[2.6] Low Life Mjolner Inquisitor Frosty Lightning Death Nova

Level 90 tree
Kill>Attack Speed>Power Charge
Pros: Fun, fast and safe clear, 6 auras, 11 charges, shatter SFX
Cons: Elereflect can ruin your day, expensive to get best results, can’t totally faceroll bosses, shatter SFX

Since I last wrote about a Mjolner build back in 2.4, several uniques have been added to the game, and several legacy uniques received considerable buffs. From Breach, the Blue Nightmare and Choir of the Storm fit directly into the build, providing a source of Power Charges and a huge chunk of damage both from the triggered spell and the bonus to crits. They also further incentivized the switch to Inquisitor, but I’ll talk about that later. However, the build was struggling with survivability, as well as getting enough accuracy to let us skip Resolute Techniques and go crit.

Then from Legacy league, we got a buff to the Shaper’s Touch. They give us about 1000 accuracy, and percent global energy shield. This is perfect, since Mjolner demands we invest in a lot of base stats, we might as well get something out of our investment.

Finally, Mjolner got nerfed in Breach, dropping from 10 casts per second down to four, but then got a nice buff in Legacy. Since our build invests relatively little in percent increased damage, the 100% from the item is actually significant. It's worth noting that the increase is to all spell damage, not just lightning damage. The cooldown nerf means the previous style of build, which was carried by sheer number of triggered spells, is no longer viable. Instead, we’re going to have to plan towards having fewer, stronger hits.

Probably the biggest change is the move to Inquisitor. Shaper’s Touch was the last piece of the puzzle the build needed to transition into low life, turning all of our Strength into ES. Templar gives reasonable access to tons of Strength and Intelligence nodes, including several strong notables. It also gives us reasonable access to all the keystones we need. Finally, the Ascendancy points are incredibly strong. The consecrated ground quartet provides tons of survivability, and turn any Sulpher flasks into anti-freeze/shock/ignite flasks. Ignoring resistances most of the time lets us socket a better support gem than Lightning Penetration, and run Call of the Brotherhood for the extra defense from freeze and chill. The last thing we get from this move is more focused defenses. Previously, I had cobbled together a little bit of everything, which was mostly to try and greed out some crit scaling. Now, though, we get to sit behind a solid wall of ES, armor and block.

Choir of the Storm, and the associated Lightning Strike has incentivized scaling area of effect. This greatly limits our choice of triggered spell to Shock Nova if you want to have full scaling. Shock Nova actually got a substantial buff through a mechanics change: the damage was moved from being divided 2/3 nova 1/3 ring to 5/6 nova 1/6 ring. This is a massive quality of life improvement for clearing. The switch to AoE and melee also necessitated a pretty obvious change: our primary skill is now Cyclone. Actually it would be more accurate to describe this as a two skill build, with Shield Charge being used for much of the clear as well as a Curse on Hit setup, while Cyclone generates hits for single target DPS.

The last major change was a transition to low life. The build is very strong played just with CI, but it starts to struggle in red maps and other high level content with both survivability and damage. Opening up our life pool as an aura source through Prism Guardian, as well as enabling Pain Attunement gives the build the last bit it needs to be truly strong. It also triples the cost of the build, but that’s how these things go.

The core of this build is my personal favorite unique, Mjolner. As a weapon it leaves much to be desired, but as the focus for lightning spells it is fantastic. Ever hit you make with it triggers one of the socketed lightning gems, with a hunk of increased damage to boot. Each spell is on a quarter-second cooldown, and you can’t trigger multiple instances of the same spell. In short, it gives every attack skill a pseudo-four-link.

The sockets in Mjolner are pretty strait-forward: Shock Nova and the two strongest support gems, in this case Concentrated Effect and Increased Crits. Controlled Destruction is better until you get all the crit scaling in your late 70s. You can swap to Increased AoE for clearing lower level content, but for T13+ maps you'll pretty much need ConcEffect all the time.

There’s much more to talk about with the triggering skills. I've done some testing here and while you can leverage damage here, it's far more valuable to focus on utility and survivability. To that end, we use Shield Charge and Cyclone. Shield Charge generates hits as it passes through mobs, so you can trigger two or three novas per charge, as well as cursing everything. Warlord's Mark is the curse of choice for this build. Every single part of it is useful: Endurance Charges for long immortal calls as well as defense (and crit chance), life and mana leech on all damage, and even a bit of synergy between the lowered stun threshold and Mjolner's implicit (OK that's a stretch). Cyclone for single target is very smooth to play, as you can easily switch from charging to spinning and back. Increased AOE lets us hit enemies from further away, letting us hit Shock Nova's ring on smaller targets, and Additional Accuracy (stop laughing) helps us bridge the accuracy gap between 80% and 90% chance to hit, especially necessary against anything with evasion.

For defense, this build uses a large ES pool supported by armor and block, with 6 auras in support. Shavronne’s Wrappings is necessary to cover our reserved life pool, and our skill tree covers freeze and other elemental status ailments. There are several options for stuns: I've opted for using the boot enchantment as well as Kiara's Determination, and this works for the vast majority of content. Swap Choir of the Storm for an Eye of Chayula against Minotaur and Chimera. Skyforth are also a very strong option, but would quintuple the cost of the build again. For auras, the three Purities are reserved on mana. Wrath and Discipline are reserved on life. The sixth aura is more flexible. If you can't get enough attack speed from gear, Haste can help bring you closer to the magic 4 APS on cyclone. Determination and a granite flask can easily give you 10k armor. Anger completely negates EE, and gives some ignite dps. Even Grace is potentially an option, though probably worse than any of the others.

Level 90 tree

Passive>Attack Speed>Power Charge

Getting the stats for Mjolner calls for a lot of traversal. As such we have a much more limited pool of points to grab notables with, but much greater selection in the nodes available. Most of mine were spent scaling crit and grabbing charges, the ES nodes in Witch, and a little bit of aura scaling. Most importantly, we can grab the Pain Attunement, Ghost Reaver, and Vaal Pact keystones, a nice mix of damage, sustain and defense. Additionally, the sprawling tree gives access to six jewel sockets, though many of these are going to be used for converting stats.

For Ascendancies, we go Inquisitor for Sanctify (Normal), Pious Path (Cruel), Righteous Providence (Merciless), and Inevitable Judgement (Uber). The consecrated ground quartet grant ES and mana regen, immunity to elemental status ailments, and a large steroid to damage and attack speed (about equivalent to the buffs from Instruments of Virtue, actually). The critical strike quartet grants a ton of crit chance to your initial shock nova, and lets you pretty much ignore resistances as a mechanic. The amount of added power compared to the Scion build is palpable.

First, the mandatory links:

In Mjolner: Shock Nova + Concentrated Effect + Increased Critical Strikes

Best in slot for damage. Controlled Destruction can be more effective at lower levels.

In Prism Guardian: Wrath + Discipline + Determination

Our most expensive auras and discipline. Determination can be subbed for other auras.

In Shavronne’s: Shield Charge + Faster Attacks + Fortify + Curse on Hit + Warlord's Mark + Additional Accuracy

The first of the active skill pair. This gets you around, kills packs, keeps you Fortified and the enemies Marked. Additional Accuracy is only really necessary at the very end of the game.

4L: Cyclone + Faster Attacks + Increased Area of Effect + Additional Accuracy

The DPS setup for the build. The goal is to have as close to 4 attacks per second as possible, as well as the ability to hit Shock Nova's ring on human-sized unique enemies. While the skill does very little damage itself, it more than makes up the difference in fluidity of play.

4L: Purity of Ice + Purity of Lightning + Orb of Storms + Power Charge on Crit

Two of the three Purities, and a PCoC setup to maintain charges against bosses.

4L: Cast on Damage Taken (20) + Immortal Call + Summon Lightning Golem + Vortex

The build's CoDT setup. Since we have high survivability and the ability to generate endurance charges I like the high level gem setup. There's a lot of flexibility here, especially with the fourth slot. You can use basically use any golem other than Stone, but I like the Lightning Golem.

Unset: Purity of Fire

While not totally necessary, I like having the full three triggered spells on CoDT, and the build is flexible enough with its ring slot that having an Unset is fine.

Get out your exalts boys, this is going to get expensive.


The heart of the build, and very budget considering its potential. I got a near-perfect roll for 5C, which this build actually cares about now. If you can get a lightning leech corruption you can open up some build options, but good luck getting one.


Probably the best value you’re going to get, the roll is nice but pales when compared to the percent ES from Strength. Even with the bare minimum strength for Mjolner this item gives 160% increased ES.


While not mandatory, you will live in constant fear of chaos damage if you don’t use this so save yourself the headache and pony up the cash. Getting the right colors can be hard, look for corrupted ones with white sockets.


How to low life with one item.


Rare Helmet and Boots: You’re mostly just looking for raw ES. This build is surprisingly lenient on resists, with several sources from the tree and uniques, as well as the Purities. In particular keep an eye out for Lightning Resistance, or as I like to call it, Crit Chance. I crafted both of these myself from enchanted whites, you could do way better here.


Another expensive piece of gear, but the Lightning Bolt alone adds about 200k DPS, before considering all the other great things it does for your damage. This item is basically the reason this build works against single targets.


Not mandatory, but a great little extra layer of defense. This is good here for the same reason it’s good in Vaal Spark, locking mobs down with chill and freeze. If you can’t get enough resists or defensive stats on your other pieces of gear, feel free to toss this.


Rare Ring and Belt: Use a nice Crystal Belt, looking for strength, ES, armor and resists. The ring fills out your missing resists and adds some more ES. I like Unset for the extra socket, but there's a lot of flexibility here.


You’re going to need a few of these if you want to wield Mjolner right at 60, and my final build has three just to keep my strength high enough. The sockets in and to the right of Witch transform 50 strength each.


When socketed in the heart of the Templar area, this gives a 25% chance to gain a Power Charge on kill, as well as the flat 5% more damage. You could upgrade this if you want to, but I don’t think 7% spell block is worth all the Chaos that blessing would cost.


This thing is still OP, especially so in a lightning build. Try to get the spell damage version, but it honestly doesn't matter that much.


More damage, more leech. The chaos resistance can be nice too.


With Determination and our incidental scaling on the tree this feels like the old beta Granites.


While the boot enchant is enough to avoid getting stun locked while mapping, it just doesn't do enough against bosses. This should give you enough of a burst to clear map bosses. If you're up against more consistent stuns, grab an Eye of Chayula.


The last flask slot is flexible. I run this for the anti-bleed, as well as all the benefits from consecrated ground. The extra damage is gravy.

For Jewels, look for Energy Shield>Spell Crit Multi>Lightning Damage>Area Damage>Spell Damage>Spell Crit Chance>Damage>Block Chance>Attack Speed. You're probably going to need some amount of strength as well just to get the minimum needed for Mjolner.

Lastly, enchantments. For the helmet, Shock Nova damage is best for damage. Cyclone attack speed can be an option if you're lacking attack speed from other sources. Stun avoidance is probably the best boot enchant. If you have Skyforth...use whatever you want, you have Skyforth. As for gloves there are too many sweet ones to list. Anything that says "attack with" will trigger your Mjolner. I'd put a preference on one of the defensive options (consecrated ground on crit, chilled ground when hit, etc.), but don't worry about it too much.

There are two parts to this build, clearing and bossing. The clear plays a lot like a Shield Charge Cast on Crit build, charging into packs and watching everything die. There’s a little skill in the positioning, but not very much since most things will die in the first Shock Nova. When you come across a pack of tanky blues or a rare or unique, Shield Charge into them to apply Warlord's then spin around them until they die. Like all lightning skills, Shock Nova has a fairly large damage range, which is further amplified by our absurd crit multiplier. This leads to very inconsistent DPS in the short term, so don't be surprised when you have to spend a second or two on a mob.

I mentioned this before, but it's fairly important to position yourself to hit Shock Nova's ring on your target, though not nearly as important as it used to be.

Speaking of crit, it's easy to forget while mapping that you need to maintain power charges, which account for about a third of the build's damage. The Orb of Storms/PCoC setup should be enough if you come into the fight at full charges, but it's not a great way to build them.

Finally, flask managment. Rumi's and Atziri's have enough charges that they can be up pretty much indefinitely. The same is true of the sulpher flask, but while clearing you shouldn't need to make any more consecrated ground, so hold it for the bleed cure. VoV and Kiara's are your ace in the hole: they have essentially one use, but while they're up you're basically unkillable and deal even more damage. Some of the T15 bosses are only really possible if you portal once or twice for flask charges.

For mapping, the only mod we absolutely cannot run is Elemental Reflect. Temporal Chains is extra sucky since it double taxes both our active skills. Beyond that, no individual mod is a deal breaker, but some combinations are. Any more than one reduction in regen is going to be hard for the build, especially things that hit leech or mana. We also don't have the largest effective health pool, especially against physical damage so too many damage mods will result in a lot of resetting auras.

Builds don’t come from nowhere, and this is the one place where this build struggles: leveling sucks. It’s much better than Scion, but Cruel and early Merciless are a bad time all around. Level as an AoE caster of your choice, utilizing as many crutch uniques as you can. If you can afford to, I would recommend playing a similar build and respeccing once you get to the low 80s.

Once you can wield Mjolner, and equip Shaper’s at 66, life gets much easier, and you can transition into a CI version of the build until you can equip (and afford) your endgame gear. Geofri’s Sanctuary is a good transition chest, giving you Zealot’s Oath and a surprisingly large amount of ES. The tree would look something like this.

Once you the basic gear you're set to clear rare yellow maps, though nothing too crazy. Once you hit 80, you should have enough points to transition into low life, and then the game is your oyster. Continue to scale crit, and watch everything shatter and die.

From having watched Mjolner builds rise and fall, it seems that there are moments where the item is good, and I think I've found one of them. I was planning to take this build further, into the Standard world of +1 curse amulets and lightning leech hammers, but as of this writing I don't know if the build will survive into 3.0. I'm not as concerned about the raw ES numbers as some people, but losing Vaal Pact entirely is probably too much for the build. The build just does way too much burst damage, without the keystone basically any reflect mob is an instant RIP. It's too early to call now, but if you want to try this out, now is the best time! I would honestly recommend this build to just about anyone with the currency, it strikes a nice balance between faceroll clear and skill based boss fighting. It's not the cheapest build in the game, but I felt like I got a lot of fun out of my investment. Feel free to ask questions, and offer constructive criticism.