[3.6] Charged Dash is amazing: 8.7Mil Dps, clears all content. Full guide w/ videos.

1shot Uber Izaro
Just to show how trivial standard content becomes soon enough.
https://youtu.be/s2v1uK3cvsY

Full Hydra Run
https://youtu.be/QrAcGIdCRNc

Full Shaper Run
https://youtu.be/URvLrVNJrvc

Uber Elder
Not my best run, but I still haven’t managed to kill it deathless. The problem with this fight is that a lot of our survivability comes from mobility, which is obviously quite limited in this case.
I believe Charged Dash to be the single best melee skill for this fight still, and with some practice and better plays I could eventually regularly do this deathless.
https://youtu.be/oXP7iNKQfBU

I will soon try again with Whirling Blades as movement skill and Kaom's Roots, stay tuned.

Helm:

If you need more resistance you can use a rare helmet here. Not so much damage to lose, but try to get a good enchantment if possible for utility. Use Abyssus for 40ish% EXTRA damage boost and very YOLO playstyle.

Cost: 1c, or variable with the enchantment.

Chest:

Other options here (less good, but still ok) are Loreweave, Perfect Form, Carcass Jack, Belly of the Beast.

Cost: similar ones can cost 2EX. Honestly pretty budget for a 6l, don't be stingy here.

Weapons:

These are 440dps weapons, obviously fairly expensive. Less dps here, less damage output, but your build will still work fine.
Hits can't be Evaded can be crafted for 3EX. Which seems crazy, but that's how good the mod is when you run calculations.

Cost: 8EX+ each. Not surprisingly, by far the most expensive items here.

Belt:


Cost: 2EX. You can save a lot of currency here with little loss, go budget as much as you need to.

Boots:


Cost: 1EX.

Gloves:

Mainly useful for Intimidate, you can use a pair with 1 abyss socket if you need to save currency.

Cost: 3EX.

Jewelry:

Yoke of Suffering is cheap and by far the best option for damage, for the 15% inc damage taken coming from the 3 ailment types we inflict (chill, shock, ignite) and the “elemental damage can shock” mod (another 20%ish inc damage taken against Shaper if you do the calculation. More on this in the PoB section).
I sold a very good 5ex amulet I was using when I realized just how good Yoke of Suffering actually is for this build. I am losing some life here, but good resistance is equally important for my character since I use so many uniques.
For rings, you can easily void Assassin’s Mark if you want a budged choice, it’s there just for some extra damage.

Rings cost: 1EX, 20c.
Amu cost: 5c to 1EX for almost perfect roll (like mine)

Flasks:

Flask are super important for this build: damage wise, with my setup, flasks DOUBLE my dps.
Taste of Hate, and a Diamond Flask are mandatory. Lion’s Roar is the BiS for pure DPS after the Diamond, but I swap it with a Quicksilver (of adrenaline) when running maps. You can also choose not to run a life flask and rely only on life leech (possibly with Vaal Pact) and regeneration.
Just make sure you have somewhere anti-bleeding, anti-curse, anti-chill.
Silver and Quicksilver are both great flasks for this build.

Jewels:

Best mods here are by far Crit Multi and Attack Speed. Phys damage and all others come after those.
I was previously using Watcher's Eye for 100% phys to cold conversion:

But I realized I could get more damage if i stayed at 90% conversion and use a rare jewel.
Only downside is I now can't run phys reflect maps: up to you if you want to do the same or not, for me it's not that big of a deal.

Cost for rare jewels: 50c-ish each, can vary a lot. I payed from 10c to 2ex (when I had currency just sitting there).
Cost for Watcher's eye: 2-3EX. As said, you can skip this.

Note on jewels: if you have to go super budget on jewels, it may not be worth it to spend 2 passives there. As minimum requirement you should always look for 5-7%life, then one between crit multi and 5+% atk speed, then any other damage mod.

6Link: Charged Dash-Melee Physical Damage-Elemental Damage-Infused Channeling-Hypothermia-Increased Area of Effect/Concentrated Effect
4Link: Enlighten lv3-Hatred-Herald of Ash-Herald of Purity
4Link: lv1Cast when Damage Taken-lv3Immortal Call-lv20Increased Duration-lv7Wave of Conviction
3Link: Leap Slam-Faster Attacks-Fortify (replaced Leap Slam with Whirling Blades, as Charged Dash is enough to bypass obstacles and WB is just a lot faster)
3Link: Ancestral Protector-Vaal Ancestral Warchief-Culling Strike
Summon Lightning Golem - Frost Bomb

Pastebin Link: https://pastebin.com/yBAYC7tP
A couple of notes about DPS calculation:

1. Charged Dash gives you 150% MORE (2.5x) damage if your projection has finished moving. You will quickly reach this state if you have decent movement speed, and almost permanently have it with big bosses. This option is not included in PoB.

2. Shock is an important component of your damage, but if you thick the “enemy is shocked” box this will add a permanent 50% inc damage taken which is unrealistic on big bosses.
To make it quick: any crit with lightning damage shocks any enemy for 2 seconds, but the increase in damage taken depends on how much damage this hit does. If this hit deals (lightning) damage equal to 0.1% of the enemy’s maximum life, the increase in damage taken is pretty much null. If your hit deals damage equal to 10% of the enemy’s max life, you reach the cap of 50% of inc damage taken.
Now, Shaper and Uber Elder have around 18M life, so you can calculate how much damage your shock is actually doing. That’s why the “shock” box is unchecked in PoB, and why I calculate my damage offline to account for that.
I am not going to list the full calculation: my shock grants me a 1.18 multiplier for the Shaper damage you see in PoB. When it comes to regular mobs up to map bosses, the 50% damage taken cap is easily reached. This is the reason why Yoke of Suffering beats any other amulet in terms of DPS

3. I am obviously not taking into account situational damage boost coming from Wave of Conviction, Frost Bomb and Vaal Ancestral Warchief

For generic purposes, I run Lunaris/Solaris and Tukohama.
For Uber Elder I swap Solaris/Lunaris for Arakaali for the increased recovery.

Skills:
Use Freezing Pulse/Frost Bomb until lv12, with Onslaught support from the beginning.
Lv12 pick Lacerate as you start scaling your melee passives.
It will be good enough until you can pick Charged Dash at Lv28.
Charged Dash is good for levelling, or at least to understand if you like the playstyle or not.
You will fix the mana issues at your first Lab so do it ASAP!

Gear:
Use the classical uniques: Tabula Rasa, Goldrim, Wanderlust, Meginord’s Girdle, Berek’s Grip. Any investment you make on these will be payed back 100% when you are done using them and sell them, so don’t be afraid of spending few chaos here.
You should swap your Tabula for a cheap (5c TOPS) 5l with some decent life around lv50, fix your resistances as you go and that will bring you to maps effortlessly.

Weapons are important here. Don't be lazy to replace them as you progress in the game: aim to get something lv12, lv30ish, lv50ish, lv68ish, before your endgame set. If you are too lazy to buy 2 weapons each time, 2h ones work fine too while levelling.
Tip: in PoE.trade set lvl requirement, max buyout 1c, sort by Physical dps.

Passive tree:
Forget about crit nodes, jewels (unless you buy them all in advance, as they don't have a lvl req) until you reach endgame, and phys to cold conversion nodes until you get the Harness the Void ascendancy node.
For me damage has never been an issue even while levelling, so focus on life.

Ascendancy path:
Take Weave of the Arcane first, as this will instantly solve all your mana issues while levelling.
Second node should be Swift Killer for frenzy/power charges.
Order for the last 2 nodes is up to you.

Trickster: highest peak damage, charged dash does not cost mana, frenzy/power charges sustainable during boss fights, movement speed and some damage mitigation.
Pathfinder: 100% flask uptime even with big bosses (super important) and other utilities.
Champion: Free Hits can’t be evaded, perma fortify, some damage and some tankiness.

I started theorycrafting this character in PoB with a 2h Exquisite Blade. This was before I discovered how badly 2h weapons fall in comparison to 1h: worse passives, no innate bonus, simply too low dps. The only reasons to go for a 2h weapon can be that it’s cool (come on, you can actually use a katana here…) and to save currency having only 1 weapon to craft (which is lame).
1h+shield… not worth it in my eyes. Some extra defense at the cost of so much dps is not worth it for a character like this.

Axes could be used in a non crit version of the build. The problem is how spread out your passive tree becomes… not enough dps as a result.
I am not sure what kind of claws or daggers you would need to beat swords in this build. I tried some calculations and swords just seem to be better no matter what.

I have been using Blade Flurry as secondary skill for single target for a long time.
On paper the damage looks good, but the first time I tried the Uber Elder fight I realized I did not have 100% uptime for the power and frenzy charges because of the hit-and-run style you need to use to avoid getting killed, so the damage drops a lot.
Also, the mobility Charged Dash gives you makes it so that you are dealing damage almost all the time, EVEN while dodging attacks.

As stated in the beginning, trying to save money on the wrong things can make the character awful. So I will only recommend one thing you can easily do to save currency: pick Champion ascendancy.
Hits can’t be Evaded is a sick mod you will want on your weapons, but it costs 3ex to craft. Using a champion will enable you to get good dps with barely decent swords that may not even require multi modding (another 2ex). Imo the best budget choice you can make here.

First of all, it took me a while to really understand how to scale damage with the conversion mechanics, so it’s perfectly normal if you will not get it immediately yourself.
I initially thought the Trickster ascendancy node Harness the Void plus the Eternity Shroud chest would give insane triple-dipping dps if I could convert damage all the way: physical to lightning to cold to fire. A way to do this is using Charged Dash+Physical to Lighing gems (100% phys to light), then 2x Call of the Brotherhood rings (80% light to cold), then Cold to Fire gem (50% cold to fire).
After testing this I realized DPS was not great and I walked away from this multiple damage conversion idea, for 3 reasons:

1. Physical to Lightning and Cold to Fire gems are, at best, comparable in damage to Hypothermia, while Call of the Brotherhood is heavily beaten by Mark of the Elder ring or some ring with Assassin’s Mark on hit.

2. Trickster ascendancy node Harness the Void gives good damage but it cannot by itself justify building everything around triple damage conversion.

3. Converting physical damage to cold is by far the most efficient conversion path (40% conv available on passives, 40% additionally available from Watcher’s Eye) and allows good use of Trickster’s Harness the Void node as well as chilling effect on enemies.

There exist a good Charged Dash (CI) trickster guide based around the unique claw Hands Of Wisdom and Action (aka HOWA). That’s what the 10 people playing charged dash are using. You can get lots of ES, but damage wise I don’t think it can even come close to this version. From my experience building the character, high damage, together with mobility, equals high survivability. You can test yourself in with numbers, but when it comes to actual gameplay, if you don’t 1shot mobs and clear boss phases quickly you will eventually die.