[10.8] Aimlessgun's 1H/Shield Lightning Cyclone Guide (videos! spreadsheets!)

The 'finished' build at level 90.

The offensive highlights of the build are Resolute Technique, Catalyze/Amplify, Static Blows and Inner Force for the elemental damage auras. Defense is a mix of HP/HP regen and snagging high value shield block nodes, while Inner Force makes Purity, Grace and Granite flasks much more effective.

~Level 30
~Level 54 Static Blows! Now the build is fully functional. In HC you can delay Static Blows to build HP instead.
~Level 70. Starting maps.

Unwavering Stance and Blood Magic?
You also can connect from duelist to marauder along the US/BM highway leading over to Resolute Technique. I don't feel Unwavering Stance is all that worth it for a build that is immune to stuns from Cyclone most of the time :)

Blood Magic is decent option for this build, but not one that I like. The benefit of Blood Magic is that it's easier to play the character: you don't have to manage mana potions. The downside is that you lose Hatred and Purity, which significantly lowers both your offense and defense. Other than the amazing +5% max resist from Inner Force Purity, it makes gearing much easier as jewelry/belts with good offense AND good defense are extremely hard to to come by, making it difficult to cap resists.

Cyclone
Core Supports: Weapon Elemental Damage, Faster Attacks, Elemental Proliferation (use one of the 5th link options instead of EProlif until you get Static Blows!!)

Proliferating shock is something Cyclone is very, very good at due to it's insane attack speed (10 attacks per second is quite achievable). Why Proliferation instead of another DPS support, letting Cyclone stack shock on stuff you're actually hitting? Because pre-buffing the whole screen with 3x shock stacks is a huge immediate damage increase as opposed to having to build a shock stack on every new enemy that enters your spin.

Fifth Link: There are a few options here.
-Increased Area of Effect: My favorite. Hit more enemies, and enemies stay in your cyclone longer, increasing the chances that you kill them in a single pass, which is great for your efficiency.
-Life Gain on Hit: For maximal tankiness. Heals you up extremely quickly. Even allows you to man mode through lightning thorns ^ ^
-Concentrated Effect: I like this less than Inc. AOE, because the radius reduction is pretty damaging to cyclone. Less radius means less time enemies spend in your cyclone, meaning less damage done to them. However, it does greatly increase your damage per hit, which means longer shock durations.
-Added Lightning Damage: Quality bonus is very helpful for stacking shocks despite mediocre DPS increase. Nice vs high HP enemies.
-Blind: A nice defensive option, synergizes well with Cyclone.

The 6th link can be another one of these, however it's very difficult to manage the mana costs at that point (making Blind an excellent 6th link due to no mana cost). Mana Leech is a nice 6l option that makes the character a lot easier to play. One could even run Blood Magic as the 6th link if using LGoH as well.

10.5: Multistrike
This is a very interesting gem with Cyclone, but one that I ultimately don't like very much. the primary reason is because with 40% less damage, that makes it hard to stack shocks in higher level maps, because after cyclones 40% effectiveness and then multistrikes 60% effectiveness your damage per hit is going to get really small. The second reason is that I don't like losing control of my character for such a long period (MS makes you do 3 cyclones in a row, and the 2nd and 3rd are determined by the game).

Doublestrike
Core Supports: Weapon Elemental Damage, Faster Attacks, Blind

This is your single target attack. Doublestrike is chosen over Elemental Hit due to cheaper mana costs and quick attacks being good at proccing Static Blows and Blind. Blind is excellent against bosses, often completely neutralizing them, and is well worth giving up a DPS gem in my opinion.


Auras
At endgame this build aims to run 5 auras. This requires The Covenant unique chest armor to run three of them from your HP (guide will be updated whenever they 'fix' the Covenant).

Blood magicked auras: Wrath, Anger, Grace(optional)
Mana auras: Hatred, Purity

Depending on how good your mana gear is, it may be possible to switch a BM aura to mana. If you have truly godly gear with tons of mana, running Determination is possible.

Before you can lay hands on a Covenant, the first auras to drop would be Grace and Hatred, as it's unlikely you can run all five on mana. Using a Blood Magic support is an option but I would only do this for one aura, three is too much HP reserved.


Curses

Conductivity: Your main curse, means more shock stacking, more damage, and with quality bonus, longer shock duration. Replace with Ele Weakness in groups usually.

Temporal Chains: Your defensive curse, mostly used against bosses. Temporal Chains makes it easy to avoid Vaal's smash and Brutus's ground slam.


Utility and Movement
Maximizing cyclone requires effective movement and positioning. Flicker Strike and either Whirling Blades or Leapslam are very helpful in this regard. Whirling Blades/Leapslam also gets your around the map faster than running in a low movespeed setup. Link both to Faster Attacks if you can.

Decoy Totem is helpful in rough situations.

Enduring Cry is something I havn't needed yet, but it's nice if your gear is lacking. Tedious though :/

This build is moderately gear dependent, with one exception: You'll want either Wake of Destruction boots, or Thunderfist gloves (or both if you really really love DPS!). Without one of these, you might be hard pressed to keep shocks up on enemies in maps. The huge lightning damage just powers the whole build and makes sure you're getting the most out of Static Blows.

Weapon:
The most important features are lightning damage and speed. After that, you actually want good physical damage over more elemental rolls. This allows you to use life and mana leech on gear, an invaluable benefit.

While leveling you can use pretty much whatever good twink weapons you have. I used twohanders until level 45 because I had some really good ones stashed.

Shield:
High block is the most important IMO, followed by HP/resist/armor. Crest of Perandus is excellent for this, especially for something you can use starting level 8. Lioneye's Remorse is a nice high level option.

Neck/Rings/Belt:
There is where a lot of your offensive firepower is going to come from. Look for %elemental damage with weapons and flat elemental damage. However, you need HP on them, and at least a bit of resist. Sacrifice some DPS to make sure you get sufficient defense, especially if you are wearing Wakes.

Gloves/Boots
If you're not using Thunderfist, go for HP, resists, and attack speed if possible. This is also a good place to get DEX if you need it.

If you're not using Wakes, you can probably get some really nice HP/res/armor boots without movespeed for relatively cheap (since everyone wants movespeed and this build doesn't need it).

Hat/Chest:
As much HP and resist as possible, then as much armor as possible.

Useful cheap twink gear:
I already mentioned the awesome Crest of Perandus. Slitherpinch and Wurm's Molt are very nice. They give you needed INT and DEX, and the dual leech is great sustain and makes mana management much easier and less tedious. The Ignomon and Sadima's Touch are good for early damage boosting.

DEX requirements:
You will want some DEX on your gear, how much depends on the weapon type you end up using (rapiers are very very dex intensive).

Leech:
Provided you have a weapon with decent phys dmg (even the rather crappy weapon I'm using atm has enough) life and mana leech on gear are extremely useful. Even 2% is enough to make a difference. It isn't a requirement to have mana leech, but it is very convenient.

Cyclone is a tricky beast to master. Cyclone too far and you waste a lot of time hitting air. Too short and you waste a lot of mana for little damage. Go on the wrong trajectory and you'll miss a lot of enemies that you then have to go back and clean up.

To set up proper trajectories, make good use of Flicker Strike and Whirling Blades to position yourself so that enemies are as much in a line as possible. You'll also want to use these to quickly close the gap between yourself and enemies: Slowly Cycloning towards a big pack of skeleton mages from 20 yards away is generally a bad idea :p

Speaking of skeleton mages, they are a good example of certain enemies that you don't want to cyclone directly towards, especially if they are firing multiple projectiles. Coming at an angle so that you scrape them with the edge of the cyclone can cause many of incoming projectiles to miss.

Distance management is the second thing you need to worry about, not only from a killing efficiency standpoint but a mana usage standpoint. Despite it's high upfront cost, Cyclone is sneakily very very cheap in terms of mana per second, provided you get decent length on the cyclones. Make your cyclones too short, and you'll be out of mana in no time.

Try to balance things so that you have at least two cyclones worth of mana unreserved. Hitting a mana pot at the start of the 2nd cyclone should give enough mana for the 3rd and keep the mana potion running for the maximum amount of time. This can be tricky and I still screw it up sometimes.

Desync: Sadly, desync will be your constant foe. Often, your client will show you cycloning, but you'll notice that monsters are not being hit and you aren't leeching any HP. This is because the server sees you in a spot where you cannot cyclone, and so in 'reality' you are just standing there dying.

As soon as you recognize the symptoms of desync, you must take immediate action. The first and best option is to hit your /oos autohotkey (setting this up is not hard, but this is not the place to give a tutorial on that). If this is on cooldown or you don't have one, Flicker Strike has a very good chance of getting you into a spot where you can start cycloning. If BOTH are on cooldown, try to Whirling Blades out of there, or logout, depending on how dire your HP situation is.

Dangerous Shit:
The only things that scare the hell out of me are lightning thorns, Brutus, and Vaal. Against the latter two, Temporal Chains is amazing for seeing the smash coming in time.

Against lightning thorns, you have two options: Either back up and split the group into smaller chunks, or go big, pop Granite and assassinate the mages with Flicker and Doublestrike. Once they're down you can Cyclone the Blackguards are your leisure.

Against everything else, huge block chance, 85% resist, and constant movement from Cyclone keep your relatively safe. However beware of late Cruel before the build is really set up.

Oh, be aware of puncture since you may not be able to stop moving. Hit Granite if you see it on you and you will usually be fine.

Dangerous Mods: This build can solo any map mods. However, Blood Magic will require you to give up Purity and Hatred, and for 50% regen and no regen you'll probably need to replace Faster Attacks with Mana Leech.

Mod combinations are more problematic. Elemental reflect combined with no regen, elemental weakness or minus max resists is quite bad. Vulnerability combined with added monster damage is bad, but that's true for everyone :) Minus max resists is also extremely dangerous combined with certain monsters (lightning thorns -.- ).

Beware of maps with lots of random doodads on the ground, like the rubble in Vaal Pyramid or the tree roots in thicket. It's that kind of stuff that can easily stop you from Cycloning.

Dangerous Enemies:
Brutus and Vaal are the only seriously problematic bosses thus far, but I haven't fought the boss of Precinct or Shrine Piety yet ^ ^

Bandit Rewards?
HP from Oak in normal. Either skillpoint or 6% IAS from Kraitlyn in Cruel. Skillpoint in Merc. Wouldn't blame you if you took the endurance charge in HC though.

More to be added as I think of them and questions are asked.