This build is relatively cheap to put together and easy to gear. It's made primarily for mapping (tho T17 bosses can take a while). Can do Pinnacles but not Ubers. You don't need Awakened gems, an Ashes or Dying Sun to make this going! Can upgrade everything over time. Of course you can get more DPS and go more glass cannon but I prefer being tanky. Only 'downside' I've found is that we lack sockets, so we can't fit in things like CWDT/Automation or Frostbomb. Note, that the shown PoB DPS and max Phys Hit taken are not correct and actually higher. PoB is pretty much the absolute endgame version of what I plan to invest in. So don't wonder about 21/20 gems, high ES items etc. This is not needed to function well! Gameplay videos & PoB can be found at the end of the post.

Attributes:

• 126 dex (for Lv 5 Awa added cold)
• 98 str (for Lv 20 golems)

Look for gloves with a high dex roll. You can get strength on ring, belt, jewels/cluster, craft on helmet/boots/gloves or spend one passive point for 30 str or dex.

Projectiles & AoE:

• 66% AoE from Flame Golem + 60% while we don't have Convergence. This can be further increased by: 20% from Dying Sun, 17% craft on Helmet/Gloves, 50% incr. area of effect support, 8% implicit on helmet
• Projectiles: 3 from wand, 2 from flask, 4 from GMP (or 5 with awa GMP)

Ascendancy:

I chose Elementalist over Occultist because of the reworked golems. Winter Orb has pretty good clear itself, we don't need explosions.

Order:

• 1. Liege of the Primordial
• 2. Mastermind of Discord
• 3. Heart of Destruction
• 4. You can either go Shaper of Flames for phys reduction or Bastion of Elements for ele reduction. Shaper of Storms isn't needed as we run Skitterbots for shock. Shaper of Winter & Bringer of Ruin don't add much.

Defences:

• 6,5-8,5k ES (depending on your gear/progress)
• Shaper of Flames for 40% phys to fire conversion
• Lot of ES regen (Zealot's Oath), leech, on kill recovery & some ES on block
• Freeze & Chill
• Evade (Grace + Jade Flask)
• Some attack block chance
• 80% spell block chance
• Capped ele & chaos res
• 70% reduced crit taken (90-100% if you use a corrupted shield and/or tattoos)
• Recuded curse effect
• Curses: Enfeeble & Temporal Chains
• Some phys taken as on helmet
• Minions that can take the aggro
• 55-65% base movement speed
• Elemental Ailment Immunity
• Support-Merc (auras / phys conversion)
• Flasks

Optional (for more phys/melee reduction):

• Arctic Armour or Flesh & Stone
• Stone Golem of Safeguarding

Pantheon:

Major: Arakaali (less DoT damage) (we get stun immunity from flask)

Minor: Yugul (for more less curse effect), Ralakesh (for bleeding) or Shakari (for less poison damage) - this depends on what you run on your flasks

Gear information:

We get 120% ele res just from Purity of Elements, Alira, Prism Guardian and the tree.

As we don't need many ele resistances, we can use the suffixes for chaos res and attributes. You can craft hybrid str/dex or hybrid ele/chaos res as a suffix. Or, if you have an open prefix on helmet, you can craft +1 AoE and put the curses in there. AoE is also craftable on gloves.

• Gloves: Make sure you get a high dex roll on the gloves.
• Boots: For the Exarch implicit you can use movement/action speed, chaos res, golem buff or drop ground X - whatever you prefer/get.
• Wand: Can also get a corrupted one with increased AoE; make sure it has 3 projectiles.
• Shield: get one with high dex and corruption. Usable corruptions: reduced crit taken, spell block, max ES, Lv 23 Discipline
• Ring 1: Curse on Hit - either syntesised, fractured or conqueror-influenced
• Ring 2: Anathema with high cast speed (can get one with corruption later)
• Amulet: Ashes of the Stars (for higher golem buffs and more Winter Orb stages) or a rare one with +1 all or cold skills until you can afford an Ashes. I recommend getting one that doesn't have any str, dex (or <19) and res so you can replace it later easily. Anoint: Exceptional Performance (is good for mapping but choose what you like).

Jewel information:

• Rare Jewels: One needs to be corrupted with "2% reservation efficiency" implicit (NOT mana reservation!) to be able run all the auras socketed in the shield. The other one should have Corrupted Blood immunity. You want +3% chance to block spell damage on both. For the remaining stats look out for: %ES, crit chance, crit multi, damage
• Large Cluster: get one with Conjured Wall and Mage Hunter. The Suffix doesn't matter as long as both nodes are in front.
• Timeless Jewel with Dominus. Make sure it doesn't change the allocated nodes in radius. Get one with channeling/aoe/elemental damage.
• Watcher's Eye: you don't necessarily need one with Hatred crit. You can start by using a rare jewel with ES and damage/crit or use a Watcher's Eye that has at least two mods of the following. If you do so, you also want to run a diamond flask with crit to get your crit chance up. Mods you're looking for: Preci - crit multi, Discipline - spellblock, ES per hit, ES regen, Purity of Elements - Chaos Res, Max Res, Zealotry - Cast Speed, Crit chance, incr. damage taken --> See 'Merc' if you use one with Hatred <--

Gem information:

• Use whatever travel skill you like
• Winter Orb: for the 6th socket, there's some options:

1. Red: Inspiration (damage) or More Duration (mapping)
2. Blue: Power Charge on Crit (damage), Increased Area of Effect (mapping) or Focused Channeling (Pinnacles)
3. Green: Hypothermia for more damage/freezes

• If you don't run Inspiration, check mana cost!
• If you want more defence, you can replace one golem for Stone Golem of Safeguarding

Aura information:

• The 50% auras are socketed in the shield (Zealotry, Purity of Elements, Haste/Hatred)
• Skitterbots is linked to Bonechill and goes into the wand
• Discipline & Tempest Shield whereever you like.
• For the last aura you can choose:

- Defensively: Flesh & Stone (Sand Stance), Vitality or Arctic Armour

- Offensively: Precision, Herald of Ice or Herald of Ash (for overkill explosions)

- Or craft a level 30 Aspect if you have any suffixes left

--> If you use a 25% aura, you probably need the mana reservation efficiency mastery, use an Enlighten, drop Bonechill or get reservation efficiency on helmet

--> With Precision on, you get additional Watcher's Eye mod options

• A fractured Unset Ring or an aura as corruption on ring/shield frees up a socket. This way you can use an Enlighten or link Lv 1 Arcane Surge to Flame Dash.
• You can use a Level 21 Discipline or Level 20 Vaal Discipline (can't recharge ES without because of RF)

Merc:

Aura:

• The one we are looking for has Grace + Haste auras, so we can drop Haste and self-cast Hatred (needs less dex). Until we find that one, start with one that only has Grace. You'll need 155 dex for Haste, so you either take a 30 dex passive node or run a Level 13 Haste.
• When you find one that has both auras (or Grace + Hatred), you can consider using a Watcher's Eye.
• Hatred itself does nothing for the build, it's just used for a huge crit boost. So I'd only use a Watcher's Eye when you can afford one that has at least one additional usable modifier. Otherwise you can just skip on this tech and throw another aura in.
• The mercs that grant Grace + Haste/Hatred are all dex characters, so you want to exile the str/int ones to find them easier.

Supporter Gear:

• You only can equip dex-based gear pieces.
• Give him items with evasion, life, suppress and resistances to increase survivability.
• You also want the following unique items/eldritch implicits:

1. Helmet: Elevore (Suppress/Recovery)
2. Gloves: Corrupted with Temporal Chains on Hit
3. Body: Rare with Eldritch implicits: aura effect + grace aura effect
4. Boots: Rare with Eldritch implicits: drop sapped or scorched ground
5. Amulet: The Jinxed Juju Amulet (aura effect) or The Ignomon (blind enemies = more evade) - Anoint: Leadership (aura effect/aoe)
6. Belt: Kaom's Binding (enemy damage phys to fire conversion)
7. Quiver: Rearguard (Block) or Maloney's Mechanism (Blind)

Power Charge Generation:

• While mapping: 8% on kill
• Single target: Assassin's Mark (needs quality!)
• Additionally: 20% on block, Anathema, Power Charge on Crit (if used)
• Sometimes the RNG can be ass during boss fights. So if you want more reliable charge generation, you can get the Caster Mastery for one charge per second while channeling. Optionally, you also can take the Mastery for 100% increased duration.

Tattoos:

• Reduced curse effect (Hinekora Deathwarden) (take Yugul Pantheon)
• Chaos res (Hinekora Storyteller)
• 3% ES (Hinekora Warrior)
• Reduced crit taken (Rongokurai Turtle)
• Hinder on Hit (Tasalia Shaman)

Additional information/tips:

• Positioning for single target is very important!! Don't stand right in front of the target.
• Merc stats (except for auras), Tattoos, Flasks and Convergence (30% more damage) aren't included in PoB calculation
• Instead of Militant Faith you can use a Elegant Hubris to get rid of attribute requirements. But be aware that this will change the passive nodes and you don't get any attribute bonuses. If you do, you can craft frenzy on kill chance on your ring.
• If you have very high resistances, you can leave them overcapped for debuffs and eldritch altars or change the bandit choice to get an additional skill point.
• If you have a large cluster with either Essence Rush or Thaumophage (suffix), you can take that and respec the single leech node.
• If you want more ES recovery at Pinnacle bosses, don't activate RF (can also put in Vitality).
• Keep your max mana pool as low as possible as RF scales with it (more mana = more degen).
• You can also use the freeze-spread implicit on gloves instead of Unnerve.
• You can use a Quartz Flask for Phasing while mapping.
• This build heavily benefits from Headhunter!

Map/Altar mods you want to avoid:

1. Bricked maps:

• Monsters remove life/ES on hit = instant death
• Ele reflect (at least if you don't run Bastion of Elements or change Pantheon/Tree)
• Less ES recovery / no regen

2. Playable but not funny (if you have increased map modifier effects on atlas)

• Projectiles are fired in random directions (you'll have a hard time against single targets)
• Reduced block chance (this will also reduce your spell block chance)
• Monster suppress / additional elemental resistances
• Reduced aura effect
• Less curse effect

PoB & Gameplay:

PoB: https://pobb.in/ivyUnadaLFag

Videos:

While recording, my character was Lv 93. No Ashes, no Awa GMP, still upgrading gear.

Eater of Worlds (93% Quant with Suppress, extra Proj and Attack speed

Echo of Trauma (forgot to activate curses and RF)

The Maven (final phase)

Cortex

T16.5 mapping

That's it! Thanks for reading, have fun playing and feel free to ask or leave any feedback!