Level 96 Hybrid Exsanguinate of Transmission Trickster^3.27

Notes

GENERAL NOTES (read this at least lol):
- Replica Dragonfang's Flight with Exsanguinate might be very expensive, because it is used by Exsang Miners - don't focus on it, it's a min-max item
- Experiment with the playstyle you prefer - either Exsanguinate + Chain (swap Chain for Swift Affliction for bosses if dps is low) - or Exsanguinate of Transmission + Unleash
- I personally prefer the Transmission + Unleash route as it is much smoother (one cast to get all stacks of dmg on enemies) - but later on you might have enough damage to drop Unleash and kill packs with a single cast of regular Exsang, or Exsang of Trans + Swift Affliction
- You might be tempted to use Perfect Agony but that will NOT work because it only applies to DoT from AILMENTS, and this is not the case for Exsanguinate



Notes on Early Game (going through the Acts)
- The skill sets for acts are a bit scuffed - sorry about that, I ran out of time and focused more on the endgame :(   There is a general layout though
- I like swapping to my target skills as soon as possible, but you need to know that Exsanguinate/Reap are pretty meh in the acts. Feel free to use any other known good spell for leveling and swap later.
- Use Life Leech Support if using Exsanguinate or Reap becomes difficult
- Remember to do the Siosa quest in Act 3



Source of LIFE LEECH
(read this for info on Life Leech Support Gem)

Both Exsanguinate and Reap require Life to cast so you either need to get good regen or some source of leech for physical damage. While there are plenty of sources for Physical ATTACK Leech, that won't work here because we use a Spell, not Attack.
We are looking for either "spell life leech" (pretty much non-existent) or "physical damage leech" (notice no "attack"). There are a few options for the latter, described below.

You will probably start with plain old Life Leech Support Gem. This is a very easy solution but the cost of not using another support gem is huge, so we want to replace it as soon as possible.

An easy replacement for Life Leech Support Gem is Doryani's Invitation Belt (WARNING! This belt has multiple versions! Make sure to get the PHYSICAL one). With that we can drop the Life Leech Support for something that gives more damage.

That belt will work for some time but we want to transition to another belt at some point: The Burden of Truth - so we need a different source of Life Leech for endgame:
1. A Watcher's Eye with "damage leeched as life while affected by Vitality" + Vitality Aura (obviously) - the cost here is a jewel slot plus the Watcher's Eye itself (a simple one with just this mod should be very cheap)
2. Eater of World's implicit on Gloves that gives "physical damage leeched as life" - this one is the most difficult to get (with good gloves anyway) but also has the lowest opportunity cost, as it doesn't require a support gem slot, belt slot or jewel slot





When to swap to The Vertex helmet?

First IMPORTANT thing: we don't just want a regular Vertex helmet, we want one with the "Socketed Skill Gems get a 90% Cost & Reservation Multiplier" Corruption Implicit. That is what allows us to use both Vitality and Herald of Purity to reserve life and to still stay above 50% Unreserved Life - 
- which is necessary for Life Overleech to work.

So only swap to The Vertex once you get one with that particular corruption.

Note: Crown of the Inward Eye technically gives more damage and EHP in some scenarios, but it is really important to use a helmet with Evasion on it because we rely on the Evasion Mastery that gives 15% chance to Suppress Damage only if all pieces of equipment have Evasion on them.

Another Note: Before getting The Vertex with the appropriate Corrupt, you might want to swap the Reservation Mastery near Chaos Innoculation from "auras have increased effect on you" to "increased life reservation efficiency" -
- that should allow you to put both Vitality and Herald of Purity on Life Reservation and still stay above 50% life (important for overleech)





Why do we use Petrified Blood and why is it important to have at least 51% of Unreserved Life?

Petrified Blood locks the top 50% of our life and prevents restoring life to above 50% (except with a Life Flask). That means that when we leech, we only reach 50% life - but our max life is 51%+.
Now, the way the game works is that it removes any Leech you have on you if you reach Max Life. But we never reach it due to this effect of Petrified Blood.
That is what creates Life Overleech - a situation where your Leech is never removed and you can keep accumulating it.
The great benefit of that is that as soon as your life drops, the lingering Leech will kick in immediatelly and replenish you back to health.

This is a very strong effect and we use two of them - both Life Overleech and Energy Shield Overleech (from Tricker's Souldrinker Node)




When to drop Vulnerability curse?

Once you get a ring with Vulnerability On Hit. Replace Vulnerability with Arcane Surge level 1 for most cast speed (always nice)




Flesh and Stone

The damage from "Blood Stance" is quite low, I personally prefer and advise to use "Sand Stance" for better survivability.




Corrupting Fever

This 4-link setup is an additional source of damage, but casting Corrupting Fever costs A LOT of Life. Be careful when using it as it can easily kill you!

Depending on how much Max Life you managed to get, you might not be able to level Corrupting Fever to max level, so keep the level of this gem adjusted to your capabilities.




Lifetap

Use Lifetap Support for those Castables that you don't have enough Mana to cast or if you notice situations where you really need to cast them but can't due to mana - Lifetap to the rescue.

You will get more mana as your progress and also less mana pressure, so you will be able to drop the Lifetaps at some point.




Watcher's Eyes

At early mapping you will probably want a Watcher's Eye that gives Life Leech from Vitality Aura (see notes on Life Leech Sources).

Once you progress further and get more currency, you might want to fish for a stronger Eye. Depending on which auras you choose (Pride, Malevolence, both?) you can fish for relevant mods on the Eyes:
- "Increased Physical Damage while using Pride"
- "Damage over Time Multiplier while using Malevolence"

An Eye with both of these might be very expensive so treat it as a min-max item. The only build-enabling mod from Watcher's Eye is the Life Leech with Vitality one and only until you can replace it (again, see notes on Life Leech Sources).





Why so many Passive Trees? I'm lost!

Sorry I did my best to describe all the options lol

For the first 90 levels just progress through the trees. Notice that sometimes there are changes in masteries, don't miss out on those

After that, trees for level 96 are separated into Normal Version and Cluster Jewel version. The difference between those is described in the section below.
If you're unsure, just go with the Normal Version

Now, both Normal Version and Cluster Jewel Version are further separated into 3 sub-trees:
* The starter one
* One with Ancestral Vision jewel
* One with Ancestral Vision + a bunch of other jewels

Start with the starter one :) Then progress to the Ancestral Vision one, as that jewel gives us ailment immunity. Notice one Ascendancy Node changes when you switch here (see dedicated section)

Then the final one with Ancestral Vision + a bunch of jewels is the ultimate one. I haven't tested it in practice, but it looks great on paper. It might be expensive, so don't fret
if you can't reach it - it's a min-max tree, we should have enough of everything to clear the game anyway. It's not really SSF-friendly either




Passive Tree - Normal Version vs Cluster Jewel Version

For the higher levels, there are two version of the Passive Tree - Normal and Cluster Jewel.

It is a case of preferrence. The Normal Version is much easier to get, especially in SSF scenarios. The Cluster Jewel version theoretically gives a bit more damage, but more importantly allows for grabbing some Chaos Resistance.

Both versions are fine




Ascendancy Change after getting Ancestral Vision Jewel

We run "One Step Ahead" Ascendancy Node for freeze immunity. However, after getting Ancestral Vision Jewel and getting to 100% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage we become immune to ailments anyway (except the ground ones).

At this point this Ascendancy Node does not really give us anything so it is worth it to swap to either Spellbreaker to get to 61% suppressed spell damage OR Heartstopper (but this one is unreliable).

(3.27 specific info) - or maybe there is some nice Bloodline to choose for this, we'll see




Why invest so much into "chance to get random charge on kill" and Charge Duration?

Mailny for Endurance Charges, because they now provide a lot of defense (they REDUCE both physical and elemental damage). No way to reliably get those unfortunately (Enduring Cry helps but is not entirely reliable),
so the best we can do is get them on kill and get some duration to hopefully keep them for the boss.

This is one of those things that seems it will be nice but will need to be verified in practice




Why are we using Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion?

It provides 25% more cast speed at the cost of self-damage based on max mana - which in our case is very low. Too good not to get.







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EXPERIMENTAL end game option - freezing with Expedition's End Armour

WARNING! I have no idea if this will work and whether it will be good to use!

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If you want to try this:
- See the relevant Item Set, which swaps to Expedition's End armour
- See the relevant Passive Tree which drops Life Mastery (useless with new armour) for a big int node (to get some more mana) and applies "chance to freeze" tatoos for a few small int nodes

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The idea is to use the Expedition's End armour piece which gives us the ability to Freeze with any damage type (not just Cold).

That itself won't Freeze, we also need some "Chance to Freeze" and we get those with tattoos on small intelligence passive nodes. We can only put around 5-6 of those and still have enough mana for other stuff, but that gives around 30% chance to freeze with each hit so should be enough.

Note that our build does quite low "on hit" damage (which is the only thing that counts for freezing) as we mostly scale the DoT part - so I'm note sure if we will actually hit hard enough to freeze anything.

But the idea of freezing entire screens of monsters with Exsanguinate of Transmission sound too cool to not at least try it :)