[2.4] Brain Rattler Elementalist - Ice Crash, Static Strike

The basic ideas:

- Main theory: Lightning damage is hampered by its inability to shock bosses. Their lightning resistance and high HP kill the shock duration formula. I always wanted to understand why skills like Tendrils felt weaker than their tooltip DPS and I think this is why. With this character we will stack resistance penetration and status effect duration to try and shock high HP villains like Malachai.
- Looking through the wiki on shock-related items I stumbled across the Brain Rattler, followed by a bunch of posts about how awful it is. So naturally I had to try it.
- Full conversion to lightning damage
- Give your witch a crazy looking mace to run around and smash things
- Ice Crash for AOE with Abyssal Cry. Very satisfying levels of explosion, a must for any build
- Ice Crash procs Mastermind of Discord
- Static Strike for single target
- Dodge, temporal chains, fortify, arctic armour, and vaal pact for defense

Required items:

- Brain Rattler


Current gear:


Tree

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMCAAW1Bx4I9A2NDkgPqxEPEZYTNRa_F6QZ1yLqIvQj0yP2JIsknSaVKjgtfTBxMHwyATY9N9Q6QjpYOw09X0lRS3hMi0yzTZJOKlFHUlNUR1SuVUtVxluvXfJh4mJaYqxqQ2wLbIxtGW1sbyd90n6vf8aExYw2jRmNfY2_j2CQ-pMnk5WVLpeVl_Saapsmm7Wdqp7EoS-jiqR4pr6smK0zshm1SLWFvorAVMG0wdXDOs960B_TftQj2V_djN2o3vjfbd-K4BLo1u0_7g7vS-9Q73rv6_DV_MU=

Explanation

This is not a top-tier build. But it is a lot of fun. With Mastermind of Discord, I have 73% lightning resistance penetration. The Decree of Fury and Leech enchants are really good for this character. A single Ice Crash with Abyssal Cry generally explodes the screen and Herald of Thunder picks off stragglers.

Full conversion lets us get the most out of lightning damage nodes. However, if any part of your support gem structure includes melee physical damage, fortify, or physical to lightning, physical damage nodes are always superior to equal percentage lightning damage nodes.

We have 25k tooltip DPS (wow :P) on static strike before static explosion, resistance penetration, and shock. I think we will top out at 30k tooltip unless we luck into a six link.

The main challenge is actually getting enough Strength (since we're on the right side of the tree), since Strength is a suffix and displaces resistances on our gear.

We're on the right side of the tree to pick up dodge. I suspect this character will run better damage and more HP on the left side of the tree but Dodge with Hinekora's and a flask is decent (not tanky at all though).

By my calculations we have enough damage on a medium sized hit to shock merciless Malachai.

TBD:

- One decision remaining: More HP, more per hit damage, or Static Blows?
- Will GGG edit the mace in 2.5 and will edits be divinable? Waiting to see before six socketing my mace.
- Experimenting with Phase Run/Inc Dur vs Leap Slam/Faster Attacks.
- Can I save up enough cash for Hydra supporter and look so cool?

Thanks for reading and if there is interest I can provide more info/algebra.