Armageddon Brand Trickster

Armageddon Brand Trickster - https://pastebin.com/qsPrBpHw

This was a starter build that I used for Synthesis. I was planning on it before the Trickster rework. I've always liked Ignite based builds and wanted to see where one could take me. I decided to go Trickster for the DoT nodes and for easy access to frenzy charges. Armageddon Brand was the application skill of choice due to its mobile play style. The rework gave the character strong defensive capabilities and honestly I have not hit the ceiling on this build. Its killed everything I've put it up against, aside from Cortex. That was more due to having the instance crash than anything else as I made to the Nightmare before getting unlucky.


Skills:
Armageddon Brand is the bread and butter of this build. It took a big damage hit in this patch due to its fire and forget play style. Thankfully, they did not change the 180% more damage with ignite. As such it still packs enough of a wallop to clear all the way through tier 16 maps. Combined with Brand Recall, Armageddon Brand(AB) makes for a fast clear with minimal stops.

Scorching Ray kills bosses and tougher map mobs. Getting a channeling skill into the build was even more important with the rework to Swift Killer to as a way to maintain charges during bosses. The high level version provided by Balefire is more than sufficient. While another support might offer more direct damage, Infused Channeling has synergies with your AB/ignite by providing an additional more damage multiplier to fire damage and gives you some additional damage reduction.

Lightning Warp is the movement skill of choice due to Decay in memories eating up non-teleport skills. Flame Dash is a fine alternative.

Cast when damage taken + Flame Golem + Flammability. These are all really low level to get as many procs off as possible. They're just some extra damage tools. I had a Witchfire Brew going for a while, but a level 1 Flammability is worth more damage than a perfect Witchfire even against Shaper.

I did not end up incorporating any Vaal Skills in the build. I tried out Vaal Discipline as an emergency button but it just didn't end up being necessary. If I were to keep playing the build I might try out Vaal Haste just for more speed.


Tree:
The tree it pretty straightforward. Pick up as much health and damage as possible. The only notable omission is Elemental Equilibrium. While its possible to utilize it, Armageddon Brand hits really frequently. Its also complete overkill for most of the content I was expecting to do with this character. If I was to move into a boss-farming build with this character I would attempt to incorporate EE for its damage boost.

I picked up 2 of the 30 Dex nodes so that I could equip my chest. Its sub-optimal and I would rather get the dex from some other source, but these points did the job. I had been using Carcass Jack, which is a completely legit alternative, but decided I wanted the higher life a rare chest could buy. It helps that I picked up my current chest for 70c already 6 linked. If I were to keep playing this build I'd look for other sources of Dex so I could move these points elsewhere.

A note about Patient Reaper. While Ghost Shrouds are getting all the attention, I have to point out that Patient Reaper is ridiculous. Not only is it a strong damage node, not only does the on kill restore mean you can go from pack to pack and always be at full health and ES, 70% recovery rate is insane. For a quick run down on what recovery rate does check out this wiki page, https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Recovery. Patient Reaper lets you do nonsense like this video that made it to the top of reddit. While this build doesn't focus on recovery to the extent in u/lauranthalasa's video, if I was to alter this build for doing bosses full-time I would bias it heavily in this direction.


Gear:
Balefire is a compact boss-killing tool. The damage from AB and ignite was substantial enough to deal with map mobs, but it would not kill bosses in a timely manner. Balefire gives the build a means to deal with harder mobs.

Ignite is calculated on the base damage of the hit. Any "Adds X to Y fire damage to spells" increases ignite damage. As such, Anger gives your AB/Ignite significant extra oomph. Malevolence is also excellent for the build as a more multiplier for your DoTs and the skill effect duration working with a variety of your effects. Wanting to use two 50% auras pushed me toward using Eldritch Battery. The Devouring Diadem seemed like a way to save 4-5 skill points and get EB. Diadem is surprisingly great. Feast of Flesh is a strong defensive tool. Pairing it with a Cast When Damage Taken-Desecrate setup has saved me numerous times. Its essentially a full restore on a short cooldown, though you do not have control of when it goes off.

The math worked out just right to be able to get an additional 25% reservation as well. I went with Herald of Ash. HoA gives significant damage and lends the build a feel similar to an auto-bomber. Herald of Ash chains can go off on their own and there is a lot of scaling for it. Specifically, I managed to get a Circle of Anguish craft with increased buff effect. I kept the one I made, though I would prefer to swap out for one with increased fire damage over reduced mana reservation.

As an ignite focused character, the Cinderswallow Urn is an important damage consideration. It also works really well in combination with Patient Reaper and Balefire to keep you topped up while mapping.

I bought a Watcher's Eye with "Damaging Aliments you inflict deal damage N% faster while affected by Malevolence." Hopefully you can get one paired with another good mod, either increased recovery rate or increased fire damage while affected by Anger. This is an important damage boost for the build.

Those are specific gear choices, but in general you want to focus on Life, ES, and Evasion for defense, and increased fire damage, damage over time, burning damage, flat added fire damage, and spell damage in that order. Unfortunately, while scorching ray and the hit of AB are buffed by increases to spell damage, ignite is not. Ignite is our primary clearing tool so we want to ensure its always got the priority on damage mods.


Upgrades:
There is a much higher ceiling to this build than I'm willing to pursue. Getting Synthesized gear with multiple implicits would be my preferred route. Getting Onslaught boots, Curse immunity shield, a better chest with natural ES, etc. The build is heavy on rares so there's always room for improvement if you want to invest the currency. I wanted to get an Arcane Surge ring since the build is EB, doesn't run Zealotry, and uses a unique weapon. There's some funky ways to enable it, but in the end we don't use the mana regen and don't make the best use of the spell damage so it was never worth the cost.

Since I've put the build down, they have enabled fossil/essence crafting on fractured items. My number one want for the build now would be a flammability on hit implicit on gloves or rings, which would ensure a more even application than the codt setup currently in use.


Conclusion:
Overall, I liked this build. I think its reasonably fast and much tankier than initially assumed. I think Winter Orb builds are faster and potentially tankier, but WO gear is pretty expensive and this build was absurdly cheap to get going. Even at this point its maybe 5ex total value for the gear on it, most of it being the Watcher's Eye and the Circle of Agony, neither of which are necessary. The build has two weaknesses, chaos damage and really strong dots. Interestingly, chaos damage does not interact with energy shield even if you have mind over matter. So for this build, which is leaning on mom for a permanent 30% damage reduction, it came as a hell of a surprise when I got demolished by a Chayula breach. This prompted a rejiggering of the build to incorporate more life and to pump up the chaos resistance to an acceptable level. Strong dots are a problem due to its interaction with EB. Since EB won't start recharging until you've stopped taking damage, you can find yourself without a way to cleanse the dot if the application is frequent enough and then you have no ES to cast spells.
Those issues aside, running around at full speed with phasing and watching health bars melt under the withering fire of ignite is tremendously satisfying.