[3.9] Crackling Assassination - Ball Lightning + Orb of Storms | All content | Beginner Friendly

+ Can clear all content (Guardians, Shaper, Uber Elder, etc);
+ Can clear all map mods (Elemental reflect is dangerous but possible);
+ Works even on cheap gear;
+ Tanky (7k-9k EHP)!
+ I use it as a league starter and it works great;
+ Lots of movement speed!
+ Fun!

- Not the best dps out there;
- Lots of uniques to work properly (ruins SSF experience - I'll work on this more);
- As with every build, some skill is necessary to clear all content.

Lightning Damage: This build focuses on lightning damage, more specifically Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms. You will be frequently casting these skills on your enemies to tear them down!

Critical Strikes: By following this guide, you should achieve approximately 85% critical chance. This means that most of your hits will eb critical strikes!

Shock: By following this guide you should achieve approximately 95% chance of shocking your foes. This will increase your damage output significantly!

Mind Over Matter: We will stack HP and Mana in equal quantity to obtain a very tanky character. By following this build you should achieve 40-50% Mind Over Matter, meaning that this percentage of damage will be dealt to mana before life, increasing our effective HP.

Many people will look at this build and say: "4k hp is sh*t", so I would like to clarify here what effectively makes this build tanky. To start off we will have Mind Over Matter which divides mana between our HP and Mana. Second, we have practically capped out block chance. Third, Elusive and Evasion stacking will grant us lots of Dodge and Evasion Chances. And last, but not least our ascendancy gives us some protection.

How much mana should you have?:

When using Mind Over Matter, your mana will get drained as you get hit. This being said, you want to avoid losing too much mana or you won't be able to use skills. For this calculation, we need to understand the mana/life ratio. This ratio should follow the equation below:

mana/life = p/(1-p) , where p is how much damage is taken from mana before life.

In other words, you should obey the following inequality:

mana > life*p/(1-p)

So the following table demonstrates how much mana/life you should have:

p -> mana/life
10% -> 11%
20% -> 25%
30% -> 43%
40% -> 67%
50% -> 100%

So when you allocate the Mind Over Matter Keystone, make sure your mana is larger than 43% of your HP. When you get the clarity modifier in a Watcher's Eye, you should have approximately 40% damage taken from mana before life, so make sure your mana is larger than 67% of your life. And so on.

At the endgame I achieved approximately 4.5k HP and 4k Mana to sustain damage and mana usage.

But how much damage can I really take?:

When you have mind over matter, your true HP is actually a variable dependent on your mana as well. We call this the effective HP, or simply EHP. To calculate you EHP, you can use a simple equation:

EHP = HP / (1 - p)

In this equation, p is how much damage is taken from mana before life. As I said above, by the endgame I achieved 4.5k HP and 4k Mana. By using MoM and the Watcher's Eye, I obtained 40% of damage taken from mana before life, so my EHP was:

EHP = 4.5k/(1-0.4) = 4.5k/0.6 = 7.5k

So the build has an effective HP of 7.5k, which is pretty significant to me. I can vouch that this value can grow even more. If a cloak of defiance was used, we would achieve 9k of effective HP.

Blocking, Evading, Dodging and Damage Mitigation?:

We also have multiple other defensive mechanisms.

-Blocking: We achieve 75% chance to block attack damage and 60% chance to block spell damage by using a shield, Rumi's Concoction and Lethal Pride Timeless Jewel. The spell damage can be further increased by modifiers on items.

-Evading: Stibnite flask and our gear should give us approximately
20% chance to evade hits and also blind nearby enemies.

-Dodgind: With Mistwalker and Elusive, we should always have some dodge chance on us. The highest value will be 25% chance to dodge attack and spell hits. This can be further increased using a Quartz Flask.

-Damage Mitigation: Rumi's Concoction will give us enough armor to mitigate 20% of physical hits. We also have 8% damage mitigation while Elusive is up. If at least two rare or unique enemies are neraby, we get an additional 10% reduced damage (helps a lot against Uber Elder).

Here you can find the skill point allocation of the build. There is a link for Path of Building users and for the ones that want to look in the browser through PoE's website. These links contemplate the whole point allocation of the build, for more specific details, refer to the "Leveling" section.

Obs.: It is important to highlight that the damage calculation for ball lightning is not efficient in PoB, so the actual damage is much higher.

Level 100: PoE website Passive Skill Tree
Level 100: Pastebin (Use this in Path of Building)

Mistwalker -> Unstable Infusion -> Opportunistic -> Deadly Infusion



I personally believe that any order here will suffice; however this is the one I use and think will work best.

1) Mistwalker: I think Elusive is amazingly powerful, so this should be picked up ASAP. With 50% chance to obtain Elusive when striking criticals, you will always have the buff. This node also powers up the buff by 25%, while reducing damage taken by 8% and removing the possibility to take extra damage from enemy critical strikes. If you are new to the game, Elusive is a buff that will give you increased Movement Speed (40%) and additional chance to dodge attacks and spells (20%). The buff loses its effectiveness over time, but you're affected by it almost all the time with this ascendancy node. Trust me, it's amazing! More about elusive here: PoE Wiki - Elusive.

2) Unstable Infusion: This node will help us keep our Power Charges up at all times. It also comes with an extra maximum Power Charge to help boost our Critical Chance. If you don't know what these are, they basically improve our Critical Strike chance for each one we obtain. You can read more about them here: PoE Wiki - Power Charges.

3) Opportunistic: With this, we will clear maps faster due to 20% additional movement speed while killing creatures. Our critical strikes also can't be reflected, which will help significantly for clearing "Elemental Reflection" maps. But the most important part is that with only one rare or unique creature you get a 20% damage boost, while with more than two rare or unique creatures you gain 10% reduced damage. This is a pretty awesome buff, since in single bosses we get a massive damage boost. However, with Uber Elder or lots of rares/uniques nearby we get a defensive boost.

4) Deadly Infusion: Finally, a huge damage boost for our power charges. This also gives us even more movement speed, making the build feel really good while running around in maps.

My preference: Kill them all for the skill points.

Also possible: Help Alira to get Crit. improvements and Resistances.

Just keep in mind that if you Help Alira you will have -2 passive points than what my Skill Tree shows.

Pantheon choices should be taken into account before each battle in Path of Exile as each combination favors different events. However, I have some favorite combinations that I would like to share. If you aren't aware with pantheon mechanics, check this out: PoE Wiki - Pantheon.

For general mapping: Lunaris (Major) + Abberath (Minor), Gruthkul (Minor) or Shakari (Minor)

For Shaper/Uber Elder: Brine King (Major) + Yugul (Minor)

Why do I favor these?

Soul of Lunaris (Major God): This gives us a tons of defenses and a movement speed boost. It is very helpful, but only when lots of creatures are nearby;

Soul of the Brine King (Major God): This helps us against stuns, chill effects and freezing. It may not seem like it, but this can really save your life in bosses that deal cold damage.

Soul of Abberath (Minor God): Protection against ignite and burning ground, while also giving speed boost on burning ground. This was a must for Blight since those burning grounds dealt lots of damage;

Soul of Gruthkul (Minor God): Physical damage mitigation is extremely helpful in all cases;

Soul of Shakari (Minor God): Being immune to poison is extremely helpful, saving a flask suffix;

Soul of Yugul (Minor God): More protection against chill and freeze, with a bonus protection against cold hit.

Main Skill (6-Link): Ball Lightning, Slower Projectiles, Spell Echo, Controlled Destruction, Innervate, Lightning Penetration




Secondary Skill (4-Link): Orb of Storms, Curse on Hit, Conductivity, Lightning Penetration




Summon (4-Link): Lightning Golem, Meat Shield, Minion Life, Culling Strike




Auto Trigger (3-Link): Tempest Shield, Wave of Conviction, Physical to Lightning




Movement (2-Link):Flame Dash, Arcane Surge




Auto Cast Defense (2-Link): Cast when Damage Taken, Steelskin




Auras (Unlinked): Wrath, Zealotry, Clarity, Precision




Vaal Skill (Unlinked): Vaal Righteous Fire

I will try to break down the gear as best as possible so you can replicate what I did and get awesome results. Remember that this is an experimental process and I don't know everything about the game. If you know something that I didn't cover or that I forgot, please let us know in the comments!

Before we begin, we will be dealing with trying to achieve the best possible outcomes of modifiers for our equipment. A great tool I use to research these modifiers is the PoEDB website. Here you can choose what type of equipment you are looking for and check out the possible modifiers for it.

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Weapon

For the weapon we want something that will greatly increase our offense. You can use either sceptres or wands, as long as their implicit gives you Elemental Damage or Elemental Penetration.

The weapon cannot be a unique item since we need to craft: "Trigger socketed spell when you use a skill".

Stat priority:
- Spell Damage;
- Lightning Damage;
- Elemental Damage;
- Cast speed;
- Critical Strike Chance for Spells;
- Global Critical Strike Multiplier;
- Damage Penetrates Lightning;
- Damage Penetrates Elemental Resistances;
- Gain Lightning Damage as extra Chaos Damage;
- Gain Elemental Damage as extra Chaos Damage.

A combination of these is excellent for your weapon as they will greatly increase your damage output.

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Shield

In this build we take advantage of blocking to mitigate damage. To boost our chances of blocking we will be using a shield. My preferred type is Energy Shield Shields since they can give you Spell Damage in their implicit and/or Block Chances up to 25%.

Stat priority (Defense):
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Resistances;
- Chance to Block;
- Chance to Block Spell Damage;

Stat priority (Offence):
- Spell Damage;
- Cold Damage;
- Critical Strike Chance for Spells;
- Cast speed;
- Gain Lightning Damage as extra Chaos Damage;

The choice for this combination will depend on your play style. I like to focus on defensive stats first always guaranteeing Life and Mana rolls as obligatory. If my build needs some extra resistances, I get this too. Block chance is always great since it helps mitigate damage. However, if you're a full damage guy, get those offensive rolls and go! Just remember that HP and Mana are a must!

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Body Armor

For the body armor I like to keep it simple and get a unique item. My choices here are: Inpulsa's Broken Heart or Cloak of Defiance. Inpulsa is for an offensive build and cloak of defiance is defensive. Since the build has lots of defensive aspects I will favor Inpulsa as the best armor for this build.

Inpulsa's Broken Heart:
This armor is great since it will give you some evasion, ES, HP, immunity to being shocked, increased damage if you have shocked recently and increased effect of shock. Last, but not least, you will explode shocked enemies, making them deal a percentage of their life as lightning damage to nearby enemies. This will help you insanely in clearing content.

Cloak of Defiance:
If you think you are to squishy and that Inpulsa doesn't work for you, here is the ultimate defense. I played with it and I was simply amazed by its defensive power. Here you will gain a ton of Evasion, Energy Shield and Manam while still getting a 1% mana regeneration per second boost. But here is the biggest deal of all: we will get +10% damage taken from mana before life. Since we already have Mind Over Matter, this will mean that 40% of damage will be taken from mana, increasing our effective health pool (EHP). As you can see, the defensive power is amazing, but you get no offense at all, so it really is up to you.

Rare Body Armor:
I really don't favor getting a rare here, but if you really want to, here are my suggestions for it. I really recommend trying to get and elder or shaper base item here since they give awesome modifiers.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Resistances;
- Increased Maximum Mana (Shaper);
- Damage taken from Mana before Life (Shaper);
- Critical Strike Chance for Spells (Shaper);
- Increased Maximum Life (Elder);
- +Level of Supported Gems (Elder).

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Helmet

For the helmet I am also favoring a unique item since it gives me everything I want. This unique is: Mind of the Council. It really is the best item here since it gives a lot of defensive potential for the build.

Mind of the Council:
This item will give you Evasion, ES and lots of Mana. You will have an additional 10% chance to shock enemies, but 20% chance of being shocked yourself. This is another reason that Inpulsa is such a good item for the body armor. Since Inpulsa makes us immune to shock, the chance to be shocked is avoided. 30% of lightning damage will be taken from mana before life, which makes us really tanky against lightning foes. But the most important part is the last characteristic of this helmet: "Recover 3% of mana when you shock an enemy". We shock our enemies all the time, so this basically guarantees that we will have full mana all the time. This item is usually very cheap in trade leagues since people don't tend to use it. Buy one and try it out. You will love it when your mana simply jumps back up. It is truly amazing.

Rare Helmet:
I don't recommend a rare helmet since Mind of the Council will help a lot with its attributes, especially the instant mana recovery when you get hit hard. However, if you simply didn't like or you want to try something else, just focus on the good mods of a rare helmet and you should be fine. It is also strongly advised to use a Mana Flask to compensate the need of mana recovery at hard times.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Resistances;
- Increased Maximum Mana (Elder);
- Chance to Block Spell Damage (Elder).

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Gloves

Here we will have rare Evasion/Energy Shield or pure Energy Shield gloves. Since we are using lots of uniques in this build, resistances and stats are very important here to help balance out your character.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Resistances (Obligatory);
- Stats (You will usually need Strength and/or Dexterity for gems).

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Boots

Here we will also use rare Evasion/Energy Shield or pure Energy Shield boots. Again, we want to focus on getting resistances and stats to help with the build. However, it's a little bit more tricky here since we also want the Movement Speed modifier.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Movement Speed (20%+ is required);
- Resistances (Obligatory);
- Stats (You will usually need Strength and/or Dexterity for gems).

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Amulet

Here we will be using a unique amulet called Choir of the Storm. This is the best item for the slot, giving us both damage and defenses.

Choir of the Storm:
This item will give us some intelligence, mana and increased lightning damage. It will also increase our Critical Strike Chance based on our lightning resistance. Since we always keep our resistances capped, this should add a reasonable amount of Crit. Chance for the build. We will also automatically trigger a Level 20 Lightning Bolt every time we deal a critical strike. Since the build has amazing critical potential, this skill will be casting many time, increasing our damage significantly.

Rare Amulet:
Even tho other amulet also have great damage potential, I don't recommend something other than Choir of the Storm here because of the characteristics cited above. However, if you feel inclined to use a rare amulet, here are some stat priorities to take into account.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Global Critical Strike Multiplier;
- Global Critical Strike Chance;
- Spell Damage;
- Lightning Damage;
- Cast Speed.

Anointments:
During Blight league we were introduced to anointments. These are Notable Passives that can be allocated to your tree through amulets by using Oils acquired from Blight encounters. Some passives are harder to obtain than others since they required rarer oils, thus requiring more currency. Below are some of the anointments that I recommend.

Cheaper options:
- Static Blows (Teal, Violet, Crimson): Shock and Critical improvements;
- Dreamer (Sepia, Teal, Azure): Lots of Mana;
- Ash, Frost and Storm (Sepia, Crimson, Crimson): Spell Damage and Resistances;
- Divine Judgement (Sepia, Teal, Black): Elemental damage and penetration.

Expensive options:
- Soul of Steel (Golden, Golden, Golden): Max Resistances and Phys. Protection;
- Constitution (Silver, Golden, Golden): Lots of HP;
- Druidic Rite (Clear, Golden, Crimson): Mana and Flask improvements;
- Aqueous Accelerant (Amber, Violet, Golden): Flask and Mana Flask improvements;
- Crusader (Golden, Golden, Clear): Mana and Damage.

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Rings

If you plan on using two massive auras as I did then we don't have much choice here, just go with two Essence Worm rings as I've done. It works great and we get massive bonuses from our auras.

Essence Worm:
These rings will allow us to use these auras without reserving mana. This is huge since we can still keep our mana to use as effective HP. There's not much else to say here.

Rare Rings:
If you don't want to use both auras, you can still use a rare ring. However, I feel like both auras really help me out. If you still want that extra rare ring, just pay attention to the following modifiers.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Lightning Damage;
- Cast Speed;
- Increased Damage.

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Belt

For the belt I favor Stygian Vyses since they give us awesome modifiers while still being able to socket an abyssal jewel.

Stygian Vyse:
This belt is great since it can give us lots of good modifiers. Be sure to do lots of abysses at high tier maps to try and get lots of iLvl 84+ belts for crafting and sellling.

Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana (Obligatory);
- Lightning Damage;
- Elemental Damage;
- Resistances;
- Flask Effect Duration;

TIP: The belt shown above was crafted by myself using very easy steps. Every iLvl 84+ Stygian Vyse I get, I use fossil crafting on them. Basically I use Metallic+Pristine+Prismatic fossils and that guarantees me great defensive and offensive values most of the times. Try it out!

Flasks are a very important feature to every build. I experimented with lots of them and what worked best for me were these:




Divine Life Flask:
This flask is used to regain HP. My preferred mods for it are:
- Bubbling (Affix): This will give us some instant heal for those desperate moments while also giving us a heal over time to feel safer.
- of Staunching (Suffix): This was crafted using Einhar Beastcrafting. I feel that when your HP starts dropping you'll tend to use your life flask. Since this is exactly what happens when you get hit by "Bleeding" or "Corrupted Blood", it it perfect to put this mod on your life flask.

Quicksilver Flask:
This flask helps us move around faster and more efficiently. My preferred mods are:
- Experimenter's (Affix): This increases the duration of the flask buff. It works great with this flask since we want to run around faster as much as possible.
- of Heat (Suffix): This was crafted using Einhar Beastcrafting. Since I try to keep this flask up all the time to run around, I feel safer being immune to chill and freeze during these times.

Stibnite Flask:
This flask gives you a big boost to evasion rating while also blinding nearby enemies. This is very important since it gives you a lot of survivability against hard hits. My preferred mods are:
- Ample (Affix): This flask already has a pretty good duration, so what we do here is add extra charges so that we can use the flask additional times before it runs out.
- of Warding (Suffix): This was crafted using Einhar Beastcrafting. Since I use this flask near enemies and it has lots of usage due to "Ample" affix, I use this for removing curses.

Rumi's Concoction:
This flask will give you armor, which is slightly irrelevant in my opinion (It will give a little bit of physical damage mitigation to be fair). However, it will give us extra chance to block attack and spell damage. This is huge for helping us cap out block chance.

Diamond Flask:
The build depends a lot on critical strikes to function so getting extra numbers on this is crucial. This flask does just this to help boost our damage output. My preferred mods are:
- Chemist's (Affix): This will reduce the number of charges used, which will help us have more usages of the flask before it runs out.
- of Dousing (Suffix): This was crafted using Einhar Beastcrafting. It will protect us against ignite which can be very deadly in some cases.

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Other situational flasks:


Quartz Flask:
This flasks gives you Phasing and dodge chance for attacks and spells. This is a great defensive flask to be used, specially when Delving.

Atziri's Promise:
This flask gives you both offence and defense. You will gain extra chaos damage from your elemental hit and also be able to leech life based on your chaos damage. This is a great flask for true dps hunters.

Dying Sun:
I used this a lot during Legion to help clear out maps and monoliths. It works great, giving you extra are of effect and more projectiles.

Basalt Flask:
This flask is great for physical mitigation. If you're having trouble with hard hitting bosses (Izaro, Shaper, Uber Elder, etc) try one of these and you will not be disappointed.

In the endgame build I use 6 jewels (5 in my skill tree and 1 in my Stygian Vyse). Lets start by talking about our Stygian Vyse.

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Stygian Vyse Jewel

In our belt, we can equip any Abyss Jewel. For these we want the following priority in mods.



Stat priority:
- Maximum Life (Obligatory);
- Chance to gain Onslaught on Kill (Obligatory);
- Maximum Mana;
- Global Critical Multiplier;
- Global Critical Chance;
- Cast Speed;
- Resistances;
- Stats.

TIP: The chance to gain Onslaught is amazing and gives us a really cool buff for "free". Try to get this, it's really worth it!

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Skills Tree Jewels - Mana Stacking

Since we need a lot of mana to use as our effective HP pool, the first 3 jewels you get should be Grand Spectrum Cobalt Jewels.



Why 3 do you ask? They work cumulatively, so having when 3 are equipped, each one will give us +270 to maximum Mana. You can read more about it here: Grand Spectrum Cobalt Jewel - PoE Wiki.

TIP: As soon as you can, try and get a corrupted jewel with the modifier "Corrupted Blood cannot be inficted on you". Trust me, this will save you from a lot of frustration since Corruption Blood is extremely deadly.

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Skills Tree Jewels - Watcher's Eye

The Watcher's Eye Jewel is huge in practically every build. They give you boosts to HP, Mana and ES, while also boosting the effects of selective auras according to the modifiers of the jewel. Since we use 4 auras, we can get good bonuses from many different combinations.



Modifier Priorities:
- % of Damage Taken from Mana before Life while affected by Clarity (Obligatory);
- % increased Critical Strike Chance while affected by Wrath
- % increased Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath
- Damage Penetrates #% Lightning Resistance while affected by Wrath
- % increased Cast Speed while affected by Zealotry

Any other modifiers for our auras is acceptable really. These are just the ones I like most. However, the clarity modifier is obligatory since it helps with the builds tankiness.

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Skills Tree Jewels - Timeless Jewel

This gem in particular is extremely important to the endgame.



Around level 93 I was getting killed a lot, so I started to invest in my HP pool and defenses. Since we deal with blocking mechanic, the Lethal Pride
Timeless Jewel of Kiloava is essential. This jewel will give you some extra strength in allocated passives in the radius, saving lots of strength modifiers in your equipment. It will also transform any keystone in the radius to Glancing Blows. This keystone will double our block chance, but now we will take half of the damage from blocked hits. This allows us to potentially reach the cap for blocking (75%) while using Tempest Shield and Rumi's Concoction. This is a huge defensive mechanism that worked really well for me. I stopped dying and got all the way up to level 97. I feel that I could've pushed to 100 if I wanted, but I really didn't feel like grinding.

TIP: I placed this jewel in the socket northwest of the Shadow starting point in the tree. This gave me lost of strength from the allocated passives and allowed me to use the "Pain Attunement" keystone as the "Glancing Blows".

- Adding Videos (They are ready, just need to be uploaded);
- Add a leveling section (with progressing skill tress and gems);
- Update skill and gear changes for endgame;

- 12/05/2019 - Guide Created.