[3.10] Mator's Manaphant - Arcane Cloak Ball Lightning MoM Miner

Links (updated 3/26/2020, 2PM PST)

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Path of Building - 3.10, use with the LocalIdentity fork - see notes please!
Current Character - 3.10, level 86

Current status: Finding some further defensive improvements, realized EO doesn't trigger from mines. POB Updated

Introduction

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This is my first build guide. I've been making and playing my own builds for several leagues now, to varying success. This is the one of the first builds that I've made which does something different from existing builds by leveraging new skill gems in interesting ways. I'm still playing and leveling this build, so aspects of this guide may change.



Overview

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Clearing: 7/10 - This build doesn't have the greatest clear speed because it's not abusing massive projectile counts, chaining, max AoE or exploding enemies. It's acceptable because we can throw our mines pretty fast and we do a ton of damage, but we won't be clearing entire screens with a single button click or anything crazy like that.

Single Target: 10/10 - This build scales single target damage to the max. Seeing how insanely tanky monsters get at maximum delirium scaling is what inspired me to make this high-damage build. If my math is right, this build should be able to hit mirror-tier single target DPS without relying on mirror-tier gear. I could be wrong about this though, so stay tuned so I can prove whether or not the build is actually as strong as I think it is.

Tankiness: 8/10 - 94% melee/projectile avoid chance, 76% spell avoid chance, 85% stun avoid chance. Chaos Innoculation, fortify, 60% of damage taken from mana before life, ~17K EHP.

Recovery: 6/10 - We have huge mana regen and use ES recharge as main recovery mechanic. We use Wicked Ward to maintain our ES recovery. We don't have any major sources of faster start of energy shield recharge, but you could get it on a shield.

Utility/Playability: 8/10 - We use mines. We need to vigilant strike bosses to get our fortify buff. We use Vaal RF and Arcane Cloak to hit big boy DPS numbers. Everything else is triggered. Using mines requires pressing two buttons, so it's not as smooth as some other skills, and we will need to use Arcane Cloak off CD for maximum DPS.

Cost: 7/10 - I try to make all my builds with achievable gear - nothing mirror-tier. That means nothing better than a single mod watcher's eye, no more than 3 mods on rare gear, no timeless jewels, no mandatory enchantments, no stupidly expensive unique items, and no crazy corruptions. This build fits these requirements but does benefit greatly from certain influenced rares that may be difficult to find early in the league. There are reasonable alternatives for most of the influenced affixes, but I'd still recommend having a couple exalts of currency to invest in this build. Minimum investment: 2-3ex, good investment: 10-15ex.


Mechanics

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Arcane Cloak allows us to spend 65% of our maximum mana (at gem level 20) to gain a shield that takes 75% of damage before our life/energy shield equal to the amount of mana we spent. We then gain flat lightning damage for all our spells based on 15% of the mana we spent. In an ideal world, we would get the helm enchantment which makes Arcane Cloak spend an additional 15% of our maximum mana to get a 12% boost to our overall DPS.

In addition to giving us flat damage, we get % increased damage through Indigon when we use Arcane Cloak, and additional damage and regen through Arcane Surge. This turns our Arcane Cloak into a one-button "beast mode" that allows us to turn our DPS up to eleven.

We then use Ball Lightning mines with the minefield support to scale our DPS through the roof. We use block, blind, and evasion as our primary defensive layers, and can fortify via Vigilant Strike as well when necessary.

Gear

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Quick Overview:





Weapon & Off-hand:
- For our primary weapon we want to use a Sambar Sceptre with Lightning Penetration and Gain X% of lightning damage as extra chaos damage. Because we get so much flat and % increased damage elsewhere in our build, these standard caster mods don't really do much for us here. We want to craft double damage while focused and/or trigger socketed spells when you use a skill. The trigger option is vastly preferable for quality of life, but comes at the cost of some DPS unless you multi-mod your sceptre, which will cost a fair bit of currency.
- For our off-hand we want to use a shield. Our top mods are chance to block spell damage, gain X% of lightning damage as extra chaos damage, and chance to block. We want to craft chance to deal double damage while focused. Other nice mods are faster start of ES recharge (Redeemer), ES, mana, intelligence, and resists.

Armor:
- Indigon gives massive percent damage bonuses when we use arcane cloak. Mine mana reservation is not affected by Indigon.
- Cloak of Defiance gives 10% of damage is taken from mana before life, allocates Mind Over Matter, and gives us some flat Mana, ES, and evasion. Look for one with a high max mana roll, the getting a good evasion/ES roll is also nice but not mandatory.
- Redeemer influenced gloves with global chance to blind on hit, mana, and intelligence are our best in slot. The global blind chance really helps us to improve our effective health. We will want to craft resists.
- For our rare boots we want mana, resists, and attributes if needed. Movement speed is of course always nice on boots, so you can get that as well if you want. For the boots base we want to use two-toned boots. We don't really benefit from tailwind boots, so I wouldn't recommend throwing your currency into them.

Jewelry:
- Essence Worm is used so we can get Summon Skitterbots in the build without losing mana, because mana is how we scale our DPS and serves as health for us.
- For our rare ring we want to get Resists, Mana, and Intelligence. Strength, Dexterity, ES, and %MaxES are also nice mods for us. Paua is the best base because flat mana is incredibly good for us because we are aiming to get ~500% increased maximum mana from the tree. A two-stone ring is also acceptable, but isn't BiS (we want to use intrinsic catalysts on this ring to maximize the mana boost).
- For our rare amulet we want an agate, citrine, or turqoise amulet base so we can reach our strength and dexterity attribute requirements. (121 strength for using a sambar sceptre and 111 dexterity for skill gems). For mods we want mana, spell block, and Lightning resistance penetration (crusader mod). We also wouldn't mind getting more intelligence, ES, or resists. We want to craft increased mine throwing speed on our amulet, so try to get an amulet with an open suffix.

Flasks:
- An Enduring Mana Flask of Staunching gives the best utility and is easy to use. You could also use a Catalysed flask for better recovery, but it's harder to manage and requires more reactive flask usage.
- Chemist's Jade Flask of Reflexes gives us a big boost to our chance to evade enemy attacks, which is absolutely necessary for dealing with powerful attacks like from delirium mobs or timeless monoliths.
- Rumi's Concoction is a must have because we're scaling block/spell block as our primary method of damage avoidance. The armor it provides is pretty much irrelevant.
- A Quicksilver Flask of The Order (ms/stun avoidance) is great for giving us movement speed for map clear and dodging telegraphed attacks. It also gives us stun avoidance which is very nice for dealing with high-level delirium content.
- A Chemist's Quartz Flask of Warding provides us with phasing, some extra spell/attack avoidance, and curse removal and immunity, and rounds out our flasks nicely.

Jewels:
- Healthy Mind: Put this jewel in the socket above the witch starting area to transform the % health from "Heart and Soul", "Cruel Preparation", and associated small passives into % increased mana. It's a great boost (like over a thousand mana on its own!)
- Watcher's Eye: You can go without this, but if you can get one to drop or have the currency to buy one, look for the following clarity mods (ordered by priority): X% of damage taken from mana before life, gain X% of maximum mana as extra maximum energy shield, X% increased mana recovery rate.
- Large Cluster Jewel, Shield: We want 2 jewel sockets and passives which give block/spell block. Prodigious Defense and Riot Queller are the best passives to hit.
- Small Cluster Jewel, Mana: We want Openness and small passives give maximum mana and/or attributes (specifically strength and dexterity).
- Small Cluster Jewel, Block: We want Powerful Ward and small passives give attributes (strength or dexterity).
- Other rare jewels: We want maximum mana, attributes, elemental resistances, and mine throwing speed.


Leveling

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I leveled with arc. Didn't do anything fancy. I don't have any advice for leveling in HC/SSF, or running this character as a league starter. I don't think it's a great option outside of trade league, but I'll be looking into this more as I continue to play the character.

reserved, I guess?

Hey man, great build, interesting idea! Really looking forward to observing your progress.

Planning to record some videos of your gameplay? Lvling the build myself atm, so
would really like to see. :)

Also, seems similar wep and shield to yours are nearly impossible to get atm, especially if you want to craft the trigger or double dmg while focussed. What stats would you recommend to prioritize?

Thanks a bunch, have a great time! ;)

EDIT. Also, can I ask what pantheons do you use?

Hey Rhothgar,

Thanks for the reply. I will definitely be recording some videos. Just trying to get my stuff leveled a bit more. I'll try to make a video available later today.

For the shield, stat priority is as follows:

#1: 10% spell block
#2: Gain X% of lightning as extra chaos / big +% spell damage
#3: 1 empty suffix
#4: Block chance

I see a couple pretty affordable prices up right now:
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/jv4pkDWCX

For the sceptre, you can use a wand alternatively, but you won't be able to vigilant strike, so I don't recommend it. You might be best off just crafting the sceptre. I see some ilvl 82+ Crusader influenced Sambar Sceptres on the trade site for ~3c. EDIT: You would want to fossil craft with Aetheric + Metallic fossils.

There are a few OK options for ~1ex right now, which is what I got my sceptre for:

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/8nPZ0YBUV

For pantheons I'm still kind of playing around with figuring out what's best. Solaris is great for avoiding repeat crits, but Lunaris seems like it could be better. If you start getting chain-stunned in Delirium encounters then you should swap into Brine King, at least until you can get a stun avoidance flask. For minor god I'm really leaning towards Gruthkul right now, but I think Garukhan could also be a strong option.

Best of luck with the build!
- Mator

Thank you for the detailed reply Mator! I really appreaciate your advice regarding the gearing. :)

I also wanted to ask about your experience with Delirium? I got torn apart with my other char in Simulacrum last waves, and I kind of hope that this build will be able to clear it, even with the insane scaling.

Thank you very much and best regards to you! :)

I had the intent of making a character with enough DPS and defenses to clear the Simulacrum up to wave 20 when making this build, but at the moment it is not yet clear to me if this build will be able to clear it.

The big issue is our recovery. I feel that we don't recover our ES fast enough to sustain multiple big hits in short succession if we get unlucky or make a few tactical mistakes. There may be a way to remedy this, I'm still looking into it (I've never had a character which used ES recharge as a primary recovery mechanic before).

I think this build has a very good chance of managing all 20 waves. Akane's build is very similar and cleared all 20 waves deathless first try. These are the differences between this build and Akane's. This build has:

- Over twice as much effective health
- Much lower recovery (I initially designed the build around some recovery interactions which don't work)
- Better attack/spell avoidance (but more gear dependent)
- Less movement speed
- Twice as much DPS.

The build is better than Akane's deathless build in every department except recovery, which is a big loss for the hectic Simulacrum. I'm not yet certain how to shore up this loss. We can't leech or gain on hit because we're using mines, I looked into regen and it seems like we aren't able to get enough of it. And recovery on kill only works when clearing, so we'd struggle against bosses. We use ES so we can't use flasks (unless we use both the sorrow of the divine and an instant life flask, but this loses us a lot of flasks and isn't even that great). We basically have to go all-in on ES recharge, and I don't know enough about the mechanic to approach that effectively.

So I'm researching right now how to optimize and improve our recovery. If The Sorrow of the Divine + Indigon worked together properly we would be absolutely golden (that's what I was initially planning on using).

Will update the thread as I find out more. :)

I just found out mind over matter doesn't work with ES. I feel like an idiot. I was wondering why I was getting one-shot so much. *Facepalm*

OK, I guess that's a learning experience, but damn. That basically bricks the entire build. If I can't use ES as my primary health bar with MoM & similar mods, then I *have* to switch to life, which means we're going to lose a ton of mana and damage and we basically have to completely respec our tree, our recovery mechanics, etc.

Wow. Big rip.

EDIT: I guess Arcane Cloak still protects our ES, so that's something. Still, this build is basically dead right now unless I can figure out a way to salvage it.

EDIT 2: I may be overreacting, the build can still work without MoM protecting ES, but its effective health has basically been cut in half. This changes a lot of things. I may be able to swap the body armour out for a different option which gives us better results, but I'm not sure yet. Will try to salvage things.

I see. That is certainly sad, but don't lose hope man! :D

However, the problems are certainly severe. I assume, if we go hybrid, we would need some considerable chaos res, which can be pretty hard with the uniques we use. However, if we do not go hybrid or CI at all, then there is not much point in going Hiero over other ascendancies right?

What do you think about LL/hybrid with The Ivory Tower? That way chaos dmg would not pose as much problems and we don't have to sacrifice that much mana, but on the other hand we would need more recovery I guess?

I am not really theorycrafter myself, so not sure how relevant the idea is.

But I really like the concept and the build has been big fun, even though I did not level that high yet, so if you will not give up on the it, I certainly look forward to the changes! :)

Best regards Mator and have fun! :)

We wouldn't need that much chaos res, but we would definitely want some. Too many sources of chaos damage in the Simulacrum/just in general.

I have half a mind to just stay CI and invest a bit more in ES, but I don't think that would be particularly amazing. Our EHP just won't be all that high, which isn't great.

It's really weird, the whole hierophant ascendancy feels like it's designed to promote usage of ES/mana as health, but then Mind Over Matter doesn't work with ES. It still boggles my mind a bit, it doesn't feel like a design choice so much as a design accident.

I considered The Ivory Tower, but we lose a lot of mana if we use it. I'm ultimately not that big of a fan of hybrid Life/ES builds. They feel really clunky to me without shavs/some other source of chaos damage does not bypass ES. I suppose we do get health recovery via our mana flasks via Indigon, so I could ignore health recovery mechanics in this particular build. The problem is just that we need chaos resistance, and there just isn't any space in the build to get it. The other problem is just that it feels like we're punished for investing in mana/ES. We get ES from investing in mana but the ES has less effective value than our health because Mind Over Matter doesn't work with it.

Honestly, I feel really discouraged and disinterested in Hierophant builds now. The mechanics just feel really clunky because MoM doesn't worth with ES, Indigon doesn't work with EB, and Archmage/Arcane Cloak doesn't work EB.

Just, why GGG? Why can't MoM work with ES? It would make so much more sense intuitively and based on the design of the hierophant ascendancy, unique items, and skill gems if it did. :/

For now I think the best bet for this build is to just prioritize getting a bit more cooldown reduction/skill effect duration and try to keep Arcane Cloak up as often as possible. This will allow us to still get effectively 75% damage taken from mana before "life" (ES). We could get cooldown recovery speed on our belt and our boots, and we could potentially pick up some skill effect duration on the tree.

Why are you using tempest shield with ball lightning ? And Cast W.D.T ? (in the helm)

I didn't understand the mechanic

can you explain