[3.0]Spark Nova EB/MoM Hybrid. Level 100 HSC, 8k EHP

VIDEO:
https://youtu.be/DiFYOWeKH7s


Introduction:
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Hi, this is a fast clearing self-cast Spark build intended for leveling to max. I called it the Vaal Spark Spark build because some of my friends whom I played with asked if I was playing Vaal Spark, but I renamed it because it caused some confusion. The build can do some bosses but not all of them. While mapping it is quite safe, I didn't die at all from level 99 to 100 while playing recklessly. The only map mod I'm not running is Cannot Leech, also Elemental Reflect can only be ran with the according sextant. It's very possible to start this build out on a low budget and farm a lot of cash which is what I did.


Path of Building Pastebin:
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https://pastebin.com/f6vfU6wD
Updated 9-11-2017. Added enchantments and corrected a small mistake.


Skill tree @ lvl 99:
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www.poeurl.com/bxh2
The last point is spent in either life/es at Melding or the Spell damage node at the Witch Power Charge.


Current gear:
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The +1 Curse Bisco is not needed at all, I ran the exact same link setup with a normal Bisco until level 99. Only a lvl 19 Wrath is needed and any level of Shield Charge is fine. I was just leveling random lvl 19 wraths and any shield charges to 20 and vaaling them, happened to have both of them at 20 when i hit 100 and both got 21, LOL!
Upgrades would be Chaos resistance instead of the accuracy on helm and intelligence on shield as well as higher es and life rolls on gear and slightly different mods on jewels.


Stats:
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6177 Life, 1852 ES @ lvl 100. Spark tooltip 138k, all buffs without Headhunter.
Hideout tooltip with Golem Heralds Aura 59k.
I recently crafted a helmet which would have bumped my es to 2.1k, but I never got to replace my boots before I finished because I would have needed Fire and Cold resistance on them instead of Lightning+Cold for the new helmet.


Links:
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Body Armour: Spark, Pierce, Faster Projectiles, Spell Echo, Increased Critical Strikes, Controlled Destruction(6th)
Helm OR Boots: CWDT (lvl 1), Warlord's Mark(lvl 5), Immortal Call(lvl 3), Increased Duration
Helm OR Boots: Wrath, Herald of Ice, Curse on Hit, Poacher's Mark
Gloves: Shield Charge, Faster Attacks, Fortify, Blood Magic
Shield: Herald of Thunder, Curse on Hit, Assassin's Mark
Weapon: Vaal Haste, Summon Lightning Golem, Increased Duration




Rough Progression Guide for newer players, includes more detailed leveling trees:
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Level 1-38
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10: Spark, Added Lightning Damage (Pierce if you can get it from someone else)
Clarity, Flame Dash

12: Firestorm, Added Lightning Damage
Level up Spark gem in your weapon swap.

14 points tree: www.poeurl.com/bxg2. After 14 points wait until you get 4 more unspent points, then spec into Mind over Matter and Inspiration behind it.

15: Herald of Ice OR Thunder

18: Firestorm, Concentrated Effect, Elemental Focus
Get a +1 Fire Gems Sceptre as soon as you can with the Vendor recipe.

27 points tree: www.poeurl.com/bxg9

31: Shield Charge, Fortify
After completing Library quest make sure you got Spark, Pierce, Faster Projectiles, Controlled Destruction, Increased Critical Strikes and Herald of Thunder in your weapon swap for gem leveling.

34: Summon Lightning Golem

38: Firestorm, Concentrated Effect, Spell Echo
Herald of Ice, Curse on Hit, Assassin's Mark
Cast When Damage Taken (Level 1), Warlords Mark (Level 5), Immortal Call (Level 3), Increased Duration as soon as you have the links.



46 points tree: www.poeurl.com/bxha


Level 39-75
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65 points tree: www.poeurl.com/bxhf


Level 76-90
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Around level 75 you can transition into crit and Spark with the final Gem links provided below, not using the Wrath Aura to still have Mana for MoM and casting. The first few items should be both Hazardous Research Jewels, Tabula Rasa, Bisco's Leash, Vessel of Vinktar, Kiara's Determination, Call of the Brotherhood, basic rare items. After that Berek's Grip. Spark Jewel spots are at Witch and between Witch and Templar.
Level 76 tree: www.poeurl.com/bxhF

Around level 85-90 you should be able to afford all the basic unique items including Intuitive Leap and a 5-linked the Covenant, finally transitioning into the endgame build which looks like this at lvl 90: www.poeurl.com/bxhv (includes Overcharged and Melding from the Intuitive Leap Jewel).



Bandit, Ascendancy, Pantheon
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Bandit: Alira. If you got godlike gear and can cap resistances without needing to use an additional resistance roll you can go for two skill points instead. This will require near max resistance rolls on all gear pieces.

Inquisitor Ascendancy: Instruments of Virtue, Righteous Providence, Inevitable Judgement. Uber: Augury of Penitence

Pantheon: Soul of Yugul, Soul of Lunaris

In terms of the Ascendancy Point order you can either choose to rush Inevitable Judgement or you can get Instruments of Virtue first for the additional utility. Augury of Penitence from Uber Lab.
Merc Lab can be done pretty easily with Firestorm, but I recommend getting a service or a friend for Uber Lab. Spec out of Vaal Pact and use a Life Flask.

Inquisitor just provides an incredible amount of damage and utility for this kind of build, not only can we ignore elemental resistances but we also get a ton of raw stats, specifically attack and cast speed, crit multiplier, elemental/spell damage, and a 16% more multiplier for close enemies.

Yugul is the first choice for a lot of builds because of the reduced reflected damage taken. Lunaris provides several defensive buffs and a small amount of movement speed. Since we are using Kiara's Determination, Soul of the Brine King is not needed.
Upgrading all Pantheon Powers fully is pretty great, you may need some help at the Lair Boss.


List of Gear, Keystone & Skill Choices:
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The Covenant unique Body Armour

Berek's Grip & Call of the Brotherhood unique Rings

Hazardous Research & Intuitive Leap unique Jewels

Vessel of Vinktar & Kiara's Determination unique Flasks

Bisco's Leash or Headhunter unique Belt

Brightbeak


Eldritch Battery

Mind over Matter

Vaal Pact

Overcharged notable


Spark

Poacher's Mark, Assassin's Mark

Warlord's Mark, Immortal Call

Wrath, Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder

Shield Charge

Vaal Haste, Summon Lightning Golem


Explanation:
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This build uses a combination of Blood Magic, Eldritch Battery and Mind over Matter to not be limited by Mana constraints and the ability to recharge Energy Shield without being interrupted by spending resource to use a skill.
Eldritch Battery and es recharge is a great option compared to a hybrid build because only 30% of the incoming non-Chaos damage will deplete the es pool, thus reducing the amount of recharge needed to sustain by 70%. Also it enables instant leech from Vaal Pact immediately upon taking damage because a portion of it will always deplete life.

Berek's Grip, Vessel of Vinktar, Labyrinth Enchant on Boots and Warlord's Mark provide leech. Call of the Brotherhood reduces incoming damage greatly by freezing monsters and preventing on-death effects with shatter.
Brightbeak is used for an insane speed multiplier on Shield Charge, also the additional resistance opens up the possibility to cap Chaos resistance.

The Belt slot is used for clear speed buffs, either Rampage from Bisco's Leash or monster affixes from Headhunter. Note that at least one dexterity roll is needed on gear when using Bisco's Leash, as well as Strength or Dexterity from gear and passives on lower levels in general.
Rare Hybrid Life/Es items are used on all other slots and a Bisco's Collar if you want to use it, with the ideal base types being Hubris Circlet, Fingerless Silk Gloves, Sorcerer Boots and either Titanium or Fossilized Spirit Shield depending on personal preference.

I chose to allocate Overcharged with the Intuitive Leap Jewel for Hexproof maps and to prevent not being able to gain charges from curses while having a Curse on Hit-buff from a slain rare monster, as well as providing additional Charge generation which I value greatly.
Poacher's Mark on Herald of Ice is mostly used to sustain the Flask Charges needed for Kiara's Determination and Vessel of Vinktar.
Assassin's Mark on Herald of Thunder is used to provide additional Power Charges and damage from the curse. This may be foregone to prevent it from overwriting Cast when Damage Taken Warlord's Mark, particularly when facing few enemies or elemental reflect.

Immortal Call+Warlord's Mark on Cast when damage taken level 1+Increased Duration. Cookie cutter defensive CWDT setup.
Vaal Haste is great for this build since it lasts 8.8 seconds with a perfect Increased Duration Gem combined with the 45% Skill Effect Duration from the Skill tree.

The Skill Effect duration and the Projectile Speed from Faster Projectiles Support and Passive nodes will counteract the penalty from the unique Hazardous Research Jewels and enable the Sparks to hit the maximum range of 150 units. Two jewels and a helmet enchantment with 3 additional projectiles will increase the total number of projectiles to 14, granting dense screen coverage.
A Pierce Support Gem is preferable over Voidwalker Boots because rare ones provide Life and Resistances, the Pierce from the Gem is permanent and other Support Gem options will only increase the damage negligably.


Experience per hour, which maps to run
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Lvl 99 exp:
Shaped Racecourse 1 white Sextant no boss: 18-19mio
Beachhead T15 full clear: 24-25mio

I didn't do Shaped Shore or Primordial Pool but I think it's a lot better for exp. I didn't want to invest much into rolling maps and in Racecourse there are zero obstacles for Shield Charge.
During lower levels I did a lot of Dunes and sometimes Mesa. Dunes is generally better for most builds and there's more return from more monsters, due to the nature of the build the exp is about the same in Mesa though. This is because even with low damage the extreme shotgunning at the walls will clear everything with 1 cast. Mesa and Racecourse bosses can be done easily, Dunes not so much. Generally this build will perform well in all indoor maps with a lot of walls because any Spark bouncing off a wall is able to hit a monster which has already been hit by the same cast, thus greatly multiplying the damage.


P.S.: I may share my profile in the future but I'm not really looking for any ingame whispers currently. Feel free to post any reasonable questions in this thread though.
Last edited by jimyyoo on Sep 27, 2017, 11:02:11 AM
Last bumped on Oct 15, 2017, 4:39:06 PM
Reserved.
"vaal spark" build whitout vaal spark? u wot m8
How many deaths overall?

How does reflect feel with a life pool like that?


Happy to see spark again, i didn't even bother attempting to try it again in HC after its nerf and just went to crit melee builds instead. I might give it a shot now though.
I died 106 times total, around 10-15 times after level 90. PoE became my main game with 3.0 so I still had to learn about a lot of stuff like Ice Nova Strongboxes with +level, Caustic Clouds, Essence of Envy, not going into reflect maps accidentally, the list goes on ...
During leveling I just death zerged a lot of bosses such as Innocence or Kitava with bad resistances since I'm just a scrub playing softcore.
I do intend to play hardcore in the future though, I learned a ton about this game playing to 100!

Soul of Yugul helps against reflect. Usually when i meet a reflect mob i lose around half my es, but it can be more against high health enemies, specifically essences. I skipped most essences at later levels since they're terrible for exp, just risky in general and most of them aren't worth anything. Racecourse boss can also be a threat because of the reflect, but with proper positioning and damage he always dies before Vinktar is gone. A regular high health rare mob just doesn't reach enough hp because Boots enchant, Warlord's Mark and Berek's Grip are safety nets against not having Vinktar up. Maybe it's not a good idea to run something like -max resistance, Hexproof, 90% chance to avoid elemental status ailments all on the same map in a hardcore setting, I don't know if I ever ran any of those.
Generally while mapping my health never drops from reflect thanks to Vaal Pact and all the sources of leech, it's only really noticable because of the es.
I actually forgot to add a section for Pantheon, Bandits, Ascendancy. Will do that later.

I also want to mention Bashtart's Freezing Spark Inquisitor specifically for more tips for newer players, also he plays Spark since long before the 3.0 update with the threshold Jewels.https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1838569
There's also an interesting thing I didn't mention above, he picked Elemental Focus near the Shadow start for increased Elemental Status Ailment effect and duration, this could be picked instead of going for the spell damage nodes near Templar start.
Last edited by jimyyoo on Sep 7, 2017, 8:27:53 AM
"
jimyyoo wrote:
I died 106 times total, around 10-15 times after level 90. PoE became my main game with 3.0 so I still had to learn about a lot of stuff like Ice Nova Strongboxes with +level, Caustic Clouds, Essence of Envy, not going into reflect maps accidentally, the list goes on ...
During leveling I just death zerged a lot of bosses such as Innocence or Kitava with bad resistances since I'm just a scrub playing softcore.
I do intend to play hardcore in the future though, I learned a ton about this game playing to 100!

Soul of Yugul helps against reflect. Usually when i meet a reflect mob i lose around half my es, but it can be more against high health enemies, specifically essences. I skipped most essences at later levels since they're terrible for exp, just risky in general and most of them aren't worth anything. Racecourse boss can also be a threat because of the reflect, but with proper positioning and damage he always dies before Vinktar is gone. A regular high health rare mob just doesn't reach enough hp because Boots enchant, Warlord's Mark and Berek's Grip are safety nets against not having Vinktar up. Maybe it's not a good idea to run something like -max resistance, Hexproof, 90% chance to avoid elemental status ailments all on the same map in a hardcore setting, I don't know if I ever ran any of those.
Generally while mapping my health never drops from reflect thanks to Vaal Pact and all the sources of leech, it's only really noticable because of the es.
I actually forgot to add a section for Pantheon, Bandits, Ascendancy. Will do that later.

I also want to mention Bashtart's Freezing Spark Inquisitor specifically for more tips for newer players, also he plays Spark since long before the 3.0 update with the threshold Jewels.https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1838569
There's also an interesting thing I didn't mention above, he picked Elemental Focus near the Shadow start for increased Elemental Status Ailment effect and duration, this could be picked instead of going for the spell damage nodes near Templar start.


I'll probably be doing a spinoff next league since you proved one of my favorite builds is still more than viable (pls no nerf), ill let you know how it goes since i pretty much exclusively play hardcore.
Last edited by Samsol on Sep 8, 2017, 10:31:36 AM
Trying it right now. Its doing okish, I still need to level up some gems.

Maybe if I can get some good resistances on gloves/helm (which I self crafted with the enchant since buying a good one with enchant its pretty hard and I don't have a lab runner) I'll try to run doryanis catalyst for more dps even vs map boss and to get more damage before I get the HH buffs

I'll try Esh Mirror in shield slot too.

Last edited by Blueskyez on Sep 10, 2017, 6:05:05 PM
Is there any freezing spark builds that actually uses spark while leveling? :/
I love the idea of freezing builds... i already tried pulse freezing crit etc :)

I really wanted to find a working spark build!

"
oestergreen wrote:
Is there any freezing spark builds that actually uses spark while leveling? :/
I love the idea of freezing builds... i already tried pulse freezing crit etc :)

I really wanted to find a working spark build!


Dude just link you spark setup with spell totem if you like. It should work just fine... bosses maY take a little longer...
[3.2] Bashtart's Spark Inquisitor: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1838569
[3.2] Oni-Goroshi Frost Blades Trickster: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2077486
Last edited by bashtart on Sep 9, 2017, 2:45:44 AM
baited :(

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