[2.2] Culler-support. Now also budget! - Full MF | 12.6kES | 7 Auras + Guardian

In patch 2.1, you decided your build, you decided your threshold for defense/offense, and then min-max it. But now we really have a choice, no class is the "absolute best" and each of them has a trade-off. Having said that, I consider guardian-templar to be the strongest among them.

Witch has the best passive tree but scion, and especially templar have better ascendancy subclasses.

Having worse tree implies:
1-Less energy shield
2-Slightly less rarity (from jewels)
3-Core tree is delayed. You will need higher level to have the same auras and culling capacities. In exchange you get other things that are either useless or not so useful for the class.

Descriptive and comprehensive overview


Quantitative summary

This build is very tanky, thanks to high energy shield. Sadly, traps do %max energy shield damage, so you a character with 6k es can die after 2 traps in normal difficulty. Obviously best is to just avoid them, but human mistakes exist.

1-Regen. (vitality aura)
2-Mobility. Haste is the other aura that should be used. Combine quicksilvers with flame dash /whirling blades/ lightning warp + reduced duration.
3-If you have levelled as life-based, keep like that until you have finished your ascendancy class. Having access to life flasks is amazing.
4-Even if you have levelled as ES, don't get bloodmagic until you have finished you have finished your ascendancy class. Having access to life flasks is amazing
5- Traps are physical damage, so it's damage should be able to be reduced/blocked. This is just a guess, could someone test whether it works or not?, it would be really useful to now. If that were the case, you can bring armour, chaos golem, granite flask, %chance to block, endurance charges, immortal call.

Tested: 6k armour reduced the dmg I took from spike traps by around 25%. Remember that after first 2 ascendancy points, you get base armour by reserving hp. So, using determination + bloodmagic can be a good choice if your es is very high.

This build has 2 goals: Culling and supporting.

Culling is the way to go if you want to get rich, but don't want to play pathoftrade. Also, for some reason there isn't much cullers out there, and every good party needs 1 culler.

Supporting in a 6 man endgame party is very apreciated. Previous iterations of the build focused on giving party extra dps, now that auras have been nerfed we have to focus on defensive auras. Why defensive auras? Because endgame content hasn't gained much hp, so dps isn't a issue. But they hit hard, so triple purities + discipline + vitality +grace are the best auras you can use for safe leveling. Again, for some reason there isn't much aurabots there, and every good party benefits greatly from 1.

Last goal of the build is to be as tanky as posible: a dead culler is a bad culler. Also, the build uses totems to cull, so you don't need to facetank anything and can stand at range.

Culls
180 IIQ and 391 IIR(with my standard gear).
Culling spell is flame totem. 2 totems x 7 projectiles, 10 cast per second and 69% projectile speed

Party Buffs
+14% increased movement speed (lvl 20 haste)
+26% attack and cast speed (lvl 20 haste)
+6% maximum fire, cold and lightning res (lvl 20 purity of fire, ice and lightning)
+68% to fire, cold and lightning res (lvl 20 purity of fire, ice and lightning)
+4274 base evasion, multiplied by increased evasion modifiers (lvl 20 grace)
+637 base energy shield, multiplied by increased energy shield modifiers (lvl 26 discipline)
+3.23% of hp regenerated each second (lvl 26 vitality)
+18% increased curse effect (dying breath from animated guardian)
+33% increased damage (leer cast + dying breath from animated guardian)

Tankyness (With my gear)
32% increased flask effect duration, 30% increased flask effect. <-- Do not overlook this, with high clearspeed is insane.
5% physical damage reduction (39% with rumi's flask)
6150 evasion
12.607 energy shield
408 energy shield regenerated per second
81% fire and cold res
82% light res
-60% chaos res
31% chance to block (75 with rumi's)
0% chance to block spells (26 with rumi's)
2105 life, 35% stun recovery
23% movement modifier

No levelling tree. Use your own leveling path, pick the dps passives you consider necessary and use a few refunds to transition to the build when you think you are ready.

Below I show some core trees that let you achieve certain breakpoints in the build, with the minimum point investment. Bear in mind that, depending on your gear, you might want to take some energy shield nodes before finishing any of the core trees.

Templar trees. Witch tree at the end.

Pre-shavs core tree
http://tinyurl.com/hy76tc5

Double totem. Maximum supporting capabilities pre-shavs.

A basic skeleton tree.

Core tree (lvl 65)
http://tinyurl.com/jsm4n76

Also getting bloodmagic and the aura nodes nearby.
Transition to this when you purchase a shavs (or solaris lorica if you are happy enough with your es pool).


Endgame tree (lvl 94)
http://tinyurl.com/jofpahv
Same as core tree, but with more defenses and flask nodes


Witch tree
Use the templar endgame tree, but skip the templar starting points. Use the free points on the es wheel and/or jewels.

Kill all bandits. You can choose all res in normal (depending on your gear) and +1 end. charge (if you have a closed group that consistently generates charges)

Culling spell


Defense with flasks (7s duration)


Defense without flasks

Armour (culling spell)


Auras

Utilities

My gear


IIQ vs IIR


Gearing indications

Tier 1. Must have
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Energy_From_Within
Put it near the passive called Melding

Tier 2. Recommended
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Conqueror's_Efficiency
This is NOT needed at all, but it's a good quality of life improvement. I gained 100 unreserved hp, which makes casting spells and keeping flask up an easier task.

Tier 3. Rare jewels
All of them must have 8% increased maximum energy shield.
Then if you need str/dex/resistances, I recommend getting them from jewels.
After that there is a bunch of luxury mods which are IIR, int, energy shield recharge and cast speed. Just buy whatever you find that suits you, this build is not jewel dependant at all (the total price of all my jewels is less than 20c).

Tier 4. Optional
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Rain_of_Splinters
The reason I'm putting this into optional whereas some other cullers put it on essential is because I don't think it's necessary. I'll go as far as saying it's subpar.

My totems fire 7 projectiles and already covers a huge area, we don't really need more. I just tested with a friend on pvp, and the extra angle is barely noticeable.

The only situation in which more projectiles are useful is when there is a lot of trash mobs, and chances are that those aren't culled anyway. So, my opinion is that they are useful, but rare jewels are better.

I don't think I can record videos, but I can take some screenshots of loot.
As I said in the previous section, I decided to go all in in IIQ. Those screenshots were taken with 205IIQ + 283IIR.

IMPORTANT
First of all, do NOT quality your distillate, 0Q is better. Higher quality increases the hp/mana recovered per second, so it becomes harder to keep flask up (when you are full hp and mana, flask effect is finished).

About culling gameplay
There are two things which I consider important:

1. Clearspeed > culls.
2. Quality of life > culls

Which basically means you shouldn't get obsessed trying to cull every single monster with distillate up.
Of course, not everyone shares my vision, but I would say this is more true the more you progress. When you have little to no gear you play very focused, trying to get the max out of it. But when you are pretty well geared and next gear upgrade takes dozens of hours, you tend to a more "disconnected" playstyle.

When I play I perma-spam a 70% movement speed quicksilver and usually walk up a bit ahead of my party, so I find a good place to cast totems in advance (at the side of packs, maximizing AoE and avoiding corners/terrain). I'm not very concerned about keeping the flask buff up on trash, only on bosses, exiles and the occasional high hp rare. I do that because of my lazyness, but also because the clearspeed of the people I play forces me to.

In a not-so-op party, you should do more or less the same. Except you probably will "down the cut" (I'm not a native speaker, so I don't know if that's correct). Basically you probably will want to keep your hp down on yellows and blues too. And you won't need to run ahead of your party because you'll have plenty of time to decide where to place totems.

Emptying life for tryhards
I don't recommend it to any sane person, but you can combine distillate with http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Blood_of_the_Karui for higher accuracy on distillate buff. Cast 2 totems, wait for enemy to be low hp, use distillate and use karui.
You trade higher distillate uptime for a flask slot (maybe even 2, because you might run into hp problems if you abuse this method)

Emptying mana for lazy guys
Ideally (if you have room for utility spells) you cast one spamable spell with fast cast speed and high mana cost. If you don't have gem room for that, you have to keep recasting totems, which is not as good because it screws totem positioning a bit, and sometimes interrupt the spells of the replaced totem. Recasting totem isn't bad (it's what I do), but having a utility spell is better.

About having enough hp to cast
Right now I have 337 hp unreserved (without conqueror's efficiency), and lvl 20 FT cost 91 mana, so I have a minimum of 3 casts per flask usage. We have 32% increased flask duration so each flask last 6.6s (20 from belt, 12 from tree). Let's suppose you don't have enlightens, and can only hold 2 usages per flask.

I said a minimum of 3 casts because on those 6.6s totems are free (unless your party is really fast and you can't afford to standstill, but if that's the case you never have flask shortage problems). Because totems lasts 8s, this leaves your party with 14.6s to gain 20 flask charges. To me, that's more than enough, but if party is too slow you have different solutions:



a. Carry more than one distillate (a life flask can be a poor-man alternative).
b. Don't use zealot
c. Play the mana version
d. Be a glass cannon and run dmg auras with generosity.
e. Keep your flame totem at a lower level. <--Not recommended, because it's hard not to get full hp, losing the whole distillate effect (which in turn can increase your hp problems). Use option a. instead

First and foremost, I don't recommend my build for starters, unless you have some old friends that you play with. Given the state of public parties, a group build when you don't have regulars can be very annoying. I also recommend reading all the other chapters before this one.

After this warning, let me say that this budged version isn't really a budged version, more like a way to get to endgame that I think can be good (but I don't have first hand experience with it). You could use anything else and then respec.
Also, prices are really variable, so if you see a good deal, buy it.

If you don't use http://poe.trade/, you are already taking too long :D

Step 1

Buy list. Reference prices are for standard.
1-Goldywrm boots, top iiq roll (non legacy <1alch)
2-Sadima's touch, top iiq roll (non legacy <1alch)
3-Perandus blazon, top iiq roll (non legacy <1alch)
4-Close to 50 IIR energy shield helmet (1-5c, depends on what you get)
5-Item quantity gem (1ex)
6-Heartbreaker (1alch, buy one which is already 3L to save fusing)
7-50+ IIR amulet and rings. (10-1ex, depends on what you get)
8-Divination distillate, aim for decent rolls (30-40c)

Farm dried lake in public parties/friends. Use this tree
http://tinyurl.com/jnv3hau. For links, use a 4L: flame totem, IIQ, IIR, GMP. For auras, run discipline and then, if no one else is running them, prioritise damage auras (hatred/wrath/anger/haste). At this level dying is not that important.

If the party is retarded (ie doesn't follow any pattern when clearing or they use some culling attack like power siphon) just leave. If you get "The brittle emperor" card, I buy them for 2ex20c, but you can sell it for 3ex to other players.

Keep using all the currency you get to buy upgrades. I can't help with prices here, because they are too variable, but slowly aim for legacy iiq+iir gear.

Step 2
You can keep farming dried lake forever, or jump to maps. I think that map give less currency than lake until you have high end friends and gear. But.. it's a more diversified gameplay, and the route you must take if you want to level. You don't want to get to lvl 100 on lake, don't you? :D


Buy list
1- 5L shavs. No need to 6L, faster casting is only necessary on high end parties, I doubt many people has cast times lower than 0.16s.
And no, for god sake, don't go solaris lorica. Shav price is dropping each week, if you have to farm lake for 1-2 more weeks, do so.

Since you also expect to level, you need some defences now. Get high energy shield, and cap resistances (you will be using 3x purities now, so capping res is easy).


After getting shavs, you can get the bloodmagic keystone to massively increase the number of auras you can use. At this point, you have pretty much the same build that me, but with less numbers.

You can run a similar build by going mana instead of bloodmagic, but for group play bloodmagic is stronger. By going mana you lose 2 50% auras (haste and grace) or one 50% aura and empower. The biggest advantage of the mana variant is that it can solo, while maintaining a high tankyness.

My friend Kaoms Heart has written a nice build of this variant at https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1080666
I'm not sure about some of his choices, but I know he is a great build designer, so you can trust his experience on the matter.

Mana vs bloodmagic highlights
+Mana has the highest tankyness I've seen for a viable solo MF build
+Mana has slightly more ES
-Mana can't do bloodmagic map mod, and it's weaker to no-regen map mods
-Mana has less suport capacities
-Mana has slightly less clearspeed (no haste) and/or less tankyness (no grace)

Updated 3-9-2014

Tags: Endgame. Culler. Support. Double totem. Strong auras. low life. Group play. Farmer.

This is an endgame build. Its main focus is culling with double totems, and uses free passives to support party, while keeping itself beefy.


Pros & cons

1.2 nerfs

My stats (screenshots)

Aura costs

Bandits
Kill them all

Gearing indications

Passive Tree


Divination distillate mechanics <-- very important when having one!
DON'T ADD QUALITY TO DISTILLATE. 0% IS BEST
When you are top healed, your extra iiq/iir from flask vanishes (with my rolls 80iir, 32 iiq, 7% max resis). MF bonus from flask is HUGE, so I need to make sure I can keep it up, and I can do it comfortably. That means having a decent amount of unreserved hp.

First I describe each spell advantages and disadvantage from a culling perspective, then give my global opinion after all spells have been commented.
Don't go straight to the end, because you won't understand it.

Incinerate

Links: 1. Incinerate 2. Spell totem 3. IIQ 4.IIR 5. GMP 6. Faster projectiles 7. Faster casting

+Very high cast speed (0,14s)
+Long range
+Good AoE
+Fast projectile speed
+Easy to notice what's being hit and what's not
+Very low mana cost (36)

-Very low mana cost

Flame totem

Links: 1. FT 2. IIQ 3.IIR 4.GMP 5. Faster projectiles 6. Faster casting 7. Whatever you please (blind, totem ele resist, power charge on crit + conduit passive, knockback, etc.)

+The only one who performs well with 5L (4L in new leagues)
+Highest cast speed (0.09s)
+High mana cost
+Good AoE
+Fast projectile speed
+Easy to notice what's being hit and what's not
+Does some damage (~800). This is only useful when running with those people who don't know what are you doing and think you can miss culls on boss, so they stop attacking it at 15% hp (in the end they only make if more difficult for you because you can run out of flask...)

-Lower range than incinerate
-High mana cost

Ball lightning

Links: 1. BL 2. Spell totem 3.IIQ 4.IIR. 5. GPM. 6. Faster casting 7. ¿Increased AOE? I don't deeply know the mechanics to afirm Inc. Aoe is best 7th slot, but seems so.

+Huge AoE
+Mana cost can be adjusted to fit your needs (you can use any level of the gem keeping same effectiveness).

-Very slow cast speed (0.37 with Faster casting)
-Very slow projectile speed (takes a while to reach the desired target)
-Difficult to see what's being hit and what's not.
-Higher mana cost than incinerate

Arc
Arc's behaviour seems like a worse version of BL, it doesn't worth more words than that.

My conclusions
Knowing what makes each spell strong or weak is good, but in the end you will have to test each skill by yourself and decide. At the current patch the decision is primarily driven by how easy you keep your life low for flask, while being able to follow party and avoding monster attacks.

Despite that, I can give general advices based on which party are you at:

For slow parties
BL is probably the way to go. The main disadvantages of BL are the low cast speed and the low projectile speed. In a fast party enemies would be dead before being hit by BL, but this isn't a problem when party is slow. If party is so damn slow you cannot sustain your hp pool switch to incinerate (or just leave party seriously, WTF are they doing?)

For fast parties
This is my typical scenario, I would like to go incinerate, but I choose flame totem instead. I can keep my life low by permanently spamming curse or any other spell, but that forces me to be static and I cannot follow party. Also I cannot replace totems or I get to full again rather fast.

With my 110 mana cost on FT, I can keep moving most of the time. This might not be necessary in n ew leagues, where replacing IIQ with another gem could make the mana cost of incinerate high enough.As I stated before, test and decide between incinerate and FT.

For insanely fast parties
Some parties kill and run so fast that you barely have time to chase them (I'm looking at you, LL ST). In that scenario, just resign and assume flask will be only up for map boss. Ignoring flask, you'll get better results with incinerate because of its higher range and projectile speed than FT.

For boss runs (Dominus, Piety)
Go FT, no doubt here. Highest aps and life, you don't need anything else.

At the time I made the build, I thought it was #1 culler build, considering how you could stack mf in every piece of gear but shield, and pack amazing utility with low risk of being killed.

Then as I played more and more 78s maps, I realised all uberbuilds casted auras themselves, so mines were useless when playing with them. Still the build had good culls and good survival. We'll see how meta evolves this time.

The build at its perfection, is probably the most expensive ever, as you want to get a bunch of legacy mirrored rares and some legacy uniques. But, as most builds, works fine without that insane amount of currency sink.

My stats. (Self buff, lvl 19/20 gems)



The goals


Culler, suport, or both?



Passive tree.



The gear


The gems and links



Basic cull tips.


Special mentions
.