Budget Low Life Wander - 1.3 Viable, Buffed in 2.0
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Hey guys, this is my take on a budget low-life elemental wander. It uses chaos resistance and life regen to mitigate chaos damage. No Shavs/Solaris Lorica used.
The build manages to get over 4k ES with none coming from boots or gloves, and without extreme GG gear. The basis of almost any elemental build (ele buzzsaw, ele tornado shot, ele cleave) is to take some flat elemental damage (Anger/Wrath/Heralds) and apply it quickly and often. While I don't use Faster Attacks, Blood Rage gives a massive attack speed boost when you are on low-life. This frees up a link in my attacks, and also allows me to run five frenzy charges. While Blood Rage gives you a chaos degen, the Blood Dance grants Life Regen per Frenzy Charge, more than mitigating the damage from Blood Rage. The build can be done pretty cheaply (end game can be done at about 5ex), but gets some substantial benefits from gear upgrades. We use life regeneration from the Blood Dance in order to sustain our life pool, and a dual curse on hit for leech. Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder are used to curse enemies with Warlord's Mark (and later with Assassin's Mark). Prism Guardian is used to bring us to low-life. Prism Guardian can have a 60% Aura (Discipline or Wrath), a 40% Aura (Vitality or Purity of Elements) and Clarity. Level Clarity as required in order to keep yourself at just over 65% life reserved.
Playstyle
Overall the playstyle is quite fast. You need to keep frenzy charges up in order to not degen from blood rage. You don't want to be too close to packs, as not being near enemies is a good defence.
Another defence is that we do cold damage and crit a lot, freezing and chilling enemies. Again, quite defensive - if things are coming at you slowly, they are easier to dodge. We use the shatter effect on Herald of Ice in order to curse things that are off screen (allowing us to generate all charges while off-screening packs), and the on-kill effect of Herald of Thunder to curse things that are closer. This gives us life and mana leech (through Warlord's mark). Close packs are cool to see shatter - Kinetic Blast will pierce the pack, often freezing the lot, and one of the pack will die, which explodes, which results in the rest of the pack chain shattering. It is limited in the map mods it can do. No Regen, Ele Reflect and Curse Immune are not possible, and Vulnerability/Half Regen are very dicey.
Tooltips at Level 83
Main Attack - GMP Kinetic Blast
 Single target - Frenzy 
Minimum Gear
My Gear
Gear Discussion
Helm
There are three main choices for the helm. The Broken Crown is very cheap for what it is - one with a near-perfect chaos resist (56-61%) can be had for as little as 2c, and it's a great way to start the build. The Vertex is again great, offering a lot of ES and a decent chaos resist roll. Finally, Crown of Eyes is absolutely fantastic for a number of reasons. Accuracy and its unique mod ("Increases and Reductions to Spell Damage also apply to Attacks"). I feel like it was designed with ES-based wanders in mind. Another option is to get a good rare helm with chaos resist, ES and accuracy. These are the three helms I've progressed through.
If you have the Broken Crown, your single target must go here. The Vertex and Crown of Eyes can both have your Cast when Damage Taken setup. Because the Broken Crown supports gems with level 20 Cast on Death, you cannot use any spells in it (even with CwDT or CoH setup)
Chest
Look for CI gear, possibly with chaos resist (mine doesn't have it). You want at least 450ES. Life is also not a "wasted attribute" on a Vaal Regalia like this, as it increased your life pool against Chaos damage.
Main attack goes here. Fortunately you only need 3-off colours.
Gloves
Maligaro's. No question. Your curse on hit setup goes here, and when you get lucky or buy an appropriately corrupted one it just gets better.
Boots
The Blood Dance. Again, no question.
Main Hand
You have a number of options here, but all of them involve the same thing: at least 1.5 attacks per second and at least 9.5% crit. A well-rolled Imbued Wand (attack speed, local crit chance, elemental damage) will give you a little bit of mana leech which can be helpful, and you can craft the last stat pretty cheaply. 22-27% local crit can be crafted for 5 alchs. 7-12% attack speed can be crafted for 1 chaos. Once you get a Crown of Eyes, you get more options - a high spell damage, high crit, high attack speed wand will do well.
The simplest option is to use a Piscator's Vigil. You will have less mana leech, but more elemental damage. It's the wand I use.
Off Hand
Prism Guardian, or a decent rare shield. if you can only run a rare shield, you are a little bit gimped - you need to run Discipline on Blood Magic with Reduced Mana, which means two less defensive auras.
Jewelry
Crit chance, crit multi, resists (especially chaos). You want to be as close to 75% chaos resist as possible.
Flasks
One Life pot, an Atziri's Promise, a Quicksilver, a Topaz and one of whatever. Surgeons where possible, of Staunching (remove bleed) on at least one, of Heat (dispels Frozen/Chilled) on at least one. Replace the Topaz with whatever element you are dealing the most of to deal with reflect. The life pot can be a lower level one, as you will have less than 1000 unreserved life.
Skill Gems
Main attack
Kinetic Blast, GMP, Life Leech, WED. 5th link is Crit Multi or Power Charge on Crit. (Crit Multi if you have the corrupted Maligaro's with "Grants Level 10 Assassin's Mark, PCoC if not). LMP instead of GMP if you can't support the mana cost.
Single Target
Either Power Siphon, Faster Attacks, WED, Crit Multi OR Frenzy, WED, Crit Multi, Power Charge on Crit. Power Siphon will give you a higher DPS but you need to be killing things every 12 seconds (to keep charges up). Frenzy means you can maintain your charges more easily.
OR
Heralds/Curses
Herald of Thunder, Herald of Ice, Curse on Hit, Warlord's Mark. This gives us life and mana leech and Endurance Charges. Things that are hit by Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice's on kill effects will be cursed. With Appropriately corrupted Maligaro's, you also get a low level Assassin's Mark for Power Charges.
Defensive Skills
We have two defensive skill groups. Our Auras (in Prism Guardian) and a Cast When Damage Taken setup.
Defensive Auras are Discipline, Purity of Elements (or Vitality if you have capped resists) and Clarity. Our CwDT Immortal Call setup is used to mitigate bursts of physical damage. Vaal Discipline is also used, as linking it to Increased Duration is a big bonus (even though it cannot be triggered by CwDT). When IC is triggered with three endurance charges, I get approximately a 4 second duration. Manual cast can allow for a much longer duration.
Misc
We run Wrath, Reduced Mana and Blood Rage in our wand, and Lightning Warp goes in a spare link where it fits (although it is really only optional)
Passive Tree at level 85 (Shadow) Passive Tree at Level 85 (Witch), requires Crown of Eyes There are a number of good options to take from here, depending on how you feel the build is going and what it needs: - The left side of the Tempest Blast/Fusillade wheel (3x15% increased damage with wands). - The Foresight wheel for more ES. - Wandslinger is 3 nodes with a total of 41% increased damage with wands, 15% accuracy rating with wands, 8% attack speed with wands. Bandits are Kill - Kill - Frenzy Charge or Power Charge. I feel that the Frenzy Charge is more valuable, as it grants attack speed and life regen - both offensive and defensive bonuses. In 2.0, this will need revising as Blood Rage looks like it will change to a Phys degen.
Offensive Stats at 83 - Outdated
Frenzy Single Target - 5 Power Charges, 5 Frenzy Charges  Frenzy Single Target - 5 Power Charges, 5 Frenzy Charges, Atziri's Promise  Kinetic Blast - Main Attack - 5 Power Charges, 5 Frenzy Charges  Kinetic Blast - Main Attack - 5 Power Charges, 5 Frenzy Charges, Atziri's Promise  Power Siphon - Alternate Single Target - 5 Power Charges, 5 Frenzy Charges  Power Siphon - Alternate Single Target - 5 Power Charges, 5 Frenzy Charges, Atziri's Promise  Album
Defensive Stats
Beta and beyond (2.0) Discussion
As I only use one Reduced Mana gem (the rest of my reduced reservation comes from the tree and Prism Guardian), it looks like the build will be able to run an extra aura (Anger probably) in 2.0, due to the reduction in base reservation. My current thoughts are to run Anger, Wrath and Discipline on Life (through Prism Guardian, reserving 73% of my life). Heralds and a high level Clarity (or Purity of Elements and a lower level Clarity) on Mana. This is likely to change, as what works now may not work on release. In addition, the changes to Frenzy Charges (4% more damage per charge) are a massive buff to the build. It's 20% more damage, on top of being able to run an additional aura. The changes to blood rage make it a little more difficult to manage, you will always be losing part of your ES. On the other hand, you often will have endurance charges or a 2-3 second Immortal Call so you should be able to sit near full ES all the time. You will be less likely to kill yourself to Blood Rage in the Beta, and it will mean that you can take another Power Charge (or Endurance Charge) instead of the Frenzy charge. It will really depend on testing though, and I have not been playing the beta. A level 1 Immortal Call will have a duration of 1.6 seconds. With a 20/20 Increased Duration, it should hit (0.4*(100%+300%+74%), giving about 1.9s of duration with a level 1 IC. A level 4 IC will give you 2 seconds of duration with 20/20 Inc Dur. So not nearly as much physical immunity, but that is to be expected.
Additional Thoughts
On Corrupted Maligaro's
The "Grants Level 10 Assassin's Mark skill" corruption is very valuable. While it does not give as good a chance to get power charges as a 20/20 Assassin's Mark, it gives a 24% chance to grant a PC on killing a cursed enemy (brought up to 26.4% by quality Curse on Hit). This means that you have a 60% chance to get at least one charge on killing at 3 cursed enemies. Because almost everything is cursed when it dies, this means power charges are sufficiently maintained. It's pretty rare to run out of charges unless you have quite a distance between packs. By using this, you can drop Power Charge on Crit in your main liks (allowing you to use Critical Damage instead). PCoC is still important to use in your single target as some bosses can take a while to go down.
Detailed Wands Discussion - To be added
TBA
Last edited by madmooseman#2632 on Jun 2, 2015, 1:29:04 AM
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For 2.0 what do you think about using a high pDPS imbued wand and tale mana leech on tree so you can replace clarity with another aura?
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I've got a couple of Imbueds that I plan on testing, but yes I'll be aiming to run Anger, Wrath and two Heralds.
With 20% reduced mana reserved off the tree, I can run Anger/Wrath/Discipline in the Prism Guardian. Heralds in my gloves, and I still have room for one more Aura (Probably either a Purity or Vitality) in my wand. I will still have 32% unreserved mana, so that may mean I can also run Clarity if I need. Last edited by madmooseman#2632 on Jul 2, 2015, 8:57:55 PM
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