Teek's Lightning Strike Ascendant | Doryani's Prototype, -230% Lightning Res | 14m+ boss dps
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Hi, I'm Teek, welcome to my 8 Threads of Hope Lightning Strike ascendant guide.
 I set out creating this build after being inspired by a few lightning based builds utilizing Doryani's Prototype. I noticed none of them were playing any melee type builds, and decided to try to build one from scratch on my own. I started out with wild strike, but didn't really enjoy the playstyle, so I swapped to elemental hit, and it felt terrible. Not wanting to completely scratch the build, I decided to try out lightning strike and immediately realized it was the perfect fit. ---disclaimer---- this build is definitely not a league starter and requires a few uniques to work properly. Also, lightning degen can hurt, but it's not a big deal, mainly because we phase/kill all bosses with degen effects fast enough that they don't cast the degen effect at all. the exception to this is shaper, who has a relatively easy to dodge lightning degen (his beam) the four noticeable sources of this are: eradicator (one of his map layouts uses lightning rods that beam from one to the other, these beams are a degen and not a hit) shock and horror (casts a degen beam at the player, dies fast enough that it has not mattered yet) baran's degen squares - these aren't so bad especially with leech, have more than enough time to move out of them before the degen starts ticking, and even once its ticking it isn't insane damage to deal with, even less so while you're leeching shaper Body Armour - Doryani's Prototype (Nearby enemies have lightning resistance equal to yours) Amulet - Eyes of the Greatwolf (rolled with 100% of lightning damage taken as fire damage) This combination of uniques combined with a bunch of threads of hope allows us to push our lightning resistance as low as possible, without having to worry about lightning damage chunking us whenever we're hit by it. This build will work great with thrusting swords, but I ultimately decided to go with claws for two reasons: Claw allows us to use a Gemini claw for a great source of life and mana on hit Claw nodes are in a reasonable position to save on skill points which allows us to fit more Threads of Hope to reduce our lightning resistance even further. On to the guide section! Strengths/Weaknesses
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--------------------------- • Drops the resistances of everything around you by up to 230% (practically the entire screen), bosses included! • Great clear with even more potential with proper helmet enchants • Slayer Overleech + Vaal Pact + Culling Strikes • Large room for improvements on both the tree and gear • Clears all current content quite easily • Elemental weakness? thanks for the free damage • Equilibrium? what does that mean? • Increased Elemental resists? you wish --------------------------- • not really hardcore viable in this current state • ele reflect, no leech? reroll D: • Not a league start friendly build • Not quite a currency friendly build • Totem Bosses (Atoll, Plateau) are currently bugged and do not get the reduction to resistances applied to them, I have submitted the bug --------------------------- Gifs
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---------------------------  ---------------------------  --------------------------- Videos
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrPNw70-cp0 - Full detailed video guide with example boss and map clears! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0Hdmd5r0Z8 - t16 map with a white level 13 weapon PoB (community fork)
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https://pastebin.com/JwdMxrTp Includes 3 leveling trees - early, mid and late leveling Includes 3 Lategame Leveling trees  Ascendancy
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Recommended • Slayer • Overleech, Culling Strikes Optional(From best to least optimal choice) • Berserker • Substantially more damage, attack damage mana/life leech, stun immunity when >25 rage • Deadeye • Great damage via Free Tailwind and increased effect of Assassin's Mark, a bit more damage on our lightning projectiles. • Inquisitor • 8% Damage pen, ailment immunity when you get a proc or if using bottled faith, more damage via "nearby enemies take 10% increased elemental damage" The rest aren't really worth mentioning, but if you feel better playing something like pathfinder/raider/jugg, feel free to take those. My current combination is Slayer/Berserker Gems
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6Link - --------------------------- • Lightning Strike - 21/23 highly recommended. a 21/20 Vaal lightning strike is great but it honestly doesn't matter, for the price difference, it's not worth in my opinion. you could also use anomalous if you want to take advantage of the pierce • Awakened Multistrike - normal multi would work here but awakened is just so much better, definitely worth the investment • Awakened Elemental Damage With Attacks - not as important as awakened multi, so you can run a normal Elemental Damage with Attacks here • Awakened Elemental Focus - normal elemental focus is fine if you're trying to save some money for 5th and 6th gem, you have some options depending on how you want to play • Fortify - decent damage, useful defensively • Ruthless - Every third attack deals a bunch more damage, increased attack speed **does not increase the damage of projectiles, so loses a lot of value in regards to map clear • Awakened Added Lightning Damage - more damage, nothing much else to say • Inspiration - ramping damage, crit I'm in the process of trying everything but personally I'm currently leaning towards: • Awakened Multistrike • Awakened Elemental Focus • Fortify • Awakened Added Lightning Damage • Awakened Elemental Damage With Attacks Support --------------------------- 4Links (Helmet, Boots, Gloves) #1 ----------- • Whirling Blades (or leap slam) • Faster Attacks Support • Hextouch Support • Enfeeble (or temporal chains) ----------- #2 ----------- • Cast When Damage Taken Support - high level (currently using level 16) • Steelskin - high level (currently using level 18) • Anomalous Summon Lightning Golem Anomalous is better, grants 20% increased buff effect at 20% quality (level 17) ----------- #3 ----------- • Smoke Mine • Second Wind ----------- in extra slots, links unnecessary ----------- • Vaal Grace • Anomalous Assassin's Mark (anomalous grants "cursed enemies take 0-4% increased damage") ----------- Weapon ----------- • Phantasmal Ancestral Protector (grants 0-20% increased buff effect) • Empower the higher the level, the better ancestral protector buff gets • Enhance the higher the level, the better ancestral protector buff gets ----------- Shield ----------- • Summon Skitterbots divergent is best, but i believe 21 normal is better than 20 divergent if you have a +2 aura gem shield • Awakened Unbound Ailments Support helps the shock provided by skitterbots • Wrath anomalous is best, but 21 wrath may be better than a 20 anomlaous ----------- Gear - There are two mandatory uniques, the rest is somewhat flexible.. basically you do NOT want any lightning resist on anything, having cold + fire resist on as many rare pieces as possible is very important. otherwise, we're looking for life, crit multi, attack speed, added lightning damage, elemental damage with attacks, %lightning damage, and crit chance.
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Mandatory Uniques --------------------------- if you can get insanely lucky like i managed to, a +1 gems/increased damage/+2 projectile gems corrupt can be very helpful, this is my current chest Anoint with Claws of the Falcon (Amber, Amber, Golden) --------------------------- Weapon/Shield --------------------------- This is not an optimal claw but it is a very good starting point. You're generally looking for flat lightning/elemental damage with attacks/lightning%/great phys roll prefixes, and attack speed/crit multi/crit chance suffixes. the more the better. Crusader base is not required, can definitely roll a better claw on a non-influenced base. I used deafening essence of wrath to hit triple useful prefixes and then used Prefixes cannot be changed meta-craft. From there, I used harvest to roll crit (reforge rare with critical, critical more likely). if you're lucky and get 2 good crit rolls(chance, multi), you can stop there and craft attack speed. I only managed to get one in a few rolls, so I used Aisling in Research to unveil crit multi and crafted attack speed. I'm currently using a Lycosidae with +2 socketed aura gems so I do not have to sacrifice a mod slot for "hits cannot be evaded", and to avoid crafting a second claw. This also allows us to bypass having to get accuracy nodes/stats on gear. There are definitely options for more damage if you can manage to craft/buy better claws. --------------------------- Jewelry --------------------------- Resists are very important here. if you can't meet resist requirements to run all of the threads of hope, use catalysts to help boost your resist. Any attack speed, elemental damage with attacks or flat lightning damage will help a lot here. if you're swimming in currency, assassin's mark on hit is also great, but not mandatory. --------------------------- Helmet/Boots/Gloves --------------------------- Archdemon crown is very good here, its basically half of another thread of hope, but not mandatory. There are influenced options available(warlord offers great mods) to help push our dps even further, but this is a great place to start. focus on a nice life roll with some resists. Enchant options are as follows • Ancestral Protector grants 18% increased attack speed while active - our biggest dps gain • Lightning strike damage (40%) - Second biggest increase in single target dps, and useful to help buff projectiles. I considered this but went with ancestral protector instead. • Lightning strike pierces 3 additional targets - extremely helpful for map clear quality of life, but sub-optimal for single target damage. I have one of each, I much prefer to general map with the pierce enchant, but ancestral protector enchant offers so much damage that bossing with it is a big help if you can get an eyes of the greatwolf like this, we can enchant helmet for pure damage and not have to worry about pierce. this is the perfect eyes of the greatwolf for a balanced clear+bossing set For optimal DPS, a pair with Tailwind would help a lot, however chaos resistance is also very valuable. Elusive is not mandatory but will go a long way in helping with survivability in maps. You do not need tailwind if you take the deadeye sub-ascendancy node. Attack speed, resistances, life and melee damage are all very good stats for us to have. You can also look for flat lightning damage. Damage while leeching is also very good as we're always leeching when taking the slayer sub-ascendancy. --------------------------- Jewels
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This build revolves around stacking as much negative resistances as we can possibly manage, so the core to the build is using Thread of Hope to achieve this. The final level 100 tree uses 8 Threads of Hope, but more realistically 7 Threads between level 94 and 98 All of these threads should have as close to -20 resists as possible, you can settle for -19 but for each reduction you lose, you drop a large amount of damage Useful (but not mandatory)Unique Jewels --------------------------- • 1x Pure Talent • 1x Replica Pure Talent • 1x Unnatural Instinct --------------------------- Thread of Hopes(mandatory) • 2x Thread of Hope (Small Ring) • 1x Thread of Hope (Medium Ring) • 4x Thread of Hope (Large Ring) • 1x Thread of Hope (Very Large Ring) Rare Jewels --------------------------- Anything with Lightning/Melee/Elemental/Global Critical Strike Multiplier, Maximum Life and Attack speed. Critical Strike Chance and %Lightning Damage are sub-optimal but still useful. Any stats with Claw, Lightning, Elemental, Melee, One-Handed or Global tags will all work with this build. --------------------------- Abyss Jewel --------------------------- Use this slot to help fill out missing stats. Useful stats rae flat Life, cold/fire resist, crit multiplier, lightning damage to attacks, attack speed. --------------------------- Flasks
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Health (optional) --------------------------- --------------------------- Utility --------------------------- --------------------------- DPS --------------------------- I swap bottled faith for a quartz of warding while general mapping, the damage is nice but not necessary for standard map bosses. to be honest, any silver flask with %crit chance crafted suffix will work just as well in this slot. cinderswallow itself doesn't offer us much outside of onslaught since we leech anyway. --------------------------- Leveling
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The Path of Building link includes three leveling trees, one for early, mid and late leveling as well as a transition tree for when you hit level 72 and can equip all of the gems/gear aside from the helmet (archdemon has a level 75 requirement, but you could equip a demon crown at an earlier level). For early leveling, I started with frost blades until I could use lightning strike(act 1, the siren's cadence, level 12), with any weapon I came across that was an upgrade. At level 22, swap to Hand of Thought and Motion and keep this equipped until you can equip your endgame claw. It's damage should be consistently higher than any other easily obtainable options throughout the entire leveling process. gem setups would be something like this • Lightning Strike • Elemental Damage with Attacks support • Elemental Focus Support • Multistrike Support • Fortify Support • Added Lightning Damage Support run skitterbots when you have the option to equip the gem (act 2 after completing "the root of the problem" level 16 required to equip use herald of thunder (from intruders in black quest reward, act 2, level 16) until you can swap to wrath (lost in love, act 3, level 24) other useful gems i used while leveling up • smoke mine - movement skill, put detonate on left click instead of movement bind. very fast • clarity - great until we get some source of leech/regen • haste - gotta go fast If you decide to try the build please let me know, and if you discover any optimizations I would love to be in the loop! Thank you for reading through and I hope the build is everything you were looking for <3 Last edited by teek on Jun 1, 2021, 3:14:32 AM Last bumped on Sep 13, 2021, 4:47:09 PM
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reserving post
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posted a detailed video version of the guide along with a small build trailer and an example t16 map, can be found in the videos section or by clicking this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrPNw70-cp0 some minor updates to the build leveling section is complete crafted some new items, currently just over 11m with the changes, still have some more crafting to do: Better claw & rings as well as: craft & test tailwind boots, gloves w/ flat lightning, a better belt, more crit multi from jewels and on the drawing board: slightly adjusting build for a version including clusters | |
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Ruthless support looks like a fail, generally turning your build into a 5-link...
It doesn't work with ranged part of strike skills. It applies only to melee portion of such skills. See comment directly from GGG on this point https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1931288/page/1#p14659699 Last edited by WrongBlight on May 31, 2021, 10:11:47 AM
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" you're correct, it doesn't apply to the projectile portion i have changed my setup in-game since originally posting the guide but didn't include the downside to ruthless in the gem section, i'll do that now currently running elemental focus in place of ruthless and it is a big improvement for map clear quality of life thanks for the info | |
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Looks interesting...gonna give it a whirl being im looking for a non aura stack scion build...lol
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keep in mind you can also try for divine flesh and a rare talisman to reach 100% of lightning as other damage, if you can manage to get enough chaos resist.
getting that specific eyes of the greatwolf is not going to be easy atleast early in the league |
