[3.4 Ready] Shattergasm | Full Conversion Crit Blade Vortex by Baumi

Changes to this build in 3.4 are very minor, it's almost not worth talking about:

The changes to Shield Charge don't justify to change to another skill in my opinion, especially looking at the other options and how fluid they feel.

This is an indirect nerf towards Brightbeak though by reducing the effectiveness of Base Attack Speed on the overall Shield Charge Speed.

This change makes other weapons feel better on a clearspeed focused version
of BV like this one (Hello Shaper-Weapons), Brightbeak will still be the fastest weapon but since the actual movement part (as stated in the 3.4 Patchnotes, Shield Charge now has three distinct parts) now only scales with movement speed and GLOBAL Attack Speed increases other weapons are not at a disadvantage in ONE out of the THREE phases.



This build also gains 2% Area Damage and one node got changed from spell and attack damage to global damage which means we gain 14% increased damage on the heralds.

-Get enough Blade Vortex DPS to kill bosses and tanky rares quickly

-Convert it into Elemental Damage for easier scaling and Elementalist synergy

-Scale Herald Damage a bit

-Run at a pack with a few stacks of Blade Vortex

-Use the Elementalist Proliferation to make Elemental Ailments (required for Herald procs) chain
through whole packs

-The whole pack dies from Herald (and later also Inpulsa) on kill effects

-For Bosses whip out your Vaal Blade Vortex and chugg your Flasks

Note that these are including my real gear from different points of progression

Bandit Reward: Kill all for 2 points (Alira possible if you drop 2 points or a jewel somewhere)

LVL 75: https://pastebin.com/ps4N40sB

LVL 86: https://pastebin.com/diNd1SyZ

LVL 94: https://pastebin.com/XvqAg15k

LVL 100 Skilltree for Reference: www.poeurl.com/bY7H

On this one it would be an option to trade the Nullification cluster for the Alira reward

Main Skill:

Vaal Blade Vortex-Physical to Lightning-Increased Critical Strikes-Controlled Destruction-Hypothermia-Increased Area of Effect

There seems to be some debate wether you should use Inc AoE or Inc Duration as your 6th link because of the synergy with Vaal Blade Vortex. Personally i think Vaal BV is too slow for me to scale it as a map clearing build, i mainly use it as temporary Damage steroid vs. tanky map bosses (say 50% monster life + 40% all Res) else it helps me finish normal bosses even during its normal duration. I use Inc AoE for better feeling map clear.

Heralds:

Herald of Ice

Herald of Ice-Innervate-Ice Bite-Hypothermia

This Herald is responsible for 80% of your clearspeed so we treat it well with a juicy 4L setup.
Innervate adds flat Lightning Damage and shock chance (important since getting Heralds to crit is not easy and this increases damage taken by the enemy and keeps Herald of Thunder going, if you are using Inpulsa this is another GLOBAL source of shock but that doesn't matter to much as an Elementalist) to Herald of Ice and grants the Innervation Buff granting flat added Lighting Damage to all of your Skills. Ice Bite lets you generate Frenzy Charges and adds flat Cold Damage and also flat Cold Damage per Frenzy Charge to Herald of Ice, Hypothermia is a FAT more multiplier because we basically always chill enemies. Overall this is just a mad juiced up Herald with some nice Buff automation.

Herald of Thunder/Herald of Ash

Herald of Thunder-Curse on Hit-Assassin's Mark-/-Herald of Ash

Herald of Thunder with the Curse on hit Setup grants you Power Charges on kill and makes enemies more susceptible to critical strikes. Herald of Ash's on kill effect is not a hit and is also not very desirable for us so we don't need to link it with anything, but we keep it for the "15% of Physical gained as extra Fire Damage" and the Elementalist bonus Penetration.

Movement:

Shield Charge

Shield Charge-Faster Attacks-Fortify

Your main movement ability, granting the Fortify Buff on hit

Flame Dash + Optional Portal Gem

Flame Dash-Arcane Surge-/-Portal

This more of a convinience setup it let's you traverse gaps and elevation and grants Arcane Surge on cast, also casting a Portal anywhere is practical, you could freely replace this but once you get used to using it you get addicted!

Defensive Setup

Cast when Damage taken LVL 1-Immortal Call LVL 3-Warlord's Mark LVL 5-Frost Bomb LVL 10

We get alot of Endurance charges while clearing and are specced into skill duration Immortal Call will save you more often than not, Warlord's Mark is for additional Mana and Life Sustain against harder targets or when your Boot Enchantment is not up. Frost Bomb reduces Enemy Cold Resistance by a flat 25% and doesn't lose effectiveness vs. bosses since its not a curse also it reduces Enemy Life regen by 75%, almost half our Damage is Cold so this one is a neat trick for additional Damage.

Get a 20% Quality BV or even better VAAL BV->20% Quality = 10% AoE


Tabula Rasa or 5L Inpulsa, because links are damage


Hrimsorrow, to convert 50% of your Physical Damage to Cold Damage


Brightbeak, for fast movement


Cheap Spellcrit-Shield or Unyielding Flame, for the uuuh crit?



String of Servitude with Skill Effect Duration or Courrupted Life-Res Belt with Skill Effect Duration, so you dont need to recast BV all the time



Atziri's Promise, basically free, twice as effective because we convert our Damage, Chaos Res AND Leech

->Having the Skill Effect Duration Node Cluster West of Scion specced

->Rest of the gear is the usual drill of as much life as possible while capping your res

I aimed for a build that plays as smoothly as possible even in high Tier maps
since i mostly run T12-15

So i looked at things that would annoy me personally and maybe you'll agree:


->I DESPISE Mind over Matter, especially with low avoidance like the top side of the tree suffers from, you'll get hit alot be out of mana and die to a two-shot because you either can't cast your spell or dodge with a movement-skill

-->No MoM for this build, we solve our defense more elegantly


->In line with that, beeing out of Mana in general is nothing i want in my silky smooth build sooo i fixed that in a few ways:

-> 0,5% of Mana regenerated from the Pure Talent Viridian Jewel
-> for gaining the Templar bonus of said jewel i skipped the Spell Damage nodes and instead went for the 0,4% Life regen plus Mana regen rate nodes which end in a 5% Mana + 5% Life node
-> Several nodes that we path over anyways have Mana regen rate on them
-> "0,6 of Damage leeched as Life and Mana if you've killed recently" Boot Enchantment for mapping
-> CwDt Warlord's Mark for Bosses

-->Enough Mana regen and Leech in every situation, i got you covered


->Fast clearing builds feel great to me so i skipped the Shaper stat-sticks on my main setup
in favour of a Brightbeak

-->If you want more damage you put the stat-sticks on your mainhand and clearing setup on the offhand, you have enough damage for T15 bosses on a Brightbeak though


->Two unique Jewels:

Pure Talent and Intuitive Leap


We use the Templar, Shadow and of course Witch bonuses of Pure Talent:
->+0,5% BASE crit
-> 5% penetration of all elemental resistances
-> 0,5% of maximum Mana regenerated per second

And use Intuitve Leap to allocate:
-> Overcharged: 8% chance to generate a Power, Frenzy or Endurance Charge on kill
-> Melding 10% Maximum ES (meh) and 6% Maximum Life
-> Dreamer 25% inc Maximum Mana and 15% Mana reg rate furthering our Mana sustain

->New Vaal Implicits
Oh yeah you heard right, it seems as if most people haven't yet realized how powerful they are
but I and now you do. A few examples:

->up to 20% inc AoE on 1H Maces


->up to 0,8% Spell Basecrit on Gloves


->up to 15% Skill Effect Duration on Belts


Full list of new Corruptions: http://poedb.tw/us/mod.php?cn=MapFragment

6k HP

more if you invest heavily into it, less if you don't at all


3 Endurance Charges + Immortal Call

via Overcharged and Warlord's Mark


Fortify

with very high uptime since we are scaling duration


4,7% Life Regen per second

equates to around 280 HP per second which doesn't sound like a ton but when you encounter stuff like traps and degens (bleed, desecrated ground, burning ground, poison) you'll learn to appreciate it


Leech

2% Warlord's Mark leech, 0,6% Boots leech, Atziri's Promise leech which all add to you natural regen
note that theese will not always be active at the same time




Attack Block

23-27% depending on the shield of your choice


Well balanced Flask Setup and Alchemist Flask Cluster

for 26% inc. Flask Effect and 10% inc. Flask Duration



High Chaos Resistance

With my gear i reached -2% without and 42% with Atziri's Promise up and you can go much further than that.

Plenty of rare Item Slots

To newer players this might sound boring but the majortiy of your lifepool comes from here
and with the new league mechanic, having alot of rares allows you to fit in Chaos Resistance as mentioned and new powerful Incurison exclusive mods.


Now we are getting to the intersting stuff: Incursion Mods

In Incursion we are confronted with high amount of pojectiles,hits, chaos damage and new mob types.
Along with Incursion came a whole set of new rare item mods that in part help builds a big deal with defensive problems and in part with damage.

A list of the Mods: http://poedb.tw/us/mod.php?cn=Incursion

Our biggest problem in terms of defense are low physical mitigation and and little to no Attack and Spell avoidance causing us to take a lot of damage from hard hitting physical melee and ranged bosses
with no chance to regain HP in between hits.

->The hybrid movement speed mods on Boots grant 30% MS and 11-12% Spell or Attack Dodge respectively



->On Helmets you can find the hybrid mini Lightning Coil mod "9-10% of physical Damage taken as Element X Damage" and a T1 resistance



->The Cold Version of that Mod is by far the best if you happen to use a Taste of Hate, meaning that at maximum rolls you take 30% of Physical Damage as Cold against a Cold Resistance of 82% (with Flask Effect scaling). This Results in a Physical Damage Reduction of 24,6% against hits while ToH is up.

First things frist:
LVL 20 Vaal Blade Vortex has a Dex requirement of 155 (LVL 21: 159),
This Builds tree gets a whopping 54 Dex which leaves you with 101 Dex to fill out.

Solving the Issue:

Weapon:


Brightbeak is the King of Clear, no question.
Try getting the AoE corruption since it affects your Heralds and BV or get yourself the Attack Speed corruption for even more speed OR BOTH

For Damage Shaper stat-sticks are your go-to, more on that in the bossing section.


Shield:

All three are solid options, Spell Crit Shield is the most Damage, Esh's Mirror adds a TON of Damage to your Heralds if you are speedy and Zeel's is the new kid on the block and will give you alot of AoE while clearing. If you are going for Zeel's try to mass corrupt or buy a nice mod of your choice

A list of possible mods can be found here: http://poedb.tw/us/mod.php?cn=MapFragment#Shields

Chestpiece:

Inpulsa's Broken Heart is the Ultimate chest for this Build because of the synergy with our Herald explosions and the Elementalist's guaranteed shock. The explosion mod scales with monster life, so it helps alot in high Tier maps.

Stat priority:
-High explosion mod
-High shock effectiveness
-High Life roll

for single target damage shock effectiveness is the most important stat


Gloves:

You NEED the Conversion from these gloves which means this is pretty much a locked slot, they are very cheap though so look for a nice resistance roll. An endgame goal is getting the +0,5-0,8 Spell Basecrit corruption. The upgraded version Hrimburn is highly unneccessary but if you want to go for those with the corruption more power to you.


Helmet:

Get a Helmet with the 9-10% of physical Damage taken as element X damage mod, preferably Cold if you plan on investing into a Taste of Hate later on since the Damage mitigation stacks. If those go up in price (unlikely got the Ursine Pelt for 8c, without the Enchant though) wear a Starkonja's Head until then which fills out alot of Dex while leveling.


Boots:

Incursion Dodge/Movement Speed Boots are bomb for defence since we can't get alot of avoidance on the tree and other gear. The Enchant makes your life alot easier but isn't required. If you want to get it for cheap, run Merc or Cruel Lab for the lower Tier version which works just as fine you wont notice the difference much


Jewellery:

The Amulet is a top Damage slot, mine sucks though, try to get a Dex base

Stat Priorities:

-Critical Strike Multiplier (more than 20% is good)
-Life
-One big res if you need it
-Spell Damage
-Critical Strike Chance if you need it (you get so much basecrit from corruptions, the Increased Critical Strikes Gem and Pure Talent that we can skip this most of the time)
-Dex if you need it

Rings don't offer much Damage for us so get as much Dextrity, Life and Resists here as you can afford or need.

There are some Shaper/Elder mods that offer tons of DPS on Rings and Necks but i didn't include those here to keep it simple.

Check poeaffix.net for all the possible rolls.


Flasks:

Seething/Bubbling Divine Life Flask of Staunching

Most things kill you fast in PoE so you want to top off your HP quick get Seething or Bubbling as a prefix. Staunching is the best suffix here
because bleeds will instinctively make you press your life Flask

Experimenter's Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline & Experimenter's Diamond Flask of Warding

The prefixes are up to debate, go for whatever you like, i prefer duration.
For suffixes you want Warding and Heat on each of them since these are the Flasks you will
keep up ideally always. Warding is not a must but it saves you money from rerolling
Curse (especially Temporal Chains) Maps.


So with our immunities taken care of we can afford two Flasks without immunities,
we are going for Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise both scale our Damage with
x% of Damage gained as another Damage type and Atziri's is twice as effective because we convert
from physical to elemental. Taste of Hate also irons out our weak base physical mitigation in combination with the Helmet while Atziri's adds a big chunk (more than 40% with Flask Effectiveness)
Chaos resistance which comes in handy in Incursions and Temples.

Jewels:

We get the Shadow,Templar and Witch Boni from Pure Talent and Intuitive Leap let's us grab a big Life and Mana Node as well as 8% chance to gain a Charge of a random type on kill which let's us be on full charges of all three types while mapping.

Abyssal Jewel Stat Priority:
-+X to maximum life
-x-xPhysical Damage to Spells while holding a Shield
-x% of Physical Damage added as extra Fire Damage if you've crit recently
-+x% global critical strike multiplier
-x% increased attack speed if you've crit recently

And one time the 6-8% roll of chance to gain onslaught on kill
maybe even phasing if you can find it on a nice jewel

If you plan on doing stuff like Shaper and Co you have to make a few adjustments to the gear and
the gem links, the tree is perfectly fine.


Get one OR two Shaped Stat-sticks:



Somehing like this will work as nice hybrid bossing/mapping weapon, for the real DPS you need to look for more "% physical as extra elemental" mods

Stat priorities:
-X% of Physical Damage gained as extra Element X Damage (Lightning>Cold>Fire)
-X% increased critical strike chance for spells
-x% Critical Strike Multiplier
-x-x Damage added to Spells (Lightning>Cold>Fire)
-x% increased Spell Damage

(-x% of non-chaos as extra chaos and x% elemental penetration are VERY nice but VERY expensive on a good weapon so if you have the money, go for it in that case you know for yourself what the stat priority is)
(-Attack Speed, nice to have)

If not using a shield for bossing you can get a dagger or foil as stat stick to use for:

Whirling Blades-Faster Attacks-Fortify

Get Power-Charge generation and Arcane Surge rolling:

Orb of Storms-Power Charge on Critical Strike-Arcane Surge

You can replace the Flame Dash Setup with this without recoloring, if using double sceptres, you should keep Flame Dash though to at least have one movement skill since it allows you to last second dodge things like Shaper's infamous Slam.

Change your Main Skill links to a higher Damage setup:

Vaal Blade Vortex-Physical to Lightning-Concentrated Effect-Elemental Focus-Increased Critical Damage-Controlled Destruction

Vaal Blade Vortex-Hypothermia-Controlled Destruction-Physical to Lightning-
Increased Critical Strikes-Increased Area of Effect