Fivers Freezing Ball Lightning Occultist ||| Clears all content ||| Great Clearspeed |||

So the idea behind this build was originally to create an Arc build with full cold conversion. The reason why I want to convert to cold damage is for the added layer of safety from freezing/chilling enemies, while also increasing clearspeed with the synergy of Herald of Ice and shatter.

The disadvantage from switching from lightning damage is that you miss out on the ability to shock enemies, which is the strongest characteristic of lighting damage. This can however be remedied by using a jewel that has the notable "Cold Conduction" on it. I'll get more in to how that works later on, but in short, it allows us to shock enemies even when using cold damage.

After playing Arc for a little while, I felt that the single target DPS was kind of low. Specially versus targets like Awakener, Shaper, and Uber Elder.
This is when I started using Ball Lightning specifically for those fights, and then quickly realized that you clear just as fast with Ball Lightning as you do with Arc, so I switched entirely to it.


The way that we convert our lightning damage into cold is by using 2 of these:
Normally they only convert 40% cold to lightning, but with the help of these catalysts we can push the damage conversion to 48% per ring, which leaves us at 96% conversion.

Ball Lightning shoots a slow moving projectile forward, that then regularly spits out lightning bolts from the projectile while it's traveling.


I know, I know.. It looks pretty underwhelming. But the AoE is a lot bigger than it looks. The skill is just really poorly displayed with increased AoE. This is the actual size of the area of effect.

The area of effect is actually really important, as mentioned early. Because the longer the target is within the range of the skill, the more times he will be hit by the lightning bolts sent out from it - increased the effective damage per projectile.



With the help of Dying Sun, we will have 2 extra projectiles up when we are clearing.

Versus bosses it doesn't matter if we shoot 1 or 3 projectiles.
Every projectile we fire does overlap, but not any additional projectiles sent with the help of items or supports like GMP.

Well, I have cleared everything that I've tried.

- Shaper was easy.
- Awakener 8 was easy.
- Uber Elder is always scary. I think I died 1 time when I did it first time.
- Simulacrum gets a bit scary at 18+, but I did it without any bigger issues. 1 or 2 deaths or so.
- Heart of the Grove was a very easy fight, even though the boss is pretty tanky.

Worth mentioning is that I had pretty bad gear when I did most of these.

Please read the notes section when you open the PoB if there is anything that seems unclear.

If you are not using the Community Fork version of Path of Building, there are things in the pastebin that won't work. I strongly recommend downloading the community fork. You can get it here: https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/releases


Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/456i3dgg



In the video guide I go through the order in which I think you should level your passive tree, but there isn't any alternative gear set in the PoB yet.

In general, most of the items are very cheap though, and the only items that can turn expensive are the jewels and the rare items.


If you have problems importing the pastebin into your PoB, click here.

We are playing Occultist, and we are using these ascendancies.

(you can click on the picture for a bigger version)

Start with either Void Beacon of Profane Bloom.
I start with Void Beacon, because the -20% to enemy cold resist is a pretty significant damage boost.
After that Profane Bloom & Malediction.
Last Forbidden Power.


You will find the passive tree in Path of Building of course, but here's a passive tree for those of you who don't want to use PoB:
http://poeurl.com/cYlh


Bandits:
Help Alira

Pantheon:
Major: Soul of Solaris
Minor: Soul of Gruthkul, Garukhan, or Abberath.

Abberath is useful in things like Blight maps, since you gain immunity to burning ground.
Gruthkul is always useful since it provides a lot of defence.
Garukhan is mostly QoL for the extra movespeed.

Ball Lightning:

There isn't much to say about it. This is the main setup.
You obviously want to get quality on the skill gems. Pretty embarassing that I haven't even fixed that lol.



When you are fighting things like Shaper, Awakener, etc. you want to use Slower Projectiles instead of Hypothermia. On paper it deals less damage, but since it slows the balls, they spend more time over the target, and therefore hits the same target a lot more times.


Auras:

Wrath provides the most damage for us, Herald of Ice provides damage but more importantly it improves clearspeed a lot thanks to the AoE damage you get when shattering enemies. Enlighten is required to be able to sustain mana.


Using a level 1 Clarity helps a little bit with mana regen, which is needed.


Debuffs:


Wave of Conviction applies something called "Exposure" to the enemy, which reduces one of their elemental resistances by 25%. It always picks the element that does the most damage from the skill, which in our case will always be cold damage.
We also have it linked with Curse on Hit, together with Elemental Weakness and Assassin's Mark.

This setup provides two things. First of all it increases the damage you do by a LOT. You should always try to use this on bosses and bigger targets before bursting.
Second, thanks to our ascendancy notable Profane Bloom, when you kill enemies that are cursed, they have a 25% chance to explode. If you ever feel that you need clearspeed, this thing is incredible.
Most of the time you don't need to use this when mapping etc, but it's always a big boost available when you need it.


Movement Skills:


Dash will be our main move skill, together with Phase Run. I always have Phase Run on my main move button, which makes me cast it every time it is off cooldown. You don't need Phase Run if you don't want to, but I find it nice.
We link these skills with Second Wind and Arcane Surge.
Second Wind gives us an extra charge on the Dash and reduces the cooldown/recharge speed of both Dash and Phase Run.
If you have these linked to Arcane Surge, then you will get Arcane Surge every time you spend a certain amount of mana with these skills. If you make sure that the mana cost of Arcane Surge is lower than a single cast of Dash and Phase Run, this means that it will activate every time you use the skill.
Arcane Surge will give you a damage boost that last for 4 seconds.


Burst Skills:


We only use the Vaal version of these skills. When activated, Vaal Haste will give you action speed, which will increase your cast speed and give you a quite significant damage boost for a short period of time.
Vaal Righteous Fire will give you a lot of extra spell damage when activated. You need to be careful when using Vaal Righteous Fire though, since it will take 50% of your maximum energy shield when you use it. You will regen this very fast when you attack, but if you use it in the wrong situation, you might get yourself killed.

These skills do not need to be linked to anything specific.


Other Skills:


Having a Cast When Damage Taken setup is really good for survival. Keep the CWDT and Immortal Call on low levels. That way they will trigger a lot more often, even if the effect will be lower than a higher level one.

The Enduring Cry will not be triggered by the CWDT, though, so level this one as much as your strength allows.
Enduring cry will give us endurance charges for extra survival, but since we take the notable "Zealot's Oath" in the passive tree, Enduring Cry will also act as a heal for us.

Enduring Cry will not need to be linked to anything.

RINGS

These are the only required items for the build. Without these rings, you will not get any conversion. They are cheap though, so that's fine.



WEAPON

We are using power charges, which makes Void Battery the perfect wand for us.
It is possible to get better rare wands, but we're talking insane wands here. I don't recommend considering this until the rest of the gear is sorted.
If you want to go for a rare, then these modifiers are strong.

Lightning damage to spells.
Spell damage
+1 to lightning skill gems.
Cold damage as extra chaos Damage.
Lightning damage as extra chaos damage.
Increased cast speed.
Increased critical strike chance for spells.
Global critical strike multiplier.
Damage when on full life.



OFFHAND

We will get block chance and energy shield from it.
It will also give us damage depending on how high block we have, which is great since we intend to get very high block chance.



BODY ARMOUR

Incandescent Heart is incredibly strong if you are playing any character using Chaos Innoculation. It will reduce the amount of elemental damage we take by a lot, as well as giving a lot of damage.

There are other options here, but I recommend Incandescent Heart. As a bonus, it's usually pretty cheap.



AMULET

The amulet I'm wearing is actually pretty bad. It has some of the important mods though.
In terms of damage, Critical Strike Multiplier is really strong.
You also want as much energy shield and resist on the amulet.

There's a lot of room for damage on the amulet with a couple of different influence modifiers, but the ones that I have on my amulet are the basics.



GLOVES

Energy shield and resists is basically what we care about here.



HELMET

Same as with gloves. Energy shield and resists.
You can get some damage modifiers here by using Redeemer helmets and getting the -9% cold resistance to nearby enemies modifier.



BOOTS

To begin with, start by getting a pair of boots with as high Movement Speed as possible.
Other than that, energy shield and resists.
There is also a modifier that you can get on Hunter influenced items which is called Tailwind.
If you can get this modifier on your boots, that is incredibly strong, and it's something that I recommend that you should aim for.




JEWELS


Placed below the notable "Melding", this one will provide us with a bunch of extra energy shield.


This jewel is important to get. A medium jewel with the implicit that gives bonuses to non-damaging elemental ailments. Always try to get one with 4 or 5 passive points, otherwise you need to spend extra passives.
The modifier we want to get is called Cold Conduction.
Cold Conduction allows us to shock enemies that we chill. This jewel is INCREDIBLY strong.
It will add a flat value of 15% increased damage taken on the enemy. Try to get this one as early as you can. To begin with you don't need to get any extra modifiers on the jewel, the Cold Conduction is the important one.


A small cluster jewel that gives energy shield is great. Preferably we want the node Energy from Naught, but that one is very rare.
We ideally want two of these, and also a big cluster jewel that I haven't gotten yet because I'm lazy. You can see the ideal setup in the PoB link though.


If you place this one in the Jewel Socket below "Minion Instability" in the passive tree, it will change the bonuses you get from Minion Instability and give you a keystone that is called Inner Conviction.
Inner conviction gives us a lot of extra damage per power charge.
IMPORTANT: when you get this jewel it is important that you get the one that says:

The important part is that it gives bonuses to High Templar Dominus.
The number does NOT matter.



We want two of these. We want one with a "Very Large" ring, and one with a "Large" ring.

Place the very large one on the jewel socket located below "Faith and Steel" in the passive tree. This jewel allows us to allocate passive points that are within the line of the circle, and we use it to get Glancing Blows.
Glancing Blows will double our block chance, but it also makes us take 50% of the damage from attacks and spells that we block. Despite the damage we take, this is a great line of defence for us.

The Large one should be place next to "Instability" in the passive tree.
We use this one to reach a lot of nodes.

- Arcane Focus
- Snowforged
- Utmost Intellect
- Lightning Walker
- Light Eater
- Heart of Ice

First Awakener 8 after switching to Ball Lightning.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/684380056

Full Shaper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdG1nX0N0nA

Video Guide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAZ9peFkv2s

Full Tier 16 map (1:40)
https://youtu.be/WQQbiXMhS3U