Overview
This Blood Mage takes the oil-grenade and Flameblast ignite idea that is popular this league and swaps the main skill for Ball Lightning. Ball Lightning is paired with Fire Infusions so that every cast leaves ignited ground behind it. Black Flame Covenant converts that fire damage to chaos, and with extra projectiles firing the burning ground covers most of the screen. The creator calls it the strongest and most fun build they have played in PoE2, running juiced Expeditions on about 800 divines of gear.
The build scales through life stacking. Stacking life on the Blood Mage raises ailment magnitude for every 100 maximum life. The ascendancy’s crit bonuses scale with current life too, and the Life Remnants dropped by enemies can push life above its maximum, to around 12,000 in the showcase. Crit chance on Ball Lightning sits in the mid-80s even in the hideout. The build runs no mana, no Spirit and no elemental resistances, so life is the only stat to worry about.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Close to a one-button build: Fire Infusions stay up without effort, so you mostly just cast Ball Lightning
- Very fast screen-wide clear through spreading ignited ground
- Strong for the price at around 800 divines. The creator puts a non-life-stacking version at 3,000–4,000 divines
- Level ups during juiced Grand Expeditions, with one death in about six hours of farming
Cons
- No elemental resistances, so defence relies on raw life, Life Remnants and some armour
- Reduced light radius makes the screen darker
- The creator says it is not built for stat checks and still has lots of room to optimise
- Poison and Corrupted Blood immunity are still upgrades it lacks
Key Skills
- Ball Lightning — main skill. With Fire Infusions it drops ignited ground that can crit
- Living Bomb — cast through the amulet’s cast-on-elemental trigger (no Spirit needed) to keep generating Fire Infusions
- Powered by Verisium — used once at the start of a map to kick off the charge loop
- Tornado — extra single-target damage and a way to hit flying enemies. Used on bosses and tanky rares
Gear & Anointments
- Black Flame Covenant converts fire damage to chaos
- An amulet with a cast-on-elemental trigger holds Living Bomb, because the chest leaves no Spirit
- Stack as much life as you can. Every point adds ailment magnitude and crit damage
- The full passive tree and gear are on the creator’s Mobalytics page linked from the video. Confirm specific uniques there
Endgame Notes
Showcased farming Grand Expeditions. Open layouts suit the build best because they spawn more Life Remnants. To gain effective elemental mitigation, build more armour; the creator’s PoB estimate puts the reachable damage reduction at around 40–43%.
Credits & Source
Build credited to Lowepe. See the source video (German) for the full build explanation and gameplay: Bester Build den ich je gespielt habe! | Showcase PoE 2.