2.5.1 Level 100 Inquisitor Vaal Spark, LL/CI/BUDGET versions + atlas shaping

You need at least ONE sacrificial harvest and one chill of corruption, stacking chill doesn't work; stacking harvest does up to 3x.


Skin of the Loyal is pretty much the best in slot armor you can get for your budget. Its a free +1 6L, with 100% ES bonus for 100 or so chaos. Nothing beats that price per chaos spent. COTB is 100% necessary for vaal spark to work. Shatter gives you extra vaal souls, which is needed to chain vaal spark.



Dagger and shield:
The perfect spell dagger: Spell crit - Spell damage - x-x damage to spell - attack speed - Multi
The minimum spell dagger: Spell crit - Spell damage - attack speed
Shield: 300+ ES, resist - spell crit is a luxury


Jewelry:
Here, you just want something to fill in the extra resist and gives you raw ES.
The perfect ring would look something like this
Your necklace choices varies depending on what style of the build you want to play. You can get either : to cap that max crit easier and a is a huge dps boost. But doing so means you have to make up for a lot of resist somewhere because you're using skin of the loyal. Or you can get something cheaper and easier to cap res with like:


Belt:
Crystal belt base with ES, Res and maybe strength if you can afford it. I wouldn't even get any other base if you're using skin of the loyal, you get too much ES from crystal base.


Helm:
300+ES, high res. 250+ if you can't afford 300+.

Boots:
Either high movement speed, es, resist sorc boots or void walkers so you can drop pierce nodes. I'd still keep pierce gem for the more % proj multiplier.

Here, we will use a 6L Vaal Regalia, if you don't have a 6L vaal regalia, the skin of the loyal is STILL better and therefore you shouldn't even use a 5L. 2g4b still - i'm just linking a random 6L regalia for reference on how good the regalia should be before you can switch to this version.


Dagger and Shield:
The perfect spell dagger: Spell crit - Spell damage - x-x damage to spell - attack speed - Multi
The minimum spell dagger: Spell crit - Spell damage - attack speed
Shield: 300+ ES, resist - spell crit is a luxury


Helmet:
300+ ES with resistances, look out for 30% proj speed to craft for later.


Belt:
Crystal belt is still BiS here. ES + Res + reduced flask charges used if you can afford it.


Amulet:
Choir is still top tier here, even more so now that you have a regalia to make up for resistances.
There are no better necklaces until you can get - Spell crit, multi, ES flat, es%, res.


Rings:
COTB + Resist ES Rings. With a vaal regalia, you can make diamond ring work.


Boots:
Either go for high es, movement speed + Res sorc boots or Skyforths if you can afford it.

I won't go too much into explaining here, everything is pretty much self explanatory. Shavs for LL to work, presence of chayula for extra es + stun avoidance + chaos res, I got skyforths even though I don't need it. Headhunters just because I can.

CI version (level 85 or so)

Low-Life Version (current for me)

Normal - Righteous Providence
Cruel - Inevitable Judgement
Merciless - Instrument of Virtue
Uber - Augury of Penitence

Normal - kill all or help kraityn if you need res
Cruel - Kill all or help kraityn once you feel like you have enough dmg for clear speed
Merciless - Help alira for power charge

You NEED life and mana leech enchant on your boots if you want to run this build without a mana flask. Otherwise you can get 90% chance to avoid getting stunned if you can't afford kiara's or skyforths/chayula or valyrium.
Helm enchants - 3 spark proj if you want to focus on killing bosses, 30% Proj speed if you want to grind to 100 fast.

Most people run a 6L Vaal Spark and a 4L Spark. I usually only run a 6L Vaal spark for lower maps when I know I can one shot everything while chaining VS. Otherwise, for t13s+, I prefer to run a 6L Spark and a 5L vaal spark, yes I said 5. Horror (3.5% crit on gloves) gives you the option to run something else besides ICS on your 4L, which opens it up for another damage gem.

Damage Gems Links:


The rest of the links are what I found most efficient and effective without wasting so many chromes:
Boots:
Helm:
Shield:
Weapon: This depends on if you can get Skyforths or The Blue Dream If you can get either one of these, then run this for flask charges. If not, then run this for power charges

Personally, I like doing higher maps sometimes and I feel that with a headhunter, I don't even need the speed from insanity gloves. Someone can argue that insanity is better for clear speed, I won't stop them. But we have flasks like these that make us insanely fast already. Horror allows me to run vaal spark in it and provides me enough damage from that 5L alone so I can run a 6L spark, or vice versa. Makes boss killing that much easier, because we don't really need help on trash.

There are a few ways to get power charges. We can do run skyforths and never worry about it again, but 95% of players don't have that budget. With the introduction of breaches, we have this pretty little thing Upon reading, it gives you chaos damage conversion, which is already nice. Makes killing those bosses a LITTLE easier. But it also gives you a HUGE chance to get power charges on kill if you're next to lightning or all res nodes. Unless I'm understanding wrong, the all res nodes should DOUBLE DIP into the % for the power charges gained %. So 8% all res, should gives it 8% power charge from all res, and also 8% from lightning res? Would need GGG staff to confirm. Anyways, it goes here.
The other way is to run Assassin's mark - Curse on Hit - Herald of Ice. Here is how it works:

If you have a 1/20% Quality Spark and Vaal spark, you can level as spark. Otherwise, you can do 1-12, freezing pulse + fire traps. 12-dried lakes firestorm.

Links for spark for leveling - Increased crit strikes, PCOC, Spark, Controlled destro, Faster casting (change out for spell echo later), added light damage. Once you can use pierce/faster proj, change it out accordingly
Links for firestorm - Firestorm - Added light dmg - Controlled desto - Faster casting - fire pen - spell echo

Make sure you have shield charge + silver + quicksilver flask to run through acts.

Skin of the loyal can be used at level 1 if you can get one with 2G4B like I listed in the section above. Otherwise, these are notable uniques for leveling.

Vaal spark only rolls crit ONCE, which means using your diamond flask and having max power charges is very vital to how much damage the entire duration of your vaal spark does. Make sure you have vinktars up for bosses + reflects. You have to play around vinktars and your leech on boots for mana, once you're used to it.. it becomes second nature. Make sure you have a grounding (shocking) flask for vinktars, bleed + freeze.

If you use a diamond flask, you should realistically only need 70-75% crit with max power charges to hit crit capped because of how it works.
0.75 rolls twice = 0.25 Chance to not crit * 0.25 chance to not crit = 0.0625 * 100 = 6.25% chance to not crit, or 93.75% chance to crit.

God-tier jewel: http://poe.trade/search/otouturikitare
Decent Jewels: http://poe.trade/search/ahusabonamekam

T11 strands - double packsize + temp chains
T13 Atoll double pack
T13 Gorge
T15 Overgrown Ruin Turbo, Triple pack, temp chains, -max
T14 springs + zana
T15 40% packsize
T14 promenade

https://gist.github.com/hauie/3ea947ae44db38b1b462f36242ba2c83

Shaped Dunes t10:
15 m/hr

Shaped Strands t11:
18 m/hr

Shaped Canyon t11:
17.2 m/hr

Shaped Atoll t13:
15.7 m/hr

Waterways t13:
13.3 m/hr (40% beyond)

Shaped Shores t13:
18 m/hr

Shaped tropical Island t13:
13.7 m/hr

Shaped Underground River t15:
19 m/hr

T15 Overgrown Ruins:
13 m/hr

Shaped Quay T15:
18 m/hr

Shaped Promenade t14:
22.5 m/hr

Springs t14:
21 m/hr

Gorge t13:
25 m/hr no boss