Armour Infernalist with Plants & Bonestorm totems

Guide is still in progress, TODO:

- update tree trees for both variants done, only need to add description

- need to update items mostly done

- need to check and finish skill + support gems, mostly just add description, they should be fine for the most part.

POBs

- preperation (lvl 80 swap + mid budget version)

- day 2 snapshot

- day 3 snapshot

- day 4 snapshot

Additional notes (will implement them into the guide eventually)

- there are body armour bases with 1.5 - 2.5% hp regen implicit, so that you don't need the corruption hp regen mod from Coward's Legacy and will have enough surplus health regen for Zealot's Oath. Belts are 1ex and cultivation orbs are like 2d on day 2, so getting the mod will be expensive. Since belts are so cheap, make sure to corrupt them for good implicit first before you spend cultivation orbs on them.

- will probably go for Sacrifice of Flesh (obtainable trough Undying Hate (amanamu)) on higher budget, since big hits will be the only issue defensively

- add Enfeeble on high budget? (need Whispers of Doom)

- dont put life regen support gems into blasphemy with heightened curse, it increases their reservation cost aswell

- very tanky even without chaos armour and only 13k armour during mapping

- metamorphosis not available?

- doing all map mods except extra chaos

- oneshot only like once per hour - more like once per 10-20 maps

- dont forget to pop life flask tip - big 

- i think im very tanky cuz I have very high chaos res? but still thats only 50% reduction from the 20% hit

Day 2 Update

Build is absolutely insane in juiced T15s, got to 93 so far. Ward and demon form interaction with second wind III works as described. Bonestorm totems are also insane - dps in millions if boss doesn't move. Mobility is amazing, new rune was added that gives +0.3 to dodge roll distance, which feels really good with Demon Form. In terms of defense I still have a lot of improvements to do and only die like one time per 15-20 maps. Only way you die with this build is to oneshots. You can get blocked by hundred white mobs for 10 seconds and they won't have a chance. Didnt check much of the new stuff that got added, following this guide 1:1 basically.

Summary (for mid budget)

- around 2.1k hp (after Beidat's Will reservation) and 600 es

- around 20k armour unbuffed, with buffs ~65% more

- around 450 life regen (-185 degen Demon Form) = 265 pure (also ES regen with Zealot's Oath, and constanct ES recoup with Storm Driven cluster and Pyromantic Pact)

- Blasphemy and Temporal Chains = ~60% action speed slow on white mobs and 17% hinder

- "unkillable" to dots and small hits with Demon Form, Second Wind III and a small investment to ward

- some damage mitigation thanks to armour and Altered Flesh = ~15-30% less cold and lightning damage? (explained below)

- very good mobility thanks to Demon Form

- very good clear with Entangle + Thunderstorm

- very good single target damage with Bonestorm self-cast and 3-5x Bonestorm totems (can't rly test rn before Ancestral Bond gets updated in 0.5), if "% chance for spell skills to fire 2 additional projectiles" procs Bonestorm will channel 3 times as fast = Bonestorm machine gun

- WS = weapon set, WS1 setup is for bosses, WS2 setup is for clearing

Overview

To start off this is more of a day 2-3 build. On day 1 play whatever witch league starter you want, I will be going for a classic ED/C + Bonestorm build (wouldn't recommend for beginners). You can swap around lvl 80 (more details below). Will do my best to update this guide after 24-36 hours of league start, so you can wait for my update before you swap.

ES recovery is getting a big nerf in 0.5 and armour getting buffed by 15% at top-end. Armour is already very good in 0.4.

Infernalist is a very strong ascendancy for armour. It enables low-life with Coward's Legacy and one reservation ascendancy node granting access to Defiance and some other life recovery bonuses.

We will be going for Demon Form, so the build is very mobile. Aside from mobility Demon Form also grants access to some good shape-shift clusters. Hide of the Bear cluster giving 50% increased armour with +1% max fire res and Blood of the Wolf cluster giving 45% increased life regen with +1% max cold res.

Ruinic Helm will grants us some energy shield that will make up for the 25% reserved life. We will recover it with Zealot's Oath and later on also with recoup. We will take Storm Driven cluster after getting higher +spell levels, which will make us proc Pyromantic Pact more often. That way you will have constant ES recoup while mapping.

For reservation node we will go for spirit (Beidat's Will). You could also go for energy shield (Beidat's Hand), which is a solid option, but spirit will be better even for defense with all the buffs. Main reason you don't want to go ES is that Pyromantic Pact hit damage is also based on ES and not just life, so the hit damage from it would actually become dangerous.

We will be going for life regeneration as our main source of recovery, on mid budget we will have around 450 life regen, which will fully cover the 185 life degen cost of Demon Form and give a lot of regen on top (life regen numbers explained below).

Altered Flesh serves mostly as a travel point for the reservation node, but with armour it should be also a big defense layer if I am understanding correctly how the damage conversion and armour interact (explained below).

For spell resource we will go for Pyromantic Pact as 4th ascendancy point, which replaces mana with infernal flame and grants us infinite resource for casting spells at the cost of getting hit with big fire damage upon reaching maximum infernal flame. Armour will mitigate most of the damage from it. You can swap to this build without 4th ascendancy point and get it later on. You will just need to use your mana flask from time to time.

Early on we will crit cap with Maligaro's Virtuosity and Pinpoint Critical. On high budget we can also go Pain Attunement and Grinning Immolation instead, which basically doubles our crit bonus (1.5 * 1.3 = 1.95). But this would require swapping from Grand Spectrums to crit bonus jewels and swapping from Pyromantic Pact back to mana or Blood Magic. Not sure if I am ever gonna do this swap as the damage should be already very high.

In terms of armour we will go for rare helmet, body armour and boots. These will be our primary sources of base armour. We can also go for Amanamu's Gaze on body armour. We get around 250% increased armour on tree and then we are going for Scavenged Plating and Charge Regulation on clearing weapon set to buff our armour even further. Both will be easily sustainable just by casting Entangle (with Armour Break III) on monsters. Together they will provide around 65% more armour. These buffs won't be available for bossing on the other weapon set because we are going to reserve our totems there with Ancestral Bond, so you will need to be more careful when fighting bosses.

For clearing weapon set we will also go Blasphemy with Temporal Chains with some investment to curse magnitudes resulting in white monsters being action slowed by 60%.

The focus is on physical spell skills, mainly Entangle for clear and for single target Bonestorm - both self-cast and Spell Totem with Ancestral Bond, which will remove the charge cost for in 0.5. Build is going to start of with enough spirit for 3 totems and progress with gear for up to 5. You will also have enough spirit for all your buffs right away, no need for any investment in gear.

Spell Totem will be on WS1 (bcs of reservation) and Entangle on WS2 so that you swap automatically to your buffs when clearing. This means you can't use Entangle on bosses, else you will desummon your totems. If you want to use Entangle on bosses, you will need to find another way to comfortably swap to clearing WS. All other skills can be used for both weapon sets.

Clearing is the classic two button combo with Entangle and Thunderstorm to water your plants. I also added Thrashing Vines, but to me it seems kinda uselles with its short duration because of Wildsurge Incantation, didn't test it enough yet so not sure. Since we are running Charge Regulation we can also self-cast Profane Ritual from time to time for 24% more crit chance. With the new amulet bases with spirit we will also be able to automate it (on higher investment) with Cast on Dodge since Demon Form is considered as dodge roll. Cast on Dodge base shouldn't be as expensive as Cast on Critical.

On single target you cast Sigil of Power, summon totems and cast Thunderstorm which summon Living Lightning II to procc impale? something like that. Then you can self-cast Bonestorm aswell, but bossing might be rippy. Spell Totem having a cost is actually a buff in this build as you will stack up Sigil of Power stages during the totem summoning period (interaction explained in equipment section for Chiming Staff).

How much life regen can you expect (mid budget)

- Vitality II and Vitality I support gems (just put them on Blasphemy/ Scavenged Plating / Charge Regulation) = 3%

- Sanguimantic Rituals = 1%

- Coward's Legacy = 2-3% (gonna assume 2.8% in calculation - realistic roll)

= 6.8% max hp per second

- 20% increased life regen from Sanguimantic Rituals cluster

- 45% increased life regen from Blood of the Wolf cluster

= 6.8% * 1.65 = 11.22%

- 30% more life regen from arcane surge (trigger with crits) (Sanguimantic Rituals) with 60% increased effect of arcane surge

= 11.22% * (30 * 1.6) = 11.22% * 1.48 = 16.6% life regen per second

Assuming 2700 max life, that's 2700 * 0.166 = 448 hp/s

Demon Form degen is 185 hp/s

= 448 - 185 = 263 hp/s life and ES regen