[3.10] Bashtart's SPARK INQUISITOR * farming like a god! :)

What are some good profitable maps to farm with this build?

"

Cromi38 wrote:

What are some good profitable maps to farm with this build?

Just run as many maps as possible... normally maps which can drop valuable cards like spider forest which can drop doctor cards are good imo.

Hey guys,

So here is my guide to Low-Life BV/Spark. I am not really clear on how to add item images that are not in my inventory, so the guide lacks item pictures which I don't like. Ideally, whenever I talk about an item, I would like for there to be a picture. I'll check in on that and edit the post later once I know what I'm doing :d.

Bashtart, if you want to put this under a "spoiler" tag on the first page or however you want to, that's cool by me.


Core Differences from Bashtart’s Pure Lightning 3.3 Version:

Based on Energy Shield instead of Life
Utilizes “Low Life” state for series of benefits
Uses Call of the Brotherhood with Herald of Ice for satisfying clear


Pros and Cons (vs. Bashtart’s)

+ Stun Immunity via Chayula’s Presence
+ Free 30% more spell damage (Pain Attunement)
+ 5 auras / heralds (can/must dip into life for reservation)
+Allows us to boost damage and survivability for “free”
+ Higher Overall Regen / Sustain / Facetanking Capabilities (~9.5k max ES + Zealot’s Oath +
Warlord’s + Energy Shield Recovery Rate on Watcher’s Eye)

- No healing from flasks
- Unable to take advantage of Choir of the Storm (you can, but Chayula’s Presence is too - - important to give up)
- Unable to use Inpulsa’s (locked into Shavronne’s Wrappings)
- Hilariously tiny light radius due to 95% life reserved (without Arcane Vision)
- Not as budget (Presence of Chayula, etc). Otherwise, gear cost is mostly the same until - end-game optimization.
- Virtually no free ring slots -- Call of the Brotherhood and a Warlord’s Mark ring are core.


Build Overview:

We use Spark as our main clearing tool and Blade Vortex in conjunction with Spark as our single-target boss killer setup. We use Call of the Brotherhood to convert some of the lightning damage from Spark to cold damage, which, in addition to a high crit on Spark, allows us to inflict freeze and shock on enemies consistently. This also allows us to proc Herald of Ice, which is perhaps the most satisfying sound / feeling in all of PoE!

Sample Videos (make sure to switch to High Quality!):

Recently optimized my recording settings so newer vids should be better quality...Uber Elder fight, unfortunately, was done before I did this so quality isn't great


Colosseum Map (Tier 14) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nno0M7MEReM


Uber Elder (doable with no deaths if I had better mechanics :d) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC6PeXdI9XI&t=8s


Skill Trees / PoB Links:

Current Skill Tree (Lv94): https://pastebin.com/YsEuHT3X

Sample CI Transitional Tree (Lv76): https://pastebin.com/p8bgS61b


Pantheon Powers:

Soul of Arakaali: Arachnoxia is simply essential for boosting survivability. There is no substitute for this. This, in conjunction with Blood Rage and CWDT, provides a near-permanent boost to survivability.

Soul of Tukohama: Provides strong mitigation and life regen while stationary. This allows us to facetank even better, and is especially useful since we are stationary while ramping up BV. Life / ES regen is huge for this build.


Ascendancy Class and Points:

We go Inquisitor for the extraordinary bonuses we get to crit capabilities and regeneration.


I recommend investing your first point into Sanctify. This provides a solid amount of survivability in the early game which can be hard to get. Some people prefer going Righteous Providence into Inevitable Judgment right away, but I find that it is better to get survivability first and that you don’t really need the additional damage that badly early on.

Your second and third points should be invested into Righteous Providence and Inevitable Judgment. This enables you to get Inevitable Judgment right in time for mapping and dealing with high resist mobs. Righteous Providence is huge in helping to get Herald of Ice going early on as the additional crit chance will result in a lot more frequent freezing.

Your last point should be invested into Pious Path. I would love to get Pious Path earlier but don’t know if we can forego the damage from Inevitable Judgment that early. Pious Path is an insane boost to survivability (+6% ES regen and immunity to elemental ailments) and QoL in general (no more mana problems, substantial attack and cast speed buff). The build really comes together with this final point. If you can, I highly recommend you get someone to carry you through Uber Lab asap so you can get this point asap.

It is also worth noting that if you do NOT have Pious Path, you may need to sacrifice a bit of reserved mana to run clarity depending on how much mana regen you have in your build. Once you get Pious Path, you will no longer have any mana problems and Clarity becomes obsolete.

Next league I may try to take Pious Path before Inevitable Judgment to see how it goes due to how huge Pious Path is for the CI / Low Life variations of this build.

Instruments of Virtue and Augury of Penitence are both extremely strong nodes in their own rights. However, Pious Path is 100% required for the build to sustain as well as it does and Inevitable Judgment is 100% required for achieving high damage levels. There is simply no possibility of taking anything else.

Current Gear:




Current ES / Mana / DPS Values (in HO unbuffed / fully buffed during combat):

https://imgur.com/a/oOyOXgz


Gear Breakdown:

Weapon

Optimal
An optimal weapon for this build is one that has a strong combination of spell damage, added spell damage, critical chance on spells, critical strike multiplier, cast speed, and attack speed. Getting an optimal version of this weapon would likely cost a ton of currency, and I am still working on mine. Even without essential stats and rolls, my current weapon performs extremely well with a healthy combination of damage and nutty attack speed (1.9 APS). The goal, in my opinion, is to find a weapon that feels as fast as brightbeak but also does damage. The increased attack speed, to me, makes the game much more fun and fluid than a little more damage. It is for this reason that I used the Karui Sceptre base (1.5 APS, 26% Ele damage implicit) to craft as opposed to something like a Void Sceptre (1.25 APS, 40% Ele damage). In the end, it comes down to preference, but I strongly prefer the faster APS than a little extra damage.


Budget
Get a brightbeak at Level 20 and that will last you until Level 75. Although Brightbeak doesn’t have any actual damage stats, it has insane attack speed which translates to excellent shield charge mobility as well as some solid resists.

Once you hit level 75, an extremely strong budget option is Doryani’s Catalyst, which boasts a fair balance of all of these stats for a very cost-efficient price. Don’t worry about swapping over to an optimized rare spell dagger or sceptre once you have a Doryani’s until you get the rest of your gear in order. Doryani’s is 100% good enough to get you to and through end game content.


Shield

Optimal
An optimal shield for this build is one that has some well-rolled combination of spell damage, increased critical strike chance for spells, cast speed, resists, and high ES.

I am extremely happy with my current shield and don’t expect to find one that is too much better for an affordable price.


Budget
Getting a rare 300 ES shield with decent rolls should be pretty affordable overall. If not, progressively lower your ES search value by 10 (290, 280, 270, etc.) until you find a shield that fits your price range. Unfortunately, there aren’t any unique ES shields that I feel are sufficient for this build. We rely so much on having high ES that ~200 ES shields just don’t do the job well enough in my opinion.


Helmet

Optimal
An optimal Helmet for this build is one that has some well-rolled combination of resists and high ES. Any stats (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence) are welcome but not required. You absolutely want the “+3 Projectiles to Spark” uber lab enchant on your helmet.

I am not too happy with my current helmet as it has really low ES as compared with my other gear. It does, however, provide the Strength and Cold Res I need to round out my build, so until I can find a similar version of my current helm but with better ES, it is good enough for my current item setup.

Budget
Most any 200+ ES helmet with the “+3 Projectiles to Spark” enchant will be good enough for a long time. Even if you can’t find a decent “+3 Projectiles to Spark” helmet early on, just go with some 200+ ES helmet and use an extra Hazardous Research jewel to compensate.


Body Armor

Optimal
The optimal -- and really, only -- body armor for this build is a high-rolled 6-linked Shavronne’s Wrappings. High ES doesn’t mean a thing if you can get clipped by some tiny amount of chaos damage.


Budget
There is no budget option in the game currently that can take the place of Shavronne’s. The only “budget” version of this, I suppose, would be a 4 or 5-linked Shavronne’s. This is why I did NOT start the league as a low-life build, and actually transitioned from a regular life version into a CI version and then finally into my current low-life version once I got my Presence of Chayula and 5-linked Shavronne’s.


Gloves

Optimal
The optimal glove for this build is a horror essence-crafted glove with “Socketed gems are supported by Level 20 Faster Projectiles” some decent stat / resist rolls and as high ES as possible.

It took me somewhere between 12-15 horror essences, if I remember correctly, to hit my current glove. This is reasonably expensive. Luckily, even though some of my slams resulted in complete trash gloves, some ended up pretty well and sold for a solid amount (one sold for 2.5 ex, a few for around 50c, and so on). Ultimately, I didn’t LOSE too much going for these gloves, but the process of risking slams consistently on the most expensive essence in the game can be taxing. I was fortunate to also hit a 40 dex line which is pretty important considering it isn’t super easy to get strength or dex with our setup. I wish I hit some kind of ES line on the gloves, but I can’t really complain. I will likely try to slam something nice on this, but do not plan to change this glove anytime soon.


Budget
There are plenty of solid budget gloves for this build. Kalisa’s Grace is a solid pseudo-5 link, but forces you to NOT take either faster projectiles, spell echo, or increased critical strikes, all of which are sorta important (but you can manage without one of them in this case). Voidbringers are not bad, but are restricted to only 4 links. It is also probably really easy to get a generic “Socketed gems are supported by Level X Faster Projectiles” glove with decent ES and resists.


Boots

Optimal
The perfect boots for this build would be a combination of well-rolled resists, move speed, possibly some stats, and ~150+ ES.

I am currently working on two pairs of boots. One has perfect move speed with a solid one resist, but low ES. One has a solid resist and high ES but only 25% move speed. Neither is exactly what I’m trying to get, but if you can imagine a combination of them...that would be ideal.

I currently run with the “16% increased attack and cast speed if you killed recently” enchant, but can’t say for sure whether or not they are better or worse than the % regen enchant. I think both are very strong and viable. The attack and cast speed ones are probably better for mapping, and the regen one probably better for bossing. Use what you prefer.



Budget
High-rolled Sin Treks are very cheap and offer a ton of ES as well as good move speed, Dex, and Int. It is extremely difficult to overtake Sin Treks in raw ES when trying to craft a rare boot, and they are overall just extremely cost efficient.


Amulet

Optimal
Chayula’s Presence. I personally will not play a build without stun immunity because I feel that stuns are so super insanely annoying. I hate the stutter to my gameplay after getting stunned. This amulet prevents that and also provides a gigantic chunk of ES. Lastly, it provides a large chunk of chaos resist which is also welcome.

Choir of the Storm is also an extraordinary amulet for Spark builds in general, and would fit here nicely. However, I can’t bring myself to not use Chayula’s Presence as I feel like it offers too much to ignore.


Budget
Chayula’s Presence is really pretty crucial for achieving high tier ES. Until you can afford it, you can use pretty much whatever you want to cover missing stats / resists in your build.


Rings

Optimal
Ring slots for this build are pretty set in stone. In one slot, we use Call of the Brotherhood. This is essential for turning Spark into a skill that can freeze and subsequently proc Herald of Ice. This is not required in general for Spark to be good, but it is required for the Herald of Ice variation of Spark which I feel is extremely satisfying to play. I currently use a CotB with a +discipline aura effectiveness corruption. I intend on getting a nice double corrupt on a CotB eventually.

In the other slot, we use a Warlord’s Mark on Hit ring. The optimal setup for this ring would be an assortment of resists and stats.


Budget
Call of the Brotherhood is already pretty cheap and there is no other item that fulfills the function of this ring.

Warlord’s Mark on Hit helps a ton with sustain. At first, I got the cheapest one I could find with this effect and didn’t stress the additional benefits of the ring (well-rolled WM on Hit rings can be extremely expensive). Before you get this ring, you can, again, use whatever you need to to keep your stats and resists up to the necessary level.


Belt

Optimal
Stygian Vise with 45+ ES and 40+ to all resists with crafted movement speed or a well-rolled Crystal Belt with similar resists but ~130+ ES. Stygian Vise has the advantage of being able to hold an Abyss Jewel which can have a slew of useful effects. Stygian Vise is better for versatility while Crystal Belt is better for raw ES.

Budget
“OK” Stygian Vises are pretty cheap. It should not be difficult to get a 30+ ES belt with 2 resists at +30% or 40%. There aren’t many unique belts that are particularly good for this build.


Flasks

Optimal
Still trying to figure out the optimal flask setup myself, but Vinktar’s with Leech and Spell Damage is definitely part of the setup. Diamond Flask is extremely helpful. I am partial Rotgut because it provides a huge movement speed buff and also refreshes on crits, which we do a lot. We use a sulphur flask to ensure we have consecrated ground and for a slight damage boost. I use a basalt flask for my last slot to synergize with Arctic Armor; I feel this is a good fit for this build because we literally have zero mitigation from Armor. You can take curse / freeze immunities on your stuff as needed. The only one that is necessary on a flask is Curse immunity since we don’t get that from our kit naturally (we get elemental immunity from our Ascendancy).


Budget
All of the above flasks are sufficiently cheap.


Jewels

Optimal
Hazardous Research with “Corrupted Bleeding does not affect you” is 100% essential. Corrupted bleeding can be such a pain, and finding one of these jewels with this corrupt is pretty easy.

We also use 2x Energy From Within jewels in two specific spots in our skill tree (one near the melding cluster, one near the nullification cluster). Ideally, get 6% ES on both jewels, but any roll is fine.

We also use one Watcher’s Eye jewel, and the effects of this jewel are massively important for optimizing this build. Optimal rolls are “40% of physical damage converted to lightning damage while Wrath is active” and either “30% increased ES recovery while Discipline is active” or “2.5% ES regenerated per second while Discipline is active.” I suspect that the % ES recovery is overall better (because it improves both regen and ES from leech) but it is hard to truly know as it doesn’t affect sheet stats in any way. Theoretically, it should be better.

Any other jewel slots should be slotted with 40+ ES abyss jewels, at least one of which has a 6-8% chance to gain onslaught on kill. Other good stats are added spell damage, crit multiplier, resists, and missing stats. Regular jewels with strong stats, such as increased lightning damage, crit multiplier, increased ES, and so on, are also solid choices.


Budget
Hazardous Research with corrupted bleeding prevention is already budget.

Energy from Within is also relatively budget, but you also don’t need them until your node areas are established. Until you get these areas in your tree established, you can easily use any ES / damage jewel you can find for cheap.

Luckily, the optimal Watcher’s Eye for our build isn’t something that is too commonly sought after, and if I remember correctly I got mine for around 3 Ex (phys to lightning and % increased ES recovery). A budget option would just be to get the jewel with phys to lightning, and those usually run pretty cheap as they are not overly sought after.

For any jewel slots that remain, use any jewel that you need to cover missing stats or resists.


Gem Links:

Weapon

Vaal Discipline - Arctic Armour - Blood Magic

This is the setup that allows you to reserve 99% of your life so that you stay in a Low Life state. We use Arctic Armor for some much needed mitigation. We use Discipline for that juicy bonus ES and to ensure activation of our Watcher’s Eye extra ES recovery rate. Vaal Discipline is also an excellent emergency button when you find yourself in a tight spot. Blood Magic allows us to reserve life instead of mana so we can easily achieve the Low Life state.


Shield

Cast When Damage Taken (Level 1) - Immortal Call (Level 3) - Summon Lightning Golem (Level 3)

Pretty standard CWDT setup. We use Immortal Call for some brief immunity (which synergizes well with endurance charges from Warlord’s Mark off our ring) but more importantly to synergize with the Soul of Arakaali / Arachnoxia Pantheon node. Lightning golem is for additional attack and cast speed and I personally prefer to not have to deal with casting it, so I attached it to this setup.


Helmet

Herald of Ice - Herald of Thunder - Blood Rage - Arcane Surge (If you have onslaught gem)

OR

Herald of Ice - Herald of Thunder - Wrath - Onslaught (If you DON'T have onslaught gem)


Nothing fancy here, just your two additional heralds and a Blood Rage + Arcane Surge link. Some might question why I didn’t just put Wrath and the two heralds on my helmet and link it with an enlighten to save a lot of mana. I don’t do this because 1) I don’t feel that the additional mana is necessary and 2) if we do this, we don’t have room for a 20% quality Culling Strike or Fortify on shield charge.

However, until you have your onslaught chance jewel, I highly recommend you run the following setup instead:

This guarantees you will have onslaught up constantly while mapping. Once I got my 8% chance to get onslaught on kill jewel, however, this was no longer needed, and so I transitioned to linking a 20% culling strike with Shield Charge for that extra attack speed.

You can also try linking heralds with Culling Strike and that seems to be all right as well. For now, I prefer the additional charge speed via Culling Strike.


Body Armor

Vaal Blade Vortex - Physical to Lightning Support - Increased Critical Strikes - Increased Critical Damage - Elemental Focus - Spell Echo

This is our main boss-killer / single-target setup. The essential 4-link here is Blade Vortex, Physical to Lightning conversion, Increased Critical Strikes, and Spell Echo. Introduce the other gems as you improve your links.

People might question the Spell Echo choice as it does not support Vaal BV in any way and ultimately results in a loss of damage for Vaal BV. Despite this, I prefer to center my gems around the main skill of Blade Vortex and I really only consider Vaal BV icing on the cake. As strong as it is, it will have significantly less up-time against the bosses that matter.

As you may have already inferred by now, I enjoy a quicker gameplay style. Spell Echo allows for that. It feels much less clunky than if you don’t have it, and so my preference is to keep it in. It also allows us to stack our BV fast enough to allow us to integrates Sparks into our damage rotation.

Ultimately, what you enjoy more will be up to you. I recommend trying out this setup, and then replacing Spell Echo for another damage mod (Controlled Destruction, Added Lightning Damage, etc) and see what you enjoy more.

I will say that I do NOT like to attach BV to Concentrated Effect. I feel the range of BV with Conc Effect is way too small and it makes positioning around bosses significantly more annoying. Again, this is a personal preference; I recommend you try it and see what you prefer.


Gloves

Vaal Spark - Pierce - Increased Critical Strikes - Spell Echo

The gem setup on our gloves is pretty much set in stone. Spark is our main clearing tool, and in order for it to function properly it needs to 1) hit as many mobs as possible, 2) crit Often, 3) go fast, and 4) be casted quickly. There is really no alternative to this gem setup in my opinion. At one point, I tried extending into the “Additional targets pierced” node cluster to the right of our tree to free up a slot, but found that the amount of points required to get there did not justify the extra gem slot. Pierce is just really good anyway as it provides the piercing functionality and also adds a solid chunk of damage.

Boots

Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Culling Strike (20% Quality) OR Fortify - Wrath (if you have onslaught gem)

OR

Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Blood Rage - Arcane Surge (if you DON'T have onslaught gem)

Again, our Boot setup goes hand-in-hand with our Helmet setup. This is the setup you run if you have your onslaught jewel and you have the free gem slot in your helmet. If you don’t have your onslaught jewel and still need to run onslaught on your heralds, you would move Wrath to your helmet, get rid of Culling Strike on your boots, and move your Blood Rage + Arcane Surge setup to your boots.


Leveling:

There are a lot of different ways to level in Path of Exile. I personally leveled this season using pretty much Spark exclusively from Level 1. Realistically, it doesn’t matter that much what you use to level, and there are people out there that can offer better leveling advice than I can because my leveling process is far from optimized. I would recommend you follow Bashtart’s leveling guide as that seems pretty solid in its own right, and, for the sake of convenience, in the following section I will describe how you should transition into this build version from Bashtart’s leveling setup.


Transitioning into Low Life:

General Advice
In order to transition into Low Life, you MUST have the two following items:

Presence of Chayula
Shavronne’s Wrappings

If you don’t have these two items, I would not recommend transitioning into Low Life. These two items are essential for making Low Life worthwhile and without them you are better off running another Spark variation.

When transitioning into Low Life, there are two primary routes you can take:

Bashtart’s version → Low Life [Late Transition]
Bashtart’s version → CI variant → Low Life [League Starter Route]


1) From Bashtart’s Version to Low Life [Late Transition]

This is probably the easiest transition overall because there is no intermediary transition but will require the most amount of regret orbs / refund points / gear switches. Because Bashtart’s version focuses on boosting life and mana and Low Life does not care about either of these stats, a lot of nodes will have to be adjusted when you switch over to Low Life. Additionally, a lot of the gear that Bashtart uses for his build does not intersect with the gear required for Low Life, and so even though there is no intermediary step, the transition will be reasonably costly.


2) From Bashtart’s Version to CI to Low Life [League Starter Route]

*** For a sample transitionary skill tree for around Level 76, look at my Skill Tree section above. I intentionally made the gear in this tree to be relatively modest and attainable for the level (with the exception of the The Ethereal chest, you might not have enough to get it at 76 unless you're a bit lucky).

This is what I did this league and I found it to be very smooth. Because CI also relies entirely on ES gear as low life does, a lot of the gear you’ll want will carry over well into the Low Life version, which will ultimately save a decent chunk of money. This is particularly important at the start of the league when currency is worth significantly more than later on.

I will say that I did not transition into CI from Bashtart’s setup (rather, I took Bashtart’s setup and made some tweaks to it during the leveling process to accommodate my own playstyle) until Level 80. My transition from CI to Low Life didn’t happen until probably around 85 when I managed to farm up a Chayula and rolled with a 5-Linked Shav’s.

Low Life builds are NOT budget builds because of the Chayula / Shav’s requirement.

I started off following the normal life / mana regen route and, once I get gear that was decent enough to get me by (some life rolls, some resists, and so on) I saved up my currency for ES gear. Sin Treks, ES gloves, ES helmets, and ES shields are all relatively cheap. The biggest component that signifies that you are ready to convert to CI is, in my opinion, the body armor slot.

I highly recommend buying 7 “The Ethereal” cards for this transition. Turning them in at Level 80 is best as the item level is based on the level of your character upon turn in and is capped at level 80. This will give you a 6-Link ES base that you can easily roll for a decent chunk of ES and resists (you don’t have to get anything super fancy, just some decent ES and resists) and is relatively cheap (near the start of the league I was able to get 7 cards for around 40-50c). You don’t have to wait till 80 to turn them in, but the level of the item will be lower in that case and your rolls won’t be as good. But, if you get lucky and get some fat drops early in the league and have the currency to transition with this purchase early, that is completely acceptable.

After this, once you get your Chayula and Shavronne’s, you can easily transition into Low Life as all your other gear should already have ES on it.



Final Word

I am really enjoying this build and am actively working to optimize my own gear to take the build to its limit. As I recently defeated Uber Elder, I can say with 100% confidence that this build is fully capable of beating all content in the game. Please feel free to message me via forum or in-game to ask me anything about the build or post in this thread.

Have fun!

TheRealTuna

@TheRealTuna: great Job writting the guide to your low life ES version of this build. Unfortunately you did such a good job that it is too big to put it into my guide... I just tried is for about 30-45min to cut the guide but it still too much. And I also really think your builde deserve a own post.

I am happy to make a link to your own build thread if you decide to make one. Atm I just made a link to this page. The advantage is that you always can edit it as you please :)

Greets bash

loool, whoops!

I guess I will make my own thread soon and link back to this one as well since a good portion of the guide is about the similarities and differences between your version and my version and how to transition from your leveling version to mine.

I like that you guys are working together to make a better build instead of most people that would make their own guide and claim it’s better. Love this community sometimes. Good job guys

New thread is up!

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2167676



And yes, I consider my variation just another style of Spark / BV. It's not necessary better or worse, it just has a few different elements that change the gameplay a little bit. I think at the end of the day, players should adapt peoples' guides to their own specifications to make their playing experience as enjoyable as possible, and that's all I really did here as well!

"

TheRealTuna wrote:

New thread is up!

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2167676



And yes, I consider my variation just another style of Spark / BV. It's not necessary better or worse, it just has a few different elements that change the gameplay a little bit. I think at the end of the day, players should adapt peoples' guides to their own specifications to make their playing experience as enjoyable as possible, and that's all I really did here as well!

I made a link to your thread in the main post for people who wanna try it out ;)

Awesome build! Loving the return of spark with this bv combo. Quick question, should I get a watchers eye with conversion or with damage gained when wrath is active.

"

trustinvision1 wrote:

Awesome build! Loving the return of spark with this bv combo. Quick question, should I get a watchers eye with conversion or with damage gained when wrath is active.

None, this build has a little to no physical damage.