Poet's Pen + Volatile Dead in 2024?

With this league I tried to "bring back" Volatile Dead with The Poet's Pen, on multiple classes.

I tried:

Hierophant (Illuminated Devotion/Conviction of Power/Divine Guidance)
Inquisitor (Pious Path/Innevitable Judgement)
Elementalist (Shaper of Flame/Heart of Destruction/Bastion of Elements)
Trickster (Polymath/One Step Ahead/I think it was Soul Drinker, if not Spellbreaker)
Saboteur (Perfect Crime/Like Clockwork/Bomb Specialist/Born In The Shadows)
Occultist (Unholy Authority/Profane Bloom/Vile Bastion/Forbidden Power + Shaper of Flame)

ALL of the builds give me great dps while leveling but seem to be problematic wanting to push beyond level 85. Some I don't seem to be able to be tanky enough (dying a lot!), while others like Saboteur cost double the mana with Perfect Crime, double triggering, and need so much mana regen/recoupe.

Other than telling me that this idea of Poet's Pen + VD is very much DEAD, anyone can hint me what class should I try to rethink around? I also bought a The Squire now so maybe there are more options open to me...?

thx

I might just do a classic Elementalist.

Convergence + elemental aegis + maybe shock? Lots of DPS and good defense from elemental aegis. You can then flesh and flame "Mistress of Sacrifice" and go max spell/attack block, "Essence Glutton" if you do ES and need regen. PS: I'm not sure if VD counts as consuming a corpse.

Then...most of your defense are going to just come from tree and gear.

Unfortunately, you say that you want advice "other than VD poets is dead"....the damage and speed just isn't there anymore so you are fighting a very steep uphill battle.

Using Flames is pointless, unless you are going for ignite which I'm pretty sure you aren't....but you might also be able to do some fun things with ALL the shapers and then that item that switches to sap, scorch, brittle.

any chain dd build can be turned into a poets pen vd build, provided you're using unearth in the wand and seething vd in a spellslinger setup. you'd use empower and enhance for unearth, in addition to gv and gmp with squire for 9 corpses at once. there are already a good number of builds like this on poe.ninja, but this concept only works with detonate dead of chain reaction and volatile dead of seething, because other skills dont detonate enough corpses for a meaningful dps. then you'd scale corpse life and fire damage as usual. orb damage doesn't matter in this build. elementalist and necromancer are probably the best classes for this, but necromancer's corpse pact wouldn't be as good as it sounds, because it would brick the attack speed breakpoints for trigger rate.

alternatively you could go for the orb based version and use volatile dead of confinement in the wand instead, and the spellslinger setup would be based on desecrate, but this build would be entirely different and you'd need some reduced skill effect duration for a smoother gameplay. I guess the base vd would also work for this, and could be better depending on the setup. I'd most likely go saboteur for this build to get to 60 orbs easier. this version wouldn't need any corpse life, and would scale spell damage and spell crit as usual.

and whatever you play, don't go ignite. poet's pen is possibly one of the worst choices for an ignite build.