[Economical] Tabula Rasa-Based CI Wander

Hi guys,

I have long been looking for a way to do wander without the standard life/ele combination. Today after my 3rd or 4th full respec of my build I came up with a playable and viable late game build.

This build is for people ready to put a bit of currency into their gear but not the full 4000 exalt wam-bam thank you ma'am deal. Think of it as the "accessible" wander.

I did get some help from abcnever's http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/414658 hc phys ci wander build, particularly in planning the far western portion of my tree.

I am playing this in SOFTCORE, but I currently have 3.8k ES and have enough confidence to say that this is viable in HARDCORE. Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact and a Life Leech gem go a long way in allowing you to survive blind ele reflect.


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This build focuses increasing the physical damage of your wand's default attack through passives and gear. It also uses chaos inoculation in order to avoid the large amount of points used up by going life. CI has its strengths and weaknesses, and care must be taken when playing this type of build in HC.

Notable Passives:

Chaos Inoculation, Ghost Reaver, Vaal Pact, 3x Power Charges (optional: Zealot's Oath)

This is my current tree at level 81


The final tree should look something like this:


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One of the crutches of the build is being able to use a 6 linked chest early on so levelling from about 60>>80 is a bit easier. Being able to use a 6L increases your survivability (through Life leech) and your dps ( Increased Critical Damage etc ). Using a Tabula Rasa will allow you to experiment with different gem combinations in order to tweak your attack to your personal gear. It will also allow you to comfortably level up until you can afford a 6L Vaal Regalia ( which can cost around 20 exalts ).

Since we are using the Tabula we are going to need to find other sources for our Energy Shield/ Elemental resistances ( 100% chaos resist though yay!). You can think of this sort of like using a Bringer of Rain (ie. "The Blender" build) but as CI. Thankfully, it is fairly easy to get up to around 3k-4k es inexpensively. If you opt for dream fragments over Alpha's howl, you will be capable of 4-5k es without much difficulty.

All in all, expect to pay around 8 exalts maximum on your gear, which is not exactly cheap, but is no where near what a 6L vaal regalia goes for. Thus this is not the best build for someone new to the game, but for someone with some currency and boredom, you will have a lot of fun.

My Current Gear:


Alternate helm I would use if i had a dream fragments:


General Pricing guideline:
Tabula Rasa - 1.5-2ex
Alpha's Howl - 1-2ex OR Dream Fragments - 2-3ex
Chayula - 6-10gcp (Buy a low rolled one for cheap and use blessed orbs to get 19 or 20 all attributes!)
Rainbowstrides - 1-1.5ex
Maligaro's - 10gcp-1ex

Aside from these 5 key uniques you will need 2 rings, both with a lot of resist, mana regen and if you can get it some flat damage mods. You will need a shield with very HIGH Energy Shield (400+) and preferably some resists. You will then need a wand, likely an Imbued wand is the best option as it has a nice base attack speed (1.5) and physical damage.

You are looking for wands that have a high physical dps. These will likely have both a % "Increased Physical Damage" mod and a "Adds #-# Physical Damage" mod. These are the 2 most important mods, but any added ele dmg, increased attack speed, projectile speed, accuracy, crit, etc... is great.

For the belt you will be looking for a rustic sash with 20%+ increased physical damge, some Energy Shield, resistances and finally armour if you can find something like that. One important thing to keep in mind is that pretty much all mods are useful aside from +hp/%chaos res.

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In the 6L.....

As I mentioned earlier you can try out many different combinations of gems. I have found that
LMP + Increased Critical Strikes + Increased Critical Damage + Chain + Life Leech + Power Siphon has been my favorite combination. Second to that one, I would suggest trying GMP + Pierce + ICS + ICD + LL + PS. I am sure many people would also prefer to switch out increased critical strikes for Added Fire damage. In my experience Added Fire Damage has added more dps than Weapon Elemental Dmg, because of how it scales off of the base physical damage of the wand. Similarly, when we consider auras, Hatred is the most important DPS aura as it scales off our base phys.



With all of my power charges up I am sitting around 3.5k single target DPS and 2.2k AOE DPS. This will improve over time as my gems all level up and are qualitied, and I invest in a better wand.

Auras

I am currently running Clarity + Hatred + Anger + Purity. This works well because of our lack of resists from a chest piece. Also as i mentioned previously, Hatred scales off of the phys damage of the wand. Anger adds extra fire damage and is interchangeable with Wrath. Clarity I am using for the time being as I found I did not have enough mana regen without using mana leech.

+ Hatred.


Curses

The main curse you will be using is Critical Weakness. If you are in a tough map, you might consider using enfeeble. I have also been experimenting with frostbite which helps the added cold from hatred to freeze all of the mobs.


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To begin you're going to need to level your witch. Typically this involves using freezing pulse or something similar up to about level 60. You will have to take life nodes until you are ready to go CI and complete a 20 point or so respec. There are plenty of guides on doing this, you can check out Dominion's CI Dual Sporker which has a detailed guide on this type of levelling. Make sure you start levelling all the gems you will be needing early on so you don't have to grind or buy them later.


At this point you should have taken most of the increased ES nodes around the tree (hold off on the phys wand dmg and crit nodes until the ES ones are out of the way). Once you have respecc'd into CI and have most of your gear together ( pretty much everything except for the dream fragments/alpha's howl). You should be able to start safely mapping around level 75. Up until then just keep grinding docks/lunaris in parties. At this point you wanna be experimenting with your gem combos to get exactly what you want. Some people want to attack faster dealing smaller hits, other people will prefer a cannon feel, slow but extremely powerful. This is the fun of playing wander, all mods are acceptable, most gems are useful.


Good luck to anyone who tries out the build! Feel free to message me in game (Ign: Skyfaxe) or post in the thread any questions/critiques you might have. Thanks for taking the time to read through it!

I am trying this out now. Currently in Act 2 Cruel.
Using a facebreaker levelling build, very OP, a little fragile. But, so far, so good.
Thanks for the post, OP.

Question for OP.
You do not use Discipline. Is it not needed? Other auras better? Interested in your thoughts on this?

Currently passive tree looks like this
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMABAcHYw5IES8RUBGWFdcdFB8CJ6ko-io4LL8tHzbFO-FBh0NjRwZKjEw1TLNPfVAwUWBWY1crV4dY9V8qX2pjQ2aebRlwfXFNc1N6uH5Zf8aAVoCugseGrohri3qPRprPncSiBKKjpwinK6c0qZWuk7b3tzG4k7vWwFHAVMHFwfPC7MNtxSjXhtgk2t3bXt6w4vfjguOE5oHnC-vk6-7sGPLh8-r60vrv

Current Gear


Robe, Boots and Gloves same as OP Build

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMABAcHYw5ID8QRLxFQEZYVUBXXFkAWvxoyHRQfAiepKPoqOCy_LR82xTt8O-E_c0GHQ2NHBkqMTDVMs099UDBRYFZjVytXh1j1Wbxapl8qX2pjQ2aebRlwUnB9cU1zU3jOerh-WX_GgFaAroLHhX2GrohrjAuPRpmams-do53EogSio6cIpyunNKmVrpO297cxuJO4yrl8u9bAUcBUwcXB88Lsw23FKNMb14bYJNsC217cx96w4vfjguOE5oHnC-tj6-Tr7uwY7LDy4fPq9lv60vrv_Ks=


build a little updated, i don't think its worth it to take the nodes deep in the shadow tree until perhaps the end game. Shoot for this for now.

Thanks for trying the build out man, gl!