Transitioning from Elemental Overload to Crit
For anyone still using Elemental Overload, it's time to make a serious shift. Swapping to a crit-based setup transforms the Vortex of Projection Archmage Hierophant into a completely new beast. After making the transition, the damage output doubled. Boss fights became noticeably shorter, and the build feels far more explosive without sacrificing tankiness.
Vortex Archmage as a League Starter
The Archmage Hierophant offers exceptional value as a league starter. With solid clear speed, strong early defense layers, and a straightforward gear path, it allows you to scale efficiently into red maps. Once the crit transition is done, normal bosses feel like minor obstacles rather than threats. While suppression and elemental ailment resistance may not be fully capped early on, those will get addressed later in the gearing phase.
Clear Setup and Core Skills
Frostblink paired with Archmage remains the best clear combo. The crit upgrade means that most enemies get deleted on the first blink. With the new support gems, we also get more consistent boss damage. For most of the game, you’ll use Frostblink with Archmage, Faster Casting, and Ice Bite. Once your crit setup is in place, it all synergizes beautifully.
Introducing the Kinetic Mercenary
Adding a mercenary to this build changed the game. The mercenary uses a wand and comes with key abilities: Elemental Weakness, Flame Wall, Greater Kinetic Blast, Frostblink, and Haste. Kinetic Blast of Clustering is particularly useful as it spreads curses and softens up enemies across the screen.
Why You Need an Opal Wand
Your mercenary setup relies on conductivity. The best way to ensure this is to use an Opal Wand with cold damage mods. Through Harvest crafting, you can reforge caster modifiers until you hit "Conductivity on Hit." This upgrade allows your merc to auto-curse everything she touches, significantly boosting both map clear and single-target damage.
Helm Synergy: Gearsight's Power
To support this setup, we use the unique helmet Gearsight. It’s mercenary-exclusive and offers a 40% chance to apply “Brittle,” a debuff that increases the target’s crit vulnerability. This indirectly raises your crit chance, especially on bosses. In practice, this helmet often pushes you near crit cap while mapping and during boss fights.
Why Purple Toes Work
We equip a Purple Toes amulet, also known for its lucky lightning damage rolls. While it’s not a massive DPS gain, it adds around 10% more total damage and contributes to consistency. Small buffs like these stack well in crit builds, especially when your goal is to one-shot packs.
Using Doedre’s Damning Ring
One key piece of the puzzle is Doedre’s Damning. This ring increases your curse limit by one, allowing your mercenary to apply Conductivity while you apply a second curse yourself. Without this ring, your curse setup would be bottlenecked by the default single-curse cap.
Scorching with Legacy of Fury
Legacy of Fury boots help your merc apply Scorch. Scorch reduces enemy elemental resistances and significantly boosts your elemental damage output. The mechanic synergizes well with your lightning-based crit spells and the Conductivity debuff already in play.
Combining Exposure and Unnerve
Another critical layer comes from gear that applies Exposure and Unnerve on hit. Exposure lowers enemy lightning resistance, while Unnerve increases spell damage they take. Your merc inflicts all of this at once—Conductivity, Brittle, Exposure, Unnerve—plus she gives you Haste. It's a stacked utility package that improves bossing and clearing dramatically.
Gear Upgrades and Spell Wands
With the move to crit, the build now needs properly crafted spell wands. Look for fractured spell crit base, then slam Cast Speed essences until you hit complementary mods like mana and spell damage. One of your wands should ideally have an open prefix for crafting additional spell power. Always check POB to verify DPS boosts.
The Perfect Ring and Armor Base
A recent gear upgrade came from an incredible ring: high Cast Speed (40%), life, mana, and all elemental resistances. This came from a lesser-known delve base and turned out to be perfect for the build. The body armor is also upgraded—a necrotic base with fractured mana and suppression rolls. It cost around 20k and was cheap to 6-link due to good RNG, but it shows the potential for value crafting.
Flask Strategy for Max Crit
To hit near 100% crit chance, a Diamond Flask is a must. This gives a 20–30% boost to your base crit chance, which pairs perfectly with the Brittle effect from your mercenary. When both are active, your critical hits are almost guaranteed, massively increasing both damage and consistency.
Passive Tree Changes for Crit Focus
Swapping to crit requires a few major pathing adjustments. First, you drop Elemental Overload since your build now reliably crits. Then, you take notable crit clusters like Potency of Will and Annihilation, which are close to your core Archmage nodes. Also, pick up the Instability wheel to add another layer of critical multiplier and spell scaling.
Managing Power Charges with Assassin's Mark
To sustain power charges, use Assassin’s Mark on enemies. Once marked, every crit generates power charges automatically. You’ll also want to take a notable passive for +1 Maximum Power Charge. With proper uptime, you’re consistently at three power charges, further raising crit chance and multiplier.
Why You Should Unspecc Elemental Inversion
If you’ve been running the node that inverts enemy resistance, it’s time to unassign it. That node becomes counterproductive once your mercenary starts reducing enemy resistance directly. Leaving it active actually reduces your damage due to double scaling resistance mechanics. Remove it as soon as you have Exposure and Conductivity from your merc.
Leveraging a Healthy Mind Jewel
A lucky Healthy Mind jewel drop (with a valuable corruption) added major value to the build. This jewel transforms life passives into mana, allowing you to scale Archmage damage even further. Early league, these jewels are worth picking up and corrupting regularly for a shot at big upgrades.
Cluster Jewels to Amplify Spell Scaling
Your cluster setup includes notables like Skin Tingling, Widespread Destruction, and Storm Drinker. Storm Drinker in particular grants leech as Energy Shield, providing recovery during mapping and bossing. With leech mechanics nerfed recently, this indirect energy shield leech is vital for survivability.
Dual-Ended Jewel Crafting
Both of your jewel slots use fractured mana bases. From there, reforge crit mods using the fortification station. You’ll want Global Critical Multiplier, Cast Speed with Cold Skills, and Mana mods to align with your Archmage scaling. These jewels provide a major DPS boost, and the crafting method is simple with access to Harvest.
Core Skill Links for Vortex of Projection
The main damage setup is:
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Vortex of Projection
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Spell Echo
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Archmage
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Lightning Penetration
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Increased Critical Damage
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Inspiration
This gem combo supports your crit scaling while still tapping into your mana pool via Archmage. With nearly capped crit, Inspiration helps with both cost efficiency and raw damage gain.
Support Skill Links and Clear Tools
For clearing, use Frostblink, Faster Casting, Archmage, and Ice Bite. This combo lets you clear while moving and easily deal with map packs. Ice Bite also helps with frenzy generation and chill effects, adding minor survivability and smooth clears.
Fixing the Single Target Weakness
To address single-target issues, the build now uses Frostbolt with Greater Volley, Unleash, and Slower Projectiles. This setup concentrates damage into fewer, slower projectiles that stack on the boss. Without projectile speed, these shots all converge, delivering reliable burst DPS even against tanky targets.
Final Gear Setup Overview
Most key items have now been optimized:
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Crit spell wands with Cast Speed, Mana, and Spell Damage
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Fractured mana body armor with suppression
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Kinetic mercenary wand applying conductivity
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Doedre’s Damning to raise curse limit
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Legacy of Fury for Scorch
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Gearsight to enable Brittle
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Diamond Flask for crit scaling
Each piece contributes to the overall synergy, focusing on stacking crit chance, spell damage, and elemental penetration.
Performance in Tier 16–17 Maps
With all pieces in place, this build comfortably handles high-tier content. The mercenary rarely dies, even in dangerous situations like strongbox detonations. In Tier 17, she stood in nearly every damaging effect and didn’t drop below 90% health. The survivability and DPS are both in a good place, especially considering the build is only a few days old.
Wrapping Up the Vortex of Projection Crit Guide
This version of the Vortex of Projection Archmage Hierophant build shows just how powerful early investment in critical scaling and utility can be. The crit swap adds an entirely new layer of damage and map-clearing speed, while the mercenary brings more than just curses—she applies Scorch, Brittle, Unnerve, Exposure, and grants Haste. Together, the synergy pushes the build beyond what’s expected from a typical league starter.
The core gameplay feels smooth and responsive, with Frostblink clearing and projectile-focused single-target setups delivering results even in T17 maps. The build is still tanky thanks to mana scaling and defensive layering, and with some more investment, it's fully capable of handling Uber content. If you're looking for a high-skill, high-reward caster that doesn't require absurd currency early on, this version of the Vortex Hierophant hits the mark.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: Is this build beginner-friendly?
A: Mostly, yes. The early league starter version works well with minimal investment. The crit setup adds complexity, but it’s manageable.
Q: When should I transition to crit?
A: Once you have a Diamond Flask, a source of Brittle, and spell crit gear—usually around Day 2–3 of league progression.
Q: Do I need the mercenary for this build to work?
A: No, but she significantly boosts utility and overall damage. Without her, your crit chance and curses are less reliable.
Q: Can I use different skill gems for single target?
A: Yes. Frostbolt with Greater Volley and Unleash is just one setup. You can experiment with slower projectiles or other spells that benefit from crit scaling.
Q: How tanky is this build?
A: It’s not immortal, but mana scaling with energy shield leech and layered resistances makes it strong enough for most content, including Tier 17.
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