[1.0.3]Budget Cast on Crit Discharge - The Vortex of Doom!

19 Points
I highly recommend levelling with Spectral Throw, Lesser Multiple Projectiles, and Life Gain on Hit. A simple three link will carry you all the way to level 60 or so quite easily with no damage passives. Grab some cheap, good levelling uniques like Geofri's Baptism, Rigvald's Charge and so on and enjoy.

40 Points
Nothing much to say here. Levelling with spectral throw really doesn't require any passives, so we flesh out the tanky elements of our build first.

81 Points
At this point, changing over to our main damage setup of Cyclone, Cast on Crit, and Discharge should be your goal.

This build requires three uniques, all of which are dirt cheap.

Ungil's Gauches are perfect for this build. The 20% block chance per combined with our passive tree allows us to cap block very easily. They attack quickly and have a decent enough base crit chance (in addition to granting global crit chance) to set off sufficient discharges. I really believe two of these are ideal all of the way through to endgame, unless you get some really insanely good rares. Even then, I think I'd only swap one out and leave the other so I'd still have a block rate around 55%.

Voll's Protector is also arguably perfect for this build. It's cheap, and allows us essentially a 7-link since we won't need a Power Charge on Critical gem for the build. Again, with an extremely good 6 link rare it would likely be better, but Voll's will carry you through into maps without a problem.

And that's really it for mandatory gearing! This leaves both rings, the amulet, belt, gloves, boots, and helmet available to do with them whatever you wish. I'd recommend maxing out Chaos resist. You have plenty of room on your gear to do so, and it not only makes you more tanky but allows you to run Blood Rage quite easily. Blood Rage's frenzy charges amplify your killing speed when it comes to groups by making every kill make the next kill do more damage, feeding in to itself.

Accuracy is another thing to consider. I have only about a 75% accuracy rate with my current gear set up, but I don't notice it too much. If you can gear even just for a few hundred Accuracy, it would be worth it. 1000 would even be better if possible, but accuracy hits some pretty severe diminishing returns quickly so I wouldn't push much further than that.

Because we have capped block and Mind over Matter, I find that investing heavily in excess armor or evasion isn't all that necessary. We do have Eldritch Battery; getting some Energy Shield on our gear is certainly useful. I wouldn't worry too much about overly investing in the innate defenses of your gear. Some ES is good, and going for hybrid items is good as well to make sockets easier, but otherwise don't sweat the innate Armor, ES, or Evasion of your gear too much. You need HP and resists, in addition to crit and accuracy wherever you can get it.

With a high attack speed and decent crit chance we crit quite often. There's no reason not to load up on as many Surgeon's flasks as we can.


A good solid Granite of Iron Skin and Hallowed Mana Flask of Warding provide the baseline of your Flask lineup. The Granite provides you with a good boost to physical mitigation naturally, and the mana flask will provide you with some ridiculous regen and curse immunity.


These are some fun little curiosities. I swap them out as needed and I can tell you that they're very useful. Both bleeds and shock stacks are very lethal to this build (and most builds in general really) and by putting these on Small Life Flasks, we reduce the amount of charges needed to 7 per use. You can easily refill these with just a few crits!


Depending on your take on the build, other flasks can be substituted as needed. Diamond Flasks are nice for emergencies where you really need some life leech or just an extra boost of damage. Jade Flasks work quite well alongside Granite Flasks if you decide to go for Iron Reflexes (or even if you don't!) And lastly if a map has a preponderance of a certain element that bothers you, Surgeon's Elemental Flasks can provide an extra boost of damage mitigation.

A number of uniques are available that could benefit the build but I wouldn't consider them necessary. Rainbowstride and Stone of Lazhwar have great synergy with each other and the build itself and are worth looking in to for potential gear expansion options.

Maligaro's Virtuosity is a great source of crit but lacks synergy with the build in other ways. If you can manage to fit it in, go for it.

As mentioned earlier, upgrading away from the Gauches is advised against unless you can get insanely powerful replacements. Divinarius is very strong and could be a possible replacement if you can afford to lose the block chance.

I'm pretty sure it goes without saying, but if you are making this build in Default league and are fantastically wealthy, then Voll's Devotion is incredibly powerful and will likely nearly double your damage output.

This build has some pretty light requirements for gem slots. A 4-link is more than enough to suffice for a time, but getting a 5 or a 6-link will help quite a bit with damage - especially single target (where the build lacks.)

The core links are Cyclone - Cast on Critical Strike - Discharge - Life Leech - (Increased Critical Damage)

I tested a few different 5-link options and Increased Critical Damage was my choice. Don't worry too much about quality on your gems. It's useful but not necessary. Eventually you can roll your gems over at level 20 to get 20% quality on the ones where it's useful. 6-link options include Concentrated Effect, Increased Critical Strikes or Mana Leech. I wouldn't bother with Elemental Proliferation or anything of the like - you need to boost single target damage with your 6 link, not your AoE clearing ability.

I won't bother going into extensive other options for gem setups specifically. As far as auras go, I'd definitely run Clarity full time so long as you're using Mind over Matter. After that, you can run Purity of Elements or Grace if needed. Most of the other auras aren't useful to you other than potentially Haste.

I would recommend having the Critical Weakness and Enfeeble Curses available to you. I personally use Enfeeble on a Cast When Damage Taken set up with Molten Shell as well, but the choice is yours.

Devouring Totem is another option - it's great for topping yourself off if you are having some issues in combat and generally smooths out the build quite a bit. I prefer to retain manual control over the Totem, so I don't use it on CwDT.

Blood Rage is a great spell to add to AoE clearing potential and not that difficult to support if you've maxed your Chaos resist.