CoC Lightning Warp Storm Call Elementalist (budget but scales well)

So. Movement skills are very important to today's meta, allowing fast clearing by moving quickly with enough damage, instead of needing to stack DPS. Cast on Critical Strike is also very meta, allowing us to cast large numbers of spells repeatedly whilst moving. How can we combine all of this?

Cast on Crit Lightning Warp.


Lightning Warp has gotten a lot better very recently. The buff to the Less Duration gem is extremely strong. We also can use a Warped Timepiece to go even faster. The Crit Strikes gem has also been buffed, with 2% base crit.



How do we want to cast Lightning Warp though?

Barrage has been a staple of the bow Cast on Crit for a long time. Typically the bow used is a Quill Rain, thanks to the very high rate of fire. However, introduced in Prophecy is this thing:


The Tempest. 1.95ApS, 6% base critical strike chance, and a global 100% Increased Lightning Damage. Perfect.

Unfortunately, we don't get that much actual damage out of Lightning Warp. But no matter! We can add in another gem that benefits from everything we've talked about so far:


Storm Call gets a big damage and QoL boost from Less Duration, and benefits from the 100% Increased Lightning Damage on The Tempest.

This is basically the core of the build. Everything else fits around this. You'll need at minimum a 5L, but a 6L will be so much better:




The biggest other consideration is going to be our Ascendancy. Elementalist is almost a no-brainer here - we obtain masses of damage, clear consistency and speed from Shaper of Desolation and Beacon of Ruin. We also need the reflect damage reduction from Paragon of Calamity quite badly, as we are crit and a glass cannon (I'll show the passive tree below, but there isn't much Life to be had). The other choices would mostly be personal preference, Assassin is a good idea for consistent crits.

Next up, like any crit build, we must generate power charges. The best way I can see is using Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice to proc Assassin's Mark:


I'm still absolutely amazed at the consistency of this. We get 90% uptime on the power charges, and Herald of Thunder is constantly proccing because of Shaper of Desolation shocking everything all the time. We also shatter a lot, helping survivability and pack explosions.


Diamond Flasks are dumb. We absolutely need one if we are going Elementalist.


Switch this in over Lightning Warp for boss encounters. It's a ~130% more damage multiplier against capped resist mobs, and we don't really need to warp around for bosses. Very important.

One last thing I consider mandatory:


These four gems combine to give us incredible pinch mobility. The animation of Blink Arrow with a 20%Q gem is absolutely awesome (see the video). Reduced Mana helps with the cost, as I reserve 99% of mana, as detailed below.

Optional Choices

A couple of other things we want to have:


Wrath is a straight-up 20% more damage in this build, which is absolutely sweet. We can combine this with a level 2 Enlighten, any Elreon ring and a low-level Barrage gem to reserve 99% of our mana and still sustain no problem - that 6L setup costs about 3 mana! Naturally, any 50% aura will fit fine here, and you can customise this to your heart's content, perhaps using Blasphemy curses or defensive Auras. Anything goes, really, you just need sustain for Barrage. With a level 3 Enlighten, you can probably drop the Elreon rings, as you should have enough unreserved for a low-level Blink Arrow, but I haven't tested this.


Just one of these (bottom right of the tree, next to Heartseeker/Acuity) seems to be the best place for this. We want both of those clusters for improved crit chance. It's also possible to put it next to the Shadow Power Charge, but this requires several extra Dex nodes.

For quivers, we have a couple of choices, but for the Life-based build it's mostly something like this:


Large quantities of Crit Chance and Crit Multi will take you everywhere you wanted damage-wise. There is also a defensive option in Soul Strike if you are CI/LL, which is a crit quiver, which I didn't know until today...


Maligaro's and Rat's Nest are both massive damage/speed additions to this build, for very obvious reasons - Crit, Crit, more Crit, IAS, movement speed...


Since this is an Acro build, Vaal Grace is spectacular, almost capping our Dodge and Spell Dodge by itself. So good.

Jewel examples:


You're looking to boost the damage of Storm Call and your crit rate. Crit Chance, Crit Multi, Life, IAS with Bows, Area Damage, Lightning Damage, Spell Damage, all good stuff. You may want to end up getting some spare Strength on Jewels or gear somewhere too.

In terms of the chest piece, this is VERY wide open. There are some interesting and unorthodox choices available here:


Carcass is obvious - we get 20% AoE for both spells, 12% Area Damage, resists, life and evasion. Very good.


Bronn's Lithe has some very interesting properties if we stick our 6L on it. We get +2 to the level of Lightning Warp, granting around a 30% damage boost for it, as well as giving us 50% increased damage with Lightning Warp. We get 10% Attack Speed for our Barrage. We also get a bunch of evasion and movement speed. Surprising synergy.


Lighting Coil is so good. It's prevalence is rightful, and if you can fix the resists on your build it might be BIS. We need the sure damage mitigation a lot more than we need Evasion. Stacks directly with Taste of Hate if you can afford one, giving 37.5% physical damage reduction straight-up.

Kaom's Heart (not pictured as I don't own one) is likely a very good choice, as we can 6L the bow and not need more gems. It also helps the build's small life pool significantly.

Other gear is rares - rare boots, rare belt, rare ring. Yes, resists are tight; you can swap most of the uniques out if you want more resists. The leech enchantment for boots is excellent, as it would be the only source of leech. You could also go for a Lightning Leech corruption on the amulet or bow for a bit more; or perhaps use a Vessel of Vinktar.

Okay, so how does this build actually perform?

I've taken this build to Tier 7 maps so far, but haven't got the time to take it any further. It is struggling now because of the small life pool and the bosses, and I haven't got the gear to fix this. Below that tier, it clears like a monster, and has a very active and intense playstyle. It's a little like Flicker Strike in the intensity and movement, but where Flicker Strike is like a cruising airliner where you mostly monitor the dials and press flasks when they expire, this build is more like a Formula One car, taking precise movement and control and it grows MUCH faster with a skilled driver. Timing your Flasks and trying to keep the Diamond Flask up a lot is very important.

Watching what you are shooting at is also very important. You can easily offscreen something and suddenly be next to it. This is partly a strength, as it allows insane speed, but it's also a weakness as you don't always know what you're getting into, or indeed you can accidentally catch things in the crossfire and move somewhere you didn't expect.

If you shoot backwards, you move backwards. Speed clearing only going forward will be fast and rough, although helped a lot by Conflux/Prolif.

VIDEO:


It's really, really fun. By a wide margin the most fun build I've ever played or seen. And I've played an Oro's Speed Raider.

On to the tree!

Disclaimer: This isn't a polished build! There's a ton of refinement and experimenting to do, including how you want to scale defenses, like choosing CI, perhaps with Soul Strike; or choosing LL, blowing an absurd amount of currency scaling this build into oblivion! Vaal Pact/Leech is a very strong combo for this, obviously. I'm sure it will perform as well as you want it to.

Second disclaimer: I don't have a character specced to this exactly at the moment. I experimented with CI and it didn't go well; and I haven't respecced back yet.

This is for the life-based version, as I've been writing the guide for.

Bandits: Oak, Kraityn, Alira (Life, IAS, Power Charge)

Passive Tree, 114 points:

We get almost every life node we come across. We get every crit node we can reach. We get spell crit, Witch AoE, Heart of Thunder. We spec Acrobatics because it's a cheap way of getting strong defenses, and stacks with Vaal Grace so well. Remember, Volley Fire goes in the bottom-rightmost Jewel socket. We also take a Strength node for the few Str gems we want to use; this can be made up on gear if you are awesome enough.

Thanks for reading. Have fun :)

Hi, nice build! I am using CoC LW, too, and it's fun!

Just for the presentation, I use it in a rather generic bow build , mainly for movement (I can stay a lot of time without releasing the attack button when using Blast Rain + Increased AoE), but also because this way I am always at point blank.
The damage is rather good, even if I have no T13, I can easily do until T12 (Village Ruin is always 50% to die to the bosses), and have 4000hp pool, enfeeble, 4 endu charges (Daresso's Defiance), and 5000 armor thanks to iron reflexes (not enough for bosses (I have a granite + basalt for them), but good against trash mobs that attack you when you are being teleported). Maybe I should upload a new video, the current ones are totally outdated.

For your build, Less Duration is good with Storm Call, but if you don't use Storm Call and have some movement speed, I am not sure it is useful for LW (and the other attack spells can find better for damage). I use Raider as an ascendancy now, and totally focused on bow/life nodes, but I was wondering if discharge on a spell focused version could work. I think your build would not need a lot of changes to try this - maybe you even have already tried it?

What I fear is that Voll's Devotion might be unavoidable for damage - maybe even Juggernaut Ascendancy - and scaling spell damage and Bow Crit chance from Juggernaut might be a bit hard. Perhaps with some well placed Lioneye's fall?

Thanks! Point Blank is an idea for a damage boost, as we do indeed get close pretty quickly. By a Discharge build, I assume you mean self-cast Discharge? We can't use Cast on Crit for Discharge with a bow, that's a little silly. Lioneye's Fall is something I hadn't considered actually, so it would be interesting to see how that would turn out. I think Elementalist is still the way to go for this build though.

I uploaded a new video, just for better mechanical showing than the last one.

https://youtu.be/0-YzHo8vcwc

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Haiyukin/characters, Character is RevengeOfCaptainMorgan. Still only around 3200 Life, but this is a lot better with a Lightning Coil than with a Tabula!

nice