[1.3]Sonic the Tricharge Discharger (Cast on Melee Kill)

Large AOE on Cyclone
-This adds TONS of quality of life to the build, cyclone no longer feels gimp!

FLASHY AS FUCK
-LIKE SERIOUSLY MJOLNER LEVELS OF FLASHY BE WARNED COOKED POTATOS INCOMING

Not necessarily optimal or min-maxed but FUN TO PLAY!
-The build is so far from done it will still twitch when you pour salt on it.

MOVEMENT SPEED OP
-SERIOUSLY RUN FAST LIKE SONIC AND WIN

Passive Skill tree (93 points used, current)
This 93 tree is probably not perfect (anyone with suggestions can go ahead and fire away in the comments, I'm always looking to improve and it will definitely help others!) but it works and it's fun. Once I get a hold of more regrets/levels and/or better gear I will be changing it around.

Passive skill tree (108 points used, planned)
This skill tree is closer to what I'm aiming for. I lose an endurance charge but by changing my pathing a bit I can save points getting up towards the Templar starting area. still taking the keystones Iron Reflexes and Resolute Technique, and now even adding in Unwavering Stance. Normally the Unwavering Stance keystone isn't taken in more tanky cycloners because of cyclone's in-built stun immunity but mine is fairly squishy (bad habit of mine, I'm trying to improve though).

The gist of it is to pick up lots of life nodes, pick up all your 2H weapons nodes, pick up your axe nodes, and go up to Templar area for sweet AoE, elemental, and yes, more life nodes. I picked up 5.4% regen on the tree as well; this will for the most part counteract the chaos degeneration from Blood Rage (will discuss why I'm using this later on) and, depending on your chaos resistance, add a little bit of a buffer for your cyclone/Static strike to cast from.

Gearing for this build is quite generic. You pick up Iron Reflexes and a little bit of Armour+Evasion, so you can use basically any armour (aside from ES-based or ES-hybrid), making gear choices easier.


The gear I am wearing right now is kind of a mishmash of different (failed and successful) experiments.

Rings and Amulets
Romira's Banquet with Resolute Technique is the most reliable way to generate power charges, which is great for our CoMK Discharge. This is what makes this build the tricharge Discharger. My other ring serves to fill resistances and get a little bit of life. Daresso's Salute is kind of an interesting choice. Because we're running Blood Rage, have no evasion/dodge, and are constantly running into mobs like suicidal idiots, we usually don't get the "on full life" benefits from the amulet. What it DOES give is an amazing +2 weapon range, along with great resistances. The weapon range is basically the only reason you would use the amulet over a good rare with resistances, life, flat physical (and maybe weapon elemental).

Another interesting choice of ring would be Ming's Heart because of its extremely high chaos resistance, and added chaos damage. However, this is probably only viable once we hit higher levels and/or sacrifice some DPS nodes for extra life nodes to compensate for the life we lose.

Belts
There are so many different belts to choose from that can be beneficial for this build it is honestly hard to list them all, but I will do what I can from the top of my head.
The Magnate is honestly quite a poor choice for this build; it gives a bit of damage (not even a great increase, because of how much %damage we picked up on the tree, giving us heavy diminishing returns on any %phys increase) but I happened to corrupt mine with 5% AoE and that's why I'm using it.
Meginord's Girdle is a great belt for us; it gives flat physical (which is awesome, since we have a lot of %increase), 10% life (which I still feel I am lacking), and some cold resistance. A great belt for many builds.
Wurm's Molt is mostly considered a leveling belt, because of its life+mana leech and low level requirement, along with poor other stats. However, it is one of the only ways you can get intelligence on a belt, and we NEED intelligence on our gear to have enough intelligence to level up our discharge.

Armour
You can easily get away with completely wearing rare gear, grabbing life, armour/evasion/both, and resists on every piece will give you quite an easy time. However, there are some uniques that are greatly beneficial for this build.
Devoto's Devotion is quite a niche item, and for whatever reason it is working extremely well for me. Reduced physical damage doesn't hurt us as much (because we have so much of it on the tree), while attack speed is greatly beneficial to cyclone and static strike. My tooltip DPS actually increases significantly when I put this hat on compared to a normal rare hat. Another quality of life feature is that it greatly increases movement speed, which is arguably a hidden boost to the DPS of cyclone. It also gives us a little tiny bit of chaos resistance, which (for me, at least) allowed me to run blood rage with about 1 (yes, flat 1, not 1%) life regen left over.
Doedre's Tenure is a great choice of glove because we completely negate the low cast speed with our trigger gem. It adds spell damage (which we basically have none of) and a little bit more desperately-needed intelligence.
Other than Doedre's Tenure there are quite a few unique gloves that can help with our build, including Asenath's Gentle Touch (Temp Chains on hit op), Aurseize, and Slitherpinch. There definitely isn't a need for a pair of unique gloves, though, as a decent armour/evasion rare with life and resists will cover the slot (I'm going to be saying this a lot).
For the chest piece, Lightning Coil is definitely going to be your best bet. It gives a total of ~1000 armour (500 converted from evasion to armour via Iron Reflexes) and probably one of the best ways to mitigate physical damage in this game. Unfortunately I'm poor and I value having a 5-link over actually staying alive so I'm wearing a resists+life 5L rare.
Boots are completely up to you. Movement speed is REALLY IMPORTANT and I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. Screw life and screw resists, if you run fast you feel good and you can dodge stuff. Cyclone benefits so much from movement speed it's not even an option. Along with movement speed, try to fill stat requirements (INTELLIGENCE), get life and resists blah blah blah. Simple stuff.

As for other stuff like flasks just pick up whatever you feel comfortable using. I haven't put much thought into the flasks but once I swap to a 5/6L Lightning Coil I will probably run 1 or 2 Topaz flasks. Quicksilvers are great, and I personally don't mind taking damage as long as I refill my life quickly so I like to use life flasks. These are honestly personal preference and you should pick your flasks as you see fit.

You will have two main attacks (one for single target and one for AoE), one in your chest and the other in your weapon. 4L should suffice for both, if you can't afford 5/6L weapons/chests but obviously it will be better.

AoE Links
4L : Cyclone + Cast on Melee Kill + Discharge + Blood Magic
5L : Cyclone + Cast on Melee Kill + Discharge + Blood Magic + Endurance Charge on Melee Stun
6L : Cyclone + Cast on Melee Kill + Discharge + Blood Magic + Endurance Charge on Melee Stun + Life Leech or Faster Attacks

Single-target Links
4L : Static Strike + Melee Physical Damage + Multistrike + Blood Magic
5-6L : Static Strike + Melee Physical Damage + Multistrike + Blood Magic + Weapon Elemental Damage or Life Leech or Concentrated Effect

Other Gems
Blood Rage is mandatory, it will generate the Frenzy charges you need to discharge when you have less than a 5L or don't have a Romira's Banquet.

Hatred, Herald of Ash, Grace, Determination, and Haste are all useful auras for our build. Obviously Hatred, Haste and Herald of Ash are great DPS raisers, and Grace+Determination gives a ton of armour. Optionally we can use either Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder to give a small buff to discharge, but in this context I don't believe it's worth it (as a lot of our damage comes from physical conversion/added). Currently I run Hatred, Herald of Ash, and a Purity of Elements to shore up resistances.

As you can see from the passive trees, the gist of the build is to kill off mobs really quickly using a 2H axe. This is because 2H axes (along with 1H Thrusting swords, for whatever reason) have the longest base weapon range of any weapon, and as such are GREAT for cyclone, and just generally feel better to be attacking with (especially at melee range). There are also some awesome uniques, both for leveling and endgame, in the 2H axe category so it's quite easy to gear and upgrade.

Once you get the core of the build going (cyclone with at least Blood Rage running, adding in Endurance Charge on Melee Stun and a Romira's Banquest as you get more links and more wealth) you will basically cyclone through a pack, melting through whatever you hit first and as soon as the first mob dies, the second mob dies faster, and the third mob dies even faster yet. This is AMAZING for clearing packs with rare mobs, as the discharges that you put out from killing the trash mobs will deal great damage to the rare monster within the pack.

Unfortunately, this leaves something to be desired for killing bosses, which is quite often the case for these "trigger gem" builds.

For single target (tough rares, unique mobs) damage my preferred skill is Static Strike. It has quite high base damage and can be supported with a myriad of support gems (not to mention it is quite thematic). Once you run into a unique mob you just start static striking away. It's quite boring compared to the cyclone discharge massacre you will be used to but it still kind of has a little explosion of sorts so it fits the theme.

Movement can come from either just flat out good movement speed (Devoto's Devotion, 25%+ movement speed boots, other related uniques) or Leap Slam-Faster Attacks. There is a total of about 69% increased attack speed with 2H axes (30% generic attack speed, 12% axe attack speed, 27% 2H attack speed) on the tree so it will be at least useable, though not comparable to quick 1H sword whirling blades characters.