[2.2] Occultist - Profane Bloom Chaos Wander

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDDnFOBP2Q0
This is a quick video of the build vs Palace Dominus in a T14 map because people were asking about how the build fairs vs difficult bosses:
Screenshot of map mods http://imgur.com/wvxUVfd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlYWWILlea8
This video shows the gear and skilltree and clears an Arsenal map with ele equilibrium and half regen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVnfuVus6tQ
~2:30 gorge clear because someone on reddit was complaining about the build being slow when doing actually challenging content. Sorry the video is quite laggy.

I'll try and upload some more videos later if there is interest.

I apologise for the quality, my computer lags playing the game normally let alone while im recording. I had to downscale the resolution to get it to record adequately and then the quality got downscaled even more when I uploaded it to youtube.

Skyforths are NOT required, see section below.

The flasks are very important, especially Atziri's Promise. You do not need a taste of hate and can substitute it for another flask of your choice.

Capping resists and getting enough strength can be challenging and you will probably have to buy some expensive pieces of jewellery to make it work.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAAMeCaAM8g18D6sPxBEvEVAUsBa_GYoajxslHaofQSBuJIsqCyo4KwotHzW5Nj07fD1fP3NCekV-RnFHBklRSbFLrkyzUDBSKVJTVYVV4FhaWbxcil3yX2pjQ2nYbAhs520ZbWxvnnBScLtzcHcHenB88H6hf8aCHoMJhMWHE4nTjAuMNo_6kQeTJ5Ugl5WX9Jphm7WcpJ-IoS-io6XLpyu0DLTFtUi4yrl8vorBxcHzwnPDOsUoytPOcNAf0NDXz9lb2-ffiuGI6QLquutj7BjssO-I7-vw1fGK8uH2W_ba9uf5N_sJ_kk=

I will be taking the witch flasks nodes next.

Taking the aura radius nodes is very important to make sure enemies are cursed by your blasphemy auras and by void beacon.

It is important to take the frenzy charge duration nodes if using snakebite gloves or else the duration of your frenzy charges will only be around 5 seconds.

Our main skill is Kinetic blast:

Crit damage could be swapped out for something else if you felt you have enough crit multi already. Such as crit strikes or faster attacks.

Our auras are two 4L's:

If you dont have skyforths or just want a larger mana pool use HoT instead of wrath, it makes very little difference.
Blasphemy Curses:

I need skyforth's and conqueror's Efficiency to run these both on my life pool. If you dont have Skyforths you will need to shuffle your auras around a bit or use Heretic's veil for the reduced reservation cost of blasphemy.

wither totem (not required but nice to have)


Utility:

There are a number of options for scaling chaos damage on a wander, however none of them are as efficient as some other chaos conversion builds which achieve 100% conversion. Therefore think of this more as a hybrid build which focuses mainly on the chaos part.

The bulk of our damage will be coming from the added chaos gem.

This gem is the highest flat damage gem in the game but isn't normally used on wanders because it doesn't get scaled by the WED gem. Since we plan to scale chaos damage we wont be using the WED gem so it isn't a problem. The high damage effectiveness of Kinetic blast (146% at level 20) means the added chaos gem will be giving us a huge amount of base damage to work with.

The rest of our chaos damage comes from phys to chaos conversion (not really conversion as its all added damage). This comes from multiple sources:
- 15% from Obliteration wand
- 25% physical and 15% elemental from Atziri's Promise Amethyst Flask
- 8% phys + elemental from Malediction (Occultist passive 4% per curse on an enemy)
- 20% (optional) from Ming's Heart

Now our wand only has around 140 pdps which isnt great. So we ideally need to get some flat physical damage on our jewlery to boost the phys so we can convert it into greater chaos damage. You can also craft flat chaos damage onto ring's with a level 7 elreon (this mod turns out to add about the same dps as a flat phys mod would). In testing Ming's Heart adds the most damage for a ring slot, however I advise using a ring with added phys/chaos instead as it makes gearing much easier and doesn't reduce your es.

An alternative to using Obliteration is to craft a wand with the Malicious prefix (adds 47 to 72 / 98 to 123 chaos damage). I haven't tested this yet but I feel unless you craft an insane phys wand which also happens to have the malicious prefix it will be better (and much cheaper!) to just use obliteration; which also doubles your chance to proc profane bloom.

The second Ascendancy passive we take is Malediction. This gives us a second curse and also adds a portion of our non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage.



The curses we will be using are Poacher's mark
and Projectile weakness.
Both of these curses work extremely well for our build. Poachers gives use mana on hit, frenzy charges, reduces enemy evasion and 100% increased flask charges (which basically makes this a flask build).

Projectile weakness gives us 50% pierce chance, which combined with the pierce gem makes 100% pierce within our aura radius (importantly only 50% outside this radius which prevents lag from offscreening). It also makes enemies take increased damage which functions as a multiplier for our damage and for our poison damage. And finally it gives knockback which is a nice defensive bonus.

(note if you dont use Skyforth's you may have to drop one of these curses for assassin's mark).

We combine the frenzy charges from Poacher's mark with the snakebite gloves in order to poison enemies. Its important to take the frenzy charge duration passives in the shadow area because otherwise you will only have a ~5 second duration on your frenzy charges with these gloves equipped.



In addition to this we use a wither totem which we drop for bosses. I dont use this much anymore but it was very useful at lower levels when my damage wasn't as high. It drastically increases the damage enemies take from both your attacks and the poison. If you drop a frost wall and a wither totem for a boss they will just melt if you position them correctly.

A note on the usefulness of snakebite gloves. Im not 100% sure they are the best option. The poison definitely does increase the damage you deal to bosses, especially with wither totem, but its completely useless for packs. Packs will all just explode from profane bloom and will never be alive long enough to take damage from poison. Even most rares dont take damage from poison because they are surrounded by mobs which explode and kill them. So while the snakebite gloves are nice for giving us attack speed, accuracy and poison, it might be a better option to use something like Maligaro's. I personally chose to use them mainly for flavour since I was making a chaos wander and wanted to poison things as well. If you dont have Skyforth's it might be worth considering to drop frenzy charges altogether and use Assassin's mark and Maligaro's isntead.

Our final Ascendancy passive is Void Beacon. This gives us an aura effect which reduces nearby enemies chaos resistance by 20%. It is the only way in the game to reduce chaos resistance.



Initially I thought this would just be a nice boost to the damage against enemies in melee range and I was thinking of ways to stand next to a boss to take advantage of it. Well it turns out it scales with all of your aoe and aura aoe passives. Since I took aoe passives to scale my blasphemy radius it ends up being as wide as the screen! This is incredibly powerful since most enemies have low or no chaos resistance anyway they end up being in the negative, which greatly increases our damage.



Here you can see the Void Beacon effect (purple swirl below enemies feet) affecting the entire screen.

This build is extremely versatile when it comes to map mods. In fact you can run pretty much any mod in the game with this build. Of course there are certain mods which do slow you down considerably.

Curse immunity is a particularly annoying mod to deal with. We have invested alot of our power into what we gain from our curses. Consequently without them our build is significantly weaker. You will lose significant damage and utility and will be unable to proc profane bloom. I would advise avoiding this mod.

Blood Magic is similar to curse immunity because you have to turn off your blasphemy auras to run it. You can alter you setup to use a curse on hit and so its not quite as bad. You will need to use a life flask and significantly alter your setup to run this mod.

Physical and Elemental reflect are both annoying mods to deal with. Both are completely safe to run but you have to keep your flasks up at all times. Elemental reflect isnt particularly dangerous unless paired with -max etc. Phys reflect is extremely dangerous if you do not have flasks up. Our only leech comes from Atziri's Promise flask (or in my case my boot enchant also gives some leech if I've killed recently) as well as our only defence against physical damage. That means if your flasks run out you are very likely to oneshot yourself to physical reflect. If you are especially worried about phys reflect you can use a phys to lighting gem instead of crit damage, or even put on a Dyadian Dawn belt to deal no physical damage.

1/2 regen and no regen maps are fine to run due to Poacher's mark giving mana on hit. Against some bosses which have high hp and dont have adds it can be advisable to turn one aura off so you have a larger mana pool to kill them with.

Skyforths are in no way required for this build, they just fall into the 'very nice to have' category. If you do not have them then you will need a way to generate power charges. You will also have to re-jiggle your auras to work without the 6% reduced mana reserve they give. And you probably need to get stun recovery on some pieces of gear and/or roll stun recovery on a flask in order to prevent yourself getting stunlocked.

I think the best way to go about it is to either drop one of your curses for Assassin's mark, or to get a +1 curse amulet and use a curse on hit HoT/HoI setup for the 3rd curse. If you drop poachers then you wont use snakebite gloves. If you drop projectile weakness then you can take the pierce nodes near the shadow for 4-5 passive points.

Ashaze reminded me about Heretic's Veil. If you are struggling to use two blasphemy auras then using Heretic's Veil is a really good option since you can make up the resists on your boots.