[3.22] Enki's Lightning Conduit Elementalist - a beginner-friendly Caster Build

Great build

Woop Woop :D Guess what I'll be trying out this league!

Thanks Enki for this build!
I got introduced to PoE via your Arc guide by my friends a month before crucible ended, so I figured I'd league start with this build too since I enjoyed it so much :D

So far my experience as a beginner, I am not sure if this is representative of the new player experience:
- I finished the campaign in 18hrs, without any obvious roadblocks; the build felt pretty smooth (altho I'm slow lmao)
- It is a *blast* to play early game maps, but I noticed I tend to die a LOT more often with orb of storms compared to storm brand.
- I also started avoiding vulnerability on map mods, since the build feels pretty squishy if I get caught by phys damage
- It cost me roughly 8-10 ish div to switch to Annihilating Light/Traitor, probably because I bought the chestpiece for 3 div
- Most notably the cheap belt option cost me 300c to craft :(
- It was *worth* spending the extra currency to get a good Brutal Restraint seed
- The build at that point felt *so* much squishier than the early game option due to the lack of instant recovery as "panic" buttons. Being new, I tended to die a lot because I didn't know how to kite boss attacks properly.
- It took a while (most notably getting stormshroud, corrupted blood immunity and life leech back into the setup) for it to feel "good" again, which cost roughly another 5-6 div.

Total spent cost: 15-16 ish div total, with 130 hours /played
https://poe-profile.info/build/199eb528c63be2b8fa6d3829dc341919

Probably a stupid question, but why Saintly Chainmail for the armor exactly? rolling 1 red socket on es base is a bench craft, does armor on just one piece help that much?

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tayerogica wrote:

Thanks Enki for this build!
I got introduced to PoE via your Arc guide by my friends a month before crucible ended, so I figured I'd league start with this build too since I enjoyed it so much :D

So far my experience as a beginner, I am not sure if this is representative of the new player experience:
- I finished the campaign in 18hrs, without any obvious roadblocks; the build felt pretty smooth (altho I'm slow lmao)
- It is a *blast* to play early game maps, but I noticed I tend to die a LOT more often with orb of storms compared to storm brand.
- I also started avoiding vulnerability on map mods, since the build feels pretty squishy if I get caught by phys damage
- It cost me roughly 8-10 ish div to switch to Annihilating Light/Traitor, probably because I bought the chestpiece for 3 div
- Most notably the cheap belt option cost me 300c to craft :(
- It was *worth* spending the extra currency to get a good Brutal Restraint seed
- The build at that point felt *so* much squishier than the early game option due to the lack of instant recovery as "panic" buttons. Being new, I tended to die a lot because I didn't know how to kite boss attacks properly.
- It took a while (most notably getting stormshroud, corrupted blood immunity and life leech back into the setup) for it to feel "good" again, which cost roughly another 5-6 div.

Total spent cost: 15-16 ish div total, with 130 hours /played
https://poe-profile.info/build/199eb528c63be2b8fa6d3829dc341919

Agreed. I have a couple thousand hours and never posted on the forums. I started lightning conduit since it was one of the few things I've never played. The build is not for new players in the least bit. And for seasoned players, it's weird, it's like you can feel the power it's capable of but there is always something in your way from maximizing it. And that something constantly shifts.

The biggest drawback is the massive amount of time I had to spend doing math, and making extremely minor tweaks to make it work. And that the upgrade paths are tightly coupled. One upgrade depends on upgrading something else which depends on upgrading something else and you can't upgrade without all pieces in place. Where a league starter I'd expect to be able to slowly and individually, incrementally upgrade portions of gear and feel the slow power increase.

You hit many walls. I can't imagine a new player doesn't just give up and reroll. I've even considered rerolling many times but I learned a long time ago to just stick with it, but even as I type this I might just consider it a lost cause. Every little change in gear to acquire more power requires a big re-setup of every other piece of gear. It's a bit daunting and exhausting. I'm no stranger to that kind of build, I played Manabond last league, same deal. But the difference was I didn't league started it and fully anticipated the challenges and were prepared for them. The only improvement I can advise is to remove the "A Begginer Friendly Caster Build" from the title.

One thing I can't figure out is why have both Eldritch Battery and The Agnostic, plus having all mana reserved to run 4 auras. How can I cast spells without any mana?

"

You hit many walls. I can't imagine a new player doesn't just give up and reroll. I've even considered rerolling many times but I learned a long time ago to just stick with it, but even as I type this I might just consider it a lost cause. Every little change in gear to acquire more power requires a big re-setup of every other piece of gear. It's a bit daunting and exhausting. I'm no stranger to that kind of build, I played Manabond last league, same deal. But the difference was I didn't league started it and fully anticipated the challenges and were prepared for them. The only improvement I can advise is to remove the "A Begginer Friendly Caster Build" from the title.

Yeah, as a new player the endgame setup was extremely frustrating as a league start. Everything before that was super fun until you do Step 2 of the endgame build.

I ran into multiple problems:
- Need to out-regen corrupted blood + something like ignite, but I had no sulphur flasks or life flasks as panic buttons
- Didn't have life leech, since the first version of the endgame build didn't have it (dropping berek's for two amethyst rings)
- I went from 2.2M damage to 4M damage but I still couldn't run higher-tier maps because I am "squishier" (i.e. the PoB says I had higher phys max hit but in practice was I died more often).

I think I switched back and forth from singularity and annihilating light roughly around 5 times (!!!) until I farmed out a setup where I got enough damage and life recovery.

All in all I had to finish corrupted blood immunity, life leech, and pantheon at the very least at that stage in the setup before making the switch. I even got Stormshroud before switching to Annihilating Light so I only needed to worry about Bleed and Poison.
Moreover I even think I got lucky since my Brutal Restraint had a frenzy charge on kill on a notable, which was free 1M additional dps.

Everything up to that point was very beginner friendly, but from my experience as a new player was that the endgame setup was a much, much bigger wall than it looked. And that is with me going in thinking it was going to be difficult (since it was listed under the Cons of the build).

Ty, nice build! first time i can reach to maps area!

Is Divergent Arctic Armor feasible for this build?

This is my second league, I was having a blast while leveling and doing white and yellow maps, a friend gave me a few chaos so I could change to the end game build, with the currency I had I tried to do my best to match you guide and now I'm stuck at level 87 and can't complete any map stronger than T6, I'm desperate, can someone please help me out? Thank you in advance.
My PoB - https://pobb.in/VspPzUR_MUGZ
PS: I had to add the life flask otherwise I can't do any map at all.