Very interesting build!

It’s similar to Undaunted Infiltrator + Undaunted Unweaver builds, except you have foregone UU in favor of Alessian and essentially replaced that damage component with the Maelstrom lightning staff. This makes you significantly tankier than any UI/UU build could ever be, with great healing over time primarily from massive health recovery.

The downside, I think, must be that your damage is a bit contingent on Wall of Elements. If people don’t stay in your Wall of Elements, then the damage is going to drop off quite a lot (both because you won’t get the Maelstrom staff damage, and because you won’t proc off balance). I imagine you use Unrelenting Grip to pull them into it. And when that works, I bet it works really well. Pull them into a Wall of Elements and Razor Caltrops, and particularly if the shock enchant concusses them (which only has a 40% chance actually), then you’ll do massive damage from them being off balance.

But, while I’ve never actually tried a Maelstrom lightning staff heavy attack build, I suspect that players won’t very reliably stay within the Wall of Elements. Have you found that they do? I guess maybe the point of the Volcanic Rune is that people who charge at you get stuck stunned inside the Wall of Elements at least for a bit? And Razor Caltrops not only debuffs their resistances, but also slows them. Does this stuff result in people staying within the wall of elements enough that you actually can get good uptime on the maelstrom staff’s extra damage? I suppose it’s maybe not super hard against melee opponents, since you can kind of just turtle up inside your Wall of Elements/Razor Caltrops and if they want to attack you they will be hard-pressed to avoid being inside it?

Also, from having played a lot of UU/UI builds, I know I get a lot of value from zapping at people and groups from really far away (whether it’s because I’m closing the distance while attacking or because there’s a group and staying further away is a lot safer). You can still do that of course, but you’ll be doing quite a lot less damage in that scenario since the Wall of Elements wouldn’t be in play from longer ranges. That said, the scenarios that are safe for this build will be larger, since it’s tankier, so it could get in close more often.

Another thing that is a bit contingent here is the off balance. You’ve got an infused staff with a shock enchant and Wall of Elements. So you can certainly proc off balance. But have you thought about using a Charged trait on the Maelstrom staff? That’d be less enchant damage, so there’s a tradeoff, but going from 40% chance to *immediately* proc off balance if they’re in your Wall of Elements to an 82% chance seems like a pretty significant difference, when we’re talking about proccing a +70% damage component that can only be procced if they stay inside the Wall of Elements (i.e. even with an infused staff you might be able to proc it since they might not be in the Wall of Elements 2 seconds after you pull them in). It also would surely get you a bit more minor vulnerability uptime—which would be nice. So I’m inclined to think a Charged trait would be superior, though I’m not entirely certain.

Overall, this is really interesting and I’m glad you posted it. Compared to the UU/UI builds that I’ve run, this seems like it’d be a good bit tankier and have a similar peak level of damage, but have that peak level of damage be much less consistent and have much lower damage outside of the peaks. So there’s trade-offs, but I really like the build.