Hey there!

I've been thinking about the new Lightning Conduit spell for the past few days, I find it really interesting and kind of wanted to try and make it work, especially with Voltaxic Rift. I've been asking around and have had some really good discussions with members of this community that have clarified quite a few things.

I finally have something I am quite content with and that should be able to league start even in SSF.

TL;DR:

Voltaxic Rift / Lightning Conduit - Archmage MoM Trickster

→ Big boi MoM Life/ES stacks max shock with Lightning Arrow pew pew and detonates big DPS with Conduit.

Before anything: in ANY Lightning Conduit PoB you see (not only mine), the DPS is a trap and mostly irrelevant. What matters is the Average Damage (what you can do in one hit), this is because your are gated by the rate at which you can apply shock, so the real "DPS" will be your Average Damage * your shock application rate. Don't believe inflated DPS numbers with 6 cast per second, this means nothing.

SSF Friendly (1 unique): https://pobb.in/fZlL0k6cR2vn

SSF Friendly with clusters (1 unique): https://pobb.in/J8X6RqQnWtSC

Not SSF Friendly but bit more damage (More damage, but less spell suppression as a result): https://pobb.in/5bpEhH9Z-FjO

Non-MoM / Crit / Pretty High investment / Non-SSF with ~3M+ Hit damage: https://pobb.in/Ql-n-tt1k5nr by xSlowmo

Also thanks /u/ww_crimson and /u/Raine_Live for the ideas and discussions.

EDIT: PoBs up to date with the buff and then nerf to the skill.

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The Build

I've been trying to make a build centered around Lightning Conduit and Voltaxic Rift and have been having a lot of fun in PoB. I am going Archmage to scale the damage further and using MoM for additional defense (kinda love the archetype) and finally landed on this.

Note that I am planning on League starting in semi-SSF (private league) which means that most uniques will be inaccessible to me, albeit farmable. The only mandatory unique for the build to really work properly is Voltaxic Rift though. You can still reach like 600k-800k DPS without it but meh.

I am not using any crazy unique or very hard to craft rare, the PoB is erring more on the side of low / mid-tier investment, most of it definitely attainable through self-craft (I am also hoping for some nice Kalandra jewelery with lots of mana and mana regen).

With limited investment this build has:

• 3k life
• 2.5k ES with ES leech and Overleech
• 4k mana with 400 regen and 1200 mana leech on Sirius
• MoM
• Capped spell suppression (depending on the PoB)
• 21k evasion without flask
• 550% shock effect (x6.5)
• A hit damage of about 1.2M. This is using a modified Shock Nova, so it probably won't be those exact numbers but it should be close enough. This is not the DPS, this is ONE hit of Lightning Conduit. The DPS is a trap because you are not limited by cast speed but by the rate at which you can attack to apply shock.
• A unique hipster playstyle because it's a brand new gem and we use Voltaxic Rift as our end-game weapon
• A sure way of making your carpal tunnel syndrome worse

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Is this incredibly impressive? Nope. Is this enough? Probably. The numbers seem alright and it looks fun and doable. There is also a lot of room for improvement on both the tree and the gear.

It also seems pretty fun, solving Archmage mana problems using Lighting Strike + Mana leech is something I never thought of before and really hope it’ll feel smooth! Conduit should cost about 1k mana to cast and each attack will give you back 1200 mana so that should work fairly well.

This is not the best way of using Lightning Conduit. My opinion is that the most optimized way of going about it is either a trigger build or using Shock Nova to apply a 75% max shock or a brand, and use a Staff / Wand + Shield to scale damage with gem level and other affixes. But I really think Voltaxic Rift is going to be fun and viable. If you're interested in creating your own - more optimized - build, and just wish to understand the mechanics instead of following this PoB, just read on!

The PoB is a mess, there are a LOT of “Custom Modifiers” in the Configuration to adjust Shock Nova to Conduit levels of damage.

In SSF, you can use any bow before Voltaxic Rift, just need to farm it in the maps that drop the card, should be easy.

Why Trickster

Honestly, as you may read if you read my following write up on mechanics, we don’t need Shaper of Storm, ergo we don’t need to be an Elementalist. Most ascendancies won’t scale our damage that much so I think taking a defensive ascendancy is a pretty good idea and I really want to use the new Trickster and its ES overleech mechanics.

But honestly, it would work with Raider, Elementalist or Hierophant, if not using archmage and going crit instead, I think Inquisitor could also be great with Fanatism.

Here is an unoptimized Hierophant PoB https://pobb.in/oJwtTey3Xn7E, focusing on Armor + Agnostic instead of Evasion and Leech.

And now...

A way too long write up on shock mechanics and how this kind of builds work.

First of all, just a reminder that both new spells, Galvanic Field and Lightning Conduit, scale with shock, and the higher shock you get on a target, the more damage you do. Up to 460% more damage!

Max shock on a target

First of all, let's look at the changes to maximum shock effect:

The default max shock is 50%. You used to be able to break this ceiling using either the Lightning Mastery that gave "Your shocks can increase damage taken by up to 60%" or Voltaxic Rift that straights up changed that limit to 100%. You could have one or the other but not both, making the highest shock attainable 100%.

In 3.19 this will change, with each source being additive, and the new mastery granting +15% max shock, Voltaxic Rift granting +40% max shock and finally Shock Nova granting +10% max shock.

This means that the new theorical maximum for shock effect is 115%. On both new skills, that both boast 20% more damage done per 5% shock, this is equivalent to 460% more damage, which is pretty darn good.

I will not be using shock nova, because I apply my shock with Lightning Arrows, and 105% maximum shock effect (420% more damage) is alright in my book.

Applying shock on a target

Now this is where everything becomes a bit more complex. We want to apply the maximum amount of shock in one hit on a target and to be able to re-apply it quickly because Lightning Conduit consumes the shock on activation.

There are 2 ways of achieving a high shock on a target:

• Doing enough damage; all enemies have an ailment threshold that, when crossed, applies a shock on the target. The effect of the shock depends on the damage done and this threshold, and you need to do a lot of damage to a boss to achieve max shock. By default, you need to do around 7M in one hit to apply the default max shock of 50% on Sirius.
• The Witch’s Ascendancy: Shaper of Storms, that grants a minimal shock of 15% on a target when hit, which can be scaled through non-damaging ailment effect.
  • This really interesting because you are scaling minimal shock effect, so any hit you do will apply this shock, even if you only dealt 1 single point of damage. This is great to apply shock through KB or any attack and spell you like without worrying about the damage.

Both are very viable way of applying shock, and I am sure we’ll see builds pop up using both techs, each having their pros and cons. But what matters most here is that they don’t have the same ceiling.

Both scale with “% Increased effect of Non-Damaging Ailments” on your tree or gear, but they don’t really scale the same.

With Shaper of Storms, you need around 330% ailment effect to get to 65% which is easily attainable only on the tree. But to get to 105% shock effect, you need 600% ailment effect, which is WAY harder to come by (if at all possible).

What this means is that if we want to be able to benefit from the +40% shock provided by Voltaxic Rift and hit 105% shock, we need to do it through damage. There is no other realistic way without sacrificing too much or being quite rich (Fury of Nature, lots of clusters...), which is not really what we want.

Proper application of shock and proliferation

We’ll use Lightning Arrow with Overcharge to apply shock, allowing us to reach 100% shock chance. Don’t forget that there will be a new Lightning Mastery that will give us Shock proliferation.

Doing enough damage to shock

Now that we know how to apply shock and how to scale it, we need to find how much damage will be needing for a constant max shock of 105% on a boss. I am taking Sirius as a basis for the calculations because most bosses and guardians are similar or have lower threshold. Haven’t done any calculations for Uber Pinnacle Bosses because I can’t find anything about their ailment threshold. They might be the same or might be way higher and requiring you to scale your damage or %increased ailment further.

Sirius as an ailment threshold of 7M damage (the wiki says 25M damage, but that was prior to the ailment threshold pass that was done in 3.15), requiring us to do this amount of damage to inflict a 50% shock.

This is affected by “% Increased effect of Non-Damaging Ailments” as well as one of the most important affix : “Shock as though dealing %X more damage”.

If you do 100 damage and have “Shock as though dealing 100% more damage”, you’ll shock your target as if you had done 200 damage. Simple.

Now:

• The new Voltaxic Rift has: “Shock as though dealing 300% more damage”
• Lighning Arrow has: “Shock as though dealing 300% more damage”
• The new overcharge gem has “Shock as though dealing 690% more damage” at lvl 20, as well as 25% less damage
• Also note that the gloves "Painseeker" exists and can roll "Shock as though dealing 100%-200% more damage". I am not using them in my build, but those are pretty great.

Those are multiplicatives, and this gives us a ((300+100)/100)*((300+100)/100)*((690 +100)/100) * 0.75→ 94.8 multipler. This means that any damage done will be multiplied by almost 95 before applying shock.

The formula for ailment damage calculation is (thanks /u/ReverendBizarre for your help understanding it) :

0.5*(D/T)^(0.4)*(1+M)

Where D: damage dealt, T: ailment threshold, M: increases to effect of shock.

With 320% Increased effect of Non-Damaging Ailments, we’d calculate our shock as follow (depending on X, our damage dealt):

0.5*((X * 94.8)/7000000)^(0.4)*(1+320/100)

Here is a spreadsheet to avoid all this math and find X for you: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jYr6yykIh9nV3qOltq9p1JhMG5HuQz2t1j32aZ98OhY/edit?usp=sharing

This is not mine. I found it while googling, I just updated it for 3.19.

If we look at the spreadsheet, we can see that to apply a 105% shock on Sirius, we only need to do 13053 damage with our hits. This is WAY more attainable than what you’d expect and if you scale non-damaging ailment effect you can even get this number down some more.

Still, it’s not that easy to get and will require a few damage links with Lightning Strike to attain. Also note that doing 13k DPS is not the same as doing 13k per hit, and 13k average hit is not the same as 13k minimum hit, which you need to do to ensure a 105% shock on Sirius. Knowing that lightning damage has a pretty big range you need to shoot higher than 13k average hit on PoB if you really want to have a maximum shock every time you hit, and optimize your damage.

Don’t forget that you also need to actually hit and accuracy is low by default on caster builds. Don’t forget that your Quiver can be a Two-Point Arrow Quiver (30% global accuracy) and can roll +600 accuracy, Additional Accuracy Support exists if needed, Ice Golem and Precision are also viable options, as well as some amulet anoints.

If you’re a bit low on damage with Lightning Strike on bosses, you can replace GMP and Mirage Archer with damage gems to ensure maximum shock or unbound ailments that adds a 50% increased effect of non-damaging ailments!

Scaling Lightning Conduit damage

There are lots of way of scaling our damage, we could definitely have gone crit or something else but I really wanted to try my hand at the Archmage / MoM archetype this league and this seems like fine way of scaling damage, giving us a lot of additional lightning damage and making investing in mana the way to go. Mana stacking additionally gives us more shock effect thanks to the lightning mastery "Increased and Reductions to Maximum Mana also apply to Shock Effect at 30% of their value", helping us lower the damage threshold for shock application.

We also convert 60% of damage to chaos, allowing us to use Withering Steps or Withering Spell Totems to apply wither on bosses and ramp up our damage. We could also use Withering touch in Lightning Arrow.

With the high base damage the build has, it definitely could benefit from increases to spell damage / lightning damage and some additional more damage but without the ability to use a staff or a wand, this is kind of limited.

The Trickster comes with +2 maximum frenzy charges so we are also using Frenzy to generate frenzy charges, giving us more overall speed with our 5 frenzy charges. Polymath is a better option damage wise, though.

I am also thinking of using a weapon switch with Wand / Manastorm. When fighting a boss just switching and using any spell before switching back will give an almost ~30% more damage for 4 seconds which is pretty fucking good. Might be too clunky though but could also be a proper rotation.

Anyway

I am really interested in any feedback on this build and hope my write up on the mechanics will help some of you create your own versions of Lightning Conduit builds.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, and cheers!