[2.6] Sasquatch's Scold's Explosive Arrow - 2kk Ignites, Guardians Down, Div Distillate & Bisco's

This build utilizes Scold's Bridle with a high mana cost skill, Explosive Arrow, to combine insane single target damage with the clear speed and utility of Cast when Damage Taken (CwDT) skills. It uses
Scold's Bridle to proc the Berserker ascendancy Cloaked in Savagery which gives us 100% leech at all times that we are attacking and protection from most damage except one-shots when there are enemies nearby.

Defences
• Cloaked in Savagery with Vaal Pact - 100% damage leech, with frequent heals from CwDT spells
• 4-6k lifepool
• 50% dodge and spell dodge
• Option to run defensive autocurses, Enfeeble is nice but Temp Chains is not needed
• Ability to run Divination Distillate for 4-6% all max resistance (6% with a Legacy version)
• 400% of our mana spent as life heal from Zerphi's Last Breath flask
• Could run Arctic Armour

Offence
• Explosive Arrow - A fantastic single target melter that is relatively cheap to get a 6L for
• Tri-curse without reserving mana or casting additional spells - Flammability, Elemental Weakness, Poacher's Mark. Replace Flammability for Enfeeble if you want more defense.
• Elemental Equilibrium (EE) applied with normal attacks and CwDT lightning spells

Pros:
• Can run all map mods (ele reflect, no leech are a pain but doable)
• Fun factor
• Party/Sarn's Arena griefing viable

Cons:
• The downfall of every Scold's build: Our EHP pool is lower than it seems. Scold's takes away minimum 15% of our life every hit, which is leeched back immediately. However if you are lower than 15% life casting EA will instant kill you.
• No armour/fortify
• Not a HC build (but probably better than most Scold's builds if you wanted to try in HC due to the instant leech and non-flask dependency)
• Requires all 4 labs in order to feel good
• Very difficult to level past level 90, as it is tough even as a skilled player to avoid killing yourself on occasion with Scold's

Content I've cleared so far:
t1-t15,
Guardians with the exception of Phoenix (I won't be bothering as it will mess up my sextant setup)
I tried Vaal Temple but don't think this build is viable for it. The EHP pool is too low.

Scold's Bridle:
Our bread and butter. Inflictss 400% of mana cost spent as physical damage. If you are familiar with Scold's builds this mechanic has changed in the last patch from mana cost to mana spent. What this means is that builds which used Soul Taker or Blood Magic and Mind over Matter will no longer work with it.

Quill Rain:
This gives us lots of attackspeed and projectile speed. When looking for a 6L, I recommend purchasing The Porcupine card for around 20c per set, and chancing to a Quill Rain. Quill Rain is a low tier unique with a higher probability of being chanced. I got my first one in 10 tries and tried for a weapon swap but didnt get it 100 chances, for reference.

Zerphi's Last Breath:
This is our QoL sustain flask that makes the build play smoother. It is not strictly necessary, but will save you from suiciding your character if you fail to notice that you've killed all the packs around you and there are no more enemies to leech from.

Jewelry:
We need two % of damage taken gained as mana when hit corruptions on jewelry. Because Scold's inflicts 400% on mana spent as physical damage, each % point of this mod effectively reduces our skill's mana cost by 4%. With 25% of damage taken gained as mana when hit we could have free explosive arrows, although that would prevent us from using Zerphi's or Divination Distillate mana flasks. I aim for 10-15% of damage taken gained as mana when hit, picking up the respective 3% passive node on the tree.

The jewelry is not important as long as it is cheap and corruptions readily available. They should cost 10-50c each on average. I use Bisco's for everything up to T16 and swap to Hinekora's Sight for Guardians.

Berserker
Ascendancy Point Order:
Pain Reaver: Nice leech
Cloaked in Savagey: 100% uptime 100% leech, enough said
Crave the Slaughter: Clear speed
Aspect of the Carnage: Damage. 1.96 more modifer for ignites.

Bandits:
Normal: Oak (life)
Cruel, Merciless: Kill all (Passive point)

Passive Trees

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I leveled this character with Facebreaker shield charge. You could also run a dual totem ancestral warchief/flameblast build and respec into the character later.

Starting Tree (Level 73)
We are aiming to pick up the Keystones Elemental Overload, Equilibrium, Phase Acrobatics and Vaal Pact and life along the way. We will be traveling around a lot, so it makes sense to focus on jewel sockets for damage and eventual transition into Grand Spectrums for endgame gear.

Endgame Tree (Level 90)
Jewel sockets

Tryhard Tree - Good luck with a Scold's build (Level 100)
We grab additional life and jewel sockets.

Main DPS Setup

Explosive Arrow - Greater Multiple Projectiles/Concentrated Effect - Chance to Ignite - Less Duration - Slower Projectiles - Empower

Requires at least a 4L. If you get a dying sun you can keep Conc Effect in at all times, otherwise swap to it as needed if you feel you can't kill bosses fast enough (shouldn't be the case even with GMP).


CwDT Setups


Our curses. I keep them on level 17-18 CwDT. You can use a higher level if you wish, but they will be less consistent for pack clearing.


Our leech setup. We use these skills to proc EE constantly and provide leech back to full health. I keep the CwDT on a level such that every two casts of Explosive Arrow will proc it.


Damage CwDT setup. Use your spells of choice.

Chest
Here we want a Kaom's Heart or Belly of the Beast for the max life.


General Rare Gear Guide
Prioritize capping your resists. Afterwards you need at least one good strength roll somewhere (belt probably) in order to have enough strength for Kaom's. Get life as much as possible every else, and accuracy rating if available. Make sure not to get any fire damage for spells or attacks on gear, and craft added cold damage to attacks on a ring. This allows our normal attack to proc Elemental Equilibrium.


Amulet
Use a Hinekora's Sight for the accuracy and dodge. If you can't cap resists, use a rare instead in this slot or the boots.

Rings
Rare and a Doedre's Damning for the +1 curse.


Jewels
Grab one Fevered Mind for the 100% increased mana cost. Get 30% increased spell damage if possible. Then run Grand Spectrum Viridian jewel or rare jewels for the rest.

Rare jewel mods are in the order of priority in which they benefit the build
Prefixes:
Maximum Life
Fire Damage

Suffixes:
Increased Damage
Projectile Damage/Area Damage/Spell Damage
Strength or Resists if you didnt get it on gear

Flasks:


Recommended:
Sapping life flask - Helps immensely with keeping up zerphi's and div distillate when getting swarmed
Divination Distillate - IMO best in slot flask if you can keep it up for mapping. Swap for guardian fights.
Dying Sun - Let's us use single target setup for clear and greatly increases efficiency of CwDT projectile skills

For t1-t15, I used a sapping life flask of staunching, quicksilver, zerphi's, divination distillate, and a quartz flask of heat. Once I got dying sun I swapped out the quartz flask.

For melting guardians, you can swap in a Vessel of Vinktar and a flask of grounding. However it's not really necessary, just helps with the speed since this is sort of a glass cannon build for guardians.

Helmet
Explosive Arrow damage

Gloves
Who Cares

Boots
8% increased Movement Speed if you haven't been Hit Recently - Some QoL, but not recommended because scold's triggers the disable condition
80% to avoid stun if you've killed recently - Not something that I desired while mapping. I rarely die to stuns & sustained damage, but more to one-shots.
10% to ignite/freeze/shock if you haven't crit recently - May be good for more consistent ignites but I need to do some testing to verify. Crits should happen very often if you are using ball lightning cwdt.

• Elemental Reflect: Fire in the opposite direction of mods and let CwDT spells leech the reflect damage. Reroll if you care about clear speed/slight risk of dying.
• No leech: Gotta have Zerphi's up at all times during packs. Play carefully and attack in bursts.
• Avoid status ailments: Can run, but your single target gonna be a lot worse.

Dangerous Map Mod Combos:
• Vulnerability: Reduces our effective EHP pool and also increased phys damage taken, our biggest vulnerability
• Minus Max resists & Monster elemental damage

Tired of running shaped strands? Want to occasionally run any map you want without worrying about wrecking your atlas? Don't want to feel gimped by having to run a pool of crappy maps? Have a high DPS and clearing potential? Then check out this technique.

We can sustain T15 shaped courtyards through clever use of sextants and leaguestones. Proper use of sextants greatly increases the number of packs on each map for a cheap long term cost relative to the cost of the maps you are running and dropping. Once you can comfortably clear hard content, you can complete all maps through t14, and at least the unique maps The Coward's Trial, The Putrid Cloister and The Vinktar Square. You can get completion for these maps on global 820 or trade 820 relatively cheaply if you can't afford running them (if that's the case you should probably stick to shaped strands for a while).

We optimize our sextant use through blocking bad sextant mods on the atlas nodes surrounding the maps we want to sextant. In brief, this reduces the pool of mods available to the maps we want to sextant so that there are increased chances of rolling good sextant mods.

To block sextants effectively for T15 shaped courtyard, roll bad sextant mods on the following maps:
Rromenade, colonnade, arsenal, cemetery, chateau, perandus manor (if you have it), forge of the phoenix, crematorium.

You may ask - why should we roll bad sextant mods on maps like Colonnade, Crematorium, Chateau, and Cemetery? You can consider these "Tier 2" sextant blocking maps. "Tier 1" sextant blocking maps are immediately within sextant range of the maps which they block. "Tier 2" maps are neighbors to the T1 blocking maps. Since the T2 map rolls a bad mod which effects the T1 blocking map, the map which we want to roll sextants on cannot roll that same bad mod, as it would cause the T1 blocking map to be affected by the same mod twice.

For example: We want to sextant The Coward's Trial. Arsenal is a T1 blocking map here. Cemetery, Chateau, Perandus Manor and Crematorium are T2 blocking maps here. We roll the mod "Areas contain Slipstreams" on Crematorium and "20% reduced Effect of Curses on Monsters - 60% reduced Effect of Curses on Players" on Arsenal. Arsenal immediately blocked the curse effect sextant from TCT map. Crematorium gives the Slipstreams mod to Arsenal, and TCT cannot subsequently roll Slipstreams as if it did, Arsenal would be affected by Slipstreams twice.

Now the question remains - How we can we reduce the cost of blocking sextants as much as possible?
• Start with the least expensive maps to roll sextants first.
• On your first time to attempt rolling a bad mod on a blocking map, do not immediately reroll a good mod if you get it. This is because rolling a good mod will reduce the pool of good mods available to nearby blocking maps.
• Proceed rolling each of your blocking maps 1 time.
• After each blocking map has been rolled, perform 1 sextant roll on the maps that you want the good mods on. If you get good mods here, it will again increase the chances of you rolling a bad mod on the blocking maps.
• Reroll the blocking maps that did not get bad mods, starting with the most expensive and moving to the least expensive.
• Reroll the maps you want to sextant that got bad mods, starting with the most expensive and moving to the least expensive.

Here is the list of the bad mods:
• Players and Monsters have Onslaught if they have been Hit Recently - 100% increased effect of Onslaught on Players and Monsters
• Unique Bosses drop 1 additional Unique Item
• Maps have 20% Quality - Unique Bosses deal 20% increased Damage
• Areas are inhabited by an additional Invasion Boss
• 20% increased Player and Monster Movement Speed - 20% increased Monster Attack Speed - 20% increased Monster Cast Speed
• Players deal 100% increased Damage while stationary - Players take 10% increased Damage while stationary
• Areas contain Slipstreams
• 20% reduced Effect of Curses on Monsters - 60% reduced Effect of Curses on Players
• Quality bonus of Maps also applies to Rarity of Items found - Unique Bosses have 20% increased Life

Moving forward, as long as you never run any maps within range of the blocking maps' sextant range, you'll never have reroll the blocked sextants and will have greatly increased effectiveness of sextants moving forward. On average, I get good sextant rolls on 5 out of 7 sextants that affect Shaped Courtyard on my first try.

A final note: In Legacy League, you can run double beyond with the leaguestone and map mod/zana mod. Run breach stones and bloodlines stones if you have a Bisco's for increased currency drops.