[3.2] HoWAbout Occultist. Shaper/Uber Elder, Minotaur flaskless on 1L!!

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Why Occultist?
2 reasons - safety, and good boss dps while still having decent clearspeed.
- Occultist provides a lot of extra ES from her ascendancy, and Malediction + secondary curse (Enfeeble) with curse effectiveness means that we take only 82% of damage from Shaper/Guardian type of bosses. This means that your life pool when you have 9k ES actually behaves like 11k effective ES. With Clarity Watcher's Eye and good gear, 14k effective life pool isn't a dream, but reality. And if you wanted even more safety, adding a shield would put you at 15.6k effective ES.
- The best melee single target skills currently in the game are Molten Strike and Blade Flurry. While Flurry is still very good, it cannot compare to Molten Strike, which fully buffed has roughly 3 times as much dps as perfectly channeled BF. However, Molten Strike has worse clear, since there is no gem equivalent of Reave that works with claws and could be swapped at will. Profane Bloom explosions from Occultist ascendancy fixes this problem. While not top tier, and still worse then Reave, it is a massive improvement over regular Molten Strike.

Why dual wield?
Because we already have enough ES. Second claw means roughly 20% more dps then a good shield (and up to 35% vs bad one) but less ES (9.5k vs 10.8k with 250ES/40Int shield).
Since we want the most ES out of our boots, movement speed can make it really pricy. And without movement speed, dual wielding + Whirling Blades is faster then Shield Charge.

Why Molten Strike?
Best dps melee skill in the game. And Occultist helps to fix the clearspeed problems of it.

Why not Pure Uniques build?
That would be a rippoff of WaffleT build, which I'm not going to do. The idea for this build was taken from my Scion HoWA build, posted in Scion subforum. Pure uniques is a very decent composition, however it does change your dps/ES ratio. It is more Evasion heavy oriented, has more ES, but cannot dual wield for extra dps since you are desperate for resistances.
It is also more expensive and you cannot start a league as early with it, since your BiS body armour is a unique drop from Uber Atziri, and 6L chest costs anywhere from 8-10ex, while you can get a 6L rare for as cheap as 1-2ex. Availability also can become a problem. Not to mention, +3 projectiles enchant on Vertex is going to be a hell of a lot more expensive then a rare, and also in very low supply.
However, it is a lot easier to assemble since all of your gear is unique, making it very fool proof. Buying/combining rares can be a lot harder and sometimes you might just not be able to upgrade something because you really need that resists on particular piece of gear.
I believe that on a small or medium budget, pure Uniques version will be better. But once you start investing more and more into the build (I'd say 15ex+ budget), rare pieces start outshining Uniques on price per price basis.

How do you calculate dps?
As a rule of thumb, take number of projectiles (7 from skill/Wildfire jewels, +3 from enchant, +2 from Dying Sun for a maximum of 12), multiply it with Path of Building Magma ball dps, multiply that with 0.47 (average chance of a single ball hitting the target with Concentrated Effect), then finally add melee portion of the skill. Calculating dps with Ancestral call (and using 2x the number or projectiles) will show you higher dps value, but this dps isn't as reliable, so I wouldn't use it for comparison.

For my character, with 20/20 level gems, level 90, and +3 enchant, it would be
482k*12*0.47 = 2.718k, +327k = 3.045 million dps.

5 minute full Shaper run
Chimera with Vulnerability and more monster damage
Minotaur on a 1L, no flasks, while being almost perma chilled
Uber Elder
Red Elder and his Guardians
Shaper at lvl 85, no helm enchant

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Main gear:
Since we get a lot of ES from Ascendancy alone, we don't need a shield. Second HoWA gives us 15% more attack speed, more Elemental Damage to attacks, and more Intelligence.
Usually you don't want too much Dexterity, since you want your Strength to be higher in order to get free Ignite immunity from your belt. Main stats are %Int and Elemental Damage to Attacks, with Dexterity being the last stat in order of importance.


ES, Resists, Intelligence. Molten Strike enchant on the helmet is desirable but optional.


ES, Intelligence, Elemental/Lightning damage, Flat lightning damage, Resists is what you should be looking for.
If you want to comfortably farm Uber Elder, you need to get Freeze and Chill immunity - Dream Fragments is the best way to do that, since you will lose too much ES and resists from wearing Kaom's Roots, and too much ES/resits/enchant if you go with Hrimnor's Resolve. Make sure you plan your ring resistances appropriately. Get corrupted Dream Fragments if cold resistance is too high for you to still get Wise Oak bonus.


Massive accuracy boost, allowing us to reach the 95% cap. Also improves our ES but a good amount. You can get one with Enfeeble corruption for a lot cheaper if Elemental Weakness is too expensive for you.


BiS. Corruption is optional, you can get just a plain 14-15% to attributes for cheap.


Astramentis is very hard to beat for this build, but also budget friendly. Majority of corruptions aren't worth it, including %Int/%Str, which will be super expensive, and unless the amulet already has high +Attributes, it isn't going to be worth your money.
A rare Shaper amulet (or Talisman with great stats) will be best in slot, however, you need specific stats for them to be better then Astramentis, and majority of them will be expensive. I HIGHLY recommend you compare them against Astramentis in Path of Building before you buy one. Best combination of stats would be %Attributes, damage per Intelligence, Penetration, %ES, flat Intelligence or flat Attributes/Strength, more or less in this order.

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Flasks:

- Jade is great coupled with Shaper's Touch, giving us over 15k Evasion.
- Silver is a great dps/clearspeed boost - it's also a good idea to buy one with enough reduced charges used mod to last for 2 uses.
- Dying Sun and Vinktar are also great for dps, since with Cyclopean Coil we are Shock immune.
- Wise Oak is great for the last slot, but all depends if your lightning resistance is the highest. Vinktar has only 1 use, while Dying Sun/Wise Oak have 2, so it's best to balance the resists so even with Dying Sun up, your lightning resistance is highest if you want to use Wise Oak.
- If you cannot balance your resists for the Wise Oak, worry not. You can use Atziri's Promise or a Sulphur flask - I believe Sulphur is superior, since it provides similar dps boost, but with the right mods lasts 3 uses instead of 2. You can also roll an additional freeze protection, or curse protection.

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Jewels:

2x Fertile Mind, super cheap, very respectable dps and ES in their respective slots. Once goes between Shadow and Ranger, second one between Ranger and Duelist.


This is what gives a lot of "oomph" to our Molten Strike. You can get ones with this corruption relatively cheap, since we don't care about fire damage.


Rest of the jewels are rare, either normal kind or Abyss jewels. Make sure to have Blind on Hit stat somewhere on one of your jewels.

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Jewels - Watcher's Eye:

Watcher's Eye is a great addition, and a lot cheaper then last league. If you cannot afford Clarity Watcher's, get one with ES Recovery (super cheap) or ES on Hit (more expensive).

Defensive:
Best of the best:
- Gain (12-18)% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield while affected by Clarity

These two I value equally:
- +(20-30) Energy Shield gained for each Enemy Hit while affected by Discipline
- (20-30)% increased Energy Shield Recovery Rate while affected by Discipline

If you are running Purity, then those are also great, but only get them in combination with one of the above Discipline Watcher's:
- (8-12)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage while affected by Purity of Elements
- (8-12)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Lightning Damage while affected by Purity of Elements
Do not get one with Cold damage taken, as it will freeze/chill you more often.

Offensive:
If you are have enough resistances without Purity and run Wrath (this might be hard but is doable), then:
- Damage Penetrates (10-15)% Lightning Resistance while affected by Wrath
And slightly worse, but still good:
- (40-60)% increased Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath

Kill all is the only option since we go non-crit.

You want to take Wicked Ward and Vile Bastion first for that much needed ES boost/stun immunity while leveling, then Profane Bloom and Malediction last.

Level 90 tree

Items to get and order of upgrade for leveling:
Tabula or 5-6L Rare with resists -> Rare
Prismweave -> Cyclopean Coil
Wake of Destruction -> Rainbowstride -> Rare
Lochtonial Caress -> Shaper's Touch
Goldrim -> Doedre's Scorn -> Doedre or Rare
Rare or Le Heup of All -> Rare
Rare -> Astramentis
Screaming Eagle -> Hand of Thought and Motion -> Hand of Wisdom and Action
Any shield with high resistances -> Hand of Wisdom and Action

Passive tree, and how I leveled this build in Incursion:
Go out through Intelligence nodes and go straight for Elemental Overload, then head straight into Templar area to socket your Wildfire jewel there + pick up nodes in that area.
Go out through Intelligence nodes towards your right and pick up Arcing blows and Written in Blood.
Tree

Next, start going down picking up main nodes on your way to Vaal Pact. Socket Static Electricity jewel between Shadow and Ranger.
Tree

Next, take Point Blank and go up towards Sentinel and jewel socket underneath Scion to put your second Wildfire jewel there. You want to connect both sides of your skill tree going under the Witch starting area, respect Int nodes on the left from Witch start, put those points into Witch ES nodes, and unspec Int nodes to the right side of Witch starting area.
Tree

After that, get Ghost Reaver, CI, and work on all the nodes that you've missed so far. Replace Static Electricity with Fertile Mind once you upgrade to HoWA.
Tree

From this point just try to get your tree to look like in the lvl 90 tree at the top of this section.

Aura gems:
Use Herald of Ice and Thunder, replace them with Wrath + Purity of Elements. Once you get mana leech nodes, see if you can run Discipline, Purity and Herald of Thunder. If you struggle to sustain mana, switch off Herald of Thunder, but really, you should be fine.

The following setup with advice on where to socket it is how I have optimized my links. It also saved me a lot of chromes on recoloring. For example, you need 3B 1R on gloves, which makes it easy to recolor your corrupted gloves. High Int boots are all 4B, Helmet is 2B with 2 off colors, you only need 1 off color on one of your HoWA and 2 on the other, both super easy to do using Vorici method. With auras not in your weapons, and Blood Rage in them, you can easily turn off Blood Rage at anytime with a simple weapon swap.

Main (Body):

You last 2 links depend on what content are you doing. For clear, you want:
For bosses, you want:

Keep in mind vs certain bosses, Ancestral Call will work out better then Damage on Full life, for example in Chimera and Elder there is a lot of adds and you want to kill them quickly.

Auras (Boots):

If you have really good gear with loads of resists, you might not need Purity - in that case, use Wrath instead of Purity and Herald of Thunder.

CwDT 1 (Gloves):

This is in order for you not to have to recast the Golem by yourself, Cold Snap slows all enemies for free, and this also casts your curse. I like Enfeeble for super tankiness.
If you have Enfeeble glove corruption, then use Elemental Weakness/Conductivity as your CwDT curse.

CwDT 2 (Weapon 1):

Standard Immortal Call setup. Blood Rage is higher level so that you still have control over it being active or not. Socket this set in your weapons for easy deactivation of Blood Rage with a simple weapon swap.

Movement (Weapon 2):


Totem + Utility (Helmet):

Totem for damage obviously, Culling strike is a nice addition, but you can use Blind as well. I use Vaal Lightning Trap for more shock effect vs bosses, but Vaal Haste will also work. Use whatever setup you are comfortable with.

My current character: https://pastebin.com/F8smxeHU

Very high budget, using my character as base:
https://pastebin.com/1zg4nFTG
Includes HoWA corruptions, 21/20 gems, Watcher's Eye. Not cheap setup, but it can reach over 5 million dps while still maintaining almost 12k ES.

If you are good at using poe.trade, yes. Here's the link to a setup I assembled in less then 20 minutes: https://pastebin.com/NRNBnjxy

And cost breakdown:
2x 11% HoWA - 12c
Helmet - 14c
Chest - 80c for 6L
Boots - 2c
Gloves - 10c
Amulet - 15c
Ring 1 - 5c
Ring 2 - 10c
Belt - 8c

2x Wildfire + 2x Fertile Mind - 5c
Other jewels - probably up to 10-15c

Wise Oak - 5c
Penetration Vinktar - 8c
Other flasks - 5-10c for set

Total: 199c, or 1ex 49c (with 150c = 1ex at time of writing).

What are the benchmarks?
9k ES, 1.2 million Shaper dps with 7 projectiles.