[3.11] Divine Ire CI Trickster chaos generator - 37m per hit, leaguestarter viable, all content

...

+ Good for boss killing, up to 29-37M+ per hit (with level 100 and some minmaxing). There is a potential to one shot bosses
+ Decent clear speed
+ Pretty tanky
+ Scales really good with each piece of puzzle
+ League start viable
+ Kamehameha?..

- Really expensive, like ~50-70ex for decent version
- Can't do elemental reflect maps
- Not HC/SSF viable

+/- Channeling gameplay might not fit for everyone, but for me it's kinda tactical and satisfying. Braindead is not allowed for sure!
+/- Gambling (yes, even here) damage output

The main source of this build`s power – maximum utilizing multi conversion with gaining chaos damage on each stage of this conversions.

We're converting
100% of our phys damage -> lightning with Divine Ire skill gem (50%) + divine wrath notable (25%) + Watcher's eye (rest 25%)
98% of lightning -> cold (2 call of the brotherhood ring)
50% of cold -> fire (cold to fire support gem)

You can assume, that we're dealing the same amount of damage, but the most cool thing about our scaling damage method is that we utilizing mod gain % of elemental damage as extra chaos damage and this gaining apply before conversations to all stages

A simple example of how it works

For example, we have 50% of elemental damage gain as extra chaos.
Initially, we have:
1. 100 phys 0 light 0 cold 0 fire - gain +50 chaos
Convert 100% phys -> lightning
2. 0 phys 100 light 0 cold 0 fire - gain +50 chaos
Convert 80% lightning-> cold
3. 0 phys 20 light 80 cold 0 fire - gain +40 chaos
Convert 50% cold-> fire
3. 0 phys 20 light 40 cold 40 fire - gain +20 chaos
_____________________________________
=+160 chaos damage!

The more % of damage you convert at the stage, the more extra chaos damage you gain at the next stage.

Also we are utilizing as much elemental gain as possible to multiply converting damage every stage. The best elemental gainings are at the start of our conversion, like “gain #% of physical damage as lightning damage.

Our ascendancy node, Harness of the void, is also applied as a gain and rolls for every stage independently. It creates (with crits and a small chance of dealing double damage from clusters) a gambling element of the gameplay. Sometimes your hit can one shot everything, and sometimes the damage is noticeably low.



With all this we can reach up to 29M shaper damage per 20 stage hit (remember, that this is an average value) under all flasks. Without them, we can divide by 2 this number, but no one (maybe, except a8 sirus) will survive long enough to left us without charges.

I'm sorry for clickbait, but we can reach 37M+ only under vaal righteous fire, that can help us to one/two shot any conqueror/guardian/metamorph/regular map boss, but not sirus/shaper/elder (where we can`t get souls for vaal skills). To calculate more realistic DPS against bosses (if you really want it; if not, you can just accept the real DPS ~ 20 stage hit, more or less, depending on the cast speed), you can use this simple formula:

average damage per hit * cast rate / 10 + channeling dps

And this is why this formula is valid:
With Divine Ire we gain a stage every cast, up to 20. Every cast will trigger small arcs in the area around us. When we hit someone with these arcs (up to 5 enemies, but for this calculations we consider 1 boss), we gain an additional stage (depending on rarity of the enemy: 40% for hit normal or magic enemy and 100% for rare and unique enemy; bosses are always rare/unique). So if we cast it 10 times per second (cast rate = 10) and if our enemy stays in range of our arcs, we can gain 20 stages per second. We must also consider the damage from lightning strikes during the channeling.

This build has a lot of defense layers. It can't survive really deep delve (I'm at 300 now and it feels good, tho) or t16 100% delirious, but it feels comfortable to take most of the hard content of the game, including conquerors or guardians (some of them we can face-tank full time, like Chimera, Warlord or Snek conqueror).

First of all, we're building around trickster ascendancy, which gives us a good balance between offence and defense. It provides us a good chunk of ES, which opens for us Chaos Inoculation (short CI). It also has a good synergy with 10% spell dodge, because we are always on full ES). I have 5-6k ES (this amount is really small for ES build), and I sacrificed the defense to take millions of damage per hit. It allows to kill things before they get us (yeah, our best defense is a good offense). The main advantage of CI is 100% chaos resistance. It means, that we no longer need to stack some of them on our gear/clusters (or to catch a one-shot by some random rare chaos mob), to be afraid of poisons, caustic grounds, snek conqueror, etc.

Also we have 50% evade chance and 31% phys dmg reduction with our flasks and some cluster jewel nodes (Battle-Hardened) plus some phys and lightning damage mitigation from infused channeling.

Finally, this build gets a 62%/32% real block (without glancing blows) while channeling (it means almost always) + recovering 5% ES on block from rare shaper shield, that allows us to jump into packs of monsters. The only things, that can actually kill us, are phys crits from several legions mini-bosses or an angry over-stacked metamorph (we should kill them before they kill us, that we can easily do with our pretty high damage).

We can also get some ES leech (1000-1500). That's kinda minor, but still useful addition.

The main weakness connected to CI is that every single hit can easily stun us because of our hp eq to 1 (see more explanation here), but we have full stun immunity while channeling + ghost shrouds. They keep us alive while we are not channeling. But if we lose all the ghost shrouds (it is quite easy to do in a pack of mobs), panic and catch a skill like a all lightning or rapidly small attacks, this can permanently stun us to death.

Most of the time you can just jump into packs of mobs and not even channel – one tap can kill all easily. In the boss fights we should place wither totems and the orb of storm (0s cast time actually) for curse and shock + activate vaal righteous fire.

Note 1: you should always hit a boss with Divine Ire’s arcs while channeling, otherwise you will lose more than half of damage and es leech. But don't be greedy, because two 10 stages hits will do exactly the same amount of damage like a one 20 stage hit, so you can charge for 1-1.5s for the 10 stage and dash out from the boss attacks.

Note 2: any usual cast (like a flame dash or an orb of storm) will interrupt channeling, but not a frostblink. However, i prefer a flame dash for boss fights, because a frost blink has a too long cooldown.

Ascendancy: Swift killer -> Ghost dance -> Escape artist -> Harness the void

Pantheon

Major: Lunaris is for usual clearing: I only died because of some random phys crits or angry metamorphs with their boys. Solaris is for strong bosses.
Minor: Tukohama or Abberath (ignite can be a real danger on some maps/deep delve).

Bandits: Kill them all! We are starve to passive points, because we can get much more, than any bandit could give, with them.

I'm using community Localidentity fork: https://pastebin.com/MquYh97P

Why not Glancing blows???

Caster builds like this usually utilizing Glancing Blows` notable and 75%/~75% half-damage block. By math, this is the same amount of damage, but it has a good synergy with a shield mod "recover 5% of energy shield on block", and increasing defenses are really nice. It also benefits notables like Arcane Swiftness. But we can easily push our native block to 60%/30%+ with a channeling skill, thanks to a medium channeling cluster and Stoic Focus node:



In 3.10, when i was planning this build, it gave +4/+4% block, but now it is still viable in my opinion. The glancing blows` main problem is that it require 6 passive point to reach, and this build is so greedy to points because of the really strong clusters. I have tried some variants with glancing blows, so that we can drop our Rumi's concoction or take precise focus notables instead of stoic focus. I have even tried to hit Glancing Blows through Thread of hope with a very large ring modifier, but at the end I always got the same ~amount of damage and ~lower defences (actually, it is really hard to calculate a profit from the recover % of ES with 75% half damage block + minus some passives against 60% real block + recover).

Always look for the highest total energy shield and any resists you need.

All the parts of our equipment must have shaper influence. We will lose a lot of damage without it (one piece of shaper item before we get full shaper deck will cost ~5% of damage). The best high level bases with shaper influence cost several exalts. Finding the one with some good mods would cost you even more, so I prefer to craft my own gear or to buy (for wands/accessories, when we don't need 30% quality) something with good mods and to finish it with target harvest crafting. The main advantage of self crafting is the possibility of getting 30% quality + some harvest crafting crazy stuff. Crafting can help us save a huge amount of currency.

Divine Ire

A casual setup:

Divine Ire - Cold to fire - Inspiration - Infused channeling - Elemental focus - Controlled destruction

More defensive setup (because of the ability to freeze enemies):

Divine Ire - Cold to fire - Inspiration - Infused channeling - Energy Leech - Controlled destruction

Maximum damage for bosses setup:
Swap Controlled Destruction for Concentrated Effect:

Divine Ire - Cold to fire - Inspiration - Infused channeling - Elemental focus - Concentrated effect

A few words about awakened gems:

Awakened Elemental focus and Awakened Controlled destructionactually will give us ~2-3% (against level 21 gems) of damage for the each one. I think, this is ok, but you may minmax it at the last queue.
__________________________________________________________________________

Auras:

Maximum damage:

Wrath + Hatred + Herald of Ash + Enlighten (level 4)

You can actually take Enlighted level 3 (it is much cheaper) with some reservation nodes, but you will lose some damage/ES from some better nodes:



Defensive and budget setup:

Discipline + Wrath + Herald of Ash +Vaal Grace (off, use only vaal version like panic button)

You don’t need Enlightened here at all, but you`ll lose a huge amount of damage (~20-30%, it depends on your Watcher’s eye type) in case of trade of ~900es and 2 good panic buttons.
__________________________________________________________________________

Totem setup

Wither + Multiple Totems + Increased duration/Faster casting + Spell Totem

3 totems need less than 1s to get 15 wither stacks on boss, this is actually a huge buff for our chaos damage (remember to check it at the pob configuration).
__________________________________________________________________________

Curse setup

Orb of Storms + Curse On Hit + Assassin’s Mark

Apart from having a curse, this setup is good, because the orb of storms can shock enemies (we can't shock ourselves because of conversion/Elemental focus).
__________________________________________________________________________

Movement setup

Flame dash/Frostblink (level 20) + Arcane Surge (level 6 to trigger by any use)/Frostblink
__________________________________________________________________________

CWDT setup

Cast when Damage Taken (level 4) + Steelskin (level 12) + Summon Ice Golem (level 6) + Tempest Shield (level 9)
__________________________________________________________________________

Vaal Righteous fire

It would be great to take it with inc duration, but we don't have enough gem slots for it.

Cluster jewels are very strong. They are much better, than almost every passive ring on the default tree. We can even drop crit multi nodes, especially after their nerf in 3.11.

I prefer physical cluster over elemental/spell/chaos (the chaos one has an explode on a kill, that is actually pretty good, but other chaos nodes are really not) because of the highest amount of % increase.

Large cluster jewels (max 8 nodes)
So, we take 2 large physical cluster jewels.
The strongest node for us is Force multiplier .
The alternative for the prefix node – Furious Assault , but i recommend to hunt exactly for Force Multiplier.

I prefer to have Battle-Hardened node, because we don't have too much good choices here and an additional defence is always good. As a 3rd node we should take Iron Breaker. We can’t utilize overwhelm, but we don't have any better options.
__________________________________________________________________________

Medium cluster jewels (4-5 nodes)

We can take up to 4 of the channeling medium clusters.

The best nodes here: Rapid Infusion, Precise Focus and Stoic Focus.
Rapid Infusion and Precise Focus give us ~equal amount of damage, but i prefer Rapid Infusion, because it give us a nice 5% bonus to MS, and it's nice, that we don't need to channel always exact 1 second every cast to gain its damage bonus. For our shield and the defences at all I always get Stoic Focus as a second node.

Important note: we need 1 Unwavering Focus to gain immunity to stuns while channeling, which is essential considering CI (we have 80% stun immunity from the tree without it, which is not enough).
__________________________________________________________________________

Small cluster jewels (2-3 nodes)

I recommend to take two ES clusters: the one with Energy from Naught node and the other one with Conservation of Energy. Energy from Naught provide us a ridiculous amount of ES (~400 for one cluster), but we always need to have an ES leech to conserve energy, even without Atizir’s promise and energy leech gem. You can replace it with some usual jewels like a good alternative and take Light Eater node of the tree. It will give you more damage and leech rate in the trade of some ES with stats/resistances from cluter’s modifiers.

I don't like taking a lot of small clusters, because they are locking the jewel slots, and every single jewel can be very strong by itself (triple crit multi – 9-10% of damage, this is pretty huge for 1 node).

Updates later...

I'm using community Localidentity fork: https://pastebin.com/3XZbfMLa

Updates later...

Updates later...

Updates later...