[3.1] Crit-Based Storm Call Cascade Inquisitor with Inpulsa's - looking for guidance!

I've been playing my crit-based storm call with inpulsa's into maps these last few days and it's been pretty rough getting into tier 4 and higher with my current set up.

I think survivability is a big issue for me at the moment. I'm even having some problems sustaining mana with MOM and mind of the council.

I think some key things that I need to focus on are some leech and maybe speccing towards some life nodes. I am concerned however that I'm going to sacrifice a bit too much damage to get there.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/stabbthehuman/characters

The character is Hrungus_McDungus. I know there are a ton of people that have been using similar set ups and I probably should have done a bit more research but I dove into this, but was having a ton of fun with spell cascade.

I would greatly appreciate any advice!

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My gear:

Hey I tried pretty much the same build a few days ago.

First of all you should drop Faster Casting for Spell Cascade, that gem is what makes this skill some what viable imo. It's also generally an unpopular decision to run Faster Casting with Spell Echo, since Spell Echo increases your cast speed anyways.

Moving on, I'm not a fan of your belt at all, even with GG abyss jewels, which is another thing you are missing, defensive stats on your abyss jewels. I would just run a Stygian belt with high life and high life on your abyss jewel as well.

You could also 4L Shield Charge if you really wanted to and link Blind with it, but I think that's probably a waste.

Overall it looks like you are prioritizing DPS over defense, you have very low/no life rolls on any of your items.

MoM is great but only if you're able to support the mana cost that's inherited with it, which means you will need to have a large pool of unreserved mana in order to make it function safely & properly, you want to aim for around a 65% unreserved mana pool if using MoM. More often than not, playing a build that has very little damage mitigation, your mana is going to get completely destroyed after a hit or two. If you are noticing that you really have two options, dropping MoM or figuring out real defenses. I feel like the two most obvious options for your build would be dropping Inpulsa's for something like Lightning Coil or The Perfect Form, probably dropping Esh's Mirror for a rare, high life shield, and/or maybe taking Acro & Phase Acro.

You may also want to consider running with a Jade flask and/or Basalt flask to help with mitigation as well.

If you're only experiencing problems supporting MoM on bosses then you can try and run something like Vaal Clarity, or the Lavianga's Spirit flask.

A few more things, your unreserved mana must be extremely low, I would drop Wrath ASAP. I'm a big fan of Curse on Hit + HoT + Curse, but I don't see the point in running with Assassin's Mark, if anything you should be running with like Warlord's Mark to help leech life & mana. Beyond that, you may want to try and find a shaped/elder ring with high life and Warlord's Mark on hit, that way you can throw Enlighten on your Herald of Thunder & Clarity or something.

Since you are not dealing cold damage, you won't be shattering mobs either, which means you will be killing yourself to packs of porcupines every time you run into them. To solve that you should dedicate a 4L to CWDT + Imm Call + Inc Dura + Vortex (for chill effect) or Phase Run (which drops aggro mid combat for a short period of time).

Before attempting a build you should start by planning out defensive layers before you even think about damage. Damage is very easy to come by if you have a 5L or 6L, most skills are able to do enough damage to complete most/all content in the game, with limited help elsewhere, besides obviously a nice weapon and some nodes in the passive tree. Where a lot of builds fall flat on their face is defense. It's not fun randomly dying every map, even if you do a billion DPS.

We're not in 3.0 anymore, where your best defense is offense courtesy of Vaal Pact. Builds need proper defense now if they plan on doing any form of end game content.

Hey, I wrote a guide, https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2057835, maybe it helps you!