[1.2] low life blood magic max aura raging spirit

1.2 tree update
More ES, more life regen, way more skill duration. Don't need skill cost reduction anymore. I found I wanted to play less cowardly, so I specced more defensive passives and auras (purities, determination + iron reflexes).

Hello. Here is the build I'm working on.

Background
I was playing elemental animator / raging sprit build last season and around the time my gems maxed out, I found auxium. I thought it would be cool to try a lowlife variant while leveling up the 20% quality gems. This is what I've come up with so far.

Pros
* 9 auras (hatred, haste, discipline, grace, determination, purity of ice, purity of lightning, purity of elements, vitality)
* ~20 raging spirits out at once
* strong auras due to taking all aura nodes
* inner force
* no snapshots
* low life effects (100 rarity from boots, move speed from rings, etc...)
* not affected by map mods
* pretty tanky

Cons
* Relatively low total ES without great gear
* ES regen is difficult
* No gem slots available for animated weapons

Notable Passive Nodes
* Blood Magic / Mortal Conviction
* Ghost Reaver
* Arcane Efficiency (reduced skill cost) on the way from Scion start to Blood magic
* Skill duration 15%s near Scion start
* Aura nodes (including Leadership, Raging spirits have huge range)
* Inner force
* Iron Reflexes

Items of note
* Alpha's Howl
* Solaris Lorica
* Ephemeral Edge

Skill Setup
Chest: Summon Raging Sprit + Spell Echo + Multistrike + Melee Physical + Melee Splash, Devouring Totem
Head: Reduced Mana + Discipline+ Haste + Grace (easier to roll colors on Alpha's)
Weapon: Reduced Mana + Hatred + Purity of Ice
Shield: Flesh Offering, Elemental Weakness, Vaal Haste
Gloves: Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 1) + Enduring Cry (lvl 5) + Immortal Call (lvl 3), Desecrate
Boots: Determination, Purity of Elements, Vitality, Purity of Lightning/Fire (switch depending on needed resist)

Passives


Bandits


Current Items


Playstyle
Cast ~6 spirits. Cast Desecrate + flesh offering to buff skuls. Cast Devouring Totem when ES needs healing. Cast Desecrate + devouring totem. Cast Elemental Weakness on boss. Cast Vaal haste to make spirits go go go!

Explanation
To run lots of auras without snapshotting, you need to use a lot of gem slots. By going blood magic passive, this build avoids needing to level up the blood magic gem and avoids its large penalty. The 40% less mana reserved node behind blood magic is also available which makes each aura cost almost nothing.

Since we are lowlife, we can reserve almost all our life, provided we have Solaris Lorica (or Shavronne's but I'm poor) to prevent the issues with chaos damage. I'm also running Lori's lanterns so that I can see and they have decent resists including chaos. Ephemeral Edge is cheap and provides 40-50% increased ES. There are also some great shield nodes that provide 15%-30% increased ES from the shield.

I spent my currency on Alpha's Howl (~4 exalts) and the high ES shield (~25 chaos).

I'm at ~3.7k ES, which is low but workable. This can be improved by leveling up and getting more ES + shield nodes, switching out Wondertrap and Aurseize for ES heavy items, and by switching to moonstone rings.

Devouring totem is another key skill gem. Since life regen is needed for casting, we use life leech via devouring totem + desecrate to heal our ES. This works reasonably well along with the CWDT setup. Sometimes you have to run away to setup a stash of bodies with a totem for remote healing. Boss rooms with no hiding places make things difficult.

Life regen is like mana regen for other builds. Using a combination of life nodes, life regen nodes and reduced mana nodes provides for endless casts. I only have ~100 life so it does not take much to regenerate it all to cast again, even on half-regen maps. For no-regen maps, swap rejuvenation totem for devouring totem + desecrate. Health potions also work well for this situation, although the charges may become scarce since you cast quite often.

Future Plans
I'm current using Araku Tiki, since it's 1% life regen allows me to cast without rejuvenation totem and it is unique, so I can use the int bonus from perandus signet to get more ES (this gives ~200 ES with current nodes). I want to explore using Cautious Life flasks for slow life regen.

I tried Curse on Hit with leech and arc/ball lightning. Ball lightning worked well for cursing, not so well for life. Want to maybe try pain attunmenet with that setup, but overall found the CWDT to be more survivable.

I want to see if it is more worthwhile to get life nodes vs the 2% regen in marauder area.

I'm playing with Perandus Signet to get more int and thus more ES. It seems like the unique flask does not count. Want to double check on that.

Inspiration
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/548554
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg0T1n501_w
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/960795

I suggest moving Grace to Alpha's Howl (it scales better than Hatred with levels) and of course Discipline/Wrath instead of Haste when you get 3 off.

That's a good idea. I'll give it a try. Better to maximize defenses at this point.

douvering totem leeches life and mana. how do you leech es?

cant see pasive tree, first is from a witch and second is not complete

"

EltharionAenur wrote:

cant see pasive tree, first is from a witch and second is not complete

yay same, fix it.



how do you leech es?

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgAAQYf56CftxPY8Lcautz4D7h2-M4esqvcycqklvN-_FHH46-oYg7YnC0KjDjxTpQxfHKeApCSwhtEXL_rSZp7AGlnzZOdV1sNtXGuESPfXm6GPRh0UAW_i94t6DXxXySj6gsdodNpilKDYTRzckye0DOq6bRki9GwLDY2nKzW5EVDBxX_GL2_ZE3C77BhfatvnRwbQ0I_6gwlGcR2q4Yj-SRqP9tr7CRmKm7XDOspKb54qTX1brEdRTM8yWW1fmG6qSsg_J8aeEH8Mfdlb6QJLrhsl

quickly made this up in response to the last 2

Hello
your Build looks nice , i will give i a try. can this build kill Atziri

Tested that build for some days and seems a nice build, but i made some variations on the way. Used the same skill tree as you. Im level 68 and still dont have all the ES pasives neither the evasion ones, and still have to take a skill duration group of pasives. Got myself at 3200ES now, summonin 12 raging spirits at a time and running 10 auras. I taken away the CWDT and the purity of elements and im using the 3 purities instead. I covered up all the resistances and i have 6200 evasion at the moment. Ofcourse, im using another kind of gear and forgot about using that many uniques. I supose next step is try to get a Shavrones XD.

Thats my gear now:

He uses Ghost Reaver to make the Devouring Totem's leech go to his ES.