[2.2] The Flippy Floppy! Elementalist Cyclone Equilibrium

Hello there!
I've been brainstorming for the past days about a fun elementalist build and I've come up with this one: an elementalist melee witch that uses elemental equilibrium with cyclone!

Mechanics explanation:
Cyclone, while Dual Wielding, alternates between the two weapons, so if we strike with one weapon that deals one element and the other that deals a different one, you get a constant flippy-floppy of -50% resistance between the two elements, so what is our weapon of choice here?



The Dyadus is often considered a bad weapon, but I feel like right now it's the best time to use it, since we got a LOT of new toys with the recent updates, let's see how much penetration we are able to stack right now without excessive hoop jumping:

-Elemental Equilibrium: -50%
-Elemental Weakness+Blasphemy: Assuming both 20/20, -47%, not including additional +% curse effect things
-Mastermind of Discord: 20% penetration if you used fire/lightning skills recently. (Lightning penetrates fire, fire penetrates cold)
-Celestial Judgment: 2% penetration

For a grand total of 119% resistance lost. For an enemy at 0% res, this means 119% more damage, for one at 75% res, multiply that number by 4. Boom! And I'm not even counting Fire/Cold pen gems, Frost Bomb (-20 cold res) and additional curses. Then we take a look at the Elementalist ascendancy tree and at some more multipliers:

-Pendulum of Destruction: 100% increased elemental damage for 4s every 10s (not a more multiplier, but it's impressive).
-Elemental Overload: 40% more elemental damage after a crit. (with that attack speed, it's basically always active)
-Shaper of Desolation: chance to become a status dispenser, adding the possibility to shock which is a 50% more multiplier.
Then you have the traditional support gems: More Weapon Elemental Damage, More Area Damage, Faster Attacks, More damage to chilled enemies, and so forth.

Once all the pieces are in place, it's time to build the passive tree and to think about gear and gem links. 200% life at 102 points, that's nice indeed.



Gear: Beside the two dyadus axes, the only unique(s) I would recommend at this moment is the usual defensive body piece: Belly of the Beast or Lightning Coil (don't worry, the added lightning damage doesn't break the build), but if you don't have those, a rare astral plate will do just fine, even if you might have some trouble on rolling URRGG on that. The rest of the gear is just rare armour gear, nothing special.

Gem links:
Main: Cyclone, Weapon Elemental Damage, Fortify (good additional defense), Concentrated Effect. Add Hypothermia on 5L, Faster Attacks on 6L, but you'll do fine with a 4L in any case.
Secondary: Ancestral Protector, Melee Splash, Weapon Elemental Damage, Faster Attacks.
CWDT: Immortal Call, Increased Duration, optionally Frost Bomb.
Modement: Lightning Warp, Faster Casting, Less Duration. (Procs fire pen)
Auras: Elemental Weakness, Blasphemy, Clarity
Everything else: Rallying Cry, Summon Flame Golem, Searing Bond (Optional, useful to proc cold pen)

Discuss! If you have any question, feel free to ask!
Greetings and thanks for reading,
Frozen Fire / The Elementalist

Not I get it. oh well

Thanks for posting this!

Very cool... Cyclone was always one of the ways I pictured this working and wondered how Ascendancy would help, glad to see you figured it out! Would be awesome if you could put up some vids of it at work :)

Some questions: how does mastermind of discord work with the build?

Also, would elemental conflux work with it for lots of burn?

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dlrr wrote:

Some questions: how does mastermind of discord work with the build?

While fighting bosses/tough rares (which is where you need the penetration the most), use Lightning Warp and Searing Bond/Summon Flame Golem to penetrate Fire and Cold respectively. It might sound like a lot of work, but once you get into a moving playstyle it's not hard. You have to do this once every 4 seconds anyway.

"

dlrr wrote:

Also, would elemental conflux work with it for lots of burn?

Yes, Elemental Conflux is the sixth point of my ascendancy tree.