[2.2] Thunder God of the North - Crit Storm Call Inquisitor Build

Welcome to the build guide for Crit Storm Call Inquisitor by kidpeterblack


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About Storm Call

With the changes to the less duration gem, Storm Call has become more viable. Keep that in mind when we get to the skill gem section. This build is still in progress, so things might change.

And from the north came a god of thunder, bold in action and bright in destruction. His hands call down lightning bolts bound with ice.

Our tooltip damage doesn't exactly reflect the power of this build. We're used to seeing huge numbers, but Crit Storm Call hangs with most builds (I haven't got into tier 13-14 maps yet, so I'll edit this later with a better analysis).

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Why go crit?
To put it simply, like most arc builds; even with new passive nodes like elemental overload, crit is still hard to beat for casters and we take advantage of the inquisitors Inevitable judgement, allowing our critical strikes to bypass mob resists. We also save skill gem slots by not needing penetration.

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Leveling

leveling as storm call can be an ordeal, but is completely doable. Most of our passive points go to health and crit so we aren't really bound to leveling as pure lightning. You can do whatever you want until picking up Inevitable Judgement from the cruel ascendancy.

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Passive Tree

The passive tree for crit storm call is remarkably similar to life based crit arc, for good reason. We're mainly focused on life and crit. You might notice the lack of lightning nodes we take on the tree. Late game, those points are better spent on jewel slots.

Basic tree - 107 points - lvl 86

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAUAAAQHBLMFQgceB2MI9AmqDkgPqxEtEZYWbxa_GjgabBvxHNwfxyBuIvQkiySqJpUnLylPKgsqOCt4LJwtizbpOlg62EGWQ8hFnUlRSbFMs08EUDBTUlVLVcZd8l8qYeJknWZUakNrt2wLbRlwUnyDfsd_xoKbg9uExYUyhXuFfYnTi4yMNo8aj_qQVZMnlS6a4Ju1na6hL6IApwius7zqvorAVMBmwJrDOsu90B_Q9dWm18_Z_Nte4XPjauQi5Yvr5Ovu6_XsOO0g74jv6_Af8NXyHfk3-d0=

It's pretty hard to mess up this skill tree to be honest, so I really don't think it needs a break down on what to pick up first. Save the jewel slots for late game. Pick up enough crit so that towards the middle of merc you have like 20% spell crit chance. Life is obviously the most vital thing to pick up.

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Ascendancy

We take inevitable judgement and Instruments of virtue. The spell damage and cast/attack speed from Virtue is awesome and inevitable judgement allows us to use call of the brotherhood without needing any penetration.

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Bandits

normal - Oak (life)
cruel - Kill all (passive)
merciless - Alira (power charge)

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Build Mechanics

Offense

Power Charges

Orb of storms is a great way to generate power charges. A simple OoS and PcoC link will generate your charges within 2-3 seconds with decent spell crit. I use this to get my charges up and keep them up with assassin's mark.

Call of the brotherhood

this unique ring converts 50% of lightning damage to cold adding another defense layer to this build. We can chill and freeze mobs. Our big nightmare is fast moving packs and this really helps while giving a nice damage boost. Since we don't need penetration, there is no penalty.


Defense

This build doesn't have mitigation, as much as buffering. We have no armor, evasion, dodge, (minimal block; no regen, a medium life pool--- how do we stay alive.

Mind over Matter

The 30% damage from mana gives us a moment to react to danger and prevents us from getting 2-3 shot. It isn't hurting us passive point wise and we don't need to fully reserve mana.

Curses

We use herald of thunder to curse with Warlord's mark. This gives us life and mana leech along with endurance charge generation allowing our immortal call to stay up longer.

I personally use dual curse for Warlord's and assassin's mark. Up to you though and those 5 extra passive points could be spent on other things. Using assassin's and warlord's makes mapping so much easier.

Immortal call

low lvl IC on a cast when damage taken. This gives us another warning. When our IC pops and our mana drops, we know we have to get away and regroup.

Taste of hate or Basalt flask

another layer of physical damage reduction

Arctic armor

another layer of physical damage reduction

Lightning coil

another big layer of physical damage reduction

Life leech on our storm call

You might think this is a huge damage nerf on our storm call, since we are already using PC on crit. It is, but Warlod's mark is not enough to protect us from reflect. Having a fast clear speed and doing tons of damage does not mean anything is you two shot yourself on reflect rares. It will happen. Having Life Leech keeps us alive and it makes mapping so much easier and stress free.

All of these combined give us decent survivability.
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Skill Gems breakdown

Storm Call - spell echo - less duration - controlled destruction - life leech - empower

this gives us 3b and 3r an easy enough chrome on a lightning coil.

CWDT - IMMORTAL CALL - ENFEEBLE (or temp chains) - INCREASED DURATION

HERALD OF THUNDER - CURSE ON HIT - WARLORD'S MARK or ASSASSIN'S mark

WHIRLING BLADES - FASTER ATTACKS - ORB OF STORMS - POWER CHARGE ON CRIT

VAAL HASTE, VAAL HASTE - INCREASED DURATION

CLARITY (HIGHEST YOU CAN MANAGE 20 PROB) - ARCTIC ARMOR - ENLIGHTEN.

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Gear

The needed unique items for this build are Lightning coil and call of the brotherhood. We don't need armor, evasion or es, so gear slots are pretty much completely open.

Helm - Life - stun recovery, resist, mana

Boots - Life - resist ------------ BIS: Skyforth. If you can get a hold of one, this allows you to drop power charge on crit and boost your damage quite a bit and potentially drop some stun recovery on the tree.

Gloves - Life - resist - attack speed

Leather Belt - as much life and resist as possible ---------BIS: Head hunters, for obvious reasons

Chest - Any 6l chest will do. We need the links. I used tabula into tier 10 maps. 6l lightning coil is BIS.

Rings - Call of the brother hood and another ring with life, resist --anything to cap your res, crit and cast speed and regen would be bonus options

Citrine Amulet - base for strength and dex, look for life, res, crit.

Weapon - We want a dagger with spell damage, spell crit, crit multi

Shield - Spell damage, life, spell crit, res

You could also dual wield daggers, but i like the extra life and res from the shield.
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Flasks

Seething divine life flask of staunching
Taste of hate (or basalt with remove curse or freeze)
Vessel of Vinktar ( more leech and damage)
hybrid flask with remove shock
Either an atziri promise for more leech or a stibnite to protect more from reflect.

I don't find myself potting much with our leech.
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Mapping

Roll over elemental reflect.

You can do blood magic with your high life leech.

You can do no regen as long as it is not also immune to curse (We can leech enough from warlord's mark)

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my gear



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I'll polish this up later, add videos, images etc

So I finished this build up and decided to reroll from it.

The main problem I had was with reflect. I'm not exactly sure why it was such a big deal for me. I could swap in arc and have no trouble (chain leech probably), but every time I came up against a reflect champ, it was a killer. I started using a life leech gem and that was fine, solved my reflect troubles, and sped up my clear speed, but the build sorta slowed down around tier 11. If I could have opted for a different gem in the 6th link, it might have made a difference.

I still feel like the clear speed for crit storm call is faster than arc, and more mobile, but the chaining of arc leeches in a way that makes you feel safer. Arc with call of brotherhood froze/ chilled more as well.

All in all this was a fun and safe build (with leech) that got me to lvl 89 without much trouble. I only stared using the Lightning Coil around lvl 87. I mapped from 70-87 with a tabula.

If you are really good with flasks, you could use a vinktar's to mitigate reflect mobs and skip the leech gem. That will boost your damage in a 6l. Likewise, maybe with an atziri promise and a stibnite you can mitigate damage enough for reflect not to be an issue.

This was early on in a league, so I feel like with vinktar, stibnite, and about 3-4k evasion on gear, I'd have faired better from leech and had a more positive opinion on this build.

What's the purpose of getting attack speed on gloves?

Was playing a EB/GR arc variant but this happened:



So swapped to Storm Call. Must say it really makes it feel much smoother with 0.47 sec duration. Overall pretty fun and especially good vs the Perandus mobs except the graphics are too flashy and there's the smoke after the Storm Call which gets a little irritating.

Rest of the gear:

Whats your DPS for this build might give it a shot!

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RedsManRick wrote:

What's the purpose of getting attack speed on gloves?

I wasn't looking for it, just grabbed whatever gloves, but I think AS adds to whirling blades speed.

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iKosova wrote:

Whats your DPS for this build might give it a shot!

on a 6l with life leech it was around 11-12k if I recall correctly. It was an okay build, but slowed down in higher tier maps do to reflect and trouble scaling the damage. I still think arc is better.

Looks like you have some misconceptions about how reflect works. Both your ways of dealing with it don't work.

1) Reflected spell damage can't be evaded. If the reflected damage is attack damage, it can be evaded. It uses accuracy rating. Stibnite Flask is useless here.

2) Leech is processed before reflect damage. Therefore the order of operations is:

Hit a target -> Leech -> Receive reflected damage

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Damage_reflection