[3.11] Stay Back! A Knockingback LL MIner build - Ball Lightning - Sirus down! 8k ES - Inasane dps

INTRO

I’m back since a few months, and trying a build regarding mines this time. Always loved them and played traps/mins sinc February 2013!
As i'm busy irl (despite the quarantine, luckily I can still work from home), I'm progressing quite slowl, but this build deserve a try and it’s fun to lay, if you like mines and a lot of damage!

Sirus down deathless and flaskless

Here my last video of Sirus, deathless and without using flasks
https://youtu.be/a4YfTPHhRYw





Changelog

Version 3.11 - Harvest

The build has been slightly nerfed in terms of dps. But it's still perfectly viable. Endgame version went from 650k to 500k average hit from each Ball Lighrning. It means each Ball Lightning (which still has the 13hit/cast cap) has 6.5 M shaper dps. Still insane damage!!

NO CHANGES AT ALL IN THE TREE

Slower Projectiles has been lowered to 30%, but thanks to Explosive Expert ascendancy, our Ball Lightning still reaches hit cap. so effectively we have no changes here.


BUILD DESCRIPTION

This build is a crit miner build which will reach the maximum potential when going Low Life. Can work with every spell, but using Ball Lightning coupled with slow projectile grant us one of the best dps out there. For this reason, even if the build can be used with any spell, I strongly suggest you to go Ball Lightning.

A drawback of being Low Life is that two expensive uniques are required:

Shavronne Wrappings

Presence of Chayula

One of the core characteristic of this build is using the new Delirum Cluster Jewels with the notable Thunderstruck to grant us knocback on each critical strike. Knockback will increase the effectiveness of damage from Ball Lightning and at the same time keep away hard hitting melee foes. In the Build Mechanic section, you’ll find a detailed explanation of this.
Moreover the new jewels gives us a nice amout of dps and defenses :
Energy from Naught gives us 100 ES.
The Medium Cluster Jewel with Mines stats grant us damage, crit multi and elemental penetration.


After a few weeks playing around I’ve modified the build, keeping the core alive and bringing you 3 different set-up from cheap start to higher dps one.



Cheap Version
This version is best suited to league start and bring us to endgame easily: cheap gear and over 90k single ball dps, which is around 1.1M Shaper dps of a single mine (multiply it for the number of mines detonated). Check the section “Build Mechanincs” for an explanation of the dps.

POB Link: Lvl 86 hybrid HP-ES Cheap Gear

This is the old gear used at league start. Dropped Tremor Rod for Wand+Shield. 6.6k mixed ES and Hp, already switched to Avatar of Fire with Pyre and Call of the Brotherhooed. It’s hybrid untill you grab a Shavronne’s Wrapping
Easily running red map

https://pastebin.com/7uwv3EiH

POB Link Low Life

Now the build as it should look like once you gather all the gear and go LL. This version uses a shield, but you can easily go dual wield for more damage
The output of this link are with my actual gear with just adding Shavronne's Wrapping and Presence of Chayula. Gear can totally be upgraded.

https://pastebin.com/GygpLVuZ


Cheap Version in details

Trying to make things as cheaper as possible, I’ve taken the idea from other build I’ve seen around (like for example [3.9] Durimon's Ball Lightning Miner, Cheap Start to One-Shotting T16 Meta-Bosses ) and designed this build to take advange of elemental conversion to drastically increased the dps. Without dropping survivability, of course.

Damage Conversion

I guess that the elmental conversion deserves a separate topic
You can turn this build to any spell gem, using the gear as following:

For Lightning Spells
  • Pyre
  • Call of the Brotherhood
  • Avatar of Fire


For Cold Spells
  • Pyre
  • Avatar of Fire


For Physical Spells
  • Hrimburn
  • Pyre
  • Avatar of Fire


The above are examples if you want to turn this build (and you can easily do this) to other spells.
Consider the conversion path (exception, like Hrimburn, excluded):
Physical -> Lightning -> Cold -> Fire

The less step you make, the more strict you must be on your gear (expecially wand and shield). What I mean is that if you pick a Fire spell, all your stats must be fire-related.

My build is focused on Ball Lightning, and I strongly suggest you to use this spell gem as well.
Now consider this set of gems :
  • Hypothermia: 39% more damage against chilled
  • Innervate: doesn't work with mine/trap/totem
  • Combustion: 29% more fire dmg + 19% fire res penetration

With this consideration, Combustion is by far a great boost of dps, and it's maximized if coupled with avatar of fire.

For this reason, the cheaper version takes Avatar of Fire and converts all the damage to fire



Elemental conversion means that
  • Any elemental damage increase your dps
  • We don’t need the costly “gain x% of elemental damage as chaos damage” to reach high dps
  • Except for the chest and ammy, other gear pieaces are very affordable





Mid Version
Here we are increasing our dps as well as our ES pool.
Each ball dps is now over 150k with about 2M shaper dps of a single ball
No Watcher’s Eye, no Bottled Faith, but a 6L Shavronne is necessary here if you want to reach that dps
Here we respec Avatar of Fire and concentrate our dps on pure lightning damage

POB Mid Version

https://pastebin.com/0hY3W3CN


Mid Version in details

First upgrade is the Large Cluster Jewel: buy one with 8 nodes, 2 Jewel sockets (30-50chaos)
We drop damage conversion so improve our one-handed weapon focusing on mine/lightning spell damage
And we use 2 small cluster jewels with energy from naught (200 ES) with only 2 nodes each (this helps savint nodes on the trees).
Here I prefer using High-Impact Mine over Blastchain, for this reason I respec Born in the Shadow for Demolition Specialist
We drop the Pyre and Call of the Brotherhood for a Mark of The Shaper plus an Elder Ring
  • Over 8k ES
  • Tons of dps





Endgame Version
Now is time to triple the dps and upgrade all the gear
We run 7 auras thanks to Prism Guardian, and it’s time for those expensive unique (Watcher’s Eye and Bottled Faith).
Each ball dps is 650k for 8.4M Shaper dps of each ball. Sounds huge!
Over 8.5k ES can be reached with good gear
POB End Version

https://pastebin.com/QvqJvHJ6


End Version in details

We run Discipline, Zealotry and Wrath in Prism Guardian giving us the low life dps boost.
Skitterbots, Precision, Herald of Thunder and Clarity casted on mana with about 400-450 mana left to cast and throw mines.

Watcher’s Eye with clarity and wrath mods (if you can afford, i cannot for sure) is a due improvement. but not the first.
Battled Faith and Awakened Added Lightning Damage are the best investment here.

Machina Mitts are cheap now (50c) and worths a try (That’s why I’ve allocated Ghost Reaver).
Jewels with “Cannot be cursed with silence” are always useful

The following are strongly suggested when facing Sirus:
  • Boots with crafted “Cannot be Frozen” are a sweet addition to the build
  • Jewel corrupted with "Corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you"


On single target, drop Minefield for Elemental Focus (awakened obviously is better)





Build Mechanics

Now let's go in deep to the core of build and check out it works and how effective it is and why we choose ball lightning, knockback and the support we use:

Ball Lightning mechanics, DPS and Knockback


I've choosed Ball lightning simply because it's a strong spell: it repeatedly hit the enemy, the slowest it goes the most effective it is.

Using it with trap/mins, it doesn't suffer from the 150ms cooldown, so we can use the "shotgun" effect of multiple mines

So it's quite easy to identify the best support gems:
- Blastchain mines or High-Impact mine and Minefield (prefer it over Swift Assembly in order to not spend too much chromes on the chest): we are miners!
- Slower projectile: we want to increase the hit/cast of each ball
The 5th link is Trap and Mine damage, or an Awekened Added lightning damage!
Last link depends on your situation: Combustion if your converting with Avatar of Fire or Elemental Focus if pure Lightning.

Regarding the dps output, considering the mechanic of Ball Lightning, check this excel sheet which provides the correct calculation of the dps of a single ball: with 30%increased aoe from ascendancy and 49% less projectile speed, considering an humaoin enemy, it'll be hit 13 times!

So, if you place 25 mines, each mine casting a ball hitting the enemy 13 times, we can say that the dps output is:
your_tooltip_dps * 13 * 25

But we have also Knockback!

Ball Lightning travels in a straight line. From the mine detonated aiming for the closest alive enemy, but always in a straight line. We can consider a line between the point (M), where the mine detonated, the point (A), which is where ball lightning starts hitting your enemy, and point (B), which is the where the ball stops hitting your enemy (because is too far from him). And it will continue traveling utill it expires (X)
In the most simple case, the enemy (E) is standing still and we can rappresent this line like this. With the enemy in the middle between the point A and point B
M - - - - A - - E - - B - - - - X

Knockback will knocback the enemy far from the mine along this ideal line pushing him through point X and him, resulting in something like this, where point of last hitting from BL and poin of expiration of BL coincide:

M- - - - A - - - - - EBX

This is actually more space where a single Ball Lightning can hit the enemy resulting in more hit/cast and higher efficiency of the spell!

It's also a life saver against melee mobs and bosses: have a look at this video of a T10 Jungle Valley Boss with Ele Equilibrium and Extra speed.
Fight starts in close distance and boss dies off-screen due to knockback

https://youtu.be/gBe2k3UeuJE




STATS

  • Can easily reach over 8k ES, or 9kES if you drop a few dps nodes
  • Over 800 ES regen/sec (ascendancy+Zealot's Oath)
  • 100-200-500k Average hit from Ball Lightning (Shaper DPS) depending on the version used
  • Immune to: Ignite, Shock, Poison, Corrupted blood
  • Knockback (Thunderstruck)
  • Chilled, Shocked and Blinded or Hindered enemies (Skitterbots and Ascendancy)
  • Gear and jewels can be easily crafted or bought (from cheap to expensive)



BANDITS

Allira is the way to go


PANTHEON

Soul of Lunaris / Solaris
Soul of Shakari (Poison Immunity)


ASCENDANCY

In order of importance:
  • Bomb Specialist
  • Pyromaniac
  • Explosive Expert (we have skitterbots and we ignite a lot)
  • Born in the Shadows (if going Blast-chain mines)/Demolition Specialist (if using High-Impact Mines)



GEM SETUP

Gem set-up change with the version of the build. Main changes is with auras (with or without Prism Guardian). Check PoB link for a better showcase.
Gem Link

Body Armor
Ball Lightning – Blastchain Mine / High-Impact Mine – Slower Projectile - Trap and Mine Damage - Minefield – Combustion/Inspiration/Awakened Added Lightning damage (depending on the version of the build)

Weapon 1
Flame Dash - Faster Casting - Arcane Surge (Level 7)

Gloves
Wave of conviction-- Curse on Hit – Flammability/Conductivity - Vaal Righteous Fire

Boots
Cast when damage taken (Level 2) – Steelskin (Level 11) - Summon Ice golem (Max Level) – Vaal Grace (Max Level)

Helmet
Auras: Check your PoB version

Shield
Auras: Check your PoB version




GEAR

Here you will find a detailed explanation of the gear to use and the stats to check or to craft on every piece of equipment
Gear in details

Cluster Jewels
Lets start with the core items of the Delirium League, the Cluster Jewels!
Just remember that the less the number of small nodes, the better it is
  • For Large Cluster Jewel buy a lightning one with Snowstorm and Thunderstruck plus an additional jewel socket, Overshock/Paralisys may be other options (8 nodes is the best, 2 jewel sockets it the BIS)
  • For Medium Cluster go for a mine damage with Expert Sabotage, Surprise Sabotage and an additional jewel socket.
    Another good set-up, which is the one i'm currently using, is Guerrilla Tactics + Surprise Sabotage, which allow us to drop Minefield for Added Lightning Damage
  • For Small Cluster go for any Energy shield one with Energy From Naught-
  • Just buy the cheapest one and use alterations untill you get Energy from Naught, then augment and regal it. It’s alredy fine



Weapon
You have a lot of choice here. Tremor Rod is a cheap 5-6-7L to start with. Then you can upgrade to wand + shield.
Check the following stats on rare gear (avoid any projectile speed):

  • Add x to y fire/cold/lightning damage to spell
  • Spell/mine damage
  • Spell crit multi
  • Spell crit chance
  • +1 to all Lightning gems would be the best mod

When you want to improve your build, focus on Lightning spell mods

Shield
Energy Shield and Resistances
Later in the build Prism Guardian will be our shield. It will give us a lot of Resistances and will cover the dexterity needed.

Chest
We need a Shavronne’s Wrappings as we are Low Life, no other choices.

Gloves
Here i got the dexterity I need
Energy shield and resistance as much as you can.
Machina Mitts are a nice unique to grab. Strongly suggest when delving.

Boots
Here I bought a pair with a free suffix mod to craft strenght for Blood Magic. Once you change to Prism Guardian, strenght isn’t an issue anymore
Movement speed at least 25%
ES and resistances
An useful craft, is the “Cannot be frozone”. A nice investment in my opinion

Rings
Start with a Call of the BVrptherhood and Pyre and quality them with Turbulent Catalyst in order to increase the elemental damage
Then go with Mark of the Shaper and a rare Elder ring with Energy Shield

Amulet
Presence of Chayula is not only good for the stun immunity, but also for the life converted in ES, it’s an huge boost to defenses. Quality with TEmpering Catalyst to increase the amount of life converted to ES.

Helmet
Focus as always on ES and resistance.

Belt
Stygian Vise with ES and resistance is a good start. A nice Crystal belt can provide us an huge boost to the ES pool.
Bated Breath is the cheapest option with nice ES

Jewels
Abyss jewels are usually better than common Jewel, flat mods on spell and ES give better results.
Remember that in Cheap Version you can pick any elemental spell damage as a mod
Energy from Within should be placed near the Melding point (nothing special here).

On normal rare Jewels look for
  • X% increased Energy Shield
  • Spell/mine/Lightning damage damage
  • Crit multiplier


On abyss jewel
[li]+x to maximum Energy Shield [/li]
[li]Adds x to y lightning damage to spells [/li]
[li] Adds x to y lightning damage to spells while holding a shield [/li]
[/list]

At end game, buy 2 jewels which have each one of the following corruption:
You cannot be cursed with silence
Corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you


ANOINTMENT

Go with Utmost Intellect/Sanctity if you feel like you need more ES
Destructive Apparatus or a more expensive Tranquility for a nice dps boost


VIDEOS


T16 Corrupted Carcass + Constrictor (Avatar of Fire “Cheap” Version)

https://youtu.be/iYGD8Qehzlg


Sirus down deathless and flaskless

https://youtu.be/a4YfTPHhRYw


Mastermind lvl83 Deahless

https://youtu.be/Gdg3MIN37wY




END

Will try to improve this post and the whole build.
Don't hesitate to leave your comments (constructive ones, hopefully) and suggestions!
Last edited by Effe86 on Jun 27, 2020, 12:45:43 PM
Last bumped on Sep 6, 2020, 5:13:14 AM
Hello!
i was considering coming back playing POE and would love to try this build.
But as you say, some items are very expensive. is there a way to avaoid spending that much for gear?
Looks interesting but how are you fully converting your lightning to Fire? I counted 50% from Avatar and another 40% to cold to fire, so you are losing 10% damage?


Also I'm not sure you should have checked +50% extra damage from Shock, when you deal no lightning damage lol.

Same for wave of conviction + cwdt, is a short range spell and not consistent at all.
"
Hello!
i was considering coming back playing POE and would love to try this build.
But as you say, some items are very expensive. is there a way to avaoid spending that much for gear?



Hey there what a nice nickname!!!

OK don't be scared of gear.
I actually cannot afford the LL gear (and ES gear is always the most expensive).
I've just improved a bit the guide, adding 2 better worked link of PoB.
The first one is my actual gear at lvl86. the gear costed me around 50chaos (luckly i dropped the Belly of the Beast and helmet i'm currently using).
50chaos is nothing, just do the chaos recipe

Consider that one of the greatest defense of this build is the dps from the mechanic of Ball Lightning + the knockback we add

"
omniocean wrote:
Looks interesting but how are you fully converting your lightning to Fire? I counted 50% from Avatar and another 40% to cold to fire, so you are losing 10% damage?


Also I'm not sure you should have checked +50% extra damage from Shock, when you deal no lightning damage lol.

Same for wave of conviction + cwdt, is a short range spell and not consistent at all.



Hey! Thank you for your message!!
I've to admit that I'm improving the guide day by day, also thanks to messages from community!
I've added a small consideration in the beginning of the guide regarding conversion, that may be useful.


More over consider this set of gems :
  • Hypothermia: 39% more damage against chilled
  • Innervate: doesn't work with mine/trap/totem
  • Combustion: 29% more fire dmg +6 -19% fire res


As you can see, Combustion is a great boost of dps, and it's maximized if coupled with avater of fire.
The 10% of damage "lost" in the conversion process, is overcompensated with Comustion.
ANd consider you can reach 98% conversion if you use Catalyst to your ring ;)


Skitterbots grants permanent chill and shock to your enemies, so i don't get why not count it :)


I found an excellent combination between CWDT + Wave of Conviction + Knockback.
Boost of fire exposure if consinstent, if you prefer you can totem your Wave of Conviction


I've added a few new sections to the build, expalining in deepth a few mechanics. Hope they help!
Sounds interesting, will come back to this topic to look at your progress. I know durimon's build, did that last league but I found it lacking in certain areas and it became extremely expensive to min max towards endgame.

So I went for the normal low life ball lightning version. Don't get me wrong,the fire conversion easily melted everything up to T15 maps, but when going for endgame, shaper,elder,uber elder,uber atziri,delve and such, it became unreliable,it felt too brittle and min maxing it was a lot more expensive than I initially thought.

Shavronne and chayula are expensive at every league start, but once you grind a bit or get lucky with some currency,that pretty much covers it.

Also honestly the wave of conviction is kind of meh, many times you find yourself in the situation of automatically firing the wave onto nothing,while the enemies keep hitting you from another direction.

Last edited by Nosferat on Mar 28, 2020, 7:03:01 AM
7th gem if I'm using a 6L Tremor?
What about Swift Assembly instead Minefield?
Minefield feels clunky to me.

PS: a gameplay video is highly needed
Last edited by FedeS on Mar 28, 2020, 10:11:25 PM
"
Nosferat wrote:
Sounds interesting, will come back to this topic to look at your progress. I know durimon's build, did that last league but I found it lacking in certain areas and it became extremely expensive to min max towards endgame.

So I went for the normal low life ball lightning version. Don't get me wrong,the fire conversion easily melted everything up to T15 maps, but when going for endgame, shaper,elder,uber elder,uber atziri,delve and such, it became unreliable,it felt too brittle and min maxing it was a lot more expensive than I initially thought.

Shavronne and chayula are expensive at every league start, but once you grind a bit or get lucky with some currency,that pretty much covers it.

Also honestly the wave of conviction is kind of meh, many times you find yourself in the situation of automatically firing the wave onto nothing,while the enemies keep hitting you from another direction.



Thank you mate!

regarding my progress, first "problem" is in particuar corrupted red maps and Al-Hezmin (The Hunter) influenced area.
Chaos damage is killing my 2k HP without any problem.
FOr this reason i was forced to buy Shavrone.

Unfortunately i got scammed. You know is a particular perdiod, especially here in Italy. We are quarantined and looking our colleagues and friends getting infected day by day, and dying. we are not lucid.
This guys publiced a 6l shavronne, and traded me a 4l 2l shavronne.
I was so stupid i didn't checked.
Actually never happen to meet a prep in this game..and so i wasted all my hard earned currency. and considering to give up.

You know. situation outside is hard. situation inside houses is though. we play to have some fun and distraction. Pandemic is hard by itself..and people sometimes contributes to make things harder.
Let's talk clearly, it's a game, no worries. but i played 4 intense week to get currency for the stuff i need.

But i'm the only idiot here.

Luckly i got it 5l with 3 fuse..and can progress further..but losed the magic.

Regarding the progress..i'm just getting together the remaining gear pieces. but with shavrone is defenetively better. and it's a must

Wave of conviction is ok to me, but as i said you can selfcast with no problems, or totem it! (like we used to do with wither totem)

I still have to get used to the new gear, will probably update the guide later this week




"
FedeS wrote:
7th gem if I'm using a 6L Tremor?
What about Swift Assembly instead Minefield?
Minefield feels clunky to me.

PS: a gameplay video is highly needed



Hello! i've just bought the gear i needed, i'll probably make a video sooner.

6l Tremor? use Immolate or an Awekened gem if possible (like A added lightning, or A fire pen or A Added cold)


Swift assembly, i've tried it. takes 4second to drop 21 mine.
Minefield take 3,8 sec to drop 25 mines..
Prefer MInefield :)
Last edited by Effe86 on Mar 29, 2020, 1:26:30 PM
It seems significantly more efficient to be using Thunderstruck cluster jewel node to achieve this. Probably with Supercharge as the second roll.

Thunderstruck
20% increased Lightning Damage
Your Critical Strikes Knock Back Shocked Enemies
30% increased Critical Strike Chance

Supercharge
Lightning Damage with Non-Critical Strikes is Lucky
Last edited by Kerotonin on Mar 31, 2020, 5:02:10 PM

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