[1.3] Mahesys's Crit AoF Fire Ice Spear Elemental proliferator

Hi all guys,

i wanted to share this buid with you because well... it was a weird idea but i found out that works very very well up to endgame!

The idea blazed in my mind when i saw the 1.2 87% damage buff on ice spear: in that moment i decided to make a build focusing on ice spear's high raw damage plus its innate high critical strike chance (600% in second form)

After these considerations i saw this beauty:



And decided to convert all ice spear's cold damage into fire with the help of avatar of fire and proc burning with critical strikes... the result is me setting everything on fire on sight :)

PRO AND CONS

PROS:

- very cheap, requires a 4 link to work fine, 5 to work good but it's nowere near necessary
- high damage and burning proliferation capabilities
- high critical chance without too much investment
- resilent to elemental reflection thanks to Arctic armor and no spell spamming
- resilent with cloak of defiance
- usually requires a single critical strike to burn entire packs
- Hardcore wise
- can run most of map mods

CONS:

- Even with 80% crit, sometimes you'll face a 2-3 non crit streak avoiding burning proliferation
- Squishy build without cloak of defiance
- It's hard to target fast moving/mid moving/leaping mobs
- Cannot run blood magic maps, 50% and no regene maps are triky and 75% fire resist maps are very tedious but still doable with a fire penetration gem

BUILD

My actual level 91 build in Hardcore league (Ex Beyond league) with 110 points spent:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMABAcEswVCBx4I9A5ID8QQWBGWEmkWbxa_FxwaOBpsHRQfAiSqJpUnLyj6Ko0snC0fMjQ1kjbFNtg26TpYOuE7fEGHQZZEq0WdSRtJUUyzTeNTUlVLVa5Vxl3yYeJqQ2sXcFJw1XF5cYV_xoIQgh6Cm4LHg9uHZYnTjDaPppBVlSCVLpo7muCdY52uogCio6SxplenCKyYr42vt7FCtz64k7jKvOrAGsBUwGbB89D11abYJNi92wvfit-w4XPjauQi5Y7r7uw47FXtPPAf8NXxbPJF8xH56PrS_gr-jw==

Build highlights:

- Avatar of fire: a requirement for the build. It's used to convert 50% of all damage sources into fire. This keystone will maximize fire damage dealt by ice spear
- Eldritch battery: a must have in order to have enough mana regene to sustain a level 20 Arctic armor and cloak of defiance mana absorption
- Life nodes: The build features a total of 187% incresed life from tree which suffices in reaching 5k life, which i consider the very minimum to run 75+ maps
- Fire and cold damage nodes: thanks to 100% cold to fire conversion, this build will gain damage from elemental, cold, fire and spell nodes. This helps increasing raw fire damage from various sources
- Mana regeneration nodes: necessary to sustain a 250 mana regene per seconds, again needed to sustain level 20 Arctic armor
- Critical chance: To work efficently, the build needs aside from the 600% from ice spear's second form another 300% critical chance. The above tree (235%) and average equip (65% from wand or shield + wand) covers this necessity. A total 900% extra crit chance means a total crit chance in second ice spear form of 70%
- Critical multiplier: It's necessary to reach at least 400% crit multiplier. This requirement it's covered by tree multiplier plus increased critical damage gem
- cast speed: Even if the build benefits the most from pure fire damage, i found out that having some cast speed helps survivability a lot. A total of 20% cast speed increase should suffice
- Absolutely no "chance to ignite" passives???: yes avoid them!!! this because we want only critical hits (the ones with most damage) to proliferate burning damage!!! note also that burning status cannot be overwritten, this means that if a normal hit would burn, you must wait it to lift off before applying another burn with a critical one!

Softcore characters can vary the build by dropping some life nodes and put them into more raw damage or doom cast cluster

EQUIPS

Since this build uses Eldritch battery, it needs some ES from gear. I found out that hybrid ES/armor gears are the ideal but ES/Eva and pure ES equips will do the job anyway. But i recommend at least 500 total ES from your gear

My gear + analisys:



You see i'm using hybrid ES/armor gear the most: because even a low amount of armor will help when using a +X% armor flask. Having 2k basic armor it's ideal and will help reaching 10k armor when quaffing a granit flask

Boots MUST have 20 or 30% movement speed. This build relies on kiting and keeping distance to let ice spear reach its second form.

Having mana regene on both rings and amulet it's ideal but not necessary. At them moment i have 80% mana regene from gear and it suffices to sustain 220 mana regene per second

Wand + shield combo with 50%+ crit chance and multiplier it's imo the best choice. Having both wands works well too. Note that i dont' have any cast speed on wand: cast speed will suffice from passives and haste aura, always aim first at raw fire damage and multiplier!!! cast speed is a nice to have tho!!!

For armor, i strongly recomend a cloak of defiance, else the build will feel a little squishy. At the moment i already did some extra damage mods map without too many difficulties

For flasks, i suggest having a granite flask of iron skin and at least 2 istant recovery potions. My actual potions are these:



GEM SETUP

For our main attack spell, links in priority are:

ice spear + elemental proliferation + cold to fire + increased critical damage + Fire penetration + added cold damage

Note that the first two are a MUST have. Without EP you'll not proliferate and without CtF you'll waste half of the ice spear damage due to Avatar of fire keystone.

Added cold damage, thanks to the duality of this build, will increase fire damage with a 100% cold to fire convertion

Reduced mana + clarity + avatar of ice + haste

I choose avatar for its nice added cold damage (all converted to fire) and haste for some cast speed and movement speed. Purity of elements can be used if your resists aren't sufficent, Determination for more armor or vitality for life regene are other nice choices

Elemental weakness + Assassin's mark + increased AoE + increased duration

Those two curses are vita for the build. I like to first curse with AM to proc crit more often and then cast EW to let enemies burn faster. This is also the basic strategy for most fight. But in pratic you'll have no time to cast EW since mobs will burn in under a second ;)

Culling strike + [skill] + increased rarity

I like to cull bosses for extra loot. Having a culling skill it's very useful in leveling process to drop more rares

CWDT + decoy totem + summon skeleton

Perfect distractions to have a spare second to throw a spear. Another good combo to survive devourers for example is immortal call + CWDT + increased duration

Arctic armor + enhance + empower + smoke mine

Arctic armor with those gems will increase movement speed and its level up to 22. Smoke mine is a must have to escape dangerous strongboxes

LEVELING

I found out that leveling with this build as soon as you get cold to fire + ice spear + elemental proliferation is NOT recomended. Your EP gem will have a short radius and proliferation will spread with some difficulties. I strongly suggest to level with firestorm for leveling. It's a very powerful spell and you won't need any respec when you will change in this build!

Links should be firestorm + fire penetration + concentrated effect + spell echo/faster casting

This will grant a powerful firestorm that will melt enemies in seconds (tested it in 1 month race, it's a great skill)

I Personally leveled by using an humble 3 liked ice nova for AoE and flameblast for single targets...

I suggest to swap to this build at level 50+. You should have at least a radius 20 elemental proliferation, 300% extra crit chance from tree + gear and 400% multiplier. This will suffice to smash whole a3m and all maps!!!

BANDITS

Easy:

normal: help oak
cruel: kill all
merciless: kill all

MY STATS

(will post screens soon)

My actual stats are:

Life 6320
mana 2300
mana regene 250
armor 900
evasion 700
chance to block 24%
Critical strike chance 430% (+600%)
Critial multiplier 630%
increased burning damage 75%
Fire penetration: 38%
Ice spear tooltip DPS: 13200
Raw ice spear damage: 2600 - 3500

VIDEO SECTION

Will update this as soon as i get more high level maps!

Underground sea map 6:46 minutes full clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJTutnPVL4k

/// Q&A \\\

Q: why not using pyre ring??
A: because it destroys corpses on kill which would normally proliferate burning damage. Basically Pyre ring completely destroys all AoE capabilities of this buid!

Q: why using ice spear over fireball? the latter has better damage and can be linked with concentrated effect!!!
A: Simply because fireball has a very low critical chance compared to ice spear. This build is based and lives thanks to critical strikes so the more you make the faster you will clear. For a little comparison, with 400% crit chance from tree + passives, ice spear would have 35% chance to crit in first form and 77% in second form while fireball only 30%. This is a huge loss and the possibility to have a "non crit streak" will increase too much

Q: why using fire penetration over increased burning damage?
A: Thanks to Porcoflip for fire penetration over increased burning damage, i'll quote him directly with mathematical explanation:

"

porcoflic wrote:

For example, initial hit of 1000 fire damage, with FP lvl 20 on a 0% res mob = 1350 damage. Without any fire-ele-burning-dot damage increase, the burning produced is 1350*0.2=270 per second = 1080 dmg over time.
If IBD instead of FP, initial hit is 1000 dmg, with IBD lvl20, the burning damage is 1000*0.2*1.59= 318 -> 1272 overall burning damage.

This is the worst case for FP and the best case for IBD.
Using your tree, the numbers are (not counting crit dmg because it's the same multiplier for both cases):
With FP: 1000*(1+0.74+0.28+0.68+0.89)*1.37= 4918 dmg initial hit
4918*(1+0.75+0.68+0.89)*0.2 = 3265 per second -> 13060 overall burning damage

With IBD: 1000*(1+0.74+0.28+0.68+0.89)*1.02 = 3662 hit
3662*(1+0.75+0.68+0.89+0.59)*0.2 = 2864 per sec -> 11454 overall burning damage

ratio FP/IBD = 1.14

And remember this is on a 0% fire res mob, which is the worst case for fire pen, on a 75% res mob, the 1.37 multiplier reaches 2.48/4=0.64 while the 1.02 multiplier on no FP setup is only 0.27 (leading to ratio FP/IBD = 2.01).

Q: can the tree dragons be an option for this build?
A: Absolutely YES. 3D will save up a gem slot for ice spear and 3 passive points. However you lose the duality of this build... It's up to you to decide to use 3D or Avatar of fire!!!

-----

I'm very open for build critics and optimization! hope you enjoyed it and want to set the world on fire!

Do you think Pyre Ring (100% cold to fire mod) http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Pyre
Can give a chance to this build to have more dps ? (Save cold to fire gems, for another support..) And AoF is no more needed.

@Dagenais regarding your suggestion

Pros
-Pyre saves you three skill points(AoF +2 to get there)
-You can replace cold to fire gem by added cold damage

So yes your damage output will be bigger.


Cons
-With Pyre the dead bodies will disappear so elemental proliferation won't be as efficient. Monsters entering your blast zone won't ignite as they normally would.


Has to be tested, so we'll wait for Mahesys answer :-)

"

Dagenais wrote:

Do you think Pyre Ring (100% cold to fire mod) http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Pyre
Can give a chance to this build to have more dps ? (Save cold to fire gems, for another support..) And AoF is no more needed.

Pyre ring MUST be avoided at all costs for crowd clearing

It increased by a load DPS and burning DoT as well as save passives and a gem slot but as Nougatt said before, corpses will disappear and burning will not proliferate afterwards.

Now, since a crit ice spear will oneshot almost any regular (magic also) mob. The burning will have literally 0 time to proliferate as the coprse will be destroyed right after the crit itself, nullifing ALL AoE capabilities of the build

Already tested and for crowd claring is horrible imo

Pyre can be used as swap for bosses tho

btw, i'll add a Q&A at this point if more will pop out

EDIT: edited OP with "why no chance to ignite passives"

Edited OP with Q&A section

@Mahesys

Do you generate power charges quickly and manage to sustain them ? If yes it could be interesting to get the 2 +1 maximum power charge passives and then spell damage per power charge. Globally you would gain 100% increased critical hit chance and 20% increased spell damage for 3 skill points.

"

nougatt wrote:

@Mahesys

Do you generate power charges quickly and manage to sustain them ? If yes it could be interesting to get the 2 +1 maximum power charge passives and then spell damage per power charge. Globally you would gain 100% increased critical hit chance and 20% increased spell damage for 3 skill points.

Maintaining power charges is not easy. Assassin's mark will generate some charges but will be hard sustaining them all the time

Power charges are not needed at all to have good critical chance and those 3 points are imo spent better in doom cast area (according to my build, with 4 points you would get 100% extra crit chance always and 10% extra multiplier)

Thanks for your answer in the other thread.

Another question: why increased burning damage over fire penetration?
According to my calculations, IBD improve the total burning damage by 13% (with my gear and tree maybe it is 15-20% with yours) while Fire Penetration is 35% to 140% more damage depending on mob resistance. Is it a way to deal with reflects as you play in Beyond?

"

porcoflic wrote:

Thanks for your answer in the other thread.

Another question: why increased burning damage over fire penetration?
According to my calculations, IBD improve the total burning damage by 13% (with my gear and tree maybe it is 15-20% with yours) while Fire Penetration is 35% to 140% more damage depending on mob resistance. Is it a way to deal with reflects as you play in Beyond?

Good question. I already tought on using fire penetration, but as wiki states, it wont help burning damage: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Burning

Now i don't fully agree with wiki because at least the target hit from ice spear will have reduced fire resist and will take more burn damage, but all other enemies caught by burning proliferation will not have reduced fire resist and wont burn faster because they're not directly hit by the ice spear itself

Added in Q&A and update OP with level 84 tree

"

Mahesys wrote:

Good question. I already tought on using fire penetration, but as wiki states, it wont help burning damage: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Burning

Now i don't fully agree with wiki because at least the target hit from ice spear will have reduced fire resist and will take more burn damage, but all other enemies caught by burning proliferation will not have reduced fire resist and wont burn faster because they're not directly hit by the ice spear itself

My calculations were made with that in mind.
For example, initial hit of 1000 fire damage, with FP lvl 20 on a 0% res mob = 1350 damage. Without any fire-ele-burning-dot damage increase, the burning produced is 1350*0.2=270 per second = 1080 dmg over time.
If IBD instead of FP, initial hit is 1000 dmg, with IBD lvl20, the burning damage is 1000*0.2*1.59= 318 -> 1272 overall burning damage.

This is the worst case for FP and the best case for IBD.
Using your tree, the numbers are (not counting crit dmg because it's the same multiplier for both cases):
With FP: 1000*(1+0.74+0.28+0.68+0.89)*1.37= 4918 dmg initial hit
4918*(1+0.75+0.68+0.89)*0.2 = 3265 per second -> 13060 overall burning damage

With IBD: 1000*(1+0.74+0.28+0.68+0.89)*1.02 = 3662 hit
3662*(1+0.75+0.68+0.89+0.59)*0.2 = 2864 per sec -> 11454 overall burning damage

ratio FP/IBD = 1.14

And remember this is on a 0% fire res mob, which is the worst case for fire pen, on a 75% res mob, the 1.37 multiplier reaches 2.48/4=0.64 while the 1.02 multiplier on no FP setup is only 0.27 (leading to ratio FP/IBD = 2.01).

I hope this wall of numbers helps you, and please tell me if I'm wrong, there may have some mistakes or misunderstanding of game mechanics.