2.3 Poison Block BV Budget Supertank -- League Starter (new vid)

Our primary defenses with this build are having a large life pool, a supplementary ES pool, and plenty of ways to restore them both quickly.

The passive tree gives us 203% life (or 230% with 4 Jewels with life), and my character netted about 6.5k without expensive gear and a few levels to go.
We also have about 200% increased Energy Shield, which, with a few decent ES pieces, can get our ES pool to 3.5k pretty easily. So, on the first side of defense, we have a 10k EHP pool.

After this, we have block. Because we're taking Mistress of Sacrifice, and have permanent Bone Offering, we naturally get around 65% block and spell block (with the Stone of Lazwhar), and a low rolled Rumi's easily gets us to the cap. All in all, we simply avoid taking 75% of all hits thrown at us.

Next, we have Mind Over Matter. With some Mana regen on rings, and some flat mana on the occasional gear piece, I had about 1800 mana total. I decided to reserve 35% of it for a Blasphemy, and had roughly 1200 mana remaining, with extremely high regeneration rate. While I was leveling, I also used a high level clarity. So there is another 1200 EHP against single hits, and far more against a series of smaller hits.

On top of this, I ran Enfeeble on Blasphemy, which is a huge defensive bonus. (PROPHECY EDIT: Run Enfeeble on some other Curse on Hit, and run Discipline and Clarity on mana, for huge all res%, and double dipping damage, as well as survivability from the extra ES)
Furthermore, Cybil's lets us use whirling blades and fortify, which was up nearly 100% of the time since your movespeed is pretty terrible, and whirling is the only thing which lets you move at a decent pace.
Warlord's Mark gives us Endurance charge generation, and our duration passives increase immortal call (if you want to use it)

So, your primary defense is a 75% chance to avoid getting hit, and a 10k + 1.2k EHP pool from which to take damage.

*However*
This is only half of the magic defenses of this build. Beyond building up our EHP and avoidance, we also have near instant ES, Life, and Mana recovery.

Mana is fairly self explanatory, as it regenerates at a very high rate naturally from our tree and jewelry. We assist this by running Warlord's Mark and a life and mana leech enchant on our boots. With this our mana doesn't even fall on it's own due to physical reflect.

For ES, which is our first layer of defense, and about 1/3 of our total EHP, we use Ghost Reaver, which converts the leech from our boots, Warlord's Mark curse, and Atziri's Promise into an ES recharging machine. With this set up, it is extremely rare for mobs to even deplete your rather small 3.5k ES pool.

If they do however, they're in for a much stronger defensive set up. Firstly, Bone Offering grants us a whopping 530-ish life on block from a level 19 gem (which completely negates damage taken from reflect). This means that on average, for every 1 hit your taking to your life pool, you're healing about 1600 from blocking the other 3. On top of this, Cybil's Paw is amazing with Blade Vortex. It is easy to get blade capped against bosses, and 50 blades generates about 400 life per second *per enemy*. Even at 25 stacks, which is a more normal amount for clearing, this regularly means 2000 life per second against 8-12 enemies. Between these two methods of life recovery, enemies need to do damage extremely fast to overcome our life/ES/Mana Pool. Having a long Immortal Call also almost guarantees that you'll have all of your life and ES back before you're susceptible to damage again (but using IC is up to personal preference). This is what allows this build to be Lag-Proof. Don't get me wrong, my shitty computer would literally freeze for 10 seconds at a time while diving into the middle of a Perandus Pack, but I always came out alive, and the people I partied with said that on occasion they saw my health drop to 90%, but then it would dip right back up. This is literally the only reason why I was able to get even as far as I did in HC on my piece of garbage toaster which I use for PoE. Also, you don't even need to cast spells to live! Your blades are already out and leeching, your bone offering is already going, and your curses are always active, so it really doesn't matter at all how long you lag out for, as long as you are hitting mobs or they're hitting you, you'll live.

The offenses of this build are much more straight forward. For your primary skill, you'd want to use BV, Echo, Poison, Inc. Duration, Inc. Aoe, Controlled Destruction, in that order. All of your duration passives affect poison as well, so your degen is easily lasting 5 seconds, long enough for you to whirling blades out of a bearer pack before they even have a chance to die. Inc. AoE can obviously be swapped for Conc. Effect for single target, but I've found this largely unnecessary and inconvenient; I'd only do this for Atziri.

In addition to those links, I also run a tempest shield with curse on hit vulnerability. Vulnerability double dips our damage, and is an enormous dps buff. It would be better to run it on another blade vortex link, but your already losing a lot of sockets to other uses.

My character died while I was redoing a lot of my gear, so ignore what my gear's links show.

6L: BV - Echo - Poison - Inc. Duration - Inc. AoE/Conc - Controlled Destruction/Conc
4L: CWDT - BV - Curse on Hit - Warlord's Mark
4L: Bone Offering - Faster Casting/Immortal Call - Inc. Duration - Vaal Disc
4L: Enfeeble - Blasphemy - Chaos Golem - Desecrate
3L: Whirling Blades - Fortify - Faster Attacks
3L: Tempest Shield - Curse on Hit - Vulnerability

http://poeplanner.com/AAAABAMDB9-K6QL-s1crvYJtGQj0wFRqQ7zqEVA1uacrl_RSUz1fl5VMs9Af7-sEB4PbVcY6WKyY99eboRhqeC985VgHj0anCOvuMtFFR8BmBLOiAPAfaPI8BZ_f73ya4EWdU1KFMhzcjxq4kyj6gscdvjOHA-756Bg8vScYVkGHnL4NHzwotz7-Cti9NZL-j03j8kU64aZXkzoIZxW4yFuWMiL0bAuTJ--I-TfXz0mxvoqhL1VLYeImlRa_f8YRlgcelS7w1UlRj_rQ0F9qDkhd8isK62MRLzY9napsjGKstUh1_YRv1ELsg9OPSI4N4puKvk8=

There is one slight variation of this build that changes only a few passives/priorities, and that's using a Lightning Coil instead of an ES chest. Its a completely viable option, and saves you the points from Ghost Reaver and Arcane Focus, which you can instead use to pick up Purity of Flesh.

The build is pretty linear and self explanatory. Since I wanted to run Blade Vortex from as early as possible, I picked up the Scion life wheel and increased duration nodes early, as well as spec'ing into Shadow simply for the Dex. You do have the option to use intuitive leap in the Scion's mana socket to get the AoE and remove the cast speed for curses node in Skittering Runes, but since we can actually make use of the mana for MOM anyway, I chose not to do so. Before getting those nodes, I leveled with Deep Thoughts. Also, giving up a Jewel meant losing 7% life and some Spell/Area damage, which I wasn't willing to do. Your ideal Jewel stats are Life, Area Damage, Spell Damage, and Mana. Getting some Str or Dex on jewels is also not completely a waste, as it's rather annoying to keep up the amounts you need from gear alone.

Here is a tree for level 81 (before you really start focusing on ES:
http://poeplanner.com/AAAABAMDB9-K6QL-s1crvYJtGQj0wFRqQ7zql_RSUz1fl5VMs9Af7-sEB4PbVcY6WKyY99eboRhqeC985VgHj0anCOvuMtFFR8BmBLOiAPAfPAWf3-98muBFnVNShTIc3I8auJMo-oLHHb4zhwPu-egYPL0nGFZBh5y-DR88KLc-_grYvTWS_o9N4_JFOuGmVyL0bAuTJ--I-TfXz0mxvoqhL1VLYeImlRa_f8YRlgcelS7w1UlRDkhd8isK62MRLzY9napsjGKstUh1_YRv1EJ0VV8q7IPTj0iODeKbir5P

After you're finished with this tree, you can use your discretion for what to go for; I considered Purity of Flesh and Foresight/Unnatural Calm, depending on your ES vs Health levels, and how many points you have to spend.

Normal: Oak
Cruel: Kill (you don't need the cast speed from Alira, you're capping BV stacks just from duration)
Merci: Kill (or Oak if you're reliably generating charges)

The only essential gear pieces for this build are a Cybil's Paw (a near perfect roll is around 3c. you can still get the 8 life on hit from a 1c Paw), and a Stone of Lazwhar (also a 1c unqiue). Since I had enough Int from my tree, I used a mana gained when hit corruption on my ammy before I saved up the 1ex to purchase the additional curse.
For Armor pieces (boots, gloves, helm, chest), you want life, ES, and Res. You don't need movespeed on boots since you're whirling everywhere. For boots, it's a *huge* improvement to purchase or farm a .5% life and mana leech corruption. Make this your first priority on boot shopping.
For rings, you *will* want a ring with a T1 Dex Roll, and a very high mana regen roll. After these conditions are met, just aim for life and Res. The belt is for life, strength, and res.

I crafted the Chest myself from alc/scours until I had a nice ES roll with either life or open Prefix. The corrupted Stone of Laz cost me 1 ex, and the rest of the gear was purchased between 1-10c In general, you want as much ES as possible on your Helm, Chest, and Shield, as these are major contributors to your ES pool. Gloves and Boots can be any base (and I wasn't the idiot who master-crafted the shield, just fyi). My gear is pretty far from ideal, so there's a lot of room for more ES, life, and chaos res.

I used the Silver flask like a quicksilver, and to build up stacks after entering a map or coming up on the boss, but it's by no means necessary. The Atziri's Promise is flat out a 20-25% damage multiplier, and the leech is an amazing defensive addition as well. I use a Rumi's to cap my block (without it I'm sitting at about 66% attack and spell), and to give me an armor boost. The roll on the Rumi's doesn't matter at all, since any amount will cap you.
If you can, try to get your hands on a Taste of Hate.