Shock and Block, Endgame Support " Aurabot " Stormweaver for two player party play.

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So far I've been forced to make my own build as a 2-player support and since there don't seem to be any here yet or on maxroll, I've decided to post my own. The rest of the post is a copy paste of what I already wrote on maxroll:

https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/lod2b0vl

This support build mainly provides a 200% shock, an 80% block to your carry and a powerful curse+exposure. This is a build designed for 2 player party play. This should work with almost any carry, since even dot builds benefit from shock now (i think?), but it should work best with a build that can make use of exposure as well. My carry is a minion arsonist infernalist, although their choice to play that had nothing to do with party play.

There are too many skills here, because you will need to adapt to your carry. Swap curse, exposure support where necessary. The support gems listed here are not necessarily optimal, there is a lot of room for different ones, but it will depend on your exact group composition. I have not used some of them myself, but it should work. I would love feedback on improvements, this is a homebrew build and I'm not perfect. There are probably lots of things I'm missing, so keep that in mind.

The playstyle is a little clunky for clearing; you ball lightning, then lightning warp (twice for maximum effect) to create shocked ground, then blink back to your carry. Be careful not to jump too far away, since they will drop block chance. For extra single target damage, apply exposure+curse. Profane ritual lets you generate charges for your carry, or yourself if you think thats better. Spec/unspec "Resonance" and "Conduit" to adapt to your needs. Carry will need to run Charge Infusion to benefit from charges. Flame wall can boost projectiles, but its minor.

For gear, the most important part is having a 5% maximum block "The Anvil" amulet and a decently rolled "Merit of Service" shield. Merit of service will give you 37% base block chance at a 48% roll and 36% base block chance at a 44% roll or higher. The base block chance is quite important, since that extra 1% will mean you need more points on the tree to cap, but you can make a 36% base block chance work. You actually need a second Merit of Service for curse weapon swap if you want to be safe, since dropping 80% block, even for a second, is quite bad. I have a worse rolled one in offhand for budget reasons.

The sceptre, in my opinion, NEEDS "presence area of effect" and then from there, the other stats are dependent on your carry. The other gear is just resistance+ES+life+mana. That is some very popular gear, so it may get pricy. It might be better to swap to Eldritch Battery and/or Chaos Innoculation at some point, but for now having the triple health bar feels good.

Not shown here are the jewels: the most important stat is "increased magnitude of shock you inflict". You will need a bunch of decently rolled jewels to get to a total of +400% shock magnitude, to get to 200% shock. You cannot go over this. It's fine to be a little under, though it isn't desirable. There is 230% magnitude on the tree, 75 from the support and another 10% from gem quality. That means you need 85% from jewels total. With 8 jewel sockets, there is some wiggle room to do stuff. It would be nice to also get "increased chance to block" on jewels, but you cannot have both those stats on the same jewels. There are a bunch of other good stats to get on jewels, but good ones will be expensive. For 1-5ex each you can get 18+% shock magnitude jewels with maybe 1-2 other useful stats. Once you get good jewels, you can also consider dropping the "General Electric" or "Alternating Current" passives in favor of more sockets or block chance, since they are quite bad.

"Deflection" is an AWFUL passive node. It almost doubles the damage you take, but it is a necessary evil for this build to work for now. With more levels and/or budget, you can pick up more jewel sockets or path towards the block nodes in the warrior area or add block chance jewels (again, block chance is exclusively on red jewels, while shock magnitude is on blue+green). If you can get to block cap without those nodes, you will become significantly more tanky.

You could apply an additional curse with Doedre's Damning if it's necessary, but with my carry there isn't a point.

Level as a different build, this build can't even kill campaign bosses alone. I don't know when the best time is to respec, I swapped right after campaign.

I think with some INSANE levels of investment, you may be able to apply shocks with Spark instead, but keep in mind that you need to deal actual damage for that to work and I can't even imagine how hard it is to get that. Maybe with adorned and a ridiculous set of jewels, it can be possible.

Credit to Snapow, who gave me some ideas on what to do in this build (notably profane ritual+charges, the 'triple healthbar' idea and a bit of an idea of how to make Merit of Service work)

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