[3.1] Literally Anything's Viable Now: Max Block Wander - Poet's Pen Gladiator

It's a Poet's Pen build. You attack and this crazy item casts free spells.

What, you want more detail? Alright. We want to attack, but not more than 4 times per second (otherwise we 'skip' potential casts). We want to dual-wield, because then we get 8 spells per second instead of four. We want to use physical spells because Gladiator scales physical damage. Blade Vortex has probably the best damage, but using two BV gems is impossible (they overwrite each other and never stack up), and anyway it's not very good for clearing. Bladefall, Ethereal Knives and Glacial Cascade are the other options: I like Bladefall best but they all have merits. Bladefall is the most straightforward and immediate: it hits where you point it, pretty much. However, if you want to position your cursor further away to concentrate Kinetic Blast projectiles, Bladefall will fire where you point it, missing the enemy. EK fires in the direction you point it, overcoming this problem. However, it has limited range and will only hit the front row of enemies, unless you use supports that are sub-optimal damage-wise to overcome this. It also doesn't have the potential to overlap areas on large single enemies. GC can easily get multiple hits in on large single enemies, but has a narrow effect area making it poor for dealing with crowds. It also converts most of its damage to cold, which will typically be resisted more effectively than physical damage.

I'm using the same set of powerful jewels as my last build:


They're still very good. Alright, I called it "Max Block Wander" but actually we only have 75/75 block chance if we've taken a damaging hit recently, which it should be said will usually be the case in a large fight. Otherwise we have a respectable 70/70 block chance.

To use poison instead of crit, swap Twin Terrors, Aspect of the Lynx and Heartseeker for Fatal Toxins and Dirty Techniques, and swap the glove slot from Oskarm to Snakebite. Personally, I prefer crit: it can reach higher damage output, and generally speaking it's better to frontload your damage so as to kill things before they can react.

Ascendancy: Gladiator, taking Gratuitous Violence for levelling, then Painforged, Violent Retaliation and Outmatch and Outlast.
Bandits: All the options have merits, but killing them all is the most reliable choice.
Link to tree

Critical

Non-critical

You can live without Shaper links for KB. You can also use an Elder helmet with Conc Effect and/or Immolate, but the reduction in AoE is actually quite a bother while clearing, and/or you'll need a source of fire damage.
Anything Goes

I love my amulet. But you can use Biscos if you want to be meta, or The Anvil to get to 78/78 block, or just a rare amulet with life, damage and resists.

Oskarm are great just for the Assassin's Mark on hit, but you can use rare gloves instead, losing power charges to gain life, resists and base damage. If you're using the poison variant, I don't see anything being as good as Snakebite, though maybe you could move KB to the gloves and use Elder gloves with the Poison support mod.

Everything else can be freely substituted. Belly of the Beast would be a great body armour, for instance. A good amount of intelligence on gear is required to be able to level various gems.

Pen #1: Bladefall - Concentrated Effect - Controlled Destruction
Pen #2: Blade Vortex - Concentrated Effect - Efficacy
Helmet: Kinetic Blast - Physical Projectile Attack Damage - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Chance to Bleed - (Increased Area of Effect - Hypothermia).
If you're struggling for mana, it's entirely doable to use Reduced Mana in place of CtB.
Body Armour: Frenzy - Physical Projectile Attack Damage - Maim - Chance to Bleed - Point Blank - Increased Critical Damage
If you're not crit, replace Crit Damage with Added Chaos. We use the Point Blank support rather than the Keystone because we want to use KB at range. And yes, you can use Barrage here instead, with Faster Attacks replacing Chance to Bleed. According to PoB, it'd deal a bit more damage even taking into account the difficulty sustaining charges, but I think that once you add in the spells, Frenzy will come out on top.
Elsewhere: Flame Dash - Faster Casting - Arcane Surge
The lack of good movement skills is nothing short of pretty reasonable considering how powerful actually good wand builds are. It really sucks to not have a good movement skill or a QS though.
Hatred - Determination - Enlighten - Summon Ice Golem

{Flasks}
We need an instant life flask, of course. Apart from that, we use Jade instead of Granite since we have more evasion scaling on the tree. Diamond can be replaced with QS if not going for crits. Atziri's Promise and Taste of Hate offer incredible damage and defence. In terms of affixes, Of Heat is an absolute must in order to use ToH - almost half of physical hits would freeze us otherwise! Staunching is as good as ever. Avenger's is nice if you can get it. The lack of Warding is painful but I wouldn't recommend having Staunching only on an instant flask just in order to get it.

It's very hard to choose, but I recommend Arakaali as a major pantheon in most situations - block builds are weak to damage over time - and Shakiri as a minor one for similar reasons. However, these choices are very situational for this build.

Attack enemies with Poet's Pen socketed with whatever you find lying around. It's ludicrously good for levelling.

Ascendancy: Gladiator, taking Gratuitous Violence for levelling, then Painforged, Violent Retaliation and Outmatch and Outlast.
Bandits: All the options have merits, but killing them all is the most reliable choice.

There are a unfortunately large number of map mods to be avoided:
-Physical reflect
-Elemental reflect
-Reduced armour & block chance
This build also lacks a Warding flask, making curse mods vary between irritating and deadly.

Bosses that deal large numbers of small-to-medium-sized hits are our favourites. Amanamu's barrage is a prime example, but Kitava's broad arm sweep is another. Multiplicit bosses such as the Coral Ruins gang or the Warbands bosses in maps like Iceberg are also kind enough to donate extra damage to your cause. Bosses with powerful damage over time effects, on the other hand, are to be avoided. The Shaper has a bad habit of giving Vortex to bosses. It's almost like we're supposed to dislike him or something.

This build might plausibly be able to do some of the Guardians, though I haven't tested it. It would require skillful play, though, and who wants to do that?