[3.1] Kitava's Spirit - Budget Multicast Trickster [Uber Farm capable]

Using Kitava's thirst, we can spend 100 mana or more per skill use in order to trigger other skills from the helmet for free. In order to achieve this, we need a few things. First, a high mana cost (100+). Second, a sizeable mana pool from which to cast repeatedly. Third, enough mana return (through various means) to sustain the mana cost, and finally, a fast skill to quickly use the necessary mana cost in the shortest frame of time.

We pull off the necessary requirements by first increasing mana cost. The easist way to do this is with the Fevered Mind Jewel.

Now this item isn't very cheap, even deep into the league it still costs over 10c which is easily achieved at this point, but keeps it from being a league starter.


Apep's Rage:

With two of these wands we facilitate much of the cast speed, spell damage, and mana cost requirements the build needs.

As for facilitating the mana return, we use a few different methods.

Atziri's Foible is the #1 most powerful item for mana regeneration that I could find. Alone, it accounts for nearly a third of the mana return necessary.

Trickster's Weave the Arcane, coupled with a sizeable mana pool, results in a hefty return of mana during casting. It is inconsistent due to being a %Chance to trigger, but I've found that it's more than able to keep up so long as you have a decent pool of free mana (~1K after reservation).

Warlord's Mark provides life and mana leech which is the final buffer towards keeping a stable mana pool with our 500+ mana/second usage.

These combined, as well as the passive tree (located below) will provide the ability to cast the spells in the helmet repeatedly, acting as a huge supplemental damage and range source to our primary skill.

The skill I chose was Blade Vortex, it has a cast time of 0.5 seconds (2 casts per second) which is one of the faster casting spells in the game.

Note: Channeling skills do not function well with Kitava's Thirst, as only the initial skill use counts for the mana cost, and most channeled skills have too low of a mana cost to be viable without extreme investment. The same goes for most attack skills, but you can experiment if you'd like.

Blade Vortex is a powerful skill, but it does have some flaws. Primarily, it requires you to be in relatively close range of a target in order to harm it. Defensively, this is very risky, even though it deals large amounts of damage.

Luckily, by focusing on physical spells like Blade Vortex, we can supplement the damage and reach of the build to make it safer and more effective.

I chose Bladefall and Etheral Knives as the support skills to socket into Kitava's Thirst. These provide supplemental damage (about 70% as much as Blade Vortex itself), while also having an extended reach and some auto-targeting capabilities.

While you can also use Glacial Cascade instead of EK, especially since it's AoE modifiers stack with the ones we'll get to support Bladefall and Blade Vortex, I don't prefer the cold conversion, and the damage is highly directional. Ethereal Knives would have a similar issue, but this is solved by using the Ring of Blades Jewel to allow EK to fire in a nova, giving similar 360 degree coverage as Blade Vortex, but with a much further reach.

Overall, we get just over 5 casts per second on Blade Vortex, which nets about 1.5 casts per second on the other skills.

Link Setups

Blade Vortex is supported first by Faster Casting to get more casts per second to trigger Kitava's Thirst. We avoid using Spell Echo, as the repeated cast does not count as spending mana, and as such, more than halves the triggers per second from the helmet. As well, Echo reduces the damage without providing much benefit towards reaching maximum stacks, as we'll be able to achieve that easily without it.

Arcane Surge Allows us to gain cast speed, damage, and mana regeneration, all things this build uses heavily, and is one of the main reasons it is even possible to pull off.

The other supports are for the sake of damage, but I would like to mention Brutality specifically. Apep's rage provides chaos damage to spells, but even with that bonus damage, the best support gem I could find for BV's damage was Brutality. Normally, you'd support BV's damage with and aura like Hatred, or Herald of Ash, but the build requires having a sizeable amount of free mana to draw from. That rules out elemental damage bonuses, making the choice for Brutality easier. The chaos damage provided by the wands is not substantial enough to choose another support for it.

The skills linked in Kitava's Thirst are supported by Controlled Destruction and Brutality as well. The main reason I chose these supports were due to the fact that they both affect either skill in the same fashion. Had I used Concentrated Effect or Slower projectiles, I would've been losing effectiveness on either skill which didn't have AoE/Projectile functions.

Supplemental skills:

Vaal Haste for top speed casting. I was seeing nearly 6 casts per second while it and my frenzy charges are active.
Flame Dash I use for mobility. I would use Lightning Warp but I have some duration nodes on the tree which make it worse and it's movement isn't immediate.
Flame Golem for extra damage.

Bandits: Kill all for a bit faster progression, or Alira for more relaxed gearing.

Path of Building Links

Level 80

Level 90

Ultimately the build suffers in that gearing is quite difficult defensively. In order to make it easier to gear, and in order to back up what small defenses we have, we make use of a few things.

Mind Over Matter: As seen in the tree above, Mind Over Matter gives us a huge amount of mana as well as moving 30% of all damage taken to our mana. This goes hand in hand with the build's design to regenerate and restore mana quickly, making it effectively 30% less damage taken from all sources.

Weave the Arcane: Provides 8% Reduced damage taken if you've used at least 200 mana recently. Considering we use that much mana in less than half a second, we can consider this to be always active.

Ghost Dance: 5% Dodge and Spell Dodge isn't amazing but it leads us into Shade Form

Shade Form: the flat ES and Evasion provided is like having an invisible extra chest piece on. As well, if we're not on full ES (which happens often) we receive 20% more evade chance, and if ES recharge has begun recently, we get 20% increased cast speed, a great bonus for the build.

Warlord's Mark on Blasphemy ends up covering any enemy that Blade Vortex can hit and then some. The 2% Leech supplements both our life and mana pools, and due to BV being passive, even if casting is interrupted by damage, we'll still have blades dealing damage to return that life and mana back. As well, the skill provides endurance charges on kill, which nets 12% physical damage reduction and some resistances, which are helpful in cases of elemental weakness maps.

Besides Warlord's Mark, we also reserve 25% of our mana to provide an additional buffer against physical and fire damage.

Finally we have allocated Vaal Pact and with 100K+ DPS on Blade Vortex alone, we should be able to regenerate our entire pool of life in a short amount of time, making only egregious amounts of damage a concern.

Update: VP may not be necessary as I've started using:

This flask is INCREDIBLE for this build. We spend 117 mana with a lvl 20 Blade vortex and the gear I have laid out. This means we gain 8 * 117 or 936 life per cast. With a cast rate of 5+ per second, it's an amazing amount of life return and should keep us alive through nearly anything that isn't a one-shot. That being said, it does require mana to work so in some cases of extreme damage, it becomes less effective as MoM is reduced before I can cast again. Luckily BV's blades are leeching life and mana via Warlord's still, so there's always life and mana return in that regard. The question is whether or not VP is worthwhile with Zerphi's involved. Further testing required.

Pantheon: Brine King for Stun avoidance and Yugul for being less likely to melt yourself to reflect.

Overall, we should end up with about 4K life and 1.5K Energy shield. Assuming maximum endurance charges, Weave the Arcane, MoM, and Arctic Armor, we should see a total reduction to physical damage of just over 50%, slightly less for Fire damage, and less still for cold and lightning damage. Chaos damage resistance is found on the wands and in the Purity of Flesh cluster.

Optional: You may run a Chaos Golem if you want a bit more physical reduction, I personally use Flame Golem for the damage.

My gear is currently pretty bad, with the one really expensive bit being the Carcass Jack, but it isn't necessary at all, just a nice chest to use. You can definitely go far more defensive for the build and sacrifice some damage but easily hit 6-7K life, making the other defensive aspects extremely strong.



Flasks: Zerphi's Last Breath is amazing for this build. We spend lots of mana per second and we get 800% of that back as life. This is made more powerful by our relatively low but resilient life pool.

Belt: If you're really hard up on resists, Doryani's Invitation (Physical) will shore them up easily, but the damage from Belt of the Deceiver's intimidate is extremely good considering your proximity to enemies.

Leveling with this build was a breeze. Blade Vortex is strong enough on it's own to make it into maps, but once I was able to sustain Kitava's Thirst (level 62, Apep's Rages are pretty much required), it really got moving.

I personally used Reverberation Rod and a Tabula Rasa to level. Having a 6L early also means it's possible to get Kitava's Thirst to function before getting Apep's Rage hooked up, but it's tricky. You'll need to focus on very expensive supports which may not benefit cast speed or BV's features very much.

Pros:
-Relatively cheap to gear (<1 ex)
-Easy to level
-Great damage mitigation
-Covers the screen in damage
-GREEN

Cons:
-Relatively overall EHP (~4.5k Life + 1.5k ES)
-Tough to get resists on gear
-Some bosses are tricky (Reflect)

Existential Crisis - https://youtu.be/H0A7f3HHFz8
Arachnid Nest (T8 @ lvl 74) - https://youtu.be/43ik9TTTuX4
Uber Lab @74 (kept getting stuck. Easy Izaro tho) - https://youtu.be/HgP6F1Cdwkc
T10 Beachhead @77 - https://youtu.be/4JcCQDleQXc
Will Add more as I continue leveling.

I just hooked up Zerphi's Last Breath and Vaal Haste and it's even more powerful than before. I'm looking into replacing blasphemy Warlord's with just a low level Warlord's with a lvl 1 CWDT. I figure that since it's always 2% leech, I don't need to have it be a high level to benefit too much. I'll have slower progression to recharging Endurance charges, but I doubt I'll have any issues. I will most likely swap out Flame Golem for Chaos Golem. Damage is really turning out not to be a big concern for the build, but defense is. Looking into Master of Force for some extra defense versus reflect.

Q: Doesn't using Brutality negate the added chaos damage on the wands?
A: It does, but it's still the best support gem I've found for pure damage. I will be attempting some other mixes once I hit 80.

I didn't expect the build to turn out as well as it did and I'm surprised with how fast and effective it is at clearing maps, especially when the helmet is deemed "trash" due to very high requirements to get it functioning. Arcane Surge is pretty much the sole reason it functions as well as it does.

The build could definitely be refined more, as I haven't looked over a majority of unique that may work for it, and my tree is hardly optimized, but I did my best so I hope you enjoy it as much as I am currently.

Become the spirit of Kitava, and sate yourself on endless flows of mana.

V1.0: Build Posted
v1.1: Added Zerphi's Last Breath, Vaal Haste, some gameplay videos, and "Current Plans" section to the guide and build.
v1.2: Improved Formatting, combined some sections together, added Q&A section.
v1.3: Added statement for Kalisa's Grace for 3.1 expansion.