[2.0] Angryaa's beginner's guide to Ball Lightning Shadow.

Hi guys, just wanted to give my 50 cents on this build. Just got to level 85 in Tempest, and I'm pretty much facerolling content. I did the quarry and museum bosses, both without enfeble.

Here's my gear

The gear is pretty nice, but most of it didn't cost more than 3 chaos. Paid 20C for the armour, and 5 linked it myself with Vorici.

Skill tree is https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwYABAcFQgceB2MI9A5ID6sRDxFQEZYTnhXnFr8W8xhqGYoajx2DIvQkiyY8JpUqOCycL28vnTBbNbk6WDsNPV9BlkV8SVFJsUyzUDBSU1VLVcZYB1xrXfJfKl9qYeJknWpDbAttGXBScLtw1XOzdFV4L3zlfjN-r3_Gg9uESInTjDaNGY_6kyeVLpWHl5WXl5f0m6GhL6SRpyusl6yYrrO5k76KwFTDCcM6w23LvdDQ0PXXz9kT2V_bXt2M4BLr9ewY74jv6_Br8NXyHfba99f5N_sJ?accountName=Xeppy&characterName=DeathIsMyBalls.

At this point, I have 3K life and 5K es, or 4K without discipline. My DPS is 2,4k in town. It goes up to about 3,4k with power charges and the golem, and HoT.

You'll notice that I run 3 auras, Warlords Mark, Discipline and Arctic Armour. AA is really great for his build, as we have no real form of mitigation, besides leech, which I still find a bit lackluster.

As many others have suggested, Curse on Hit with HoT is ass. Use a seperate Ball Lightning to curse with both your curses, it was the deciding factor for me. If you have any questions, please ask me!

'' Later, when you have the currency buy Arctic breath and Tempest Shield (bought from Act 2 Yeena), Greater Multiple Projectiles and Cast When Damage Taken (bought from Act 4 Petarus and Vanja) and link them together in a 4 link item. This will give your character an additional defensive tool. It might be some time before you have enough currency and a 4 link item for this, don’t worry there is no big rush. In a pinch, using a 3l item and dropping Tempest Shield is fine. ''

Arctic Breath is not from act 2... you can buy it from act 3 Clarissa :)

"

Xeppy wrote:

You'll notice that I run 3 auras, Warlords Mark, Discipline and Arctic Armour. AA is really great for his build, as we have no real form of mitigation, besides leech, which I still find a bit lackluster.

As many others have suggested, Curse on Hit with HoT is ass. Use a seperate Ball Lightning to curse with both your curses, it was the deciding factor for me. If you have any questions, please ask me!

Hiya Xeppy, nice review of this guide, helping me form opinions.

So the guide says use HoT, HoI, Disc and Wrath for auras.
But you are not using HoI and Wrath, and use AA instead.
I understand this.

Being lvl 54 early a4 cruel myself, I'm running HoT, HoI, and Disc right now.
But I am wondering about AA being very nice to this build, but I would have to drop 1 aura.

Whats the best aura setup for this build?
HoT, Disc, Wrath, AA? Can you run 4 auras, or just the 3.

I did a quick test of CoH with Balls (thats what i call it ;p),
and found it too similar to my main skill.
Arc to curse on hit, seems a better alternative for me, what are your thoughts?

Also, thinking about the fire best golem setup
Golem - Min life - Min resists - Blind? Can you fit in Min damage or not.

I keep thinking of more things to add here.
About CWDT, can tempest shield be levelled normally in this setup, and work ok?

Rallying Cry thoughts for its dps boost and mana regen?

Cheers.

Feedback on the tree: First of all you'd be better off getting the jewel node close to the vaal pact / charisma cluster instead of the jewel nodes connected to intelligence since +10 dex is more useful than +10 intelligence for gear/gems requirements.

Also i question whether it is really worth spending 4 passive points for 20% more ball lightning radius? I'm thinking about the blast radius cluster because ball lightning does not benefit from area damage % so that part of the cluster is wasted. Would it not be more efficient to spend those points on for example sovreignty or the purity of flesh cluster?

Edit: Hmm never mind it would screw up the pathing a bit and you would have to get two more useless +10 int traveling nodes if you want to go for purity of flesh/sovreignty rather than the blast radius cluster

"

havenrl wrote:

"

Xeppy wrote:

Also, thinking about the fire best golem setup
Golem - Min life - Min resists - Blind? Can you fit in Min damage or not.

The golem is not there to do damage. It's sole purpose is to be a distraction and tank some hits and the buff it gives you. It's damage is so miniscule compared to yours it's not worth wasting a link buffing it.

"

havenrl wrote:

"

Xeppy wrote:

You'll notice that I run 3 auras, Warlords Mark, Discipline and Arctic Armour. AA is really great for his build, as we have no real form of mitigation, besides leech, which I still find a bit lackluster.

As many others have suggested, Curse on Hit with HoT is ass. Use a seperate Ball Lightning to curse with both your curses, it was the deciding factor for me. If you have any questions, please ask me!

Hiya Xeppy, nice review of this guide, helping me form opinions.

So the guide says use HoT, HoI, Disc and Wrath for auras.
But you are not using HoI and Wrath, and use AA instead.
I understand this.

Being lvl 54 early a4 cruel myself, I'm running HoT, HoI, and Disc right now.
But I am wondering about AA being very nice to this build, but I would have to drop 1 aura.

Whats the best aura setup for this build?
HoT, Disc, Wrath, AA? Can you run 4 auras, or just the 3.

I did a quick test of CoH with Balls (thats what i call it ;p),
and found it too similar to my main skill.
Arc to curse on hit, seems a better alternative for me, what are your thoughts?

Also, thinking about the fire best golem setup
Golem - Min life - Min resists - Blind? Can you fit in Min damage or not.

I keep thinking of more things to add here.
About CWDT, can tempest shield be levelled normally in this setup, and work ok?

Rallying Cry thoughts for its dps boost and mana regen?

Cheers.

So lemme try and answer this as best I can.

It's very hard to run 4 auras, and even 3 is a challange. Wrath is a much better damage aura that HoT, but the extra mana reserved is just too much for me. I have about 1200 mana, and when i run Wrath, Disc and HoT, I have just enough mana for 1 cast of BL. That is not very handy. The damage is completely fine with just running HoT, so there's no need for Wrath unless you for some reason wanna go complete crazy. The damage monsters do late game is pretty crazy, and the % reduction is in my opinion vital to survive in maps.

Arc for CoH is fine also, as many others in the thread have suggested. I only tried it for a bit, but found that I would have to cast it multiple times to curse a whole pack. I like BL for CoH, because I know that whatever I curse will also be hit by my main BL. In other words, it seems less random to me to curse with BL. I also find the AoE to be better.

The golem doesn't matter at all, fuck the links. Minion life is just there to make him a bit tankier, but his damage is pretty much non-existent.

And no, Tempest Shield cannot be leveled in the setup. I've just been an idiot and leveled it a bunch without realizing it. Thanks for noticing :D

I don't see a need for Rallying cry, you leech a lot more mana than you need to cast BL, and the dps is as I keep saying, more than satisfying without spending time casting a warcry.

I appreciate these comments, cheers Xeppy.

I have since progressed into tempest maps.
But in merci a3 (piety and dom), the projectiles and phys dmg incoming was a lot.

Switched into AA, and picked up the lioneye's shield to help with armour.

I changed my cwdt setup as well.
Normal cdwt - immortal call - tempest shield now.

This has since helped me out alot. Soon I will have enough mana for another aura.
Thinking about wrath and haste now.

I have 3.4k hp
And 3k es

This is my gear @ 75

Hello guys,

Just a question. Wouldn't it be better to go on CI with this build? I mean I already died several times from Chaos damage. CI is just 1 point away and our 2 curses should work with vaal pack and ghost reaver (if I am not wrong).

So what do you think about this build and CI (with a skill tree adaption of course)?

So I'm new to PoE. I've done this build so far and was looking for easy improvements upon my gear. More for survivability on bosses than anything else. I know I need better boots but I haven't found anything with a decent 4L yet. Is anything in this gear setup decent, bad? Can you help tell me why? Much appreciated!

Smoke mine is largely useless? Rly? lol On HC that's the most viable skill to open strongboxes....

Hmm no reply to my question ^^ . I have googled a bit and looks like CI is pretty shit now with the changes. So I understand why we don't use it lol

Sooo here is my feedback for this build: I am level 75 right now. Leveling this build was easy due to the nice ball lightning damage. But I was struggeling with survival problems in act 3 merciless, once I used the both curses(warlord and assassins mark) I died much less lol.

Here is my current gear:


And here is my current passiv tree:


I have not enough strength and dexterity for the fire golem, warlord mark blind and gmp. So I will take some strength and dexterity nods in the passiv tree.

I bought everything on poe.trade for 1 or 2 chaos, expect the sceptre. I was very lucky to find the sceptre, it does a pretty good damage. Normaly you find enough orbs during leveling for buying better stuff. I run wrath and herold of thunder aura, my damage is 3,1k now. I am using critical strike chance gem instead of increased area of effect, cause my crit chance just sucks.

I bought me a white 5L chest for 1 or 2 chaos and alched it several times to get the one I have. I think that is the cheapest way to get a usable 5L chest.

I use warlord and assissins mark with ball lightning to trigger it. Using herold of thunder was too unreliable for me during boss fights.

My big problem is survivability. I have my resistances capped to 75% , expect my chaos res (-60). I have 2,9k life and 1,8k ES. The leech from the curses works pretty good, but my problem is that it happens sometimes that unique monsters and rares kills me so fast in 2 or 3 hits that I can't even react to it. I guess I need more ES and life. I have already gear with life and resistances. I know I need to run discipline aura, but I have no idea how to run 3 auras, I don't have enough mana for 3 auras even with atziris foible and mana on my gear. I don't want to drop wrath or Herold of thunder either, that would make me lose too much damage and would take years to kill bosses in maps. Anyone a suggestion here? ^^ How do you handle 3 auras or what you do for a better survivability? I don't see me making high end maps with this build :/

Another problem is my crit chance, I have only 26,15 crit chance :/. I have found 1 ex and bought me this dagger here I compared it to my sceptre and even if the dagger gives me 32,4% crit chance, I kill much faster mobs with my sceptre than with this dagger (both shows the same dps in the damage tool)