[3.20] Sire of Shards CWC Ball Lightning Trickster

Watcher's Eye - Discipline ES gain on hit is essential. Eventually you want to upgrade to an eye with vitality life gain on hit as well. Both of those mods together make us very tanky.

Sire of Shards - Staff that gives us +4 projectiles fired in all directions. Attributes and resists are nice, but the main mod we looking at is proj damage.

Ashes of the Stars - BIS. Damage, survivability, and reservation efficiency. Everything we need. Anoint Whispers of Doom

Crown of the Inward Eye - Huge survivability as well as a bigger mana pool.

StormShroud - Pair this with two 50% shock avoid abyss jewels and you are ailment immune. Get one jewel with 50% shock and 40% poison avoid, and another with 50% shock and 40% bleed avoid. Combine that with the avoidance cluster on the tree and you are immune to poison/bleed as well.

Kaom Lethal Pride - It fits best on the left side of the tree. Look for double damage and endurance charge on kill. Strength of Blood is a very good defensive layer once we get leech on the cluster jewel. note that in order for this to work, we need to have just under 50% life reserved. This interaction with petrified blood makes us never be full life, so we never stop leeching. Seed 16009 gave me a lot of what I was looking for.

Dying Sun - AOE and multiple projectiles. AOE scales DPS
Progenisis - Huge Survivability. Pretty much stacking petrified blood.
Oriath's End - Big QOL upgrade in clearing screens.

Optional - Mageblood(2 flask Corrupted)
Its a lot cheaper than a regular mageblood, and we are using 3 unique flasks anyways. Solves all ele resists and makes you zoom.

Optional - Shavronne's Wrappings
You can throw shavs on in place of getting a bunch of Chaos resistance, but you will lose a lot of DPS. Only use if you already have the DPS to clear packs and are looking to level.

Do not take Nimis
This build was theorycrafted with Nimis in mind, but unfortunately it doesnt work as well in practice. Ball Lightning does not return to the character, it fizzes out after a set amount of ticks. It does bounce off of walls, which can make it fun on some maps, but not really worth the investment.

All rare bases we want are armour/energy shield.

Gloves
Gloves are a good spot to get attributes. You can buy a fractured +50 strength or dex base, then spam essence until you get the other attribute with a high ele or chaos res roll. From there you can use an eldritch ember to make exarch dominant and eldritch chaos until you have life/es prefixes.

Implicits:
Lightning exposure on hit - Can be low tier with the exposure elemental mastery on the tree.
Chance to unnerve - Can be low tier as well. Ball lightning hits so much that its always up.

Rings
Both rings want lightning damage against shocked enemies paired with a curse on hit. One ring with conductivity, the other with elemental weakness.

Listed below are other mods to look for in order of priority

Chaos res
Energy Shield
Life
Ele res if you are not capped
Adds # Lightning Damage
Increased Lightning damage

If you are running into mana issues. Benchcraft -7 to non-channeling mana cost.

These can be hard to find or expensive on trade, but they are fairly simple to craft. Use an Awakener orb to combine a curse with lightning damage to shocked enemies. Be sure to use amethyst or opal rings as the base. Hope for good other mods, and exalt/annul if you feeling risky. This can get expensive if you are looking for specific mods, as the annul can brick the item.

Body Armour
Use an awakener orb to combine Frenzy Charge on Hit with Spell Crit chance. Frenzy is more damage, and spell crit eliminates some awkward windows where Elemental Overload does not have 100% uptime. From there you bench/beastcraft suffixes cannot be changed and then reforge caster in the harvest bench. This will guarantee an additional curse prefix.

Belt
2 Flask Mageblood is the main goal here, until then, the belt is mainly a stat filler. A Stygian is recommended for the extra jewel slot. Prioritize Chaos res if its not capped. Ele res, attributes, life, and energy shield are good as well. % increased energy shield or % increased lightning damage are good influenced mods to look out for.

Boots
Boots can feel a bit off with cyclone and the way ball lightning works. The slower projectiles make it feel a little weird to stop channeling between packs. A two flask corrupted Mageblood solves this issue. If you cannot afford the Mageblood, there are two ways to play it. One prioritizes comfort, the other prioritizes speed.

1. The Stampede is comfortably consistent, but is slow. You can channel the whole map spamming balls everywhere and it's very smooth. It feels like butter to play. Unfortunately you will not clear maps as fast.

2. Rare boots can get you going fast, but you will have awkward moments of flask downtime. In those windows, you significantly slow down. Mapping can feel a bit clunky even though rare boots are faster in the long run.

The main mods you are looking for on boots are 30%+ Movespeed and Chaos Res. After that any attributes or elemental res you need. Ailment Avoid can take stress off of your jewels for the stormshroud requirement, but nod needed.

Eye Jewels

You will want the Shock/Bleed/poison immunity jewels described above in the uniques section under Stormshroud. You can look for lightning damage and ES/Life/Armour on top of that, but they are hard to find with the avoid stats.

Cluster Jewels
8 passive Large cluster
Storm Drinker
Doryani's Lesson
The one I found had snowstorm in the back if that makes it easier to search.

4-5 Passive Medium Cluster
Eye to Eye
Shrieking Bolts

If you are using rare boots:
Quicksilver Flask
Silver Flask

You will want t1 movespeed on one, and t1 ele resist on the other. Any prefixes that are not reduced effect or reduced duration work. Enchant use when charges reach full.

Once you upgrade to the Mageblood, you will want an increased effect prefix as well as the increased effect enchant from enkindling orbs.


If you are using The Stampede:
Rummi's Concoction
Sulphur flask - Ele Res if you need it, % armour if not.

24% to ball lightning area of effect. The bigger the ball, the more hits as it passes by. POB gives us a big DPS increase at "21" AOE, and thats if the target is standing still. Depending on how the enemy is moving, any AOE helps us.

Cyclone - lvl 1
Awakened Cast While Channeling
Divergent Ball Lightning
Slower Projectiles
Arcane Surge
Awakened Added Lightning Damage

Cast when damage taken lvl 20
Immortal Call lvl 20
Increased Duration lvl 20
Wave of conviction lvl 20 - This is here only to apply exposure. Can be removed once you have exposure implicit on gloves

Anomalous Petrified Blood
Discipline
Enlighten
Anomalous Wrath
(can swap determination for wrath if you feeling squishy)

Clarity
Vitality
Defiance Banner
Arrogance

Herald of Thunder (Can only be equipped with higher reservation Ashes of the Stars)
Enhance

Vaal Haste - Not necessary, just a little speed boost. Do not reserve normal haste

Sniper's Mark
Mark on Hit - Cyclone will apply the mark, so you need to get in melee range for a sec.

Frostblink

Cast on death
Portal - Not necessary, If you need this a lot, get more chaos res.

The Veiled modifier "Trigger socketed spells when you focus" lets us cast any spell wile still channeling cyclone. This can be benchcrafted on any helmet with an empty suffix. Look for the usual suspects for other mods(Chaos res, ele res, attributes, life, and ES).

Once you have that mod on a helmet, it will grant you a "focus" active skill and all socketed spells will trigger when you use that skill. Socket your curses and be in range when you trigger them for big dps increase.

If you have extra sockets on the helm, I like linking galvanic field and culling strike as well. This will trigger and cull tankier enemies.

Eldritch implicits for the helm are increased area of effect and mana reservation efficiency of skills. If you dont need the mana, you can go with lightning pen, spell damage, or non damaging ailments.