Level 95 Hybrid Crit Spark Inquisitor^3.21

Notes

Hello! Welcome to my Spark carry guide for 3.21 

If you're looking for someone to group with or just want a bunch of people to talk about the build with then you should check out our Discord server. 
It's a friendly and helpful place and is a great place to ask questions.     https://discord.gg/gcZKtz7 (PoB text coloration can sometimes interfere with copying/pasting text, remove the last two characters if it's causing the link to not work)

I'll also be streaming on league start, so if you want to see these builds in action come say hi!      https://twitch.tv/haloplasm	https://www.twitch.tv/seikelp

How to configure this PoB properly when swapping between variants:
1. MAKE SURE to sync Passive Tree/Item/Skill Gem sets when swapping between versions.
2. Check which auras are enabled in the Configuration Custom Modifiers box. The Endgame version should have Hatred enabled, the rest should not.*
*If you're doing simulacrums or feared with a "Budget Endgame" aurabot, be sure swap out Haste and activate Hatred; in these 2 situations the cold damage is very important
3. There are two different strength elemental purities in the config; the weaker one is granted by the Budget Endgame aurabot, and the stronger by the Endgame one.

--Leveling--
This will be focused on gem/item acquisition/progression and tips on how to play the aurabot. Generic duo leveling and zone-by-zone pathing guides can be found in the Useful Resources channel of the Discord server: https://discord.gg/gcZKtz7




//  NOTES BELOW HAVE NOT YET UPDATED FOR 3.21   //

-Act 1-
Considerations:
Whenever you enter town, check Nessa and Tarkleigh for links (and movespeed boots) using the following paste: -[rgb]-.-|b-b-b|b-g-b|g-b-b|nne|rint|sce
Against tankier targets, be sure to place down your Orb of Storms before casting Spark.
Place your Decoy Totem somewhat away from yourself, so that you don't incidentally get hit by enemies aiming at the totem.
Kill any essence monsters you find, as you'll need them to make rare rings for the spell damage crafts in act 2.
Since you're using sceptres to leap slam, you'll want to try and pick up 2 Driftwood Sceptres as they have the best base AS. Even if you don't use these immediately, you'll want to do your ring crafts on them.

Gem Acquisition:
Level 2:
Spark, Nessa, 1 wisdom
Pierce support, Nessa, 1 wisdom (purchased by aurabot)
Arcane Surge support x2, Nessa, 1 wisdom (one is to be leveled up in a spare socket or off-hand, and linked to spark later on, link the other to frostblink and keep it at level 1)
Onslaught support, Nessa, quest reward
level 4:
Frostblink, Tarkleigh, quest reward
Orb of Storms, Nessa, 1 wisdom
Decoy Totem, Nessa, 1 wisdom
Level 8:
Added Lightning Damage support, Nessa, quest reward 
Level 10:
Clarity, Tarkleigh, quest reward
Leap Slam, Nessa, 1 transmute

-Act 2-
Considerations:
Act 2 is where you'll do your added spell damage crafts on your sceptres. The recipe is as follows:
Magic weapon + rare topaz ring + 1 alteration. This will return the same weapon used in the recipe, with the same socket colors and links, but with a large amount of flat added lightning to spells. 
Importantly, the weapon will also have a level requirement of 20, so be careful not to use the recipe before you're level 20.

Gem Acquisition:
Level 16:
Herald of Ice, Greust, quest reward
Level 18: 
Faster Attacks support, Yeena, 1 alt

-Act 3-
Considerations:
Once you're level 24, vendors have the potential to offer a 4-link, so always check your vendors.
The best bases to chrome are Int, Int/Str, or Int/Dex, or Str/Int, so if one of these shows up 4-linked but doesn't have the ideal colors (2b1g1r), you should take it and color it with chromes. 
You should avoid attempting to chrome a base that doesn't have an int requirement, as you could easily sink 20 chromes without getting your colors.
Also be on the lookout for your aurabot's ideal 4-link (2r1b1g, or any 4-link with a Str requirement).
If your aurabot needs chance orbs to buy your gems from Siosa, you can trade 1 fusing for a chance orb at Clarissa.
If you happen to have 3 augs at this point, you can craft 10-14% increased movement speed on any boots you find with life/res and an open prefix

Gem Acquisition:
Level 24:
Purity of Elements, Clarissa, 1 alt 
Level 31:
Lightning Penetration support, Siosa, quest reward
Inspiration support, Siosa, 1 chance
Ice Bite support Siosa, 1 chance

-Act 4-
Considerations:
If you havent already, pick up Karui ward as soon as you can, it's the first item to buy, between both characters.

Gem Acquisition:
Level 34:
Sigil of power, Oyun, quest reward  (Level it for a while; you can use it immediately but you'll almost certainly not need the damage)
Level 38:
Spell Echo support, Diallia, quest reward  (Level in a free socket or off-hand)

-Act 5-
Considerations:
Take a granite flask as a reward from Lani; despite the fact that the aurabot runs grace far earlier than determination, an early granite flask is too good to pass up.

-Act 6-
Considerations:
The moment you get into act 6, open the character sheet to check your ele res; you'll want to craft transmute tier resists on each piece of grear until you've reached around +40%. 
If you can't get this much Ele res, just craft what you can and carry on.
There are several rewards in act 6 through 10 that give 4-linked pieces of rare gear. Be sure to pick the item base with attribute requirements that allow you to easily recolor them according to your current needs.

-Act 7-
Considerations:
Grab a jade flask from Welyam for the silver locket quest (first zone in act 7). Jade is the best defensive flask to run, after granite, and it'll be even more powerful since the aurabot is running grace at this point. 
Don't take Greust's necklace from Helena; the quest takes some time and is useless. Also, as a quest item, you can't delete it in town and have to drop it on the ground somewhere.

-Act 8-
Considerations:
Talk to Hargan and be sad when you remember that the conqueror jewels aren't in the game anymore.

-Act 9-
Considerations:
The Trial of Ascendancy in The Tunnels is always the first left off the main path
At this point you can start aiming to overcap your resists to 105% so that you can get straight into mapping after being cursed by a10 kitava.

-Act 10-
Considerations:
Since most defensive flasks aside from granite and jade are fairly underwhelming for this build, take a silver flask. In late acts it'll help patch the holes in your OoS onslaught uptime. 
Later on it'll be our primary source of onslaught when you drop OoS entirely in early maps
Kill Kitava.

--A note on freezing Uber Bosses and Feared:
(this leaves out some details and makes a few generalizations that are correct for this build. Check the wiki page on freeze if you want to learn more).

To freeze a boss, you must deal cold damage equal to 5% of their maximum life. Most endgame bosses have around 60-75 million hp, which will always be at least doubled since you'll be in a party with an aurabot (or more).
This means that to freeze a boss you need to deal around 6-7 million cold damage. Because of how freeze duration is determined (check the wiki if you want to know why this works) modifiers to freeze duration lower the required damage to inflict freeze.
Notably, ailment affect does not apply to this, only freeze duration
For instance, if you have 90% increased freeze duration, this 6 million damage instead gets brought down to 6mil / 1.9 = 3.2 million cold damage to freeze. Uber bosses take 70% less damage which massively increases the amount of damage you'll need to freeze.
For instance (in a 2 man party) Uber Shaper needs to take 25 million cold damage, or 13.2 mil with 90% increased freeze duration. It's important to remember that only cold damage is counted to determine freeze, and with heatshiver a large part of your PoB average hit will be fire.
you can check how much cold damage you deal in the calcs tab, selecting spark. Finally, because your base damage is entirely lightning, with large variance in damage rolls, while your average hit might be a bit too low to freeze, occasionally you will roll high damage and inflict freeze.
Since spark hits fairly often, you can be benefitting from heatshiver even if you only have around 2/3rds of the average hit required to freeze, although your largest possible hit will never be more than around twice the average.

here are a few reference numbers to go off of, all adjusted for 2 player party HP.
Freeze a feared bosss : 7.5 million cold damage (life or defense modifiers will raise this number accordingly)
Freeze Maven 5.1 million cold damage						  With 110% freeze duration wheel: 2.5 mil
Freeze Uber maven 	17.4 million cold damage			With 110% freeze duration wheel: 8.3 mil
Freeze Uber Shaper/Sirus 25 million cold damage		 With 110% freeze duration wheel: 12 mil	
To consistently be freezing these bosses from spark, due to the natural variance of your lightning base damage that was converted to cold, you should have around 70% or more of these values. (only cold damage counts - not heatshiver fire damage!)