Blood Magic Keystone Incinerate Marauder

UPDATE FOR 2.0
The game has become significantly more difficult but this build remains strong. In fact, I'd argue that it has become far stronger. Incinerate no longer shotguns, but it also no longer needs to. The major problem with incinerate remains its ability to be sustained, which is now even easier than before with blood magic, and the wheel behind it.



Recommended Gearing Options:
Astramentis -- At least until you get a good stat stick amulet to cover for your int/dex needs. Earlier in the progression this is much more important, but there are three easily available +30 dex nodes in the tree, two +30 int nodes and the +20 int/dex node in marauder. All of these should be specced out of if possible. But they're good early on, especially if you're in a stat bind and don't have an astramentis.
Fire staff -- Preferably +2 or better, Searing Touch is a good unique option, but you can craft better ones -- it becomes even less of a good option once you realize it is now on a lathi instead of long staff. Incinerate doesn't need the burn damage, but the levels and cast speed are exceptionally important (cast speed being the most so, so don't leave home without it).
Kaom's Heart -- Because this build uses a staff, Kaom's Heart is the most efficient chest piece in the game. We're extremely heavy on life so that 500 ends up being something more like 1700, plus we get up to about 3-4 passives worth of fire damage on it (which is incredibly efficient). Belly of the Beast is a good alternative, but you'll have easily 1k life less, but the sockets will allow you to use a flame totem or put a CWDT setup in the chest.

Recommended jewel modifiers: Anything with damage, fire damage, or cast speed (especially cast speed) will be very good on this build. Because there is no shotgun, if you're just interested in clear speed, projectile speed would also be good.

Recommended Unique Jewel: Clear Mind (exceptionally powerful if over a 52% spell damage roll), which basically makes its combination of percent damage higher than any other gem, and it is spell damage. And yes, it does indeed work with blood magic.

For the record, all of my current gear is either self found or crafted. And yeah I've got a few bellies of the beast too, when I started this build I used a rare armor and went from there. I haven't been really active in the buying side of the trading game (I still sell some items from a forum shop) aside from currency since before the launch of Forsaken Masters.


Current DPS: 17,918.1 tooltip * 4 for spin up = 71,672.4 * 1.43 for fire penetration = 102,491.532 dps
Spin up takes very little time and quite often white monsters melt faster than incinerate spins up.

Defensive Stats:
Life - 8,847
Armor - 7,743
Six Endurance Charges

Bandit Choices
Kill - Kill - Oak

Gem choices:
Incinerate + Spell Echo + Faster Casting + Fire Penetration + Life Leech + Lesser Multiple Projectiles
Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Increased Duration + Increased Area of Effect
Flame Dash + Faster Casting + Increased Burning Damage + Flammability
Basic strategy
Summon Chaos Golem + Minion Life + Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance + Empower

Alternate Gem choices:
Lesser Multiple Projectiles -- Can easily be replaced with faster projectiles, culling strike, slower projectiles or simply removed. Without shotgun the gem isn't necessary, but is nice for clear speed.
Life leech -- If you don't like the idea of using the life leech gem, you can use the warlord's mark curse, this will replace the flammability curse as your primary curse.
Flammability -- Unless you need warlord's mark I highly recommend flammability over elemental weakness. This is because ES cooldowns are much faster than they used to be, so if you need to dodge a mechanic they can start regenning energy shield sooner. But an ignite of even only 1 dps will stop that from happening for a few extra seconds.

Basic Gameplay style:
When encountering a pack of monsters, enduring cry to get them to come closer to you and also build up charges. If the reduction is still not enough, quickly discharge with an immortal cry or top up with a granite flask. This should minimize or absorb all physical damage. Which leaves only elemental damage to worry about, which is usually not a problem with your life leech (even AFTER the life leech changes) and natural regeneration. For monsters that make a habit of fleeing, flame dash is effective for quickly bridging the distance, and avoiding traps.

The New Life Leech and you:
The new life leech mechanically seems weak, but overall the only reduction this build notices is the extra 4% max leech that a 20Q life leech gem would provide. Incinerate hits fast enough and hard enough that at full spin, it can still hit leech cap, even against single target. If you want more assurances stacking warlords mark with the life leech gem works marvelously, and flammability or elemental weakness will up your damage significantly to help boost you up. In short, don't worry about it, it's still very effective.

Pros:
-Extremely durable for soloing
-Reasonably fast killing speed
-Can do almost all maps
-Never hear an OOM message ever again
-Can use life leech instead of regeneration, so no regen maps are still okay.
-Defensively built so may be hardcore viable, just stay away from Atziri, Uber Atziri, and Hall of Grandmasters (This build can do Atziri without problems but it's much too risky, Uber Atziri is impossible with this build, the vaal twins deal too much lightning damage period -- need more lightning mitigation purity of lightning maybe a saffel's frame and might just want a spell block build at that point, and Hall of Grandmasters is a more pvp style area, which this build isn't meant for).

Cons:
-In your face playstyle which relies upon sudden twitches to survive, automation is non-existent.
-Expensive for best in slot items, which make the build more efficient.
-Elemental reflect is extremely dangerous, although less of a problem than pre 2.0. You won't instagib yourself like you used to, even on thornflesh but it is a significant problem which only gets worse with higher casting speeds.
-Absolutely no auras, which only seems to be getting worse every expansion, the new anger would work well with incinerate.
-After you get used to it, you can easily get overconfident that nothing will kill you, and then something will. Overconfidence is your enemy.

Hardest obstacles:
- Elemental Reflect: Some mitigation from flasks, and lowering dps helps considerably. I find the best method is actually to just manually use bursts (which lets your life regen a little bit) instead of full streams for dps.
- Some new 2.0 monsters use hard to see attacks (the eyeball spawning type things in particular which leave a mark on the ground you stand on) and incinerate makes them almost impossible to see. If you keep moving it isn't a problem, but that goes counter to killing stuff with incinerate.
- Lightning Thorns can be a hassle on high level maps, especially the Promenade bosses, take special care on them.

Leveling Guide
Until level 4 do whatever you want. Then use flame totem. That's the new meta and you should not ignore it. It's easy, and available for marauder from the gem vendor. At about 31 you can potentially switch to incinerate, with a life leech gem attached. I didn't til about 50 or so. If you're worried about dps I highly recommend keeping the flame totem around for awhile. You can't really transition into something like Kaom's Heart early on, and if you're running Belly of the Beast (as a budget option) you can easily keep it around. Even if you don't switch out to incinerate you can easily supplement your dps by using firestorm as an aid, which is also available from the gem vendors. Get both in a +1 fire sceptre and it should be easy all the way up to merciless as long as you don't neglect defensive stats, which this build has a lot of.

Just wondering...

If instead of Astramentis, you would wear a Dex/Int amulet with life+resists, you could safe some skillpoints in the tree (you use a ton of points purely for resists).

There's also two +30 Dex and one +30 Int node right next to your path.

And I'd be definetly greedy and take at least the fire damage notable "Heart of Flame" instead of all these resists... ;)

If I had a really good amulet that gave at least 50 or so dex I would consider it. I need around 110 dex and have two +30 dex nodes available. But that's still pretty far along into the build path, Astramentis just makes life easier. This far into the build I actually don't need much more int either. Only need about 161 for level 20 incinerate, and I think I'm currently pulling around 140 from the tree.

And yes, I have been eyeing Heart of Flame for some time. That and more life nodes wouldn't ever hurt.

But yes, the points into resists are sadly necessary considering my current gearing options. I run extra resists to overcap in curse maps, auras aren't really an option.

Edited after Atziri kill, bump.

hi am playing now marauder for about 1 week now on one month torment bloodline event for the seraph armour set and i was doing well in terms of damage and survivabillity thanks to instant flasks but i came to death many times but doesnt matter since am playing the softcore version currently i am level 39 marauder with 2-Handed Axe




Gear

screenshots of my status:



Passive Skill Tree






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Your gem choices don't make any sense... Block reduction gem on IC? Lv20 EC? Supporting Incinerate isn't difficult. RF Incin even supports AA while doing so. You just need to make an active decision in the matter

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conqMax wrote:

Your gem choices don't make any sense... Block reduction gem on IC? Lv20 EC? Supporting Incinerate isn't difficult. RF Incin even supports AA while doing so. You just need to make an active decision in the matter

This build cannot run AA because that requires a mana pool -- did you not read that this was a blood magic keystoned build? Originally that immortal call was supported by a level 3 Enhance, which does make sense. I had been leveling a block choice reduction because I didn't need the enhance to have good results, and it was an open slot.

The choices of level 20 enduring cry and immortal call were purely defensive measures. With 6 endurance charges it is possible to sustain immortal call indefinitely. This means that your largest problem is not physical damage, but elemental.

There are other solutions to the mana sink problem that incinerate is than the one I chose. But I like my choice because it allows me the ability to focus entirely on life and damage nodes. I have viewed the RF incinerate build before, and that required going and taking eldritch battery, which is a strong choice for going on a mana heavy char. They make up for it by grace of the righteous fire spell damage buff. Oddly enough the RF incinerate build also now has the heralds going for it (this build was made before the heralds were introduced) and celestial punishment which could easily make for a shocking incinerator better than three dragons ever did.

Graklak I thank you for your interest in my build, or at least getting my opinion. I regret I have not been actively checking this thread for activity. If you do check this thread again hoping for some advice, the only advice I can offer you is that this is not a build on which to base a temporary league character on. It also has very little to do with a melee build, even though it inevitably has to start as one. There are probably better guides or people to ask for advice on how to get going to level 50+.

Really like the idea of the build I was curious though, what made you take skillpoint in normal instead of oak? I mean with 249% life wouldn't oak be better then a skillpoint?

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blight93 wrote:

Really like the idea of the build I was curious though, what made you take skillpoint in normal instead of oak? I mean with 249% life wouldn't oak be better then a skillpoint?

Depends on what you need really. At 249% life 40 life is like another 140ish life or so. When you have 8800+ (which my marauder currently has), thats only a small spot on the road (and in fact is probably better served with even more life % because of the high level of the character). This character has so much life built in that you could probably go in and ignore getting flat life on gear. I wouldn't recommend that, life being incredibly important as a survival feature (determines how much you can leech and regen, which are both important to using blood magic effectively, and in hardcore can cover messing up in many situations that would otherwise kill you).

But let me ask you this, is 40 life better than a half a jewel socket (assuming two points to get to a jewel and each point is worth 3.5% life plus damage taking into consideration that 5% increased life is better than 40 flat life at high levels)? If the answer is no (which it was to me), you'd get rid of Oak as your first bandit choice as well.

I'm a bit curious - why dont get a staff with "gems in this item are supported by lvl1 Blood Magic" master-crafted mod, and ignore Blood Magic keystone completely? You'll be able to run 2 auras, or aura+herald+AA, etc...