[2.0] Allout Lightning Melee (budget build)

So far I can level quite easily and don't die too often, but I got killed some times, be it mistakes or content too hard for my poor little Scion.
I "manually dodge" a lot of dangerous stuff via whirling blades.

My idea of fun is grabbing some rare playstyle or unique and trying to build around it, trying to make it work. I also enjoy the levelling progression from 1 to 80 more than the stupid grind after 90, so I don't even care about "end-endgame" viability.

And I obviously could improve my survivability by adding more expensive items that I do not own and will not be able to afford in the time of one league, unless I drop some Mjolnir stuff. No need to comment on that as well. This is seriously a "budget build". ;)

Not jumping on the "Armor and Endurance Charges or gtfo" train is also on purpose. Fuck FOTM. ;)

Hyaon's Fury has some crazy elemental DpS (~400), that gets double-boosted by frenzy charges (normal frenzy bonus + 12% lightning damage per charge), yet it is considered a trash unique by most players, and even top rolls cost little to nothing.
Cool, I take this!

It enables a build with allout lightning damage, which is pretty cool (in a thematic way), and also kills very fast (faster than the raw DpS implies).
I love this Unique. It's so sweet! Wanna make it work? Here you go!

The Blood Dance boots are required to "get Hyaon's rolling" via convenient frenzy charge generation. It's the easiest way to do it, and on top of that, the life regeneration part is super useful as well (along with pots and the not very reliable "life on kill" stuff, regen is my only true life recovery).

To get even more lightning damage, I add auras, Wrath and Herald of Thunder.
Those two add some sweet free damage, and this also seriously helps progression during the leveling stage: just use a claw/dagger/sword/axe (whatever you find or can purchase cheaply) with high attackspeed and %WED, and the two auras carry you till Lvl62 (Hyaon's time).

To overcome the drawback of Hyaon's, I also added Arctic Armor, and to pay the mana cost of my attacks (mana leech is unavailable without phyiscal damage or dedicating a link in the main attack), I use a low-level Clarity Aura.

Every build needs some kind of defense, I chose Acrobatics, another gear-independent solution that costs nothing. And since Accuracy can be a tricky and very costly issue, I take Resolute Technique (you can drop this if you find a convenient way to save 4 skillpoints... I can't, so far).

As written above, I wanted:
*Lots of Life (160%+)
*Aura Nodes to be able to run all that stuff
*Acrobatics, RT keystones
*some lightning damage, elemental damage, weapon elemental damage and attackspeed
*some other useful stuff like 4 jewels, a frenzy charge, mana regen, life regen
*raw str, dex and int stats to be able to use any desired item and gem (only int needs a little boost via gear to save skill points)

The best solution I could come up with is this:
Go for the templar and shadow zone and grab the most useful nodes from there.
102 points
(Want to spend more skillpoints? Take the 3x 4% increased AoE at Scion start, the life and mana regen at Templar, more life nodes and the frenzy charge close to Ranger, life and regen at Marauder. You can drop some life to grab other stuff, but I wouldn't recommend doing so, Evasion/Acrobatics needs to have a serious life pool).

The tree may not be fully optimized (I'm having a hard time with this one), but it does the trick.

I used Cleave and Reave, whichever I rolled the socket colors for (more green sockets: Reave, more red sockets: Cleave). Both work perfectly fine and have a very similar playstyle. You can also try other skills if you like them more, but I generally prefer a skill that doesn't need Melee Splash to work as AoE and doesn't require me to target single monsters.

Cleave does slightly more damage (136,6% over 122,8% at lvl20) and has a fixed radius of 20 in a large 180° arc. You don't ever have to be in direct contact with monsters.

Reave starts with 14 radius and goes up to 31 after a couple attacks, at a slightly smaller 135% arc. You have to start at "true melee range", but get a bigger AoE than Cleave in the end.

No matter which skill you choose, you need these three DpS supports.
They fill the 4L (anyone can have a 4L).

Weapon elemental damage
Obvious choice, a huge "more" multiplier.
Multistrike and faster attacks
Also quite obvious, they make as attack at a comfortable speed.

That leaves us with up to two more support gems.
Note that this build works with a Tabula Rasa if need be, which can be easily obtained by farming Aqueduct for the Humility Divination Cards.
I highly recommend using utility gems here, not DpS gems, as long as you can afford to.
In higher maps you probably want some more DpS, switch to a dps setup once you have 5k+ HP and can actually tank a bit.


So pick two off of this list (italic: the ones I am using atm):
Increased AoE
Very comfortable for mob clearing. Let's you stay further away from damage sources and kite all sorts of monsters/bosses.
Lightning Penetration
Makes sure our DpS gets through the resists. Not 100% required, but it certainly helps a lot.
life leech/gain on hit
Helps recovering health.
Knockback
Pushes monsters (even exiles/bosses) out of melee range. This improves survivability by a ton, I'd say it helps more than life leech stuff, and it's great and fun to play. It only has the drawback that you will sometimes push shooters out of your attack range, so you have to "follow" them while they get pushed.
Added Lightning damage
Just more lightning dps without a drawback.

Level all these gems in you offhand weapon set, so you can adapt and switch (again, Tabula greatly helps in terms of "switching").

Mobility:
Whirling Blades
+Fortify
+Culling
+Rarity
Whirl through packs to gain the fortify bonus, then start hitting.
Used as a Magic Find tool to to finish bosses and rare monsters.
It has 100% uptime because of the high mana regen not dependent on leech, so you can use it to quickly run around all the time.

Lighnting Warp
+reduced duration and/or faster casting
Used to cross obstacles that cannot be whirled.
You don't really need those supports, if you want, you can free up two sockets.

Auras:
Clarity
Don't overlevel, I use Lvl 7, which is enough to sustain even in "-regen" maps.
Wrath
Lightning DpS.
Herald of Thunder + Curse on Hit + Conductivity (+ Elemental Weakness for rich people)
Easy curses, more DpS.
Arctic Armor
Easy survivability.

Trigger:
Feel free to use whatever combination you think is good.
I'm using a pure offensive one atm:
CWDT + arc + innervate + tempest shield
Arc and TS shock and help to proc Herald of Thunder. Not required, but it fits into the lightning theme. At higher levels, these spells actually manage to kill some monsters, which gets you the "onslaught" bonus from innervate quite often.

The two uniques from above are set, Hyaon's Fury and the Blood Dance.
The rest:
Rares with life and resists.

Gloves appreciate to have an attackspeed roll.

All the Jewelry and the belt want a high roll of % increased Weapon Elemental Damage (30%+).
This can get a bit expensive, unfortunatly, since every melee dude out there also has elemental damage via Hatred/added fire and uses this affix to scale his damage.

You also need a little bit of flat intelligence on gear (iE helmet, jewelry), because a lot of the gems are blue and require some serious int.
This can be solved via jewels or +30 int nodes as well, but it's obviiously better to save those points for life/damage.

If you can, use Gear with Evasion, since Acrobatics kills the Armor and ES ratings.
But you should probably use hybrid gear to get the required sockets, there's a lot of red and blue gems needed, and almost no green ones.
It's super hard to roll the desired sockets on stuff like:

You can use Vorici's 25 chromes recipe to force blue sockets on the weapon and shield for the auras and Lightning Warp. The Blood Dance can get RGGB for Whirling Blades quite easy (within 20 chromes, i guess). The rest: good luck to you.

In Act 2 Normal, rush the jewel quest, grab Survival Secrets as your reward. +3 flat mana regen is pretty nice to sustain the attacks, 10% elemental damage is also pretty sweet. You can keep this jewel forever.

The rest:
5-7% life is obligatory, then add other useful stuff (elemental damage, (sword) attackspeed, resists, int, mana cost)
Jewels like this are in alchemy orb range on poe.trade.com.

For reflect mobs, use a Topaz flask.
A Granite Flask seems to be more useful than a Jade Flask to me, because "some armor" (even if it is only at half value) seems to be required in some content.
Fill with 3 Divine Life Flasks (ideally instant, instant on low life).
As flask affixes, add the usual stuff:
Remove freeze, curse, shock, bleed (you need at least one bleed flask all the time, from lvl 30 upwards).

My setup, if you need visualisation:

Oak for Life
Kraytin for attackspeed
Kraytin again for a frenzy charge

Lol, this n00b doesn't even have capped resists! ;)
Remember: this is "non-showoff" 4L DpS with unleveled gems without quality.
I expect it to grow by quite a bit.

Gear
Cheap stuff (most is actually selffound) I'm wearing atm:


Atziri's Mirror is a pretty nice "stepping stone" (to a better one or dualwielding hyaon's) with its high int bonus and 30% to all resists.
I bought the belt and helmet for a couple chaos, sword and boots for 1 chaos each, the rest is selffound stuff. Tabula is super-easy to obtain via Humility.

Current tree and my shitty jewels
Click me
Working on getting to around 4.5k life via life wheel, then will finish acro, then will probably add the 4% AoE nodes at Scion.

Sweet 5400 life. :)

Items:

Finally got life everywhere.
Still needs improvements, but a 6L real chest will have to wait. I'll never have those Exalts. ;)

Skilltree
Click me
I grabbed another jewel slot and bought a couple jewels.
"8% sword attack speed, 7% life, 3-4% reduced mana cost" seems to be quite popular and cheap. I'm fine with that.

Start with the mana nodes, head for the big life node. life gain on kill and your first jewel socket for "survival secrets" in A2N. No more mana issues, yeah!
19 points
Be sure to wear gear with addtional str, dex and int, you'll need this as a Scion.

Then head towards Shadow.
37 points
I took the +30 Int node to be able to use blue gems.
I took the two physical damage notables at Shadow to get some damage with 1 alch levelling weapons. We'll get rid of that at Lvl 62.

Use Cleave/Reave + Melee physical damage + faster attacks + multistrike till Lvl 62 (Hyaon's).
Then swap physical damage for elemental damage and equip Hyaon.

72 points
Finished all the pathing, took the aura nodes because I was already running Wrath+Clarity+HoT. Took another +30 Int notable for the blue gems.

82 points
Took all the interesting stuff at Templar and respecced the melee physical damage at Shadow since I'm wearing Hyaon's Fury now.

102 points
Acro, Phase Acro, and I got rid of the +30 int nodes. Started to take all the remaining life nodes and sockets.

Further options (bold is what I did so far):
Another jewel socket at Templar (2 points)
Life and Chaos resist in the upper left (2 points)
Life and elemental resist at lower left (3 points)
All sorts of elemental damage (Celestial Punishment%&Judgement) at Templar (5-6 points)

We save 13 skillpoints if we stop at the frenzy charge at Duelist (16 if we also skip the frenzy charge).

You can spend these 13 points in Marauder for Life, Life regen and Armor:
102 points
Wear armor items (or hybrid for blue sockets) instead of Evasion.

This stuff improves the build by a lot, but it obviously is a bit expensive for a casual (except for vaal grace, I've just been too lazy to buy one).
These are the items to save up for when all the rest is done.


Lightning Coil: the best defensive torso in the game, especially for an acrobatics build, and it even has flat lightning damage on it.
Not only does it cost a fortune, it also requires more expensive other gear to make up for the negative lightning resist.


Doryani's belt: This belt is nice for any lightning build. But I'd rather use a life+WED+resist rare.


Doryani's Sceptre: nice stat stick for "fake" dualwielding ( you'll not attack with this weapon, but gain the elemental leech and damage). Again, no life and resists. You can't use all of these items without super-expensive rest-items.


Double Curse: This ring or an Amulet with additional curse corruption to get more damage in via elemental weakness, you can also take double curses @6 skillpoints in the tree (I prefer 6 life nodes, however).


Elreons Jewelry: to further lower the mana cost and drop the Survival jewel or Clarity


Thunderfist: Damagewise, this item is about as good as a well-rolled rare, but lacks life and resists. The added lightning gem is nice (can see what I linked there), but not obligatory. What really makes this item shine is the "100% increased shock duration".

0. Activate Auras.
1. Whirl around till you find monsters.
2. Whirl through monsters to gain the fortify bonus.
3. Cleave/Reave them.
4. HoT activates on your first shock.
5. Cleave some more, now with additional damage.
6. Whirl around some more.

I use Whirling blades quite often in combat to reposition, something you have to get used to.
Against most monsters you can just facetank, but a some of them hit super-hard, and it is better to kite them.
Good bosses to practice kiting are the bosses in the mountain ledge, strand and vaal pyramid (slow melee dudes). ;)

Get used to your flasks, this build relies heavily on life flasks and their mods.
The "65 life on kill" and 5%+ life regen are ok for most combat damage, but in certain situations it's just not enough.

That's why I also do not recommend "levelling builds", you have to get used to your char, watch him grow and learn his strengths and weaknesses. Best way to do it is by playing him from 1 to 80+ with his dedicated playstyle, not "I level with Flame Totem till 80 and then swap to some GG gear".

Elemental Reflect:
You can handle it, but it's better not to bother with it.
If you really want to, bring a second topaz flask and swap Wrath for Purity of Lightning.

Blood Magic:
Kills Auras (about 33% of your damage).

Less regen:
That's fine. Scion starts bitching about Mana a little bit, but it's ok.

Monsters have Lightning Resist/Elemental Equilibrium:
Doesn't matter. Doesn't even slow me down.

Dangerous stuff
Extra damage, minus max resists, extra crit, double bosses, cursed with xyz...
I can take a lot of this stuff when playing concentrated, kiting around etc.
You'll have to figure out yourself how much you can handle.

Annoying mods
Temporal Chains, Ice ground, Fracture etc.
No different than other builds. You can do it, but it's just a pain in the ass. ;)