[3.8] Stormblast Mine | DPS on low to moderate budget | League starter -> easy uber elder kills

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I love the idea and your writing is great.

The build itself:
Gems
Holy shit thanks for the flame dash - arcane surge. I've been struggling with figuring out what fits into my own mine build and what doesn't. Since flame dash doesn't have a good 3rd link, arcane surge is a perfect fit here. I feel like it's obvious but I've been away for too long, I guess.

You overlooked chaining as one of the pros to running Swift Assembly.The throw speed for minefield makes it almost always unacceptable for getting a decently juicy chain. While the math works out to about 60% more damage from Swift Assembly vs 100% more for minefield, in practice--with enough throw speed--you can get another complete 23 mine chain going with a single trigger, which can't be done with minefield. I'm too lazy to try to calculate out the MORE damage from that, but I bet it's a bunch.

I'm running curse on hit-EleWeak-Minion Life-ice golem and CWDT-IC-Phase Run-Temp Chains. For stormblast, I'd probably just slot conductivity instead of eleweak--I'm swapping icicle and pfyro, so eleweak is decent enough.

Arctic Armour is a valid option for folks who feel squish. Run in place of Wrath for lab or tough map mods.

Gear
Daggers > Wands if you have the money. They can roll nearly identical mods, but the roll pool is twice as large so a near-perfect roll will be way more expensive...but it means you can run whirling blades.

Unfortunately, stormblast doesn't have the Projectile tag, so you lose a lot of really fun accessory options. Carcass Jack is a super solid fit. Shroud of the Lightless would also be a decent option.

Since you're not overloaded on uniques (like my build admittedly is), you can easily fit Machina Mitts. Life leech from mines is AH-MAY-ZING.

Skill tree
I feel like there's a lot of wasted pathing. I'll take a deeper look at it tonight. Quick recovery is almost too good to pass up, but I think there may be some better options to get more life, more mana, and at least equivalent damage. Maybe I'm wrong; it's just a gut feeling.

Thanks a ton for sharing!

This is gonna be my league starter so any updates would be appreciated good sir

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