[2.2] Crit Vaal 75% Poison Shell - Decent damage/clear speed - Many variations

Non crit VMS Scold is something that people did quite a lot in this league and in the past. However, building crit vaal molten shell unlock new possibility to achieve a higher damage ceiling, possibility to shatter, instant leech and better flask management and it can only be reliably done with the Shadow Ascendancy Assasin.
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According to Wiki, "Vaal Molten Shell's chance to crit is decided when the user initially casts the spell. It uses the user's crit chance to determine if all Vaal Molten Shell procs will crit or not crit. This means that the spell will either crit for every proc of the duration or none of them." Moreover, at the beginning of the cast, VMS will think that it is casted vs a full life enemy, thus receiving full bonus of the Ascendancy node "Ambush" that grant 100% MORE crit chance and 40% inc. crit multi. This helps a lot in capping crit chance with a 5% base crit chance even in Enfeeble maps.

Budget t11 Academy with 4L VMS and no Sac Harvest - I only realized that the map has the mod that makes monster ignore status ailment, meaning I shatter a lot less and recharge VMS a lot slower. Not a very good demo but it gives you the idea how can this build works with low budget.

Quick twinned T12 Village Ruin

Temp chain Conservatory Map T14

Double boss Excavation T13

Life based - Current skill tree at lvl 97

CI - Planned skill tree at lvl 95

Comment:
- Life based can get decent life regen ~400 w/o bino and life pool ~5500 life. You get to use portal and potentially RF although I never feel the need to do so.

- CI will net your about 6k8 es according to my calculation. You need to use either Eye of Chayula, Skyforth or Kaom's Root to deal with stun. A Scold with 10% less Discipline mana reserve is needed and an Enlighten lvl 3 so that you can reserve 2 auras without getting to Low Mana status (65%). You get a higher effective life pool, can use Vaal Discipline and Vaal Pact.

- Low life non shav: Doable since you can have high life regen/insta es leech with Acuity. You will need perfect chaos res from 2 rings, ammy and belt to make it work. You get to run 1 more aura on life, near 6k es, your damage will probably get Uber Atziri to 1 life in 2 sec with RF on but I don't think it is worth the effort.

- Ambush is absolutely needed to cap crit chance even in Enfeeble map. It also yield more tooltip damage than Toxic Delivery.

I leveled with Firetrap, Fire storm trap in deerstalker boots. I speced in Saboteur and later respeced out of it. I strongly think this is one of the fastest and most powerful ways to level any shadow.

I started to use VMS around lvl 70 so I can use all my gems.

Bandit:
- Life based: Oak-Point-Alira
- CI: Point - Point - Alira

- 5L Infernal Mantle: 1ex
- Chill of corruption: 1c
- Bino + Consuming Dark: ~60c
- Scold:35c
- Belt + Gloves + rings + ammy + boots: 70c

Total cost: ~ 3.5 ex

My Gear


- Helm: Scold's Bridle is a must to trigger VMS. Good enchant: Reduce AA mana reservation (for life based) or Reduce Discipline mana reservation (for ES based). Enchant with Molten shell will work with VMS but I don't think it is as good as being able to run more auras.

- Weapons: The Consuming Dark is a must for free poison and conversion from fire>chaos damage. Bino's Kitchen Knife greatly improve clear speed by proliferate poison. The mods on Bino's benefits poison too.

- Chest: Infernal Mantle is the absolute BiS here. +1 fire gem lvl, fire>chaos conversion, Fire damage, Crit chance. If built ES based this provides a decent amount of ES too. The down side can be avoided if we left enough mana to cast other skills and use elreon's jewelry so that we never reach low mana status. Can be a bit annoying in no regen maps but as soon as VMS is up we will leech mana to full every time.

- Gloves: I have 3 pairs of gloves for different purposes.
+ Mostly used: A rare gloves with life and resists so I can cap resist in Ele Weakness maps.
+ Atziri's Acuity: Safest option for rip maps. As long as I have VMS up I am a god since any hit that cannot 1 shot me will make VMS instan leech to full HP. The armour is a good bonus too.
+ Facebreaker: For highest damage setup. I actually never get to use it since I don't think it is necessary.

- Boots: Rare boots with tri res is my choice. Kaom's Roots, Skyforth, Windscream are other options depending on what you want to build and your gear level. Good enchantment: Cold damage when you are hit, Leech if you killed recently. I chose cold damage so that I can shatter procupines and crabs.

- Belt: Rare belt with high life, tri res

- Rings: Very flexible. I used an essence worm to run Anger before but I don't feel that I need the damage so I dropped it for more life/resist. Elreon's ring is a bonus so you can drop reduced mana in your Flameblast setup but I am too lazy for it.

- Amulet: High life, spell damage, crit multi. Other stats will just cherries on the cake. Crit chance is not needed.

- Jewels: I use 2 copy of Sacrificial Harvest and I find it to be more than enough. I ran 1 chill of corruption before and it is also OK since you shatter a lot. The rest is just life/spell damage/crit multi.

- Vaal Molten Shell:



For 5L: remove controlled destruction

- Flameblast:



Note that reduced mana is not needed and it is only equal to -5 mana cost elreon ring. I am just too lazy to change.

- Movement skills:



- CwDT setup:



- Utility:



Note: Wither totem is great vs bosses. The damage increase is stacked up very fast. I value stone golem since it helps to run blood rage and it is slow, meaning that it will not damage mob before I finish casting flameblast and ruin my Ambush bonus.

- Auras and Curse:



Note: you can sacrifice a ring and run Purity of Fire/Anger and run blasphemy and still have 52% mana unreserved.

Facebreaker - No flask
Facebreaker - with Atziri's Promise and 3 Frenzy Charges

Rare Gloves - No flask
Rare Gloves - No flask Flameblast
Rare Gloves - No flask Enfeeble map

With VMS up, no flask

Nothing fancy here, I rely a lot of flask management, moving all the time with high speed whirling blades to kill/keep Fortify buff up and leech.

Q: Is this build expensive?
A: It can be anywhere around from ~4ex to over 30ex. The more you invest the more convinient the gameplay will be. Check out the budget section if you want to start the build.

Q: How do you shatter?
A: Being crit and using boots with added cold damage when you are hit. Since I hit myself and crit all the time, the cold damage is enough to shatter even rare mobs. This is also thanks to high damage effectiveness of VMS (200%)

Q: Have you tried Uber Atziri?
A: I am not interested in Uber Atziri since the drop doesn't yield much benefit anymore. I can imagine it being able to do Uber quite easily since non crit version like Mathil's did it with little to no problem.