[3.7] The Wild Mage - The Agnostic CWDT

By using 48% MoM and The Agnostic keystone, we are able to devote ourselves nearly entirely to having a big brain, with only minimal investment into getting fit and healthy.
In fact, our life pool is there only to prevent our fragile frame from getting crushed by the many one-shots out there, as anything that does not destroys it in one hit will be regenerated in less than a second.

While having a huge mana pool and regen is nice, we don't want it to just sit around and be full all the time. We need to spend it.
This is where Scold's Bridle comes into play. Since the physical damage we inflict upon ourselves with this item is entirely redirected to our mana, we virtually increase our mana costs by 400%.
This cost is sustainable (to some extent) and allows us to use CWDT setups filled with spells.

I basically put a level 10 CWDT setup in every piece of gear except for the gloves, where I put my active Ice trap skill. I found lvl 10 CWDT to be quite smooth while allowing for a relatively low less damage multiplier.

- Helmet : CWDT - Bladefall - Ball lightning - Firestorm
- Boots : CWDT - Cremation - Volatile dead - Vortex
- Chest : CWDT - GMP - Fireball - Arctic breath - Unearth
- Staff : CWDT - Mana leech - Glacial cascade - Arc - Ice nova
- Gloves : Ice trap - Charged traps - Multiple traps - Cluster traps
- Rings : Fire golem and Flame dash

I use Ice trap as my mana spending skill for four reasons :

- I really love its visuals
- Charged traps gives permanent full power and frenzy charges
- Saboteur scion ascendancy for additional life regen
- It bypasses the cast speed malus of Scold's bridle

The mana leech gem makes a real difference against blue packs, abysses, breaches and all these monster messes. It will be less useful against bosses of course.

I chose scion because I love her and she offers a lot of flexibility when doing stupid builds. I'm sure this build could be easily done with templar hierophant too.

On the tree, get as many mana notables as you can (why is the best one for duelist ?), as well as the nearby jewel sockets. Take a few life nodes to still look acceptable during summer.
I took acrobatics and phase acrobatics for additional survivability and naruto running.

I went with hierophant ascendancy for amazing mana bonuses and permanent arcane surge (+0.5% mana regen per second).

I went with saboteur ascendancy for additional survivability through life regen and blind, as well as area of effect. I think assassin ascendancy could be a good alternative with poison, as more than half our damage will be coming from Disintegrator and therefore be physical.

Current tree at level 80 :

https://pastebin.com/M3bST1ha

I put the Militant faith jewel in the top right socket next to chaos inoculation.
I run only one Fevered mind for now, as I feel two would be too harmful for my lifestyle.

- Helmet : Scold's bridle, to trigger explosions and get a nice spell damage boost
- Chest : Cloak of defiance, for huge mana bonuses, regen and 40% MoM
- Amulet : Atziri's foible, for … well … more mana
- Staff : Disintegrator, for massive added physical damage to our spells and some life leech at the price of an easily manageable physical degen
-Gloves, boots, belt and rings : Evasion bases would be best; mainly try to tediously cap your resistances, because that’s where all of PoE fun is.
I chose to wear unset rings for my golem and flame dash.
Having one or two Xopec mods on your items gives a great boost to mana (flat + percent increased mana). Xopec best waifu.

- Jewels : Venarius Militant faith for The Agnostic keystone;
Clear mind for regen and spell damage, because you don't want to waste a single point of mana by running filthy auras;
One, two or even three Fevered mind depending on the amount of pain (pleasure ?) you want to punish yourself with;
Ideally several abyssal jewels with mana and life mods. If you have resistances deficiencies like I do, resistance jewels can be useful dietary supplements.

- Flasks : I currently have three mana flasks, one with freeze immunity and one with bleed immunity, as well as two quicksilver flasks, because I like the occasional burst of speed. I think that one of the mana flasks could be replaced by an utility flask like a jade, quartz or elemental one. Curse immunity could be useful for silences, as, even if you will still be able to throw traps, it will prevent your spells from triggering.

Playstyle is quite simple : throw traps to generate charges and spread your magical love to your enemies. Getting close is preferable dps-wise, but long range is possible for tense situations since traps can be thrown very far.

Hits that can one shot you must roughly exceed two times your life pool thanks to 48% MoM; don’t neglect your body too much !
When dropping below ~60% mana, stop throwing, as you are surely taking too much damage. You want to be constantly regenerating mana, but getting too low can quickly degenerate. In these situations, if you think the enemy cannot one shot you, you can facetank him and let him trigger your spells while regenerating.
If you end up taking life damage while having no mana and miraculously not getting one shot, seek cover immediately, as your mana regen will be delayed as long as your life isn’t full and you therefore won’t be able to throw anything or even dash.

Nice bonus : Dying with this build feels smooth, as you don’t have to recast any aura. And that is an important part of PoE gameplay. Hardcore viable, trust me.

- I really want to equip Dream fragments, but I’d lose a socket and resistances
- Healthy mind could be a great addition, but I’m still wondering where it could be put and if the life cost isn’t too much for my shape
- More jewel sockets and better jewels
- One day reach Mana flows, because 40% regen looks juicy
- When I feel more comfortable with my mind and body through yoga training, level up my CWDT gems and add more Fevered mind jewels
- Try and get shaper/elder items for Disintegrator
- More power/frenzy charges ?
- Run Righteous fire ? With 75% fire resistance and about 2300 hp, it would be around 500 fire damage per second, which could be sustained but would seriously slow my regen
- One day, when the sun dies out and the universe has reached thermodynamic equilibrium, get 6 links on both chest and staff

First and foremost, thank you so much for reading my guide. It is my first time writing one, and I hope it does the job of conveying the main aspects of the build while making you at least smile (you never know).
I probably won’t add videos because I don’t really know how to record them, and I currently am playing on a laptop that drops me to literally 3 fps during abysses and betrayal encounters. Great idea to make a CWDT build on top of that, eh ?

With about 1400 hours of gameplay, I am a mediocre at best Path of Exile player, with Atziri being the strongest boss I defeated. I only recently started to seriously do maps and take time to optimise my characters.
I have a fascination for cheesy builds and mechanics and really wanted to share this one with you, as I think it came out decent, to my standards.
I am French, so I apologise in advance if my English sounds weird or unnatural.

I am open to suggestions and looking forward to them.

Again, thank you for reading and have a nice day !