[1.1.5.] Nito's Ball Lightning EB MoM AA Build Now with Videos!

Welcome everyone!

I've been putting this guide off for lost to a week now, but i finally found the time to put it together.

Feel free to post with Feedback, or Message me if you have any questions about the build.

This build can operate on any number of budgets, with the gear varying between them.

*Disclaimer* Since everyone seems to be content to be silly, i guess i have to add this Disclaimer, that i'm leveling the build, so it has some kinks to work out.

To see this build in action, stop by my stream! Twitch.tv/BasedNito

Videos

*Warning Potato quality ahead*

68 Springs map, proof of concept and clear speed test


67 Sewers Double boss from Twitch



My links

4L: Ball Lightning - Spell Echo - Lightning Penetration - Life Leech

5l: Add Faster Casting or Knockback, FC will stack the Cast speed with the MORE modifying of Echo for increased Damage, while Knockback will make sure things that are away from you, stay that way.

6l: for the 6th luxury link, you can add a few gems, i would recommend Added Lightning, Slower Projectiles, Increased Aoe, or even an IIQ/IIR gem if you're comfortable with where the damage sits at.

Slower Projectiles will allow the balls to move slower, and expire seemingly quicker, but as the balls move slower, they spend more time near the enemies, increased your Effective dps output. However, i would not recommend using it combined with Knockback, simply because rather than walking towards you, into the path of Lightning, the mobs will most likely be knocked back, and because of the shorter cast distance, or "life" of each orb, it would in theory shrew your dps over time.


"But Nito, Ball Lightning has a Damage Effectiveness of 30%, why bother with Added Lightning at all?"

Because, you poor misguided soul, despite Ball Lightning's awful Damage Effectiveness, using a level 17 Added Lightning w/o Quality i've been leveling, and adding it my setup, jumps my dps from 1,059 up to 1,433 adding almost 400 damage with one support gem. i think it's worthy of your consideration based on that.


"But Nito, shouldn't you use LMP or GMP to aid Clear Speed?"

Absolutely not, we'll be taking the Aoe nodes in the Witch starting area, and that, combined with the increased aoe gem is more than enough Range for the Lightning without gimping the damage with a LMP.

"But Nito, isn't using the increased Aoe gem the same as using Lmp?"

Of course not, that's dumb, for one, it gives us the advantage of a lmp/gmp gem without the incredibly steep damage reduction

One gives aoe at the cost of damage, the other gives aoe without gimping the damage, regardless, it's optional, but my preferred gem if i had a spare socket.

Auras:

4l: Preferably in your helm, as i've done, but any 4l will do. Clarity - Discipline - Reduced Mana - Empower/ free Socket for an aura of your Choosing

Curses:

You can use either Conductivity, or Ele Weakness, depending on your build, Conductivity if Solo, and focusing on shock stacking, or Ele weakness if in a party to help out your friends and only care about lowering resists.

Cast When Damage Taken
4L: CWDT - Enduring Cry - Immortal Call - Increased Duration

For when you end up in trouble, though from my experience, once you get MoM and AA it won't be too often. Also Semi Mandatory if you're Going up against Atziri; those back up dancers of hers hurt like a bitch.

Now for the Fun stuff!

Items

As I mentioned, this build can be made with extremely little Currency, Leveling i just put my gems into a Tabula Rasa and went to town, in fact, i didn't replace it until close to level 70! As much, there's No Required Uniques Though the ones that follow certainly will help.




Cloak of Defiance for MoM. As a witch, this is most likely your only option if you want to use Mind over Matter, short of butchering your skill tree. Notice, it's not linked at all, that's because i don't actually use my Chest for my links. That job belongs to this bad boy:



Now before you all close the guide in disgust, know that the Pledge of Hands is not Necessary at all. it's an absolute Luxury item, and a pricey one at that. It frees up your need to level an Echo gem, and gives us a Ludicrous amount of mana, and by extension, mana regen. for instance, After Discipline is taken into account, the staff alone, gives me just shy of 1,400 (1378) mana, and Roughly 54 mana regen alone! However, as this is definitely the most expensive item in the guide, you can absolutely skip on this first, and use a Wand + shield, though that would require a better linked Cloak of Defiance to compensate.




I enjoy using this Helm, rather than Alpha's howl, or a rare, because the gem levels are nice, (and allow us to use Empower early!) and the Tri Resist and Chaos resistance is helpful in later difficulties, obviously. In fact, combined with all my rares, i'm currently sitting at a rather comfortable -4% Chaos Resist.

Recently i picked up

And i have some observations of node:
While it is obviously an extraordinarily good belt for this build, ele leech, damage, and resists, not to mention armour and added shock chance from the flasks, it does give us a frustratingly difficult time capping our resists, if you follow this build to the letter, gear wise. Though if you're overcapped anyways, then it won't be an issue for you. Plus that ele leech opens the possibility of dropped our Life Leech gem, and using an Empower instead, which should increase our kill speed by quite a bit.

Other Uniques that would help would be Doryani's Spectre for additonal ele leech and massive cast speed and ele damage at the cost of not being able to use a Pledge of hands and relying on your chest for links.

my thoughts on

This would be an exceptional helmet for our auras, my only regret is, as its dexterity based helmet, i can't pick up enough dex to comfortably wear it, also the loss of resists from Geofri's Crest is also a problem. Though if you can manage your resists and dexterity, then this would be a direct upgrade, albeit you will not be able to rock a +1 level empower in an Alpha's.

Other Things to note, this is an Evasion/ Energy Shield Build, and all uniques, could potentially be replaced with Well rolled Rares, per the usual.

Other Suggestions would be Devoto's Devotion for the Chaos Resists, and Movement speed. ( Not to mention some awesome looking footprints!)

if not going for MoM, you can also consider an Eva/ES Atziri's Splendour, as it can roll Health, all Resist, and 100 life and mana on kill, which, at the speed that we can kill trash, would definitely help Survivability, though, that would, of course be useless on bosses that don't spawn adds.

I'm also rather fond of using the towards the end of merciless, as it gives everything we need, Cast speed, Lightning Damage, and spell damage.

I'm constantly looking into more applications for uniques, so i may expand upon this Section as time goes on.

"But Nito, why not use Armor/ES instead?"

I Chose Eva/ES because i wanted to minimize the movement speed Penalty from gear, as i don't incorporate a Movement skill into the build, so we'll be relaying on the Movement speed of our boots, to get around, all old school. But you could just Lightning Warp around if you prefer and go for Armor/eva the skill tree won't change, i don't think.

My Current Gear:



Ignore the Boots for now, Exalting them over the next couple days.

Bandit Choices

Life, Cast Speed or Passive point, and Passive Point


Leveling trees, this is just the route i would go, obviously you can't use ball lightning before level 31, so level with whatever you prefer, ele buzzsaw, searing bond and the like.



My Current Skill Tree (91 points used) i will be updating this every level i attain until the final tree is reached


Final Tree (102 Points used)


Stats

Offenses


Defenses

Reserved

Reserved

Tried ele prolif? 100% MORE dmg after the ~.25 seconds it takes to apply to a whole pack.

Good guide though. Great to see someone else who shares my opinion about LMP.

My preffered links

"

Apolyon34 wrote:

Tried ele prolif? 100% MORE dmg after the ~.25 seconds it takes to apply to a whole pack.

Good guide though. Great to see someone else who shares my opinion about LMP.

My preffered links

I thought about it, but since Ball Lightning doesn't hit terribly hard, wouldn't the shock stacks last for a really short time, if not diminish instantly? i suppose i'll give it a try, when i get a chance, either way.

I feel like knockback can screw you over sometimes because when the ball passes through the enemy they can continue to be knocked back but since the origin of the knockback is the ball itself it will knock enemies closer to you and out of the damage range of the ability.

At least that was my experience with the skill linked with knockback I don't know if there is something I am doing wrong.

"

Based_Nito wrote:

"

Apolyon34 wrote:

Tried ele prolif? 100% MORE dmg after the ~.25 seconds it takes to apply to a whole pack.

Good guide though. Great to see someone else who shares my opinion about LMP.

My preffered links

I thought about it, but since Ball Lightning doesn't hit terribly hard, wouldn't the shock stacks last for a really short time, if not diminish instantly? i suppose i'll give it a try, when i get a chance, either way.

My setup is quite different to yours but shocks on regular mobs actually last for a very long time.

1. 2k life is very low for your level, even with MoM.
2. Consider using spare linking for something like lightning warp for mobility in your chest and a cast when damage taken setup in your boots.
3. NONE of your resistances are capped. This is a massive problem. (mainly in your rings, those are pretty bad.)
4. 1 mana potion should be enough to take you through the game if you get some more mana regeneration % on gear.

Just my 2cents, hope it improves your build! General idea is solid.

"

Apolyon34 wrote:

"

Based_Nito wrote:

"

Apolyon34 wrote:

Tried ele prolif? 100% MORE dmg after the ~.25 seconds it takes to apply to a whole pack.

Good guide though. Great to see someone else who shares my opinion about LMP.

My preffered links

I thought about it, but since Ball Lightning doesn't hit terribly hard, wouldn't the shock stacks last for a really short time, if not diminish instantly? i suppose i'll give it a try, when i get a chance, either way.

My setup is quite different to yours but shocks on regular mobs actually last for a very long time.

Ah, i'll definitely try that out then.

"

Skillfullism wrote:

1. 2k life is very low for your level, even with MoM.
2. Consider using spare linking for something like lightning warp for mobility in your chest and a cast when damage taken setup in your boots.
3. NONE of your resistances are capped. This is a massive problem. (mainly in your rings, those are pretty bad.)
4. 1 mana potion should be enough to take you through the game if you get some more mana regeneration % on gear.

Just my 2cents, hope it improves your build! General idea is solid.

The only resist that isn't capped with my gear at the moment is fire, and that's sitting at 73, and is somewhat mitigated by AA. maybe you think the final tree is the one i have currently? I haven't picked up Elemental Adaptation yet.

But obviously, i'll be picking up more life nodes, and life on gear, the boots are just being used for leveling gems atm, but my cwdt will be going in. but i'll switch some stuff around, thanks.