[2.2] Rowan's Cyclone CoC Discharge-Tanky, High Damage, Life Based (Even Budget)

Here, Your best friend is a high crit and high attack speed dagger. The best base is an Imperial Skean. Despite having .05% less APS than an Ambusher, the .3% higher base crit on the dagger more than makes up for this difference, as you'll be getting WAY more proc of Discharge. with that. High Crit and APS are your primary stats to look for, after that you want spell damage, crit multi, spell crit, or damage added to spells. All are good. The Best in Slot dagger however is a Vagan one, preferably a Skean or Royal Skean. They can be a pain to get a hold of, especially a good rare. I personally went through about 8 blue Vagan daggers before I got mine. When you Regal the dagger, you HAVE to hit either a prefix or APS/Crit Chance in order to be able to properly multimod the dagger.

Why is a Vagan Dagger best? Because of the unique mod of "hits can't be evaded," This means that you don't have to worry about accuracy, which is huge for two reasons. The first is that is makes gear a lot more expensive. You'll want to go for high accuracy, something like 90% or close to that so that way your hits don't miss much. The problem is that high accuracy is expensive on good pieces of gear, so that increases the price of the build. Secondly, it's because accuracy counts against you twice with crit. First, the initial hit needs to hit, then the game checks whether or not this hit is a crit, then it checks if this crit will help as well.

Saffell's is AMAZING for survivability, not to mention it gives some damage. The +4 max all res helps to make almost all elemental damage laughable, as well as help with reflect quite a bit. The spell damage it gives is a nice bonus, in addition to the +14% all res it gives. This Item is non-negotiable and a must have for the build.

Rat's Nest is amazing for this build. It gives you basically everything you could want (except life). It has a huge amount of crit(which we all love) as well as attack speed for more crits per second, and finally movement speed for faster clearing of the area. The high evasion is very nice as well, as evasion gear is what we primarily want.


If you cannot afford one, a rare with high life and accuracy works, but I would suggest a Starkonja's Head. It could even be replaced for the Rat's nest due to high life it gives, not to mention it still gives crit chance and attack speed. I recently switched to this, as the 50% crit Rat's Nest gives is less important than the 100 life. Also, Assassin more than makes up for this lost crit.

Your main goal is to have Diamond Rings. These are by far the best option for any ring base. Here, the mods you want are high life, int, as you'll need quite a bit to make up for the high int requirement of PoL and discharge, and then any resistances that you need to make up as well. If you don't have a Vagan dagger, you need to try and get high accuracy here as well. If you don't need very much on your rings, then just try to get some more strength(for more life), attack speed, or master crafted crit chance(costs 1 divine, so kinda expensive). Increased lightning damage or fire damage(if you have a voll's devotion) is also another good mod.

If you chose assassin ascendancy class, Diamond rings aren't as important, and I would suggest coral rings instead for more life.

THIS is going to be THE BIGGEST upgrade for the build. If you're doing a budget version, then get a rare which I will cover soon, but here's why the Voll's is so good.

A Voll's Devotion basically DOUBLES your damage, not to mention it gives you a huge survivability boost in multiple areas. Because you're constantly consuming power charges thanks to discharge and Voll's Protector, you in turn constantly generate endurance charges. These charges don't add as much damage as power charges, but they still add a large amount to the damage of discharge. Now since you're doing even more damage, you now leech even more instantly thanks to Vaal Pact and a life leech gem, which in turns means it's harder to insta-kill you so long as your attacking.

Secondly, because you're generating endurance charges, it gives you lots of small frames of additional physical damage reduction. Since we're also running a 3 link CWDT immortal call, having these constant frames of endurance charges usually means your immortal call will consume these for a hopefully 4 second immortal call. (results may vary based on amount of endurance charges

Now if you don't have a Voll's Devotion, this is for you. The basic description is the same as the rings, the only difference being you want to have a lower priority for resistances, and instead try for damage. If possible, get high crit and crit multi, as those will be great damage boosts. Also feel free to help fill in any more missing stats you need.

Leather belt base is what you primarily want, due to the implicit life. Here, you want High life, as much as you can get, and any resistances you need as well. This is a good spot to fill in those missing ones.

A lightning Doryani's is OK, but because of the lack of life, I would personally prefer a rare rustic, but these will work as well.

A third belt that I've been experimenting with is the Soulthirst Unique Belt. When used with a 20 quality Quicksilver flask, you get around 4-5 seconds to kill things and generate souls. Why are souls good though? Every soul grants you 4% attack and cast speed, 4% elemental resistance, and 4% physical damage reduction, as well as increased player size. The attack speed boosts your clear speed, and the phys damage reduction makes you even tankier. As an added bonus even, the belt has 60-80 life, and +15% all res. The belt's very solid, and of course, the ultimate goal would be +1 endurance charge, though +3-4% aoe is fine if you dont have a Devotion.

If you have the currency, a +1 endurance charge belt is ALWAYS the best belt for this slot. High life and resistances are always preferred, but these can be hard to get a hold of. NOTE: These +1 end charge belts are for high budget only.
Example:

Here you actually have some freedom of what you want to have. The two best gear choices are either Maligaro's or a pair or rares. Maligaro's are the damage option. Rares if you're like me and want life. You can also fill in resistances here, as well as get accuracy if you still need it and get attack speed. You can also get int if you need it or str for more life. Both are equally good and come down to personal choice, so long as you can fit all your resistances in.

Once again, you have the freedom to choose between uniques or rares.
Atziri's Steps are a very good option. They have high life, a sweet 30% movement speed, not to mention 14-16% spell dodge and high evasion. If you opt for rares, what you want here is much like the other rare gear slots. You want high life and movement speed, and then resistances or stats that you need. Both are equally good and come down to personal choice, so long as you can fit all your resistances in.

This gear slot is NON-NEGOTIABLE. You HAVE to have a Voll's Protector. It's possible to do this with only a 4 link, but will be largely ineffective without a life leech gem. A 5 link is basically the bare minimum. The reason a Voll's Protector is so good though is because of it's unique mod "Gain a power charge for EACH enemy hit by a critical strike". This means that with just one crit with cyclone on a pack, you could easily get your maximum power charges for the next discharge. Then with that next discharge, if it crits, you generate power charges for every enemy on the screen basically. This chest is the whole thing that binds this build together.

Here's where you can go nuts, as there's so many good stats. Most important is % increased life, try to get that on every jewel, then after that feel free to get damage, attack speed, crit chance, or crit multi. I would suggest getting crit multi if you don't have Maligaro's, as you'll be generally lacking in crit multi unfortunately.