[3.22] - Annihilating Light Chieftain build theory crafting

TLDR: I think annihilating light is a cool item that could work on the chieftain, but I need some help optimizing the build.


I've wanted to make a chieftain character for this league, but I'm having trouble finding any builds that seem fun or or that aren't done better by another ascendancy. I've come up with an idea which I feel could be good, but I can't quite seem to get the damage numbers up there. Here is the idea:

Spell caster relying on the triple damage mod from annihilating light staff.

The downside of the staff is that it massively reduces your elemental resists. However, the Tasailo / Valako branch on the chieftain tree gives you tons of free resists, making it so you can still hit resist cap even with the annihilating light equipped.

My next thought was scaling damage by adding in some abyss jewels that give flat spell damage.

've been using purifying flame as the main skill because I see easy scaling on phys and fire, but the numbers still aren't great.

Despite some time tinkering, the damage numbers still seem relatively low. Not sure if this is a build that could go somewhere and I'm just bad at POB, or if it's a dead end.

Here is what I've come up with in POB
https://pobb.in/cT7_5T0pXtLO

Would love to get some feedback and/or ideas. Thanks!

Check out Mathil's Annihilating Light Elemental Hit build from Crucible. I had a quick play with it in PoB and it looks like switching it to Chieftain could work. You lose a fair bit of DPS from the Ascendancy but do free up a lot of resistance slots as Mathil had % all res on almost every piece of gear so you can most definitely gain some of it back.

I just got this item as well, and am a big Chieftain fan. Was my league start despite the negative talk about the rework. I want reroll that character, and was thinking of making a self cast (insert fire spell here) using the staff. They resistances is anon issue with this acendency. Explody node is way better than expected. So with RF, iron will, and 6L staff, damage should be juicy. I kind of have a love for fireball but not sure if that would really work all that well.