Seinfire's Build Logs

Defenses
Vaal Power Siphon
KB
Barrage
All stats are buffed.

After completing challenges I wasn't sure what to do, and was already considering options for what I would play next league.

I wanted to make another kinetic blast character, which got me thinking of all the variations I'd played in the past. While listing them off I realized I'd never made an ignite+prolif wander. The concept has been around since the golden age of ignite prolif, and I figured using KB instead of power siphon would compensate for the radius nerfs.

Enjoyed the character a lot, but can't say I would recommend it over a conventional wander.

With vaal power siphon the clearspeed is very good, and I was able to achieve higher and more consistent exp/h than I was with my sparker. This was surprising considering the characters low mobility.

The one hiccup is single target damage.

The ignite simply doesn't deal nearly as much damage as I had hoped, so my best option is to stand next to a wall, pop flasks, and fire away. Works well enough in shaped red maps but this character will never kill guardians or shaper, and I imagine it would even struggle with some t15s (although not shaped maps).

For what it is (another clearpseed meta build) I found it to be quite good however, and very satisfying to play.

9.5k es
1895 int
8k tooltip icestorm unbuffed, 11k with ele overload

I wanted a character that could easily tank guardians and shaper, and whispering ice seemed like a good choice.

Originally I wanted this to be a regen build as that is my favourite part of playing a guardian. However, I eventually had to go vaal pact in order to deal with guardians.

Went through a lot of respeccing and tweaking to optimize the setup which is one thing I really enjoy about whispering ice, the min-maxing of stats.

Still have some messing around with the setup, plus shaper to do, so will see how the build ends up.

After playing around with the setup a lot I ended up dismantling the character.

Just wasn't satisfied with the damage on guardians and shaper, which was the whole point of making this character.

Defenses
Vaal Spark
Spark
Lightning Bolt
All stats are buffed

I wanted a character to complete the 10k map tier challenge as fast as possible, so what better than highest potential clearpseed build in the game?

I had already vaaled most of the jewels, and kind of wanted to play vaal spark for a while.

Levelled with incinerate totems then switched to spark at 69 and cruised through all the good layout maps I had lined up from my previous 2 chars.

Quite fun, however my setup still needs a lot of optimization as my single target with vaal spark was simply atrocious in red maps, to the point that I stopped playing the build. With better optimization I should be able to take down any boss below t15 during the duration of vaal spark, so I may revisit the build later on.

Got a few upgrades and the build feels a lot better now. No issues with most bosses and ofc it clears maps at the speed of fast. Finished my last ~2k map tiers very easily with this char.

Defenses unbuffed/buffed
BF with Inc Aoe unbuffed/buffed
BF with conc unbuffed/buffed

I wanted a character to farm lab and kill guardians+shaper. Figured bladeflurry anything would be good, and I love juggernaut and regen builds in general.

Started off with a scaeva and used that up to lvl 91, then switched to a nice rare sword with high attack speed.

Easily my favourite character this league, breezed through all map bosses up to t15, ran a lot of uber lab, cleared all breach lords including chayula easily.

However, guardians were not deathless, and I failed shaper twice. Even with a ton of mitigation, about 10% life regen+able to nearly hit leech cap on single targets the sustain is not high enough to facetank guardians. Guardians with easy map mods are deathless, but I can die easily with some damage mods. Shaper can be beated by simply playing better. My issue is that my damage was at a level that it actually matters where I place the vortexes during the third phase, and I ended up covering a large portion of the arena.

I will likely revisit this character once I kill shaper just because I enjoy playing it so much. In particular I want to get acuities, but that more than doubles the cost of the build. So it makes more sense to use that currency on a build that can kill shaper at a lower cost.

Ended up dumping a bunch of extra currency into the character... Killed shaper a few times with it, but only once deathless.

Overall enjoyed the character a lot and may play blade flurry again in the future.

8.2k es
23k tooltip firetrap
11k tooltip lightning trap

Wanted my league starter to be a character with good clearspeed that required minimal gear and trading.

I figured with lightning traps short cooldown saboteur was not necessary so I went with assassin instead for more damage.

The build worked out pretty much how I expected it to, and I was able to farm a good bit the first week of the league. However, clear is a bit inconsistent with sometimes 1 or 2 mobs surviving with a sliver of life, and my setup is quite squishy. This lead to me stopping the character at level 90.

Single target is also lackluster, I expected firetrap ignites to deal much more damage, but it was still manageable up into red maps.

Defense unbuffed
Defense buffed
Ray unbuffed lvl 19 gem
Ray buffed

When theorycrafting this the choices I looked at were: trickster, occultist and inquisitor. Inquis had the highest raw damage values as well as some interesting bonuses from the concecrated ground so I went with that. After playing es characters for most of the league, I wanted to try a life based build and cannot say it is worth doing...but it was fairly cheap at least (around 3ex).

The clearspeed was not the greatest, but not the worst either with decent whirling blades speed and enough damage to clear most packs in a single spin of the beam.

The most interesting part of scorching ray for me is the boss killing potential. I was able to do a 4key uber lab run at lvl 75 fairly comfortably due to the skills amazing kiting potential. I could simply stack up the dot on the target, whirl away, and keep the damage up by one-tapping with the beam between dodging, which was quite satisfying to play. I only had temp chains to extend the dot duration, but with duration nodes I imagine this is even smoother.

That being said, while it was fun for a while I don't see myself using this skill again anytime soon, at least not as a main skill. Coming from an rf+ignite build (albeit one with about 10x the currency invested) it felt quite underwhelming. When I did end up trying the gem out on my guardian I found that the advantages of the beams playstyle did not make up for the low damage, and that my rf with inc aoe did more dps anyways.

Defenses
Buffed KB (6 power charges+instruments of virtue)
Buffed Barrage

I've played a lot of kb builds but never tried kb mines and never played an inquisitor, so decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Clearspeed was pretty good in open layout maps (peaked at about 400m exp/h in strand at 82), otherwise fairly average. It felt clunky to play and I didn't see much potential for endgame as the build has no survivability and the single target damage is mediocre.

Using 8x Grand Spectrum Viridian+1 Energy from Within for jewels.

Helm, boots, gloves and belt were self-crafted with essences. Stun avoidance is not as good as using valyrium or some form of stun immunity, but it is good enough for 99% of situations.

Ideally I would be using both valyrium and pyre, but this would require me to shift gear around a lot.

Alternatively, chayula is a loss of about 700 es as well as a chunk of regen.

Unbuffed Defense
Buffed Defense
Buffed Vortex ignite tooltip (ele overload+sulphur flask)
Buffed Vortex ele focus tooltip

Two things I wanted to accomplish with my second character were:

-Kill shaper.
-Build a chill as fuck mapper/lab runner.

My original plan for this league was to make a bv pathfinder for bosskills like everyone and their mothers. However, after testing it in standard, as well as seeing how meta it's become, I decided not to. While it easily meets the first criteria, I recall forgetting to press flasks for 6 seconds, and going from an immortal god of destruction to instantly dieing to white mobs from 9k es. It is not a relaxing playstyle, and can feel down right uncomfortable at times.

With fond memories of my juggernaut, I wanted to make some sort of regen build, and an occultist with soul strike seemed like a good choice. I toyed with and tested a few ideas on what would be strong with a bow, the most obvious being caustic arrow and essence drain, and the most prominent for me personally being some sort of poison blast rain setup.

Ultimately I was unsatisfied, so I thought, "what else has insane regen?" and remembered playing a guardian.

Earlier in the league I'd had the idea of remaking my rf berserker, so rf guardian came to mind. I had used grand spectrums and essence of horror helm on my autobomber and figured they would make a good fit. As for the main spell, I figured rf could take care of map clearing, so I needed something that synergized with the whole setup. I remembered reading about an rf vortex elementalist last league, and how vortex's "modifiers to spell damage also apply to this skills damage over time" applied to ignite...and yeah, that was the build.

The dream is to oneshot bosses with this thing, but will have to see how it actually turns out.

Updated: Turned out pretty well. I will have to take another crack at shaper before I give my final verdict, first run with my non-ignite setup was a struggle. Now that I've worked ignite back in and know the fight better it should be much easier.

Did all my endgame grind challenges and solo'd most bosses in the game without issue. Still have yet to attempt vaal temple though. On uber atziri the trash is more dangerous than the actual bosses. The vaal constructs which are usually the least threatening on any build, just happen to offscreen and stunlock me thanks to -60 chaos res. Other than that not too difficult.

Update: Put together a shaper set on standard, and despite multiple fuck-ups I did it deathless. Ignite damage makes a huge difference.

Also ran hall of grandmasters a couple times. The first time I died halfway through the first hall, not sure what character it was but I was getting oneshot from 10k es... Second attempt I actually had a pretty easy time using scorching ray instead of vortex, which makes me think the skill has no pvp scaling, as in pve it does less damage than my rf with inc aoe.

viridian grand spectrum x10

Crafted chest using alt+aug+regal method and got lucky. Helm and belt were self-crafted using essences. Rest of gear was traded for, with all grand spectrums being bought for 30-40c during the first week of essence.

9.4k es no notable defenses outside of flasks
18k tooltip herald of thunder
10.8k herald of ice
11k flameblast with faster casting, 17.7k with conc

I enjoyed this character overall, but am honestly a bit disappointed with the build.

The entire point of going for grand spectrums was to give this build that is mechanically capable of absurd clearspeed enough damage to scale into the highest tier of maps. However, while herald of ice chains just fine up into t14s (the highest I ran) herald of thunder just didn't hit hard enough to oneshot most mobs, which led to me killing most packs via 1-4 stack flameblasts which slows down the clearspeed quite a lot.

In order to scale the damage further I feel like I would either need to be lvl 100, or be low-life with a dual curse setup. I died a lot with this character, so I don't think dual wielding is a solution when the goal is high level maps.

All that said however, the clearspeed was still quite good, and I was able to oneshot every boss I faced with either vaal rf or conc effect flameblast thanks to ~800% increased damage double dipping with ignite.

I would like to try something like this again in the future, because when the build works (using only movement skills while heralds kill everything) it feels really good.

4.8k life, 7.1k tooltip flameblast 83ish crit, 6.9k herald of ice, 9.6k thunder 43ish crit on heralds over 500 multi

I was unsure what my goal was with this expansion and how I would approach the atlas. I had been wanting to remake my heralder for a while after grand spectrums were released, and a new league seemed like a good place to start before jewel prices got too high (viridian grand spectrums were multiple exalts late into prophecy).

My plan was to mf dried lake and low level maps, as that is what the budget version of the build excels at: content where you can consistently oneshot packs of mobs with heralds. I would put together all the gear I needed, and worst case scenario, I could flip the jewels and reuse es pieces for my next character. If I had stuck to this plan I would likely be done my respec days ago, but for better or for worse I found it more attractive to explore the new maps, and to do this I had to drop all my mf gear to survive.

Rather than use the same setup as my storm herald assassin from perandus, I based this character around raizqt's autobomber, which is much more survivable and stronger overall. Having tested the build on standard pre-atlas may have caused me to misjudge the builds power level a bit (lvl 20 gems, carcass jack, uber lab points, and being higher level is kind of a big deal, who knew?) but I still enjoyed mapping with the build. While I was able to get some very nice herald of ice chains up to t10 maps, it was inconsistent on anything past t4, where depending on the mob types and map mods it either felt amazing, or like playing a 4l flameblast build with a very shitty version of prolif.

After about 40 hours of casual play I managed to put together all the gear I need for my respec, and am just waiting on about 20 regrets and an unknown mount of fusings to make the switch. I generated the currency needed just from random drops plus some essence and jewel crafting, roughly 400 chaos with a few self crafted pieces thrown in.

Defenses with endurance charges -> fully buffed, Shield Charge tooltip with endurance charges -> fully buffed, Warchief tooltip with endurance charges -> fully buffednot screenshotted, 22k tooltip shield charge with conc effect, 38k fully buffed.

I wanted to do a build with rigwald's curse as I didn't get around to it in talisman. I also wanted to use the voidheart that had been sitting in my stash since week one of the league. Figured shield charge would be a great choice, and juggernaut to negate the effects of abyssus.

First issue I encountered is the fact that I oneshot myself to phys reflect. Required some respeccing to get more endurance charges+armour to avoid this, as well as picking up vaal pact. Reflect is still scary, but as long as I keep charges up it is survivable.

Second issue is low crit chance, to the point that I'm not sure it is worth doing this over non-crit. With diamond flask it feels decent, but another thing that threw me off is how specific the wording is on rigwald's curse. If it was "claw modifiers apply to unarmed attacks" I could realistically drop warlord's for assassin's mark and sustain purely off of claw leech, but sadly that does not work, and relying on blood rage alone does not feel safe vs anything moderately difficult.

The character was fun because of how fast it was, but it didn't feel very comfortable for me and I stopped playing it at lvl 90.

Defenses unbuffed -> fully buffed, Offenses with endurance charges -> fully buffed

I found a reach on my third council run, and got a great roll on my 5th divine. I wanted to make a build with it, and prior to finding the bow I had also wanted to make a lab farmer.

The combination of these two ideas lead to the creation of this character.

My original plan was some janky setup with lioneye's fall and crit and block and rearguard, using lightning arrow pierce+frostwall. However, the damage was severely underwhelming.

After some finicking around I eventually settled on a tshot poison+point blank setup, dropping my astral plate for a kaom's heart. This was the highest damage setup I could come up with while still being strong enough to easily tank izaro.

I will likey dump some regrets into revisiting crit la on my next (and probably final) level. Or I may even try tshot with crit if I can 6l my reach.

Overall, my conclusion is that I could've sold the reach, and using half of that currency, built an eq lab farmer that was stronger in every way.

I did still enjoy the character however, it accomplished what I wanted it to, and still has room to be improved upon.

Ended up not trying crit because I don't think it is worth it. 6linked my reach in about 700 fuses and went with LA as my main skill, as using the added chaos gem makes it quite good for poison despite the ele conversion.

Managed to take down core malachai, no difficult mods, just temp chains+monster life. Died once on maligaro and 3 times on malachai second phase, so not a comfortable clear but doable.

Feels very smooth to play, one of the most comfortable mapping experiences I've had while also being fairly strong against bosses.

Defenses unbuffed -> buffed, GMP Tooltip unbuffed -> fully buffed, Pierce Tooltip unbuffed -> fully buffed

Felt like playing incinerate because I was curious how strong it is now. Feels pretty solid and will see how far I can push it.

Did not play this character much, but it was fun, and capable of taking down atziri and uber izaro fairly comfortably.

Fucked up my copy pasta, both defensive stats or fully buffed... KB tooltip with only power charges -> fully buffed

Wanted to make a stronger version of my chaos kb ranger from talisman. While that characters damage roughly doubled with ascendancy+pierce buffs and it was the best wander I had made even before then, I still wanted more damage, specifically more consistent crits. It was also a character with 4.8k life at lvl 94, granted, 4.8k life with good defenses and able to offscreen everything, but still not ideal.

Simplest solution to both of these issues was to be ci and play assassin, focusing more on crit+crit multi than scaling damage with frenzy charges.

My initial plan was to use the bonus crit on full/low-life enemies+inc crit strikes gem instead of poison, getting poison from the ascendancy instead. I still might do this, but currently I believe overcapping crit with deadly infusion (and pcoc over void manip) and using marylenes fallacy for a massive dps boost will be stronger than using void manip gem+a rare amulet.

Will see how it turns out.

Using marylene's fallacy setup I was able to hit 152k tooltip kb fully buffed, however, I felt like the damage was overkill and it was not safe in red maps. Probably what I would use if I wanted to run gorge rotations all day though... Rather than crit strikes gem, I used slower proj+pcoc and just used a diamond flask+crit gear and nodes. Ended up with 75% crit chance on tooltip. Also ran dual heralds with curse on hit poachers for frenzy charges.

Final thoughts, overall I prefer my current setup over the deadeye build just because I prefer ci over life-based. It feels safer, and even without reliable poison the damage is higher. If I make another chaos wander it will probably be a pathfinder considering that this character ended up going into ranger for flask nodes anyways.

Defenses with frenzy charges -> fully buffed, Offenses with frenzy charges -> fully buffed -> with added lightning, MF Stats

I wanted a clearspeed build that also stacked mf for a couple of reasons. First of all, I simply wasn't making much currency on my cocslammer, and in 91 levels ended up buying red maps for the challenges as none dropped. Second of all, I just felt like making a bow character as it is something I rarely play because kinetic blast exists, but felt that it was well suited to what I wanted to do.

My choices were raider and pathfinder. Deadeye was out because it doesn't get any movement speed... Not sure why I picked raider, I guess just slightly higher movespeed due to the extra frenzy, and the damage and defensive bonuses are quite nice as well. Flaskfinder would've been a strong and fast option as well.

My targets were voll farming (still unsure if I want to finish that grind), and low-mid tier maps. Specifically unid and corrupted maps for the massive quantity bonuses, which go hand in hand with mf builds.

If I wasn't wearing mf gear this would honestly be a doomfletch build, as vp+dodge already handles reflect quite nicely, and I could also pick up arrow dancing. However, voltaxic does add a layer of safety as I run a lot of unid maps, and ignoring 60% of enemy elemental resist works out to be more damage in a lot of cases. Also voltaxic is purple.

Total cost about 120c atm (self-found 5l prophecy), 70 of which was just the ventors, so this could be built relatively cheaply for a high clearspeed mfer.

Will level this char a bit more as I'm dumping currency into crafting for a new char, and this is currently my fastest method of doing so.

Overall satisfied with this characters speed and how profitable it has been. The build can also run atziri and higher level maps quite comfortably in mf gear, by just swapping iir gem with added lightning.

Ended up dropping belly for queen of the forest. While I could've kept dark rays and been sanic, I decided to pick up goldwyrm again as I was maintaining over 200% ms even without darkray.

Defenses unbuffed -> fully buffed, Groundslam tooltip, Bladefall tooltip, GC tooltip

After playing rf totems I wanted a build with clearspeed. I also wanted to have good sustain and be able to kill bosses. Considered blade vortex and a few different types of coc but eventually settled on this for some reason.

I guess just because it is cheap and I think it will be strong.

Will probably end up with about 6k life, clearspeed is very good, single target is decent, sustain is decent (still need that op 100% leech when you get your ass smacked). My only concern atm is oneshots as this build has almost no mitigation.

Will see how it turns out.

Pretty much done with the build now. Used tabula up until lvl 91 and was hitting 5.9k life with it. Got a es/ev chest from dapper prodigy that I decided to use, which put me at over 6.2k life. Ideal chest would be a 6l carcass jack, but I currently don't have the means or the desire to acquire one.

Build works great up to and including t15 maps, although core and uber are untested. Have killed every boss I've come across deathless, including twinned plaza, twinned gmp kaom, and ghosted kaom with damage mods. On atziri I oneshot myself to mirror. Solution is to swap glacial cascade for conc effect, as while offscreening is great for clearspeed, it is obviously a bad idea on the split phase. Can then proceed to pretty much facetank everything.

Can run all map mods besides no leech, just sub in phys to lightning for phys reflect, ignore ele reflect unless it is paired with -max or ele weakness.

Overall, a very strong and versatile character that was also cheap to build. 90 chaos for everything including jewels and gems, although a decent non-tabula chest will roughly double that it is not needed.

Defenses unbuffed -> fully buffed

I started off with the idea of using mf rf totems to farm until I could get a shavs, then transition into a pseudo support where I could buff the party while still helping to kill single targets, or even carry bosses and solo high tier maps due to the extreme tankiness of guardians.

Well, not saying it isn't possible, but an mf char with bad clearspeed is a pretty pointless endeavor unless you are playing a culler. And rf totems have the WORST fucking clearspeed simply due to the mechanics of having to constantly reposition totems (often multiple times per pack despite nearly maxed aoe).

Ended up just respeccing and going full bitchboy.

Bloodmagic can be annoying at times, but I think it is the best option for me as mana based with prism guardian is suicidal while wearing lorica.

Bino on swap because the prolif is quite good with abyssal cry. Also whirling blades.

7.4k life at lvl 83. 3.6k armour. Idk how much damage. Currently running t5s and 6s, but have done some t10 zana dailies and the damage was plenty. Will try to hit 90 and test the build in some red maps.

Soon. Basically I run into a pack and cast abyssal cry which instantly wipes the entire screen when one mob dies (greater range with bino's).

Pretty simple concept, I wanted to make an abyssal cry build since trying the skill out with my bladefall trapper in talisman.

Berserker is needed for the cooldown reduction, and from my previous experience I knew abyssal cry by itself would be great aoe. I needed a primary skill that would synergize well with it however. At first I was thinking maybe viper strike and build around full chaos scaling. It would cover my single target quite nicely, but I wasn't too keen on it.

Decided to go rf for a few reasons. The first was clearspeed. All I have to do is cast abyssal cry, and then rf will start the chain reaction. Secondly, elemental focus, overload, and the berserkers 40% MORE damage are all multipliers that were not available to rf builds pre 2.2, so I figured it would be very strong for single target. Well, this remains to be seen but from the speed on map bosses and merc malachai kills it looks promising so far (malachai kill at 67 was comparable to some of my fully geared 90+ chars. Bosses so far are either dying instantly to abyssal cry, or in a few seconds to rf with inc aoe). My usual dps checks are atziri and fairgraves booty in mao kun, so I can make some more accurate comparisons later.

Recently switch from using rare chest+helm
Gained a good chunk of damage from the +2 wrath on alpha's, a lot of life from belly, and more than double my armour due to being able to run grace instead of aa.

Edit:rolled a great enchant on boots (increased crit if you haven't crit recently. Always up because traps are critting, not my character), otherwise no changes.

5k life at lvl 91. Capped ele resist -60 chaos, not ele weakness capped. 14k armour with grace, 23k with basalt flask. 4.8k tooltip kb unbuffed-->7.7k with charges 91% chance to hit at level 91, 79 crit with charges. Each trap rolls crit seperately with cluster trap, so it feels consistent despite the low crit.

Two things I wanted to test with this character. Offensively a life based ele wander, getting 32% lightning penetration thanks to trap nodes+arcing blows+force of nature, as well as a huge multiplier from point blank.

Defensively, utilizing the energized armour jewel+iron reflexes to get high armour as a right-side build. At my current armour level I could pick up acro and still be at over 10k armour with basalt flask (always up) which I may do if I have enough points later.

Overall the build feels good, although kb on traps feels clunky and clears slower than manual attack kb. Clearspeed is still quite good despite being on a trap with point blank. Single target is more dependant on the frostwall+pierce interaction than a regular kb build due to trap cooldowns, and getting the correct frostwall placement on moving targets is frustrating. Under ideal circumstances however, I have killed t9+ map bosses in 2-3 trap throws. Easy kills are bosses like dominus, merviel, academy boss, volcano, piety etc. which prefer to attack you at range. Some of these bosses are considered quite dangerous, but are trivialized due to the sheer burst damage of this combo.

6l would be wed which could push tooltip damage to 10k+. Considering each cluster trap can fire 20 projectiles through multiple frost walls the damage potential is quite high, but also extremely situational. So far on a 5l with lvl 19 gems it has been enough to handle t12 maps comfortably (highest I've had drop on the 2week so far).

Still a lot of time left in the league, so I will try to get a 6l, level up as much as I can, and push to the highest level of content I can, then see where the build ends up at the end.

I lied. Did not play the race much until the last 2 days, and did not end up finishing the build. Basically it is not a good build outside of the gimmicky instakills which other builds can do better, and I enjoy regular kb much more. Not a bad character overall though.

Also crafted another dagger that would be a bit better after multimod+divining due to being able to add spell damage not sure it would be worth it as I still need to reroll chest and these daggers have poor resale value (kris/demon daggers are highest average damage and easiest crit cap, but not everyone plays flicker and I think people still prefer ambushers/skeans).

Update: Threw some chaos at the chest and gained 400 es overall. Really hard to get high es on a chain hauberk. However, I did not have 5k chromes lying around to try and colour a regalia, and the only other option would be a 6l splendour which would cost me 4x as much as it did to buy and craft my current chest.

Defenses unbuffed->with flasks. Offense with charges->with flasks

Still have a lot of levelling to do, crit multi, phys damage, and a bit more es.

Overall the character is working out nicely. I believe trickster is better overall, but this is kind of just showing off to my friend who told me to play this after having not the greatest results with occultist flicker.

The regen on kill counters blood rage quite nicely, and I can just weapon swap to turn it off if I need to stop. Originally I wanted to use poacher's mark, which also solves the need of speccing into accuracy nodes. However, it requires a significant investment to work out the mana issues (although I did sell a heretic's veil to help fund this character...), and those points can now be invested into more damage and es. Alternatively I could use a curse on hit setup, or run herald of ash instead of hatred, which I may test in the future. Blood dance is there because when I wanted to use poacher's I realized curse immunity exists, and it was also quite nice for levelling. May swap it out later but I kind of need the dex...

Hit 90 and now the 2week will be starting so I am done with the char. Maintained the highest solo exp/h of any char I've made (170-220+ up until 90) although it somehow didn't feel that fast due to all the backtracking I had to do because you just have no control over your character while flickering.

I remember getting a headache the first time I tried flicker, but somehow it didn't bother me with this char, but I am unlikely to revisit the skill just because of the randomness of it. Still enjoyable to map with because of the speed, and with occultist I had very few deaths despite not having an average es pool and no mitigation aside from flasks (on that note reflect was not an issue).

Charges+Defensive Flasks+Tempest Shield

I remember some of my favourite builds were block-based, but never tried aegis. Also wanted to make a build with varunastra. Looking at the usual choice of gladiator, it seemed a bit underwhelming as all it granted was block chance, whereas juggernaut would allow me to hit high armour without running grace/determ, be crit+use abyssus because juggernaut, and ofc the nice qol from unstoppable.

Damage ended up not being anywhere near as high as I expected from looking at the stats I was getting from the tree, but was plenty enough for solo play up into t14 maps. Not tested in t15s because rng and I stopped levelling once I picked up soul of steel.

Build has 2 issues:

-Low life.
-Sustains only via aegis and flasks, so high dot like village ruin or excavation boss is dangerous.

Other than that the build felt very safe as you would expect of aegis.

Charges+Defensive Flasks

Seeing how much damage you could get as non-crit with Hyaon's in previous leagues, I assumed that with asassin I would deal some metric assfuck of damage and steamsaw everything in the game. Sad truth is, I very much doubt I will make an attack build this league that does as much damage as my juggernaut, while being even half as tanky.

Build had a lot of room to grow, but ended up dropping it as I couldn't find a good enough reason to finish it.

Damage and clearspeed were good, high sustain with vp and decent mitigation with acro+ev+coil+aa, but low life (which is what I would've been picking up throughout the rest of the levelling process).

6.9k es as trickster/5.7k as saboteur
12k dps/3k avg damage
49/60 crit
2.5k accuracy
3.7k evasion

Wanted to see how good of a phys wander I could make on a budget, using the new Obliteration wand. Never played a CI wander before so I wanted to try that, and also wanted it to be a poison build so I could run defensive buffs without taking too much of a damage loss. Had not played hc in a while so I decided to give it a go.

Basically a giant fail. I had assumed the damage would be fine because I had less damage scaling with my chaos wander and that turned out well. However, I had underestimated the strength of scaling flat damage with that character. Pure phys was really bad at my gear level, so I ended up using the same added chaos+void manip combo that gave me twice the damage of the physical setup. The main reason I had wanted to run phys was for the leech, but using a mana flask isn't that bad.

Anyways, while it was plenty for low and mid maps, I knew I would need to scale the damage much higher to be comfortable in t10+.

After not playing the character for a few days, I remembered theorycrafting a kb trapper siome time ago, but deciding that it would be bad. Well, with cluster trap and chain reaction, I realized that it was possible to fire 20 kinetic blasts with one toss, and on top of cluster trap frostwalls and point blank I assumed it would instantly kill anything in the game...

Well, as you can imagine it didn't turn out that way, but I feel that the mechanic is worth exploring on future chars.

Ripped shortly after a 60 odd point respec from trickster to saboteur to test this awesome idea. 3am in the morning and decided to do graveyard mrevil with damage mods after dropping 1.2k es because I assumed she would fall over instantly (did not have much trouble with her using manual attack kb before). Did crap damage due to poor trap placement and her teleporting around. Tped out to get my freeze flask back, reentered and slowly died to invisible icestorm (frozen and too slow to press flask or log even though I had several seconds).

Defenses unbuffed->with flasks. Offenses with charges in aoe setup->with all buffs in single target setup (conc, added fire, haste, brotem, flasks)

Atziri Run

My first char in Perandus, I just wanted something strong that could get all my bosskills/map challenges done and have good clearspeed. Started off as rt with mf gear and a 1c maul that I added flat phys on for 400pdps. Farmed up for a few days and bought celestial justicars, crafted my astral plate, and slowly bought all my crit gear. Once I had everything lined up I did a bit of respeccing (like 8 points from rt mace) slapped on my gear and facerolled my way through merc lab for that sweet 1k accuracy node.

The build has been a lot of fun, dealing massive damage while being tanky with huge amounts of phys mitigation. Also the unstoppable node is amazing. Recently did double daresso with 98% extra lightning damage with no issues, but have yet to try core. I doubt I will be able to do uber with this build just because the damage on atziri feels low (cannot facetank like with vaals/trio and it's a melee build), but will probably try it anyways.

Failed at both core and uber so build is bad.

Core (100% extra damage as cold, temp chains and 60% slower regen): Died 3 times to maligaro before I tried that thing called getting chaos res. Doedre and shav fairly straightforward, although the builds general lack of sustain made them a bit uncomfortable. Died once on shav. Malachai hit me for 4k on an autoattack through 21k armour, 2 endurance charges and fortify. 7 charges or bust. Died once to tentacles and once to piety balls which ripped my last portals. I feel like the slower regen on top of having poor sustain to begin with is what really killed the run for me as I wasn't taking too much damage. May try again with easier mods+warlord's mark.

Uber: Trash is easy as expected due to knockback+high phys mitigation. I expected vaals to go similar to regular atziri, but somehow did not pass the dps test and died 2 times because the second vaal went turbo on me and I couldn't outheal the balls. Finished the last vaal with my aegis char with 1 death then crawled through trash and died to rain on trio. Relogged back on staff eq and didn't want to waste portals so I played it safe on trio and just ran around dropping earthquakes and got through it smoothly. I do not think I can facetank them anyways though. On atziri I used the same strategy, getting most of my damage in while she was casting stormcalls and otherwise just tapping her with the aftershock damage. I dodged the flameblasts+stormcalls and was able to eat a few spears by just popping my bleed removal (about 2.5k initial hit). Died on first split phase from eating 3 spears in a row, and lost my last portal stupidly by running in with 0 charges and taking a 5k hit from a spear then died to the bleed (thanks abyssus). I even brought my but did not use any flasks before getting hit.

Feel like both maps are possible if I stop being bad but it will be slow going either way with this build.

Have cleared all map bosses aside from core/uber, and all unique maps deathless.

Ended up sticking with the warlord's mark setup which is what I had levelled with, but later started messing with for bosses.

Currently about 5k life, 20k tooltip CA, 10k evasion unbuffed.

Made this char because I happened to vaal a +1 drillneck. Not sure I will play it much longer as I'm seeing how important +levels are and they are not cheap. Will likely come back to it once I can craft a better bow.

Charges+Defensive Flasks I accidentally my copy pasta but defensive stats are non-existent anyways. Just capped resists and ez mom.

Initially wanted to do lightning warp ignite prolif. However, my inner hipster kicked in and I decided that elementalist is a cheezey ascendancy that grants an insane clearspeed boost to any slightly decent skill setup in the game.

Instead I decided I wanted to try out something along the lines of raizqts autoplay heralder, but using crit instead of stacking freeze chance.

Basic concept is that through the use of call of the brotherhood, our herald of thunder will freeze and shatter mobs. The shattered mobs then create a chain reaction via herald of ice which kills off the entire pack. Mobs are also shocked due to added lightning damage on herald of ice, which then refreshes the duration of herald of thunder. An initial hit (storm call in my setup as it is also great single target) as well as vaal storm call keep the chain going vs anything that is not oneshot by heralds.

The base mechanicas of the build were in place once I picked up deadly infusion, however, the build did not work how I had imagined it until after completing merc lab. Even with deadly infusion it is extremely difficult to get high crit on heralds, as they only scale off of global crit or jewels, and have 0 base crit chance. With ambush doubling crit chance on full life targets however, I experienced the dream of heralds wiping the entire screen by themselves as I casually speed through...In dried lake. Had to drop the glorious inc aoe gem as the damage simply didn't hold up in maps. Even with 10 freaking thousand damage per hit on a HERALD (much higher when you factor in ambush) it doesn't deal nearly enough to compete with the likes of spark and scolds vms for clearspeed in maps.

The mechanic is definitely there, but in the higher tiers of maps I feel like I am just playing a 4l stormcall build. Build is somewhat on hold having been demoted from the speed mapping dream to a coin farmer. Also ele reflect is sketchy as fuck but I currently run ez mom so no vaal pact. While solo I can flask throuh it, but while in a zana rotation I legitimately instakilled myself on an ele reflect rakango.

Ended up dismantling the character because I'm poor, and felt like it didn't really have a purpose anymore.

After respeccing my pathfinder several times while finishing challenges (ek nova,
autobomber, ngamahu's cyclone) I settles on this build because I wanted something that was strong for killing bosses and wanted to test a specific defensive combo.

Initial idea was lightning coil paired with storm barrier, pathfinder and wise oak to achieve high mitigation to both phys and ele mitigation.

The concept works as well as I expected too, being able to facetank shaper slams and guardians. However due to only having ~5.8k life it is still possible for the character to die quickly (hydra turrets, bad map mods, etc).

Satisfied with the characters power level as an end of league build, although it was not the relaxed playstyle I was hoping for, it is still the highest dps I've had on a non-poison build and has solid defenses.

VP changes made me want to play a CI attack build again, and I also wanted a character specifically for hunting down the elder and his guardians. After finding a ton of flat added damage jewels while playing a dot build I wanted a character that could take advantage of them.

Wander was a natural choice as it is a build I always go back to. The other consideration was HoWA,
but I didn't do any research on if abyss jewels are actually good for it, and knew I would have better clearspeed as a wander. Another factor was that I went into this build originally using crown of eyes+beast fur shawl. The up to 40% increased recovery rate of energy shield was a massive boost to leech rate, however my setup lacked survivability so I ended up dropping it for a +1 barrage helm and an elder vaal regalia+rare shield with higher es.

Overall the character was successful at what I made it for, but I did die a lot both to simple mistakes and to weaknesses in the build. So despite how much I enjoyed it (and so far always enjoy wanders) I would have to say it's a pretty bad build for how much currency I invested... Hit 95 without much issue and will likely respec to a pure mapping build once I've completed my last few elder guardians for the endgame grind.

Respecced from life-based inquis at around 87 when I had the core pieces of gear required. It was a significant loss of damage, but a massive increase in survivability. Damage sorted itself out with levels and was more than adequate for shaper+elder+guardian farming and uber lab,
which I ran a lot of for the challenge completion.

The character was very successful overall but I ended up shelving it when it came to the "complete influenced maps" challenge as map clearspeed is not the best.

My league, was fairly easy to level with and mapping+running lab was quite comfortable as well up until the point I respecced. The only major downside was getting chunked in abysses due to lack of phys mitigation.

Split arrow clears very nicely, although at the speed I kill bosses with blast rain it is better for me to just skip them.

Without HH buffs I am barely over 200% movespeed, which is good but not as fast as I would like,
just one of the downsides of stacking quantity gear.

Overall I felt like this was a solid mapper, but got bored of it pretty quickly.

Respecced what was left of my wander to make this char. The original plan was to use the flask charge on crit node +coc firestorm to achieve permaflasks on bosses but I ended up just making this a pure clearspeed build.

Pretty fun overall.

I wanted to play some form of glacial cascade but I wanted a character that I would mostly use for mapping. The basic idea of the build was to utilize assassin for self-chaining herald of ice (often triggered by whirling blades+the storm cascade skill from rippling thoughts) which would cover my aoe clear, while having a full time conc effect glacial cascade for single targets.

Overall the build was successful, and despite being a clearspeed oriented build I also managed to take down guardians and shaper with this char, simply due to the raw power of glacial cascade.

However, I ended up not playing it past lvl 92 as I didn't find it as smooth or satisfying to map with as my other characters (spectral throw and kb).

After having a lot of fun with st last league I decided to try howa again. I wanted to take advantage of the int stacking of howa while still having instant leech, and MoM+energy shield using the new soul tether belt seemed like a good option.

My original idea was to go crit with the new inya's boots, but after seeing Invalesco's setup and how much more efficient it was I just went with that.

Somehow ended up having far more damage than my CI Howa build in legacy, albeit on a much more fragile character. However, I was still able to comfortably take down shaper, guardians, and uber atziri with relative ease, and the build was an absolute pleasure to map with.

Interested in trying other st builds but I'm honestly not sure if there are variations competitive enough to justify a reroll.

Unused swap gear for more deeps:

I hadn't made a wander in almost 1 whole league (aside from respeccing one char on standard) so decided to try making a life-based wander after the es nerfs. Ended up going with what seems to be the standard mapping setup with esh's mirror and qotf.

As always, playing kb was a lot of fun, and very fast to map with although I still don't care for barrage that much. This char was made exclusively for mapping as I already had my slayer for bossing.

Ended up just farming up some currency and levelling a few empowers before starting my next char.

Wanted to make a character capable of knocking down endgame bosses and farming lab. Hadn't played a duelist since 2.0 and also wanted to play some sort of bleed build. Was tempted to go disfavour+eq but decided to give lacerate a try instead.

Worked out pretty well and had a lot of fun with this char and experiencing slayer for the first time in general. Damage isn't amazing but it is plenty enough to comfortably do all content in the game with the level of survivability I ended up having.

Been wanting to play explosive arrow for a while, and finally decided to do it as my leaguestarter despite the nerfs to ignite. Levelling was slow but easy, and mapping was decently fast although the build lacked single target. Went MoM because as berserker it is fairly easy to sustain both life and mana for a larger ehp.

Had my fun with the character but quickly rerolled when I had some currency and my atlas was set up.

This build originally started out as dual scourge crit bladeflurry, but after playing bf with pre-nerf aoe and dying sun the new aoe just felt terrible to map with.

I still wanted to make a strong poison build and reuse some of my gear and after levelling and enjoying warchief totems in the beta I decided to give it a go in 2.6.

Ended up finding a starforge on my occultist (on my last shaper set) quickly 6linked it and divined it up.

Despite limited clearspeed the build was very fun to map with, and took down guardians and shaper fairly comfortably (somewhat surprised that chimera was the easiest fight despite poison immunity).

Would definitely consider playing warchief totems again in the future as they just feel very powerful.

I had levelled with cwc setups in the past and enjoyed it, but never as a chaos variant. I went occultist over berserker because after doing some research it seemed like berserkers damage was overkill anyways, and the -20% chaos res from occultist is also a huge damage increase which shortens the gap.

I feel like I made the right decision, as being ci with occultists es recharge and having profane bloom for pack clear felt very smooth and satisfying to map with, while retaining extremely high single target damage. The recharge also made it one of my most comfortable lab runners, rivalled only by rf guardian.

This is the only build I've played so far (and will likely play for a while due to nerfs in 3.0) that outdamaged howa vs shaper and it was also quite decent on chimera and hydra.

Overall very satisfied with the build, and while poison will be getting nerfed, I will likely play another occultist in the future.

Discharge was one of my favourite skills, but I hadn't played it in any form since before the coc nerfs. Decided to try it out this league and enjoyed it quite a lot, although I do miss the screen sized aoe.

I am not using vinktars simply because I balanced my resists around wise oak and don't feel that it's needed. I also opted to not use the inc aoe gem as I didn't find it noticeable while clearing and prefer to have higher single target. Inc aoe gem+dying sun together would be noticable however, so I may switch flasks around before I stop playing this character.

Edit: Really didn't realize what I was missing out on. The build was already quite fun but with vinktar's+dying sun+aoe gem it feels amazing, even after the nerfs.

Did not keep the flasks however as the dying sun was simply a lucky drop and I was in the process of levelling other characters.

Wanted to play ed, also wanted a character that could clear all map mods. Trickster over occultist for 2 reasons. First of all this char started off as an assassin, and secondly because I already had a character for boss kills, so this would be used almost exclusively for mapping (although I did end up running a lot of uberlab with it as well).

I chose to go with cospri's will+a shield over a regalia+consuming dark mostly because of shield charge, but also the +1 curse and ignoring hexproof maps is quite nice.

I never played ed before and felt the contagion chains were very satisfying. Can't imagine how good it must've been pre-aoe nerfs with dying sun+templar and scion aoe nodes.

Enjoyed the character quite a bit but eventually got bored of it. May revisit ed in the future on a higher damage setup.

Sold or recycled most of the gear. Used dual void batteries+voidwalkers and some generic es gear.

I figured the 100 breachlord kills challenge was a good way to level a new character, and this happened to be what I did it with. I wanted to make at least one build that abused poison this league, and this idea was fairly interesting to me. Using dual void batteries for some massive double dipping damage and extra crit, I figured I would delete everything in the game despite having relatively low base damage. While the potential is there, I didn't feel like it was worth investing more into the build after facing minotaur. The character was just far too fragile.

I had also originally planned to use on this character because I'm playing assassin so why not. It knocked me down to just over 50% crit, so with a diamond flask it is not bad, and would be higher damage. Ultimately though, I ended up deciding that victario's+an extra flask slot was the better option.

Some other info though:

Main links were Wither-CwC-ED-Poison-Void Manip-Controlled Destruction

Curses were blasphemy temp chains+vuln from witchfire brew.

Victario's Acuitiy for charge generation while clearing, otherwise orb of storms. Stun avoidance on boots, although I did mostly use chayula vs esh.

I think maybe using consuming dark+a decay weapon and replacing poison support for another multiplier could yield more damage, but it is such a huge loss of spell damage and crit that I couldn't say without calculating or testing it.

Character I respecced my ranger to around 4 days into the league. I wanted a character that could complete all challenges, and hadn't played spectral throw in a long time. Was a lot of fun playing and leveling this character but not much else to say. HoWA op.

My league starter. Fairly easy and fast to level and got a few lucky atziri drops on day 3-4 of the league which let me respec to howa quickly (which was the plan from the start).

I had wanted to play with Bladestorm last league but never got around to it. I also wanted to make something tanky for delve and ended up with this character.

Not really much else to say, had a lot of mitigation thanks to Divine Flesh+stacking fortify effect and a lot of damage thanks to impale scaling and being a champion. The clearspeed was mediocre, but playable with one aoe cluster and pulverise.

I started this build simply wanting to utilize the Blight unique boots. As I thought about all the things I could do to reduce Flamedash's cooldown I eventually decided to make it my main skill.

With the strength of Elementalist and the newly reworked golem nodes I got it to a point that it was playable, and actually one of the funner builds I played this league.

Playing around the skills clunkiness was actually pretty rewarding and it struck a good balance between power and difficulty.

I happened to find a pretty well rolled Eternity Shroud and wanted to make a build with it. As for the characters purpose, I essentially wanted a character that had the regen and damage of my VD Necro, but with greater mobility and damage mitigation. Having wanted to play storm brand for a while I settled on that as I felt it would have good synergy with Indigon.

Overall I would say the character was successful in what I set out to do, but not as powerful as I had hoped. I really underestimated the amount of mana sustain granted by the Necromancer ascendancy and the uniques I used when comparing it to Trickster. I feel like it would be much stronger if I dropped the Eternity Shroud and went for CoD and better rares, but didn't enjoy the playstyle as much as I'd hoped I would to try to further optimize it.

This character started around the idea of using Soulthirst with the new "Enduring" mod on mana flasks. After some quick maths turns out that is not a great idea due to the low duration, but played around with some options and decided to go ahead with it, on top of the usual self-curse+solstice setup to maximize the duration.

I then started to think of what build could utilize the attack and cast speed and the newly buffed poet's pen came to mind. While doing some research I stumbled upon the necromancer setup. Considering how easy it is to hit the cooldown cap using frenzy with that setup, I decided to go with indigon setup which would mostly be autoattacking.

Well, the indigon+soulthirst setup worked out decently, getting 100+ souleater stacks in dense maps. However, while it was fast, the clunkiness and the lack of survivability led to me dropping the soulthirst and self-curse in favour of building a more well-rounded character.

The damage was fairly high, especially when I was able to frontload my damage by pre-casting during boss fights, and the combination of the Agnostic keystone and my mana flask gave me absurd amounts of life regen.

Overall a fairly strong character that I had a lot of fun with. It's main weaknesses were the lack of damage mitigation and low mobiltiy.

Went pathfinder as my leaguestarter because I wanted to try running lab for profit as my league start strategy. Started off as icicle mines which I used up into low red maps. I used a staff with icespear mines for lab runs but eventually swapped into Wave of Conviction traps when I transitioned into a pure lab runner as I could not insta-phase izaro with my mines.

Overall I enjoyed my time with this character, but I likely won't make another lab runner as I simply prefer mapping and delve.

Quite simply, I wanted to make another Impale build, but something tankier than my previous Champion.

Ended up utilizing the soul tether+corrupted soul combo as an easy way to achieve high EHP and sustain. I went for shattering steel as it was simply something that synergized with the setup and that I had never tried before.

Initially played with paradoxica's which were significantly higher on damage (~90% more dps per projectile) but belltimber's attack speed felt much better and the extra projectiles shorten the damage gap while being much better for clearspeed (point blank shattering steel does insane damage anyways).

Overall I'd say the character was decent. The damage was very high, noticably higher than my scourge arrow trickster, not as high as my top-end on tshot but more consistent. Played around with both chain and fork for clear and found chain to be superior. However, coming from my chieftan it was not particularly satisfying for general clear despite having comparable speed (due to much faster leapslam), only really fun for deleting bosses.

Did not play this character for long as it was my last build of the league, but I had some fun with it.

My main objectives for this character was to create a build that was tanky enough to handle t16 legions and delves, while being fairly well-rounded on single target damage and clearspeed.

Initially I wanted to make an iron will build, but scrapped that in favor of getting more damage and fitting in a few specific pieces of gear, mainly the explodey mace+asenath's combo.

This was the first really effective and enjoyable BV build I played, and it hit all the marks on the checklist. Self-chaining triple explosions wiped out mobs in a single tap which was both visually and audibly satisfying. Although the damage was not overwhelming, it was consistently high with the potential to quickly burst down any boss with a bit of setup and some well-timed cooldowns. With fortify, a bit of armour, Molten Shell and a high life pool it was also more than capable of tanking monolith and emblem encounters.

One nitpick is the mobility being restricted to mediocre leapslam speed, but it was not at all slow.

Although I felt that BV was the best choice overall for this setup, I'm interested in exploring other phys caster+explosion setups in the future and the build was quite enjoyable.

While crafting bows for my scourge arrow trickster I ended up making a pretty good phys bow and wanted to make a build with it.

My goal was to create something with competitive single target while having better clearing ability for legions and tornado shot seemed like a clear winner.

Didn't get quite what I expected. While the screen coverage was excellent, the character was held back by limited mobility. It still easily full cleared legions but the general playstyle was not as smooth as I would have liked, especially considering how often I died with this character. CWDT/Vaal molten shell and adrenaline took care of burst damage, but I still found myself dying to legions quite often.

The damage was absurd, possibly the highest dps of any build I've ever made. I could easily have dropped damage in exchange for a lot of survivability, but considering the cost of the build I decided to sell it off and play something else entirely. Still, it was quite fun and I'd like to revisit both tornado shot and impale in the future, although not necessarily on the same build.

When theorycrafting this character I was excited about the synergy of multiple defensive layers. Ghost shrouds, wicked ward, shaper's touch, and int stacking. Add in fortify and chill/freeze to the mix and indeed, the character did not flinch when taking on all of the games content.

Natuarally however, I didn't build enough damage, and couldn't clear legions. While it isn't difficult getting enough damage to wipe the screen in one cast, the issue in legions is either taking way too long to pop icons while using my clear setup, or not having enough coverage in the single target setup. For bosses, casting continuously for the full duration of one icestorm would yield respectable damage, but if the target moved I would have to restart from 0 dps again. As such, having respectable damage over x amount of time is not adequate for icestorm as it would be for a dot skill, the per hit damage needs to be fairly high and if a target decides to stand still they should melt, which was not achievable with my setup.

While the results were disappointing I enjoyed to playstyle and how tanky the build was. If I try a similar setup again it will likely be with a different skill however.

In synthesis, scourge arrow ended up being my second option for a boss killer, so since I went GC mines instead I never ended up playing it despite being quite interested in the skill.

Well, this ended up being the perfect opportunity as the skill not only has insane damage, but is also great for clearing legions. I went with trickster because I wanted something with a bit more survivability than the average bow build, and because it also had good synergy with dex stacking (more recovery per ghost shroud).

In retrospect, I would say this is probably the strongest and most well-rounded character I made this league, and easily one of the best builds I've ever made. The clear wasn't amazing due to lack of movement speed and the channelling mechanic, but it consistently wiped the screen with ease and deleted bosses while freezing everything it touched and being able to tank massive hits and keep going.

Despite how strong it was, I did eventually get bored of it, so I don't regret dismantling the character to try new things. I'm definitely keen to try some more scourge arrow in the future.

For my starting strategy this league I decided to go with magic find as I hadn't played it in years. The basic strategy was to alch and vaal a white map with multiple bosses so I could load up on vaal fragments to sell, as well as load up my shop early on with rares and uniques that I could sell quickly to get my full mf gear asap.

City square was the natural choice as it has triple bosses, a layout I enjoy, and was adjacent to burial chambers which I could leave as my only t5 for easy sales. Coincidentally, it also happened to be fairly good for legion monoliths.

Toxic rain was a natural choice as it was something I was familiar with, enjoyed playing, was fast with minimal gear, and could run all map mods.

I made a mistake by rushing into t4 farm before fully completing my atlas however. I was barely sustaining city squares which is absurd given the buffed map drop rates this league, and only running 1 sextant. Well, fortunately quantity gear was dirt cheap at the start of the league, and the profitability of legion carried me hard enough that I didn't need any optimal setup to scrounge together a decent chunk of currency.

Rather than regear my pathfinder for red maps, I decided to put my currency towards a more specialised bossing build. However those rapid fire alch and vaal white maps were some of the most fun I had this league. One of the main reasons I went for this strategy, just quick and mindless fun, as opposed to the high maintenance t16 elder strat.

I'll probably start with a different strategy next league, but will have to wait and see.

Wanted to play with the new chaos skills and Soulrend seemed like a good choice for getting to 95 fairly painlessly.

Went pure life based instead of the more defensive ghost shroud setup as I was targetting shaped t10-11s which are not very dangerous even with flashback mods.

Fairly fast levelling and pretty comfortable to play. Overall I think I prefer ED/Contagion so probably won't play it again, but it was fun for what it was and it did what I wanted it to.

Wanted to play KB again and figured this would be a good variation to dump currency into.

Ended up being pretty weak on damage, but threw enough currency at it that it was playable. The thing I really enjoyed about this character was the strength of ghost shrouds, and their synergy with int stacking and shaper's touch. This allowed simultaneous scaling of energy shield, evasion, accuracy, and flat lightning damage.

Felt like playing flameblast for some reason so I threw this char together with a few 100c. Basic idea was to have enough ignite damage that my prolif would take care of map clearing, and otherwise focus on the blast for single target damage.

Worked pretty much how I expected it to, would hop around melting stuff and then pop Vaal Flameblast+RF to nuke bosses.

Got bored of it pretty quickly though and decided to respec.

Enjoyed playing mines last league and wanted to give it a go again. Instead of doing elder t16s I wanted to farm bosses this league, so GC was an obvious choice.

While GC does not feel as smooth to play as arc, I ended up with close to double the single target dps while using worse gear, so the build did what it was meant to do.

Ended up not doing a ton of bosses because I took a break after the first week of the league, but still managed to get in a good amount of shaper and uber elder runs, as well as a bunch of synthesis bosses.

After testing a few levelling setups before the league started I decided to try out arc mines.

Started off as life+MoM and had a rough time with syndicate encounters. Improved a lot when I switched to call of the brotherhood+shroud of the lightless for some chill+freeze action, but while I rarely got hit I would regularly drop to 10% life or less with 7k ehp and acro+phase acro.

Eventually respecced to lowlife around lvl 96 as I was enjoying the character enough to continue playing it and LL seemed like the strongest overall option.

Wasn't disappointed as I had much better survivability with 10k+es and a hefty bump in damage.

Levelled comfortably to about 98.5 running various elder t16s before trying experiencing the brokeness that is pure breachtones. Breachstone parties/rotations ended up being the bulk of my exp from 99-100. It was fast and easy but I kind of regret doing it because it simply was not satisfying to hit 100 in that way, and I ended up burning out on the league instead of going for 40/40 challenges so I didn't need a lvl 100 anyways...

All said and done though, I would gladly play arc or some other kind of miner again as I enjoyed the playstyle.

I started really enjoying bow builds after playing with mirage archer for the first time, and winter orb seemed to offer a similar playstyle.

Was not disappointed as this ended up being one of my fastest and funnest characters ever. Hit 90 in about 10 hours /played and 95 in 24 hours, which is my fastest lvl 95 by over 40 hours despite being considerably inflated by crafting and trading.

I chose pathfinder because after playing arc mines I didn't need a good all-rounder, I just wanted something that was fast. Low level delve, syndicate farming, and uber lab were my original targets. However, as I stopped doing challenges at 36 I ended up not farming lab or syndicate with this char. With my original clearspeed oriented setup using zeel's amplifier+doryani's catalyst and the inc duration gem it would be very well suited for magic find as well, but I ended up running t16s instead and needed much more damage for that.

Used a 4l herald of ice for cleanup (self-chains decently well) so no inpulsa/boomstick needed. Went for a shield charge setup over QOTF so that I could use carcass jack for more aoe. After playing it for a while I still don't fully understand how winter orb projectiles overlap, but apparently I have enough aoe with carcass jack+dying sun+aoe nodes that all 8 of my projectiles hit on single targets while using conc effect.

Ended up crafting a nice scepter and utilizing focus for the first time this league. This setup gave me the burst damage to take down high level syndicates and map bosses without issue. I would not use this build for bossing due to lack of sustainable damage and vulnerability to oneshots, although guardians and shaper are doable, just not fast.

Despite the character being very fragile with only 4.4k life at 95, I rarely died on this character due to the amount of burst damage I had and the fact that I almost never get hit. Was able to easily survive t16 corrupted elder maps as well as clean up 400-420 depth delves without stress. Winter orbs playstyle combined with aspect of the spider and temp chains is very defensive.

For my purposes WO pathfinder worked out quite well, but if I play WO again I would probably go for a more damage oriented ascendancy unless I plan to magic find.

Not much to say here, wanted to grind out atlas objective challenge faster so I rolled a second character on ssf betrayal.

Brands were fast and enjoyable to level with. Went armageddon because it deals the most damage and I was on a 4l all the way up until I stopped playing at lvl 86 (ended up getting my 36th challenge through temple upgrade rng so I didn't complete the grind).

If I play brands on trade league some time I would go for storm brand instead, as instant damage is just faster and safer than arma.

Wanted a comfy build to finish off the lab run grind and maybe run some elder t16s afterwards. I wasn't particularly worried about optimizing damage or defenses, it just needed to be fast and feel good to play.

My previous TR setup was fairly tight on mana, so I went blood magic. Add on QotF, quill rain, and a lot of attack speed scaling and I had a speedy build.

Ignored poison completely and just focused on duration+attack speed scaling, and ended up being more damage than my other setup as well.

Overall, I enjoyed my CA Occultist more, but this setup was still quite fun to play and it accomplished what I set out to do.

After playing CA for a while I decided to switch things up a little. I needed a boss killer/delver because I was converting my pathfinder into a lab runner, and waggles occultist bv looked like a strong choice.

In short, I hated it. Should not have been surprised since I don't like bv in general, but I figured profane bloom would make it manageable on the clearspeed side of things, and while not having as strong of a recovery mechanic it would outdamage my vd poet's pen.

Ended up dismantling the char and selling off the gear pretty quickly.

Levelled as life based with full mf gear and qotf until lvl 91, then switched to CI when I decided to farm elder t16s with beyond as well as push for delve 600.

Overall a pretty fun character, love profane bloom explosions, and fairly good survivability with enfeeble and fast es recharge.

The only downside is the damage output. The fact that I don't instakill every rare mob and take longer than 3 seconds on a boss puts me in far more danger than if I were to have 3k less es but triple the dps.

I did end up hitting delve 600 fairly easily, but don't feel the desire to push it further and it is not fast enough for my tastes to push for level 100.

I needed a build for bossing as well as grinding delves and this was my most logical choice for uber elder and guardians.

After playing an indigon pp build in incursion I wanted something tankier and this build worked as expected, facetanking uber elder and easily completing the elder+shaper guardian grind.

However, the map clear didn't feel good enough for me to grind the sulphite needed to hit depth 600.

Wanted to play caustic arrow for a while, and the new buff+changes this league were a good excuse to give it a go. Just based on the gem description I figured I would end up as toxic rain in the endgame, and built my setup around poison because of that.

Played mostly with lioneye's glare but ended up switching to quill rain once I got a 6l as it just felt much better to play. While the poison damage was lower, the extra dot from stacking pods more than made up for it, and overall it seems focusing on the dot moreso than poison would've netted me higher dps.

Managed to get my atlas set up, kill shaper, and do some red/yellow elder farming.

Character was very fun to play, but ultimately it didn't perform as well as I wanted to (especially in delves where I had the bulk of my deaths) and I decided my currency would be better spent respeccing instead of trying to optimize the character further.

Will likely revisit toxic rain in the future.

Pretty basic character, wanted to play rain of arrows and thought up a few different build variations. Ended up going non-crit pathfinder based on the logic that I should build defensively for flashback in order minimize deaths, and damage would be "good enough" for t10s and 11s.

In the end the build performed how I wanted it to, although the amount of investment required to hit "good enough" damage was higher than I thought it would be (did not have point blank in my initial planning for example).

Considering how much time I wasted messing around with gear and passives I was surprised to find that this was my fastest level 95, and on a fresh start no less. The build had fairly average clearspeed as well, but the combination of flashback mods, incursions, and my experience hitting level 100 made things go faster than I had anticipated.

As far as the skill itself goes, I'm not sure I would play rain of arrows again, but it seems like a strong all-around skill that felt good to use.

Never played a poet's pen build to endgame so it made build one with the newly buffed arc. This was made to be a boss-killer with high over defenses, damage, and infinite sustain.

The build wasn't especially fast for maps, especially not compared to my elementalist. However, because I had maps and sextants ready as well as a bunch of breachstones I was able to hit 90 in 13 hours, which was a record for me.

Overall I'd say the build was moderately successful. It was able to take down all bosses as I'd intended, but uber elder while reliable was not deathless. Still a fun character but I could've easily finished my challenges without rerolling and actually did go back to my elementalist for a lot of them because it was faster.

I originally started this character with the intention of remaking an old build, vaal power siphon burning wander. The major changes were that this version would be life based, non-crit, and would use regular power siphon for clear with the new ele hit for single target ignites.

The build didn't feel bad to play, but in hindsight it was pretty shit... Even so it took me to level 93 before I realized something. The build had far better clearspeed if I just removed power siphon and oneshot everything with a second ele hit setup.

Fast forward two levels and this also lead me to the realization that if I was playing non-crit, then switching to a bow based setup would not only grant me far more damage (lioneye's glare+corrupted point blank quiver), but it was also about 1/8th the cost of piscator's+lycosidae which I had been using previously.

The build finally came together when I had mirage archer+phase run in the setup, which allowed me to essentially run through the map at 260+ms only attacking every 4 seconds while mirage archer oneshot everything.

This left me at a crossroads however. I had already lined up all the gear for my next build, a boss killer. My intention from the start had been to reroll at 95, but now that the character was so much more enjoyable I decided to keep playing and see how far I could push it.

If a year ago someone had told me that my first 100 would be an ele hit witch running underground seas I would have told them I'm not a masochist, funny how much a few changes can drastically alter the game. The build cleared maps like a dream, with the initial burst of damage wiping the screen and ignite and shock prolif mopping up beyond mobs. Although I have to say it is inferior to other variations of bow ele hit that I've seen (most notably crit deadeye) this wasn't an issue considering I was running t11 and t13 maps for the most part.

My one minor gripe is that the audio and visual effects of ele hit are quite underwhelming compared to something like kinetic blast, and being a non-crit build with no heralds did not help. Still one of my most fun characters and even after a loooooong journey to 100 I'm not tired of it.



Fun stats:
2587 maps completed
Average time per map 05:30 = 02:57 in map + 02:17 in town + 00:15 in sides 1.33 portals 41% in town
Total time 237:32:39 = 127:27:17 in map + 98:51:31 in town + 11:14:06 in sides 3429 portals 41% in town... INEFFICIENT :(