The Dirt Devil- A tanky, crit-capped, Cast on Crit staff Marauder

Build Pros
-It has a big life pool
-Great mitigation against physical and elemental damage
-Infinite skills thanks to Blood Magic and great life regen
-Fairly cheap, can be put together for under 6 ex total
-Amazing AoE clear speed, rivaling my windripper Tornado Shot build
-Since we use a staff we get a 6L and a 7L for skills
-You'll either totally cap or nearly cap crit chance. Since our staff has 'hits can't be evaded', you should crit nearly every time you attack. A wand CoC build might be theoretically stronger, but not having to roll for accuracy and then roll twice for crit helps offset the difference.


Build Cons
-Requires a fairly high character level to really get going, you'll need to level with a different build
-Very dependant on skill gem level for your spells and Cast on Critical Strike Gem
-Best in slot items are now legacy, but it's still pretty good with current versions
-Not that fast on single target, but not painfully slow either
-Doesn't scale as well in large parties

Note: This doesn't reflect the physical mitigation that Lightning Coil gives us.

Note: My gear is far from perfect. Once I get 20q on Cast on Critical Strike and get an upgrade to my amulet, I should be capped for crit chance.

The idea was to use Vagan to create a beastly Cast on Critical Strike staff. You'll combine his signature mod (Hits can't be evaded), with his level 7 mod (Gems are supported by level 1 Blood Magic). This effectively gives us a 7 link staff and allows us to reserve our entire mana pool. I still need to 6L mine, but here is an example of what you want to try to craft:



The Templar aura cluster gives us easy access to 10% reduced mana reservation, so we can run Anger, Herald of Thunder and Purity of Lightning while reserving our whole mana pool.


Why Purity of Lightning? So we can use Lightning Coil for good physical damage mitigation (which became VERY dangerous in 2.0). That also gives us increased max lightning resistance and our skill tree gives us increased max fire resistance, so the two most dangerous forms of elemental damage have further mitigation beyond the standard 75%.


Additionally there is a notable passive that gives increased crit chance with staves AND gives a 10% chance to get an endurance charge on melee critical strike, so we usually have maxed endurance charges as well for further physical mitigation and overcapped elemental resistances for elemental weakness maps.


Most of our crit chance is global too, so our spells have pretty decent crit as well.


And jewels each can grant us over 30% increased critical strike chance with staves, making them a great investment (which is what really makes the build viable). These are the two jewels I'm using:

The core of the build is really the staff, which is mastercrafted for maximum effect. You'll start with a Vagan's Staff, and then hope to regal one of Spell Damage, Attack Speed or Critical Strike Chance (Attack Speed is probably the best, if you can regal a high level affix). Here is mine, which still needs to be 6L'd:



We use Lightning Coil in the chest for good physical damage mitigation. A variant of the build could run Voll's Protector, but I didn't feel much of a difference in charge generation. I'd only recommend Voll's if you want to run Discharge as CoC (which I'm not because I play on a potato). Legacy Lightning Coil is BiS if you can afford it, but the current version is pretty good too.



Your gloves and helm should be dedicated to boosting your attack speed and crit chance, and there are two uniques that are fantastic for that:



Your rings, amulet, boots and belt should prioritise capping resists, crit chance, intelligence, dexterity (as needed) and life. Mine are cheap, and I'm looking forward to upgrading them. Here are mine:



Flasks are great since we can use Surgeon's flasks in almost every spot. If you crit chance is under 80, I'd recommend a diamond flask, but if you have a good crit chance then rolling with 1 life flask, 1 resistance flask, 1 resistance Or granite flask, 1 movement flask and an Atziri's Promise is the way to go. These are my flasks:



We get 2-3 Jewel slots too, and you'll want rare jewels that give Melee Critical Strike Chance and 2 Handed Melee Critical Strike Chance, hopefully getting over 30% increased critical strike chance. These are mine (I'm only using 2):

In your staff:

Cyclone-Cast on Critical Strike-Life Leech-Spell 1-Spell 2-Spell 3

I like Ice Nova and Arc, Ball Lightning is good too and I've played around some with Shock Nova. There's a variant that could use Discharge with Voll's Protector, but it sacrifices too much defense for my liking.

In your chest:

Molten Strike-Multistrike-Blood Magic-Cast on Critical Strike-Flame Surge-Life Leech/Power Charge on Critical

Molten Strike gives us a wombo-combo with Flame Surge. The crit that triggers Flame Surge should ignite your target, giving you a whopping 50% more damage from flame surge. This is what I use to down single targets. And every swing of Molten Strike can crit up to 4 times (3 projectiles and the main attack), so every use with mutlistrike gives you 12 chances to crit. It's much more effective than using Cyclone.

In a 4L:

Ice Golem-Minion Life-Minion and Totem Elemental Resistances-Blood Magic

Ice Golem buffs your crit chance and since I'm lazy I made my golem a little tankier. Blood Magic lets you recast it without having to disable an aura.

In a 4L:

Herald of Thunder-Vengance-Curse on Hit-Assassin's Mark

This applies Assassin's Mark, which gives increased crit chance AND power charge generation, when we do damage with Herald of Thunder and when we take damage, with Vengance.

In a 2L, if you can manage it:

Riposte-Power Charge on Crit

This is pure theory, as I haven't hit the right colors yet on my other Rat's Nest to try it. In theory your staff block chance should give you a chance of generating power charges.

In 2 other sockets:

Anger, Purity of Lightning

Anger buffs our spell damage, Purity of Lightning overcaps our lightning resistance which helps with reflect, enemy lightning damage, and physical damage via Lightning Coil.

Bandits: Oak (Normal), Kraityn (Cruel), Alira (Merciless). This is what I have at level 88.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwEAAdwEsw3NE3EUIBZvFy8aOBo-HM4c5x0UIuIksCcvKk0rUDIJNZI62D38PydBckWOR35H4krIUEdRTFXWVw1YY1iuWfNepV8_ZU1mVGaeaPJqHmxGbqpvO2-ecg9ybHKpdqx3B3fjeA15aH1bgKSCB4KbgwmE2YcTiq-Mz49GkFWSfZRvmG-aO5ykogCkOalurEesqq2Nr6e18ryavTa-p8AawGbBBMQVxPbG2MlnykrPftIh2L3ZYdwj4XPjauXP6hjsOO1E7w7wH_Iv8kH2SPcy-tL7i_5U?accountName=Desert_Elk&characterName=Wargruf

I have an idea for a variant at really high levels of gear, but I can't afford it yet. If anyone has the gear to test this, please do and let me know if it works, or let me borrow it to test it.

The idea is to swap Anger for Wrath, drop Life Leech from the staff, and use Valako's Sign, Lightning Doryani's and an amulet that's corrupted for lightning life leech. Then use link 4 lightning spells to cast on crit and cyclone in the staff since they'd be buffed like crazy by the interaction between wrath and uniques and we would have leech on gear.

The spells that I think would work best would be: Arc, Ball Lightning, Shock Nova and Lightning Tendrils. Spark might be OK too. I don't think Storm Call would work well, as the delay wouldn't be worth it.

I think it would be able to run every map mod, since elemental reflect wouldn't bother us too much courtesy our Purity of Lightning.