EA, RT, EE, MoM, Acro, Phase Acro, Arctic Armor, "Onion Defense" Scion



Overview:

This character uses an alternative defensive spec than the ubiquitous Blood Magic EA Scion.

While The effective life pool from Life + MoM is not as high for this build as the 8k+ life pool that is available to the BM version, the use of Acrobatics + Phase Acrobatics + Vaal Grace, an physical-elemental damage conversion chest piece and AA scales this effective life pool very well to make a tough character.

This defensive spec can be easily adapted to other offensive skills due to a large number of jewel slots and proximity to other damage nodes. This is also why the Scion start is very important. This build could not be done as efficiently with any other starting class.

Passive skill tree at level 90.

Jewel slots should be Life, mana, fire damage, area damage or projectile damage. My jewels could definitely be optimized.

When leveling I went for jewel slots and RT fastest, then only picked up MoM after I had a good enough mana pool. Acrobatics was last. That was for leveling with EA. If you level with another method do it however you like.

Gear


A +3 bow is used rather than quillrain because EA is a very mana-hungry skill, and rapid mana use doesn't play well with MoM. A +3 bow allows a play style where single volleys of EA are used to clear a pack of mobs rather than trying to stack several charges. This is more mana efficient, and conducive of rapid clear speed.

The chest should be either Cloak of Flame or Lightning Coil to add another layer of defense against big hits, which also synergizes well with Acro/MoM because you're not relying on a high armor rating for mitigation. For boots either Atziri's Step or The Blood Dance work best, though if you go with Blood Dance you'll probably want to drop a couple of elemental damage nodes from the tree to pick up some bonus frenzy charges. I prefer Atziri's Step myself, as the +3 bow provides plenty of damage, and more spell dodge, life, and evasion is better defensively than more life regen.

Jewelry should have life, mana, mana regen, and cover your necessary resists. Stats from jewelry isn't really necessary as the tree provides plenty. If you can pick up more fire damage here it's a cherry on top of the sundae, but isn't a priority at all.

A +1 arrows quiver and +area radius belt corrupted gear is really nice, but not mandatory, though they increase clear speed really nicely.


Links

5L Bow: 21/20 Explosive Arrow (it's expensive, but it's a big damage buff over 20/20 EA) - Fire Penetration - Slow Projectiles (more damage with no AoE penalty, very strong) - LMP (GMP if you don't have +1 arrow) - Empower (level 3 currently, level 4 would be really amazing, but is really amazingly expensive). I swap out faster attacks for LMP for bosses. With a 6th link I would use increased AoE for clearing, and conc effect for bosses.

5L Chest: Lightning Warp - Less Duration - Faster Casting - Curse on Hit - Warlords Mark. This set up is for mobility and auto-cursing to get both leech and end charges. This might be unorthodox, but IMO with EA's delayed kills this kind of set up is very good for increasing mobility and survivability.

4L Helmet: Cast When Damage Taken - Enfeeble - Ball Lightning - Blind. Blind is quite cool for enhancing our mediocre evade rating, and Ball Lightning can hit all of the monsters in a line multiple times, increasing the chance of blinding the monster. That being said, I'm thinking of switching this set-up out for CWDT - Enfeeble - IC - Increased Duration. The build does have pretty exceptional physical mitigation, so I'm honestly not sure how necessary this is.

4L Gloves: Vaal Grace - Rallying Cry - Faster Casting - Increased Duration. Vaal Grace is key for the build, as it makes you nigh-invulnerable in tough situations, so faster casting and increased duration are essential to minimize its chance to get interrupted and maximize its effective time. Rallying Cry is a decent damage buff, but also bumps up mana regen by almost 60, increasing the effectiveness of MoM. The faster casting support does not work with rallying cry because it is a wary cry.

4L Boots: Clarity (mine is level 19, which seems good enough) - Arctic Armor - Portal - Flammability. Flammability is great for getting ignites to take down bosses much faster.


Defenses

Total effective life pool is ~5800 with life and mana together. Mana regeneration keeps the mana pool full so running out is never an issue. The evasion total isn't spectactular, but it's significant. This is one of the reasons why I prefer Atziri's Step over The Blood Dance.

In addition, with Atziri's Step when you pop Vaal Grace you have 73% dodge and 75% (capped) spell dodge. This is like having over 20,000 life against any hits that don't 1-shot you; and it's even higher against physical hits with the Arctic Armor and damage conversion chest piece. This is the main advantage of this build over the "classic" Blood Magic EA scion


Last edited by LeftyLucy on Sep 20, 2015, 9:57:40 PM
Why not have a golem in the last slot of the boots 4L?
"
MauranKilom wrote:
Why not have a golem in the last slot of the boots 4L?


Wouldn't be a bad idea, but my experience with golems is that they die constantly so aren't really worth the hassle of recasting all the time.


Got to a Grandmaster's chest.
Last edited by LeftyLucy on Sep 21, 2015, 1:41:22 PM
Funny thing, I was making a build of my own and stumbled onto yours.

What do you think about this tree?
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwAAOyjylwhnA5abXZM6bj2omr0nYEO-gHvDGDwYVoMJ-ehvnoLHQYfKSvGzKPq3Pl-wS1eYrbiTiFqDzP4Km7XA4xzcXsA8Ldi98kXDOoTF6-6PGsaug1864SLqJIsZiprghTLE9gthplfo1g-rlwZFnXKpr2xN45smBbUWv8SiU1L3MmjyMgGNvwMeJpXmgd-Yu-N82fAffEuyGdQjH0Fh4su9Ylr-uqIAlnTPejBxVUsknQSz4XNh692ojDbTfsBmmjt6U0t45RmksQBePAWCmzpCtDjljhmO73z79e2Dl5cILkV8NZL-jw==

Less mana then your tree, more damage.

Also RT costs 6 points. Is it absolutely necessary? Can get Ranger starting accuracy + Templar accuracy cluster for 4 points. Will also get 9 IAS out of it.
Last edited by azmodael on Nov 11, 2015, 2:45:57 PM

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