Charged Bolts - Liam Neeson

The Charged Bolts Liam Neeson guide has been here since season 2, through thick and thin... and TBH the damage has always been thin, but I still love the build. Now in Season 11, I'm still not giving up on it.

Greater Charged Bolts is the best it's ever been thanks to buffs to Staff of Lam Esen that drastically increase it's damage the longer the Charged Bolts stay alive in the air seeking enemies. As a result the build is best played by casting Charged Bolts at range and letting them heat seek enemies.

• Greater Charged Bolts is your main damage dealer. Spam this puppy from mid range and let em scatter and seek with Staff of Lam Esen
• Prime Unstable Currents is your attack speed steroid to be used whenever it is off cooldown. Aspect of the Orange Herald helps reset it.
• Summoned Ice Blades should be cast off cooldown, they reduce all your cooldowns
• Mystical Teleport use for movement and to make crackling energy for Convulsions
- Either cast Teleport off the skill bar or press evade for Teleport enchant evade
• Shimmering Ice Armor cast for a large barrier
• Flame Shield to get out of sticky situations and dodge lethal damage

General Overview

Charged Bolts is a shock core skill that has you shotgun blast 5 bolts out from your hands. They travel a moderate distance and then hit enemies. With Staff of Lam Esen the bolts last longer, travel farther, and deal more damage the longer they are in the air. For bossing this means you sort of want to sit a moderate distance away and blast at them.

With the Charged Bolts enchantment you create extra Charged Bolts when you stun enemies. With Aspect of Piercing Static every time an enemy is hit by 3 casts of Charged Bolts they release 5 Charged Bolts. What does this mean? Basically your screen will be littered with Charged Bolts pouring out of enemies ears.

Although Charged Bolts has been a bit of a melee build in the past, due to how Staff of Lam Esen works you now play at range a bit. You just spam the crap out of Charged Bolts and let them do their thing. It's a pretty fun build and it has great area of effect.

The dev team made some very good changes to Staff of Lam Esen & Aspect of Piercing Static so the build has crawled out of C tier into B. God bless.

Masterworking

• Masterworking an item adds 2-5 Quality per upgrade, up to a max of +25 quality
• Each quality point increases all affix values by 1%, so +25 quality = a 25% bump to all affixes
• Fully Masterworking an item to +25 quality now gives a 50% upgrade to a random affix or temper
• Masterworking will cost anywhere from 200-500 ish obducite to get to +25 quality

Tempering

• Tempering is done at the blacksmith and you manually add a single extra affix to an item from a list of temper manuals you obtain by killing monsters, completing activities, opening chests, or collecting whisper caches
• Temper manuals have different classifications; offensive, weapon, defensive, resource, utility, and mobility and different item slots can only apply certain temper classifications. Ex. Weapons can only have Weapon tempers or Offensive tempers
• The temper manuals themselves have a quality range from magic to rare to legendary, but it's not too difficult to acquire the max legendary manuals
• Each temper manual has 3-4 affix choices, but you get to choose the exact one you want (ex. Chance for Frozen Orb to cast twice)
• The temper affixes have a value range of say 25-30% Chance for Frozen Orb to cast twice for a legendary manual. The magic and rare manuals will have a lower value
• When you temper it will randomly apply a value within the given range, and if you don't like the value you can re-temper the item to try and get a higher roll
• If you apply a magic temper manual, when you get a rare or legendary manual you can re-apply the higher quality manual for a higher value
• If you change your mind about a temper you can re-temper to a different affix from any available to that item, even if it's a different classification, such as swapping your Amulet from Offensive: Cold Damage, to Resource: Unstable Currents Cooldown Reduction
• Tempering has a chance to apply as a greater affix which sets the value to the max in the range, then bumps that max value by 50%
• An item gets 6 chances to temper, which is increased by 1 for each greater affix on the item. Additionally once you are out of chances, you can reset the chances back to max one time using a Scroll of Restoration acquired from a variety of sources, with the most consistent being opening the Item Chest in Infernal Hordes

Seasonal Sanctification

Process: Sanctification is a process where after your item if fully complete, you can slam it into a slot machine that transforms the item by adding something random to it.

Finality: Once you sanctify, the item cannot be changed. You cannot imprint a new aspect, add additional sockets, re-temper, etc. The only thing you CAN do is change out the gems or runes.
But remember, if you forgot to add the gem/rune sockets to the item, you are screwed.

Example Outcomes:
• Adds 5-25 Quality Ranks (5%-25% bump to all affixes (Most frequent)
• Replaces an affix with a curated list of affixes (Legendary Items only)
• Adds an extra affix such as Lightning Damage[x] or Intelligence[%]
• Adds a random Legendary Aspect from the list of available aspects the item can have such as adding Conceited Aspect to Staff of Endless Rage (Low chance to occur)

Elixir/Incense

Elixir - Advantage II for 15% attack speed
Incense 1 - Sages Whisper for 100 Intelligence. Use 60 All stats one if you need to hit paragon reqs
Incense 2 - Reddamine Buzz for +750 max life or Song of the Mountain for +300 armor
Incense 3 - Soothing Spices for all resistance, max all resistance, and some armor

12/5/25 - build created for S11