[3.7] Vaal Spark Pathfinder - Just run through content (MF Option)

Nothing Changed, build is still viable !

Monolith side note: To generate vaal charges during the first phase of the monolith, you'll need a Chill Of Corruption Jewel (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Chill_of_Corruption).

So let's talk about the basics. How does the build works ?

First, you need to understand to any reduced and/or increased duration to a spell applies to the soul gain prevention of the vaal skill.
If you add increased duration to a spell, the time you'll not be able to gain soul for the vaal skill will be longer and vice versa.

To reduce the soul gain prevention duration we are using 2 Hazardous Research jewels with 20% reduced spark duration and a Soul Catcher with 40% reduced Soul Gain Prevention Duration(DO NOT use the upgraded version of that flask !) BOTH ARE MANDATORY ITEMS



And to stack up multiple uses of the Vaal Skill we use "Reduced Soul Cost of Vaal Skills" mod. (+ the reduced soul cost from the flask)
We can get those on weapons thanks to fossils. At least one weapon with this mod is kinda mandatory


We also make use of the PF ascendancy and the Conqueror's Potency to buff the effects of the Soul Catcher flask.

Ok, now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to the leveling section !

I'd recommend leveling as a bow character. Use lightning arrow then switch to Rain of Arrows, use Barrage or Scourge Arrow for single target.
Pretty basic stuff. There is multiple guides out there on how to level as a bow character, so I'm not going to explain much more than that ! :p

Use leveling gear such as Tabula, Goldrim, Thief's Torment etc... if it's not your first character of the league.

Alright, now let's move on to the gear.

- Helm -
For the helm, a rare one with 30% increased Spark Projectile Speed enchant.
Aim for life and resists
You can also use The Gull. It really helps with clear speed with the small shrines that it spawns.

- Weapons -
For the weapons, the only necessary mod is 20% reduced Souls Cost of Vaal Skills.
Shaped Daggers are BiS because of the Crit Chance they have as implicit.
Other usefull stats are Spell Damage, Damage to Spells, Critical Strike Chance for Spells, Elemental Penetration, Lightning Damage.
And with the crafting rework in Betrayal you now craft a lot of useful mods (Arcane Surge, Spell Damage/Extra Chaos...)


- Amulet -
For the Amulet the budget version would be a Bisco's.
BiS would be a shaped amulet with 10% quantity, life, spell damage, crit chance/multiplier and eventually resists.


- Body Armour -
QUEEN OF THE FOREST ! NOTHING ELSE !
This is where all the speed comes from. Plus it gives life and resists, what more do you want ?


- Rings -
For the rings I'd recommend a Ventor's Gamble (to cap out your resists) and a Pariah with a white sockets.
If you don't have the funds for these rings, just use rare ones with life and resists until you can afford them.


- Gloves -
For the gloves you can use Sadima's Touch for the quantity or rare ones with life and resists, or Shadows and Dust for the rampage bonus if you don't wear a Bisco's Leash in your belt slot.


- Belt -
Here you can use a Bisco's Leash with the sweat Rampage bonus.
Or a Perandus Blazon.
Best option would be a corrupted belt with %quantity as implicit, but it's really expensive.

If you have the funds you could also use a Headhunter, which is really the best option here as it gives you so many buffs (movespeed, damage etc...)


- Boots -
Goldwyrm, basic MF boots.
Or rare ones with life and resists if you're poor ! :p


- Flasks -
For the Flasks we're gonna use a Soul Catcher, a Jade Flask to get more evasion for the QoTF, a Diamond Flask for crit chance, a Quicksilver for movespeed and a Vessel of Vinktar for the leech and damage boost (Penetration or Damage to spells, both are fine but Penetration might be better in terms of DPS)


- Jewels -
And for the Jewels you'll want to use 2 Hazardous Research, a Conqueror's Potency to increase the bonuses of our flasks and an Abyss Jewel with the %chance to gain Onslaught on kill mod for the sweat sweat onslaught buff !
Stats for rare jewels are : Spell Damage, Crit Chance/Multi, Cast Speed, Life%

Non mandatory jewels are a Watcher's Eye with the Movement Speed mod with Grace and an Intuitive Leap to grab the node that allows us to generate Frenzy, Power and Endurance charges.

- Helm -
For the helm, a rare one with 30% increased Spark Projectile Speed enchant.
Aim for life and resists
You can also use The Gull. It really helps with clear speed with the small shrines that it spawns.


- Weapons -
For the weapons, the only necessary mod is 20% reduced Souls Cost of Vaal Skills.
Shaped Daggers are BiS because of the Crit Chance they have as implicit.
Other usefull stats are Spell Damage, Damage to Spells, Critical Strike Chance for Spells, Elemental Penetration, Lightning Damage.
And with the crafting rework in Betrayal you now craft a lot of useful mods (Arcane Surge, Spell Damage/Extra Chaos...)


- Amulet -
For the amulet, you can use either a rare one with Life, Crit Chance, Crit Multi, Spell damage...
Or you can use a Solstice Vigil if you have a Headhunter. Because, with this amulet, your buff are twice as long than normal, and it gives a free Temporal Chains curse !
Or you can also use a Victario's Acuity, it helps with charges generation, gives great damage boost and you can also get a good corruption on it since it's a cheap unique amulet !

Note on Victario's Acuity: If you chose this option, you can drop the Intuitive Leap jewel and the Overcharged node. And you can respec this jewel slot on the one near the Shadow start to get 20 more dexterity points, thus granting you a bit more evasion rating.
Instead of Intuitive Leap you can use a rare jewel.


- Body Armour -
QUEEN OF THE FOREST ! NOTHING ELSE !
This is where all the speed comes from. Plus it gives life and resists, what more do you want ?


- Rings -
For the rings I'd recommend a rare Opal Ring (for the elemental damage). Aim for Life and Resists.
And also a Call Of The Brotherhood. It gives a great damage boost, some resistances and it also gives us Lightning to Cold conversion, which is helpful because you can swap out your Added Cold Damage gem for Controlled Destruction and still shatter enough !


- Gloves -
For the gloves you can use Shadows and Dust for the rampage bonus. Rampage gives 1% increased movement speed and 2% increased damage per 20 stacks and Rampage stacks to 1000 !
So it is a great damage/MS boost !

- Belt -
Here you can use a rare stygian vise belt with Life and Resists. You can also try to fossil craft it and get +%Elemental Damage on it. And it also grants us another abyss jewel slot !

If you have the funds you could also use a Headhunter, which is really the best option here as it gives you so many buffs (movespeed, damage etc...)


- Boots -
Rare boots with Life, Resists and Movement Speed are the best option here !


- Flasks -
For the Flasks we're gonna use a Soul Catcher, a Jade Flask to get more evasion for the QoTF, a Diamond Flask for crit chance, a Quicksilver for movespeed and a Vessel of Vinktar for the leech and damage boost (Penetration or Damage to spells, both are fine but Penetration might be better in terms of DPS)


- Jewels -
And for the Jewels you'll want to use 2 Hazardous Research, a Conqueror's Potency to increase the bonuses of our flasks and an Abyss Jewel with the %chance to gain Onslaught on kill mod for the sweat sweat onslaught buff !
Stats for rare jewels are : Spell Damage, Crit Chance/Multi, Cast Speed, Life%

Non mandatory jewels are a Watcher's Eye with the Movement Speed mod with Grace and an Intuitive Leap to grab the node that allows us to generate Frenzy, Power and Endurance charges.

- Single Target Help -
To help with the single target DPS I use a Vaal Storm Call setup. I use it when I encounter the boss or a Betrayal Event.

Vaal Storm Call - Concentrated Effect - Increased Critical Strikes - Less Duration


- Spark Setup -
Pretty basic Spark links :

Vaal Spark - Increased Critical Strikes - Increased Critical Damage - Added Cold Damage - Pierce - Faster Projectiles
(If you have Lightning to Cold conversion (Call of the Brotherhood ring) swap out Added Cold Damage for Controlled Destruction. If you don't have Lightning to Cold conversion, you'll not shatter enough !)


- Auras -
We'll be using Herald of Ice for the shatter and Grace for the bonus evasion (more movespeed) and for the Watcher's Eye mod (more movespeed).

Herald of Ice - Innervate - Increased Area of Effect - Enlighten

Grace - Enlighten

Level 3 Enlightens will be enough to be comfortable.

If you can't afford 2 Englighten gems drop the Innervate or Increased Area of Effect with your Herald of Ice and should have enough mana to play comfortably.

Another option is to add Herald of Thunder to the build. You can do it by linking Grace and Herald of Thunder to a level 4 enlighten, (It kinda is necessary to have enough mana to be comfortable, best would be 2 but one is enough in my opinion) and by using a more usual Curse on Hit setup with Herald of Ice. We use Assassin's Mark as it gives Power charges generation and great survivability.

Herald of Ice - Curse on Hit- Assasin's Mark - Enlighten

Grace - Enlighten Level 4 - Herald of Thunder


- CWDT Setup -
Pretty basic stuff. I just added a Curse for more utility, it's really just a matter of personnal preferences, you can change the curse as you like.

Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Temporal Chains

If you have a Solstice Vigil amulet :

Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Blasphemy - Temporal Chains

- Utility -
I chose to run Flame Dash and Phase Run linked to Blood Magic. Doing that i'm able to use both those skills during mapping.
Because the Soul Catcher flask prevents us from gaining mana, you'll run out of mana if you use the skills. Linking them to Blood Magic allows us to use them without spending mana, so you can spam them in your map ! :)

Flame Dash - Phase Run - Blood Magic


- Spare Links -
For the spare links I use a Portal Gem (really useful) and a Lightning Golem for the bonus cast speed.

Alira for resists and Crit Multi.
Kill them all for the 2 skill points is also a good option, do as you prefer.

Level 92 Tree : www.poeurl.com/ckV8

Note : If you have an Intuitive Leap jewel put it to the right of the Witch starting point and grab the "Overcharged" node to generate charges.
If you don't have one just spec into a 5% life node above the witch starting point.

https://pastebin.com/8ZMDisZ9
You can also find my gear under the "My Gear" section.

Major : Soul of Lunaris (more survavibility)
Minor : Soul of Garukhan (more movement speed) or Soul of Shakari (poison immunity)

My Magic Find Gear :


My Non-MF Gear :

T7 Arcade : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzh68hUDlwM

T16 Elder Toxic Sewer : https://youtu.be/5JRbxaAnYGc

T16 Elder Toxic Sewer with Headhunter and Non-MF gear : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9dEsMw7EJ8&feature=youtu.be

Note on farming T16: Even though I did it deathless with my MF gear in the video, I would highly recommend investing in some more life/defenses to be safer. You can easily get one shot by the syndicate members.

More Coming Soon

When you start a map you won't have charges for your Vaal Spark.
To generate them just kill one or two packs of mobs, but DO NOT USE YOUR SOUL CATCHER FLASK UNTIL YOU'VE KILLED ONE OR TWO PACKS OF MOBS !!

Otherwise, you'll run out of mana and you'll have to wait for the Soul Catcher Flask to run out to regen mana and start killing mobs again.

So just kill some mobs, then pop your Soul Catcher and you'll be ready to go !

08/01/2019: Added a Video, corrected some typos and added the HeadHunter option for the belt.
10/01/2019: Added a T16 video. Added 2 more gear options (gloves and belt)
11/01/2019 : Added the Pantheon section
19/01/2019 : Added a Non-MF Gear/My Gear section; Changed Gem Links; Updated Gear
21/01/2019 : Added Another Video
08/03/2019 : Updated the PoB Link/Tree
25/06/2019 : Added monolith note for Legion league