SpiraMN - CoalMN's Ethical Elementalist Blade Flurry HoWA PVP Build. UPDATED for 3.3

EDITED June 23, 2018 for patch 3.3

This build is a great hit-and-run style melee build that takes advantage of the CI playstyle. Its emphasis on mobility allows you to quickly find flanks and reinforce allies. It's capable of quickly dispatching squishy targets while threatening tanks with lethal damage.

Stats Overview

Elementalist
70% Lightning Penetration
1.2k+ Intelligence
7.5k Energy Shield
Shock and Ignite Immune
Stun Immune
Chaos Immune
Bleed Immune
75% All Elemental Resists

Gem Links

HoWA:

Several HoWAs are stashed in the inventory to counter specific builds, read below for sample setups.

Atziri's Mirror: Frost Wall - Spell Echo - Spell Cascade

Gain pockets of breathing room versus projectiles and limit your opponent's movement.

The Vertex: Enlighten - Wrath - Discipline - Herald of Thunder

Aura setup in The Vertex will benefit from the +1 level of gems, gaining more power and defenses

Shaper's Touch: Lightning Warp - Less Duration - Faster Casting - Swift Affliction

This provides better distances on closing or opening gaps. Casting has a bit of a delay, so only use it to cross cliffs/gaps or mix up your movement.

Atziri's Splendour: Blade Flurry - Weapon Elemental Damage - Damage on Full Life - Lightning Penetration - Block Chance Reduction

The main source of damage.

Death's Door: Whirling Blades - Flicker Strike - Faster Attacks - Fortify/Maim

The main setup for mobility, allowing us to find flanks and run away from bad engagements.

Gear

Weapon



The bread-and-butter of the build. It's possible to stack insane amounts of intelligence due to the forced all-uniques ruleset. Intelligence not only contributes to your damage, but to your Energy Shield total as well.

Armour



Atziri's Splendour provides a good amount of ES and resists. Atziri's mirror is great for resists and intelligence. The Vertex is purely for bolstering Energy Shield totals and giving our auras +1 level. Shaper's Touch is an absolute core of the build, providing much needed accuracy and an extra source of Energy Shield. Death's door is very useful versus builds that utilize bleed to counter ES regeneration, while providing some ES and resists.

Jewelery



Astramentis is a must, providing high amounts of attributes which increase your damage, mobility, and defenses. The Perandus Signets not only contribute a lot of much desired intelligence, but huge amounts of mana regeneration which allow us to continuously use skills. Cyclopean Coil simultaneously provides intelligence, % damage, and shock+ignite immunity with a bit of careful attribute balancing.

Flasks



A persisting heat flask is crucial, as being locked down with a freeze usually spells death. The Chemist's prefix on Divine Mana Flasks allows for 10 drinks from a single flask. This allows us to safely clean burns (from Scorching Ray) relatively cheaply, allowing us to run and regenerate energy shield for another clash. Warding flask is also mandatory as blasphemy curses can halt your advances; look to replace the Quicksilver for another warding flask if curses are too much of a problem. I chose Stibnite flasks because they give the most amount of drinks for a persisting flask.

Jewels



Brute Force Solutions in choice spots will net a lot of intelligence; those are placed in the leftmost jewel sockets. 3 Viridian Grand Spectrums provide 108% increased damage, which is nearly as effective as 3 affix % damage jewels but can be cheaply bought. Grand spectrums also tie in well with the Whispering Ice swap (will be explained below). The rest of the jewels should be dedicated to capping resists and more attack speed for more fluid gameplay.

Sample Swaps



Blink Arrow - Faster Attacks - Faster Projectiles

This Quill Rain combo is mainly used for Blink Arrow, which will allow you to escape great distances in the smallest amount of time to ensure that ES regeneration kicks in. This also doubles as an anti-namelock swap (an opponent that holds down their attack button after they've clicked on your character).



Ice Storm - Cold Penetration - Increased Duration - Spell Cascade - Block Chance Reduction

This swap serves multiple purposes. For glass builds that utilize a lot of range, this can be used to harass them and open themselves up to counter-attacks, if not outright kill them. We scale Ice Storm serendipitously with intelligence and Grand Spectrums. Spreading chilled ground also dissuades enemy engagements and acts as an area-of-denial skill. Increased Duration on the Ice Storm allows it to destroy traps, should they last longer than the Clever Construction buff, as the Ice Storm lasts 4.72 seconds versus the 2.5 second immunity that traps have.

Miscellaneous Swaps:



Having several self-cast curses allows us to burn enemy warding flasks and improve our chances of ideal engagements: Elemental Weakness for more damage, Temporal Chains to limit enemy movement, Enfeeble to reduce enemy damage output.



Rare-but-lethal reflect builds that reflect a lot of physical damage are countered by Immortal Call. This low opportunity cost swap allows us to gain as much physical immunity uptime as possible.



Inserting Conversion Trap and Advanced Traps into the BRG HoWA claw allows us to counter minion builds, such as Golemancers.



Allows us to have a reliable way of dealing with chill/freeze outside of flasks. Use against heavy cold damage builds to ensure seamless gameplay



Saves a lot of warding charges against heavy Temporal Chains users. Ensure that the Timetwist reduces skill duration, so that it benefits Lightning Warp as well.

Strategy

3v3/2v2

Never look for a fair fight. Look to flank high priority glass cannons or double-team attackers coming for your own allies. Assume that every 1v1 is a coinflip due to your semi-glass nature, so look to get the first strike to better your odds. If you don't succeed in killing your target, run away using a combination of whirling blades and lightning warp to recover any lost energy shield. If you find yourself the last man standing, try to keep moving to pull your opponents into bad positions, and pick off threats one-by-one.

CTF

Use your mobility to secure areas to zone, aggro, and threaten enemies. Look to aim for high priority glass targets, or at least keep their attention away from major chokepoints. If you can, try to sneak the flag to pull aggro to yourself, and run if you can't find a secure route. Use frost wall to block runners from capping or to protect yourself and allies from projectiles, just be careful you don't accidentally block your allies' mobility.

Addendum

Current PoB as of June 23, 2018: https://pastebin.com/9jSxGbuK

The profile should be always open, so you can look for SpiraMN in my profile to take a look at the gear and passive tree, or PoB it. Feel free to ask any questions in this thread or message @CoalMN ingame for questions.

Have been one shotted by this build. Great damage and really good es pool considering only uniques being used.

I dueled with him a lot times.
He is fast and hits hard.
Great Job!

Nice guide Coal! EthicalMeleeMasterrace

Can confirm; this build is insane