I’ve tried both of those approaches and didn’t really enjoy them. I’m curious if I can use fragmentation rounds as my main skill, since that feels most like a shotgun.
You wanna roleplay as Graves? 🫠
There’s also the support gem/rune that stops reloads, but doge rolling gives you 5 ammo back. I use it for explosive shot, but you could use it for anything I guess.
If you look at any Blood mage plasma blast builds, they mostly use Galvanic shards like a shot gun to clear maps. Use plasma bolt for bossing though. Pretty fun build overall. You can also use Shockburst rounds like an smg on rares that have a lightning ailment and it melts them.
I use galvanic shards last league. 1 shot packs, only had to switch to something else for bossing but even those are doable if you really want
Try explosive shot. I use it as my clear and nades for single target. Socket in supports multi shot 2, Double barrel 3 with passive nodes in stun build up you’ll get instant reload on heavy stun.
I think the permafrost feels a lot like a shotgun build but I know you said you tried it
Galvanic shards?
Poison pathfinder can use any crossbow skill as the main skill.
I got bored at this stage in the league and decided to spend many of my hard earned divines on a small project. Wouldn't it be funny to stack Energy shield for a min-level char? [https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a027](https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a027) Tabula rasa has relevant jewel mods noted on it in POB so the math actually works out since it doesn't seem to work properly in POB. second screenshot is with a lvl 29 discipline aura with 36% increased aura magnitude - I didn't wanna spend another several thousand divines on a support character, I just wanted to see how well it would work theoretically >3000 ES without aurabot is possible, however, its basically impossible in practice. As of now, there are \*18\* 2 socket uncorrupted crown of thorns left on trade - on average it takes \~11 to hit a 30% and then another 1 in 3 to get a 3 socket one. Hitting a double corrupt on said 3 socket would be better then my current one, but that's not plausible sadly. Same for the boots. Hitting a better double corrupt on the gloves and focus would likely be plausible, but I couldn't buy more bases from Finn. Grip of Kulemak 59% ES \*should\* be possible, but it already took me over 40 attempts to hit 57% so I think I'll just leave it as is. Belt I didn't find any other way besides the 25% corrupt to get ES without a level requirement - if anyone has any idea tell me. Amulet could sanctify for 19/19 but again, would require silly amounts of currency (each try is \~30 div as is with annoint + sanctify + quality). I \*think\* patient barrier should be best annoint, but correct me if I'm wrong. Total investment into this character so far is about 3000 divines, probably a bit more. further thoughts \- maximum technically possible is 3112 ES at level 2 unless I'm missing something important. POB [https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a02a](https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a02a) \- doubting this but: is it possible to get an ascendency at this low level by skipping straight to geonor with a helper? In which case it might be possible that xp penalties kicking it would allow me to ascend at lvl 2? This would allow +20% +20% (ascendency) +60% (jewel) ES, which would get me to 3218 ES (actual build) / 3732 ES (max technically possible) Did I miss anything?
I made an elemental crossbow varashta sorc this season as my starting build (goal was to exploit yoke of suffering's full potential, you can find poe ninja below, don't be fooled by the dmg tooltip, it kill ubers before they can move) and so since I was in the intel side of the tree I used my weapon swap to maximize exposure (with whispering ice) and curse magnitude. Here with some non-optimized gear I'm reaching a total of -338% res (that's -169% on bosses), meaning it's better than rakiata's. I use cursed ground support to apply the curse and icestorm (which comes with the staff) with prolonged duration and potent exposure to make the exposure last longer. This tech doesn't require much investment apart from your weapon swap and a few sockets at most so it can be plugged into many elemental builds. As it is now, it requires you to cast the spells with your weapon swap, so I use it mostly for bosses, but i might cast icestorm on bulky rares in juiced maps once in a while. If you have a skill dedicated for mapping, it'll propably better to use rakiata on it, and remove it or use another skill for bosses. Here's the poeninja: [https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/McZaatar-0907/character/Dendjala](https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/McZaatar-0907/character/Dendjala) I might make a build showcase if people are interested, it's a fun league starter build. With yoke and the electrocution node on the tree, enemies have 120% damage taken, more if they're cursed, on top of the giant res drop, plus you benefit from a lot of the "damage against enemies with ailments nodes" so that's why the tooltip is low (explosive grenades indicate 60k in game but they hit bosses for like 2M) at first I was playing with permafrost bolt with frost nexus + navira's fracture + fragmentation rounds, it was a fun combo and really strong for leveling but I couldn't scale navira's fracture damage in late game (I had command + minion nodes on my second weapon instead of the curse/exposure at the time) Hope this inspires some of you!
The Oracle Death Star is fully operational- only took 30 days of playtime. GGGs https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/L0L-breh-1628/character/ShapesofWrath