[3.29] MasterTs THUNDER ORB Tendrils Elementalist League Starter

Heellooo internet, this is the Thunder Orb Tendrils Elementalist, one of the strongest contenders vs the insane Winter Orb meta for 3.29. Watch the video showcases and you will understand that this should have been the meta spell build this league, not winter orb.

The build utilizes Lightning Tendrils early on, then transitions into the Tranfigured version Lightning Tendrils of Eccentricity which deletes everything that comes infront of it.

UPDATES?

I cant always instantly post new videos on youtube because of irl jobs, but I am always updating the written guide with new things, so please favorite the guide and check the changelogs for what new things have been added or adjusted.

Ctrl Shift R on windows to refresh the cache of the site to update it in case it hasnt done it on your end already.

IMPORTANT:

You will see ALOT of different tabs for this build in the pob, and in the written guide.

That is because this build has TWO DIFFERENT Endgame Variants, One that Uses Spectres, and Coiling Whisper, much higher damage and speed, but has a little it of clunkiness to it.

And another variant that is more Brain-Off gaming, tankier, but less damage and slower.

Please check out the Videos below for the playstyles for each variant and see which one you want to go for.

For Progression Reference:

Early Mapping For the Build refers to getting your first 2 voidstones.

The way to progress this build after that stage is the following:

Early Mapping >>Red maps Blasting (no whisper) >> Endgame No Whisper >> High Budget No Whisper

OR FOR THE Coiling Whisper SETUP:
Early Mapping >> Red Maps Blasting (No Whisper) >> Red maps Blasting Whisper Swap >> Endgame Whisper >> High Budget Whisper

Videos:

All of these setups have full progression from act 1 to endgame, and are an extremely powerful league starter.

IF YOU SEE DIFFERENT TREES AND GEAR IN THIS GUIDE COMPARED TO THE VIDEOS, THAT IS BECAUSE THE GEAR HAS BEEN UPDATED AND OPTIMIZED.
THE CHANGES ARE LOGGED IN THE CHANGELOG AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.
The mechanics of the build remain the same, its just more optimized and efficient.

1 Divine Early - Red Mapping Setup: https://youtu.be/TlX3t3DHGeo
Full Non Whisper Ring Endgame Setup: https://youtu.be/qmzA2RnPZoI (This setup has a high budget version too, this video only shows how it looks with endgame gear)
Whisper Endgame High Budget Setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5vl2GSjQo (This setup has lower budget versions too, this shows how it looks at high budget. Its identical at lower budgets just a bit less tanky bit less damage)

Highest Budget Showcase: https://youtu.be/8HKHa23MaSg
(Guide is Not Updated With this Version Yet, it needs some tinkering. will be updated on Sunday with a video guide to go with it to top off the build)

PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS:

DO NOT JUMP THE GUN AND GO INTO HIGHER BUDGET TIERS WITHOUT THE APPROPRIATE GEAR.

If you jump the gun and try to mix match different budget tiers without knowing exactly what you are doing, you will screw your defenses or your damage or your speed or all of the above.

So please follow the guide its very detailed you got this I believe in you.

Levelling Instructions?

Scroll down to the How It Plays Section for a full step by step guide through the campaign.

Crafting Notes:

They are at the bottom of this page in the How it Works Section.

I HAVE QUESTIONS WHAT DO I DO?

There is an F.A.Q Section at the bottom of this page. Any questions that I repeatedly get I will put the answers in there, so please Ctrl + F and find your question there, if you dont find it then tag me @masterT in my discord help channel for poe 1, and i'll respond there, Or ask me in my youtube comments.

If its a very specific problem, please include an in game clip and your pob so I can see the issue and fix it.

Where to Reach Me?

You can reach me directly on my discord, I am active almost all the time there in the chats. I have too many jobs irl to stream so this is all i got.
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/rNVCYuRVkt

If you like what i do and appreciate the detail and work I put into things, then consider checking out the patreon, but you really do not have to just your views and comments on youtube and in my discord are enough to warm the fires.

Patreon for Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/c/_MasterT

Important Levelling Extra Tips:

Before you read the levelling tips, make sure you do this early on to make the swapping at different tiers feel better.

Level Less Duration Support and a Lightning Warp and an Arrogance Support in your weapon swap. These gems are swapped to later on, and feel bad if you swap to them at low levels.

You also want to be levelling a Wrath and Discipline aura in your weapon swap because you will be swapping to them at the end of campaign.

After that, buy a bunch of lightning tendril of eccentricity off trade when you can, and put them in your weapon swap to level them and then quality + vaal them later for a 21/20 gem.

Act 1 How To Tendrils Early on:

- After Killing Hillock, pick up Lightning Tendrils as your quest reward. You can start using this skill right away.
- The skill feels slow on the first 3-4 levels, when you get cast speed on the tree it will feel better. Range is low but you will get used to it, gets better later.
- Use your wisdom scrolls to get ARMOUR Bases, these will make you tankier since Tendrils is very squishy early on because you stand very close to kill things. Use 2 wands for first half of act 1 to give yourself high damage to kill things fast. Make sure to check Nessa for Flat Damage wands, those are the best. Only swap to a shield when you get Orb of Storms
- Temporarily use Added Cold Damage Support instead of Arcane Surge Support the cold damage will chill enemies, helps with defenses this early.
- For Shield Charge you will use Momentum Support and later on pick up Faster Attacks Support and use a 3 link setup for it. If you do not have a 3 link yet, use Faster Attacks Support until you can fit momentum.
- Once you get orb of storms, your gameplay will look like this:
Shield Charge / Frostblink around, dropping Orb of Storms + Lightning Tendrils on magic packs, and moving along. Same thing for a boss.

- Pick up as many blue and rare items as you can, and vendor them unidentified for Transmute Shards/Orbs. You will need these to craft fire res on everything in act 2.
- Buy 2 iron rings, and 2 random blue gems and vendor them together to get 2 sapphire rings. These will help you face tank everything in the merveil boss fight.

Act 2 How To Swap to RF:

Your gameplay in act 2 will get much faster now, you will no longer need to use Orb + Tendrils on magic packs. Righteous Fire will take care of most white mobs and magic mobs just tendrils them.

- In order to swap to righteous fire, you NEED THE FIRE MASTERY FOR OVERCAPPED FIRE RES TURNS INTO LIFE REGEN, and to craft fire res on all your gear, every single one. Buy white armour bases off the vendor and craft fire res on them if you dont have bases with open suffixes. The only exception is boots, if you have movement speed boots but no fire res on them its okay.
- You will do the same iron ring trick but with red gems now to get 2 Ruby rings, and craft fire res on them too
- You will be using Wave of Conviction to apply exposure to enemies for single target.

- IMPORTANT: Your Righteous Fire will degen you more based on how much LIfe and ES you have. Unless you're a god, you will never have enough life in campaign for it to degen through your regen. But if you equip too much ES Gear, it will start burning you. You should only equip ES Gear once you swap to Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion later on.

And from now on you will be cruising along nearly immortal, the rest of the levelling section will not require any changes to how you play your skills or how you will gear your character. Just make sure to upgrade your armour bases as you go, otherwise you will eventually start to feel the hits coming in.

Act 3 and 4:

In Act 3, you will be self casting a Elemental Weakness curse, and adding in new auras.
In the labyrinth, use blue gems to try to hit Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion you will be swapping to this Later, but its good to try to rng into getting one now.

In Act 4,, you will be getting the Liege of the Primordial ascendancy and equipping Summon Stone Golem Summon Lightning Golem and Summon Flame Golem. You will Add Summon Chaos Golem to your gem links, but you will NOT summon it until later when you get Golem Commander (Inefficient to path to it this early if you're not relying on the dot multi bonus) These golems will solve your mana regen, life regen, and aoe, and later on chaos res.
- You will now no longer be using Righteous fire as a source of main damage, it will still do Alot of damage and clear white monsters but your main clearing skill is going to be Lightning Tendrils now.
- You will also be using an Arcanist Brand to automate your curse + wave of conviction. MAKE SURE TO LINK YOUR Arcanist brand FIRST, THEN Conductivity THEN Wave of Conviction in the gem links. It goes in order and you need the lightning res down so that wave can apply lightning exposure.
- You can now breeze through on this setup with no big changes until the time for the staff swap

Do Not Level Clarity or Vitality Above Level 12. That is the sweet spot for regen and not reserving too much of your life.

You will only be swapping to a max level clarity way way in the end game.

Act 7 Staff Swap and Important Tip if you Got An Early 5 Link:

You will continue then till your next swap at Act 7 After 2nd Lab. This is a good point to pause and fix any gaps in resistances or bad gear that you didnt change earlier.
- You will now be using Any Staff With Attack Block Implicit and Attack Block on the Suffix (optional, but ideal) and Craft cast speed on it.
- If you can afford one, pick up a Marylene's Fallacy. If you can not afford it yet (league mechanic usually drops alot of currency if you've been doing it) then continue using Elemental Overload but make sure to pick that up as your first purchase, ideally with a high roll of crit multiplier.
- You will also drop Righteous Fire now and use Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion. This version gives you Cast speed instead of Spell damage, and has a much weaker Degen on you so you dont need as much regen to counter it. Summon Stone Golem and Vitality fully carry your regen.
- If you were not able to find Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion in your first or 2nd lab, and its too expensive on trade, then you can skip it entirely until you farm for it in 3rd lab or can buy it. Do Not Finish Campaign without this, it makes everything Much stronger and Smoother for mapping.

IF You have a 5 Link at this point, Your gem links for Lightning Tendrils will be:
Lightning Tendrils Controlled Destruction Support Arcane Surge Support Infused Channelling Support Lightning Penetration Support

You will only use Inspiration Support when you get a 6 link and can combine it with Focused Channelling Support.

End of Campaign/Start of Maps:

When you Finish Campaign, you will be swapping off of haste since you now have Arcane devotion RF giving you the cast speed, and instead switch to Wrath and Discipline instead.

This will be your main time to pause, and fix up your gear before you blast through early map progression in peace.
- Xirgil's Crank is a VERY powerful defensive and offensive option this early on, and can carry you into the endgame. The price of this drops very quickly, every hour it drops in price so buy it as soon as you can afford it. You will allocate Wicked Ward only when you have this.

Some other note worthy uniques to pick up at this stage are:

Geofri's Crest gives a very good amount of armour es, and a load of resistances including chaos res.
Berek's Grip VERY important to pick this up as soon as you can, this heavily offsets the build's weakness to chaos damage and chaos degens.

The rest of the gear just pick up some good armour es gear (Roughly 2k ES is a good number to aim for, with your golem alive), cap your res, aim for around 30-50% chaos res if you can.
A ring with cast speed will also feel very good.
Please dont torture yourself, roll a life flask with instant recovery and corrupted blood immunity on it.
Happy blasting.

Instructions for Progressing Beyond This:

The Rest of the Instructions for Progression are given in The Build Variants Tabs above this section. It will have everything you need, do not skip it.

Skill Rotations For Non Whisper Setup:

Mapping:

Lightning Warp into a pack, zap it with Lightning Tendrils, lightning warp to next pack. In the endgame setup its the same thing, but instead of Warp you will use Frostblink of Wintry Blast.

Once you pick up Pact of Lycia you will be popping it whenever you need a large damage boost, like harvest or ritual or breach rares in the middle etc etc. You also use Frost Shield for extra defense

Bossing:

Use Arcanist Brand for your debuffs and curses, Pop Frost Shield (Try to make yourself be in it, but the boss outside it) and Pact of Lycia, use Lightning Tendrils. If the boss moves just move after it with your movement skill and continue.

Skill Rotations for Whisper Setup:

Mapping:

At the start of the map, you want to Frostblink of Wintry Blast into one or 2 packs DO NOT Kill them, this will give you your initial full 45 soul eater stacks. After this you can blast normally, Blink into packs, Lightning Tendrils, blink to next pack. The occassional straggling enemy will give you a soul to maintain your stack uptime. This is best in High Density content, if you are running unjuiced maps you wont have good uptime.

You can just hold down Lightning Tendrils and never let go of the button. Whenever you arent spamming your frostblink button, it will just register that you are pressing your tendrils button and immediately start casting it again. I preferred putting Tendrils on Spacebar so when im ultra lazy i lean back in my chair, put my foot on the spacebar, and put my frostblink on the mouse side buttons.

Bossing:

Frostblink of Wintry Blast on the boss, wait a sec, do it again, wait a sec, do it again. this will give you your full 45 souls, Pop Pact of Lycia and then Lightning Tendrils.

Crafting Notes:

Early game just buy your gear off trade or pick it up off the floor or gamble for it.

This is how I would craft the Red Maps blasting and beyond endgame gear

ALLFLAME CRAFTING IMPORTANT TIP FOR 3.29 ALLFLAME LEAGUE:

Almost every single crafting step here can be used in the Allflame crafting bench. So any of the steps mentioned that have any SPOOKY rng in them, do those in the allflame crafting bench. You can even slam veiled orbs in the allflame bench (you cant unveil it in there though ofc)

Staff Crafting:

I have a video for this too:

https://youtu.be/JpKedRJ9qfw

- Get any rare staff Item lvl 77+ (77 is the lowest lvl required for +4 lightning) with 25% Spell Block Implicit
Modifiers you want are +2 All Spell Skills, and ANOTHER rare staff with +4 Lightning Spell Skills. (You can also alteration spam to get these modifiers on 2 different bases, will take quite a bit of alt spam though.)
(The fewer other mods on the staff, the better)
- Use Kishara's Ducat in the Allflame Crafting Bench. This will split your item into multiples each with 1 mod, you are aiming to get a base with ONLY spell skills on it, and ONLY lightning spell skills on it. (You do not have to do this if you used alteration orbs to get the modifier)
- Put a random crafted suffix on both bases (this will reduce dust cost)
- Recombinate using the Random Mod Selection 100% Chance Recombinator option. This is the rng step, if you pass this step then congratulations you're basically done. If you fail, you go get more bases and do it again.

Once you are done with recombinating you will have a base with +2 All spell, +4 All Lightning Spell.
IF Your Final Base Also has TWO Suffixes on it, you need to Craft Prefixes cannot be changed, and Scour it. ONE suffix is okay though. And THEN Continue with the following steps.
- Craft can have multiple crafted mods
- Craft lowest tier mana on the prefix (any non veil mod works but just do this for safety)
- Craft prefixes cannot be changed.
- Slam a Veiled Chaos in the allflame bench. (You do not want ANY other suffixes thats why you want to do it in the allflame bench and pick the option without other suffixes. If you get EXTREMELY unlucky and it Full fills your suffixes you have to yolo annul a suffix, if you miss you have to start over) You can also use a Veiled exalt to skip all potential bad rng on this step.
Pick the option that has No other suffixes once you get it
- Craft fire damage over time multiplier to block those mods from showing up in the unveil (Any damage over time Multiplier works to block all of them)
- Unveil the item. The best modifier to hit here is Chance to Deal Double Damage or Cast Speed. IF you hit cast speed, you will need to use 3 more mana regen tattoos on your tree to compensate the extra cost per second. You are almost done now
- Craft can have multiple crafted mods
- Craft chance to block attack damage
- Craft Spell Dmg + Mana regen prefix.

Try to divine the item to get better rolls on the attack block since you cant just recraft it (use allflame to divine it its easier)

EXTRA STEP:
Use Tempering Orbs until you hit Caster/Mana/Speed(if you have cast speed on suffix) enchant. Nice little bit of extra dmg on top. (You can do this in the allflame bench as well)

Body, Helmet, Gloves Armour pieces:

I reforge defense on harvest or if dense fossils are cheap i just use those until I get good prefixes, then I eldritch chaos for the suffixes.

If you need chaos res, you can do prefix cannot be changed reforge chaos.
For attributes, you can do prefix cannot be changed reforge Attributes, or use eldritch chaos.

Rings:

Early Rings:

Reforge Chaos on harvest guarantees chaos res, do this until you get mana regen rate and also ideally cast speed on a Moonstone ring base or amethyst base.

For the endgame mana regen rings (Check which build variant uses what ring you need)
(THIS IS NOT THE HIGH BUDGET WHISPER SETUP RING, The Prefix Unveil is different for those)

Get a fractured +2 - 3 unset ring, or not if you cant find one. You can also get fractured ES on the prefix.
Use Deafening Misery Essences until you get your Strength or All Elemental Res and 1 open suffix. (If no open suffix, yolo annul to get one) Getting strength is only good if you do not have enough on the other gear, if you already have your attributes sorted then go for All Ele res, or Chaos res, Cast speed works too but dont go too high on cast speed you'll end up spending too much mana.
When you have a base with Whatever suffix you desired, mana regen, open suffix, and open prefix, you're all set.
Use the Allflame Crafting Bench + Brinehook's Ducat to get a 1-4 chance to hit Aspect of SOLARIS. If you miss, you have to try to annul it off, if you miss the annul you have to start essence spamming again.

For the prefixes
Craft suffixes cannot be changed, veiled Chaos. You can veiled exalt here, if the veiled chaos fills your prefixes you have to yolo annul and if you miss its over you restart so its upto you. (Allflame bench helps alot with this step with veiled chaos)
You want your suffixes done, 1 veiled prefix, and 1 open prefix minimum.
Then you craft mana on the prefix, and unveil. This is a 3/4 chance to hit, it will block all the trash mana mods, and leave you with the +life and mana regen mod, which is the one you want. The life is irrelevant we just care about the mana regen.
If you hit the 1/4 sad roll and Miss your unveil, you will need to do suffixes cannot be changed Veiled chaos or exalt again.
Once you get the unveil done, just craft -cost for channeling and you're all done.

High Budget Whisper Ring:

Running out of space in this section, the steps on how to make that are in the High Budget Whisper Setup Build Variant Tab above.

Belt:

Reforge Chaos or Envy Essence. In the Red Maps Blasting variant and above you will be doing this until you get a Minimum of 25% Flask charges gained, or 25% Flask effect duration. This will give you the uptime you need on all your flasks, its not 100% uptime but its around 89-100% which is more than enough, your flask would turn off 2 minutes or so after you turn it on with 89% uptime, if you havent killed something in two whole minutes what is happening man

Abyss Jewel

There isnt a great way to craft one of these, just buy one off trade priority stats are:
Crit Multi
Cast speed
Flat Lightning Damage

Try to get Corrupted Blood immunity here if other jewel doesnt have it.

Flasks:

Coruscating Elixir is mandatory it is how you do not die to chaos damage on low life.

Always roll your own flasks, use alteration orbs.

You want a Topaz Flask and a Sapphire Flask with:
- minimum of 30% Increased Charge Recovery OR 30% Increased Duration
- One of them needs Additional Elemental Resistances during effect on the suffix

-The other will have a Crafted Suffix for 50% chance to avoid stun (This mod also exists naturally so if you hit it naturally, you dont need to craft it its the same thing. just make sure its minimum 50%)

-You need minimum 50% avoid stun to combine that with 25% on glove craft and 25% on helm craft to be 100% stun avoid.

You NEED REUSED AT THE END OF FLASK EFFECT Enchant on ALL your flasks. If you put "USED WHEN CHARGES REACH FULL" This will have the chance that your Coruscating Elixir turns off, and you die.

Boots:

Boots are very simple. Reforge Defense or Dense Fossils or Just buy a base with high armour es prefixes.
- If you need chaos res, prefixes cannot be changed reforge chaos.
- If you need attributes, prefixes cannot be changed reforge Attributes. (Or use eldritch chaos, but can get more expensive if bad rng)
- You need one open suffix to craft Avoid Bleeding

Early game, you will craft avoid bleed and use a bleed avoidance jewel
Late game, you will use Greater Eldritch Ichors to get 38% Avoid bleed, and use an orb of conflict to raise it to Grand (this way is cheaper than spamming very expensive Grand ichors)

Jewels:

Jewels are INCREDIBLY easy to craft with the allflame league mechanic, heres 2 different ways:

- Buy a 2-3 mod rare jewel with all mods you want, and one open slot.
- Take it to the allflame bench, and exalt it with the allflame. You get multiple options, hope that you get something good.
OR
- Buy a full 4 mod jewel, with 3 mods that you want.
- Allflame bench Annul it, hoping to remove the 4th bad mod.
- Then allflame bench exalt it.

OR

Alteration Augment spam until 2 mods, then Allflame Regal and hope you get your 3rd mod, then allflame exalt the 4th.

I have made VERY strong jewels like this easily.

Desired mods in order of strength:
- Crit Multi with Lightning Skills
- Crit Multi with Spell Damage / Elemental Skills
- Cast speed while wielding a staff / Cast speed with Lightning Skills
- Global Crit Multi
- Cast speed OR Attack and Cast speed

And defensively,
%Max ES. I would value this first before damage.

Use this trade search to find your bases, if these get price fixed then just go with the alteration augment spam method to make your own bases.
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Allflame/X3rRm5QeuP

Clusters:

For your large clusters you want them all to be 8 passive only, NOT 9 passive or above.
For the small, you want it to be a 2 passive NOT 3.

Spell Damage Cluster:

You will use Reforge Attack on the Harvest Bench.
Its roughly a 1 in 20 chance to get Essence Rush and Arcane Adept Together.
Now you need ANY THIRD NOTABLE PASSIVE, if there isnt already a random 3rd one here then:
- If there is an open prefix, use the Allflame Bench and An Exalted Orb, hope that it gives you a notable passive in the result. (The reason you want an open prefix, is Essence Rush is already a suffix, and cluster jewels can only have 1 notable suffix passive and 2 notable prefix passives)
- If there is no open prefix, or you miss the exalt, then try to annul and try again.
- If you annul Essence Rush or Arcane Adept, go back to the harvest bench and start reforging again.

You want Essence Rush and Arcane Adept with any 3rd notable. Once you get 3 notables, put it in your passive tree to make sure Essence rush and adept are in the right spots, and you're done.

Lightning Damage Cluster:

You will reforge lightning on the Harvest Bench.

For All the Early - Endgame Setups, The only thing you care about is Overshock and ANY other 2 notables. It is a 1 in 20 to get Overshock with any other notable.
Once you get Overshock, if there is only 1 other notable but not 2 other ones, then:
If there is an open prefix or suffix, use the Allflame Bench and An Exalted Orb, hope that it gives you a notable passive in the result.
- If there are no open slots, or you miss the exalt, then try to annul and try again.
- If you annul Overshock, then go back to the harvest bench and start reforging again.

Once you get Overshock with any 2 other notables on it, you are done.

For the High Budget Setups:

You want Overshock and Storm Drinker Both. The steps are the same as above, you will reforge lightning until you get Both of these mods. It is roughly a 1 in 75 to get it, and then use the exalt/annul step to get any 3rd notable passive.

These are very easy to hit, please dont be silly trying to buy exact 1-1 clusters off trade when i've specifically said you just need the 1 or 2 notables with ANY last one.

Small Cluster:

For the Enduring Composure cluster, just reforge defense like 10-15 times and you'll hit it its stupidly easy.

You can get attributes or res on these clusters, or damage or more cast speed or ES, i havent included any mods in the pob to keep it simple.

Timeless jewel:

You want a Brutal Restraint (Balbala The Traitor) timeless jewel. You dont need any specific mods on the seed, but the best ones are the following:

- Onslaught on kill, very nice.
- Frenzy on kill, I like onslaught more but this is same power, onslaught is faster.
- Movement speed, Ailment Effect, Aura Effect. All 3 of these mods are the same power. Movement speed might not be that good if you fully get used to blinking around.
- Chance to Avoid Being Stunned. If you get one of these here, this combined with a 55% chance to avoid on your flask, and 25% on gloves, it gives you 100% and you can skip needing to get the remaining 20% on a jewel.
- Increased flask charges gained, if you get 2 of these you can skip the mod for increased flask charges gained on your belt, could use a darkness enthroned in that scenario.

What Spectres Do I Use? (WHISPER SETUP ONLY)

(For a detailed guide on how spectres work please check the FAQ section below)

The build uses a Perfect Spirit of Fortune and A Perfect Warlord in the whisper ring setup. It uses a 3rd Spectre, a Perfect Guardian Turtle, in the high budget setup.

Spirit of Fortune gives you Wrath and Lucky lightning damage, which is ALOT of damage for lightning builds.

Warlord gives aoe endurance charges, and vitality.

Guardian Turtle gives you a big determination aura.

All 3 of these are Itemized Corpse spectres so they will be acquired off trade. They all respawn if they die so do not worry about losing them that way, you can only lose them if you do the things I've mentioned in the guide on how spectres work in the next section.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

How does the Balbala Timeless Jewel work?

To explain this in simple terms, it gives you flask charges based on how many empty flask slots you have. So if you have multiple empty flask slots, it gives you a TON of flask charges to let you get perma uptime on certain flasks, if a build relies on certain flasks for alot of power.

In this build, we only need ONE empty flask slot, combined with the body armour implicit for another flask charge, and a little bit of charge gain/flask duration boost from the belt, we get full uptime on FOUR resistance flasks (the other types of flasks can not work here, they have different durations and charge numbers)

How are you surviving chaos damage with such low life?

Brutal Restraint (Balbala The Traitor), combined with flask charge implicit on body armour, and flask charges gained on the belt gives full flask uptime of Coruscating Elixir which prevents chaos damage from bypassing ES.
Before balbala jewel, the build is weak to chaos damage it only has around 1-1.5k life vs chaos dmg, I use an instant life flask and i pay attention to my life bar, life leech items like Berek's Grip help ALOT with this too do not unequip that ring until you get balbala.

I am still dying to chaos damage! Why!?

Your flask is turning off or isnt on. Make sure you activate your flasks at the start of the map, and have REUSED AT THE END OF FLASK EFFECT on it so that they have full uptime.

I feel very squishy what am i doing wrong?

You need to be upgrading your armour es gear, early on the build has very few mitigation layers outside of block and regen so if you are not upgrading your armour to match the tier of content you are in you will start to feel the hits.
Make sure you read the BIG NO NO at the top of this page and did not jump the gun on what tier you are at.

My damage feels low

Early on your damage should absolutely not feel low, even with a naked character and the gems so if its low that early please show a clip of gameplay in my discord help channel (discord linked at the top of the page)
For later stages, make sure you have good cast speed on your rings, or good jewels, your amulet annoint.
Make sure you read the BIG NO NO at the top of this page and did not jump the gun on what tier you are at.

What the hell is Nature's Affinity doing to me:

Refer to the video guide for it it's hard to explain in words, but tldr it makes you slower when you stand still but gives you a ton of defense and damage, and if you want to move again just blink out of it dont walk out of it.

Why is my Righteous Fire Turning Off??

You need Eternal Youth allocated. This prevents your life from ever hitting 1 (rf turns off at 1 hp) from Coruscating Elixir as it Instantly recharges above 1 thanks to the keystone, letting RF stay on.

You NEED REUSED AT THE END OF FLASK EFFECT Enchant on ALL your flasks. If you put "USED WHEN CHARGES REACH FULL" It will make your Coruscating Elixir get spam used and the life recharge wont be able to keep up and it will flick your RF off.

My RF Degen is bad.

Stone Golem with 20-30% Quality solves majority of the build's degen issue vs RF. Just make sure you do not have over 1200 Mana (Arcane Devotion RF burns you more based on your mana).

And please actually make sure you are using Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion and not regular Righteous Fire.

Gem Quality/Colored Socket Priority?

Lightning Tendrils > Less Duration > Flame, Stone, Lightning Golem > Infused Channeling Support > Arrogance Support > Chaos Golem > Righteous Fire > Purity of elements > Annihilation

All other damage support gems in your main links have the same benefit so quality whatever in any order.

This same order applies to what socket colors you need to prioritize to give those gems even more quality.

Do not bother qualitying your curses, or arcanist brand, or wave of conviction, or any of your auras besides purity. It does nothing.

I feel really squishy even on the high budget setups:

A watcher's eye with ES gain on hit while affected by discipline is a MASSIVE defense boost, get that as early as you can.

Why 3 Raise Spectre Gems?

The 3 raise spectre gem in gloves are just for the pob to config that you have 3 spectres. You will only be putting ONE raise spectre gem in there.

Do I absolutely NEED to use spectres in the whisper swap and above setups?

You don't NEED to, but its a massive damage and tank loss. All good players in poe now use spectres since they respawn on death and give very very powerful buffs, so you shouldnt be scared of them anymore. Read the answer below if you are a complete noob on spectres.

How do Spectres Work? (Detailed Answer)

I will eventually make a dedicated video explaining this but the summary is this:

Spectres are special corpses you can raise that give very strong buffs, these buffs can be regular Auras like Wrath, hatred, determination etc, or buffs like Onslaught, increased action speed, or applying strong debuffs on the enemy.

You raise a spectre by casting Raise Spectre onto these corpses.

Some spectres you can raise directly from the floor in a map, these are your Regular spectres. Once you raise a spectre like this it gets added into your "Spectre bank" which is the corpses that spawn when you use Desecrate (by default it just spawns bones). This spectre bank allows players to share spectres with each other, there is a whole global channel /global 6666 for people doing this, making it much easier than going into a map searching for spectres.

The other, far stronger, version of spectres are Itemized Ritual Corpse Spectres. These spectres spawn inside Ritual shop windows, and can be Traded to other players. Once a player summons this corpse spectre, they cannot be shared to other people, and it does not get added to your spectre bank. You right click the corpse in your inventory to turn it into a corpse on the floor (can not be undone) and then cast Raise Spectre on it.

All spectres respawn on their own when you leave the map if they died in the map so there is no way to end up Losing your spectres, especially if the ritual ones you bought were expensive.

HOWEVER, you CAN permanently lose your ritual corpse spectres if you do something stupid. The only way to lose your spectres would be to UNEQUIP your raise spectre gem, this will make your spectres turn back into corpses on the floor, and if you Leave your hideout while they are a corpse on the floor they will despawn.

The other way would be be messing aroudn with your attributes, and losing the attributes for the item the spectre gem is in (which works the same way as if you just unequipped the item) and then didnt fix your attributes and raise them again.

The last way would be to Do either of the 2 above things, INSIDE a map. if you despawn your spectres in a map they will not turn into corpses on the floor they will just disappear forever, so please dont randomly strip inside a public map.

So to summarize, do not mess around with gear and forget to resummon your spectres. and dont strip inside a map you perv.

How do you get 2-3 Max Spectres?

Death Attunement gives +1 max in the endgame setup, and a raise spectre gem at lvl 13 gives a max total of 2. But please use a lvl 21 gem, it gives your spectres alot more survivability.

In the high budget setup, your spectre gem reaches lvl 25 (21 from gem, +2 from staff, +2 from empower). A level 25 gem has a base max spectre count of 3 spectres.

My Spectres are Dying sometimes?

Your spectre survivability relies on you to kill things fast. The faster you kill, the less hits they take, the more they will survive. The build gets psychotic amounts of power when it starts using spectres so just make sure you're doing a nice clean sweep of monsters around you. They can still die Sometimes, but thats okay the build isn't Relying on them to do damage, it has plenttty of damage even if they die sometimes.

Why Cant I fit all my auras?

For the auras that reserve mana, please make sure you have Mana reservation efficiency on your helmet in the red map blasting setup.
Before that, you need to be specced into the Influence wheel on the tree

For the auras that reserve LIFE in your Arrogance Support make sure your clarity is Level 9, not anything above that. You can right click the level up + icon when it pops up on the right side of your screen to block a gem from being able to be levelled further than that, so when your clarity hits 9 and is ready to be levelled to 10, just right click the + and you're all good.

Make sure to check the level of your clarity gem. At different progression tiers the level is slightly different. You can lower the level of your gem by vendoring 1 Orb of Scouring + the Gem, this will reduce the level by 1 each time.

The New Roiling Tempest Keystone:

Roiling Tempest is a very powerful keystone to use but ONLY on the whisper setup. If you have low cast speed, the Low rolls of lightning damage feel really really bad even though PoB shows more damage. With high cast speed from soul eater, you do not notice the low rolls at all.

This keystone makes Annihilation Support's cold and fire damage explosions do 0 damage, but you will never actually notice this in maps so dont worry about it.

What Does Light of Solaris Aspect Do and How to Get it?

This is a new Aspect you get from using the Brinehook's Ducat in the allflame crafting bench.

This has 2 components, first it just applies fire exposure to nearby enemies but this build does not care about it.

The other is that it gives Stacks of Sunscald, a debuff that increases the effect of ALL exposure, 15% per stack and stacking up to 5 stacks. Very powerful on elementalist since our ascendancy gives us a very big base exposure.

Pob does not calculate this on its own so the config has the notes mathed out for 4 stacks of Sunscald

Can I Keep Using the Pariah Ring on the No Whisper Setup?

The pariah ring's price shot up Alot, so I removed it from the build and replaced it with a rare ring. If you have a high ES roll pariah ring you can definitely still keep using it in the no whisper setup with no other changes required you just need to equip 2 Mana Regen Tattoos.

REGEX:

-For NON Whisper Setup:
"!te of|ced f|em$|rch$|t reg|^au"

-For WHISPER Setup:
"!te of|ced f|em$|rch$|ills$|t reg|re he|^au"

These are all the things that i personally do not like running, it includes the brick mods like no regen, and v annoying ones like Searing Exarch runes. It still includes some rippy mods like Reduced Chance to Block.

For -max res maps, RF Will degen you a little. Only use it if you feel confident that you can quickly go through the map and rely on your es leech and gain on hit to push you up from the rf degen.

Burning ground + - max is brutal, use Abberath pantheon for those maps.

BE VERY CAREFUL IF FARMING RED ALTARS. DO NOT PICK THE MODIFIER THAT STOPS YOUR FLASKS FROM GAINING CHARGES.

Bandits and Pantheon?

Kill all Bandits.

Pantheon
Early game you want Major pantheon to be Brine King, you dont need to upgrade it you just need the stun immunity and stun recovery. Minor can be based on what youre farming. Burning ground immunity for red altars, shakari for if you want some extra defense vs chaos, or tukohama for baseline tankiness and regen.
Once you get your stun avoidance to 100%, you will swap to Solaris for crit immunity as your major pantheon.
For minor, Tukohama for defense or Abberath for Burning ground immunity

Specific Attribute Requirements?

The build needs Exactly 173 strength, 98 dex, and 173 Intelligence in the endgame. To do this, you will need a total of 88 Strength and 53 Dexterity on your Gear. (in the high budget setup this goes to 108 Strength, since 2 strength nodes will be tattoo'ed) You can get Most of that strength on your belt, and through crafted suffix on your body armour, and Dexterity on your gloves.

This is just to help people get an idea for the attribute numbers they need to aim for.

You can also use the new Genteel's Ducat in 3.29 Allflame league to swap one attribute into a different one to get the one you need.

- 23rd July 2026
Guide Posted

- 25th July 2026
PoB Updated for 3.29

- 26th July 2026
Full Written Guide Overhaul, You will now level with lightning tendrils from act 1 because its op, the levelling instructions are much more indepth, and there is a full section on when and how to progress in the tiers of the build and what gear you will need for it.

29th July 2026
Big changes to how the build solves mana costs. We no longer use Empower support as it was heavily inflating mana costs but the damage benefit wasnt high enough to make it worth it.

- We now use inspiration support in Tendrils.
- There were reports of spectres feeling squishy, so there is now a 3rd extremely tanky spectre that gives you and other spectres Endurance charges. Also investing some points into their survivability on the tree.
- Moved some block points around to get cap block, and more aoe from the staff wheel, and recover es on block from the staff wheel too.
- Ring craft no longer needs the mana cost efficiency roll. You can now go back to doing the safer easier option of unveiling mana regen by blocking life (crafting notes have been updated)
- No one is farming abyss so good abyss jewels are very scarce, switching the build to using Cobalt jewels which are EXTREMELY easy to make with allflame crafting (crafting notes added)
- Body armour and helmet implicit no longer need mana implicits, updated those to be stronger mods.
- The farrul bloodline wasnt giving us alot, so it is being swapped to Shaper of Flames for a big defense boost vs phys damage.

31st July 2026

Massive Update for the No Whispers setup, that version now has it's own endgame variant for those that dont want to play around Soul Eater stacks and just want to stand still and chill. The guide is now also even more detailed by moving the levelling instructions into the Build Variant tabs to have more character limit to explain everything.

- Added new endgame variant for non whisper enjoyers
- Added BEAUTIFUL Visual Explosions using Herald of Ice into Both the endgame no whisper setup as well as the whispers setup.
- Updated some of the crafting steps on clusters and boots
- Added Herald of Ice as a aura swap for mapping
- Added Pact of Lycia and how/when to use it because it is absolutely insane damage.
- Added more instructions on how to make swaps for the people that had trouble getting their setup done properly.

5th August 2026

Massive Updates for All Setups. Support gem changes, new setups, gear optimizations to make it much simpler to follow and craft, corruptions removed, expensive uniques removed (mostly). Whisper setup new identity vs non whisper.

- New high budget setups for both endgame playstyles.
- Whisper setup passive tree overhaul, it is now 2x stronger than Non Whisper and uses Roiling Tempest instead of Unholy Trinity Support
- Thread of Hope Replaced with Light of Meaning
- Whisper Setup Annoint Changed
- Pariah Removed from the build because its price is now far too expensive, replaced with a rare ring with -channeling, allowing use of Focused Channelling Support for more damage on all progression tiers (Thank you to KUN in the discord for the inspiration for this)
- All corrupted implicits removed in the gear to prevent casuals from being targetted by massive price fixers, corrupted implicits are NOT necessary for the build they just add an extra layer of damage that you can go for if you watch the video and understand the scaling of the build.
- Added more specifics on how to get explode and what gem swaps are done for uber bossing vs mapping.
- Boots no longer use the ailment effet unveil, making them much easier to craft at all stages.
- Added new crafting notes for everything, you can guarantee chaos res or attributes on your gear without needing to go bankrupt on eldritch chaos.
- The build no longer uses the Guardian Turtle spectre until you reach the High Budget Whisper setup. This is to let you get the hang of your spectres before buying such an expensive spectre.
- The build continues using Heart of Destruction in all versions now so no more feeling like your AoE is small and puny. Enjoy nice big pops.
- Build now continues to use The Wise Oak in all variants because its very good and very cheap and continues to make gearing extremely easy, and makes you tankier.
- Whisper Setup no longer uses Oriath's End and uses Annihilation Support, this is cheaper and better overall.

9th August 2026

- Updated the crafting notes for the Large Clusters to make them easier to understand
- The spell damage cluster is now much easier to craft with a tip from mr johnsilton4489 in the youtube comments.
- Added a note to Not select the red altar modifier that turns off your flask charge generation.

10th August 2026

- Added a Crafting Video on how to make the High Budget +6 levels Rare Staff for those that were struggling on following the written steps

11th August 2026

- Cleaned up ALOT of the irrelevant clutter in the guide, more cleanup will be done later.
- Added some more info into the levelling instructions to make them easier to follow without confusions.
- Xirgil's Crank and Berek's Grip have been moved further into the levelling progression as they will most likely not be available on trade early on unless you are 12-24 hours into the league. You will just use any rare stick off the ground until you can afford to Crank it, and Berek's will be picked up as soon as you can in maps to help with the Chaos Degens.
- Fixed the gem quality numbers in pob, it updated to now be able to see socket colors so i dont need to manually set +10 quality to things.

- VERY IMPORTANT: Sigil of Power was never reaching 4 stages fast enough for it to be viable in most situations, it reached at most 2 - 3 stages so it has been replaced with Frost Shield in all stages of the build, frost shield does not give any Damage but it gives defense that Sigil of power wasnt actually giving because it never reached max stages.
- You will replace sigil of power with Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion in your ring slot, and put frost shield where your RF originally was.

In the WHISPER Swap, Frost shield is not used. Instead, you just use Pact of Lycia all the time, giving you that massive damage boost when you need it, and making there be one less gem swap to do if you want to swap from mapping to bossing.