Introduction
The Crystallised Omniscience Vaal Lightning Strike Champion is an endgame monster capable of farming all Uber bosses, deep Delve, and Delirium with ease. The build excels at clearing fast while still doing good single target damage. It rewards the player for investing in defence as much as offense thanks to the scaling granted by Perseverance. The Champion ascendancy provides speed, damage, and defence, making this build currently one of the most well rounded builds in the game.
Warning: This guide assumes you have already reached endgame and have a full set of gear ready to equip your character. To learn how to reach a point to where you should consider this Build Guide check out the Spectral Helix/Lightning Strike Champion League Starter Guide. Read that first before continuing!
Strengths and Weaknesses
Difficulty
Moderate
Budget
High
Mapping
Great
Bossing
Great
Defence
Excellent
Skills Breakdown
Lightning Strike
Lightning Strike is the primary source of damage of this build. Positioning is key and can double your damage when you correctly stand at the specific distance from your target. Additional strikes also target effectively, allowing us to hit with both our melee strike and projectiles at the same time.
Vaal Lightning Strike does incredible damage in bursts, which is fantastic for clearing maps and defence, thanks to the life on hit it offers during the duration. It is much less useful on bosses, and takes some time to charge up. It can attach to enemies or be positioned on the ground to shoot out auto targeting lightning beams, that scale with our attack speed and damage.
Mobility
Whirling Blades allows for swift mobility in all situations where an obstacle is not obstructing our path. It scales extremely well with attack speed, making the attack time almost instant. This allows the build to blitz from pack to pack, as well as avoid dangerous mechanics.
Utility And Auras
Determination + Grace + Defiance Banner multiplies our base defence and makes the Champion absurdly tanky by scaling our Evasion and Armour. Precision grants us a lot of flat Accuracy as well as a little bit of Critical Strike Chance.
Additionally Molten Shell linked to Cast when Damage Taken Support will mitigate burst damage, absorbing 75% of incoming damage for a short duration. While you can't use Molten Shell yourself in this setup, Vaal Molten Shell gives you a panic button to use on demand for an even bigger shield that absorbs 35-40% of incoming damage.
Single Target Abilities
Assassin's Mark suits our Critical Strike-based build. We link it to Mark On Hit Support to automate its application. This way we have easy access to Power Charges while mapping, as well as extra damage to bosses or tanky rares/uniques we may come across in maps.
Buff
Ancestral Protector + Ancestral Warchief can be placed down right before engaging a boss or when fighting in a confined area like Rituals to further boost our damage as they collectively provide us with a huge attack speed and damage multiplier.
Elusive
Withering Step is a crucial part of our kit and must be placed on left click. This ensures that we maintain our Elusive buff as much as possible to maximum effect. Elusive is an additional layer of defence that grants a great deal of movement speed, a chance to avoid all damage from hits, and scales our Critical Strike Multiplier thanks to Nightblade Support.
Ascendancy Breakdown
The Champion is an outstanding choice as it provides some of the best defensive layers currently in the game, complimented by a modest amount of additional damage and aura enhancing bonuses.
- Fortitude & Unstoppable Hero grant the Champion 20 Fortification stacks, effectively reducing all incoming hit damage by 20% as well as providing Stun immunity, Attack Speed, and flat Armour and Evasion.
- First to Strike, Last to Fall intimidates targets permanently, increasing the attack damage they receive by 10%. It also grants the Champion Adrenaline for 20 seconds when reaching low life and heals for 25%. This is a massive buff that grants 100% increased Damage, 10% additional Physical Damage reduction, along with 25% increased Attack, Cast, and Movement Speed.
- Inspirational allows for a banner aura to be reserved for free and increases the effect of all non-curse auras granting us a substantial boost to the Champion's Defensive and Offensive Auras.
To learn how the Labyrinth works, feel free to consult our Labyrinth Guide!
Playstyle
Lightning Strike is a skill with two damage elements: a ground strike and a following burst of lightning projectiles emanating from the impact. We move around maps swiftly, unafraid of hit damage as it is greatly mitigated by Fortify, in addition to the core defences we build. We must maintain maximum effect of Elusive by binding Withering Step to left click; this ensures we get the most value out of Nightblade Support. Vaal Lightning Strike is the main damage cooldown available in our kit. When used in combination with Ancestral Protector and Ancestral Warchief we are be able to effectively burst down bosses with ease.
Positioning on single target encounters is crucial to maximize DPS with Lightning Strike. Standing at the right distance from your target doubles your damage from Strike Skills target1additional nearby Enemy which is critical for your endgame setup. This modifier has a range reaching further than the primary strike, allowing us to hit a target with both our projectiles and the melee hit.
Mapping
While mapping we must be wary that damage over time is not mitigated by our defence. We are practically near-immortal as long as we are attacking thanks to the immense recovery provided by claws' life gained on hit implicit, as well as the ability to spec into leech nodes on the passive skill tree. Whirling Blades and Elusive give the Champion massive movement speed and packs are cut down rapidly thanks to the projectiles piercing from Lightning Strike.
Bossing
The double-hit mechanic of the impact + projectiles plays the biggest role when fighting bosses. Before engaging, place both Ancestral Protector and Ancestral Warchief to gain their buffs. Keep pressing left click to ensure Withering Step resets the Elusive buff granted by Nightblade Support. When the souls are filled for Vaal Lightning Strike, drop it directly on the boss for a big damage burst. Adrenaline from our First to Strike, Last to Fall Ascendancy will proc whenever we go below 50% hp, granting a substantial amount of life and damage increase.
Key Build Information
Lightning Strike is the primary source of damage for this build. Lightning Strike as with other projectile based attacks, does not shotgun by default therefore we must use additional strikes and clever positioning to be able to do so. When positioning, make sure you see a Lightning Strike hit where your character is striking the ground, as well as an additional lightning strike on your target. You must stand at a specific distance away from your target to double your damage. The Strike Skills target1-2additional nearby Enemy mod allows us to hit with both our melee strike and projectiles.
Improving Critical Strike Chance
Scaling our Critical Strike Multiplier is useless if we don't actually deal Crits, so we need to stack as much Critical Strike Chance as we can. To ensure that your Critical Strike Chance is as high as possible do the following:
- Only equip a claw with a tier 3+ Critical Strike Chance roll.
- Roll a flask with the #% Increased Critical Strike Chance During Flask Effect suffix.
- Equip a Diamond Flask.
- If you are still struggling to get to 80%+ Critical Strike Chance you can swap out Elemental Damage with Attacks Support with Increased Critical Strikes Support in your main links.
Crystallised Omniscience converts all of our attributes into the Omniscience (omni) Stat. This means Dexterity won't grant Evasion and Accuracy, Strength won't grant Life and Melee Damage, and Intelligence won't grant Energy Shield. Omniscience grants 1% elemental penetration and 1% to elemental resistances per 15 Omniscience. It is important to note that how much Omniscience you're getting out of an explicit can be deceptive, for example: +25to Dexterity and Intelligence is equal to 25 Omniscience, +12 to All Attributes is equal to 12 Omniscience.
Crystallised Omniscience can be used to almost cap our Resistances, and provides a massive amount of generic Elemental Penetration. This allows builds to not have to focus on one specific elemental damage type to be efficient. Trinity Support and other conditional damage notables found on the passive tree work well with this setup. The sweet spot for Omniscience is approximately 1500. This almost caps our Resistances exclusively from Attributes. Beyond that, it is still a nice stat to stack, however diminishing returns are incurred. The damage increase granted by Penetration damage does not scale linearly, so after a certain amount, other stats become favorable.
Build Scaling
- Offence
- Defence
Offence
Lightning Strike is a hit-based, critical strike scaling elemental skill. Most of our critical strike multiplier comes from Nightblade Support, allowing us to focus on other stats to further scale our damage output.
In general, we prioritize the following stats, which are abundantly found on the Passive Skill Tree. However, we must mainly rely on gear for our critical strike chance.
- Added flat Fire, Lightning, Cold damage
- Critical Strike Chance/Multiplier
- Elemental penetration
- Generic Damage Increases (Elemental/Attack)
- Frenzy Charges
- Attack speed
- Elusive Effect
- Auras scaling
Defence
Champions have easy access to many layers of defences that grant an absurd amount of mitigation for all incoming hit damage. Perseverance allows the Champion to scale Attack Damage by stacking Armour and Evasion. The bulk of our base defences come from Armour/Evasion hybrid item bases as well as both Jade Flask and Granite Flask flasks. In addition, Grace and Determination grant additional flat Armour/Evasion and a massive multiplier. Due to the unique effects of Perseverance, it is important to best maintain a balance between our Armour and Evasion, as we gain extra value the closer they are together. Fortify reduces all hit damage received by an additional 20% and Elusive grants avoidance up to 40% depending on how much Elusive effect we are stacking. The build also greatly benefits from both leech and life gained on hit provided by our weapon of choice, the Imperial Claw.
The most important stats we must focus on to make sure our defences scale effectively are:
- Armour and Evasion from Gear, Flasks, Skill Tree and Determination + Grace
- Capped Elemental Resistances at 75%
- Fortify
- 100% Spell Suppression
- 100% Ailment Avoidance
- Stun Immunity
- Corrupted Blood Immunity
- Elusive effect
- Aura Effect
- Mana & Life leech
With all these defensive layers against Hit-damage our main weakness remains Damage over Time. As a result, we always try to maintain a high uptime on a target if we are degenerating, as leech and life gained on hit will effectively mitigate them.
Map Modifiers
The following modifiers are impossible to run on the build:
- Monsters reflect #% ofElemental Damage
- Cannot Leech from monsters
The following modifiers are to be avoided if possible:
- Players have #% reduced effect of Non-Curse Auras from Skills
- Players have #% less Armour
- Players have #% less Accuracy Rating
Recommended Farming Content
First step is to progress through the Atlas following our Atlas Progression Guide. As a mapping focused character you should focus on the mechanics listed below depending on what level of content your character is currently capable of completing. If you're struggling in higher tier content it is always recommended you go a step back and farm up more Currency and Gear. Clicking the League Mechanics below takes you to either a full Explanation Guide or a detailed Currency Farming Guide based around maximizing your profits from that mechanic or content.
- Legion
- Delirium
- Blight
- Shrines
- Expedition
- Harvest
- Eldritch Altars
- Delve
Pantheon
To learn how the Pantheon works, feel free to consult our Pantheon Guide!
For Major Pantheon, select Lunaris to gain additional damage reductions. Additional bonuses are not baseline and need to be acquired with a Divine Vessel.
For Minor Pantheon, select Tukohama and upgrade it. This grants you Physical Damage Reduction and Life Regeneration. Alternatively, you may want to select Ralakesh until you gain Corrupted Blood from a flask suffix or jewel corruption.
Skill Gems
Gems are a fundamental part of your build, getting the correct link setups before taking on content is your main goal. This is how your Gem setup should look like:
Lightning Strike
Vaal Lightning Strike is our main damaging ability. Trinity Support rewards the player for investing in a combination of 2 or more added elemental damage rolls, for example Lightning + Fire or Cold. With Trinity Support in your build, an icon appears in the top left corner of the screen indicating the current state of the buff. If you see all three bars filled after attacking an enemy, you are on the right track. If one remains empty, you need to rebalance two of your three elemental damage types so that theiraverage damage doneis roughly equal. Check your skill's offense details in the character tab for that!
Inspiration Support grants us a considerable boost to both our elemental damage and critical strike chance. Most importantly, it greatly reduces the mana cost of Vaal Lightning Strike. Added Cold Damage Support is our preferred added damage link. It helps balance our resonance for Trinity Support and provides additional defensive utility such as chills, freezes, and shatters. Nightblade Support grants Elusive on Critical Strike, 1% to base Critical Strike Chance while Elusive, and also grants Critical Strike Multiplier scalable with Elusive Effect. Elemental Damage with Attacks Support is a multiplier for elemental attack skills.
Auras
Wrath is our main active offensive aura. It provides a large amount of flat Lightning Damage, greatly increasing our overall DPS. Determination, Grace, and Defiance Banner are our main active defensive auras. They provide a bonus flat as well as a % multiplier to both Armor and Evasion to scale up our base defences. Precision is a gem which reserves more mana and grants more flat accuracy as it is leveled up. Therefore, it is important to balance out its level to ensure we still have enough mana to play comfortably. If there is ever a point where your accuracy rating is not capped (but you cannot afford to level up precision any higher) you should invest more into passive skills that grant accuracy or find equipment with either % increased or flat accuracy. Link the gems with the highest reservation cost to Enlighten Support level 4 to increase the reservation efficiency.
Ancestral Totem Buffs
Ancestral Protector and Ancestral Warchief linked to Multiple Totems Support can be used as a temporary buff to damage and Attack Speed. Place these down on hard boss fights and re-summon them as they expire for maximal damage output.
Guard Skills
Molten Shell linked to Cast when Damage Taken Support and Increased Duration Support provide us with a massive defensive boost. It is best to keep Cast when Damage Taken Support at level 6 and Molten Shell at level 13. It ensures the buff procs more often with little to no downside. When you take 897 damage the gem automatically triggers, granting the player a huge absorb shield which scales with Armor. The more Armor, the larger the absorb shield, up to a maximum of 10,000. Keep in mind that Molten Shell only works against Hit damage, not Damage over Time.
Single Target Debuff
Assassin's Mark linked to Mark On Hit Support triggers when a rare or unique enemy is hit, marking him. This grants lots of additional Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Multiplier. It's important to keep track of the skill's high mana cost, which can easily deplete your entire unreserved Mana pool. In that case, keep Assassin's Mark at a lower level until you can support it.
Mobility
Whirling Blades is our primary way of moving around, that scales with Attack Speed, allowing for very quick movement. Withering Step should be placed on left-click to ensure that you are refreshing the Elusive buff on cooldown granting the highest potential effectiveness of Nightblade Support.
Skill Tree Progression
Cluster Jewel Sockets on the edge of the passive tree should only be allocated after you have acquired the Large Cluster Jewel jewel to socket within it. After socketing clusters ensure you allocate all points needed to fully unlock all jewel sockets and socket your Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh into them.
Massive Ring Thread of Hope socketed by Charisma will allocate the following passives:
- Leadership
- Harrier
- Hired Killer
- Path of the Hunter
- Finesse
- Weapon Artistry
- Aspect of the Lynx
- Sleight of Hand
- Blood Siphon
Character Progression
Core Items
Aspirational Upgrades
- Gear Overview
- Milestones
Core Items
The equipment shown is core to the build, great care must be placed to make sure all defensive thresholds are met in order for the build to operate at it's best. If you wish to learn about how to craft your own gear like this please refer to the crafting guide to understand the way items like these are created with current means.
Video Guide
Path of Building
Summary
- The Spectral Helix/Lightning Strike Champion is a great all-round build with strong defences. In its final form it can take on the toughest challenges in the game with ease.
- The build rewards frequent upgrades with satisfying power jumps along the way. Balance out your elemental damage types for Trinity support and other various benefits such as Shocks, and Chills that buff damage and defence.
- Perseverance is a core item that scales both offenses and defences for very little cost, making investing into defences very rewarding.
- The build can fit an Inspired Learning at no passive skill cost granting a boost in mapping efficiency.
- Once itemized properly this Champion is able to take on Simulacrum wave 30, 100% Delirium as well as all the Uber bosses with ease.
Credits
Written by Crouching_Tuna.
Reviewed by Wudijo and Echohack.
Changelog
Aug 14th 2022
Build Guide fully updated for 3.19.
Jul 15th 2022
Build Guide Created.
Aug 22nd 2022
Spelling and grammar improvements