After finishing my first build and wracking my brain trying to figure out what to play next I re-read the patch notes looking for anything that popped out. The ignite changes are what prompted my first build, but the changes to Scorching Ray and Searing bond really caught my eye. Yes EE is effectively dead for these skills, and EO is literally dead (they can't hit therefore can't crit whatsoever), but their base damages were raised so enormously (exactly 58% more for both) that it doesn't even matter. In addition, no longer needing a 4l to proc both EE and EO and just straight getting almost your full damage on every monster is a huge plus.

The first manner of business was to scour poe.ninja for ideas, and that's where I came across [this] (https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/s130133269/ICE_flamethrower?i=0&search=skill%3DScorching-Ray%26skillmode%3DTotem) build that was putting out some pretty great DPS. It has a solid lifepool, but not much in the way of layered defenses, and therefore not an amazing effective hit pool according to the PoB calcs tab.

The next step was to lose some DPS but gain some tank, and for that I fit in both Determination and Defiance Banner, and switched to a Staff (Searing Touch) for the option of 2 6ls and an easier time getting higher block and spell block without Glancing Blows. Unless you have a recover on block shield and other layers of defense, I just hate Glancing Blows with a passion so that went right out the window. With a few block wheels and notables and a small cluster jewel I ended up with 64/49 Block/Spell Block with Rumi's Concoction up, while maintaining a good health pool (solidly less than before, but the massive additional armour and actual block mixed with Molten Shell actually increases our effective hit pool substantially.

The theoretical damage is very solid, sitting at right about 6.2M total dps between 6 Scorching Ray Totems, and 1 Searing Bond Totem. In order to not remove an SR totem from your pool, a Phantasmal Searing Bond with at least 10% quality is necessary.

The gear is mid-tierish, at about 5-6ex total including a 6L Soul Mantle, a 6L Searing Touch, and a Viridi's Veil. 6L armors and weapons are rather cheap this league outside of the most meta and expensive bases due to the Scourge mechanic providing a solid way to 6-link items. I paid 60c for my Searing Touch and 65c for the Soul Mantle. Viridi's was about 100c. I don't have any video yet as I'm still very early on in the endgame leveling scheme of things (level 68 so far), but I can say for sure that it was one of the absolute smoothest leveling experiences I've ever had in 8 years of playing this game.

With more investment you can quite easily achieve 10M total dps, with Awakened gems, a +2 Soul Mantle, and an Empower on your Searing Bond instead of Inspiration. An Empower 4 on the Searing Bond will bring you from a 25% more mult on your 6th link to a 103% more mult; literally more than doubling your dps just through 3 levels of the skill. That's how absurdly the skill scales with gem level.

Here's my current theorycrafted PoB, which is essentially just a modified version of ICE's original gear and character, so most of the credit goes to them ,I just made the build a bit tankier and changed up the gearing and skills a bit: https://pastebin.com/vMV3UstV

Once I'm in endgame I plan on making a full video on its performance.