Bane/Soulrend Occultist 3.6 Synthesis league starter and leveling guide

I will be making a scion to start for the extra blue drops from Hillok, and for the onslaught support she gets on the strand. Also it is common practice for racers to do this to get the extra vendor RNG for a good 3 link blue blue green wand and movement speed boots. seeing as the charachter is a throw away the extra 3 scrolls are helpful currency for buying these items as well.

For leveling purposes on the witch we want to move thorugh content as smoothly, and quickly as possible so I will be taking freezin pulse from tarkleigh for killing hillok, and pairing it with the arcane surge support from the lage chest on the strand at the start. It is very important that we do not level Arcane surge support. This league has seen a lot of nerfs to mana costs, because of this support's specific interactions with things like brand recall. at level 1 it requires a minimum of 15 mana to be spent to obtain the effects of spell damage, cast speed and mana regen. I intend to be usin this support with my bane, 3 curses, and Concentrated effect in the end game version of this build. at level 20 bane has a mana cost of 20. to gain the Arcane Surge buff every time we cast bane we cannot level the arcane surge past level 4. That being said we wont even bother leveling Arcane Surge at all until we get into high tier maps where bringing it up to level 4 will be a quick process. Once we move on we will skip past the Hailrake quest in the tidal islands, grab the WP on the coast, move through the mud flats picking up the glyphs and skipping the fetid pool. We then go to the submerged pasage where we will take that waypoint back to the coast to then complete hailrake. Doing this allows us to only have to travel back to town one time to get our level 4 gems, and our quicksilver flask rewards at the same time. this is where we will take Frost Bomb and link it to our Onslaught support. We then move thorough the submerged passage skipping the crab if you are hardcore, completing it if you are softcore (this is for rippyness avoidance), and moving on. we rush through the ledge and prison dropping frost bombs as we move, and make our way to Brutus. After we complete brutus we move on to prisoner's gate, take that WP back to town, and pick up added lightning support and flame dash from the quest rewards. Our main skill at this point is frost bomb. We want to link up our new added lightning with our onslaught frost bomb which is why we try so hard for a blue blue green 3 link wand. As you are moving through remember that chest armour slows us down. Agian I will reitterate that I am by no means a racer, but still would like to progress through the content as quickly as possible, get into maps, and start making money as early as possible. once we've linked up our frost bomb freezing puls is literaly just there to help us finish any mobs that survive a bomb. We will now be moving through prisoner's gate (0r going back to complete the crab if in hardcore), and into the ship graveyard where we will complete the fairgraves quest. This is a risky fight for Hardcore but the payoff is huge. having access to the skill point, and level 12 before we enter the cavern means we get access to storm brand immediately uppon entering the cavern of wrath. Once we do this we take the WP to town, take our quest reward (pick the green gem) and buy ourselves a storm brand. we replace frost bomb in our links with storm brand. move frost bomb into the link to replace our freezing pulse, and by this time we should be able to transmute our 3 link blue blue green wand into a magic item. We can then sell the green gem we just got from our quest reward with an iron ring that can be bought from nessa or found at any point up to here to get ourselves a topaz ring. we vendor this topaz ring with our magic wand and an orb of alteration to get ourselves a "+1 lightning skill gems" wand. we can now breeze our way trough merveil and all of act 2 only worying about a few item optimizations on our way. We are not a storm brand build, and we are not a critt based build so for the bandits you will kill all 3. complete act 2 as normal. try to get your hands on some gold rings and amulet to help with generationg curency from rares and blues, and push on to act 3. Act 3 is where we will pick up our main skills for the build as highlighted in the introduction to this guide. "Uppon completion of "Lost in love" I will be picking up bane and enfeeble, and leveling them in offhand weapons until I complete "Sever the Right Hand". Uppon completion of this I will pick up Soulrend, and I will level it as well in the off hand weapons until completing the library. My intention is to complete Siosa, pick up the supports I need (namely slower projectiles, LMP and efficacy) for Soulrend and (temp chain enfeeble) for bane, and switch to the intended skill set of the build just before Dominous."

from this point foreward as far as skill progression is concerned you just want to grab the rest of the skills listed in the PoB link below, level them as you go, and try to progress your gear to run the two 6 links required for the build. I hope this guide was helpful in showing you how to progress through the early game content efficiently.

At this time all of the items in the PoB are hypothetical goals with middling at best rolls, there are no new skills, and the build is not tested. Remember these are purely hypotheticals as the patch does not release until tomorrow, and nobody knows what it will evolve into. This is just my take on what may come. The skill tree is broken down by Labs, and shows an effective and realistic timeframe to switch to full ES/CI. Moving from life to CI will require 25 respec points in total, 20 of witch can be gained by going back into the story mode and completing the respec point quests. The remaining 5 will need to be obtained by using Orb of Regret's. I do not recomend doing this until you have gathered enough Energy Shield gear for the switch. Finally the tree caps out at an easily obtainable level 92, with the addition of a couple more jewel slots by 98 if you take it that far.

https://pastebin.com/78FepUS7