[2.4] Occultist Tri-Curse Chaos Fireball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oClgyh6mNXI&feature=youtu.be
(note at around 5:20 how blowing up minions works to take down the boss quickly)

Send out your curse skill (can be ball lightning or Orb of Storms) to get mobs with multiple curses (which increases BOTH your survivability AND damage), then start sending out volleys of fireballs. Profane Bloom gives a 20% chance to turn a killed enemy into a chaos bomb for 25% of their maximum life. When combined with your power charges, this can take even a tough mob of monsters and insta-gib them. For bosses with a lot of minions nearby (like Izaro and Voll), you can make very short work of that boss quickly just by abusing this mechanic. Add the rolling flames gem, and suddenly you're insta-gibbing mobs that are 1 1/2 - 2 screens away. Use whirling blades to quickly move from mob to mob. Vaal Fireball is a great way to get more fireballs out in a hurry and/or use if you find yourself completely surrounded. For tough bosses, use whirling blades right through them to get fortify up for more survivability. This build gets EVEN BETTER when you finally get void beacon, since that makes all enemies within a certain radius of you take -20% chaos resistance as well as -25% life regen. So all that chaos damage you were doing? Well it just became even more effective. The downside to this is that they have to be somewhat near you to take the -20% chaos res, which counteracts the effects of rolling flames, but is great when you use it on chaos resistant rares and even some bosses. This build proves that chaos conversion from consuming dark is still pretty damn good, and still worth playing in 2.4.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAHzwkQdCenpwGkj0KN-wghAHpQLjSbIsnAVCQZbQ9a6zTLOXlVJTl_Q9X20ZIvRsC5MnvOpqQ8BUCPQNH5y-f8Z-WRGWBx6VLvDVSVGP-uv1ZJ3yHQ5IXfIqC3BSidOMNisKAx4fQetjNj2dqmyMYqzQH-_rOw0RD1Aw2146WFXGg9sRLZuhGGp4L3zlWAePRqcIFVDa3evuHNyPGriTKPqCx_noQYe3Pv4K2L01kv6PTeOmVzrh8kUy0UVHwGYEs6IA8B88Be98n99p2H6h44Q8KA3RoS--inyDJ6msmGNDRZ2a4FNSVUth4iaV

Go Occultist
2 points: Profane Bloom
4 points: Malediction
6 points: Void Beacon
8 points: Forbidden Power

The only required gear on this is the dual consuming darks (which sadly costs about 30c each on ESC) and the Asenath Gentle Touch gloves (which is pretty cheap to get and free temp chains, turning your 4l gloves into essentially a 5l), but this build can be done with just rares and a 5l rare chest. Overall, pretty budget friendly outside of the daggers. A good basalt and diamond flask will ensure that you can handle phys damage and keep getting those juicy crits. A great upgrade for the build would be a 5-6l Carcass Jack for more life and sexy AoE bonuses

5l - Fireball, Spell Echo, GMP, Inc AoE, Inc Critical Damage
4l Asenath's Gentle Touch - Ball lightning, Curse on Hit, Assassin's Mark, Enfeeble (can use orb of storms instead of ball lightning, but ball lightning fits with the theme better imo, and lets your curse more enemies from a distance)
3l - CWDT, Immortal Call, Lightning Golem (because faster casting is good for this build, though stone golem would be a nice option to keep your life up. Can also add Inc Duration in a 4l to help out with IC)
3l - Whirling Blades, Faster Attacks, Fortify
2l - Flame Dash, Faster Casting, (add Vaal Fireball unlinked to help with deeps)
Unlinked - Herald of Ice (Hatred also works, but I like having more mana for the build), Clarity

Pretty easy going here. A bubbling flask with either grounding or heat suffix, a Seething of Staunching for bleeds, you can do a mana flask in here or grab a silver flask for some onslaught fun, basalt flask, diamond flasks. All cheap stuff, really. Just try to get a warding suffix, and heat suffix (if you took grounding on your life flask), and an experimenter affix on your diamond flask to help keep getting the best crits possible.

I used a Rolling Flames gem in the jewel socket right above the witch starting area, which with my power charges up + profane bloom lets me decimate things up to 1 1/2 screens away due to the AoE increasing the further away your fireballs travel. This jewel is usually pretty cheap to buy and can add a LOT of power to an already pretty powerful build.
For your other jewels, I would get something with AoE damage, AoE Radius, Proj Damage, Proj Speed, and +Max % life to help scale damage and make you tankier. If you find yourself hurting for dex or str, you could get that on a jewel as well.

Oak for extra life (if doing LL or CI, then take the skill point instead), Alira for faster casting (though you could kill all of them for an extra skill point if you want), Alira for +1 power charge

Yeah for leveling, it's pretty much standard leveling uniques like lifesprig wands up until you can a reverberation rod and maybe a storm prison wand (to help generate power charges). Wanderlust boots, eventually get and 4l your Asenath's Gentle Touch gloves, Karui Ward amulet (to help with movement speed, projectile speed, str and dex requirements) and a goldrim helm are all great for getting movement speed, freeze immunity, and a very good amount of resistances when starting off. Mana may be a pain in the rear to sustain if you use a Tabula Rasa outright, so you should be fine with fireball in a 3l in the reverberation rod (or even amplification rod if you feel like upgrading the reverberation rod for a free 6l). Once you get to level 53, you'll be able to equip your consuming dark daggers.


In terms of skill points, you take the witch starting spell damage nodes up to Occultist's Dominion, then go left. Rush your way up to Whispers of Doom for the +1 curse. This is important because by around that time, you'll start getting your curses in A3. Do try to get the dex and str nodes there. I take the +30 str/dex nodes on the tree itself to make it much easier and more affordable to gear the character. Remember that the less you spend on other gear, the easier it will be to save up and get yourself those consuming dark daggers. If over time you're able to get better gear, you can always spec out of the extra str/dex nodes and invest them into more life/fire dmg/chaos dmg later on. From there, I went down to the Scion life wheel and grabbed all of those to stay nice and tanky. Make sure to grab your Assassin's Mark and Enfeeble gems in A3 when you can and start leveling them up. The higher the level, the more effective they become. These are your main sources of damage and defense, so get them as high level as you can.


Around the time I was able to get to Normal dried lake, I went ahead and did normal lab. Now at this stage, fireball is a bit of a pain in the ass to beat Izaro with. You can do like I did and just remove LMP and recolor your wand for concentrated effect to beat him with fireball, or you can cheese the whole fight with firestorm. Your choice, though the latter is probably the easiest way.
Once you get your two points, pick up Profane Bloom. This will make leveling from here on out MUCH easier. The reason for that is like I stated earlier, cursed enemies have a chance to explode for 25% of their maximum life as chaos damage. This has a domino effect, so it becomes quite satisfying to see entire mobs disappear in a puff of purple smoke.

By the time you're ready to do cruel difficulty, you should make sure to grab GMP and Inc AoE as well as buying yourself an immortal call and cast when damage taken gem. I usually put my CWDT/IC combo in my boots, but anywhere that has two linked red sockets should be fine for now. Just don't put an underleveled flame dash in there, or you might find yourself flame dashing unexpectedly whenever you get hit. LOL
Get your curse on hit and grab your ball lightning (or orb of storms) and start cursing. I would actually level Assassin's mark outside of your gentle touch gloves and not use it just yet though. You won't be able to tri-curse anything until after cruel lab, so enfeeble and the temp chains that the gloves provide take priority. For this reason, I recommend running a storm prison wand to generate your power charges. Remember, profane bloom only procs on cursed enemies, so start developing that potty mouth now and curse the hell out of them! xD


Cruel difficulty is pretty easy at this point. You just upgrade your rings as you go on, and if you happen to find a better dex/str amulet than the karui ward, use that instead. You do lose on 10% movement speed, but trying to stay res capped is more important tbvh. As you level up, I would go left and take Amplify for AoE and the life nodes there. Keep grabbing life/mana nodes like quick recovery and Heart and Soul to help keep you tanky and your mana topped off. Grab jewel nodes as well, especially the jewel node above the witch starting area. That is reserved for the great Rolling Flames jewel. It's important that you grab it the way I have it so that you have the required 50 int for the jewel to work. Once you have that, the build becomes even more fun. You're blowing up stuff off-screen and just really going to town on content by this point. Grab the extra power charge, Annihilation, and Blast Radius here too. By this point you should be completely wrecking stuff with the extra crit and AoE.

From here, it's starting to get important for you to get more crit chance/multiplier to help keep deeps up. So we're gonna be working our way over to the shadow side. We'll pick up Written in Blood and Doom Cast. Grab the +30 dex/str nodes along the way to help keep up with requirements. Cruel lab should be easier to do with fireball this time around depending on what fight mechanics there are for the day. Portals and anything with a bunch of minions should be considered payday for you thanks to profane bloom. Just get a bunch of minions to surround Izaro and watch his health go down substantially each time profane bloom procs on his minions and does damage to him. I would keep firestorm on a separate 3l setup just in case you have to do tougher fights like charge disruptors. Once you beat the lab and get your next two points, you can pick up Malediction for +1 to curses. You also will now do more damage for each curse on the enemy. Now you can add Assassin's Mark to your curse on hit setup. This will help generate power charges, and give life and mana when enemies die.

Now from here it would be a good idea to quickly grab Skittering Runes by the Scion life wheel because again, your curses are the heart and soul of both your defense AND offense. And with the slight nerf to curse effectiveness in 2.4, it becomes even more critical to grab curse effectiveness nodes when/where you can. Also note that by around the time you're ready to do cruel lab, you'll be able to use your Consuming Dark daggers.
Now, there's two schools of thought here and both have merit. The first one is to get your CD daggers equipped ASAP so that you can have whirling blades and apply fortify to be tankier. The other is to hold off until after cruel lab so that you can continue to use storm prison for generating power charges, while still having enfeeble and temp chains up to keep you tanky.
So really it comes down to what kind of defenses you feel most comfortable having when you enter the Izaro fight. Do you mind sacrificing enfeeble for fortify? Also keep in mind that with CD daggers, your chaos damage poisons enemies. So there's merit to having Izaro take DoT while you whirl around away from him.
Which ever way you go is up to you. I kept the storm prison and reverberation/amplification rod wands so that I could keep the curses AND have my power charges up. In the end, I'm an ESC player and therefore value deeps more. lol


However, after the fight, get those daggers on there! If you can only afford just one of them, then the Heartbreaker dagger isn't a bad choice for the other hand. It adds spell damage and even adds culling strike to your spells. Just keep in mind that having only one Consuming Dark dagger converts only 30% of your fire damage to chaos damage. This might be a problem for some of the EHC players out there if they happen to accidentally stumble onto an ele reflect rare. It's still doable, just don't derp haphazardly on mobs with rares and read the affixes of what each rare contains before blasting. Better to be slowed down and live than die a dumb death at a fast pace. One way to tell without reading the affixes if a rare has ele reflect or not is to use your curse skill. Do you take a bit of damage when it hits? If yes, it's ele reflect, so skip it and move on. If not, blow that damn thing sky high. This is another reason I use ball lightning over orb of storms. I don't take as much damage when testing for ele reflect rares than I do with orb of storms. The latter may be better for applying shock, but man does it hurt if I get it on an ele reflect rare. Normally I don't level up the curse skill, and keep it at level 1, but even then orb of storms can still get you for some damage since it takes longer to dissipate than a single cast of ball lightning does.

If you've been grabbing all the +30 dex and str nodes so far, then you should have no problem using whirling blades, faster attacks, and fortify. Now there's no real need to level up fortify or whirling blades. Just faster attacks. You only need fortify for the phys dmg mitigation and not the extra melee damage it gives. We're a caster, not a melee build, so we just want the defensive aspect of fortify. By not leveling up whirling blades, we keep its mana cost down so that we can spam the hell out of it. Once you get faster attacks leveled up pretty well, you can ditch your quicksilver flask and even save money on gear by getting boots with lower movement speed. You won't be walking much, so you can get away with only having 20% movement speed instead of the max 30%.

Once you switch to the daggers, it's going to be time for you to have at least a 5l. So at this point you can have a Tabula Rasa or you can find yourself a cheap 5l. Make sure you have Fireball/Spell Echo/GMP/Inc AoE/Inc Crit Damage. With a diamond flask you should be getting pretty high on up crit chance, so I would take the crit damage gem over the crit chance one. Your assassin's mark should be generating power charges pretty frequently for you, but if not, replace the crit damage gem with power charge on crit. You'll lose out on overall deeps, but at least you'll be getting crits.

As you go through merciless, just curse, throw a volley of fireballs, and whirl from one pack to the next. Once you get to merc lab, just do like you did for Cruel lab. Get a bunch of minions near Izaro, then blow them all up in a giant chaos bomb. Repeat until he goes down for the count. If he happens to have a tough fight mechanic, you can replace GMP with Faster Proj and Inc AoE for Conc Effect. This should help get your damage up even further to help take him down fast. A favorite way of mind to cheese the fight is whirl through Izaro when he's about to hit me, land behind him, and cast fireball. Once he turns around to hit me again, I whirl right back through him, land behind him, and cast fireball again. If timed correctly, he'll never be able to land a blow, you'll have fortify up all the time, he'll constantly be hit with enfeeble and temp chains, and you can whittle him down in no time at all.
And it's quite funny to watch him constantly swat at the air and never hit you. lol

And at that point you can pick up void beacon for -20% chaos res to enemies around you. This will make mapping so much more fun. Like most people, I prefer to farm dried lake until 75 and start mapping after that. You'll be able to farm up the chaos recipe enough to make back some of the money you spent investing in the daggers, and you won't have to spend any currency rolling maps just yet. If by any chance you haven't gotten your second Consuming Dark dagger yet, now is the time to farm up the chaos recipe enough times to get it.

The Chaos Recipe (for those that don't know it):




What maps affixes to avoid:
- Hexproof (we're a curse based build, so this would negate all of our defense and a good chunk of our offense)
- Blood Magic (theoretically you could do it since you're not reserving that much of your mana, but as a caster you're already pretty squishy. And fireball doesn't come cheap in terms of mana costs. Better to roll over this than risk suiciding yourself because of spamming fireball. lol)
- Elemental Reflect (even with the daggers, 40% of your damage is still fire damage and with the amount of crit damage you deal, you'll just one shot yourself to death)
- Crit and GMP maps (both are rippy, but when combined are outright suicide for the build. Remember that you're not using blasphemies with curses and have to use your curse on hit skill for defense. Getting offscreen 1-shotted is a real danger in these maps)


When buying your gear for mapping:
Usually around level 65 is when you wanna start gearing up for end game content. You'll want a 5l (if you haven't already gotten one), boots with life/some movement speed/resistances, a belt with a total max life of at least 100 + resistances, helm with life and resistances, rings with life and resistances (preferably diamond rings for more crit chance too, though coral rings for extra life is acceptable as well), and a good amulet that gives you enough dex and str to run the build comfortably. You should try to be ele weakness capped (145% resistance of each element if standing in your hideout, or 85% if standing in town) before you jump into mapping.

Most people don't bother with getting any chaos resistance, but if you happen to get some on any jewels you roll, I consider this a bonus. There are some bosses (like arid lake boss) that do chaos DoT and it can hurt like hell if you don't try to get at least SOME chaos res. Obviously stats like life, area damage, proj damage etc take precedence. But if you can get those PLUS some chaos res, that's the dream right there.

As far as limitations on the build go, I have not tested it above T10 maps. My experiences is that you're going to have to really start min/maxing the build to do the highest content. It can be done, but you're going to have to start investing into the build further to do red maps comfortably. I was testing with subpar gear to see just how far I could go with it, and T10 seemed to be the limit before I started rip'ing a lot. To be fair you could just spam T8 and T9 maps all the way to level 100 if you like. But I know that many people want to complete their Atlas, so if you plan to do that with this build, be prepared to keep farming ilvl75+ white jewelery and alching it + chaos recipe to help get the scratch to keep investing in the build.

That said, there's room to grow with this build. I would eventually get a carcass jack chest piece and at least 5l it. Last I checked, a low rolled one was around 25c in ESC, which you could then buy a 'the jeweler's touch' prophecy (about 30c in ESC) and 5l. Buy a divine orb (if you haven't already found one) and reroll for higher life and damage on it. You don't need the absolute max rolls on it to crush content, but just high enough to have a good chunk of flat life and area damage.

If money is no object at all, consider getting a Shavronne's Wrappings chest piece and going Low Life instead. You'll have to do some respecing of life nodes into energy shield ones instead, but you can squeeze out more damage this way and in most cases, can have more effective life this way too. If you go this route, ditch Forbidden Power for your last two points in favor of Wicked Ward. You'll have less power charges, but a flat +100 ES AND not having your ES recharge interrupted is too good to skip.
If you go CI, then ditch any worries about getting chaos res on jewels and focus entirely on more ES and damage. The new crystal belt base gives a LOT of energy shield and with essences, you can craft even more ridiculous amounts of energy shield. There's a reason why CI and LL are currently in the meta, and Occultist is one of the ascendancy classes that can really help scale that.


Finally, if you want to go the "money is no object, must have unlimited power" route, consider ditching the consuming dark daggers for dual void battery wands. They're about the only thing I would consider ditching the daggers for. Getting free +1 to power charges and doing a ton more damage per power charge up is min/maxing to the utmost degree. And Occultist is the one ascendancy that can best abuse the living hell out of what void battery brings to the table by picking up Forbidden Power and reworking the tree a bit to come up with +9 max power charges right off the bat. Then get some vaal'd jewelery with +1 power charges to scale that damage even more right into insanity land.
At this point you'll most likely 1-shot yourself to reflect somehow (especially since you gave up the protection that doing mostly chaos damage gives you), but sweet baby jesus on buttered toast would you be able to wreck havoc on content. lol