1400% spell crit challenge build!

I've started thinking about this as a fun idea, but as things began to take shape, I realized (both because of comments from the board and simple math) that this isn't going to be an easy build. So instead of marketing it as some sort of new and revolutionary build, I've decided to simply call it a challenge build: It's not going to be the most effective DPS build for how soft it will end up being defense-wise, but it will open up some less-explored gameplay opportunities, and it's got an interesting angle at least imo

The goal: Make a character with a 90% spell crit chance that doesn't die to white mobs!

Step one: Getting all the crit from gear:

In order to get this much crit, a lot of gear slots are going to be taken up by uniques and items with narrow use:
Two 170% crit daggers: 340 total crit
70% Rat's Nest: 410 crit
Maligaro's: 460 crit
Two 60% Gifts from Above (a bit excessive, I know): 580 crit

If I aim for six power charges (probably going to stay away from the Witch one because there's no nearby crit nodes), that brings the total to 880 crit.

This is as much as I could reasonably squeeze from gear. If I were to have perfect gear I could bring it as high as 915% increased crit chance.

Step two: Working on that tree:
This is the tree I'm starting with. It has every relevant crit node except for Mental Acuity (10% crit/passive spent is probably not worth it), and the Ranger crit nodes (REALLY not worth the trip).
From this tree, I get 500% increased crit. Combined with the above equipment, I get around 1380% increased crit, which is damn near close enough for me.

If I really need some extra passive points or a gear slot (replacing one of the Gifts with a ring that gives me more health and resists, for example), I could also use a crit chance gem, though it would be at a great cost considering how valuable elemental damage gems, penetration gems, and elemental proliferation is when you crit all the time.

Step three: Not dying all the time! Auras edition.

What I'm left with is a build that has roughly 50 passive points or less to dedicate to things like health, resists, cast speed, and mana management. For gear, I've got only my amulet slot, chest slot, belt slot, and boots slot available for +health mods, defensive stats, and resists. Seems like a bit of a tall order, which is why I decided to call this a challenge build.

Since I don't have a whole lot to work with on the passive tree, I'm going to have to take a strategy that is very efficient. Since all the major aura clusters are right there on the skill node pathways, I decided to use auras to pick up the slack on resists, cast speed, and mana management. With this tree, I've got almost 2x effective auras, and 41% reduced reservation. This and level 20 reduced mana gems will let me run 180% of my mana auras in auras, leaving me with 25% left over for Clarity and free mana. The aura suite I'm considering is:
Purity of Elements,
Purity of Ice
Purity of Lightning,
Haste,
Clarity

This will give me all the resists I need almost entirely from the auras, high resistance caps, and the extra cast speed I am missing from the tree (almost 30%). If I need more mana for Clarity, I can always swap out those health regen nodes at the start of the tree for mana nodes.

Charisma is a little out-of-reach, but those dex nodes aren't exactly wasted either: I'm going to need some dex and str to be able to run those auras after all, and this is 50 less dexterity I have to make up for in my already-crowded gear slots.

You might ask, "Why would I need such a high level for Clarity? And what about Purity of Fire?" Those two questions are answered by the next section:

Step Four: Not dying all the time! Gear edition.

The chest piece is available, that's a good sign. There's a lot of chest pieces that can add a lot of survivability to characters with very little investment. Lightning Coil is one of those, but considering my gear and passive restraints, I don't think I could compensate for that -60 lightning resist very easily. Plus, being a dex/str chest, it's poorly suited for coloring spellcasting links. I'm going to choose a closely-related variant of Lightning Coil, you could say it's the older, less-edgy and not-as-cool brother:


Like Lightning Coil, this chest will multiply my total health against physical damage, but unlike Lightning Coil, it's much easier to color for spellcasters, and it doesn't come with that hefty resistance penalty. There's also one more added benefit: It doubles the effectiveness of Arctic Armor! Yes, I figure if I can manage to get a stable level 10 AA going, that could alleviate a large portion of my concerns about physical damage. The only concern I have is a lack of passives spent on mana, a lack of gear to compensate for that, and only 25% of my total mana that can be reserved for Clarity.

Eldritch Battery is really close on the passive tree (only two points to get it), so I could grab that, but I'd be far from the 2k+ mana most EB users end up having. Still, if I could add another 300 mana to my pool, that might be enough to get a high-level AA going.

Another possibility is to simply use Lightning Warp to move around and bypass AA's major regeneration penalty entirely. I've not done this before so it may be too slow/annoying to be worth it. One advantage of this however is that I also get the benefit of being able to easily shock enemies thanks to my insanely high crit rate!


Final tentative build + possible uses

So how does it all come together? This is my tentative blueprint for level mid-80's. Some rough math I did a while back while brainstorming for this build suggested that with 200% increased max life and decent health rolls on my belt, boots, and amulet, I should easily get to 3,500 HP, and with a bit of work 4,000 isn't out of the question. 3,500 is a bit low, but 4,000 sounds about right for a non-tanky build. If I had the currency to blow on a Lightning Coil + coloring it for four blue sockets (not to mention a decent amulet and boots that had +attributes, lots of lightning resistances, and +health), getting to 4,000 would be a bit easier.


So now that I have a 90% crit chance (and a fair bit of crit multiplier, too!), what do I do with it? Well first off, the biggest difference this build would have from other crit-based spell builds is consistency. You can always rely on your spells to crit. That means, if I want to freeze enemies, Ice Nova + Proliferation will always freeze the pack for the full duration of the weakest member (whereas cold snap + proliferation can sometimes only hit the strong/resistant mobs, resulting in <1sec freezes). My Ice Nova damage might even be high enough that I could consistently freeze resistant rares as well, in which case I wouldn't even need to worry about proliferation, which means a single rare with no trash mobs in sight won't be as big a speed bump.

Second, it allows me to use skills in ways most players (esp. crit players) haven't done before. Everybody loves Freezing Pulse + GMP for example, but what about a single Freezing Pulse projectile? It's got one of the highest base damages of any cold spell, so you're going to get good freeze durations. As I mentioned above, I could use Lightning Warp as both a way to shock stack a group AND as a mobility spell.

I think the most interesting primary spell however will have to be Flameblast. Every time I use it, I will almost always have a high damage blast coming. No need for Elemental Proliferation, chance to ignite, quality, so on, as everybody hit will burn. The damage could be insane as well with supports like Added Chaos Damage. The damage might even be enough that I seldom would need to fully charge FB to one-shot mobs.


Anway, as of now, the build is only level 31 so there's still a way to go. I also haven't even bothered trying to get the gear together. Haven't decided if I want to liquidate another character or just grind for the currency to get this started. I'm probably going to have to 6-link a cloak of flame myself, seeing how it's not exactly a popular unique for end-game characters.