3.30 Lightning Conduit / Lightning Tendrils of Escalation league starter

The notes in this guide are organized in sections with a blue header to make each section easy to find. Yellow text is more detailed information for newer players which can be skipped. The blue header plus the level based layouts in this pob should be suffient for experienced players. Orange text is information which is critical to understand and should be read by everyone. Just an FYI for anyone who has never used the feature, on the skill tree page in pob there is a check box at the bottom called compare, if you turn that on and pick select a 2nd skill tree, pob will show you what is different between the two trees. BUILD SUMMARY This build guide is intended to be used as a league starter during the first week of a league. It is not intended as an optimal way to level this build later in a league, but it will do just fine for that as well. This guide is also not intended to be a racing build, if you can get to maps in 3 hours you don't need this guide. I make my builds to be reasonably tanky and comfortable to play. It isn't hard to make this build do considerably more damage by going zhp, but I have no interst in making builds that way. The build easily scales damage to 4+ million with very little gear while also being reasonably tanky on that level of gear. Beyond the basic build, it is straight forward to scale damage beyond 15 million dps via several unique jewels, a single cluster jewel, and a unique staff. Lightning conduit is a 2 button build, you cast orb of storms and then hold down the lightning conduit button until everything is dead. Both the player and some monsters must be within the orb of storms for lighting conduit to do any damage. You can replace orb of storms with storm brand for a more defensive play style and/or for bossing, but orb of storms is much faster/easier to use since it does not require any aiming and the area of effect is far larger. When you cast lightning conduit it triggers orb of storms to hit all enemies within the orb of storms, applying a 65% shock (via Shaper of Storms). The lightning conduit spell hits all shocked enemies within a very large area (almost the entire screen), thus the combintion of orb of storms to apply shock and lightning conduit to consume the shocks for big damage. The build is a reasonably fast mapper since the damage is pretty high even with very little gear and every cast of lightning conduit hits all enemies within range. It plays a lot like a melee build since you have to move within range of the monsters, cast orb of storms, and then cast lightning conduit. Generally one press of the lightning conduit spell is enough to kill most white/blue packs. This guide invests into a decent amount of defense early due to the nature of the build requiring you to be within close range of enemies to do damage. If you do not invest into defense, you will die constantly and you will not have a good time. I find most of my deaths with this build early on are due to playing too aggressively, getting stunned, then getting overwhelmed. Mana is often an issue with this build, it is very important to make sure that you have enough mana regeneration and/or skill cost reduction to avoid running out of mana constantly. This build relies heavily on the Mystic Bulwark passive which gives you 1% mana regen per 1% spell block, so in this case investing in defense gives you offense. It is critical to invest in spell block early to provide mana regeneration. Attrubutes are also often an issue since the build requires 158 str, 68 dex, and eventually 293 int for a Twilight Regalia body armour. The benchcraft which gives 25 of two different attributes is generally the easiest way to get the attributes you need, as the 50 attribute points is basically as good as a t2 attribute roll on gear. I often find myself having to take the 30 str or dex passive nodes to meet attribute requirements until I get really good gear. ======================================= LEVEL 2 to 28 - Fireball + holy flame totem ======================================= Take kinetic bolt as your reward for killing Hillock. You'll use it to get through Mud Flats and kill Hailrake on the Tidal Island. You can also buy prismatic burst support which gives a little bit of extra damage, but it isn't mandatory. I switch to fireball right after Hailrake, but you can stay with kinetic bolt all the way to the end of act 1 if you prefer. Fireball is definitely better than kinetic bolt by the end of act 1, but in the early part of act 1 kinetic bolt is better. After killing Hailrake return to town, take your quicksilver flask, and acquire holy flame totem, elemental proliferation, infused channelling, volley, flame wall, and frost blink. You also want to get a shield plus shield charge if possible. You need to get an amulet that gives dexterity and as soon as you reach level 8 you need to get a heavy belt for strength so that you can level up your gems. This will be the skill setup you use all the way to level 28. If you do not have an amulet which gives dex and a heavy belt for strength, you can path to Practical Application for +20 str and dex. You need a source of str and dex to be able to use shield charge, faster attacks, and to be able to level up holy flame totem. Respec out of Practical Application once you have solved str/dex some other way. Holy flame totem and fireball both benefit massively from passing through flame wall, so when you need more damage always try to cast flame wall so that these skills pass through the flame wall before hitting their target. Once you kill Brutus, you can return to town and Tarklleigh will give you a quest reward. Take combustion for your 3rd support on holy flame totem. I also recommend buying clarity and vitality to give you a steady supply of mana and life. You also want to buy faster attacks support for shield charge. I personally prefer flame dash over frostblink, so if I have the currency I'll replace frostblink. I recommend keeping the frostblink gem (either in your stash or on weapon swap) so that if you later get the option in lab to upgrade a gem to its transfigured version you'll have the ability to get frostblink of wintry blast. Help Alira for the +15% all elemental resistance This build uses multiple uniques and even with purity of elements, resistance can be a problem early. With good gear you can later come back and take the +1 passive point instead of the +15% all elemental resistance, but that is unlikely to be possible until level 90+ Fire mastery choice I recommend taking the regenerate life per fire resistance mastery node once you reach Heart of Flame at the top of the passive tree. The 100% increased damage against ignited enemies node is also very strong, but I don't find that I need the damage by the time I reach the node, whereas if I craft fire resistance on several pieces of equipment I get 75 to 100 life regen per second. That much life regen basically means even a low skill player such as myself rarely dies and can just mindlessly shield charge through zones ignoring monsters to get through the early part of the campaign faster. Craft added spell fire damage on wand When you find Dialla in the act 3 zone "Solaris Temple Level 2", just past her is the entrance to a room named Eternal Laboratory. This room contains a crafting bench recipe which allows you to craft added spell fire damage onto your wand. This recipe massivly boosts your damage and you should use the crafting bench to add this to your wand as soon as you get it (if possible). ======================================= LEVEL 28 ======================================= 28 Switch to Firestorm + Armageddon Brand After killing Gravicious in the act 3 zone "The Ebony Barracks", you can return to town and Marmoa will give you a free Firestorm gem which is a massive upgrade to your damage. The minimum level to use Firestorm is level 28. Mana will be significant issue with Firestorm until you complete your first labrynth trial and add lightning golem. You can also buy armageddon brand from the vendor. I use armageddon brand + firestorm, speed runners use firestorm + cremation/desecrate. Use whatever you prefer, any of these fire spells are really strong for the campaign. You can also take the Runebinger keystone to double the damage armageddon brand does for single target since this build guide passes directly by it. As soon as you kill Daresso and Kaom in act 4 and give the two quest items to Dialla, you can return to town to get spell echo which is a massive damage / qol update for firestorm. You also need to buy a lightning conduit gem and keep it in an offhand weapon or a spare socket so that when you are ready to switch to lighting conduit the gem is fully leveled. First lab, take Liege of the Primordial If the divine font gives you an option to add quality to a gem, you should use it to add quality to your lightning conduit gem. You did remember to buy a lightning conduit gem before doing lab right? Getting 20 quality on lightning conduit gives 14.5% more damage. I go all the way into act 4 and find Diallia in the Crystal Veins zone before returning to act 3 and doing my first lab. You have to be level 34 to use golems so there is no point in rushing to do the first lab before you are close to level 34. Take the Liege of the Primordial node to give +2 golems and make your golems automatically resummon after they die. The most important golem is the lightning golem as it gives you mana regeneration and cast speed. After that, stone golem and flame golem are both helpful. Chaos golem isn't necessary early, but it is a helps a lot once you reach maps to give you free chaos resistance. Using two unique rings makes chaos res much harder to get during early progression. Note that you could take bringer of storms for your first lab and switch to lightning conduit immediately. IMO the fire spells are a lot better during the early part of the campaign, especially with the additional support from golems, whereas if you take shaper of storms you don't get the golems. ======================================= LEVEL 45 ======================================= Make sure to buy these gems after reaching act 6 After clearing Twilight Strand in act 6 you can talk to Lily to buy any of the standard gems. You want to be leveling up Less Duration and Lightning Pentration in your offhand weapon/shield slots as these can only be bought from Lilly at level 1. If you didn't buy Lightning Conduit in act 3, you should also go back and buy it now so that it is fully leveled for when you switch. You also want to be able to add quality to it from the divine font when you take your 2nd ascandancy. ======================================= LEVEL 55 ======================================= 2nd lab, take Shaper of Storms, swap to lightning conduit If the divine font gives you an option to add quality to a gem, you should use it to add quality to your lightning conduit gem. Lightning conduit gains around 14.5% more damage from 20 quality. By the time you complete your 2nd lab, using Faustus to respec your passive points will cost around 300 gold for each point. Assuming you are following this guide, you have 12 passive points which you have to change from fire to lighting, so make sure to have close to 4000 gold before doing your 2nd lab. You can use some of the free respec points you have gotten from quests, but imo those are more valuable later when the gold cost to respec passive points gets much higher. On the 2nd lab you take the Shaper of Storms ascendancy passive to give you guaranteed shocks. Please read the shock & ailmet effect section below for a full explanation of how shock is utilized by this build and how important it is. Once you have shaper of storms you can now switch to using lighting conduit + orb of storms. After completing the 2nd lab you may be able to buy the two unique rings used by this build. Generally these are available for 1 to 3 chaos on day 1, but if you are very fast to level 55 they may not be available or might be a bit more expensive. I would not pay more than 3c for either as the build works fine without them during the campaign and you can just self cast conductivity vs. tanky monsters as needed. best supports for Orb of Storms If you do not have 160% lightning/ailment effect, you must use unbound ailments support. The goal on the end game version of the build is to get enough ailment effect from other sources to drop this support as well as the amulet annointment. Unbound ailment support provides 50% and the amulet annointment is 30%, therefore you need other sources for 80% ailment effect. In this guide I get 40% from Overshock on a cluster jewel, 30% from the Militant Faith timeless jewel, and 10% from an abyss jewel socketed in a stygian vise belt. There are other ways this could be accomplished which I've listed in the section on ailment effect. I'm sure there are other sources that I did not include, but the basic idea is you need to find 80% ailmet effect for the end game version of the build. Once you switch to the crit version of the build, you must have power charge on crit support. I'm sure there are other ways to generate power charges reliably, but the easiest path is to just use power charge on crit support with orb of storms. You must have a source of shock proliferation and if you are using shaper of flames you also need to have ignite proliferation. The elemental proliferation support solves both problems. If you are not using shaper of flames, you can get shock proliferation by spending a point on lighting mastery or from a searing exarch implict on your gloves. A source of shock proliferation is mandatory for doing and content with high density as the orb of storms beam splitting effect will not shock all monsters outside Increased area of effect support is very nice to have during early progression since it allows you to get monsters within the orb of storms from further away. If you are using the Heart of Destruction ascendency passive, the 60% area of effect from there makes it easy to replace increased area of effect support with something else. Chain support is very helpful as it allows orb of storms to chain to monsters substantiall further away and thus improves clear speed. You must have a source of shock proliferation to get good clear with chain. buy Valako's Sign unique ring (very nice) You can check trade when swapping to lightning conduit to see if a Valako's sign ring is available for a few chaos. Getting one of the life leech rings asap is very helpful as it provides a great source of recovery and either ring (Valako's Sign or Berek's Grip) also gives you some extra damage. Valako's sign gives considerably more damage. Berek's Grip gives a little bit of life, but imo the extra damage is the better choice. buy Honourhome helm (very nice) If you use Honourhome during the campaign you may need to use Purity of Elements instead of Wrath to cap your resistances. It still gives you more damage even without Wrath and you have the additional benefits of elemental ailment immunity from Purity of Elements. If your resistances are fine without it, you can use Wrath instead if you want the extra damage. Since this build guide uses the Honourhome helm all the way to level 80+, it makes sense to go ahead and buy one now as they should be available for 1 chaos. Honourhome isn't necessary early on as the build has plenty of damage in the campaign without it, but if one is available and you don't need the resistances on your current helm it makes sense to go ahead and switch. Honourhelm gives you around 30% more damage and now also has a 30 to 50% mana cost efficiency mod on it, so with Honourhome you will have no problems with mana. You can later switch to a 5 link body armour with the 5th link being Inspiration. The only reason to make this switch is if you get a good helmet. From a damage perspective there is no real gain from a 5 link body armour vs. the 4 link Honourhome, so rather than looking for a 5 link body armour you can instead just take any body armour with good stats regardless of links You do still need at least 4 sockets, but depending on what gems you put in the sockets you may not need links. You want to get either BBBB or BBBR sockets on the helm. Use cruelty if you have a red socket or lightning penetration if you have a blue. Either is fine and you'll be limited on chromatics at this point so just take whichever one you get or try to buy a BBBB helm if you are lucky enough to find one that already has 4 sockets. buy Mark of Submission unique ring (quality of life, highly recommened) Using the Mark of Submission ring is not mandatory for the build, but I use it because it gives around 25% more damage, all of the time, without pressing a button. Early on you need the extra socket and always getting the extra damage from conductivity while mapping feels really good. Maybe in an end game version of this build you can switch to the Anathema ring since you don't need the extra damage while mapping and use Bane or a helmet with the crafted mod to trigger all spells on focus to apply multiple curses by pressing 1 button. With Purity of Elements and all of the resistances you get from the passive tree, you should fairly easiily be able to max out your resistances even when using Mark of Submission. This is already a 2 button build with Orb of Storms + Lightning Conduit, so imo getting full damage uptime with the Conductivity curse socketed in Mark of Submission is a big win. Shock & non-damaging ailment effect It is very important to generate 65% shocks to maximize damage with lightning conduit. This build requires the ascendancy passive Shaper of Storms to give guarnteed 25% shocks, an additional 160% shock effect to create 65% shocks, and finally the +15% maximum shock lighting mastery to raise your maximum shock from 50% to 65%. Not only do you get 65% more damage from the shock itself, but when lighting conduit consumes the shock it gets 16% more damage per 5% shock effect, or 208% more damage from a 65% shock. Getting 20% quality on lightning conduit gives you an additional 4% more damage per 5% shock. Additional sources of gem quality such as the Ashes of the Stars amulet are also very valuable for lightning conduit. The 65% shock effect is generated from the guaranteed 25% shock from Shaper of Storms plus an additional 160% increased shock/ailment effect from passives and the unbound ailments support gem on the orb of storms spell. Some sources of shock/ailment effect useful for this build are listed here: 50% from level 16 unbound ailments (54% @ level 20) 50% from the Breath of Lightning passive 10% from the small ascendancy passive node before Shaper of Storms 30% from the Static Blows passive 20% from the lightning ailmet effect passive before Static Blows 20% from the ailment effect passive next to Divine Judgement 30% from annoiting Ash, Frost, Storm 40% from Overshock passive node on a lightning damage cluster jewel 80% from a medium non-damaging ailments cluster jewel (overshock + astonishing affliction) 3% per 10 devotion via Militant Faith timeless jewel 23-30% benchcraft amulet suffix (receipe found in maps) 23-30% benchcraft boots suffix (receipe found in maps) To get to 160%, you need the 110% from the first 3 sources plus another 50%. Initially this build guide spends 4 pasive points on the tree to take Static Blows and the passive next to it. Later on when you are able to farm or buy a Teal, Violet, and Crimson oil, you can annoint Static Blows which frees up those 4 passive points since you'll also have the 20% from the passive node next to Divine Judgement. For an end game build you want to get enough shock effect that you do not need to use the unbound ailments support gem with orb of storms. This will free up a socket for other useful supports such as hextouch, which allows you to replace the mark of submission ring with kikazaru or anathema. Note that pob does not currently correctly calculate the shock effect you get with unbound ailments. While you can see that you have 160% shock effect, the calculated shock effect ends up being wrong since it does not correctly account for the base 25% shock you get from shaper of storms. 3rd lab, take shaper of flames If the divine font gives you an option to add quality to a gem, you should use it to add quality to your lighttning conduit gem. Getting 20 quality on your lightning conduit gem gives you 14.5% more damage. I recommend running the 3rd lab multiple times to get 20 quality before going to maps. There are three good options for your 3rd lab on elementalist. I strongly recommend shaper of flames since it greatly improves your defense against physical damage and there aren't any other good options for that. This build has plenty of damage for early mapping without Mastermind of Discord and since you won't have gloves at this point to apply exposure automatically you'd only get the extra damage by manually casting Wave of Conviction or Hydrosphere. You could also stack armour and run determination + molten shell instead of purity of elements, but imo the combination of shaper of flames for physical damage mitigation, purity of elements to become immune to elemental ailments, and zealot's oath + life regen + energy shield gear is a better route for building early defense. You do want to focus on armour bases early on, however, as getting to 3000+ armour helps masively against small and medium physical hits. Bastion of Elements is the 3rd good option, but I don't find myself dying to elemental damage anywhere near as often as physical, thus my recommendation is for Shaper of Flames over Bastion of Elements for the 3rd lab. Generally having elemental ailment immunity early on plus 75% elemental resistances is plenty of protection against elemental damage during early progression. ======================================= LEVEL 66 - 70 ======================================= Stop leveling arcane surge at level 12 until you get a 6 link A level 20 arcane surge takes 400 mana to activate. Since it only lasts 4 seconds you won't maintain good uptime unless you stop leveling the support gem. Unless you have another source of activating arcane surge (ie, support your movement skill with a level 1 arcane surge), you need to keep a close eye on how much mana you spend per second vs. the level of arcane surge. At level 90+ you should be spending closer 160 to 180 mana per second and can then level arcane surge up to level 18. I don't recommend ever going above level 18 for arcane surge without having some other source which triggers it. Arcane surge level, activation cost, and spell damage: 13 121 27% 14 148 27% 15 178 28% 16 213 29% 17 252 31% 18 296 32% 19 345 34% 20 400 35% Putting a higher level gem in pob might look good on the damage, but if arcane surge isn't active that damage doesn't exist. Your cost to activate arcane surge should be at most 1.5x your mana cost per second unless you only care about bossing or if you have some other method than spending mana to activate it. Get 20 quality on your lightning conduit gem for 14.5% more damage Getting to 20 quality on the lightning conduit gem gives the build 14.5% more damage. This should be done asap. I recommend doing several runs through merc lab to use the divine font at the end to add quality to lightning conduit. This can be done either right before or after finishing the campaign, but before entering maps. I do this before switching to the Agnerod West staff and I use storm brand instead of orb of storms as I find it a lot safer to use vs. Izaro since he can still one shot you if you aren't careful. You should also have a frostblink gem in your stash or in your weapon swap just in case you get the option in the divine font to transform a gem into the transfigured version to get a Frostblink of Wintry Blast. Swap to Agnerod West staff after campaign, the staff requires level 66 The +2 skill levels, 20% lightning penetration, and added lightning damage from the Agnerod West staff gives better damage than you can reasonable get from a wand + shield setup early on day 1. Even for slowers players, it takes a very, very good wand/shield to be better than Agnerod West. The 158 str requirement may require you to take a +30 strength passive to get enough str to wield the staff. You eventually want to make sure to have both a red and a blue socket on the Agnerod West staff so that when you take the staff mastery you get 12% life and 12% mana. If you are playing in a small private league or SSF, any of the 4 versions of the Agnerod staff will suffice (North, South, East, or West). The West version is the best, but the others are still better than any rare wand/shield setup you'll be able to get when first entering maps. You can also play the build using a rare staff or a wand/shield setup (with some changes to the passive tree). You can stay with a wand/shield setup for quite a while after the campaign. It is plenty of damage for early progression, but eventually using a staff gives far better damage, especially once this build switches to critical damage scaling. The criticial damage nodes for staff give you a lot of extra crit multiplier which is not avialable to a wand/shield version of the build. I've used wand/shield all the way to nearly level 90 before without any problem, but the agnerod west staff does give a massive damage boost over any wand/shield setup you are likely to have with this build on a league start. Orb of Storms supports Unbound ailments is mandatory, so in a 4 link setup you have three good choices. Increased area of effect, chain, and elemental proliferation. Once you go to crit scaling, you also have to add power charge on crit support. I think increased area of effect is really nice, but it the weakest of these supports. I have used elemental proliferation + area of effect as that setup is more defensive since you can hit monsters from further away, but overall I prefer elemental proliferation + chain. The elemental proliferation isn't 100% mandatory, but proliferation makes a huge difference against dense monster packs. It also guarntees that enemies get ignited to trigger the shaper of flames physical -> fire damage conversion. You can instead use a lightning mastery point or a eldrich gloves implicity to give lightning proliferation and give up on ignite proliferation. In the end game versions of this build I'm not using shaper of flames, thus I drop elemental proliferation support and isntead rely on another source to get lightning proliferation. Use lightning warp until you get frostblink of wintry blast After buying the unique items and getting the build set up for mapping, you can check to see if there are any frostblink of wintry blast gems for sale which you can afford. The gem is generally cheap early on day 1 and the price goes up to around 1 divine by the end of the weekend. If you can't afford a frostblink of wintry blast, lightning warp supported by less duration and swift affliction works pretty well. It can feel a bit clunky until you are used to it due to the delay between when you cast it and when you move, but with good cast speed plus having the gems leveled up (less/reduced duration matters a lot), lightning warp is a pretty good movement skill. The delay between when you cast and when you warp depends heavily on your movement speed. Using a quicksilver flask and then using lightning warp will make it wrap much faster because the delay is based on how long it would take you to walk directly to the destination. On the other hand, if you are suffering from effects which reduce your movement speed, lightning warp will feel terrible. I recommened also including frostblink assuming you have a socket available for it as a defensive ability and to use lightning warp outside of combat. Switch to new auras for mapping Your aura setup will now be Purity of Elements, Wrath, and Flesh and Stone (in sand stance for the damage reduction). Not only does purity of elements make it easy to max your resistances, but the elemental ailment immunities it gives greatly increase tankiness. Flesh and Stone is also very effective on this build since you have a lot of area of effect and you'll typically be in close range of monsters due to how orb of storms + lightning conduit works. Use Honourhome Helm instead of trying to find a 5 link body armour If you didn't buy an Honourhome helm earlier, you should buy it now. Honourhome gives you as much damage as a 5 link due to the +2 skill levels and the massive mana cost efficiency roll makes it very easy to mana your mana costs. With Purity of Elements there shouldn't be any issue with getting to 75% elemental resistances even with Honourhelm. Get bleeding/corrupted blood immunity life flasks Until you get bleed immunity via a corrupted Valako's Sign, you'll want to make sure you have at least one flask which gives you bleeding / corrupted blood immunity. ======================================= LEVEL 80 ======================================= Damage vs. defense The way I have this build guide set up is that I take several choices to build more defense early instead of offense. The build has plenty of damage naturally due to how easy it is to scale Lightning Conduit. Investing in defense early is very important to make the build feel good to play during early map progression. If you want more damage, you can take Mastermind of Discord and Heart of Destruction for your ascendancy passives instead of Shaper of Flames and Bastion of Elements. I do not recommend doing that, but you are free to do what you want. The level 100 anathema setup does take both of those, but for general mapping / farming / leveling I strongly recommend staying with the two defensive ascendancy choices at least until you have built a substaintial amount of defenses via endurance charages, max block, and a large energy shield pool. Note that pob and by extension, poe.ninja, do not show the massive benefit to physical max hit the build gets from taking shaper of flames. To see what shaper of flames does for physical max hit you have to put in a custom configuration "40% of physical damage taken as fire" and turn off the "is the enemy ignited" check box. Pob does account for shaper of flames in the EHP calcultion if you check "is the enemy ignited", but it does not account for it on physical max hit. If you leave the check box turned on, pob will double count the shaper of flames effect on EHP with the custom config. On the level 96 version of the build, shaper of flames takes physical max hit from 15k to 25k. Amulet annointment Some time in the level 80 to 90 range, you'll want to annoint your amulet with "Static Blows" or "Ash, Frost, and Storm". These annoints are basically identical, but Static Blows is a little cheaper. By default, pob does not enable the "have you shocked an enemy recently" effect, so the 30% increased damage from Static Blows will not show up in pob (or poe.ninja). This annointment allows you to free up the 4 passive points used to path to Static Blows and reallocate them to critical hit nodes. Even before swapping to critical hit damage scaling, taking some critical chance nodes improves the uptime of Elemental Overload. Replace Honourhome helm when you get a decent 6 link chest armour Sometime in the level 80 to 90 range you will probably be able to buy a 6 link body armour with bad stats. You'll have to be careful with mana costs as losing the massive mana cost reduction from Honourhelm while also going to a 6 link may require changes to your passive tree. 4th Lab, take Bastion of Elements Until you get 2000+ energy shield, 4 endurance charges, and 16% physical taken as elemental (via eldrich implicits on your helmet and body armour), I recommend taking Bastion of Elements as your 4th ascendency notable rather than Mastermind of Discord. The buffs Lightning Conduit got for 3.29 give plenty of damage to complete your atlas, void stones, and farm currency to buy the gear you need to make the build very strong. The real issue you tend to have early on is lack of defense, and you'll have a much better time playing the build if you aren't dying constantly. If you are feel like you do not need the defense, then feel free to take Mastermind of Discord for the 16% extra damage it gives you (assuming you have a way to inflict exposure, either via Wave of Conviction or a pair of gloves with an eldrich implict). Gear priority #1: Gloves that give lightning exposure Getting a pair of gloves with a high life roll (100+) and 3 good affixes (open suffix, 25% or higher resistance rolls, good life regen, or 30+ strength/dexterity) is the first piece of gear you want to spend a fair amount of currency on. Once you have these gloves, you'll have to spend around 26 lesser eldrich ichor to get the "inflict -11% lightning exposure on hit" implicit. Early league ichors cost around 1 chaos each, so before spending that much currency on the gloves it makes sense to have a pair of gloves that you'll be able to keep for a long time. Once you have these gloves, you can consider switching to the Mastermind of Discord ascendancy notable instead of Bastion of Elements, but as mentioned above I'd only recommened doing that once your have been able to invest in some other defensive layers. If you use Bastion of Elements for the extra defense, you should spend 1 passive point on the elemental mastery to make exposure always give at least -18%. This mastery is useless if you take Mastermind of Discord. Zealots Oath Zealot's Oath is very important for increasing your defense. This build uses life regen to restore energy shield during progression rather than relying on energy shield leech. Energy shield leech is helpful, but it requires a lot of passive points and it is still worse than Zealots Oath if you aren't heavily investing in energy shield gear to get 3000+ ES. Zealots Oath is far more effective at restoring ES during combat with moderate amounts of ES. This build already gets almost 200 life regen from the stone golem. If you get some extra life regen beyond that, having 400 or 500 ES regen via Zealot's Oath makes ES a very valuable part of your defense even with low amounts of ES. With Zealot's Oath allocated, your only source of life is the life leech from Valako's sign and life flasks, so bleed, poison, etc can kill you very quickly outside of combat if you aren't paying attention. It is very important to get at least one life flask which gives you bleed and corrupted blood immunity. If you have Zealots Oath before doing your 4th lab, you can either deallocate it or just keep a very close eye on your life, as you can die very quickly from bleeding caused by the traps outside of combat. Storm brand instead of Orb of Storms (advice for bossing or defensive mapping) Storm brand is a drop in replacement for orb of storms since it has the activation speed as lightning conduit's cast speed, thus it will stay in sync while casting lightning conduit, applying shock to enemies before each cast of lightning conudit. Storm brand follows the boss around and continues to generate leech and power charages even when you aren't casting lightning conduit. The down side of it is that it shocks in a smaller area, shocks fewer enemies, and it only lasts for 6 seconds so you have to recast it. You can also damage off screen with storm brand since the center of lightning conduit is on your cursor, so if your storm brand is attached and keeping enemies shocked off screen you can hit them from very far away. On maps with very challenging mods (especially on day 1), storm brand may allow you to clear a map that you would fail using orb of storms. In general it is slower to map with storm brand due to the smaller aoe, but there are advantages which make it worthwhile to use in specific circumstances. I almost always just use orb of storms, but there are some bosses which make it difficutl to be near them so I keep a storm brand gem in my inventory to switch to it when necessary. Don't use spell echo to support lightning conduit I see a fair number of people using spell echo to support lightning conduit on poe.ninja. This does not work with Orb of Storms. The repeat cast of spell echo does not trigger orb of storms so it does zero damage. While pob may show a damage increase for using spell echo, in reality you are only doing 1/2 the damage that pob shows. Spell echo also doesn't work when using storm brand as the timing will no longer line up correctly. ======================================= LEVEL 90 ======================================= Swapping to crit around level 90 While you can swap to crit much earlier than around level 90, the damage gain is small until you can take a lot of critical hit passives so there isn't much point to doing it. You can spend points taking the Tireless life wheel in the Templar area until you are read to make the swap Make sure to deallocate elemental overload after swapping to crit Elemental overload makes crits do no extra damage so if you don't remove this keystone when you switch to the critical hit based version of this build you are losing most of your damage. Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion If you don't use RF of Arcane Devotion, mana regen for the level 96/100 versions of this build is very easy to manage even with the 25% higher mana cost from the 3.29 changes to Lightning Conduit. I really only use this gem while bossing as I find my damage is already more than sufficient for mapping without it. The visual effect of RF just makes it harder for me to see what is going on so I do not use RF while mapping. The gem does make the pob number go up, and it is very useful for bossing, thus I include it in the build. RFoAD gives 24% more cast speed which is 24% more damage as long as you have enough mana regen to handle the additional cast speed. The degen is basically canceled out by the life regen supplied by your stone golem. Staff upgrade In 3.29 GGG buffed staves quite a bit, so it isn't hard to get a staff which is significnatly better than Agnerod West. You basically just need at +3 skill levels, cast speed, and a decent spell damage roll. You also want either an open suffix or at least 13% chance to block attack damage on the staff (13% is the maximum benchcraft for attack block on a staff). With 13% attack block on the staff plus mana-infused staff, a 5% block / 3% spell block replica restless defense jewel, and annointing steelwood stance, you can cap both attack and spell block. To annoint steelwood stance, you first have to get another source of increased non-damaging ailment effect (militant faith or overshock on a cluster jewel) to replace the 30% you'd lose from the Static Blows annoitnment. You can, of course, switch to a rare staff without the annointment and just path to steelwood stance as shown in the level 90 passive tree. Replace chaos golem with ice golem if you have enough chaos resistance If your chaos resistance is pretty good without the chaos golem, you can replace it with an ice golem. The ice golem gives 72% increased critical srike chance, which is around 6% more damage. Ice goelm does require more dex than the other golems, however, so you may not be able to level it up fully. A two mod watchers eye jewel with the purity of elements mod to give chaos resistance is the most direct way to cap chaos res. The other mod on the jewel would be a Wrath mod. Automate + quality your flasks As mentiioned elsewhere, you need to have at least 1 life flask which gives immunity to bleeding and corrupted blood. In addition to that, you'll want a diamond flask (crit chance), silver flask (onslaught), quicksilver flask (movement speed), and a granite flask (armour). On the utility flasks, getting a prefix of gain 3 charges when hit, increased duration, or reduced cost is good. For the suffixes, you want one of each of these: % spell damage leeched as energy shield, % increased armour, % increased critical strike chance, and % increased block and stun recovery. Having more than one flask with the same suffix is unhelpful since only one of them will count. Other good suffixes for utility flasks are % increased movement speed or % chance to avoid being stunned. The % spell damage leeched as energy shield on a utility flask is an easy way to get some energy shield leech until you get it from "Storm Drinker" on a cluster jewel. While the flask isn't active 100% of the time, while mapping it will almost always be active. Automating flasks costs 5 instilling orbs + 5 glassblower's baubles in the crafting bench to craft the "used when charges reach full" enchantment onto the flask. While this isn't as good as manually pressing the buttons to use flasks at the best time, hardly anyone does that outside of hardcore gamers. Just automate the flasks and they'll usually be up during combat. ======================================= END GAME SCALING ======================================= get a +3 lightning conduit Replica Dragonfang's flight or an Ashes of the Stars amulet Either of these amulets gives this build around 30% more damage, so this is by far the biggest single item damage upgrade to the build. The +1 skill level and 30% quality from ashes of the stars is really good because Lightning Conduit benefits a great deal from quality and so do the golems. Replica Dragonfang's Fligth is generally going to easier to fit into the build since it gives you reduced attribute requirements on your items and gems (and as mentioend already, attributes can be a problem on this build). The other big benefit is that the reservation efficiency on the amulet frees up 1 passive point from the Contemplative Meditation wheel. add Light of meaning for added lightning damage The Light of Meaning jewel with 6% increased lightning damage per passive node in range is very good in the jewel socket above the witch starting location. This jewel gives somewhere in the range of 16% to 20% more damage assuming that you are following this guide. Light of meaning tends to be fairly expensive for the first few days of a league, expect to pay 5 to 8 divine for it. The price drops a lot by the 2nd weekend as more players start farming bosses. add Watcher's Eye jewel Watcher's Eye has several good mods for the Wrath aura. The lightning penetration mod and the critical strike mod are the best ones, but increased lightning damage is also decent. There is also a very good purity of elements mod which gives 30% to 50% chaos resistance. That mod solves your chaos resistance and may allow you to replace your chaos golem with an ice golem for 72% increased critical strike chance. A good 2 mod WE jewel with lightning penetration and either critical strike chance or chaos resistance gives this build around 15% more damage. Getting a WE jewel which has two good Wrath mods will be fairly expensive early league, but a WE which has only lightning penetration is quite good by itself and you may be able to find a 2nd mod from purity of elements for a reasonable price. add Militant Faith timeless jewel with High Templar Dominus mod Details on the Militant Faith jewel can be found here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Militant_Faith Fubgun has a video on how to find a timeless jewel using pob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kYy-s_B-ng A Militant Faith timeless jewel with a "converted by High Templar Dominus" mod will transform any keystones within range into "Inner Conviction" which gives 3% more spell damage per power charge. The level 96 passive tree uses Militant Faith to transform The Agnostic into Inner Conviction. Militant faith always transforms all attribute nodes in range into nodes that just give 10 devotion. This build already struggles with attributes, and in the level 96 passive tree Militant Faith will convert 3 strength nodes and 2 intelligence nodes, so make sure that you have extra str and int before buying the jewel. Militant faith also randomly transforms some notable passives within range into new notables. You can use pob (see Fubgun video above) to find Militant Faith jewels which have specific nodes that you are looking for or which do not transform any of the nodes that you want to use. Alternatively, you can just manually copy/paste jewels from the trade site into pob to see what what effect they have on your passive tree. In addition to changing the keystone, Militant Faith has two additional mods which give benefits per 10 devotion. On the level 96 passive tree, Militant Faith gives 110 devotion. The Militant Faith mods which are useful for this build are as follows: 3% increased effect of non-damaging ailments per 10 devotion 3% increased mana cost efficiency per 10 devotion 4% increased elemental damage per 10 devotion 1% increased effect of non-curse auras 2% to all elemental resistances per 10 devotion regenerate 0.6 mana per 10 devotion The non-damaging ailment mod is mandatory for the level 96 and 100 version for the build as it allows you to drop unbound ailments support from orb of storms and replace it with hextouch plus 1 or 2 curses. This then allows you to replace the Mark of Submission ring with another unique ring such as Anathema or a corrupted Kikazaru. The 3% increased mana cost efficiency mod is mandatory to be able to save the 3 passive points used to take the Contemplative Meditation wheel. The new ring corruptions have a common result of giving mana reservation efficiency for auras. Getting a corruption for the Wrath or Purity of Elements aura frees up enough mana so that you do not need the reservation efficiency from Contemplative Meditation, but you do still need the cost efficiency from that wheel unless you get it from another source. Bleed immunity via a corrupted Valako's Sign ring If you can make up for the loss of 30% lightning resistance, buying or crafting a corrupted Valako's Sign ring which gives bleed immunity is a really nice defensive addition to the build. You can also possibly get a double corruption of bleed and poison immunity, or bleed and 16% all elemental resistance, but that will generally be very hard to find. RIngs now also have +1 to maximum power charges or endurance charges, so if you don't care about getting bleed immunity (you should), you can get damage from the +1 to maximum power charge corruption on both rings as long as you are not already capped on critical strike chance. If lightning conduit is already at 100% crit chance, power charges have only a minor benefit. The new corruption mods which increase reservation efficiency of auras can also allow you to save 3 passive points from taking the contemplative meditation wheel. To deallocate this wheel, you must have a militant faith jewel with the 3% increased mana cost efficiency mod or some other source of mana cost efficiency, otherwise you will not have enough mana regeneration to keep up with casting lightning conduit. Corrupted blood immunity via a corrupted abyss jewel Getting immunity to corrupted blood is very nice to have, most people would consider it to be mandatory from an end game build. The level 96 and 100 versions of this build need to get 10% increased effect of lightning ailments from the abyss jewel. Any other mods on the jewel are a bonus. It is unlikely that you'll find one for sale on trade, but you can just buy many jewels which already have the lightning ailment mod for 1 chaos and corrupt them until you get the corrupted blood immunity corruption. You usually won't find abyss jewels for 1 chaos which have 3 or 4 mods that you want, but sometimes you get lucky. The odds to get a corruption implict is 25%, and then the odds to get corrupted blood immunity is about 5%. Thus, on average, it will take around 80 attempts to create an abyss jewel that gives corrupted blood immunity. So basically the cost is around 80 chaos plus 80 vaal orbs and your time. I just buy 10 to 20 jewels at a time, exalt slam them (if they have an open mod and I have exalts), then corrupt them with a vaal orb until I win. add a source of Energy shield leech This build needs to add energy shield leech in the end game version. Here is a list of some easy ways to do that ordered from best to worst: Stormdrinker notable in a lightning damage cluster jewel Watcher's Eye with a leech ES while affected by wrath mod Annoint Light Eater or Ethereal feast add cluster jewel The lightning damage cluster jewel needs to have Overshock and Storm Drinker. Beyond that, getting str, dex, or all attributes is very helpful. You can also get a 3rd notable Doryani's Lesson to give you life leech, thus allowing you to replace the Valako's sign ring with another unique ring. You'll generally be able to buy a cluster jewel without having to craft it a few days into the league, but early league you'll likely have to craft it or spend a lot of currency to buy one. A simple way to craft the lighting damage cluster is to just buy an 8 passive lightning damage cluster jewel and use harvest reforge lightning until you get a useable jewel. To roll both Overshock and Storm Drinker takes somewhere around 80 attempts on average, but you'd have to just accept whatever other random mods you get on the jewel. Endurance charge generation The "100% increased charge duration" charge mastery makes power, frenzy, and endurance charges last for 20 seconds. Getting an implicit mod on your body armour which generates an endurance charge every 15 seconds means that you'll always have endurance charges. You'll also want some way to get endurance charges quickly as otherwise you have to wait for 60 seconds to get to 4 charges. You can use either an enduring cry gem which you need to use once per map or buy an Elixer of the Unbroken Circle flask which you also use once per map. The advantage the flask gives is that it works outside of combat so you can just use it as soon as you enter a new area to give you full endurance charges, whereas with enduring cry you have to use it near a pack of monsters or the pinnacle boss you are about to fight to get the charges. ================================= LEVEL 93 progression ================================= The level 93 layout is just an example of a mid way progression between the level 90 and level 96 setups. ================================= LEVEL 96 ================================= The level 96 layout is an example of what the build looks like once all of the above updates are completed. I purposefully made this tanky, but you can easily mix/match between the level 96 and 100 setups to massively increase damage at the expense of defense. Personally I prefer to play tanky builds and I think most people will have a better experience with the more defensive version of the build. The staff used on the level 96 version of the build is a fairly mediocre weapon. Staying with the tanky version of the build, but using the GG STAFF from the level 100 version, pushes your damage to almost 30 million, which is easily enough to do any content in the game. Adding the anathema ring, but keeping shaper of flames and bastion of elements, you can push the damage into the 50-60 million range without giving up defense. ================================= LEVEL 100 with anathema ring ================================= On the level 100 setup I get enough ailment effect from jewels and jewels and the passive tree to drop the unbound ailment support on orb of storms. This gives me 3 extra supports which I use on hextouch and two curses. I also have 2 more curses (enabled by the anathema ring) which I link to arcanist brand for use against tanky mosnters, bosses, etc. I also added Doryani's Lesson to the cluster jewel which enables the build to drop the Valako's Sign ring since Doryani's lesson gives a source of life leech. This gives flexiblity to add another unique ring such as a corrupted Kikazaru for the +15 all attributes, 60% curse effect reduction, and up to 300 life regen. The level 100 version of this build is comfortably tanky, but you do still have to play the game. The primary issue is big physical hits The defenses against elemental and chaos damage (assuming that you take the energy shield mastery to make 30% of chaos damage apply to energy shileld) are quite good. Note that you could switch to an anathema setup well before level 100 by giving up some damage or defense. You could also use the Deodre'd Damning just to allow 2 curses if you do not want to manually cast arcanist brand to apply additional curses beyond the 2 curses linked to orb of storms. Doedre's Damning also gives up to 20% to all elemental resistances, so it may be easier to fit in to your build.