[3.11] CoC Ball Lightning Assassin - 20M+ Shaper DPS/10k ES/fortify - League Starter Guide Included

Promenade (T16)
Sirus (A8) featuring facetanking the "Die" beam.
Cortex
T16 100% delirium + beyond
Kurgal (depth 726)
Ahuatotli (depth 952)

Offensively, We trigger ball lightning by using cyclone and cast on critical strike support. Ball lightning has a very high base damage, so it is the best spell to use in this build.

These unique gloves allow you to deal 30-35% more damage to enemies in chilling areas. We use vortex to create them. Vortex is an instant skill, which means that you can cast it while channelling cyclone. Thus, although we use 2 active skills, the gameplay is very smooth.

The most important defensive layer in this build is Watcher's eye with the "ES on hit" mod. Because ball lightning has a very high hit frequency (150 ms/hit), we can gain an insane amount of ES from this unique jewel alone. Let's say, our ball lightning hits 13 times per cast and we cast 7 ball lightnings per second. This corresponds to 105 hits per second (cyclone hits 7 times/s), hence 3000 ES recovery/s. On top of that, we use energy shield leech and ES regeneration from consecrated ground. With all of these combined, we achieve 5000+ES recovery/s against a single target, and the recovery becomes even more if multiple enemies are around you.

Cast on critical strike (CoC) has a cooldown of 150 ms, and you don't want to attack faster than this. You might think the best attack rate is 1/0.15 = 6.66 per second, but this is incorrect. This is because every action in this game happens at a constant interval of 33 ms (1 server tick). As a result, the cooldown of CoC behaves as if it is 165 (33*5) ms. With increased cooldown recovery speed (CDR) stats, you can reduce this cooldown. The summary is given below:
With 0-13% CDR, your optimal attack rate is 6.06 aps.
With 14-51% CDR, your optimal attack rate is 7.56.
WIth 52%+ CDR, your optimal attack rate is 10.1.

Note that there is no difference between, for example, 14% CDR and 20% CDR.

If you have a limited budget, you'll have no CDR and should look for 6.06 aps or slightly lower than this.
If you have 30+ ex, you can get 14-20% CDR, so look for 7.56 aps. 14-20% CDR can be obtained from your belt. Remember that the T2 CDR mod (11-15%) works as well as T1 CDR mod (16-20%). Just use some divine orbs to make it 14-15%.
If you are super rich and have no idea how to spend your money, look for 10.1 aps and 52% CDR. CDR can be obtained from belt (up to 20%), boots (up to 15%), and awakened CoC support (up to 22%).

I recommend the following article for the basics of CoC.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/e5pyr8/the_cyclone_cast_on_critical_strike_cooldown/

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If you are not familiar with how ball lightning works, please take a look at the following picture. I hope it is easy to understand for everyone.

Budget option is described at the bottom of this section
Current gear


Optimal gem setup in helm depends on your budget. Go to the skill gem section for details.

Minimum Requirement:
Sceptre: Hits can't be evaded. High crit chance is highly prefered. The attack speed roll does't have to be good. If you are looking for 6.0 aps, a sceptre with 1.4 aps is good. If you are looking for 7.56 aps, a sceptre with around 1.74 aps is good. If you are looking for 10.1 aps (which is very expensive), use a sceptre with highest possible aps. Keep in mind that you don't have to follow these numbers exactly, as you can change your attack speed by, for example, dropping silver flask.

You can use a dagger if you don't need fortify.

If you are unsure how good your sceptre is, please read the following (Big thank you to kentishtown!)


rare ring: Elder influense.
ring, amulet & belt strength and dex. You need 114 dex to use level 21 slower projectiles support, which means you need 81 dex from your gear. The strength requirement depends on which sceptre you use.

Jewels: Watcher's eye with the ES on hit mod. Immunity to corrupted blood. Militant faith with the "Dominus" mod to convert pain attunement to inner conviction (3% more spell damage per power charge). The all res mod on Militant faith is recommended. The other mods doesn't matter, there are no good ones.
What is Militant Faith?


Flasks:Freeze & curse immunity suffixes are essential. diamond flask is a must. Bottled faith is very nice and enables you to replace increased crit chance support with inspiration, which is a huge damage boost.

Note:
1) Amulet with flat ES, %ES, crit multi and some attributes (dex or all attributes) are good enough for endgame contents. +1 to lightning is not necessary at all. Do not prioritize the +1 to lightning mod. Crusader prefix mods are very good in general, so try slamming crusader's orb whenever possible.
2) Minimum frenzy charges are a good way to increase your attack speed. This mod is available on rings, amulet and shields.

3) Helm enchant: 15% reduced mana reservation of wrath or zealotry. You can also use 40% increased ball lightning damage. In that case take 8% reduced mana reservation nodes in the sovereignty cluster. +1 ball lightning projectiles enchant does not increase your dps (because ball lightning doesn't shotgun), so it's not a good enchant.
If you are looking for 52% CDR, 15% increased attack speed of cyclone is a good enchant, too.

4) Gloves with the +1 level to soketed gem levels implicit to make enlighten support level 5 are very nice. You can also use elemental weakness on hit implicit with level 5 awakened curse on hit. If you use this implicit, take 8% reduced mana reservation nodes near the sovereignty notable to use all the auras (the reduced mana reservation helm enchant is required).

5) Tranquility is the best anointment because it gives a huge dps boost. I highly recommend to use this anointment asap.

6) Megalomaniac with the overlord notable (gain fortify on melee hit) is very strong but is not necessary at start. There are only limited amount of good jewels on the market, so don't be disappointed if you can't find a good one.
Here is my searching result: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/Yy2Y0eguY
Weighed sum of 12 means all 3 mods are useful (very rare) and 11 means 2 of the 3 are useful.

You can instead use a rare cluster jewel with the overlord notable.

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If you skip the suffix notable (heavy hitter), you spend 5 points to take 2 notables and 2 jewel sockets, which is decent. You can replace fuel the fury with weight advantage if you don't need attack speed.

Use of cluster jewels
After level 96, you can use more cluster jewels. The use of cluster jewels increases your DPS by 10% without losing your ES pool.


Min-maxing


Budget option

Crafting guide

6-link setup
cyclone-cast on critical strike-ball lightning-Inspiration-slower projectile-(awakened) added lightning damage
If you don't have Bottled Faith or are running a reflect map, use increased crit strikes support instead of inspiration.
3-link setups
phase run-vaal RF-flame dash
This setup is up to your personal preference, use anything you prefer. Frost blink is very nice during mapping, because you can use it while spinning. However, it sucks very hard against Sirus.
Don't level up phase run too much, as you won't have enough dex.

cast when damage taken (level 1)-immortal call (level 3)-summon chaos goldem(level 3)
You can use level 1-2 immortal call if you don't have enough strength.
4-link setup
cast when damage taken (level 1)-tempect shield-wave of conviction (level 7)-blade blast
Wrath-zealotry-discipline-enlighten (level 4)
If you cannot run all the auras, drop Wrath. Zealotry is much better than wrath because it creates consecrated ground, which in turn increases our critical strike chance.

vortex-arcane surge-curse on hit-conductivity
The idea here is to use an instant cast spell to proc arcane surge. This is important because you can cast an instant spell like vortex while cycloning. This makes our game play much smoother. We also link curse on hit-conductivity to reduce lightning resistance of tough enemies. Keep in mind that only the initial hit of vortex can inflict a curse. If you have level 5 awakened curse on hit, you can use elemental weakness instead of arcane surge. If you this, drop chaos golem and link arcane surge support to flame dash. You might want to lower the gem level of flame dash to lower the mana cost.

Additionally, vortex creates a chilling area and allows you to deal 35% more damage against enemies inside.

Ascendancy Points


I recommend you start this build at level 68, when you can equip vaal regalia.
PoB: https://pastebin.com/ZwUgsuSx
This PoB includes passive trees at level 68, 84 and 95. You can choose the tree at the bottom left of your PoB. Use this PoB if you are new to this build.

LL version with triple purity: https://pastebin.com/vKQTQY9R
Use this PoB if you want to get stun immunity from Presence of Chayula.

The passive tree of the cluster jewel version (for 3.10) is the following: https://pastebin.com/rd1D1zu2
Use this PoB if you are rich and want to use more cluster jewels. The details are given in the gear section.

Bandits: Help Alira.
Pantheon: Lunaris & Gruthkul, this is up to your preference.

Because of the high gear requirement, this build cannot be played as a league starter. In this section, I will explain how to smoothly transition to this build. There are a lot of ways to level a character and farm currency at league start. The advantage of following this particular leveling guide is that you'll need fewer respec points (orbs of regret), as the passive tree of the leveling build is similar to that of the final one. That said, you'll need considerable amount of respec points anyway because you cannot level a character as a CI build.

The leveling guide consists of two parts, the spellslinger build and the life-based CoC build. The spellslinger build is the starter build and can be used until you reach red maps. The life-based CoC build can clear T16 maps, so you can basically earn as much currency as you want using the CoC build. When you switch from the spellslinger build to CoC is up to you. You can start CoC after you finish the first lab, but I'd recommend you switch to CoC after completing the storyline and the 3rd lab. Cyclone has a big movement speed penalty, so the gameplay is clunky without the movement speed buff from the ascendancy. The spellslinger build is pretty damn strong and good at speed farming, so I find no reason to switch to CoC during the storyline.

Although the final build (CI CoC ball lightning) relies solely on ES for defense, these two leveling builds use life as the primary defense. This is because you need good gear for ES build to work, and you don't have good gear at the start of the league. Thus, you have to respec life nodes when you switch to the final build.

The spellslinger build


The life-based CoC build

-Against stationary enemies, try to hit them at the edge of your cyclone. This way you can maximize the number of hits per cast of ball lightning.
-If you want to run ele reflect maps, replace Inspiration support with increased critical strikes support. Also make sure that you always pop up your diamond flask to increase crit chance.
-If you want to run "no regen" maps, drop wrath or aspect of the spider and bring a mana flask.

Ball lightning hits a maximum 13 times per cast if you have 40% increased AoE from the passive tree. Thus,

DPS = (AverageDamage(ball lightning)) * EffectiveCritChance(cyclone) * AttackRate(cyclone) * 13

If you don't have 40% increased AoE, use 11 (0% AoE) or 12 (20% AoE) instead of 13.

Note that for the first 2 seconds your actual DPS is lower than the calculated DPS, because during this period the number of ball lightings is not enough. Unfortunately, almost all enemies die in 2 seconds, so you rarely see your real DPS.

Hey guys - I wanted to come and chime in as a HC player. I've lost 2 97 and 96 CoC Ice Nova chars - did the Kami guide but tweaked it with defenses and even though I really enjoyed it, I like this build a lot more. The scaling is way better and the damage output is significantly higher over the CoC Ice Nova. The way Kami has it setup also does massive damage but I had to drop a lot of stuff in order to gain defenses where on this build I can incorporate it while still being efficient.

I have pasted my pastebin below and please feel free to ping me directly or ask Noesy for anything. He is an amazing guy and thank him for taking the time to put this together. He did a phenomenal job and he is someone i've had on my friends list for a very long time.

I wanted to wait to post until I did a lot of the end-game content. The only thing missing for me is Aul and I am looking for him now - nothing so far up to depth 250 but managing just fine in Delve. I do sub-2 min UE, Cortex, Elder, Shaper, Simulacrum without taking any damage (PLEASE be careful if you play HC the only thing that can kill you and that killed my 97 was Impale and -Phys reduction in one wave - insta kill for us).

If you take a look at my POB it is VERY tailored to the min/max aspect. I have 96 strenght (perf str for scepter), 113 dex (needed for 21 Slower Proj when i get it), 100 % ailment immunity so don't need freeze, burning, sap, etc.. removal flasks, perm fort, 3 endurance charges via medium channeling cluster, and ES on block from shield and with Rumi's I am at 75/75 block. If you want 75% spell block you either have to get 10% spell block on shield or do what I did and got lucky, 5 % on ammy and craft the other 5 % on the shield.

Things I still want to do to improve:

1. Rare Ring - I did double influence and got two solid stats that I wanted which was crit multi (elder influenced) and ES % (crusader influenced) but I could surely use other better stats like flat ES and spell damage. My ultimate ring would be something like ES%/Flat ES/Spell Damage/Crit Multi/Dexterity, and All Res/Light Damage (if i can find res somewhere else.

2. Shield - I would like to squeeze out another 100+ ES on shield as my prefixes blow but I don't see a huge need right now because the build is doing fine. This would be absolutely min/max eventually.

3. Ammy - I would ideally have loved to get Power Charges/+Light Gems/+% damage based on intelligence instead of ele damage with attacks but the rest of the amulet is godly.

4. Gems - Need to get some gems to 21/20 and need to get my Awak Light gem to 5 soon.

5. ULTIMATE DREAM - Boots - This will likely never happened to any of us let alone me but my dream boots would be Tailwind, Cooldown, and Ailment Immunity but to land all 3 stats is statistically impossible. If someone was to ever land these stats you could drop The 30% ailment cluster I have next to Unnatural Calm and go with From Naught or even a rare jewel with corrupted blood immunity.

A SIDE NOTE for people playing this - drop chaos golem as its useless and does nothing but put in Precision as it gives a little extra crit chance for us.

I am sorry for the lengthy post but I owed this to Noesy as he has been an online buddy for a while and I wanted to give my take on this build from an HC standpoint.

POB - https://pastebin.com/zY4YHBbi

How can I improve my damage?
1) Buy a 21/0 ball lightning gem. They are not that expensive and increase your damage a lot.
2) Anoint Tranquility. Make sure that your amulet has flat ES, %ES, global crit multi and some attributes, as this anointment is expensive. +1 to level of lightning spell gems is not necessary on your amulet at all. Forget about this mod until you become very rich.


How can I improve my clear speed?
While I'm happy with the clear speed of this build, you can improve it by:
1) using HH.
2) replacing slower projectiles support with GMP. Note that you'll lose a lot of DPS by doing this, so this is recommended only for easy content.

Awakened lightning pen vs inspiration
For me inspiration gives slightly more shaper DPS, but it is possible that lightning pen is better for some players. There are other factors that favors inspiration over woke lightning pen: 1) mana cost of cyclone, 2) higher crit chance when you are run out of flask charges. You can use woke lightning pen if these factors are not a problem for you.

Why is my crit chance low? I miss ball lightning procs too often.
Make sure your weapon has "hits can't be evaded". Otherwise you miss your attacks a lot. You can use Lycosidae if this crafted mod is too expensive for you.

I run out of mana.
If you want more mana regen, try the following modification to the passive tree.
Respec Utmost Intellect cluster (3 points) and one +10 int node next to it.
Take Arcane will, 1 small node (%mana and mana regen) next to it, and two 6% ES nodes. You'll gain a lot of mana regen at the cost of a small amount of ES.


Arc?
Arc is fine but not my taste (less ES on hit). Use whatever skill you like.

Headhunter?
This build doesn't scale well with HH, the only benefit being extra movement speed. If that's exactly what you want, use it.

+1 projectile enchant? Dying Sun?
Additional projectiles suck because they don't shotgun. For the same reason, dying sun is not recommended. However, I found additional projectiles useful in Legion encounter, so if you are focusing on it you might want to use these.

1. Please read the Q&A first.
2. If you are looking for advise on your build, please give me your PoB. Linking items on the forum is not ideal because I miss a lot of important information. Please do not link your items ingame. it's really hard to give you good advise if you do that.