The build starts out as a basic caster. For your first set of gear, all you need to focus on is having a good amount of Life on each piece while getting enough Elemental Resistances to cap them at 75%. Your damage gets covered by a unique weapon and getting Cast Speed on your jewelry.
Once you've progressed deep into your atlas and have acquired more currency, you want to upgrade your gear to use another aura and the Annihilating Light staff to push into endgame. Wave of Conviction and Conductivity are being replaced by modifiers on your items for an easier playstyle, and to make space for Purity of Elements to gain Elemental Ailment Immunity.
If you like the build enough to go all out on it, you can upgrade to Crystallised Omniscience on a high budget. This requires a completely new set of gear - while Life and Armour are still needed, you now want lots of Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence instead of Elemental Resistances.
The section below shows what stats to aim for in each slot and for each budget.
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Weapon
Agnerod West is a great staff to start mapping with. It has lots of damage stats, is usually cheap and you don't even need to link its sockets, just getting it to six sockets to fit all gems is enough.
If you can't get your hands on one, look out for a staff with atleast three out of
80%+ Spell Damage or Lightning Damage,
+2 to Level of all Lightning Spell Skill Gems,
Adds 1 to 150+ Lightning Damage to Spells and
20%+ Cast Speed.
The Annihilating Light is your endgame staff to upgrade to. It simply triples your damage, but of course that comes with a downside - your Elemental Resistances get reduced by a substantial amount. You want this value to be as close to 60% as possible when buying this staff.
To give you an example: With a Level 20 Purity of Elements and a 60% roll on your staff, it would take another 176% to each Elemental Resistance to reach 80% for Brass Dome.
The tripled damage is not shown in your tooltip DPS, so while it may look like a downgrade at first, you'll notice just how good this staff is while playing the game.
Since this is your endgame weapon, it's also worth to farm the Harvest Enchantment below.
On a very high budget, get an
Annihilating Light with
Cast Speed corruption.
Harvest Enchantment: Grants 1% increased Elemental Damage per 2% Quality
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Body Armour
You can start with a
Tabula Rasa, a unique body armour that only has six linked white sockets, or a rare body armour with atleast
five links,
70+ Life and
Resistances on an
Energy Shield base to have an easier time with getting the right colors for your Arc setup.
Brass Dome is your endgame body armour. It offers a huge increase in survivability by giving you tons of Armour and raising your
maximum Elemental Resistances by up to 5%, while also making you take no extra damage from Critical Strikes. The loss of Life is made up for by this.
Your Brass Dome doesn't need any links, only six sockets to fit your Golems, Clarity and Defiance Banner in. Arc goes into your Staff at this point.
On a very high budget, get a
Brass Dome with
+5% to all maximum Elemental Resistances and either a
+1% to all maximum Resistances or
50% increased Damage corruption.
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Helmet
Your first helmet should be an
Armour base with
70+ Life and
Resistances, don't bother with an Enchantment or Eldritch Implicits at this point.
For endgame, you want to craft a helmet with those same stats, the right Enchantment and a
total of atleast 15% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills, which together with a Level 3 Enlighten and the Level 85 Passive Tree goal allows you to fit Purity of Elements in.
Start with a helmet base with the
Arc Chains an additional Time Enchantment, then use
Shrieking or Deafening Essences of Loathing until you get
70+ Life and an open suffix to craft a Resistance, or 30%+ Resistance and an open prefix to craft Life. The remaining Mana Reservation Efficiency comes from the Eldritch Implicits obtained through
Eldritch Ichors.
If you upgrade to Crystallised Omniscience, use a
Black Sun Crest. This helmet increases your Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence by up to 15%, and each of those gets converted to increase your Omniscience instead. It also raises the level of socketed gems by 1, which your Determination + Wrath + Purity of Elements + Enlighten setup greatly benefits from.
Eldritch Implicits: The Searing Exarch offers damage increases through
Adds # to # Lightning Damage to Spells or
#% increased Cast Speed. More important is the Eater of Worlds'
#% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills for the reasons mentioned above.
Enchantment: Arc Chains an additional Time
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Gloves
Start with
Armour base gloves with
70+ Life and
Resistances.
For endgame, all you need is the same with more Resistances to use Annihilating Light, then roll for the Eldritch Implicits below to gain more damage and throw out Wave of Conviction.
If you upgrade to Crystallised Omniscience, aim for an
Armour base with
70+ Life and
atleast 40+ to two out of Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence.
Eldritch Implicits: The Searing Exarch has
#% chance to Unnerve Enemies for 4 seconds on Hit to aim for while the Eater of Worlds has
Inflict Lightning Exposure on Hit, applying -#% to Lightning Resistance, which replaces Wave of Conviction.
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Boots
Go for
Armour base boots with
20%+ Movement Speed,
70+ Life and
Resistances first.
For endgame, you once again just need the same with more Resistances and then work on getting the Enchantment and Eldritch Implicits below.
If you upgrade to Crystallised Omniscience, aim for an
Armour base with
20%+ Movement Speed,
70+ Life and
atleast 40+ to two out of Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence.
Eldritch Implicits: The Searing Exarch offers
#% increased Action Speed to speed up anything you do. The Eater of Worlds implicit to go for is
#% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate of Travel Skills, which makes your Flame Dash more useful.
Enchantment: Adds 1 to 160 Lightning Damage if you haven't Killed Recently
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Amulet
Start with
50+ Life,
20+ Dexterity and
+1 to Level of all Lightning Skill Gems.
For Endgame, you want to add some more damage stats to this. Those can be
#% increased Spell/Lightning Damage,
#% increased Cast Speed,
Damage Penetrates #% Elemental/Lightning Resistance or
+1 to Level of all Skill Gems. If needed, you can also add some Resistances to use Annihilating Light.
Crystallised Omniscience is a high budget option for anyone that wants to push the build even further. It's very expensive, but can easily triple your damage output with the right setup.
Once you get it, it becomes the core of your build and requires you to adjust your gear around it. The amulet converts all your Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence, including any #% increased modifiers to a new attribute called Omniscience and adds them together. While Omniscience itself doesn't do anything, the amulet has modifiers that interact with it.
You gain 1% Elemental Resistance Penetration and 1% to all Elemental Resistances for every 10 Omniscience you have. This quickly becomes a massive damage increase that allows you to replace the Lightning Penetration support gem for Arcane Surge, and helps to counter the Elemental Resistance Reduction from Annihilating Light. The amulet also allows you to meet attribute requirements for your gear and gems with up to 25% of your Omniscience instead.
This amulet only drops from the
Searing Exarch and can be farmed.
Anointment: Ash, Frost and Storm (Endgame Amulet); Charisma (Crystallised Omniscience)
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Rings
Start with any rings with
50+ Life,
Resistances and some
Cast Speed.
For endgame, replace the Cast Speed with more Resistances to use Annihilating Light. One ring needs
Curse Enemies with Conductivity on Hit to throw out the Conductivity gem and free up its socket. Ideally you want these on
Amethyst Ring bases to gain lots of Chaos Resistance.
If the Resistances are at 30%+ each, it's worth using
Prismatic Catalysts to maximize them.
If you upgrade to Crystallised Omniscience, aim for
50+ Life and
atleast 40+ to two out of Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence on
Amethyst Rings, with one of them having
Curse Enemies with Conductivity on Hit.
Catalysts: Prismatic Catalyst (Endgame Rings); Intrinsic Catalyst (Crystallised Omniscience)
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Belt
Your first belt only needs
80+ Life and
Resistances, ideally on a
Leather Belt base.
For endgame, get
80+ Life,
40+ Mana and lots of
Resistances on a
Stygian Vise. This allows you to socket a
Hypnotic Eye Jewel, aim for
Life,
Dexterity and
Lightning Damage.
The mana is needed to smooth out your sustain and can technically be on any gear.
If you upgrade to Crystallised Omniscience, get any Synthesized Belt base with
13-15% increased Strength, -Dexterity or -Intelligence and use either
Sorrow- or
Spite Essences until you hit
70+ Life and
40+ Strength.
Catalysts: Prismatic Catalyst (Endgame Belt); Intrinsic Catalyst (Crystallised Omniscience)
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Jewels
These are socketed into Basic Jewel Sockets within your passive skill tree. I recommend to have
Life on all of them, then add as many of the other listed stats as you can afford.
Watcher's Eye is an optional choice that has some life and up to three aura-related affixes. Good choices for this build are:
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Cluster Jewels
These are socketed into Large Jewel Socket at the outline of the passive tree.
This build only needs a
Large Cluster Jewel. It has to be
Lightning Damage based and ideally has
8-9 added Passives. The important notable to go for is
Doryani's Lesson, this gives you Life Leech and lets you respec Infused Flesh.
A good addition is
Overshock to get improve your shocks, and with that your single target damage.
Inspired Oppression,
Prismatic Heart and
Thunderstruck are alright too. The third notable at the back doesn't matter and is just needed to push the two useful notables to the front.
Doryani's Lesson should ideally be the left or right notable when socketed, if it's at the back it costs you two additional passive points to get. You can check the notable order by importing or recreating the Large Cluster Jewel in Path of Building.
