[2.4] Non-Shav's Low Life Blood Magic BV Chaos Occultist

So this build takes advantage of a few combinations to make this strange build work. First, Blade Vortex is our skill of choice due to all the synergies at play. It's linked to Spell Echo, Controlled Destruction, Poison and Void Manipulation in a 5 Link. Secondly, we use quite a few uniques to bring the build together; The Covenant grants us Blood Magic without having to travel across half the tree, as well as Shav's comparable ES and an extra level 15 Added Chaos Damage link, which turns our Blade Vortex into a pseudo 6 Link; Ming's Heart grants us a large increase to damage and Chaos resistance, the latter we need in spades to survive with a small health pool and no Shavronne's Wrappings; Lori's Lantern grants a lot of resistances and the luck factor, which decreases average damage received by between 6% and 21% depending on the source; Bino's Kitchen Knife grants an increase to our damage over time, poison proliferation and 200 health regeneration per second for 4 seconds on killing a poisoned enemy, which is the 'battery' we use to fuel our mana cost as well as survive chaos degeneration and hits; The Writhing Jar functions as a back up health source for casting skills when we don't have Bino's regeneration active, as well as giving us two worms to activate Bino's regeneration and proliferate a bit of poison to enemies too; Coruscating Elixir functions as an extra defense against strong sources of Chaos damage (exiles, extreme degeneration, roided Vile Touch mobs, Poison on Hit map mod, etc.) with the downside of being at 1 Life quickly mitigated by our extreme health regeneration from Bino's, it also grants (maximum) fire resistance and some Energy Shield regeneration; two copies of Atziri's Promise are used to have permanent uptime on both the damage boost and the chaos damage life leech, as over half our damage is Chaos damage this flask gives us a pseudo 7 Link; lastly, Kiara's Determination is our source of Stun and Freeze avoidance, which is actually less required than you'd think. There's also an Energy From Within nestled in the tree below Melding for an additional 27% increased Energy Shield (I stumbled upon a max roll one), but this isn't as vital to the build.

Skill gems other than Blade Vortex include Stone Golem, for a near-constant 100 Health Regeneration which stacks with Bino's Regeneration (combined these two have let me survive zombie death degen, poison arrows, multiple poisonous hits, Viper Strike exiles, all with ease); Blasphemy Vulnerability to scale up the Physical half of our damage as well as the 33% multiplier to Poison degeneration; Discipline, for more Energy Shield; Whirling Blades for movement and Fortify; CWDT Immortal Call for physical damage; CWDT Blade Vortex linked to Increased Area of Effect and Blind for blinding enemies and popping writhing worms to activate Bino's if caught with my pants/BV down; Vaal Discipline for an extra defensive layer; and Wither Totem for scaling Poison/Chaos damage.

The Passive Tree focuses on grabbing a large amount of Energy Shield as well as the Chaos and Physical damage increases in the Shadow area, some duration near Scion, some Area of Effect near Witch and some Poison damage. Some of our pathing looks suboptimal as it's hard to grab enough Dexterity to meet the requirements of Blade Vortex. Notables picked up include Pain Attunement, as we reserve 70% of our life with Vulnerability Blasphemy and Discipline for a 30% more damage multiplier, and Ghost Reaver to keep our Energy Shield topped up since Bino's and Stone Golem handle our health regeneration. The next few planned points on the Passive Tree are to grab the Flask Effect cluster in Witch and the Spell Damage Jewel socket in Scion. Ascendancy class is Occultist, and points are Wicked Ward, Vile Bastion (which works with Writhing Worms killed) and Void Beacon. With Uberlab we'd take Profane Bloom.

As I recently spent the vast majority of my currency 6 Linking my Cauteriser Axe on my Shockwave Totem character (LaptopDidgeridoo on my profile if you're interested), I tried to do this character on a Budget. All uniques except for two cost 1 Chaos for good rolls, the exceptions being Kiara's Determination, which goes for 100 Chaos or a bit over, and Energy From Within which goes for ~15 Chaos for a bad roll. Most of my gear was purchased for 5 Chaos or less, except for my Amulet which was 1 Chaos (a bargain to be fair) and my belt, which cost me 7 Chaos to buy, 1 Scour to clean and 2 Shrieking Hatreds to roll (I needed 40% cold resistance and then was going to craft 20% lightning resistance, but I lucked out and rolled lightning resistance so I crafted ES). Lastly, a Jeweller's Touch costs about 23 Chaos, but I had one of those lying around too. All in all this build costs a little over 2.5 Exalts, with 1.5 Exalts of those being Kiara's which you don't need until tier 5+ maps (an anti-freeze flask would suffice while you farmed Dried Lake for currency until then).

With current budget gear we have over 8.5k Energy Shield and just over 1000 life (~300 unreserved), as well as Elemental Weakness capped elemental resistances and capped Chaos resistance. We have 10k tooltip DPS on Blade Vortex, 13K with either Atziri's Promise up. However, Blade Vortex tooltip is iffy, and this doesn't account for Vulnerability scaling the physical damage, Void Beacon scaling the Chaos damage, and Poison. Poison has 70% increased damage on the tree, 34% increased damage on the support gem, 30% increased damage over time on Bino's, 37% increased damage over time in the Shadow section, 137% increased Chaos damage (10% from a Jewel), 30% increased area damage (which applies to Poison as it inherits it's applicator's tags), 50% increased skill effect duration, Vulnerability's 33% multiplier, Void Beacon's 20% Chaos resistance decrease and Void Manipulation's 37% more damage multiplier. In summary, it does a stupid amount of damage.

This build still has a bit to go, there's more damage and survivability to be grabbed on the tree over the next half a dozen levels, the only 20/20 gem used is Blade Vortex (they're about 4 chaos Corrupted each right now), and non-flasks gear could easily be improved from the ~5 Chaos a piece average going right now.

Anywho, thanks for reading if you've read this far, I know it's a wall of text but I'm genuinely enjoying all the interactions this build has to offer and want to document every niche of it.

To level I just grabbed a few relevant Blade Vortex caster uniques, Lifesprig, Reverberation Rod, Obliteration and using things like Added Cold/Lighting Damage and Faster Casting as links until we unlock support gems required. I didn't fully equip all my gear and go Low Life until 70, since that's the point you can grab everything you need on the tree (take away extraneous Jewel Sockets and a bunch of %ES non-notables in the Shadow and Scion section to see the tree at 70) as well as wear a Level 20 Blade Vortex.

Other gear choices include Saffel's Frame since it gives Maximum Resistances (Chaos Resistance too, it doesn't specify Elemental), but mathing it out it the maximum resistances reduced Elemental/Chaos damage by ~16%, but I lost 16% of my ES in the process, and Physical damage is much more prolific than Chaos. Two Ming's Hearts, while the damage would be nice, isn't really optimal. Still decent if you are going super-budget and can't afford Chaos resistance on gear to hit 75% resistance. The Broken Crown is also another budget option for Chaos resistance, but it does mess up your links.

Whirling Blades and Shield Charge are interchangeable. CWDT Blade Vortex with Blind is just a set up I like, other things like Arctic Breath, Vortex and Tempest Shield are also viable.

With a 6 Link, I'd likely stick in either Faster Casting, or the Increased AoE/Concentrated Effect switch combo. If I go for Faster Casting, the increased Blade output and therefore DPS would let me drop an Atziri's Promise for a Rumi's Concoction (or Basalt with Bleed immune)

Map mods with this build can be dangerous, while you have enough regeneration to survive lowered regeneration maps, desecrated ground and half a dozen stacks of Poison individually, combined they will be unplayable. Fortunately I haven't run into any deadly combinations like that yet, only individual occurrences which can be handled with Corruscating Elixir. Other things to look out for are to pay attention to the mobs that spawn some Spiders have innate Poison on Hit chance, some Exiles use Viper Strike and Poison Arrow, Alira's cornies do Chaos damage, Snakes to Chaos damage, Catarina missions spawn ground degeneration etc. That said, all of these are generally survivable if you have Bino's regeneration up (I have no deaths to Chaos on this character so far). Just watch out for Vaal Constructs, those things hit really hard.

Tier 10 Arsenal
(First time using OBS to record, don't know how to focus only on the window, forgot to turn off Global, still learning. 7 Minute map clear, boss is at 4 minutes in.)

Planning on making a video guide to this build once I get the mic I ordered online

Here is the reddit thread I made prior to this, the write up section is mainly a copypaste job.