[0.3][BUILD OF THE WEEK] The Blood Warp Drive - Lightning Warp Blood Mage

The Blood Warp Drive


Welcome exiles, to the Blood Warp Drive! A bloodmage lightning warp build. I call it the warp drive because you’re warping along the path of a wave of ball lightning, much like the real warp drive is riding a wave of curved space time (yes I am a nerd :3).
If you like a 1.5 button build, flickering around, surfing a wave of ball lightning and melting bosses, this build is for you.

But before getting into the build itself, a few disclaimer:
1) This is not the most original build, it’s a blood mage, it uses Atalui’s Bloodletting, Tecrod undying hate and rathpith Globe. If you don’t like that or want ultra originality, it’s not for you.
2) Since it uses all that, it’s not cheap. I’ll be putting a budgeter pob but you at least want Tecrod and Atalui’s(14 div at the time of writing). I played it without those and you can do it, it works, but you’re not very tanky. I would not recommend it and you would need a different tree focused on lightning damage and penetration.


SHOWCASE
(in low quality because my pc is not that good and is overheating, sorry)
(Also low effort video, because I am a lazy gal :3 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pud2duR1S0c

POB:
https://pobb.in/QLoExerDy-rN
Like I said before, the pob contains a budget loadout.
The build feels way better in the endgame version. The budget one is there for those that would like to start it early( and a friend of mine started it that way and is having fun). The budget version has had several things removed that make the build feel a bit less tanky and a bit less smooth.
Also look at the configuration, pob doesn’t doa good job at calculating life cost, so I had to add phys as extra for lightning warp corresponding to the life cost we really have.

PRO:
- Zoom around the map
- Excellent damage
- Fun
- Pretty?

CON:
- The playstyle imply being in close range of enemies, sometime (rarely) you will die
- Some boss hit box make it a bit finicky sometime
- Zahmir, the Blade Sovereign of the Sacred Reservoir anomaly map cannot be done, lightning warp doesn’t work at all in this arena.
- Eye cancer?




HOW DOES IT WORK?

1)We are a blood mage so we have high crit, some extra life and our spells cost life.
2)We use Atalui’s Bloodletting in lightning warp and life-tap everywhere else to convert all our mana cost into life. Atalui also give us a lot of damage based on the life cost
3) We use undying hate with Tecrod conqueror so that we can allocate sacrifice of blood which gives us a lot of life regen depending on how much life we spent recently.
4) We use Rathpith globe which, on top of giving us a lot of crit and spell damage, increases our life cost substantially which, in turn, gives us more damage and more regen.
5) Finally for defense we run mind over matter and eldritch battery to have roughly 2.5k mana that act as a first line of defense against damage. We have no mana cost and the mana remnant spirit gem and some mana on kill assure that this mana is always full and sometimes even close to 4k with mana remnant overflowing it. We also have a good life pool and an ungodly amount of regen, but our life costs make it yoyo a lot, sometimes getting very low, our mana protects us during those moments.

HOW DOES IT PLAY

Mapping:
Cast ball lightning at some mob, use lightning warp on said ball lightning You will crit and then Cast on Critical will spawn more ball lightning upon which you will use lightning warp again, and again and again, seemingly ridding a wave of ball lightning in your warp drive.
You will run out of balls to warp to when you run out of mob and then need to cast ball lightning again.

Bossing:
Put down sigil of power, cast lightning ball when the boss becomes damageable and then lightning warp. You should be flickering between the side of the boss as ball lightning is cast by cast on critical.
You can also drop mana tempest after some time, but not too early or you’ll run out of life.
You can also drop spellslinger to generate some orb of storm for extra damage.

SOME IMPORTANT NOTES

Aoe is very important, it allows us to kill stuff from further away, shielding you from harm but also allows us to fuel the cast on crit engine more easily. As such we get aoe on the tree and on jewels.

Projectile speed is also important because of the way you can warp into ball lightning. Sometimes enemies hit-boxeS can prevent that. On boss in particular you often have to wait for the lightning ball to go through the boss. Proj speed make that happen faster. It also make us move faster while mapping. We don’t take proj speed on the tree (we could, that’s an option for you to choose), but we use the support gem we can for that.

Es is Mana, Mana is life. Get high Es Roll on your gear, but we don’t care about “increased maximum energy shield” stats, they don’t do anything. But we care about increased mana tho.

TREE
Most of the tree is pretty self explanatory, there is no weird interaction.
We’re taking Ritual cadence for spell slinger to generate orb of storm on boss at a steady rate.
I’m taking efficient killing (or the nodes leading to it) because it helps a lot with mana sustain. But you could sacrifice some crit on jewels and get mana on kill there.
Some interesting other node you could anoint or use megalomaniac :
barbaric strength or cooked : lot of crit damage bonus
Crystalised immunities: give immunity to chill and that pesky chilled ground
Efficient Inscription : with enough spirit on amulet it should allow for slotting another 30 spirit gem, like time of need to deal with those annoying curse.
Hale Heart: for even more life regen
Turn the clock forward: for more proj speed
Reverberation: for more area of effect




GEAR:
Helmet: You want high life, high es prefix, and res as suffix, before Rathpith you can go for crit chance and after a chaos roll to cap the res or rarity.

Body Armour: we want high ES, resistance and the cherry on top is crit bonus reduction from essence but you could go for more chaos resistance.

Boots : Movespeed, life, Es, resistance

Belt, Life, resistance, mana is good also if you can get it

Ring, Life, cast speed, resistance. If you want rarity it’s one of the rare spot we can get it

Amulet: level of all spell skills, Spirit and flat life are all what you need to start, but later you want cast speed and % life. The last mod is free, I like remnant pickup range, but rarity or crit multi is also a viable option.

Focus, we use rathpith globe, take the cheapest that has not reduced stat and an okay life roll, we need all stats to be high even the life cost one, since life cost is damage. On the budget setup a focus with +3, cast speed, and crit is the bare minimum you need.

Wand: You probably want a dueling wand for spellslinger, but it’s not a hard requirement. We want +Level of lightning skill, crit chance,cast speed, then some increased damage and damage as extra. +5 wands are expensive but you can find a good +4 for a reasonable price.

Glove: We use Atziri Acuity, some might find it overkill, but it’s really helpful. The Tecrod regen has to ramp up to be efficient at sustaining our mana cost. Atziri Acuity helps that sustain before Tecrod can take over, it also allows us to run some reduced recovery maps (those maps are still a bit painful tho). Moreover crit chance on it allows to still be capped crit while taking some crit multi node on the tree and Int allows us to take more strength. Really the only reason I see not to use it is to have a headhunter and you need the belt resistance on a rare glove.


Jewel: We want Crit chance, Crit bonus, Area of effect and if possible spell damage, but that’s just a bonus

CONCLUSION
This is a funny build that I like very much and probably the strongest build I played in poe2 (outside of temporalis blink in 0.1, but that doesn’t count).
I hope you get to have as much fun as me with it and don’t hesitate to ask questions, I’ll try to help as much as I can.