End to Chaos!

Hardcore guide. Mix of campaign thoughts as well as post-campaign planning.

Stat: STR through campaign; RNG after
Cards: Armor!, energy, flat dmg, xp%.

Weapon:
Maul for me due to low CD on Death Blade. For r6, you may want a ranged offhand and a ranged weapon if the fight is irritating. Mystic Maulquake is the main attack, and BlazingEarthshatter can be used when more ranged is needed. Any R works to proc the bonus but I believe Hurricane Havoc (3rd option) may be the overall best.

Skills
Electric Dragons until...
Death Blade/Dragon Flame - first to use/test, second for campaign pushing if needed
"Buff" skills to look out for on belt or random purples (25-100% ele):
Arcane Apocalypse, Burning Shield, Vortex, Static Charge, Any Totems, ...
Anything can really work with time/farm/sweat, I'm just optimizing for familiarity and speed.

Dragon Flame used here as it is a ranged duration skill with high base dmg. Can snapshot an R's bonus, follow Nightshade, etc. +duration seems best

Bosses!
r6: Echo of Elysia: any random ranged offhand and ranged weapon should help; keep them around, try it if you need it. Small circles don't hurt as much as you think.
r12: Apexius: Can teleport. Dispellable enrage (run over containers). Don't lockout your dash by spamming Q or R.
r18: Try not to get bounced! One of the reasons to push for damage/boss early.
r24: (also r23): Simple attack pattern. Run around and get used to it. Simplest is a ranged duration offhand like dragon flames, and don't forget to check the range on each of your skills to maintain uptime.
r30: Don't get bounced! Can run out of circles now without move mod on boots if you're direct about it. Any AoE helps in phase 3 since you'll have some cleanup to do; if you can 1 or 2 shot an area that can be a big help with the area given.
r36: If he gives you trouble r31-35 have purple armor/weapon which should give you regen/stats to handle this.

Early/Midgame Farm Plan:
Helmet: 2 flat/extra energy
Relic: Double Energy
Bracer: 2 stat/1% Damage
Boots: Inv%, container, or 20%ms
Amulet: 10 stat/1% health
Rings: Boss dmg, Armor (even post-nerf)

After the basics are set up, you'll want to figure out which stat to commit to. I use a mix of cards and enchant RNG, so use a cheap respec after you upgrade for 4th or 5th reroll.
Cards to go for with your ele%/stat: flat armor, energy regen, xp%/stat%, health/stat%, flat stat.

Push goals:
r40 capital npc
r40: Ancient catacombs: Run when you slow down. Longer you wait the better, but getting lucky with monogram or drops (500 dex amulet or certain other orange mods can be very strong even on an ilvl4 item. Inv%, 2stat->1% dmg bracer, container mod, 20% ms...) can be very silly. Some mods are only good early, so try them out.
r45 Elysia - dragon upgrades, wpn monogram. Scales up and gives scrolls. Can give rupture completion if farming heavily.
r~45: Gravedigger - I'm sticking with maul and using the middle R for mediocre clear. Magery's Ground Slam is going to do the best job in here if you have the time/patience to level it up and swap a wand in.
r45: Enclave - cheapest wpn monogram, belts.
~r88+: 50+dr from armor, ~4k+ life to survive shotguns
r76: Endgame farm for scrolls using container mods begins. You stay here a long time, since infused modifiers can make r76 harder than you think sometimes. Prioritize double containers and health containers. If you want to hunt harder for rings, double boss chest means 2 monograms (chest -> monogram, chest -> monogram otherwise they can duplicate)
r100 Bridge: RNG Weapon drops! 50-70% armor dr and >5k health should be plenty. R100/105 boss probably will be a harder fight when you're used to mechanics.
r125 Archeon: RNG Armor drops! 75-80% armor dr and >15k health. Main risk is abilities comboing you before you recover; stay out of whatever you can!

I'm not bothering with Min Loduhr (lethal, enclave is cheaper) or Olympus (boss mechanics won't be fun) til they're outscaled.

Skill Tree. At any point feel free to add in Infinite Wind in the bottom right; energy sustain is quite important.

16 SP - Starting DPS[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

26 SP - Boss Dmg[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

31 SP - Armor/Regen[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

42 SP - Ele%[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

55 SP - Life/Armor[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

64 SP - Pathing[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

82 SP - XP/Ele%[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

96 SP - Crit/Regen[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

110 SP - Arcane/Fire Stackable[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

118 SP - Crit%[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

137 SP - Inventory, Lightning Stack[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

198 SP - Agility[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

Strength Tree - Strength[dwarvenleaderboard.com]

IMO, the last 20-30 points are more about figuring out which leftover notables and smalls have enough value to help fix holes in the build. If you aren't using much inv%, feel free to only take the notable (QOL!) and not every small. Don't forget to respec out of XP, warstrike, and some of the boss dmg smalls around/after archeon.

ELVEN TREE:
I path down to get crafting, maps, disenchant value, and craft cost value. Then up for XP (sometimes books, sometimes leave that til later). Left for armor, extra mining, and armor gems. Right for dmg, mining, dmg gems, and the 10% crit chance buff. I like finishing on DPS, but Digging Deeper might be better with the full season length.

Pushing Goal:
4-5x death blade duration

Bracer: 2 agi -> 1% dmg
Helm: 2 flat per 1 extra energy
Boots: 20%ms or inv% (least important)
Amulet: 10 agi -> 1% health (HARDCORE)
Relic: Double Energy
Ring: Armor
Ring: Boss dmg

Gear stats: Agi% (10+), Energy, Damage, Agi (if 15+), +Max health

Very Endgame Considerations:

• Determine if we can swap to 1% of Max Health as Flat Dmg bracer as fossil takes over dmg% and our health scales up.
  
• This works well with our eventually-capped LifeLeech and should help scale survivability.
  
• Try out ele crit helm at some point, but we need non-helmet flat first!
  
• I don't think 5 agi -> 1 flat on helm is viable, but maybe.
  
• Armor and boss% on rings will likely turn into health as armor caps and fossil dominates boss%.

Pushing plan: run around stacking deathblades in a circle/on a point and luring enemies. DB slowly moves towards enemies, so it shouldn't be too painful. Don't forget that our 12-15s+ duration skill deals the buffed R for the entire duration!