3.6 CI Soulrend Trickster (League Starter/SSF/HC viable) - No MoM/EB shenanigans :^)

My idea of this build was to get the most out of the new Soulrend ability and the updated Trickster ascendancy. That being said, the goals to achieve this were:

Defensive
- Utilize built-in energy shield leech from Soulrend by stacking energy shield and energy shield leech in skill tree, therefore also going Chaos Inoculation (CI) in long term.
- Utilize the updated ascendancy nodes "Ghost Dance" and "Escape Artist" by also stacking as much evasion as possible.

Offensive
- Stack as much chaos damage and damage over time as possible :)


So far I was able to easily run through maps up to tier 10 without any difficulty.
After playing this build for a while, I feel like these are the good and bad things about this build:

Pros:
- Insanely good map clear, especially on open terrain, due to large travel range and homing missile like mechanic of Soulrend
- Super fast due to movement speed and cast speed from Trickster ascendancy
- Super tanky so far due to big energy shield leech and energy shield recovery through "Ghost Dance" ascendancy node and Vaal Discipline as Life Flask replacement
- Immune to chaos damage due to CI
- Infinite mana without mana flask and "Weave the Arcane" once you have all required passives
- Reflect mods are irrelevant since chaos damage is neither physical nor elemental damage
- Proximity shields are irrelevant. Now the boss of Whakawairua Tuahu is a piece of cake :)
- Decent boss DPS with Wither/Blight totem and swap from GMP to Swift Affliction
- SSF viable; I am currently playing with Sin Trek as my only unique equipped.
- Pretty cheap due to using hybrid evasion/energy shield items and pure evasion body armour (due to "Escape Artist" ascendancy node) without maximum life affixes.

Cons:
- Hard mana management in longer, pure single target fights (Shaper, (Uber) Elder, ...) before you got most of the mana regen nodes (which you should get very late aka when you actually want to do those bosses) due to missing mana recovery through "Patient Reaper" ascendancy node when killing things and no mana leech.
- A little squishy when out of Ghost Shroud stacks ("Ghost Dance" ascendancy node)
(- not sure if this is a con, but you have a smaller energy shield pool compared to Occultist, but probably better energy shield recovery thanks to "Ghost Dance" ascendancy node)

Skill Gems are ordered by priority!

Body Armour
1. Soulrend
2. Greater Multiple Projectiles
3. Efficacy
4. Controlled Destruction
5. Swift Affliction
6. Void Manipulation
Note: Ideally you want to have a body armour with 3 blue sockets, 2 green sockets and 1 white socket (via Vorici in Research safehouse) so you can swap Greater Multiple Projectiles with e.g. Energy Leech for pure single target fights.

Helmet/Gloves/Boots #1
1. (Vaal) Discipline
2. Malevolence
3. (Vaal) Clarity
4. Enlighten (Lv. 2+)
Note: As long as you still need mana flasks for boss fights, you can swap Clarity for a Flame/Lightning Golem.

Helmet/Gloves/Boots #2
1. Bane
2. Despair
3. Enfeeble/Temporal Chains
4. Arcane Surge (Lv. 6)
Note: For clarification (in case you didn't know already) - Arcane Surge is left at Lv. 6 because it is its highest level where the mana spent threshold to trigger it covers a single Bane cast.
Choose your second (defensive) curse by personal preference or given socket colours (green vs. blue). Keep in mind that Temporal Chains also increases the duration of our Soulrend DoT!

Helmet/Gloves/Boots #3
1. Wither
2. Spell Totem
3. Faster Casting
4. Flame Dash
Note: Very important! Flame Dash must not be linked with Spell Totem, so you only want a 3L.
You may replace Wither with (Vaal) Blight in combination with the Spreading Rot Jewel (quest reward in Act 5). I still prefer Wither because of the greater range which allows me to place the totem further away, thus potentionally increasing its lifespan :)

Weapon #1
1. Immortal Call (Lv. 3)
2. Cast When Damage Taken (Lv. 1)
3. Increased Duration
Note: For clarification (in case you didn't know already) - Cast When Damage Taken is left at Lv. 1 because the damage threshold to trigger the supported spell (Immortal Call) is lowest. Immortal Call on the other hand is left at Lv. 3 because it is its highest level supported by Lv. 1 CWDT.

Weapon #2
1. Shield Charge
2. Fortify
3. Faster Attacks


Gameplay
Move around with Shield Charge for speed and Fortify, shoot Soulrend everywhere, use Bane on targets with more Life (e.g. Rares) and weave it in every few seconds to keep up Arcane Surge, place your Wither totem for bosses.

<Path of Building Code>

Please note that this PoB build contains several different skill trees (found in the bottom left corner of PoB)

Bandits
Kill all!

Ascendancy
1. Patient Reaper
2. Ghost Dance
3. Escape Artist
4. Prolonged Pain

Pantheon
Pick what you feel like :D
I'm currently using Soul of the Brine King to have some stun lock protection in case my Ghost Shrouds drop - dealing damage with Soul Rend to leech energy shield is our biggest defense when Ghost Shrouds is gone :)
Regarding minor gods: Soul of Gruthkul is always good. Others may be used situationally (e.g. Soul of Yugul for Uber Elder)

First off: For general leveling tips you should look up other sources. This leveling section only guides you on how to level this build in particular.

Right at the beginning, pick up Freezing Pulse for your Hillock quest reward and follow the "Until Bane" PoB skill tree. Until Bane, use any useful Support Gems for Freezing Pulse that you can acquire. Right away you can use your Lesser Poison Support. When you bring the Medicine Chest for Nessa, you have access to Arcane Surge Support (not as quest reward, but you can buy it from her) - use it as well. Once you kill Brutus, pick Flame Dash as quest reward and switch your Arcane Surge from Freezing Pulse to Flame Dash (don't level Arcane Surge above level 5 until you get Faster Casting Support in Act 2). You can fill the open support slot on Freezing Pulse with Added Cold Damage, which you can buy now from Nessa. You can also pick up Void Manipulation Support from here for later and start leveling it.

Once you get Bane (early Act 3), make sure to get the "Whispers of Doom" passive asap and use it as your main skill together with Despair, Temporal Chains (or Enfeeble) and the Void Manipulation Support from before. Then fill up the missing passive skill nodes from the "After Bane" skill tree. After that you can follow the "Before CI" skill tree..
At this point (early Act 3) you also have access to Discipline and Malevolence. You should get both and use Discipline right away. Atm I'm not sure about this and need to test it, but I remember having severe mana problems using Discipline and Malevolence simultaneously. If you feel that way as well, just play without Malevolence (you may keep it in your gear and level it though).
Also in Act 3, you can get Soulrend as a quest reward for "Sever the Right Hand" - do so, but don't use it as your main skill right away (you may level it though). IMO you should keep playing with Bane as your main skill until you get the Greater Multiple Projectiles Support from the Act 4 quest "The Eternal Nightmare", then you may swap to Soulrend.

In the endgame, once you have found some decent energy shield items and start to easily get killed by chaos damage, switch to CI and follow the "Final (with CI)" skill tree from then on. When I switched to CI, I had somewhere between 4-5k ES and it was fine.
How you advance through the rest of the skill tree is up to you for the most part. I would get the mana regen nodes last because you pretty much only need them for boss fights (going mana regen isn't bad though because you don't need mana flask anymore and can get another utility flask for more offense/defense). If you feel like you need more defense, get the energy shield nodes. Otherwise get the few damage nodes we have first :)

General Gearing Priority
1. Cap resistances
2. Get as much energy shield as possible
3. Damage increases (spell damage, chaos damage, increased cast speed, ...)
4. Get as much evasion as possible
Important: Once you have the "Escape Artist" Ascendancy node, you want to wear a pure energy shield base Helmet and a pure evasion base Body Armour.

Flasks by priority
1. Life Flask (replace by any utility flask once you go CI, I recommend a Silver Flask)
2. Mana Flask (replace by any utility flask once you have enough mana regen, I recommend a Sulphur Flask offensively or a Granite Flask defensively)
3. Quicksilver Flask (replace by any utility flask once you use Shield Charge, I recommend a Basalt Flask (Granite Flask if you chose Sulphur Flask in 2.))
4. Stibnite Flask
5. Jade Flask
Note: You should cover several immunities with your flasks, at the very least bleeding and freeze/chill; After that I would get shock and curse immunity. For the last flask you can decide between burning immunity or reflexes (60-100% increased evasion) - I prefer the evasion.

Uniques
Nothing mandatory! Cerberus Limb can be really nice, and you don't even need the 30% block requirement for extra leech because you should already be on leech cap, so just get most benefit out of the armour/energy shield rating on your shield. Also, Sin Trek is great :)
Pass me your ideas! :D

Here are some aspects to think about or to keep in mind:

- A few things about Soulrend and PoB: In general, Soulrend damage consists of 2 parts - the initial projectile damage and the DoT. PoB is pretty misleading regarding your actual DPS. The "total DPS" in PoB only shows you the projectile damage portion and the "DoT DPS" shows you only the DoT damage and, very importantly, per second. The base duration of the DoT portion is only 0.4 seconds. So you will have to apply your DoTs back to back to actually reach the shown DoT DPS.
Because of the "problem" in PoB, e.g. Cast Speed only shows you a slight increase in total DPS aka your projectile DPS. Technically, cast speed does indeed not increase your DoT DPS per se, though it helps you getting closer to the back to back DoT application and therefore closer to actually reach that DoT DPS. So cast speed is actually a proper DPS gain, which is only not correctly shown in PoB.
In case you want to calculate your actual total DPS, you will have to use following formula:

If [1 second] / [Cast Rate] < DoT duration
Actual total DPS = "Total DPS" (projectile DPS) + Cast Rate * DoT DPS * DoT duration

If [1 second] / [Cast Rate] >= DoT duration
Actual total DPS = "Total DPS" (projectile DPS) + DoT DPS


What does "[1 second] / [Cast Rate]" mean? This is the number of applications of the Soulrend DoT you do per second, respectively how much time goes by between 2 Soulrend casts. If you overlap your DoT because your Cast Rate is too high, you are wasting DPS (since you can only have one debuff of the same type simultaneously on any target). Say we have the base duration of 0.4 seconds of the Soulrend DoT; Then [1 second] / [Cast Rate] must not be lower than the 0.4 seconds. In this example, your Cast Rate must be equal to or lower than 2.5. With increases to cast speed and increases to DoT duration, we can actually reach the point where we can apply our DoTs back to back very easily (again, implying we hit the target with every cast).
With that being said, you can maximize your DPS by tweaking the behaviour of your cast rate and DoT duration, for example by swapping Swift Affliction Support in and out or by changing your passives at the Shadow starting area from "Attack and Cast Speed" to "Physical and Chaos Damage" and vice versa.

- Temporal Chains increases the duration of our Soulrend DoT on enemies! Keep that in mind after reading what I wrote just before.

- Why not take "Potency of Will" when you already have "Shaper" next to it? Also because of the correlation between DoT duration and cast rate. If your cast rate is that low (which should never really be the case), it might be better to get it.

- Soulrend provides 4% of its damage done leeched as energy shield. Thus it offers better defense by better offense. That being said, Efficacy and Controlled Destruction may even defensively outperform Energy Leech. This should be calculated for your current setup.

- The damage reduce of Greater Multiple Projectiles (or Lesser Multiple Projectiles) only applies to the projectile portion of your damage. The DoT DPS of Soulrend is untouched. Therefore, GMP does not reduce our damage by 26% (it is in fact somewhere around 5%).

- Keep an eye on your mana management; Check your current mana status regularly on PoB. Once you have enough mana regen, every bit more is wasted. PoB shows your mana regen per second on the left panel. To find out how much mana you spend per second, multiply your cast rate with the mana cost of Soulrend (you can find it under "Calcs" in the "Skill Damage over Time" frame). So if you already have enough mana regen, feel free to shift some mana regen passives to something else.