[3.4 Pathfinder] Disintegrator Delving - Zerphi's Blade Vortex

• High health regeneration
• Sizable health pool
• Strong elemental defenses
• Decent physical reduction
• Very strong in end game mapping & Delves

Currently at Delve depth 385 and pushing easily, the only thing holding me back is the amount of time I have to put into mapping for sulphite.

• Expensive mostly due to Zerphi's Last Breath
• Requires awareness to play and maintain the mechanics against single targets especially
• Uses a staff, meaning relatively immobile other than move speed and Flame Dash
• I don’t recommend trying to play this build before having a character at least level 75

https://pastebin.com/5h7sxTwS

The Path of Building link contains some variation pieces that I have tested in some instances and not tested in others. I've expanded upon everything below, bear in mind that I specifically haven't tested a lightning variation of this build - only theorized about it so far.

The crux of this build is stacking Shaper and Elder items with Disintegrator which, per Siphoning Charge, gives us added flat physical, added non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage, and damage leeched as life.

It’s important to the build that we don’t leech mana. With Zerphi’s Last Breath, our primary source of life regeneration, reaching maximum mana will cancel the flask effect. As a Pathfinder it’s usually fine due to an abundance of flask charges but there will be cases where you don’t quite have the flask charges required and die from Disintegrator and Blood Rage degeneration until you’re comfortable with the build.

Similar to a Poet’s Pen Volatile Dead build we need to maintain some level of health degeneration in order to keep our mana low and maintain the Zerphi’s Last Breath flask effect. The VD builds typically do this through Blood Rage as we are. With this build specifically I’ve been using Blood Rage in order to minimize the amount of actual health I lose. The 4% degeneration from Blood Rage has been the perfect amount for me to maintain the Zerphi’s proc in most instances. You could do Righteous Fire but I prefer Blood Rage for the frenzy charges to buff our cast speed, RF is certainly worth testing though. I'm too scared to do it while leveling so I just use it for the Vaal RF active.

We use Mind Over Matter with this degeneration tactic to essentially fully deplete our mana and constantly maintain any mana flask in our belt.

Unlike the builds I took inspiration from that reserve 2 auras, I’m reserving 3, which leaves me with 51 flat mana, so it’s essential that we maintain degeneration in some form to ensure that we aren’t hitting maximum mana during Zerphi’s.

Another interesting mechanic since the introduction of instant skills is using Blade Vortex and Blood Rage casts at the same time in order to quickly build up Siphoning Charges. Instant skills count toward “using a skill.” Blade Vortex’s cast speed can feel really slow, especially below level 87, so learning to hit Blood Rage on recharge while building up Blade Vortex is a large gain to fully ramping up the damage.

To take full advantage of the Zerphi’s Last Breath and Blood Magic combination in with Blade Vortex, we stack Fevered Mind jewels in the tree which give us increased spell damage with 100% increased mana costs. Blade Vortex casts for me are a +245% modifier from Blood Magic support and 400% increased due to having 4 Fevered Minds in the tree.

Currently, that’s 770 mana per cast. My Zerphi’s roll is 581% (871.5% with flask effectiveness calculated) which means I’m getting 4,473 life regeneration over 4 seconds on every cast of Blade Vortex, or 1,118 per second for a single Blade Vortex cast without considering that we're a Pathfinder. On my build currently, my cast time is 0.38 standing in town (38% of one second), meaning that in 4 seconds I can fit 10.5 Blade Vortex casts in that time, netting out to 11,719 life regeneration per second while standing and casting Blade Vortex uninterrupted. This is even more with the frenzy charges gained from Blood Rage and properly calculated flask effect. I plan to test Spell Echo at some point which could theoretically push the build closer to the regeneration of a Poet's Pen VD build. Cast speed is far tougher to come by than attack speed.

Obviously, those conditions don’t always happen in practice but suffice to say the regeneration on this build is nutty even with a few casts. If you ever played Vaal Pact when it was instant, that’s any Zerphi’s build. Insanity.

Cast Order:

Basic Stats:


Standing Defense:


Defense, Flasks Active:


Blade Vortex, 10 stacks, 8 Siphoning Charges:

The most important areas to prioritize are stat requirements, for Strength in particular, health nodes, jewel slots, flask effectiveness and duration, and skill effect duration. This means that we want to prioritize the middle portion of the tree first and build outward from there, the nodes on the way to jewel slots in this area give good benefits such as elemental resists, much needed strength, and percentage health regeneration.

If you’re fairly new to making your own skill trees, here’s how you should prioritize stats between levels 75 and 95:



Here’s the minimum required skill tree, in my view, level 75 with two bandit points:

Here’s my current skill tree at level 94:

Here's a variation that includes an extra jewel slot at the cost of 12% increased health (very viable with a moderately good jewel in the spot):

There are two main paths you can take for your Ascendancy:
Movespeed during Flask effect:


Maximize overall flask effectivness:

Your number one priority is to convert physical to elemental damage as soon as possible. As a Pathfinder with our Ascendancy choices doing physical damage means wasted potential.

Main Damage:
First 4 required, add the last two in the order they appear here.

Auras:
Early on, you’ll probably only be able to fit 2 auras into the build until you have a level 3 Enlighten. I found it tough to maintain my Zerphi’s without a level 4 Enlighten on a 100% mana reservation setup as this build currently uses.



Utility:
This is a fantastic CWDT set up for a BV caster of any kind, but especially this build with increased fire damage from the Kaom’s Heart, big health pool, and increased Area Damage from the tree:

Movement & Golem:
I personally don’t mind self-casting golems, when you’re sitting around with max Blade Vortex stacks and instant health recovery casting a golem is nothing.

• Major: Soul of Lunaris
• Minor: Soul of Shakiri

• Disintegrator, 4-link minimum (highly recommend 5 for Increased AOE)
• Zerphi’s Last Breath
• Kaom’s Heart

Items to Prioritize:
• Elder ring with needed stats
• Mark of the Shaper
- • Max life roll
- • Highest spell damage roll possible

We prioritize an Elder ring to pair with Mark of the Shaper. Affordable Shaper rings even with great Shaper mods like spell damage didn’t out-damage the potential 80% from having the Elder ring.

• Watcher’s Eye


Other good mods for a Watcher's Eye if you can't get your hands on a double Hatred:

- • (6-10)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage while affected by Purity of Fire
- • Immune to Ignite while affected by Purity of Fire

You could also run Purity of Lightning instead of Purity of Fire and go for:
- • (6-10)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Lightning Damage while affected by Purity of Lightning

If you were running a Wrath version of this build and can afford the following, it's conceivable to run a 100% lightning version of this build using the Watcher's Eye and Physical to Lightning Support in tandem:

Required for 100% lightning build:
- • (25-40)% of Physical Damage Converted to Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath

Plus any of the defensive choices above, or these offensive choices:
- • Gain (15-25)% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath
- • Damage Penetrates (10-15)% Lightning Resistance while affected by Wrath

You could also potentially run a Hatred/Wrath combo with an Enlighten, drop all other auras, and get a Watcher's Eye with conversion to both cold and lightning.

• Fevered Mind x4


• Conqueror’s Potency


- • Jewel of choice 1
- • Jewel of choice 2

My jewels are way less than ideal so here's how I would search for rolls on poe.trade:

Require (And):
• % Maximum Life, min 6
• #% to All (or whatever you need) Resistances

And some number of these (Count 1):
• % Increased Global Physical Damage
• % Increased Area Damage
• % Increased Spell Damage
• % Increased Cold Damage
• % Increased Lightning Damage (if you have Physical to Lightning)

Alternative Tree gives a third jewel of choice slot.

Core Flasks:
• Zerphi’s Last Breath (required)
• The Wise Oak
• Divination Distillate
• Experimenter’s Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline
• Taste of Hate


Swap Slots:
Depending on the need, I will swap either the Divination Distillate or the Taste of Hate with the following flask:
• Experimenter’s Granite Flask of Warding (haven't rerolled mine yet)


If I’m in a Delve where the speed is completely unnecessary from the Quicksilver, I will use:
• Experimenter’s Quartz Flask of Warding

My Gear:

Improvements/possible changes for my gear:

When I’m mapping to get sulphite, I swap my helm for a Devoto’s Devotion. Move speed for the win, baby!



As mentioned above, Hrimburn can be worked into the build for the conversion
instead of a Watcher’s Eye while you save up.

You can easily substitute a decent Stygian Vise for the belt slot, if you do get a Stygian Vise I recommend flat health and the affix that gives a chance for phasing on kill with your Abyss jewel, it's a nice QOL to have free phasing as BV.

• More gameplay videos
• Test Spell Echo for more regen and less damage
• Test lightning variation after saving up for another Watcher's Eye
• Attempt Uber Elder (Shaper & Elder down, both easy though)...
• Test Indigon