Hey fellas,

So this league I've been struggling to come up with a build that I would enjoy playing that wouldn't also potentially cost a mirror to start. Bleed Glad and Mamba anything are strong, but I did not enjoy the feel of the builds and dropped them even before breaking into reds.

So lo and behold, the build that finally clicked for me and that, somehow to my great befuddlement, also works really well for chilling while blasting T16.

First things first, T16 Strand with Ritual and Beyond for cheap XP: YouTube

I don't run Deli mirror, but as it just naturally spawned I thought it would be a good showcase of the build's strong and weak points at the same time. I also skipped altar clicking, I'm atrociously slow at reading those.

POB: https://pobb.in/pOhFiSKNo9VE

Strong Points

• cheap as shit
• T16 tanky, 5K ES CI + 20K armour block capped glancing blows Aegis Aurora + Incandescent Heart + blast freeze. You don't really die in maps
• very satisfying clear with Occu pops
• 1 button build. Dash around with Shield Charge or Whirling Blades, Frost Blink while cycloning
• decent growth potential with currency

Weak Points

• single target DPS is painfully mid, as can be seen in the video
• as with all Cyclone CoCs, damage projection is non-existant, have to be on top of enemies to deal damage. Not gonna be offscreening Legions any time soon.
• not a whole lot of movement and attack speed, movement is not the snappiest
• weak to phys oneshots, though that is something I only experienced with bosses and it's already a bad idea to do those with this build
• stats are annoying in this build, need both high dex and str and we get neither from the tree

How it all works

Blade Blast of Dagger Detonation is a funny skill that sits somewhere between spells and attacks. It takes the damage of your dagger, multiplies it by almost 7x and adds it to the blast. So you should approach your dagger as you would approach a dagger on an attack build: get highest damage possible. Gem levels don't do much, +3 levels would give about 14% more damage, so scaling them is a waste of currency for the most part.

This lends itself nicely to CoC, focusing most of your damage potential on just one item of which, thankfully, a good and affordable unique exists (shame Bino's went somewhat meta with Mamba now, it was way cheaper before).

From then on, scaling goes for applying a whole lot of ailments and leveraging Yoke and Taming.

At this low budget, we don't go over the first CoC threshold and thus don't need CDR at all, which saves us cash money on belt/boots or, god forbid, Awakened CoC.

My main goal with this build was to cook a fun CoC build as cheap as possible while being tanky in maps. So in general, I wouldn't push this build much farther than I have and will opt to farm currency with it for... something, dunno yet. Though there's quite a few avenues for scaling here. Most importantly, no, I won't touch Ralakesh with a 10 foot pole even if it's always objectively the right answer, did one too many builds with that in the past and stuff stops being fun when there's always the same answer for the question of "how to scale damage" xDD

Price Breakdown

• Weapon: Bino's Kitchen Knife 1.4D. Poison prolif is absolutely useless, but it's by far the best PDPS dagger for the money.
• Shield: Aegis Aurora 25C.
• Helmet: random base for 40C + 60C worth of shrieking dex essences
• Body: 6L Incandescent Heart 1D
• Gloves: random res + armour/es from trade + a couple of small embers/ichors = +-30C
• Boots: same as above
• Belt: stygian with a bunch of str and res, like 50C or smth
• Ring 1: 48% Taming 1.4D
• Ring 2: ele weakness on hit + 50+ dex 2D (still think that's a robbery)
• 10% Yoke of Suffering 4D
• Watcher: 35% Hatred phys to cold + flask on crit 2D
• 8p cluster with Blanketed Snow and Sadist: 2D
• Any Dominus Militant Faith: 1D
• Large Thread of Hope: 1.4D
• Cheapest Immutable Force: 45C
• Flasks: my flasks are a disaster I don't feel like fixing atm, just get granite and diamond with inc armour and inc crit, rest is flavour
• CB abyss jewel with fire to spells: 1D
• Armour Light of Meaning: 35C

All above adds up to something like 18D, so 2D of safety margin. Keep in mind that I started blasting T16 on about 10D budget with quarter the damage and went from there.

Can create alternative 10D tree, if anybody's interested.

Important Details

Some parts of the build may look random but end up making the whole thing function, so I'll highlight them here.

Taking Clever Thief is very important, even if we're not really an attack build nor do we benefit from life leach part of the notable. This is simply the only way to sustain mana. On that note, aim to get as much unreserved mana as possible, since leach has a ramp up time. I keep my Precision at level 13 for this exact reason, that's the lowest level that still allows me to reach hit cap.

Added fire to spell on the abyss jewel is important. The amount of added is not. We just need at least 1 fire damage to ignite with our crits and get +10% damage taken from Yoke and +48% inc damage from Taming.

The Light of Meaning with armour is very important. Getting decent armour as a witch is very tricky and LoM end up giving us close to 50% more armour in the end.

Flask on Crit on Watcher is nice for sustain, but can be skipped to save about 1Div.

Conclusion

Hope someone will find this build as enjoyable as I found it. I almost gave up on the league just cause I couldn't cook something I was excited about until now.

There might be small inefficiencies here, I did not min-max the shit out of the tree and gear within budget, so if you see something let me know!