[3.17] Nefarious' Storm Burst Inquisitor | 20mil DPS | Delve Depth 900 | League Start Friendly
 Hello everyone! I've been having a blast with Archnemesis, and to celebrate my first level 100, I'm making a guide so you can enjoy channeling spells as much as I have. This is my first build guide, so please feel free to give feedback. This build's playstyle is a bit different from the usual run and gun, so it will definitely not be for everyone. It can run almost all mods except Reduced Aura Effect and No Regen, can comfortably clear all content, and requires just a single respec point to run a reflect map. Who am I?
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I'm a long time ARPG player, but somewhat latecomer to PoE. I started seriously playing in Ritual League, and have done a different, self-made build with 36 challenges every league since. I play a lot of Templar, love to answer questions, and am still learning as I go.
Intro Path of Building Link: https://pastebin.com/n4KnQbi9 Videos
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T16 Frozen Cabins (Spell Suppression, Extra Life, Resists)
Delve Depth 500 Delve Depth 800 Uber Elder Uber Atziri Sirus The Feared (White) (probably capable of running The Feared rare, but I didn't want to record this multiple times to get a deathless run) Storm Burst requires you to stand in place while you channel orbs which last 1.2 seconds. The orbs jump around and deal damage every 0.4 seconds. If you stop channeling, all the orbs explode and deal damage based on how long they had left. We will be taking advantage of the channeling portion of this skill, entirely ignoring the release explosion. Storm Burst is also a Physical + Lightning skill, which opens up additional options for scaling damage and defense. We can scale our damage in the following ways:
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1. Duration - longer duration means more active orbs. This only helps in 0.4 second intervals. 2. Area of Effect - larger AoE means more orbs hit the target 3. Criticals - Strike Chance and Multiplier are the largest chunk of our damage 4. Increased Physical/Lightning/Spell Damage - Also "% Physical as additional Elemental Damage" 5. Gem Levels - Gem levels are pretty efficient with Storm Burst because of its low added damage efficiency 6. Increased Damage Taken - we actually come across quite a few of these effects 7. Added Spell Damage - preferably physical, efficiency is low though. 8. % Non-Chaos added as Chaos - Since we convert 100% of our damage, we double dip on this effect. I know that standing still feels unnatural in PoE, but with the help of Frostblink, we can move without interrupting Storm Burst. Additionally, we take advantage of every "stand in place" defensive ability we can, making us surprisingly tanky with a good amount of regen. We scale our defense in the following ways:
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1. Health/Energy Shield + Corrupted Soul 2. Life/ES Leech and Regen - such as consecrated ground 3. Armour/Determination 4. Elemental/Chaos Resist - I leave mine at 75%. The only time its an issue is wave 26+ of Simulacrum and rough Delve mods. 5. Attack/Spell Block - I keep it low. 36/24. Glancing Blows + Rumi's Concoction is an option to cap it. 6. Reduced Damage Taken - such as Infusion and Arctic Armour 7. Reduced Damage Dealt 8. Molten Shell / Frost Shield 9. Vaal Molten Shell and Vaal Discipline as "panic buttons" Gear
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All gear includes high and low budget alternatives. On all gear, Strength, Intelligence, Life, and Resists are desired.
As you gear up, it is worth noting the breakpoints on duration for Storm Burst:
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Duration - Increased Duration - Increased Duration w/ 10% More Duration Mastery 1.2 sec - 0% - 0% 1.6 sec - 33% - 21% 2.0 sec - 67% - 51% 2.4 sec - 100% - 81% 2.8 sec - 133% - 121% Reaching 2.4 sec is possible with atleast 11% duration on your boots, but unfortunately it is not possible if you are using timeclasp instead. I was unable to find a practical way to reach 2.8 sec and above Weapon
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For a rare, +gem levels, cast speed, and spell damage are most important. If you can, Double Damage (while focused or not) and Non-chaos as Extra Chaos are both great boosts to our damage, since it double dips on the damage conversion. My weapon has no quality enchantment because I use Battlemage through Forbidden Flesh/Flame. For a Unique, Agnerod West works fine. Chest
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Sporeguard is amazing, but it comes at the cost of a chest with better resists or new implicits. Sporeguard's fungal ground, however, gives us a huge damage boost, lowers enemy damage, and makes enemies explode (which just feels so so good). Corrupting it +2 Socketed Duration will affect Storm Burst and Infused Channeling. With a level 21 Infused Channeling, you reach the next damage increase. Annoint with either Exceptional Performance or Charisma. A good Incursion rare with %life, resists, and energy shield works great. You can usually find these on trade because Righteous Fire uses the same chest we want. Helmet
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Crown of the Inward Eye with "Storm Burst has a 15% chance to summon an additional orb". This enchantment is a free 15% MORE damage. All round great boost to survivability, easy to find with good corruptions and good helmet enchants. Reservation Efficiency corruption was a must for me to fit in Aspect of the Spider, but I think Enlighten lvl4 would have worked too. No rare alternative here unless you want to go for a double influenced helm with "+1 to Maximum Power Charges" and "Nearby enemies take X% increased elemental damage." It's hard to beat the amount of health and ES we get though. Gloves
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Rare Gloves with Crit, Life, ES, and damage are best. I chose to use "Increased Damage during soul gain prevention" because I use my Vaal skills a lot. We also use EoW/SE implicits to get a source of Unnerve and extra Life Leech. With all the attributes we'll be getting, Shaper's Touch is a no brainer budget option. Corrupting with "+X% to spell critical strike chance" helps cap Crit Chance early when your other gear is lacking. For enchanting, I like Commandment of Reflection to pull aggro while I'm channeling in tough situations, but this is more a preference. Amulet
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Because of Storm Burst's Physical and Lightning tag, we have flexibility here. Any combination of +1 Skill Gems, +1 Physical, and +1 Lightning that gets us to +2 levels to Storm Burst will work. I also use my amulet to satisfy lacking attribute requirements, Life, and Aspect of the Spider if you can fit it. On the low budget end, Astramentis works well with everything we want to do, giving 120% increased crit rate with some our Ascendancy Passives. Annoint with either Exceptional Performance or Charisma. Rings
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Here's where things get a bit weird. There are limited sources of Increased Duration available on gear, and Timeclasp is one of them. Pick a good corrupt and go with it if you don't have Increased Duration Boots yet. Otherwise, rings are just stat sticks. Fill out your resists here, boost your life/ES, get some extra attributes, and some extra crit if you're rich. Belt
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As with rings, your belt is another stat stick. Hunter influence has a couple good mods for use: %life and Flask Charge on Crit. Otherwise, life and resists on a Stygian Vise. On your Eye Jewel, Added Physical Damage to Spells, Life, and Resists if you need them. If you don't have a Glorious Vanity, you can pick up Replica Soul Tether to get Corrupted Soul here instead, but I think it's a waste. Boots
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I saved boots for last because you're going to have to craft them. Nobody else wants the combination of Influenced Mods we want. They are a necessary source of duration to get Storm Burst up to 2.4 seconds. A pair with Tailwind (preferably Elevated) and Increased Duration is the minimum. Life, Movement Speed, Armour/ES, and your choice of Strength/Intelligence, Resists, or "Increased Damage During Soul Gain Prevention" can roll here with higher numbers than on gloves. An alternative cheaper option is to go with EoW/SE implicits on a good pair of boots. You can get travel skill cooldown recovery, which makes frostblink feel a lot better. I enchant with life regen for better survivability. Pick your favorite enchant and run with it. Flasks
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Freeze immunity comes from Arctic Armour, and Chill Immunity from boots, but poison, ignite, bleed, and corrupted blood still need to be handled. Quicksilver/Granite/Diamond/Sulpher flasks with either Flagellants (Charges gained when hit) or Surgeons (Charges gained on Crit) Prefixes, plus a similar life flask. If you prefer to go without a life flask, a Quartz flask is good. Bottled Faith for the high rollers. As you get immunity to ailments, you can sub out for syndicate benchcraft life regen, cast speed, leech, crit rate, and so on. At higher cast speeds, the Syndicate Benchcraft "Reduced mana cost of skills" is necessary. Put it on your easiest to proc flask. Jewels and Clusters
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Watchers Eye - go with Zealotry mods, increased damage taken and increased cast speed. There are probably better alternatives for the cast speed if you want to experiment with defensive Determination or Clarity mods, or maybe Precision if you can fit it. Timeless Jewels require a bit of experimentation to find the best spot and seed. I lucked into a Lightning Damage and Life Leech Notable, cast speed, life, and resists, all on my existing pathing. We mainly need this for Corrupted Soul. Large Spell Damage clusters tends to have better notables than Lightning Damage for this build. Arcane Adept boosts channeling skills, Thaumophage gives us a source of Hinder, Practiced Caster helps with stuns. Medium Channeling clusters are best in slot. Rapid Infusion is best, but honestly all of them are pretty good. Forbidden Flesh/Flame has a lot of good options for Templars. I went with Instruments of Virtue to benefit from Battlemage. Since I took an additional passive from Inquisitor, Pious Path and Inevitable Judgement would also work, allowing us to manually allocate Instruments of Virtue. Sanctuary of Thought is probably the superior option, though, for all it provides. Should have 1 slot left for a rare jewel. I chose a Corrupted Blood immunity jewel with life and a bit of resists. Crit multiplier would be better, but I wasn't spending that much on a jewel. A Large Radius Thread of Hope in the far left jewel slot allows you to get Glancing Blows, Divine Shield, two Staff notables, two Elemental Damage notables, and the Reservation Efficiency notable. I don't use this because it doesn't let you get the masteries, and it sacrifices a jewel slot. Gem Links
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Primary Skill, in order of importance: Divergent quality Storm Burst gives a huge AoE boost. This almost guarantees an enemy in the center of your orbs will get hit by all of them. Lvl 21 Infused Channeling with +2 Duration Gems reaches the next breakpoint for More Damage. Divergent Inspiration helps with mana problems at high cast speed. It doesn't hit the next More Damage breakpoint until lvl 25. This is possible with a +1 Socketed Gems corruption, lvl 21 base, and +3 to Critical Gems mastery. This also benefits the rest of your critical gems, but not by as much. If you somehow got an insane amount of Crit already, Increased Duration or Awakened Added Lightning/Fire Damage are good alternatives to Increased Critical Strikes. Aura stack looks something like this: You'll need to play around with mana reservation efficiency and Clarity's level, but you should be able to get everything except Aspect of the Spider in without using Enlighten or a Reservation Multiplier Helm. With enough efficiency, you can swap out the Efficiency Mastery for "Increased Effect" instead. Lvl 4 Enlighten not necessary, but would likely allow the aforementioned swap. Zealotry is a no brainer. Especially with the Watcher's Eye mods. Determination can be swapped for Wrath if you want more damage instead. This might cause problems with Divine Shield if your armour is too low. Arctic Armour does more work than it appears since we'll be standing still 90% of the time. Freeze immunity is also nice. Frostblink is the best option for movement. Unlike Flame Dash, it doesn't interrupt Storm Burst's channeling. I link with Arcane Surge at lvl 7 to guarantee the proc. Anomalous Frostblink increases the Area of Effect, making it easier to hit more enemies and shorten the cooldown. In practice, blinking into a pack of monsters instantly resets the cooldown. With good movement, this makes mapping really fast. Socket into boots for Increased Duration and higher mana cost for triggering Arcane Surge Vaal Molten Shell linked with Cast When Damage Taken stacks well with all our armour. If you aren't using Determination, Steelskin might be better, but you lose out on the Vaal portion of Molten Shell. Socket into boots for increased duration. You'll need a support skills for Power Charge/Onslaught/Culling Strike. I use Orb of Storms, but Storm Brand and other "fire and forget" AoE spells work fine. Innervate gives our main skill some added damage. Divergent Quality helps with bosses. Also support with Added Damage or Concentrate Effect for more damage if you want. Three options for Mark skills: Poacher's Mark is best for Frenzy Charge generation and a bit of Added Damage. If you don't have another source of Frenzy Charges, use this with 20% quality. Assassin's Mark is best for the Critical Strike Chance and Multiplier. Warlord's Mark is only good if you really really want those endurance charges. I do fine without them, and would rather find a different source than this if I needed them. Other Supporting Skills: Frost Shield has three purposes: Defense while we stand in place, Increased Crit Rate, and Chill enemies. Level it up as much as your Energy Shield regen/leech can handle. I use Chaos Golem for added defense. Lightning Golem is a good alternative for cast speed. If you can, link to CWDT to help with uptime, otherwise you'll be casting a lot. Vaal Discipline is a good defensive ability, especially with all our Increased Duration. Use with Vaal Molten Shell as a "panic button" when things get tough, and to boost damage with Syndicate mods on boosts/gloves. We won't be using the aura since the balance between ES an Health is finely tuned. I don't use Sigil of Power, but it can be good because we're standing in place and have a good amount of AoE. Level it up until you can't consistently hit the mana requirements to increase stages. You might want to use Frost Bomb if you have trouble with regenerating enemies. I use a belt enchantment instead. Ascendancy, Pantheon, and Bandits
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Take them in this order: 1. Sanctuary 2. Pious Path 3. Righteous Providence 4. Inevitable Judgement The reason we wait for Righteous Providence is because Elemental Overload works with virtually no investment into crit until we complete the third Labyrinth. Major: Soul of the Brine King for help with stuns, since they're particularly devastating to Storm Burst. Soul of Solaris for help against Crits. Lunaris might have some use in deep delving. Minor: nothing beats Soul of Tukohama since we spend so much time stationary. Make sure you upgrade it ASAP. Swap to Soul of Yugul for reflect maps. If you upgrade it you almost have curse immunity due to 50% from consecrated ground. Bandits: Kill all for 2 passives or side with Alira. If you side with Alira, you'll want to swap to Two Passives once you have more efficient gear. She's great for leveling though. Skill Tree
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Follow the PoB. There's some additional considerations and choices to make though: Use Elemental Overload until you have a comfortable amount of crit. It will easily trigger with Storm Burst, even at base crit chance. Don't forget to unspec this once you get the Crit Ascendancy Passive and other notables. Clusters make a world of difference. Get them ASAP, even if they're not perfect. There are lots of good notables on the two types we've chosen to use. You can run Elemental Reflect maps with a quick change. Swap Elemental Mastery to Reduced Reflected Damage taken, and swap your Minor Pantheon power to Soul of Yugul. While you have 3 spots for Glorious Vanity, it will destroy a lot of good Notables in any location except above the Templar starting location. I built in about 60% reduced extra damage from crits. You can swap these points around for more damage. Specifically, Critical Mastery can be swapped for +3 Levels to Critical Support Gems, and Sanctum of Thought points can be spent on Divine Judgement or Nimbleness. There are lots of opportunities to build in resistances if your gear is lacking. Elemental Mastery can be swapped for resists, Practical Application is only 2 points away, the two nodes next to Safeguard, etc. A lot of the build takes advantage of our base physical damage, and the skill tree is no different. Unholy Might on Block, Elemental Mastery, Divine Wrath, etc. Unspec Divine Judgement if you run a map that shreds your armour. The new Unending Hunger boss fight does this. Reservation Mastery can be swapped to Increased Aura Effect if you have efficiency elsewhere. This is REALLY effective with our auras. Leveling
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A lot of this has already been stated elsewhere in the guide, but here are some tips: You get Storm Burst in Act 1, but before that you can use Lightning Tendrils with Infused Channeling, Added Lightning Damage, and Arcane Surge. Other auras you can use are Hatred or Herald of Ash for good Added Damage. Other supports you can use are Added Fire Damage. Use Elemental Overload early on. It's easy to trigger with Storm Burst. Take advantage of your base physical damage with whatever skills and items you have. Once you get Corrupted Soul, keep your Health higher than your Energy Shield. I go for a 60/40 split ideally. This is because your ES will recover faster than your Health most of the time. Glass Cannon Variant
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You can make a quick swap to double your damage at the cost of a lot of survivability. Take Pain Attunement, swap Discipline for Wrath, and swap Arctic Armour for Petrified Blood. I strongly recommend against this as we already have great damage, both single target and clearing. Corrupted Soul makes this even more difficult. Map Mods and other Remarks
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We can run all mods except Reduced Aura Effect and No Regen. Reflect maps are doable with a quick respec on elemental mastery and change in minor pantheon.
There is a damage ramp up equal to your Storm Burst duration, so its important that you don't stop channeling on bosses and tough enemies. Make liberal use of Frostblink to move around without breaking your channel. Last edited by NefariousDestiny on May 7, 2022, 8:17:25 PM Last bumped on Jun 27, 2022, 10:06:58 AM
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Looks interesting I might try this for my next league start.
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Looks very interesting I'm about to give it a try in hardcore.
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Hey man! Build looks interesting, might give it a shot next league. Any info about how you'd path through the passive tree while leveling?
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" Hey! The leveling tree actually looks almost identical to the main tree with a few differences: 1. Take the "Elemental Damage" minor passives at the start of the tree instead of the strength. 2. Don't take any staff passives until you have a good staff. I used wand+shield for a long time. 3. Take Elemental Overload keystone asap, and don't take any crit passives until your gear and ascendancy catches up. 4. Get channeling cluster jewels as early as possible. The notables are all worth it. 5. Get "Potency of Will" and "Ash, Frost, and Storm" early. The Mastery passives there are also really impactful. Last edited by NefariousDestiny on May 5, 2022, 8:24:03 PM
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" Thanks for the detailed breakdown, I appreciate it! |
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Looks like my league starter. Could you specify approximate investment into final build version?
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" It's hard to estimate how much I invested because this last league had wildly varying prices and I crafted most of the gear myself. It felt comfortable after a 3-4ex investment. For the final build, I spent probably 30ex on gear, and another 30ex crafting. |
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" Thanks a lot! | |
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Hey, OP! Thanks for this build. I'm planning on trying it.
Any chance you can make some leveling trees and maybe add some notes on gems/links while leveling? I made my own trees and notes for this, but not sure about them. Here are the POB notes I made if anyone wants them:
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" Last edited by Milkshakez on May 10, 2022, 1:22:02 PM
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