[3.15] Pure Elemental Dancing Duo, currently not updated.

24-10-21: Updated discord link.
04-05-21: Added notes on testing petrified blood.
04-05-21: Updated Animate Guardian section. Added budget options.
28-04-21: Theorycrafting Petrified Blood. Added to defensive layers section.
23-04-21: Added Cluster Jewel information.
23-04-21: Added Changelog.

‣ The Feared, white
‣ AW8 Sirus

Manifest Dancing Dervish
Manifest Dancing Dervish has a low base damage which makes it hard to scale. In this build we focus on increasing the base damage through, firstly, offensive aura's and secondly, through ghastly eye jewels. Most of the base damage will therefore be elemental, through smite, wrath and hatred. For this reason we also convert all physical damage to elemental damage (Cold) through "Triad Grip" gloves, so we can focus on scaling elemental damage.

Elemental Equilibrium
A massive damage boost comes from the use of the elemental equilibrium keystone in conjunction with the avatar of fire keystone. All of our damage will be converted to fire damage which in return lowers enemy resistances to cold and lightning by 50% when we attack with smite. Smite is also linked to ancestral call support and with the increase aura AoE it is easy to tag all enemies in your screen and simultaneously apply its aura buff to your minions.

Offensive Spectre
We will be running one Carnage Chieftain for generating frenzy charges. The monster can be found at The Old Fields in act 2. Frenzy charges are much more powerful for minions than they are for players so this is a great deal of extra damage. Frenzy charges are also much more powerful in this situation than power charges.

Effect frenzy charges on minions:

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15% increased Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge
15% increased Cast Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% more Damage per Frenzy Charge
5% increased Movement Speed per Frenzy Charge

Rampage
Keeping up rampage is essential for this build since it's what causes the dancing dervish to manifest. It's also why I've chosen to go for the scion as character, because we use flasks to do so. The Scion's ascendancy provides access to the pathfinder's flask nodes. But can also access the necromancer for some more offensive bonuses to minions. With the right items and passives we achieve enough reduced flask charges used for "The Writhing Jar" to use 13/40 charges. This means that with 2 flasks we can summon 12 worms (if we're lucky and "flasks don't consume charges" hits twice we can get full rampage from this. However for boss fights (not map bosses), or 100% delirium maps, I always swap out the quicksilver flask for a third writhing jar for convenience. For mapping 2 will always be fine. Your carrion golem, spectres and animate guardian will get another 3 kills to start the rampage.

Evasion
Defense is mainly focused around evasion. Most of the items give a good amount of base evasion alongside grace aura. Watcher's Eye will give another flat 8% chance to evade attacks on top. Evasion is further amplified by three-step assault, which gives +100% evasion rating while affected by onslaught (which is always due to rampage), and Jade Flask with +100% increased evasion during the potion's effect. Evasion will be around 21000 at this point and increases to 40000+ after being hit due to Wind Dancer.

Minions have a chance to blind on hit and also I'm thinking about running a rare redeemer chest on my animated guardian with nearby enemies are blinded. Blind effectively halves the chance for a monster to hit you.

e.g. You have 60% to evade a monster's attack. If it's blinded they will have 0,4*0,5=0,2 = 20% chance to hit you instead of 40%.

Phase Acrobatics will reduce the chance of dying from spell hit, but spells should be actively avoided if possible.

Damage Mitigation
As long as you don't get hit Wind Dancer will decrease damage taken by 20% from DoT. As well as the first hit you recently take. Furthermore Animate Guardian will provide a permanent fortify buff reducing damage taken on hit by 20%. These are important because there's no other physical mitigation in this build whatsoever. Resistances will be capped to 75/76/75 and also 75% chaos resistance with the end-game rings and Watcher's Eye. Spectre enfeeble curse reducing monster damage explained in the following section.

Defensive Spectre
We will be running with one Diabolist found in upper prison act 1. These spectres are incredibly tanky and provide an elevated enfeeble curse, which it spams around multiple times per second. The increased minion AoE makes it so the curse area covers a great portion of the screen as well so most mobs get cursed in one cast. Generally monsters are cursed with enfeeble before they get near you.

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Diabolist enfeeble curse provides:
Cursed enemies have 40% reduced Accuracy Rating
Cursed Normal or Magic enemies deal 40% less Damage
Cursed Rare or Unique enemies deal 15% less Damage

The reduced accuracy combined with mobs being blinded pushes your chance to evade to 95%. With 50% chance to dodge this effectively pushes your chance to not get hit by an attack to 97%. Besides this, their damage will also be greatly reduced.

Petrified Blood (Tested: Definitely Viable)
Petrified Blood reserves 35% mana to apply a buff which allows to mitigate 40% of the damage done to the lower 50% of your life over 4 seconds. Caveat is that your life regeneration other than flasks won't heal you above 50% life. We can use this gem to our advantage to protect ourselves from one-shots. Since we're specced into pathfinder and have a good amount of flask charge regeneration, it should be easy to heal back to 100% life using writhing jars. These should heal around 800-1000 life instantly on use.

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Calculations:
• Maximum life = 4000
• Skill gem is at 21/20 providing 0.75*40% life loss after 50% life to be mitigated over 4 seconds
• Maximum hit to tank without petrified blood = 4000
• Maximum hit to tank with petrified blood = (2000+(2000/0.6)) = 5333
• Damage mitigated over 4 seconds = 0.75*(5333-4000) = 1000
• Life degeneration over 4 seconds = 1000/4=250
• Life regeneration exceeds 250 easily, providing no other degenerations are present there should be enough time to heal up using flasks.
• EHP effectively increased by 4000/5333=1.33 or 33%.

04-05-21 update: I've tested using petrified blood by replacing Awakened Ancestral Call. This reduced the ease with which you can apply EE to monsters somewhat, but it was still easy to tag stronger monsters for which it mattered. It has to be placed in body armour to have enough mana left to cast Blood Offering. I could barely notice the degeneration after a big hit, and it was very easy to keep health at 100% spamming Writhing Jars whenever I also use my flasks for buffs. I use it in ultimatum league.

Conclusion
These defensive layers combined allow you to survive a T16, 100% delirious map with only a 4k life-pool. If it's not enough, a lot of increased maximum life nodes are in direct reach on the passive skill tree after sacrificing damage nodes.

Notes on T14+ 100% delirium + beyond
100% delirium maps will go just fine with this build. Maybe the occasional death as shown in the showcase video. However things become a lot harder when you introduce beyond stacking. You will be very susceptible to spell damage and beyond monsters throw spells around like crazy. This requires actively evading spells in order to succeed. As shown in the T19 100% delirium +44% beyond video showcase, you do plenty of damage. But you'll just get one shot too much.

Map mods to be aware of when doing 100% maps:
• Monsters have increased AoE (Spells are a lot harder to evade).
• Monsters have increased accuracy + player dodge chance is unlucky (you'll start to get hit by attacks).
• Elemental reflect (Could be annoying because it kills your carrion golem, dervishes and you will be fine though).
• Players have -#% maximum resistances (Spell damage).
• Players are cursed with elemental weakness (Spell damage, however you will be running curse immunity on flask).

Weapon (no links needed):

Essential
Minion Damage Support
Damage on Full Life Support
Elemental Damage with Attacks Support
Multistrike Support

Interchangable
Minion Speed Support - Early Game, swap with Anomalous Ruthless Support after enough minion movement speed is acquired on gear.
Concentrated Effect Support - Bossing
Pulverise Support - AoE for clearing

Gloves (2 green sockets linked):
Dash <-> Second Wind Support
IMPORTANT: Do not link precision and grace with second wind support!
Precision
Grace

Note: 4x green sockets needed to get full physical to cold conversion.

Helmet (2 blue sockets linked):
Summon Carrion Golem <-> Anomalous Feeding Frenzy Support*
Anomalous Convocation**
Vitality

*Anomalous version will drastically increase golem survivability. Get it when you can afford it. Make sure it's 20% quality for the 1% life on hit.
** Anomalous version for 40% increased minion movement speed. Convocation will also be the minion skill to trigger 20% increased minion damage from ghastly eye jewels.

Body Armour (2 red sockets linked):
Smite <-> Ancestral Call Support (Alternatively Petrified Blood, no need for link then)
Haste
Hatred
Clarity - can be level 10 to save on reservation.
Wrath

Boots (4 linked sockets):
Raise Spectre <-> Minion Life Support <-> Meat Shield Support<-> Animate Guardian
Animate Guardian is explained in a seperate section below. The spectres that you will use are Diabolist and Carnage Chieftain. They will provide Enfeeble curse and Frenzy charges respectively. Running clarity makes it so you don't need to link them with life tap support for 100% skill uptime!

- Helmet: Alpha's Howl
Try to get one with Flesh Offering grants increased attack speed enchant.

- Weapon: The Dancing Duo
Quality provides increased weapon range +30% quality corruption is most effective. Any other corruption is not worth it. Additional damage corruption will gimp your minion accuracy. Resolute technique gimps your damage by blocking chance to crit (you will easily get 100% accuracy with precision aura). Normal quality only provides a small damage boost, but AoE is much more usefull.

- Body Armour: Victario's Influence
Getting +2, +3 or +4 to AoE/Aura gems is a direct multiplier for your dervishes damage. +2 is ±8% more damage and +4 is ±15% more damage.

- Gloves: Triad Grip
- Boots: Three-Step Assault
- Belt: Rare Stygian Vise
Must have at least: -18% Reduced Flask Charges Used

- Amulet: Rare shaper amulet with reduced mana reserved and minion movement speed.
Allocate Champion of the Cause
- Rings: Rare redeemer unset rings with increased minion damage and minion movement speed

- Helmet:

- Weapon:

- Body Armour:

- Gloves:

- Boots:

- Belt:

- Amulet:

- Rings:

Swap out quicksilver for another writhing jar during bossing

Cluster Jewels
Notablables listed in order of importance:

2x Minion damage Large Cluster Jewels (8 passives)
1) Renewal
2) Feasting Fiends (make sure you have 1 of these)
3) Primordial Bond
4) Raze and Pillage
5) Vicious Bite
6) Call to the Slaughter
7 & 8) Rotten Claws, Skeletal Atrophy (both have 0 effect)

1x Increase effect non-curse aura Medium Cluster Jewels
1) Sublime Form (to manage mana reservation)
2) Vengeful commander

2-3x Minion life Medium Cluster Jewels
1) Renewal
2) Dread March

Ghastly Eye Jewels
1x T1 Taunt on Hit
1x T1 Blind on Hit
Rest of the jewel sockets for damage.
Recurring theme: Minion Movement Speed

Thread of Hope (Medium Size) 1x

The Watcher's Eye
Essential Affix:
Evade Chance (Grace)

Mix and match:
Attack Dodge (Grace)
Movement Speed (Grace)
Chaos Resistance (Purity of Elements)
Phasing (Haste*)
Spell Dodge (Haste*)

*Provided Haste is run in gloves when swapped with precision. This might be possible with lower level precision and clarity, but haven't tested.

Animate Guardian is a great minion to have for both offensive and defensive bonuses. Try to find resistances suffixes on the rare gear to max resistances. Resistances should already be close to max from Purity of Elements aura, so focus on chaos resistance.


Budget version of AG would only cost 5 chaos. Once you're confident the AG won't die easily upgrade to "Kingmaker Despot Axe" first.

The gear I'm using:

Helmet: Rare redeemer helmet with "nearby enemies have -9% to cold resistance" affix. Alternatively Mask of the Stitched demon (only in combination with body armour providing ES based on maximum life and/or "Grave Intentions" notable passive). Budget option: Leercast Festival Mask.

Body armour: Rare redeemer chest plate with nearby enemies are blinded affix. Also craft 10% of maximum life gained as extra energy shield. This synergises with Mask of the stitched demon if you are using this helmet. Budget option: Ambu's Charge.

Boots: Victario's flight for 10% movement speed buff. Enchanted with +2% life regenerated when hit recently. Budget option: No enchantment.

Gloves: Gloves with the corruption implicit "Enemies hit are cursed with Elemental Weakness* on hit". Budget option: Southbound.

*The Elemental Weakness curse from AG will overwrite the Enfeeble curse from Diabolist. So this is only useful for stronger enemies. Other enemies will also die too fast for AG to be able to apply Elemental weakness anyways. It is also possible to increase AG curse limit with Windscream boots or a hunter influenced body armour with "Can apply additional curse" affix. In this case AG won't overwrite Enfeeble curse, only the other way around. But AG will be attacking fast enough that both curses have close to 100% up-time.

Weapon: Kingmaker for fortify buff to surrounding allies, culling strike for surrounding allies and 50% critical multiplier for surrounding allies. Budget option: Dying Breath iron staff.

+2, +3 or +4 corrupted Victario's Influence
Getting +# to gem level of your aura gems in Victario's Influence is very nice boost to our damage. So what's the cheapest way to get the right colours and sockets once you've found one? Using the crafting bench!

1) Buy the cheapest one with the corruption and stats that you want. Sockets do not matter. (Unless it already has what you need for a good price, doh)

2) Set item to 6 sockets - 350 jeweller's orbs and 350 vaal orbs.

3) Link 4 sockets - 10 fusings and 10 vaal orbs.

4) Craft at least 1 red socket until you hit 2 red in the linked area and the rest 2 blue and 2 green - 4 chromatics and 4 vaal per try.

This will cost you in total 350 jeweller's 10 fusings and 400 vaal orbs to achieve on average.

________________________________________________________________________
1) Go to https://www.craftofexile.com/
2) Press "Emulator"
3) Press "Restore saved item"
4) Paste the text from the pastebin files

Amulet

No longer possible with harvest changes.

- Restore Saved Item code | ±15ex crafting costs (note: I'm lucky on non-speed to speed crafts)

- Cheaper option would be to buy an amulet with reduced mana reservation, a favourable resist roll and an open suffix to craft 22% minion speed. Prefixes can then be rerolled with harvest crafting (keeping suffixes) to something decent. Or you can augment life, but that gets expensive quickly. I would get a good base using deafening essences to make that worthwhile instead.