Hello all, while I normally like to play and post some less meta setup, this league I'm just blown away by the current iteration of energy blade. It's always been a favorite build of mine, but the new items and supports this league have made selfcasters genuinely extremely powerful as well. After a point, it became my goal to get PoB to say 1 billion DPS without any egregious configs, and today I achieved it for imo an extremely reasonable budget for that level of dmg on a defensively solid sound character.

https://pobb.in/dLFHmx56XPPX - 170M single hit spark dps, 1B optimal dps, and around 500d or so overall. I would argue you can start the build with accel belt (200d) and 50d or less and still feel fine, the bulk of the cost is a better chest, lvl 4 supports, and mirrored jewelry. Honestly, you can start with a massive belt at like 10d total and still feel great on a non-proj spell, but to get good numbers you DO need to run intensify which isn't always good for your clear on aoe spells. I know most of this shell is pretty well established, but here's some of the more niche stuff I've done to up the performance.

-I'm using a 4% crit rathpith that costs 5d instead of an expensive 6 crit / 6 life. By going the 6 life mastery route, I have the total life pool to comfortably crit cap without a 6/6 or righteous providence. Having an 8% or 9% life sacrifice roll is actually EXTREMELY good here as well for general sustain, and a 6/6/8 is unreasonable to buy. Lean on assassins mark before you get that kind of life pool.

- Skill gem wise, both overloaded intensity and unholy trinity are broken as HELL, the two give literally 400% more dps to this build. Using just nadir mode I easily sustain all stacks of both overloads for the former, and overloaded intens is a +102% dmg support for me. In builds that can fit it, a crit mastery for +3 lvl is even more disgusting on it. Unholy trinity requires a blue nightmare to work - fortunately, we want the res anyways, so it's easy to slot even with well below 50% conversion it's always fully stacked. This is a +142% dmg support - more than even spellblade gives. Both are extremely cheap at lvl 3, and not awful to get level 4 on. These two both costing a jewel does rule out purity of fire sublime vision though; that is the one major opportunity cost here but that jewel costs more than this entire character.

-Top cost imbues are never worth it until many mirrors deep at the price inflation we're seeing. I sold a pinpoint spark for more than any other single piece of the build, and it's within a few % of 15 div ICD here, or 1d cruelty / arcane surge. Same for other popular builds like voidforge cyclone - bloodthirst is 1d, infused channeling is like 100+ and forti is even more. You don't need it unless you're throwing multiple mirrors into the build anyways.

-I'm a strong believer in one non-reflected ring, for dex and capping res (and if possible life res efficiency). Speaking of dex, at sufficient budget forest tiger is a WAY better spectre than pain artist - PA dies a lot, and zealotry on eternal blessing is so much easier to slot than a mid lvl haste due to dex reqs. It also gives frenzy charges, which I will admit is the one config that's a bit stat-padded here. There's a world where you can run a 3rd spectre with better boots than I have (elevated elder suffix and an imbued support on raise spectre, then empower 4 in its place), but I'm dreading that craft too much after botching the boots I have equipped. Adding a turtle would open PDR as a watcher's eye mod and really bring the phys max hit up quite a lot for sure though.

Overall it's just been a joy to play and by FAR the most efficient price:performance I've ever had, I can upload a couple of short videos like spawnkilling a feared or a nice juiced map next time I'm on if there's interest, but I've seen plenty of Jiquani spark posted and I felt I needed to share this for contrast and for some of the novel things it does. If anyone has any advice for how to make the boots I want (elevated pierce + life + ms, elevated spectre level + res + life regen rate) please hit me up too, that's the last thing I really want for this char to be done.

Edit: +45% proj speed option, bringing total to 313 from 268 at a minor dps cost - https://pobb.in/dkPp-x1uE-y5

Video test if anyone is concerned about whether it is fast enough to be smooth - https://youtu.be/UDPkIDVBXNk