[3.8] LL Xirgil's Crank Vortex+Cyclone Block Scion | Easy Relaxed Playstyle, Uber Elder Viable

This is a WORK IN PROGRESS

Hi, welcome

This build plays pretty well and is pretty tanky. What it lacks in pure DPS, it makes up for with great defenses and a relaxed playstyle for those who prefer it. "Relaxed playstyle" in this case does not mean slow; you can go at a decent pace with this build.
I'm pretty happy with this build and have done multiple uber elders with it in Legion league. I'm in the process of playing it again in Blight league. Some changes since then have shifted some of the power in this build, but overall the power should be around the same if not slightly better.

Playstyle:

Cyclone around pack to pack to proc elemental overload/equilibrium and power charge on crit and drop vortexes on cooldown (~1 second). When you reach a tough enemy drop a cold snap and frost bomb, then continue to cyclone. If you need energy shield, dip out until energy shield starts regenerating, which takes around a second to just under two depending on your gear. Damage is very consistent and is always happening, as long as you always have a vortex down on the enemy, which is easy to do.

Path of Building:

https://pastebin.com/Jz2ALk83

This is my Blight character (level 76 at the time) scaled up to level 96 in levels and passive points. This POB contains the items I had at level 76. I have yet to make some changes to my gear such as replacing a ring with a Mark of the Shaper, replacing the other ring with an Elder ring, and rebalancing resists to make up for these changes.
At level 96 you'll be seeing more than 1.2m dps with vortex and 130k dps with cold snap with Vaal Righteous Fire up, 21% less without.

Pros:

1. Good Block. We achieve close to max attack block through nodes, gear, and mini-ascendancies. We can achieve max attack block through the use of potions. Spell block hovers around 40%.
2. Amazing Recharge. Getting hit by an any attack, whether you block it or not, has a 13% chance of starting your energy shield recharge. If your recharge has begun within the past four seconds, it will not be stopped by damage due to Vile Bastion, a keystone that was taken from Occultist ascendancy. Recharge delay is almost halved with the right gear and can probably be reduced further. With my gear and tree, if you've killed an enemy affected by your damage over time recently, I recharge ~80% of my ES per second, ~53% per second otherwise
3. 10% chance to blind on attack. This is enough to permanently blind enemies as long as you're cycloning around them.
4. Easy, relaxed playstyle. Just spin through enemies and press your vortex button to kill those around you. Cyclone is very easy to use now and is extremely easy to evade danger with. Vortex AOE is big enough for vortexes to almost overlap when used with quicksilver flask and 30% movement speed on boots. Defenses are good enough to not worry about dying until the deadliest encounters, or in certain situations.

Cons:

1. Weak against degens. You cannot block degens. Bring flasks of the right type against certain bosses, such as dousing flasks against The Enslaver. Be very wary of degen ground. Once your energy shield regen starts, however, feel free to walk on degens as much as you want, except for shaper pools, squid poop, or some burning ground.
2. Weak against one-shots. There is still a chance for one-shots to get through block, so be careful against telegraphed attacks. You can get off-screened by something big nowadays.
3. Weak against spells. Spells don't get blocked nearly as much so it is best to avoid them if your energy shield recharge hasn't restarted recently.

Things to take note:

1. Effective HP is only decent without expensive uniques. 6k ES with no Watcher's Eye or Presence of Chayula, 8.5k with both. Slightly above average by ES standards.
2. Prices fluctuate madly depending on the meta. Synthesis league, Shavronne's was multiple exalts. Blight league, it's around 40c. Don't expect this build to be cheap if ES is meta, such is the nature of ES. Presence of Chayula is 1 ex Blight league.
3. Basically, you’re vulnerable if your energy shield isn’t recharging. This build makes it very easy for energy shield to start recharging, intentionally or unintentionally.
4. I haven't pinned down exactly how to do blights efficiently with this build. Will update on that once I figure it out. As it seems right now, it's not that good for blights because the enemies just walk through the vortexes, probably needs more time slow towers or chill towers.

Key Items:

Weapon Slot:

This item, while not absolutely mandatory for your survival, is what defines this build. The block chance is huge. The chance on block to start energy shield regen combined with Wicked Ward makes you incredibly tanky.

Chest Slot:

Shavronne's Wrappings. You cannot go without it, or you'll die every time.

Belt Slot:

A staple of ES builds, this belt gives your energy shield recharge rate a massive boost. Its % ES is pretty hard to beat, in addition to its small amount of flat ES. This belt is cheap and widely available, only reaching the lower double digits in chaos orbs when it’s ES meta.

Recommended Items:

Amulet Slot:

Gives you a lot of Energy Shield in addition to the very important stun immunity. Without it, you will need to run Soul of the Brine King, but this just makes everything much easier.

Boots Slot:

Sin Treks have flat ES that is hard to beat. However, if you need resists (which you likely will while min-maxing the character) you will need to replace these boots with a pair with similar ES in addition to resists.

Remaining Item Slots:

Rings:

Your standard ES and resists rings. Get one unset ring if you can. Get strength and/or dexterity on them. If you can’t, don’t be ashamed to take one or even two +30 str/dex nodes on the tree. It is important to buy or craft “% faster start of energy shield recharge” onto the rings, so find rings with spare prefixes.
If you want to, you can replace one of the rings with mark of the shaper and the other with an elder ring, but that would make capping resistances much harder.

Gloves:

Your standard ES and resists gloves. Nothing special about these. If you want to squeeze like 1% more damage out of the build, you can get a shaper/elder pair with an extra gem link on them to up the cost of the socketed cold snap so you can use a higher level Arcane Surge, but that’s it.

Helmet:

ES and resists helmet. Get a vortex damage enchant if you can.

Obligatory Watcher's Eye:
% of mana as extra ES while affected by Clarity. You can get the zealotry arcane surge one on top of that and then drop arcane surge on the links if you really want to.

OPTIONAL: Militant Faith (Avarius)
This allows you to go Power of Purpose, which removes frenzy charges to buff your power charges. You won't be gaining frenzy charges against bosses so this gives you roughly 9% more damage against them.


Flasks:

Flasks aren’t huge with this build. Just get poison, bleed, and ignite immunity flasks in addition to a quicksilver flask and a Rumi’s Concoction. Don't mind the life flask I'm using, imagine it's a silver flask or something.

Links:

Vortex - Hypothermia - Efficacy - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destruction (5l)
Last link is Inspiration. If you have a level 4 Empower (Very expensive!) use that instead.

Cyclone - Curse On Hit - Frostbite - Fortify - Power Charge On Critical (5l)
Last link is increased critical strikes.

Vaal Cold Snap - Arcane Surge - Bonechill - *Unbound ailments

Malevolence - Blood Magic

Zealotry

Steelskin

Frost Bomb

Flame Dash

Clarity

*Vaal Righteous Fire

*Either of these are disposable. If you don't have an unset ring, choose one or the other.

Vaal Discipline

Videos:

https://youtu.be/gqUW5PBj6l4 Caldera T11 demo, no Blight

More coming soon!