[3.12] Cast While Channelling VD/Any Skill Chieftain - Terrific all rounder, easy A8 Sirus

Hello,

I want to start by saying this is not my build, it's a variant of TENPURAUDON's which you can find here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKFceZmt73P5utpHlZMkycQ




PATH OF BUILDING FORK VERSION
https://pastebin.com/QLuwiA74

VIDEOS:
Spoiler

A8 Sirus /w Animate Guardian and dps setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5Jd0--C6EU
POB (fork community) for this setup: https://pastebin.com/HhVJixqq

T16 Minotaur /w Animate Guardian setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpjYENnGSGk

T16 Hydra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBfH6DoLlK8

Baran Map + A8 Sirus: https://youtu.be/EqJeFfCYqYg

Uber Elder
https://youtu.be/VmmxMdAk3Tc


PROs:
Spoiler

Terrific all-round build. Good offense, good defense, good map clear, good single target. The only thing that can really kill me are running through a narrow door in Heists into a pack. Alas, just be patient and load up a bunch of VDs and wait for it to clear the other side of the door before continuing.

League starter-able.


CONs:
Spoiler

Capping resistances + dex requirement is tricky.

Can't do Ele Reflect

Mechanics require reading/intermediate knowledge (use the checklist below)


BANDITS, ASCENDANCY, PANTHEON:
Spoiler
Kill all because cluster jewels are too good.

Ascendency: Tasalio > Ngamahu > Hinekora > Valako

Pantheon: I'm using Soul of Arakaali and Soul of Shakari purely for Chaos res and in all honesty, I haven't upgraded a single pantheon


CHECKLIST FOR A SMOOTH EXPERIENCE
Spoiler

I AM SELF KILLING MY CHARACTER TOO MUCH FROM CHANNELING CYCLONE
- Soul Tether/Immortal Ambition is required
- Do you have a Life gained on Hit with Spells ring?
- Do you have a Increased Total Recovery mod on a ring/amulet?
- Corrupted Soul is a priority upgrade to protect you but not required to get going.
- Are you actually leeching an enemy?
- You can remove Siphoning Charges that damages you by weapon swapping.

I AM RUNNING OUT OF MANA TOO OFTEN
- Enduring Eternal Mana Flask @ 20% Quality (run 2 if you need to)
- Essence Extraction node teched to on passive tree
- Quick Recovery node teched to
- Medium Cluster Jewel /w Special Reserve and Spiked Concoction (drop the large cluster jewel if you have to!)
- Another issue is that you may need to just simply level more, in this case use another glove instead of Voidbringer and test your mileage.


GEAR:
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This is just a glance, best to check my char profile or the POB


GEM LINKS AND CHESTS:

Spoiler

ORIGINAL
Spoiler
Main:
Volatile Dead - Cyclone - Cast While Channeling - Spell Cascade - Energy Leech - Firestorm/Inc Area of Effect/Conc Effect

Energy Leech provides a very nice defensive buffer which makes you basically immortal during maps.

Alternatively, if you want full damage you can go with:
VD - Cyclone - CwC - Spell Cascade - Ele Focus - Conc Effect

I've also learnt that many are struggling to find Skin of the Loyal similar to mine. In all honesty, most chest pieces are good. Loreweave is an excellent option that provides more defense than Skins. The best and most expensive would be an Explosion chest with Spell Crit Chance and life.

If you're specifically looking for Skin of the Loyal, than a +2 AOE corruption is actually better than my +1/40% increased damage one. You can also get away with having a red socket replace a blue (use Fire Penetration instead of Energy Leech or Concentrated Effect).

CWDT setups
We want CWDT to be level 1... MAKE SURE YOU ARE KEEPING TRACK OF THE GEM LEVELS. It is okay to level the support gems but the actual skill gems need to be tracked.

I use 2x CWDT setups. We ideally want a CWDT setup linked to:
Desecrate-Spell Cascade-Combustion
Unearth-GMP-Combustion
Blade Blast-Combustion
Storm Brand-Power Charge on Crit-Combustion
Wave of Conviction-Power Charge on Crit-Combustion

Arcane Surge:
Linked to Immortal Call (enable this on movement) and your preferred movement skill

Auras:
Herald of Ash and Zealotry

I also use Enduring Cry to pre-load some Endurance Charges and act as a Life Flask.


ANIMATE GUARDIAN SETUP
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I can't officially recommend this option yet because it requires testing as I am unsure of the survival extent of AG. What I know is that he can survive A8 Sirus and T16 maps easily but his one death for me has been in a T16 100% Delirius map. I would like to test him vs Uber Elder and Atziri but am scared of losing that cost (also note you can unequip the gem to not summon him and save some of your gear). The addition of Divergent AG in 3.12 Heist also makes this option more viable.

The reason I use AG is purely for damage boosting. My Animate Guardian is effectively providing free Elemental Equilibrium.

To do this: I've dropped Fire Walker and teched to Grave Intentions instead.

Link Divergent Animate Guardian-Minion Life-Empower (lvl 3 is working fine for me)

Move Combustion from CWDT to a 6L. Link Wave of Conviction and Power Charge on Crit. Dropped Energy Leech and Storm Brand.

If I was able to 6L my staff (to have two 6Ls), I would drop Enduring Cry, put Combustion in that CWDT setup and re-add Energy Leech to the Volatile Dead 6L.

Animate Guardian gear:
Weapon: Aurumvorax
Shield: Rare /w +2 minimum endurance charges + life + res/block
Helm: Mask of the Stitched Demon
Chest: Skin of the Lords /w Elemental Equilibrium
Gloves: Rare /w Life + res
Boots: Wake of Destruction, this is to apply EE.




LEVELING:

Spoiler

While this was my league starter in 3.12, I started with CwC Firestorm and bought 2x Widowmakers.

Act 1: Etheral Knives-Onslaught (mule from Scion) - Pierce (mule from Ranger)

Holy Flame Totem-Added Fire Damage + Explosive Trap for additional damage

Flame Dash + Arcane Surge

Act 2: Add Herald of Ash and Herald of Purity

Act 3: Drop EK Knives and use Bladefall-Spell Cascade-Controlled Destruction-Physical to Lightning AND Blade Blast-Controlled Destruction-Added Fire Damage-Elemental Focus

When mana is okay, use Summon Skitterbots as an aura (we switch to Zealotry when we have enough crit multi and can exit Elemental Overload).

Post level 38, we want these setups in our Blades:
Blade Blast-Intensify-Elemental Focus-Controlled Destruction-Fire Penetration-Inspiration

Blade Fall-Spell Cascade-Unleash-Controlled Destruction.

The above should be able to carry you to maps before transition.

Starting Act 6 when we get Lilly, try to fit in more damage using Wave of Conviction and Blade Blast and defenses using Enduring Cry and Immortal Call.

If you get a 5L/6L, you can purchase 2x Widowmakers or a +1 Fire Spell Staff and use the CwC Firestorm setup.

Firestorm-Cyclone-Cast While Channeling-Elemental Focus-Controlled Destruction-Spell Cascade/Conc Effect)

Passive Tree (yes we will end up respeccing):
Warrior's Blood > Heart of the Warrior > Born to Fight > Divine Judgement

Divine Wrath > Devotion > Holy Dominion > Light of Divinity > Retribution

Elemental Overload > Avatar or Fire > Purity of Flesh

From this point forward, continue on with the end game POE tree and add life/damage nodes based on your needs.

Additionally please see below brosmike experience with leveling/progressing with this build using twink gear:
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"
brosmike wrote:
I started leveling this a few days ago, up to level 82 now. My notes from leveling:

* I used melee skills until 38 with vendor recipe weapons. This was somewhat painfully low damage from 20-38 or so; if you're taking this route, definitely diverge from the POB skill tree to pick up some extra damage and respec at 38.
* Use vitality while leveling, it's very helpful.
* Once I hit level 38 and did first lab, Cyclone + CwC + Firestorm felt perfectly fine until 65 with just Tabula and self-found rare stuff
* I tried using 2 Widowmakers, but I found that just using a self-found rare staff with +fire damage to spells was better
* I used a Tabula with +2 to Socketed AoE Gems (it was the same price as an uncorrupted Tabula when I bought it)
* It felt good to buy and use most of the basic gear immediately at 65 (Disintegrator, Scold's, Stampede, Soul Tether, Glorious Vanity, cluster jewels, 5-10c non-cluster jewels, non-unique flasks). This cost ~5ex, most of it in Glorious Vanity and cluster jewels.
* *Voidbringer is the exception to this!* Using Voidbringer right at 65 was way more self-damage than I could handle at that point. You want *at least* merciless lab, and it will feel much more comfortable with a "life gained for each enemy hit by your spells" ring and uber lab.
* You'll want to keep mostly using Firestorm for damage until you do start using Voidbringer to generate enough corpses for lots of VD. Switching to Disintegrator while you're in this state still feels good, the big +Physical Damage is nice.
* Maximum life is a really big deal for feeling comfortable with the self-damage, since the self-damage doesn't scale with max life but leech and recovery mostly do.
* I was initially using a Granite flask in place of the Quicksilver originally recommended by the guide; this was nice for defense but *not recommended* once you start using Voidbringer and VD, it counteracts Voidbringer too strongly to be able to get enough corpses. Maybe this would be more feasible if you got a Voidbringer with a higher mana-cost-of-skills roll (mine was 52).
* I found it easier than I'd expected to deal with dexterity and cold/lightning resistance, but low chaos resistance seems like the biggest con to me so far, that's what a lot of my recent deaths have been to.
* For body armor, I found a Skin of the Lords with Call to Arms on it, which was a *huge* quality of life boost (Enduring Cry on left click, hold it and cyclone on right click at same time). It adds so much QOL that I might consider pathing to there through the Bloodless cluster on the tree to be able to switch to a better body armor (the dream would be an explody chest with some +chaos res)
* Replica Soul Tether is only 5c; you can save a marginal amount of currency by buying it and a cheaper timeless jewel, but I wouldn't recommend it since it'll be much more expensive to get a good corruption on the belt that way.


Level 65 is when you start looking to transition into Volatile Dead. However for a smooth experience, please use the above checklists.




That's it for now, thanks for reading :)
Last edited by Eathb on Oct 20, 2020, 8:13:56 AM
Last bumped on Mar 12, 2021, 1:20:36 PM
Budget to get started?
Any expensive must haves?
"
Rakio wrote:
Budget to get started?
Any expensive must haves?


Nah.

Need Disintegrator, Scolds, Soul Tether, Stampede, 6L, Essence Extraction node to get going... That's less than 1ex in total.

Next priority upgrade is the Timeless Jewel at 180ish chaos.
Uber Elder video up

https://youtu.be/VmmxMdAk3Tc
Super cool, might give it a try. Thanks for sharing !
Nice, will try this asap. Thanks a lot.
so just wondering if you would be able to go a little more in-depth on the leveling when you said you used cwc firestorm im guessing you mean cyclone to proc the cwc also why would you use widowmakers?


just another question as far as spells go that you socket into the cwdt can you use just about anythhing?
Last edited by ThePossessed on Oct 9, 2020, 3:58:53 PM
Could you add some details on how you leveled until you can use the disintegrator/scold's bridle/etc?

Also, would the replica atziri's foible be good for this build?

Also, why do you use Disintegrator for this build? I don't see the siphoning charges being used. Wouldn't a Duskdawn be better? Or even Martyr of innocence?
Last edited by Ashwin on Oct 9, 2020, 2:30:52 PM
He use Disintefrator because it make him alway be hit, triger all skill link with cwdt.
Just wanted to ask if you consider it or if it would even work properly, switching to Divine Flesh. Ditching stampade, buy good chaos res boots, ditch some life nodes on tree and putting double small clusters with chaos res. You would go to 4,5k life but now with even much more defense.

This is just idea i had, i dont even know if it would work that well. Just something i was thinking about...

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