PoE2 Sorceress Lightning Builds...HELP!

Trade is your best friend and necessary poison at the same time. It can fix all of your gearing issues and it appears you have not attempted trade before. For starters, go familiarize yourself with using the filters on the trade website. I recommend setting a "1 exalted" price max to fix your gearing first. Use ES for now until your mana pool gets to a decent level. Spirit is given by body armour and amulets. Cap your res at 75% asap; use weighted filters first, then specific stat filters to cap the remaining res.

You may not like it, but trading is an essential part of the game for a casual to enjoy end game. Therein the description of trade as "a necessary poison" I described earlier. You may have been able to play through the campaign on items you farmed, but you can no longer do that in maps. Dying costs you the way stone and xp at higher levels, while dying in campaign costs nothing.

Hey!

Funny thing, I've just converted to this specific build!

For now don't do the mana only, keep a normal energy shield and life build, your mana pool is not big enough.

You basically need 350 spirits for this build (with everything turned on)! To get there you must use a scepter and/or spirit from you armor and amulet.

I honestly just sold one of my two Divine yesterday to buy everything. You basically want ES, Mana, Regen and resist.

I still need two levels in order to convert to Mana only but my "old self drop" was able to do T5 and nearly Sekema (died at the final boss..).

You can totally make Spark, or any meta skill really, your own; so you can actually still be a snowflake while running a meta skill.

If mana pool/regen is your issue - look at the passive tree and your gear. Grab nodes that give you int/mana/mana regen. Look for gear that has int/mana/mana regen modifiers. There is even a keystone passive that converts all energy shield into mana - a massive increase for your mana pool in one node.

You can get Spirit on chest and amulet + the 100 you get from campaign. Sceptre too, but Sorcs generally want a Focus. Dont forget, you have another weapon slot. You can map Blink to your second weapon and free up 60 spirit just like that. Game will automatically switch the weapon when pressing your Blink binding.

Wands and staves are mostly just stat sticks with some exceptions ofc. You dont have to use the skills. Some have really nice skills though, like Chiming Staff, which makes it a good secondary weapon to carry around just for its buff. Attuned Wand's mana drain could be used for additional recovery source for Mind Over Matter users(mana pool becomes an extra health pool basically), although ive personally never needed it and run both MoM and Chaos Inoculation.

Cap your resis, ITS a must. Or you will die. And from all builds you can try in this Game, mana stat stacker Spark is the hardest one - and most expensive, when it comes to Trading.

Sorry, i would start a new Char AND follow a build. Infernalist ist easy and cheap. Gemling Shockwave Totem is dirtcheap. Nobody plays it, and mine for example is lvl 88 and clears all content even T18 Maps for the cost of 200 Exalts for all my Gear.

Poe 1 and 2 are Games which demand a deep understanding of tree, skills, Gear. If Not, you get fckd in the Maps. Or you follow a build. What i recommend!!!

I"m just gonna answer these points:

Gaining enough spirit to activate Archmage, Cast on Shock, Grim Feast, and Blink simultaneously. Is this even possible? If I can activate all of these above skills^ How am I able to gain enough spirit to do so?

The campaign gives 100 through quests. There are multiple ways to gain bonus spirit:

• The most commonly available are amulet and chest affixes. Each gives around 45-50. There's also an implicit on amulet for extra 10-15.
• There's also an implicit mod available on corrupted helmets for 20-30, which is insanely good, but quite rate. If you're using an expensive helmet you mean ght as well forget that it exists. But if you're using a cheap unique -- it's very affordable. My Solus Ipse helmet with this mod costed me 1 Div (normally this helmet is1 ex)
• various uniques and jewels. The good ones (e.g. Gambler's Ring) are usually super expensive
• and last but not the least -- offhand Scepters. Can provide 150+ spirit for quite cheap. Usually all those " million procs per second" builds always utilize one. You loose approximately 40% damage for not going a +2 focus, but such is the trade-off.

What is the point of the Attuned Wand for Mana Drain? How does it work? Should I be casting this all the time while in mob fights/boss fights?

There's no particular point in any specific wand type. Besides the fact that Attuned and Twisted give "+ lightning skill levels" (5 max). The rest of them give other elements and all wands give "+ ALL spell skills" (but max is 4).

You won't ever be using any wand skills. If you have mana regen problems -- buy some "gain % mana on kill" jewels. +5-6% is enough to sustain Archmage builds. On bosses you might wanna use the Maelstrom flask. Besides that you do not need any extra mana regen anywhere. I run with 4k mana and 150 regen.

Max mana is boosted through Eldritch Battery (and high energy shield gear), Zalatl soul cores, Morior Invictus chest piece (+mana and spirit with 5 sockets goes for 12 Div) and just in general by mana affixes on gear.

Lots of good input in here. I'll add a few notes of my own.

Personally at this level I would focus on getting a solid "all rounder" build, which usually combines the following, in priority order:

• capped resistances
• solid defensive layer (ES, health pool, stun/freeze threshold)
• good sustain or fast clearing
• decent burst setup for bosses

The key idea above is having a balance of things. You take your weakest link and improve that, until the gameplay feels really comfortable (eg. 0 panic moments).

And when I say weakest link, I mean it as in whatever you feel is the worst for your build. For example you mentioned mana regen -> get some mana regen either via passives or gear. Don't stick to the build guide if it's not working, customize depending on how things feel, it'll teach you a lot about the game and you'll be more proactive when making build decisions.

I've probably respecced at least 20 times and followed 4 different build guides, and am nowhere near any of them now. The reasons are simple : my gear is different, I have different gameplay preferences, my budget is...you guessed it, different.