MoM Ball Lightning Totem Hierophant

Build made by Tatiantel2 If you have any questions/suggestions - feel free to ask in chat on Twitch (streaming every day): https://www.twitch.tv/tatiantel2

------ HOW BALL LIGHTNING WORKS ------ In order to scale Ball Lightning damage we can use all the normal sources of Spells scaling like: Cast Speed, Elemental Damage, Spell Damage, Elemental Penetration. But the main way to scale DPS is to:

1. Increase Area of Effect;
2. Reduce projectile Speed. Each Ball Lightning's Ball can hit the same enemy multiple times, with set intervals of 150ms (this value cannot be changed). So, in order to multiply the damage, we scale the amount of time the Ball will be damaging the enemy. The slower Ball moves, and the bigger its Area, the more times it will zap the enemy. In this build we hit the mark of 10 hits per Ball.

Having %increased Area of Effect on Helmet implicit and 1 Jewel corrupted implicit is crucial - it allows us to hit the threshold for 10 hit. So it is very important to roll that on helmet eventually.

It is possible to scale this number even further, but it requires more AoE and Reduced Proj Speed investement, and sources of these mods are scarce. It is also worth noticing that the amount of hits per Ball value is hard-capped at 13. If you try to scale AoE or Reduced Proj Speed even further, it will give nothing.

------ PLAYSTYLE ------ Mapping. Place totems in the middle of the pack of monsters. When encoutering bigger pack of monsters - place Decoy Totems in the middle of a pack. Decoys have much bigger AoE for their Taunt (and it lasts longer), so monsters will group around Decoys, and you and your BL totems will not get hit. Against packs of monsters with Rares (or when you need more damage) cast Conductivity and Wrath Aura (temporary aura linked to Divine Blessing) after you placed all the totems.

Bossing. The "rotation" of skills is as follows:

1. Place Decoy Totems if not on cooldown (to not get hit and lock Boss in place)
2. Place Ball Lightning Totems
3. Cast Conductivity
4. Place Sigil of Power
5. Use Wrath aura (temporary aura linked to Divine Blessing)
6. Throw and detonate few Stormblast Mines (or Wave of Conviction Mines) until you get 3 Frenzy charges (from Charged Mines Support)
7. (optional) While not busy with replacing totems or dodging boss mechanics, keep throwing Stormblast Mines (or Wave of Conviction Mines) without detonating them (in order to proc 3% increased damage taken on Monsters from Mine skill gem)

This rotation of skills might seem overwhelming but you get used to it pretty quickly. Totems last 20 seconds, and they are tanky, so there's plenty of time to do something else - like throwing Mines and maintaining Frenzy Charges from them.

Arcane Cloak (or Steelskin while leveling) - this skill is linked to Automation Support, so it will be automatically activated once it's not on a cooldown.

How Sigil of Power works: Your char has to be inside of the circle created by Sigil of Power in order for totems to have extra damage. It doesn't matter where your totems are. The timing also doesn't matter - whenever you are in the circle ALL totems get extra damage (all totems summoned before or after placing the Sigil). So you can freely walk out and back in the circle if needed - the extra damage is automatically reapplied once you're back in the circle. The build has a lot of increased Area of Effect for Sigil of Power, so this skill doesn't really lock you in place - there's plenty of room for maneuvers. Getting to maximum stages of Sigil of Power is fairly easy, because each cast of Divine Blessing Aura or Arcane Cloak immediately triggers +1 stage.

------ FIRE DAMAGE MASTERY ------ While leveling It is very IMPORTANT to have flat fire damage to spells on a Wand ("Adds # to # Fire Damage to Spells"). Even 1 point of fire damage will allow to proc Fire Mastery "100% increasaed Damage with Hits against Ignited Enemies". You can either use on of the Wand bases, that has that fire damage on Implicit, or just bench-craft fire damage to spells in hideout. Eventually, instead of having fire damage on a Wand we can craft this mod on Abyssal Jewel, which we put in a socket in Stygian Vise Belt.

------ EXPOSURE DEBUFF ------ Exposure is a debuff that lowers enemy's Elemental Resistance. The best way to apply exposure with this build is to get implicit on gloves "Inflict Lightning Exposure on Hit, applying -11% to Lightning Resistance". You can get it by spamming Eldritch Ichors on Gloves until you randomly get this mod. Lowest tier Ichors give 11% Exposure, Grand Ichors give 13% - the difference is not too big, so it's not worth investing in higher tier Ichors (unless there's nothing else to uprade anymore). With this implicit mod Totems will automatically always apply Exposure.

But BEFORE you can get your hands on such Gloves (hehe), there are 2 ways to apply Exposure:

1. Throw and detonate Wave of Conviction Mines - recommended option (shown in Leveling Gems section);
2. Cast Hydrosphere (also can link to Hextouch+Conductivity). Option 1 is far better, because it applies 15% Exposure (vs 10% from Hydrosphere), plus you get Frenzy and Power Charge generation, and there's "2% chance to deal double damage" to enemies around Mines (from High-Impact Mine Support). Only use option 2 (Hydrosphere) if you're looking for much lazier playstyle (and you're ok with losing a lot of damage), because you get both Exposure and Curse with 1 button press. Triggering Curse from Hextouch also result in damage loss, because you also lose Curse effectiveness from Doom mechanic. So I heavily recombend reading the "Can I not use Mines" paragraph first.

------ CAN I NOT USE MINES? ------ Short answer: YES, BUT Mines are really efficient because of few reasons:

1. Mines provide the easiest accessible source of Frenzy Charge generation (from Charged Mines Support), plus at the same time they generate Power Charges too (which help with proccing Elemental Overload more consistently);
2. Stormblast Mines have aura around Mines, which makes enemies take 3% increased damage per mine. That's effectively 3% more damage per Mine in most cases (which means from 10 mines it's 30% more DPS multiplier);
3. Stormblast Mines have built-in increased effect of Shock, so they actually apply decent (~8-10%) Shock against Pinnacle Bosses. (Not relevant for this build as Totems apply bigger Shock); 3*) Before you get Exposure Gloves, Wave of Conviction Mines apply big Exposure (15%), and give 2% more damage to enemies around Mines (instead of 3% from Stormblast Mines, but still good).

So I would really recommend trying to overcome this initial struggle and play with Mines for few days, because eventially they will even become enjoyable to use. I would recommend binding Mine Throwing Key and Detonate Mines Key to 2 buttons that are next to each other on the keyboard - this way it doesn't feel like you need to press 2 buttons. For example, I use "W" for Mine and "E" for Detonate, and when I want to use Mines I hold down "W" with middle finger and spam "E" key with pointing finger. It's also possible to just press and hold down both keys simultaneously.

IF Mines still don't work for you, then you need to at least find different source of Frenzy Charges. Possible ways:

1. Craft Minimum Frenzy Charge on Rings and Amulet. This gives permanent Charges, but most likely you'll have to sacrifice other stats on jewellery in order to be able to craft these Minimum Charge mods;
2. Use Cold Snap / Vaal Cold Snap. This is very unreliable source of Charges;
3. Use 4-link setup: Frenzy - Additional Accuracy - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Faster Attacks. This uses a lot of sockets on gear, and not much lazier than using Mines.

As you can see, all these sources have their own downsides.

------ LEVELING ------ In "Tree" section at the bottom you can select different trees for different Levels to see which passives to take at each stage. In "Skills" section you can see which skills to use at each Level.

As shown is Skills section we level with Holy Flame Totem and Flame Wall, this combination of skills can clear early acts pretty easily. It is possible to mule Sniper's Mark curse, which will increase damage of Holy Flame Totem even more. "To mule" means - you create a Duelist, and get to Submerged Passage waypoint with it, and Sniper's Mark will be offered as a quest reward. Adding Wave of Conviction Mines as early as possible (level 16) is recommended. Make sure that your highest elemental damage dealt with WoC is fire, so that you apply Fire Exposure. If it's not fire, you can add Added Fire Damage Support to WoC + Blastchain Mine. We use Wave of Conviction Mines until we get Gloves with "Inflict Lightning Exposure on Hit, applying -11% to Lightning Resistance" implicit mod (explained in "------ EXPOSURE DEBUFF ------"), and once we get it we switch to Endgame setup - Stormblast Mines.

Switching to Ball Lightning Totems - at around Level 35, once first Labyrinth is completed, and we get some AoE from tree. BE CAREFUL when switching to Ball Lightning Totems - make sure that you don't have sources of "increased projectile speed" on your gear. One time while leveling I dropped Karui Ward amulet, which gives projectile speed and damage, and that was a very nice item for Holy Flame Totems. But then I switched to Ball Lightning, and I couldn't understand why damage felt underwhelming. Don't make the same mistake!

It is very IMPORTANT to have flat fire damage to spells on a Wand ("Adds # to # Fire Damage to Spells"). Even 1 point of fire damage will allow to proc Fire Mastery "100% increasaed Damage with Hits against Ignited Enemies". You can either use on of the Wand bases, that has that fire damage on Implicit, or just bench-craft fire damage to spells in hideout. Eventually, instead of having fire damage on a Wand we can craft this mod on Abyssal Jewel, that we socket in Stygian Vise Belt.

Switching to Mind over Matter - at around Level 56, once second Labyrinth is completed. It gives really good source of Mana Regen, so it makes having damage taken from Mana less painful.

Divine Blessing + Wrath we only start using only at Level 68, once we take extra sources of reduced manacost from tree.

------ ENDURANCE CHARGE GENERATION ------ Now in order to get perma Endurance Charges we have to craft +1 to Minimum Endurance Charge on rings and Amulet. It is also possible to use 3 Grand Spectrum Jewels, one of which with +1 to Minimum Endurance Charges. This is more expensive way of getting charges.

------ RAIN OF SPLINTERS? ------ There's a unique Jewel called Rain of Splinters, and it gives 2 extra projectile to Totems for a small cost: 30-50% reduced damage (not Less damage). With this Jewel Ball Lightning will shoot 3 projectiles at a time, but they cannot shotgun, so we don't get extra damage from that. It only helps a little with clear-speed in maps. When you'll try this Jewel for the first time, it might feel like it makes a big difference for clera-speed, but that's not the case in reality. I tested running different (indoor, outdoor) maps with and without Rain of Splinters, and the difference is very minor. So it's up to you - wether or not to use this Jewel. Because it just feels nicer to have more projectiles on screen, when at the same time it doesn't really help that much, and Single-target DPS suffers quite a bit (cause we have to sacrifice other Jewel for this unique Jewel, which also reduces the DPS even further).

Build made by Tatiantel2 If you have any questions/suggestions - feel free to ask in chat on Twitch (streaming every day): https://www.twitch.tv/tatiantel2

Tags

• #POE1
• #Lightning
• #Hierophant
• #MoM