[3.6][Hardcore Viable] Soulrend Trickster

- Cheap. There's not a lot of investment required, and aside from Essence Worm to use Malevolence you don't have to spend a lot of currency. This makes it a terrific league starter as you can start to early maps easily on a four-link, switching to a five-link as you progress further.

- Tanky. Being intended for a hardcore audience, the build uses a hybrid (life and energy shield) concept, coupled with evasion, Acrobatics, Phase Acrobatics, and Mind Over Matter (MOM) to mitigate damage. To go along with the previous point, being hybrid means you don't have to worry about spending stupid amounts of currency to get geared for mapping, as you won't be getting CI-based gear.

- Damage Potential. As I said, non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier really made DoTs powerful, and that's no exception here. Soulrend is a very strong skill, which leeches damage to your energy shield. Coupled with the Trickster's natural affinity for boosting damage over time, it's a no-brainer for using it with this skill. It's even tankier than Occultist!

- Two curses. With Bane we can apply our curses to targets in an AoE, damage them, and keep on hitting them. Bane also does a respectable amount of damage by itself, so for leveling and early maps you can use this to clear packs quickly.

- Best MTX in the game. Pick up kitties, fling kitties! You get to map as well as piss off PETA at the same time!

PoB Link: https://pastebin.com/MUFwnbHn

The link shows you the gear I have at the time of this writing, as well as intended linkage. It also provides trees for 30, 60, and 90 points as well as the endgame to help make your leveling a bit easier!

Yes, I know I'm missing some gems. I'm trying to figure out what the final four-link will be.

Soulrend > Greater Multiple Projectiles* > Swift Affliction > Efficacy > Arcane Surge** > Controlled Destruction

Flame Dash > Faster Casting > Summon Chaos Golem

Bane > Despair > Efficacy > Enfeeble***

Malevolence****

Clarity

Vaal Grace*****

*Switch out Greater Multiple Projectiles for Void Manipulation for bossing.
**Keep Arcane Surge at a level where you can reliably proc it with Soulrend alone. Right now, it costs 117 mana per cast for me, and I keep Arcane Surge at level 12 to proc it every cast.
***You can switch out Enfeeble for Temporal Chains. Until you can use your second curse, use Controlled Destruction here.
****Use Malevolence only if you have Essence Worm
*****Don't use Haste, only use Vaal Grace for increased dodge and spell dodge.

BANDITS: I choose to kill all. However, at the beginning of the league choosing to help Alira for mana regeneration and resistances is understandable. Just save up to spec out of this later!

ASCENDANCY PATHING:

Patient Reaper (damage and recovery/tank) > Ghost Dance (tank) > Escape Artist (tank) > Prolonged Pain (damage)

Instead of Prolonged Pain you can do Swift Killer for charge generation and damage, or Weave the Arcane for more tank and mana. Overall, I think Prolonged Pain is the most viable of the choices, as unless you plan to self-cast Blight you're really only going to have charge generation while clearing trash and not on bosses.

PANTHEON: Major is Soul of Lunaris, minor is whatever you want but I choose Shakari for reduced chaos damage and immunity to poison.

[UNIQUES]

Nothing is really mandatory. It's all fluff, but it's fluff that will make the build shine far more than without them. Essence Worm will allow you to run Malevolence without needing to worry about mana reservation (don't use Malevolence without it!). Esh's Visage allows you to reflect shocks inflicted on you to enemies around you, increasing damage output and allows you to prevent chaos damage from bypassing energy shield so long as you aren't on low life or low mana. If you choose this route, you MUST HAVE Essence Worm or you risk getting nuked by sudden chaos damage.

In terms of rare items, your weapon should have "+N% to non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier", where N is...any number. It also would behoove you to try to find spell damage (chaos damage or DoT damage are also pluses!) and cast speed. Wands are great for their implicit spell damage increase, and you can use Aberrant Fossils to craft chaos damage and non-ailment multiplier pretty easily (as well as inflicting Despair on hit, which isn't necessary but is pretty solid in any case). Do not fall into the trap of getting a Breath of the Council; until they add a non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier to it, it's simply worse than any leveling wand you'll find.

For armor: life is the big thing to watch out for. After that, resists capped to 75% and overcapping to at least 120% before low red maps to protect you from Elemental Weakness. Mana is nice, too, for MoM, but don't put it above life or resists. Look for Chaos Resistance as well, though you get some from the tree and Esh's Visage, if you go with it. Movement Speed on boots. In terms of bases, you can go with whatever you want, though you'll want evasion on the chestpiece and energy shield on the helmet (to make use of your ascendancy!). Getting a Belly of the Beast will increase your tank, but good luck coloring it (4B2G).

This has been the strongest, safest build I've run. My guild will tell you day-in and day-out that I RIP constantly. This character, this weekend alone (22 MAR 2019), netted me 4 exalt drops, a Kaom's Heart I sold for 4 exalts, and I'm waiting to sell a beast that makes the portal to Fenemus. I have had no problems with tanking anything, and I haven't had to hit my logout macro more than five times since hitting maps. It's very error-friendly and forgiving of mistakes. Plus it's a fun build, fast at mapping and delving.

Overall, I haven't put too much currency into the build. The chestpiece cost me 49C, and I used 5C to roll it. Esh's Visage was 30C. The weapon I spent 80C on. The belt took about 15C to roll. The rest of the gear was under 5C each. You don't have to spend this much though, and you will make it back very quickly, I promise!

For the record, I used twink gear to level. That took me about five hours, but I was engaging in the league mechanics as well. Without twink gear, running with friends, and not running the mechanics you could feasibly do it in four hours, and even without friends or waypoint help you could do it in the same timeframe.

Reserved to be updated!

Reserved to be updated!

Reserved to be updated!

Reserved to be updated!