Background:

This is more of a proof-of-concept with random gear I had in standard, as I didn’t league start as LC and still wanted to give it a go, but couldn’t really bring myself to level a second char + re-gear again given the state of the league economy. The ssf-ish nature of the gear is evident in the PoB, as I’m running Doyani’s Prototype without hitting -200 lightning res, have some sub-optimal node pickups on the tree, and have highly questionable chaos res. However, the build should be doable in-league with all the new LoK rings that give a huge amount of – lightning res. Overall it’s definitely not a high-end knock out all content build and doesn't have massive DPS or survivability, but is quite an enjoyable mapper with an easy playstyle of “hold down right click and go”.

Way back in the day, Poet’s Pen Arc + Lightning Warp was a popular and super fun build that let you teleport around the map while shooting lightning and blasting packs. Unfortunately, nerfs to Poet’s Pen and Arc put an end to it. With Lightning Conduit’s unique mechanics and huge base damage, it seemed like it could be an interesting spell to use to try and bring the build back. The spell looked quite fun but somewhat clunky with the 2-button playstyle so I looked to the various trigger mechanisms that existed, even though it was pretty clear the most optimal path was to self-cast it. With LC’s unique stacking cooldown when triggered + the mechanic requiring a pre-shock from another skill, it seemed like a good candidate to get something running, as the cooldown would give ample time to cast another spell in tandem for mobility or additional dps. I also wasn’t super concerned with only having a 3-link on LC due first to its huge inherent damage, as well as the lack of a large number of really good supports for it when not building for crit. Controlled Destruction dropped crit chance by too much to reliably proc EO, and Conc Effect + Spell Echo don’t work for the skill, after which the next-strongest support is Hypothermia, giving only a 29% more bonus. This left (Awakened) Elemental Focus + Added Lightning as the two that significantly boost the skill’s DPS values, working perfectly as the 3 links for a Poet’s Pen.

General Build Mechanics:

Offense:

Tl;dr: Poet’s Pens with LC + Lightning Warp. Power Siphon 6L for trigger and shocks, right-click to go.

LC has a unique property of stacking its cooldown with the cooldown of any trigger that applies it, in this case stacking the 0.25s cooldown of Poet’s Pen with its default cooldown of .5s, for a total cd of .75 seconds. This built-in cooldown isn’t ideal, but when dual-wielding Poet’s Pens, gives enough of a downtime to attack a second time and trigger a spell in the off-hand wand, allowing for either a mobility or second DPS spell to be ran concurrently. With some very handy multi-function passive tree pickups + cooldown recovery on boots and belt, this cooldown value can be dropped to approximately half of its original number (I’m currently getting .36s CD with normal mapping buffs up on LC). Getting attack speed to half of that value + server tick breakpoint doesn’t take a huge amount of investment and ensures that every-other attack LC will be triggered.

For general mapping, I’m running another Poet’s Pen with Lightning Warp for mobility as my offhand. These two are weapon-swapped with my non-equipped weapons for bosses, which are two other Poet’s Pens that are running another copy of LC + Ball Lightning. Shocks are generated by Power Siphon, which I chose over KB for its built-in GMP and culling strike, as well as lower mana cost. With Wrath + Awakened Added Lightning Damage for base lightning attack damage + Overcharge and Unbound Ailments to increase ailment effect, this setup is able to consistently generate 65% Shock hits on Shaper, and is probably way overkill for mapping (Unbound Ailments should probably be swapped for LGoH / Energy Leech Support), but allows for consistent max damage hits with LC regardless of map mods. In general, the build’s damage is also strongly carried by Doryani’s Prototype, although with the random gear I threw together (primarily back from Scourge league) I’m only sitting at -164% lightning res. Overall, I’m getting ~3.5m DPS from LC and another 2m DPS from Ball Lightning with Convergence up. Not nearly as much as some of the crazy 100m+ DPS LC builds on poe.ninja, but more than enough for me to comfortably run t16s without any issue.

Defense:

Moving around constantly with Lightning Warp / ~40k armor with flasks up / 6 portals

The defenses aren’t great on this build. There are some definite gaps (low chaos res, only real recovery coming from LGoH ring + Poachers Mark, needing to pick up Holy Dominion to cap ele res, which both costs me a passive point and lowers my damage), but these can be fairly easily overcome with a bigger budget and better gearing choices. I’m able to comfortably do 8-mod T16 maps, but would average a death or so usually when trying to run something with rough mods on it. In its current form, this is definitely more of a fun meme build instead of something that’s super survivable or has super high DPS.

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