[LLD][pvp BotW S4/E1] Arc/Spark shock caster (great 1v1 and insane in teams)

This is the passive tree. I chose to kill all bandits for an extra passive point.


In the witch start I only pick the first mana regeneration node because my gear has enough flat mana and mana regeneration to allow me to get the starting cast speed/spell damage nodes without having mana problems.

Practical Application is mandatory to cover the stat requirements of various gems and it also helps with stun. After picking Heart and Soul I head for Breath of Lightning taking any large life/mana/lightning damage clusters on the way to there.

Breath of Lightning vs Heart of Thunder. This is mostly a personal choice between 20% lightning damage/5% shock chance/20% shock duration and 37% lightning damage/3% lightning penetration. I prefer the flat shock chance which helps quite a bit with the shock from spark.

Edit: As I have a large amount of mana regen/flat mana on gear I was able to take both Breath of Lightning and Heart of Thunder at the expense of Deep Thoughts. This does limit my mana somewhat and forces me to use at least 1 -8 elreon ring but gives me a nice boost to dps with only very short out of mana moments while casting for prolonged periods of time. Before you get good elreon rings/lots of flat mana on gear Id still recommend to pick Breath of Lightning.

Arc (with Enhance or Block Penetration + Empower+ Lightning Penetration + Added Lightning Damage) This is one of our main damage spells as a 5L. It has good range, auto targets anything, clears traps and has 48% shock chance. It gets better the more opponents there are because the arc will bounce between targets.


Spark (with Enhance or Block Penetration + Empower+ Lightning Penetration + Added Lightning Damage) This another one of our main damage spells. It has 20% shock chance but 3 projectiles per cast so its good against opponents that need to get close up to deal damage. It has longer but more random range than arc, is better in tight places that you can flood with sparks and it can go around corners.


Molten Shell (with Empower and potentially (Enhance or Block Penetration + Lightning Penetration + Added Lightning Damage ) lvl 2 Empowered + 1 gems molten shell gives you ~550 armour and explodes after ~600 damage was mitigated. This is 600 damage that doesn't go to your health pool!!!. It also deals quite significant fire damage (especially if opponent is shocked or uncapped on fire.) You can choose to replace arc or spark in your 6L for it depending on your opponent and then it will be supported by added lightning and lightning pen. (they are not ideal but every little bit helps).

Temporal Chains or Elemental weakness (with Enhance) Since Temporal chains has 60% effectiveness in PvP elemental weakness might be a better choice as it will help substantially vs uncapped or barely capped opponents and also has better synergy with your molten shell and team members. Conductivity is a viable choice too if you want higher shock chance. A 20% temporal chains with enhance lvl 2 (potentially 3 if in +1 boots) is still very noticeable vs melee users that also get chilled by your arctic armour. The choice of curse may vary on the matchup or personal preference for more defence or offence.




Above are the core skills. The rest are useful utility skills:


Cast When Stunned (with Temporal Chains+[/b]+ Cold Snap)
and
Cast When Stunned (with Cold Snap + Frost Wall). Since you are somewhat easy to stun those set ups help you chill/freeze/push away your attacker. Frost wall can be removed in certain match ups vs duellists or people with +2 ranger weapon (or both!!) because they can hit you over the frost wall but your sparks bounce back.

Rejuvenation Totem Its free health regeneration and can draw some agro away from flicker strikers or summons. If its in a shield or wand you can remove it before it dies so you don't feed charges to your opponents.

Arctic Armour: A lvl 1 Arctic Armour is incredibly useful because of the aoe chill that it provides vs melee opponents and the chilled ground it leaves behind if you need to retreat. It also gives you up to 7% movement speed which is noticeable and helps with kiting slower opponents.

Clarity: VERY useful if you want to be able to spam your spells.

Herald of Thunder (with Blind+Increased Duration) Since you shock absolutely everything you can proc HoT from traps,guardians, summons,totems and other players in team fights. This gives you a free damage, blind and most importantly auto targets traps around you for around 5-6 seconds. Traps thrown at you will be zapped before they land on you as well. Its the bain of non clever construction trappers!!!

Cold Snap: Provides chill and potentially freezes your opponent. (can force them to drop their rare life/res boots for a pair of wanderlusts)

Animate Guardian You can use a standard guardian set up (Leer cast/Dying Breath/Bramblejack/Shackles of the Wretched/rare boots) but I try not to use it too often as the short term cast speed buff from frenzy charges is not always that good and it gives extra charges to your opponent. Plus with 4 things to cast there simply isn't enough time to cast everything if your opponent is trying to rush you. You already need to juggle items on and off your hotbar

Your main goals with gear is to get: Life/resists/flat mana/mana regen/cast speed/spell damage/lightning damage relatively in this order. Prioritise fire and cold resists as almost no one uses lightning still while the other two elements are used a lot more often.

Will be updated as I acquire and test the new released LLD uniques. Some of look promising.

Amulet: Atziri's Foible. Without it, it is very hard to be able to spam spells without often going out of mana. It also helps with running arctic armour. If you don't use foible you must get a lot more str and dexterity to use the same gems :/ The 25% reduced stat requirements is huge!

Chest: Tabula Rasa Corrupted for +1 Gems. This is the best option for a chest (unless you have a lvl 28 6l corrupted for +1 gems). Used with lvl 2 empower it gives you +3 levels to your spells which almost doubles your damage. The lack of life/resistances is a small price to pay for the increase in damage.

Gloves: Rare gloves with life/resist/stun recovery/flat mana. Ideally it will be corrupted with Elemental weakness on hit lvl 10-12. (Asenath's with that corruption is a great option). +1 gems can also be very useful on gloves.

Boots: Two options really. Rare boots with movement speed/life/resists/stat or wanderlusts. It shouldn't be incredibly hard to get +1 wanderlusts. Use wanderlusts every time when you get excessively frozen.

Belt: Life/armor/ES/Double resist and reduced flask charges used.
Having more than 15% reduced flask charges used will make your flasks use 8 instead of 10 charges which gives you one extra pot use per full flask. (25/10= 2 pot uses vs 25/8=3 pot uses) The new Belt of the Deceiver might be a good option vs crit users.

Weapon: Rare wand with spell damage/hybrid spell damage/cast speed/mana/lightning damage

Shield: Legacy Crest of Perandus is a great option. A rare shield with life/spell damage/resists/useful master crafted suffix (reduced dot damage/extra block chance etc) is also a very good option.

Rings: Life/resists/cast speed/mana/mana regen/stats. You shouldn't need elreon crafted rings. If you can get slightly overcapped on resists using coral rings it will be great for your survivability. Even though -mana elreon crafted rings are not mandatory they decrease the need for flat mana/mana regen on other pieces of gear and might even allow you to drop Deep Thoughts for Heart of Thunder for more damage. The new BloodBoil coral ring might be a good swap vs cold casters.

Helm: Asenath's Mark is gives you all useful stats (cast speed/mana regen/stun recovery/movement speed). But a rare helm with life/mana/resist/stun avoidance is better.

Weapon Swaps You want have enough strength of dexterity to use a good 2h or bow so I suggest you get 2x The Screaming Eagle Jade Hatches and use quality lightning warp/reduced duration or bright beak with leap slam.

The first choice you need to make is what skills will you put in your tabula. You need to chose 2 out of 3. (arc-molten shell-spark). Whatever gets left out will be poorly supported and much less effective.

The molten shell is probably the one skill that retains most of its functionality outside of the 6l. Especially if you have a second lvl 2 empower to link it to. And if you manage to fit it in +1 gloves/shield or boots it will remain almost unchanged.

This is also the time to choose if you want block pen or enhance in your 6l. Block pen can reduce the mana cost if you are struggling and does help vs people with high spell block or phase acrobatics. It is better to land a hit that doesn't shock (arc for example) after all than to not land one at all because they dodged it or blocked it. Use block pen only if you suspect them of having phase acrobatics (shadow/ranger) or spell block.


Spark vs Arc?
Arc excels against multiple opponents and ones that prefer to keep their distance. It has a higher shock chance per single hit and is a nice ability to use if you notice your opponent casting rejuvenation totems or guardians as the arc will bounce back and forth between them doubling the damage output. (or more if the first hit shocks). Also some people like to use CWS totems, and since you have a very good chance to stun someone with your spells you can proc their totem causing the arc to do even more damage and potentially proccing more totems!

Spark excels at flooding tight spaces with a lot of projectiles which makes it very hard for melee characters to approach you. It can also go around corner so you can sometimes hide from their spectral throw or traps while still being able to occasionally get some hits with sparks on them. Flooding an area also has the added benefit of potentially giving you some space and time to heal up with your totem if you had sustained some damage and don't want to use a potion. Spark also has a much higher single target output as often you can hit someone standing on top of you with all 3 projectiles. With 20% shock chance it is quite likely that you will shock them, making subsequent casts deal even more damage.

Basically vs melee's most of the time I'm going to pick spark and molten shell. Vs ranged people Ill go with arc and molten shell or spark depending on how much physical damage they deal. Vs elemental casters molten shell is useless so Ill go with arc and spark.

Any time that you have spark in the 6l, try to bring the fight to some tight space that you can quickly flood with sparks to increase the damage output. You can use such areas as a buffer zone between you if you need heal time, or to catch unaware people in the middle of a spark storm.


Matchup's
Any matchup where your opponent has low lightning resist is good for you as you will be able to 2-3 shot them with arc and potentially 1 shot them with a close range spark.

Vs melee: Try to keep molten shell up all the time and recast it every 5 or so seconds to ensure that you don't need to do it in the middle of an engagement. If they try and keep their distance try to harass them with arc. Use their traps to your advantage to gain herald of thunder that will blind them and provide a nice extra damage debuff on them. Use spark for when they get up close and hope that you deal more damage to them than they do to you. Getting good at using panicked flasks will be a big help to "tanking through" their damage. Make sure that arctic armour is on so that you will chill them as they get close. Use cold snap on them, especially if they don't have wanderlust or are trying to kite you with spectral throw.

Vs ranged: This is one of our less favoured matchups and can be tough to play against. Ranged opponents that use traps are easier to play against than ones that don't because herald of thunder can zap their traps mid air as they cast them and this negates a large part of their damage. Clever construction is somewhat annoying but if you don't rush an area that they just trapped you should be ok. However you still need be more aggressive here than vs melee because you are outranged and can't afford to take a lot of damage by staying back. Try to use arc for when they are outside of your reliable spark range and keep molten shell up at all times.

Vs other casters. Casters rarely have spells that can reach around corners so try and use spark to your advantage in this case. Make sure to not engage if you have double curse or elemental equilibrium on you and harass with arc and use spark for close range.

Should you make this build if you are lacking a +1 tabula rasa?
From what I have seen the +1 tabula is the only really important item to allow you to do well in 1v1 as this is a large chunk of your damage and you have no one else to rely on. The build will still be good in team battles as you are bringing a lot of dps on the table by shocking the enemy team. Using any other +1 item can also work (there are plenty of cheap uniques that can be corrupted for +1. You can use a spell + penetration+empower+added lightning in a 4 link and get great damage out of it.)

Keep in mind though that currently if you are on a very limited budget (no lvl 2 empower and not a single +1 item) you might be more successful on the ladder and in pvp events if you go as some sort of non crit melee or bow user as they require less good items to make them function well. If you don't care about ladders etc and just want to have fun, this is a great place to start though and has a lot of room to grow and improve as you acquire better items.

•19th Dec 2014. Updated Gameplay section. Clarified a few things in skill gems section.
•17th Dec 2014. Started the Guide.

FFA: eu hc: 3rd,4th us hc 6th and 9th places
swiss hc 1: 5th place overall
swiss eu 1: 4wins, 1 loss, 2 dc

unfortunately I have bad connection now so have been unable to participate in more events but in the few that I did, the build performed incredibly well. Zap Zap :)