2.0 Mathil's Life Crit Ele Kinetic Blaster - Cheap, easy, effective

My stream here: Twitch.tv/mathil1

AWAKENING UPDATE

Passive tree update in 2.0

This build has gone through some changes for 2.0 that I believe have made it much smoother and better than before. The video guide for this build may now be found here. Most of what I say here is covered in that video and other videos later on for gameplay.

For a look at the end game setup here was a video on Beta that had me reach over 50k GMP dps.

Firstly you will no longer be running all auras but rather just Wrath, Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder. With both heralds attached to curse on hit + assassin's mark we keep up power charges quite easily, along with Power Charge on Crit attached to my pseudo single target, Frenzy. Instead of Alphas Howl we're now using a Rats Nest and paired with other changes in the passive tree we get quite good movement speed and the character becomes very mobile.

We no longer worry about mana at all as we run the main skill on Blood Magic. Your links will be BM + Kinetic Blast + GMP + WED + Pierce or Faster Attacks. The 6th link has not been explored and will be up to you. Damage scales through WED, crit, crit multi, attack speed, accuracy and frenzy charges so as always the better your gear is the more you will get out of the build but it is quite good early on with little to no gear anyway. That said, the elemental damage on the wand is quite important now as every high roll will be equivalent to a herald or even better so your wand will be a large part of your damage. Piscators kinda sucks for the build now since it scales your elemental damage and you don't get all that much from auras anymore. A good rare will go much much farther, trust me.

With low end gear I was able to reach about 20k GMP dps and with high end I was well over 50k. KB will be your primary single target paired with Frost Wall when used correctly. It takes a bit of practice to maximize dps through pierce and Frost Wall but in my experience it's best to cast atleast 2 frost walls on top of or directly behind the target before firing volleys of KB into it. Examples may be seen in my last video for ele Kinetic Blast found here.

Lastly, there is no leech on gear or gem as it felt weak to me and unneccessary. The best defense to me was a strong offense but at the really high end of gear you will potentially be killing yourself to reflect. I haven't tried out Life Leech + VP to combat this but it may well suffice. On lower to mid ends of dps your evasion, dodge and block along with resist flasks provides plenty of defense against reflect.

I'm now much happier to recommend this build as I found it very fun and effective and think it's a pretty great starting build even. Hope you all have success and have fun.


Description/Discuss video

Atziri kill video which was pretty messy

Summary: The build revolves around stacking elemental damage from your weapon along with auras and heralds (Wrath, Herald of Ice & Herald of Thunder) and pairing it with high crit/crit multi/attack speed. The area skill used is Kientic Blast paired with LMP or GMP when your damage is high enough, and the single target of choice for me is Frenzy on a 4L (to maintain Frenzy charges) or sometimes Kinetic Blast paired with a Frost Wall.


Current gear at 81, total cost is roughly 3ex:

Current gear at 86, total cost is roughly 4ex and 200 fusings on the 5L:

Gear on Standard that was reaching 30k+ GMP dps w/ Vaal Pact (ignore gem slots, gear is on other characters):


Some of my gear choices:
- Belly of the Beast is used in the build because it is hard to get much life % from this side of the passive tree and that chest fills out a lot of our life pool, especially early on.
- Rat's Nest is the best choice in 2.0 as it gives good attack speed, crit and run speed, all of which the build thrives on. Alpha's Howl is no longer used.
- Rare gloves or Maligaro or Facebreakers are the gloves of choice but are mostly up to you. Maligaro should provide the highest dps although are most expensive. Facebreaker will give huge dps too but nothing other than that. Rare gloves should have accuracy/attack speed/life to be used.
- An Evasion shield is chosen because it will be your primary source of evasion which helps to deal with reflecting projectiles.

Your Wand choice: (ele vs phys vs Piscator)
- The best weapon you can get now will be an imbued with lots of crit, tri ele rolls, attack speed and crit multi. A lot of your elemental damage can now come from your weapon as the rolls have been buffed so the more you invest into a wand, the better your results will be.
- A Piscator is an okay choice but will ultimately be far less dps than a decent elemental wand. Piscator scales all of your elemental damage and since we only run Wrath/Herald of Ice/Thunder without much enhancement from the passive tree, you do not get that much benefit from the wand.

Kinetic Blast Links: 5L - KB + GMP + WED + BM + FA
- Kinetic BLast + LMP/GMP + Blood Magic are the most important. After that Weapon Elemental Damage is your biggest boost. Next comes Faster Attacks or Pierce. Try both out and see which you prefer for dps. I no longer go with Life Leech in a 5 link as I survive entirely off of killing quickly, some life regen and 2 life flasks.
- For the 6th link it will be fairly optional. Life Leech + VP should make you reflect immune but you will lose your life regen in the process so be warned. Critical Damage/Pierce/Faster attacks are the other choices and I haven't yet tested which is better than which in the 6th slot.

Pierce/Chain Discussion:
- Piercing is great for Kinetic Blast. Whenever the attack pierces it will explode the aoe damage all over the initial target, pierce through and explode again on the next target. However, I believe only 40% pierce from the passive tree is all that is needed to allow this mechanic to succeed. Using the Pierce gem itself feels like a waste of a precious gem slot to me.
- Chain can be really good but in solo play feels very overkill and diminishes the single target capability of your Kinetic Blast. It feels highly unnecessary to me and on top of that it increases the mana cost substantially. Play around with it at your own discretion and fit it in to your setup if it feels right to you.

Passive tree I'm working towards - Please keep in mind things change as I level and I will at some point need to rework a bit to go to Vaal Pact. I'll do this when my dps starts to get high enough.

Vaal Pact Passive Tree when your damage starts to struggle vs reflect

Single Target DPS:
- This can often feel lacking on the build. Until you have a really high crit rate Power Siphon won't feel like it kills very quickly. At the higher end of gear Power Siphon on a 4L (PS, Faster Attacks, WED, Crit damage) kills things very quickly and is a great single target ability as well as topping up power charges in moments of need.
- A great alternative is to lure the hard targets into corners, near walls or drop a Frost Wall behind them and Kinetic Blast into that area. This usually causes the attack to hit your target multiple times and can kill them far quicker than Power Siphon in many cases.

Defense:
- Most of the character's defense comes from high evasion, high life and high dps paired with life leech. Without Vaal Pact your defense against reflect comes from Ondars + Jade Flask. With that combination I've managed to not die to reflect at all up to level 88 with 18k GMP Kinetic dps. It is around this level of dps however you'll want to drop Ondars and travel to Vaal Pact. Your main defense then becomes instant leech and a large life pool.

Leveling:
- Leveling felt really simple. If you can get a hold of some Elreon jewelry (-mana cost) then your leveling will be even easier but if you can't that's no big deal. I ran with 2 mana flasks for quite a while and a Wurm's Molt for the 2% phys to mana leech.
- Start leveling with Static Strike up until 24 when you can get Kinetic Blast.
- Get a fast wand (carved, engraved, imbued) when you can and hopefully have a crit roll and a phys mod helps too for the leech.
- Initially start out with Wrath and add a Herald of your choice (I went with Ice because it then gives you a 2nd elemental damage). As you level up and get blood magic in your main setup or use Elreon Jewelry you may then apply your 2nd Herald. As soon as you convert all your skills to blood magic you can run both heralds and Wrath.
- I leveled with Kinetic Blast + LMP for most of the leveling experience which usually had my skill cost 19 mana. Be careful with your mana management if adding more links as the skill cost will go up dramatically. Soul Siphon in the Shadow tree can help manage mana early on too.

When leveling I traveled from Shadow to the Wand nodes in top right then went to the Duelist area.

Bandits were Life(oak) or Passive, Attack speed(kraityn), Power Charge(alira)

since it's an ELE build, have you tried looking at this wand for when you hit 65?



lot's of jargon about mine and a friends attempt at a similar build -

Hey mathil, I was in your stream last night talk in about dual totem kb and wanted to show you what I came up with.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1128394

Let me know what you think

Currently leveling with a modified version of this build. Smooth sailing with lightning tendrils and fire trap as my wand is crap :/

Im trying to go for hatred, anger, wrath, herald of ash but I'm not sure I'll have enough mana just yet.

is it not worth going anger aura, i noticed on stream u dont?

Update this build please, with your current gear and the damage/survival in the end game.

"

Carrmatt93 wrote:

since it's an ELE build, have you tried looking at this wand for when you hit 65?

Spoiler

With Piscator's you'd need to make room for Clarity somewhere due to not having the mana leech from phys damage.

watched your video the clear speed with your gear is Insane dont want to know what happens if you use LL , acuitys and 500 dps wand

Interesting with frostwall. So kinetik blast still explode when hitting wall not mob?

Hey I was thinking about adding a Cod to your build. I am trying to make a skill tree that can support cod could someone help me out?