[Talisman] - Poisonstormer: 8k+ eHP, 4-6% LL, GR/VP, Chaos Firestorm, Crits - Tanky Spellcaster

Facetanking Shock and Horror's Lightning Beam via lifeleech: https://youtu.be/4pO5Sjjb-GE
Volcano: -MaxRes, Enfeeble at level 85 - https://youtu.be/_RxhfKtd-wc
Double Shock and Horror Boss: https://youtu.be/rLU2i3QDfzY

Current tree, level 89:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwYAsNhFfJeXFefwa3OzjDZVS4nTYeJwUiaVKgsWv13ytNEOSCsKyAwRlhEvdoJ_xgcetUiTJ5UubWzviPDVNj3ndPk3j_pJUZ2q2xro1tfP0NBcQOv1bIwQeyLq6xTN6gW1SbFfaofLZJ1irL46wzoGcMLsp5vyHYngm7UqOE6fOq11nuZYX7CExXp_b4TPFZMfykr_HEkTb55RTPGzgwmcpKxHS1eHE31bwON3BypNPydH4l-YSsgi4lltbqqkOc8ytfI1kv6P2L1N4w==

Planned tree, level 92:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwYAsNhFfJeXFefwa3OzjDZVS4nTYeJwUiaVKgtd8g5IKwoRlhEvf8YHHutjkyeVLrVINj3viPDVbWydqvk3j_pJUed0bIzXz9DQXEDr9dsa6NZirEmxX2qHy2SdEHsi6usUzeoFtaeb8h2-OsM6BnDC7HWeieCbtSo4Tp86rc8V5lhfsITFen9vhJMfykr_HEkTb55RTPGzgwmcpKxHS1eHE31bwON3BypNPydH4l-YSsgi4lltbqqkOc8ytfI1kti9_gq3PkGH-eiCxx2-M4cD7g==

(See Gear)

I'm currently able to clear T13-T14 maps with most mods with no issues at all. Character is level 89 with only decent gear and few Q20 gems, much less 21/20 gems and such. Viability for end-game content is very, very high.

Current gear:

Firestorm -> Life Leech -> Mana Leech -> Spell Echo -> Concentrated Effect -> Controlled Destruction/Empower/Faster Casting

Rallying Cry -- Ice Golem -- Discipline (Optional: See Utility Skills)
Whirling Blades -> Faster Attacks -> Fortify

Blade Vortex -> CWDT -> Blind -> Power Charge on Critical
CWDT (3) -> Enfeeble (7) -> Warlord's Mark (7) -> Increased AOE/Assassin's Mark (Optional: See Utility Skills)
Increased Duration -> Vaal Discipline -> Vaal Haste -> Vaal Grace (Optional: See Vaal Skills)

We have three required uniques:



This build flat out doesn't work until we get this. It converts 75% of our fire damage to chaos damage. Try to have one ready to equip as soon as you hit the minimum level.

Next - an Infernal Mantle.



This is a particular potent item for this build, both offensively and defensively. It perfectly gets us to 100% damage conversion, which allows us to use Chaos nodes at full efficiency. The 100% global crit is an obvious plus. But even better, it provides a big chunk of our energy shield, and therefore, effective HP.

Last, Doedre's Damning:



This is so we can apply two curses. If you can swing it, you can use two or a corrupted amulet for three curses.

For the rest of your gear, concentrate on life, resists, crit chance, crit multiplier, and magic find. Hybrid Eva/ES gear is the best for you because it fits with your stats and is easier to chrome to fit your gear needs - however, either pure evasion or pure ES gear works too. I try to keep ~600-1000 base evasion on my gear to allow for some degree of evasion against enemy attacks.

This character was built because my first character was a *lot* of fun to play and cleared low to mid level maps incredibly quickly, but was a bit of a glass cannon and performed poorly against single, high-value targets. It was more of a "mow through hordes of squishy monsters" type of build with no real defenses against spikes of damage coming from a single, dangerous mob. This build seeks to rectify that.

First on the list - Life and Energy shield. This forms the core of our defenses, by soaking up hits that make it through on us. we have about 4k-5k health (in practice) and about 2-3k energy shield from our Infernal Mantle, Discipline Aura and other gear. This form an effective health pool of about 6k to 8k. Not bad.

This means nothing if we can't sustain it, though, which is where the Life Leech gem, Ghost Reaver, and Vaal Pact come into play. This combination turns our relatively paltry 2-2.5k energy shield from a pre-fight formality into a formidable bastion of defense, regenerating itself quickly mid-combat and keeping your life pool in reserve for emergencies. This is why we can call our energy shield 'Effective HP'. It's very much an active and prominent part of your survivability in this build.

This brings us to our Golden Combo:

+

This is important enough to go right after "Have and sustain your life pool". These two flasks when used together are your defensive trump card, and you want to play it the instant things look even remotely hot. When you hit these two flasks, you are simultaneously saying three things:

1. I want to stop getting hit.
2. I want my energy shield back.
3. I want to deadify the things that made #1 and #2 necessary with extreme prejudice.

The Jade Flask of Reflexes accomplishes #1 in a pinch, putting you at 15k+ evasion for the duration of the potion with your evasion nodes. Atziri's Promise accomplishes #2 and #3, and is absolute solid gold in your hands. By increasing your damage, doubling your shield-leech rate and approximately halving the amount of physical hits you're taking, the effects you'll see by hitting these two buttons are your energy shield leaping immediately back up to full and things dying, which buys you some time to assess the situation: Has your health pool been hit? Is it still being hit? Are you surrounded?

Is it time to use the YOLO Button?*

This combo takes up the space that health potions usually take up on my other characters. It's that good. The only problem it doesn't solve is chaos damage. That, it only helps with.

Our health pool is sustained by these two flasks:

+

One heals lots of damage over time, the other less damage but instantly. Both remove bleeds. We also support these with the Profane Chemistry notable, and potentially Herbalism as well.

Our second line of defense is our evasion and block. We have lots of evasion% from our tree, but only a bit from our gear. Keeping a Jade Flask up as often as possible will be our main source of evasion, but even without we have about 2-5k depending on gear, which is enough to evade some attacks. A shield lines out our avoidance by giving us ~24% block. This allows us to cut a significant portion of damage coming our way without too much investment in terms of gear.

Finally, Enduring Cry/Warlord's Mark gives us 12% physical damage reduction through Endurance Charges.

*See "Utility" section for more information on the YOLO Button.

Chaos Firestorm: Because the "Burning" effect only stacks once and Essence Drain doesn't work with Vaal Pact.

That's why Firestorm is so beautiful for our purposes. It does everything we need it to do that the Chaos skills don't. It crits, at 6% base, which is why Contagion out of the question. We need it to efficiently refill our energy shield via Ghost Reaver or our ES is essentially useless, which makes Essence Drain a bit of a trap for us (along with the 5% crit rate). Already, the decision to go with damage conversion has been made. But there's more!

It hits many times with one spell cast, which works very well with poison, allowing many stacks to be applied with one cast. It stacks when cast into areas with with itself, unlike some skills I can name (I'm looking at YOU, Caustic Arrow). These two facts together allow for some truly impressive single-target DPS, along with decent pack clearing ability.

The damage scheme of the Poisonstormer is based on one concept - scaling the damage of your initial hits off the same stat as the poison aftereffect. Aside from Fatal Toxins, all our offensive nodes are geared towards dealing lots and lots of Chaos damage, either directly or converted from our elemental damage nodes. The poison is allowed to scale on its own, since points spent that go only towards it inherently aren't 100% effective. This is why we want to scale our initial hits off the same 'element' as our poison - the poison then becomes a multiplier that makes those damage nodes more than 100% effective.

Your increased skill durations nodes are wonderful because they increase the duration of both the Firestorms and their resulting poisons.

There are four mandatory gems, five once you're using an Infernal Mantle.

Firestorm -> Spell Echo -> Concentrated Effect -> Life Leech -> Mana Leech (with Mantle).

The Infernal Mantle causes you to take 100% increased spell damage while on low mana. Mana Leech makes sure that never happens, and allows you to run Discipline instead of Clarity for precious energy shield points.

Concentrated Effect is mandatory because both effects are good things for you. Massive Shrines should actually be avoided due to their DPS-destroying effect on your Firestorm.

We have three different utility setups.

The first is our curse setup. Our main defensive curse is Enfeeble. Our other curse options are: Temporal Chains, which is doubly effective as an offensive gem for us because it keeps monsters in our Firestorms and increases the duration of the poisons they take. Poacher's Mark, which generates Frenzy charges for us. Warlord's Mark, which generates Endurance Charges for us on kill, and gives us more leech against cursed enemies. We can't use the fancy new Blasphemy gem due to our Mantle, and Curse on Hit/manual casting takes away from precious Firestormin' time, so we're going to do it the old fashioned way and use CWDT to deliver low/mid level versions of these curses.

If you use Temporal Chains or Poacher's Mark, pair it with Enduring Cry and a Golem of your choice. If you use Warlord's Mark, pair it with Rallying Cry and a Golem of your choice.

I currently use two Damnings, with Enfeeble, Warlord's Mark, and Assassin's Mark.

Our second utility setup is Whirling Blades linked to Faster Attacks and Fortify, which makes for a nice movement and escape tool.

Fourth is Blade Vortex hooked up to CWDT, Blind, and Power Charge on Critical. This allows us to simultaneously reduce the accuracy of melee monsters (making our evasion more effective) and semi-reliably generate power charges for critical strike chance.

There are three different approaches we can take to our Vaal Skills. There is the most sensible and efficient option, which is to link Increased Duration with Vaal Discipline, Vaal Grace, and Vaal Haste. This gives us a potent combination for tanking damage spikes as well as a powerful offensive tool, and they'll all be very long lasting.

The second option is to do CWDT->Increased Duration->Molten Shell instead of a Vaal Skill.

Then there's The YOLO Button.

I prefer The YOLO Button.

The YOLO Button is: Vaal Molten shell -> Increased Duration -> Increased AOE -> Life Leech

I'm sure someone has put this combination together before. But on our particular build, it's ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS, as it allows you to spend 20+ glorious, hilarious seconds tanking entire packs of monsters and watching them die from the resulting high-powered-crit-Chaos explosions and ensuing poison, as their futile efforts to hit you only generate you more ES and more blasts of death in their face. It's hysterical and I recommend it that everyone do it.

Good times to press the YOLO Button include:

- When you hear several Goatmen going "BAAAAAH"
- Right before aiming a Whirling Blade right next to Xixic and his pack of minions.
- At any point during a fracture map.
- Right before popping a treasure box.
- Basically anytime it's up and there's a lot of melee monsters in your face.

I have no clue, to be honest. I wanted to save my regrets for experimentation so I toughed through it with chaos damage nodes and died a lot. I'd suggest not doing that!