[Phrecia2.0] Perma-Vaal Clarity Archmage Harbinger by SurgeonGeneral

Vaal auras are duration based buffs with powerful effects. Vaal Clarity makes all skills cost no mana while active.


The problem with trying to build around vaal auras is that their soul gain prevention scales with any duration modifiers on the gem. You can stack skill effect duration which lengthens the time you have the vaal aura but that also lengthens the duration of the lock-out period for regaining souls, making it very hard to maintain 100% uptime.

The Phrecia Harbinger ascendancy contains a node which offers an extremely rare stat: "Buffs on you expire 30% slower." This stat stacks additively with Runegraft of the Warp for a total of 60% slower expiry rate.

Buff expiration rate doesn't actually change the duration of a skill, it just makes it "tick" slower. The actual "effective duration" of a buff can be found using the following:

"

Effective Duration = Base Duration / (1 - Sum of Slower Expiry Rate)

With 60% slower expiry rate, we have a 2.5x multiplier for the duration of any buffs on our character. Critically for the purposes of this build, buff expiry rate modifies the effective duration of the vaal aura, but does not have any effect on the soul gain prevention duration. By stacking skill effect duration and getting 60% reduced buff expiry rate, we can make Vaal Clarity's effect last for over 77 seconds with a soul gain prevention duration of only 38 seconds. This gives us almost 40 full seconds to recover souls while the effects of Vaal Clarity are still active.

Vaal souls are gained by killing enemies or dealing damage to unique enemies. More reliably, we can get passive vaal soul generation from two sources: the chaos bloodline small ascendancy node gives 1 vaal soul per second and Runegraft of the Soulwick gives another 1 vaal soul per second. With the Chaos Bloodline skill Priest of Yaomac, our Vaal Clarity has a 35 soul cost. With 2 souls gained per second, we fully regain the cost of Vaal Clarity in 17.5 seconds, well under the 40 second window that we have between soul gain prevention and the expiration of Vaal Clarity.

At the start of every map, you start with zero vaal souls. Your passive soul generation starts immediately, but it’s annoying to wait 18 seconds before you can start mapping. Instead, you can use a Draining Eshgraft on the first pack of monsters you see. Kills from the graft skill will grant you additional souls; by the time you get past the first pack, you should have enough souls for your first use of Vaal Clarity. After that, the passive soul generation alone will outpace the soul cost for Vaal Clarity. All you need to do is remember to press the button about once every minute.


We’ve guaranteed easy 100% uptime on Vaal Clarity. Now the question is, how to weaponize it?

Archmage Support combined with mana stacking can add a substantial amount of flat damage to any spell. The downside is that Archmage also adds a large flat mana cost to the skill. This usually makes it impossible to sustain any fast-casting skill, such as channeling skills or CoC setups.


Fortunately, the "skills cost no mana" on Vaal Clarity overrides the additional mana cost from Archmage. We can therefore juice up any skill we want using Archmage without having to worry about recovering mana before the next cast. Additionally, since we're not using our mana to cast our spells, we can instead use it as a separate hit pool through Mind over Matter and the Arcane Cloak guard buff.

In this build, I've stacked up just about 6k mana (without late-endgame gear like Heist jewelry or multi-T1 rares) which amounts to about 1k additional flat lightning damage from Archmage.

Technically, you can choose to play whatever spell you want. However, since we’re already stacking skill effect duration, we’d want a skill that scales its damage via duration. Additionally, we’d like to use a channeling skill to take advantage of the extremely strong defensive Summon Visiting Harbinger of Focus ascendancy node. Storm Burst ends up being the perfect choice for our main skill.


Storm Burst is a channeling skill that spawns an orb on every tick of the channel. Those orbs deal area damage when created and, while channeling is maintained, the orbs move towards the cursor dealing damage again every 0.4 seconds. Each orb has a duration after which it disappears. Our damage is therefore determined by the maximum number of orbs that we can sustain which is in turn determined by our skill effect duration and our cast speed. With my gear, I have a cast rate of about 11 casts per second and the orbs have a duration of 4.6 seconds so they deal damage 12 times before expiring.

The downside of Storm Burst is that it’s a channeling skill, meaning you have to stand still to deal damage. This is fine for pinnacle bosses which have well-telegraphed skills but feels awful for mapping. Fortunately, because of the mana mechanics we have enough damage to get more than 8M damage on a 4-link, plenty for most mapping content. This lets us socket Cast while Channeling + Frostblink of Wintry Blast in our Storm Burst setup while mapping. That way, you hold down the Storm Burst button and blink around in the direction of the cursor, clearing as you go. You will maintain close to peak DPS because you won’t need to break the channeling animation in order to move around the map.


For pinnacle bosses, you swap out the CwC setup and just play Storm Burst as a traditional channeling skill and focus on manually dodging. This gives you room in your six-link for two more damage supports, bringing the total damage up to around 16M dps before considering any spectre buffs.

For reasons discussed in the previous section, our main skill is Storm Burst with Archmage Support. Our next two highest priority supports are Infused Channeling Support and Elemental Focus Support. Infused channeling grants a moderate more multiplier for damage but also makes us take less damage from hits while channeling the skill. Since we’re virtually always channeling, this is a very nice hybrid offensive / defensive gem. Elemental Focus is there purely for its large % more multiplier; the downside of not being able to apply elemental ailments doesn’t matter to us because we’re applying shock via Skitterbots.


For mapping, our last two links will be Cast while Channeling and Frostblink of Wintry Blast which makes our character warp in the direction of the cursor while we click-and-hold the channeling button. Remember that FBoWB gains a cooldown equal to its cast speed if triggered. You’ll need to ensure that you have enough cast speed and “increased cooldown recovery rate of travel skills” (boot implicit) so that FBoWB’s cooldown is faster than the trigger rate on CwC. You can lower the trigger rate if needed by using a low-level CwC gem.


For bossing, we’ll replace the CwC setup with two % more damage supports. Awakened Lightning Penetration Support and Arcane Surge Support are the highest damage options.

Arcane Cloak is an almost-ideal support skill for this build. It’s a guard skill which spends a large portion of our unreserved mana, granting a buff that takes damage from hits before our life. It also gives us additional flat lightning damage while the buff is active. With about 6k maximum mana, Arcane Cloak grants another 800 flat lighting damage to our main skill.


The typical problem with Arcane Cloak is that it has unreliable uptime, leading to “bursty” damage. As a guard skill, it has the line “this skill’s cooldown does not recover during its effect.” There’s no way around this limitation; however, since this build is already stacking skill effect duration and buff expiry rate, a single cast of our Arcane Cloak lasts more than 25 seconds. With a 3.7 second cooldown, we have an uptime on Arcane Cloak of almost 90%.


We support Arcane Cloak with More Duration Support to help extend it’s buff length and link it with Arcane Surge Support. This makes the Arcane Surge effect be a property of the Arcane Cloak skill, accomplishing two things:
First, this is the only real way to proc Arcane Surge on this build. Since Vaal Clarity gives us “skills cost no mana” we can’t regularly activate Arcane Surge by spending mana. Fortunately, Arcane Cloak’s mana spend is hard-coded into the skill effect itself; while it counts for “mana spent,” it’s not actually a cost. It therefore doesn’t interact with the “no cost” from Vaal Clarity.

Second, this makes Arcane Surge a skill effect which in turn makes it scale with skill effect duration. By default Arcane Surge has only has a 4 second duration, but with our duration scaling from passives and More Duration Support, its buff effect lasts more than 35 seconds. This is longer than the duration of Arcane Cloak + its cooldown, so we will have 100% uptime on Arcane Surge.

The final link in this setup will be Automation Support to automatically retrigger Arcane Cloak as soon as possible.

Wrath is our strongest damage aura. As we need to keep our mana unreserved for the Archmage and Arcane Cloak mechanics, we will be using Eternal Blessing Support on it which entirely removes its reservation.


Since we can’t reserve against mana, we’ll use Prism Guardian to reserve another few skills against our life, down to the low life limit. Arctic Armour will be used for its “less damage taken from hits while stationary.” Since we’re almost exclusively holding down the channeling button and warping around with Frostblink, we’re technically always stationary so this buff is always active.


Summon Skitterbots will also be socketed in Prism Guardian and will apply shock for us, increasing the damage taken by enemies. We can use a few unique items to further increase the power of Skitterbots. Profane Proxy will make our Skitterbots apply a socketed curse instead of one of their base auras. We will use this ring in the left ring slot, replacing the chilling aura with a Conductivity curse aura to reduce enemies’ lighting resistance. Finally, The Arkhon’s Tools increases the magnitude of the shock applied by skitterbots and adds another scorching aura, further reducing enemies’ resistances. The downside of this item is that the Skitterbot auras also affect us. Fortunately, we have curse and ailment immunity from our Harbinger buff, so we are unaffected by the skitterbot auras.


The final socket in our Prism Guardian will be for Vitality, giving us some life regeneration for any damage over time that bypasses our energy shield. More importantly, since the reservation of Vitality scales with its gem level we can tune our life reservation to be just above 50%, putting us below the low life threshold and enabling the more damage buff from Pain Attunement.

Our final 4-link will be used for Raise Spectre and Flame Golem, specifically for the buffs that they grant to our character. To keep the minions alive we’ll support them with Meat Shield and Minion Life.


There’s a few options for which spectre to use. On a small budget, I suggest Carnage Chieftains to generate frenzy charges for you and Arena Masters for their % damage and % cast speed buff. At higher budgets, the best options are likely Perfect Tigers for their Haste aura and frenzy charge generation and Perfect Pain Artists for their Zealotry aura and consecrated ground.

A spare 2-link will be used for Convocation Support linked to Automation Support. This will make it so that every few seconds, your minions will be teleported to your location and life regeneration will be applied to them. This helps keep the minions alive and keeps you in range of their auras.

Since we’re already stacking mana, we can leverage it to get a bunch of "free" energy shield with a Harbinger ascendancy node. This splits incoming damage between life and ES - we can further split damage by taking Mind over Matter. With this setup, 100 incoming damage will be split as follows: 70 to ES, 12 to mana, 18 to life.

With a split hit pool, we need to recover all three resources effectively. ES will be taxed the most, so we get ES leech from a Wrath Watcher’s Eye, plus natural ES recharge. We’re pathing close to the Wicked Ward keystone, so we’ll take that which makes energy shield recharge a more reliable recovery mechanic.


For life and mana, we have life leech from a helmet corruption, about 10% per second regeneration of each resource, and 20% mana recoup. Recoup is especially efficient in hybrid builds like this - while we only take 12% of incoming damage to our mana, the base amount for the recoup calculation is taken from all incoming damage. This means that our 20% mana recoup will, in the long run, actually heal our mana pool for nearly 2x the amount of damage that we take.


The build doesn't have significant armour or evasion, but we do pick up a few generic less/reduced damage taken sources in Arctic Armour, Infused Channeling, and the aforementioned Harbinger of Focus buff (20% reduced damage taken, elemental ailment immunity, curse immunity, stun immunity). The uptime on all of these buffs is essentially 100% due to the mechanics of the CwC setup.


Pathing around the top of the tree, we have quite a bit of access to spell block. We’ll socket a Blue Nightmare jewel north of the witch start and tattoo all the nearby intelligence nodes to lighting resistance; this gives us a massive chunk of spell block by itself. Picking up two spell block wheels gets our spell block up to 65%. At higher budgets, you could use a well rolled Rumi’s Concoction and a rare jewel or two to cap spell block if you desire.
All told, max hits are about 21k phys, 71k ele, and 35k chaos. With serious endgame rares / unique corruptions, you could build in some "phys taken as" and additional maximum resistances to pump those numbers up even more.

The helmet is a competitive slot for damage-scaling uniques, but as a hybrid life/ES/mana build, it’s hard to beat Crown of the Inward Eye. It provides scaling for all three hit pools and also grants a significant amount of % increased damage via the Transfigurations. It’s a boss drop (Sirus), but it’s one of the more common ones on his loot table so it’s practical to look for a useful corruption. A “lightning damage leeched as life” implicit is very useful for smoothing out recovery against the small amount of damage that reaches our life.


As previously mentioned, we use The Arkhon’s Tools and Profane Proxy to modify the effects of our Skitterbots. Arkhon’s Tools is a common boss drop, a useful corruption should be cheap. The priority roll is the ailment effect line, but you’ll also want a decent roll on the attributes to help hit your dexterity requirement. Profane Proxy is cheap after the first day of the league.
Prism Guardian is used to fit all of our auras and enable our low-life setup for Pain Attunement. The base implicit is very helpful but corruptions are possible too. Again, look for a good dexterity roll.


Our final unique is Ashes of the Stars. Storm Burst gains base duration with gem quality and since this build revolves around scaling skill effect duration, adding base duration makes all that investment more potent. Storm Burst has breakpoints at multiples of 0.4 seconds duration; get whatever quality roll you need to hit a breakpoint while also being affordable.
The build uses four unique jewels. As mentioned earlier, Blue Nightmare gives us a little extra damage but more importantly gives us a large amount of spell block.


Since we’re pathing around the Scion area to pick up skill effect duration, we use a combination of Unnatural Instinct (northwest of Scion start) and a mana version of The Light of Meaning (south of Scion start). This combination adds flat mana to all nearby passives and then picks up a bunch of those passives without actually pathing to them. Unnatural Instinct tends to be desirable and expensive, but prices fall as the league goes on. The version of tLoM that we use is typically not that popular and generally inexpensive.


As discussed in the defenses section, we use a Blue Nightmare jewel to get a significant amount of spell block by the jewel socket north of the witch start.


Finally, you’ll want to use a Wrath Watcher’s Eye. “Lightning leeched as energy shield while affected by wrath” can save you several passive points – without it you’ll need to path to the Light Eater wheel. Preferably you’ll also be able to afford one with either “increased lightning damage while affected by wrath” or “penetrate lightning damage while affected by wrath.” Both mods are approximately the same effectiveness in terms of damage.

We use rare body armour, gloves, and boots. You can get exceptionally strong rares from the Genesis tree.

Priority rolls on armour are high tiers of flat life and flat mana (and movement speed on boots). You’ll need several high tier rolls of chaos resistance in order to get close to capping it. This is important in a low life build since chaos damage bypasses energy shield. The rest of your mods can fill out your elemental resistances as needed.


For your rare ring, look for high life and mana rolls, then fill out whatever resistances and attributes you still need. If you can afford it, try to get a ring with a high tier cast speed mod. This will both scale your damage and reduce the cooldown on Frostblink of Wintry Blast, increasing the speed at which you can move through maps.


Your weapon is straightforward. You want a Profane Wand base for the cast speed implicit, then as much flat mana, % spell damage (or lightning damage) and cast speed as possible. Added flat damage to spells is not particularly useful – we already have a ton from Archmage and Arcane Cloak so even a high tier mod is a marginal increase.

One of your grafts should be a Hardening Uulgraft. This graft applies a buff which grants bonus life regeneration rate and grants the player an endurance charge on a four second cooldown. The buff is applied when the player is on low life – since we’re always on low life for pain attunement, this buff will constantly keep refreshing keeping our endurance charges at maximum. I prefer an Uulgraft with a % maximum life roll.


For your other graft, I suggest a Draining Eshgraft. This graft gives a skill (Enervating Grasp) which can be manually activated to spawn a field of orbs which damage enemies. Use this skill to kill the first pack in the map to help supplement your passive vaal soul gain. These grafts can roll % spell damage and lightning penetration. Either one works for the build.

Flasks aren’t super important on this build. I suggest a Rumi’s Concoction to get the last few points of spell block towards the cap and to help buff up the low attack block that the build has. An Atziri’s Promise gives a small amount of extra chaos damage. The cast speed buff from onslaught on a silver flask is a nice add, but you can’t rely on its uptime for cast speed breakpoints. The last couple flasks are flexible. Likely you’ll want an Oriath’s End to help with clear speed (if you can afford it), or just a couple defensive flasks.

The two big budget items for the build are Ashes of the Stars and Unnatural Instinct. Together, those should run 10-12 divines. Very strong rare gear can be bought for quite cheap due to the Genesis Tree; you should be able to spend less than 2 divines each on all of your rares. The remainder of the uniques should be measured in chaos unless you’re looking for perfect rolls or best-in-slot corruptions.

I estimate you should be able to put the build together on 20-25 divines. You could comfortably make a very strong version with 40 divines.