Righteous Fire - Block Tank [v1.2]

With just ok gear at lvl 90 you get.

- 5,6k LIFE (6.9k lvl 100 or 7.4k with life boots, amulet but lower spell block)

- 7,4k Armour

- 69/52 % Block Chance (Possibly capped with Concoction flask)

- 48k DPS (Dual Curse + Elemental Equilibrium)
For comparison you get 75k dps with 9k life tree but you loose all your block. Not worth it imo.

- 781 Life Regen (lvl 90) + Lots of leech against packs.

- Main Auras Used
Purity of fire, Vitality, Grace

Level 90 - https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAAdwCcQPGBLMFLQbpCfYLYQxfDPcSaRRNFFIUcRZvFxwabBv6HKckqiWtJd8nLydhJ9Un7Sj6Lv81kjbpPC1Bh0WdTP9PfVBQUWBTUlOlVbVYY14TXh9fP2BLYSFlTWwWcXl07XgNeWh6737igFaCx4M4hNmE74cZmK2a4J2uns2gtKIAog-kGacIpzCpbqyvr2y18rc-uJO-isEEw4bEWMT2xYrGrsbY2L3a3eLq42rjn-cL55Hp1evu7w7vfPAf8wbzvvno-tL7qvxL_Qv-CimlTiq2QUMxG8g=

Level 100 - https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAAdwCcQPGBLMFLQbpCfYLYQxfDPcSaRRNFFIUcRZvFxwabBv6HKckqiWtJd8nLydhJ9Un7Sj6Lv81kjbpPC1Bh0WdTP9PfVBQUWBTUlOlVbVYY14TXh9fP2BLYSFlTWwWcXl07XgNeWh6737igFaCx4M4hNmE74cZmK2a4J2uns2gtKIAog-kGacIpzCpbqyvr2y18rc-uJO-isEEw4bEWMT2xYrGrsbY2L3a3eLq42rjn-cL55Hp1evu7w7vfPAf8wbzvvno-tL7qvxL_Qv-CimlTiq2QUMxG8hHfryfGJFQRxQgvYE9_IzP9kiplQ==

You possibly go full life after the 90's (or even consider doing it earlier in expense of some block chance).

Alternative Level 100 Optimization - https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAAdwCcQPGBLMFLQbpCfYLYQxfDPcSaRRNFFIUcRZvFxwabBv6HKckqiWtJd8nLydhJ9Un7Sj6Lv81kjbpPC1Bh0WdTP9PfVBQUWBTUlOlVbVYY14TXh9fP2BLYSFlTWwWcXl07XgNeWh6737igFaCx4M4hNmE74cZmK2a4J2uns2gtKIAog-kGacIpzCpbqyvr2y18rc-uJO-isEEw4bEWMT2xYrGrsbY2L3a3eLq42rjn-cL55Hp1evu7w7vfPAf8wbzvvno-tL7qvxL_Qv-Ckd-vJ8YkVBHFCC9gT38jM_2SKmVpldN4_6POuHyRQ==

(Determination+MoreLife instead of IR+Grace makes the build even better but much more expensive to equip)

Normal - OAK (+40 life)
Cruel - Passive
Merciless - Passive (Or endurance charge!). It's up to you.

- On one of the items below you NEED to have +cold or +lightning damage in order to trigger elemental equilibrium with cyclone. If you don't then you can just craft it or use a CWDT+Ice Nova gem combination.
- You also need some Dexterity for Grace

- Helmet
Go for high Armour (or Armour and Evasion), lots of Life and Resistances.

- Chest
Use Belly of the Beast (for more life and life flask rate) or Carcass Jack (for more AOE) or as a third choice any other high Armour, Life and Res rare.

- Main Hand
Doryani's Catalyst.

- Off Hand
Rise of the Pheonix.

- Amulet
+1 Curse Lazhwar for spell block or The Anvil for physical block (Apex Trio).

- Rings and Belt
Aim for high Life and Res.

- Gloves
Go for high Armor, Evasion, Life and Res.

- Boots
Go for high Armor, Evasion, Res and definitely movement speed since it makes you harder to hit.
Or switch to Rainbow stride for better spell block chance.

- Flasks
Keep both Life and Ruby Flasks to be able to cap your health regen since the effects of those two stack.
Get at least one Rumi's Concoction to be able to cap both physical and spell block for 10 seconds.

1) RF Sustainability
RF's degen is 90% of max life.
Max Fire Res = 75 (tree lvl90) + 8(shield) + 4(pof) = 87%

Degen = 0,9 * MaxLife * (1-0,87) = 0,117 * MaxLife

In order to sustain RF, the regen must be higher than or equal to the degen so :
Regen >= 0,117 * MaxLife or 11,7% Regen

My build has 12,1(tree) + 1,65(Vitality) = 13,75 > 11,7%

Since even the regen from the tree 12,1>11,7 then this means that it's self sustainable even without Vitality so you can just drop Vit for another aura if you prefer something else instead of life regen.

2) Iron reflexes and grace

After some testing i've seen that even though IR+Grace Offers more armour than Determination you can actually have quite similar numbers with good strength equipment. It's gonna be expensive though, so go for (Determination + More Life) when you can afford it and as an endgame build improvement/optimization.
The equipment flexebility that IR offers is amazing for the early levels.

3) Don't drop the cyclone leech combo

Gives you immunity to stun.
Makes you hard to hit from mob projectiles.
As an RF most life regen is used to sustain the RF's degen on you so a form of leech is essential for your survival. Imo this was the No1 reason that improved my survivability pre-petch.

4) 1% Regen > 1% Resistance (in terms of RF sustainability)

The reason is that the regeneration applies on the whole life but the resistancies are applied on the 90% of your life that you take as damage, so Resistance is at 90% effectiveness in comparison with Regeneration.

ex.
For 100 life RF does 90 dmg to you per second.
1% Regen heals you for 1,0 hp per second.
1% Resistance is preventing 0,9 dmg per second.


5) Don't go for Whispers of Doom

Make it your long term goal to get a Lazhwar with an additional curse and save 6 passives for health, block or regen.
In the meantime if you absolutely need a second curse just use 1 of the 2 following uniques at expense of some life.


6) Don't get Sovereignty or respec it at Level 20 Reduced Mana
The only reason to get it is the "% reduced mana reserved" in order to be able to run Grace along with the essential Vitality and Putiry of Fire until your Reduced Mana support gem is level 20.

The 22% buff to auras imo isn't even worth mentioning since it equals to :
0,37% more regen + 0,88% additional fire res = 0,37%+(0,88%*0,9) = 1,16% Life Regen for 4 passives!
It amplifies Grace also but still not worth it.

-Righteous Fire + Increased Burn DMG + Concetrated Effect + Increased AOE + (Optional:IIR) + (Optional:IIQ)

- GRACE + PURITY OF FIRE + VITALITY + REDUCED MANA

- CYCLONE + FASTER ATTACKS + LIFE GAIN ON HIT + BLOOD MAGIC
Awesome combination that gives you a lot of life regen.

- CWDT + ENDURING CRY + IMMORTAL CALL + INCREASED DURATION
Even with 3 Endurance charges it's always nice to have immortal call casting all the time even for 2-3 secs of duration.

- CWDT + ICE NOVA + (ANY OFFENSIVE OR DEFENSIVE CURSE)

- LEAP SLAM + FASTER ATTACKS + BLOOD MAGIC
Mobility combination.

You can see what works for you at this point and customize those to your needs.

PROS
-High Life
5600 HP (but can count up to 22400 HP) with my ok gear. Can get higher if you change the amulet and spell block boots with life gear or can go up to 6900 at level 100.
The actual life though is even higher because of block chance since the expected amount of dmg it can mitigate before dying with capped 75% block is 4x5600 = 22400 HP

-High DPS
Not as high as RF can get but high enough. The dmg is even more scalable with double curses and kaom's heart.

-Extremely mobile and hard to hit
Due to cyclone.
-Immune to stun most of the time
Again due to cyclone.

-Good Life Regen
It has a good amount of regen over the RF's degen in order to be able to save a few flask uses and this only gets a lot better in packs due to the cyclone leech.

-High Block
69/52 and possibly capped with the Concoction unique flask. Can go higher with a few tree adjustments but don't know if its worth it.

-Lots of customizability through respecs.
You got everything tou want around you. You can get more life, more armour, more regen, more block chance in expense of something else but you have everything close to you.

CONS
- It's a melee build
The most significant negative side of the build is that it works only in very close (melee) range which forces you to face tank everything.

- Can't make some map mods.
Minus Max Resists, Low regen, Blood magic

- Low life leech against single mobs.
This reduces your total life regen significantly.

I'm still in the process of raising levels and improving the equipment but there are some very important things you should know about this build.

1) Energy Shield hurts you really bad. It lowers your regen by a lot so try to keep it low by not having (+ES mods) on equipment and by not increasing the quaility of the armor parts that give you ES (RotP shield, RainbowStride boots).

2) There is one more area (Life, Regen, DPS, Block) that you get in contrast with the pure life RF builds (Life, Regen, DPS). So in order fit the points you need to sacrifice something in return. I do sacrifice some life and currency to do that. I'm saying currency because you can't afford to go the +1 curse from the tree and you need to purchase a +1Curse Lazhwar which is the second most important item in the build after the RotP shield imo (still viable w/o it though).

3) Because of (1) and also because it's a build designed for endgame tree optimization you should expect to see the full capabilities in higher levels (85+). You should not expect to have all those areas (Life, Regen, DPS, Block) at full effectiveness at for example level (65-70).

4) Block acts like in the following examples.

Ex.1
RF char enters a room with 50 mobs dealing a sum of 16.000 dps.
- Normal Life RF is dead.
- Block RF recieves 4.000 DPS and gets away with it.

Ex.2
RF char recieves a single hit of 16.000 dps.
- Normal Life RF is dead.
- Block RF has an almost 3 out of 4 chance (75%) to block and recieve zero damage but with bad rng he can also die.

Ex.3
RF char recieves a single hit of 7.000 dps.
- Normal Life RF always gets away with it (considering he has >7k life).
- Block RF has an almost 3 out of 4 chance (75%) to block and recieve zero damage but he can also die in constrast with the Life RF Build (considering he has <7k life).

So as you see block is very trust worthy against many enemies but can be treacherous against single high dps hits.
Rumi's Concoction flask can really save you in tough situation where you can just pop it and have an instant stop to most of the damage you recieve.

5) YOU NEED TO SPEC THE TREE AS A NORMAL LIFE RF UNTIL AROUND 75-80 LVL
I can't stress that enough. Don't try to fit block at low levels instead spec for life and full regen first and then if you feel ok start adding block at higher levels or else you'll end up biting more than you can chew.

6) ENDGAME OPTIMIZATION
As it was proposed in the comments below, an endgame optimization will be to drop IR and grace at some point and go for Determination + More Life + Expensive equipment.
The trade-off here is money for better armour on streangth equipment (in order to match IR's total armour) for 5 life nodes instead of IR.

Sounds like an awesome trade-off! I have already done that and i can tell you it really pays off. I intend to update the thread with more info and videos when the transition feels completed.

7) Build is endgame optimized but is viable during the whole time!
Good thing is that everything can be done in stages and only with small changes on either the tree or the equipment. The core remains the same, the build only gets better with every stage.