Phaze's Flickering Fire

Hi everyone, Phaze here! This is my first build guide ever so go easy on the criticizing. This build has been updated for 1.3 and is very easy to use. It costs about 5 exalted orbs to make and it can be a little tricky getting all the resists on your gear. There are different variations of this build that used different items. There is an expensive version of the build that uses Kaom's Heart instead of Belly of the Beast. Both versions are capable of doing Atziri. Even if you are a new player, you shouldn’t have much of a problem making this build. It’s very straight forward! I’m quite new myself :)

This build is very similar to the classic Righteous Fire build and I used Oro’s Righteous Fire Marauder as the foundation of this build. If you haven’t seen his build, go check it out! It’s a very good build guide. Most people think of a Righteous Fire build as a lazy build in which you can just use one hand to kill everything. All you have to do is Cyclone and pick up items, that's it. Unfortunately, the 1.3 patch made it so that you can’t target enemies with Cyclone. This means that you can’t just hold the Cyclone button and let your character sway back and forth on an enemy like Atziri. This is one of the main reasons I decided to make this build. I couldn’t stand using Cyclone anymore (yes, I’m a lazy lazy fool). Switching to Flicker Strike brought back the laziness (and even more) I loved so much when using Cyclone in 1.2.

Another reason I chose Flicker Strike, is for the incredible clear speed. I designed this build to be both easy to use (lazy) and fast at clearing maps. I realized that when I used Cyclone to clear maps, I often found myself having to go back and clean up a few mobs that I missed. Flicker Strike hits all the enemies. This makes opening strongboxes take 2 seconds! One main reason why Flicker Strike is better than Cyclone is because of how you bounce from mob to mob. It has a ton of dodging ability and you don’t take as much damage compared to using Cyclone. I was very surprised when I was testing this at the Apex of Sacrifice. I noticed I didn’t have to use Ruby Flasks as often when I was killing the trash mobs.

You should use this build if:

You want the crazy clear speed of Flicker Strike builds
You enjoy playing carelessly
You want to hold 1 button and watch everything burn
You enjoy playing as a tank
You want easy farming
You want to get laid

There are only 2 items that this build requires:


Rise of the Phoenix is a necessity because of the +8% to maximum fire resistance. This allows us to sustain the life degeneration of Righteous Fire if aided with life regeneration and more fire resistance.

Ming's Heart and Rise of the Phoenix should not cost you more than 5 exalts. The prices will probably fluctuate a little bit in the future, though.

If you have enough chaos resistance on your gear, then you should switch from Ming's Heart to a Death Rush. Using a Death Rush is much better than Ming's Heart because it doesn’t have the 15% reduced maximum life and it gives extra accuracy, armor and Onslaught. How can you hate Onslaught?


Where does our damage come from? It comes from our life because Righteous Fire’s damage output is based 50% of our maximum life. Unfortunately, there is a major drawback to using this skill. It takes out 90% of our life per second as Fire Damage. The key to sustaining Righteous Fire is having an increased maximum fire resistance (Rise of the Phoenix + Purity of Fire) and a lot of life regeneration from the passive tree.

To get an endless spree of Flicker Strikes, we have to support it with Multistrike so that each time Flicker Strike is executed, it attacks three times. If we have Blood Rage up, then each kill grants us 1 Frenzy Charge. The high amount of damage provides a fast income of charges. By expending a charge we can bypass Flicker Strike’s cooldown time and create the endless spree of Flicker Strikes.

The use of Blood Rage causes us to to lose 4% of our life per second as Chaos Damage. In order to combat this, we must cap our chaos resistance to 75%. This is the tricky part. Not only do we need to cap lightning, fire, and cold resistances, we have to cap chaos resistance. We get 20% increased chaos resistance from the Purity of Flesh passive tree cluster. Ming's Heart can provide anywhere from 49% to 63% increased chaos resistance. Lets assume our Ming's Heart has 55% chaos resistance. This mean’s that we need 60% more chaos resistance to get 135% total chaos resistance (75% on merciless). We can get the last 60% from gear. You can either get two items with perfect 30% rolls or three with 20% rolls.

- In the passive tree, we aimed for as much life and life regeneration as we could.
- The Purity of Flesh kills two birds with one stone because we get both life and chaos resistance.
- Holy Fire was taken to significantly increase our Righteous Fire damage.
- Elemental Equilibrium combined with added Lightning Damage or Cold Damage from gear allows us to give -50% fire resistance to enemies which results in a huge amount of extra damage. Righteous Fire does not proc Elemental Equilibrium because it is a degen.
- Amplify was taken to increased the radius of our Righteous Fire and makes it easier to clear mobs grouped together.
- Arsonist is double points as well, granting us extra Fire Damage and life regeneration.
- You must get Barbarism for the +1% to maximum fire resistance. This makes it easier for us to sustain Righteous Fire.
- Unwavering Stance was taken so that we have an easier time during the Atziri Boss Trio. We want to reduce as much stunning as possible to keep us flickering.
- Art of the Gladiator was only taken for the extra dexterity. If your gear provides enough, then you don’t have to get it. I chose this specific node over Agility because it granted bonus movement speed and attack speed. This build requires almost no dexterity, but I like to have some so that I can run other gems such as Haste, Purity of Ice, and Cyclone. Dexterity will be different for everyone. If you use Blood Dance you will need 80 dexterity, if you run Haste you will need even more, etc.
- Grab as many +30 INT nodes as you can so that you can use your blue gems, but do not get any +10 INT gems just for the intelligence.
- Remember to get all the extra 5% life nodes before the extra 4% life nodes (if you’re getting the 4% at all).


Bandits:

Normal: Oak (+40 HP)
Cruel: Skill point
Merciless: Skill point

I did not get the Frenzy Charge because I almost always have 3 charges up and Righteous Fire kills fast enough to keep us at 3. If you are using Blood Dance, then I recommend getting the extra Frenzy Charge.

Alright, guys. Get ready for this incredibly thorough explanation of the DPS calculation on Righteous Fire!

Required Items:


Rise of the Phoenix gives us the +8% to maximum fire resistance that is needed to sustain Righteous Fire. Without this item, our life degeneration would overpower our life regeneration.


Although Ming's Heart has a nasty drawback of 15% reduced maximum life, we need this ring for the 55% chaos resistance it provides. We get the other 60% chaos resistance from items. If you have 90% chaos resistance from items, then you should use a Death Rush. Using a Death Rush gives us about 400 to 500 life back.


Recommended Items:


Getting a Belly of the Beast provides a lot of health and some extra resists. You do not need a 5L. If you have enough currency, then go buy a Kaom's Heart. It provides you even more health and just makes you look sexy. The benefit of having a Belly of the Beast are the extra sockets. With the extra sockets you can run Leap Slam + Faster Attacks and a Portal if you have one. You don’t need these though, they’re just nice to have.


Getting all the chaos resistance along with the other resistances on your items can be tricky. Using an Aurumvorax makes it much easier to cap all your resistances by providing 40%-60% to all elemental resistances. This weapon is very cheap and easy to obtain for new players! Doryani's Catalyst is the ideal endgame weapon because of its massive damage scalar. It can give us anywhere from 90% to 110% increased elemental damage.


If you are using an Aurumvorax (or just have godly gear and met all the resistance requirements), then you can use a Blood Dance. Having the extra life regeneration that these boots provides makes us even more tanky. The only downside to using Blood Dance is that it does not provide us with any life. Blood Dance or life boots work fine.

All of your other gear should have as much life as you can get along with the 4 resistances. You do not need to overcap with chaos resistance. Once you have 75%, you’re good. One very important thing to mention is that one of your items must have added Lightning Damage or Cold Damage. This makes it so that a Flicker Strike will proc Elemental Equilibrium and the enemy will lose 50% fire resistance.

You do not need to wear a fire version of Doryani's Invitation. Righteous Fire does not provide us with any life leech even if you wear this belt. You can choose to wear one for the extra Fire Damage and resistances, but I chose a life belt over Doryani's Invitation because the life outweighs the Fire Damage increase. We are already killing mobs quickly and the extra increased Fire Damage doesn’t improve our DPS by that much. This belt is a little unnecessary, especially if we are giving up life.

Flasks:


It is important to use Ruby Flasks and not Life Flasks. Each time we consume a Ruby Flask, we gain 10% increased maximum fire resistance and makes our life degeneration from Righteous Fire very small. This allows us to get close to 1000 life regeneration per second while using a Ruby Flask. Assuming we have a Lv 17 or higher Purity of Fire, if we use a Ruby Flask, we reach 97% fire resistance.

Since Righteous Fire takes 90% of our life per second:
Without a flask: (90)(1-.87) = 11.7% life degeneration.
With a flask: (90)(1-.97) = 2.7% life degeneration.

Our passive tree gives us 13.2% life regeneration and a Lv 20 Vitality gives us an extra 1.65% life regeneration. Without a flask we have a net of (13.2 +1.65 - 11.7) = 3.15% regeneration and with a flask we have (13.2 + 1.65 - 2.7) = 12.15% regeneration.

Assuming we have 8000 life:
Net life regeneration without flask: (8000)(.0315) = 252 life per second
Net life regeneration with flask: (8000)(.1215) = 972 life per second


I use a Dousing Flask for when I’m in tight situations. It unlocks the full potential of my life regeneration and makes me close to invincible.

Cheap Version:
Rise of the Phoenix: 10 chaos
Ming's Heart: 4 exalts
Belly of the Beast: 5 chaos
Aurumvorax : 1 chaos
Blood Dance: 1 chaos

Total: 4 to 5 exalts

Expensive Version:
Rise of the Phoenix: 10 chaos
Ming's Heart: 4 exalts
Kaom's Heart: 10 exalts
Doryani's Catalyst : 3 exalts
Blood Dance: 1 chaos

Total: 17 to 18 exalts

What to bring:
1 Life Gain On Hit
1 Cyclone
1 Life Ring (to swap with Ming's Heart during Trio)
4 Ruby Flasks
1 Granite Flask
1 Topaz Flask
1 Dousing Flask

Trash:

I was extremely surprised when I tested this build at the Apex of Sacrifice. I didn’t think this would work on the trash mobs because they have such a large amount of health. The way it works is that once you cast Flicker Strike, you will bounce three times and most likely not kill anything, resulting in 0 Frenzy Charges. This will happen at the beginning of a mob pack. On your third hit, you will just stand there for a second (because of the Flicker Strike cooldown). During that time, you end up killing a few mobs and receive your Frenzy Charges due to Righteous Fire. From then on, you bounce around until the pack is gone. You may have to pop a Ruby Flask during the Flicker Strike cooldown, but that’s it! Unlike a Flicker Strike Crit Dagger build, if you fail to kill mobs and you lose all your charges, Righteous Fire picks up the slack and you can continue to flicker away!

Double Vaal Oversoul:
For this boss, all you need to do is flicker around and take down both of their healths at the same time. Do not kill them one at a time or else the survivor will become and enraged and much more difficult to kill. The only thing you need to look out for when doing this boss is dodging the light beams (they can chunk you down fairly quickly). When I do this boss, I just hold Flicker Strike and they seem to die at the same time because Flicker Strike attacks both of them at almost an equal amount. I was surprised at how much easier it was to kill the Double Vaal Oversouls with Flicker Strike than Cyclone. Since the Vaal Oversouls spawn mobs, I continue to have Frenzy Charges up and I keep bouncing around until they both die.
Use 4 Ruby Flasks and a Dousing Flask.

Trio:
This is the hardest boss at the Apex of Sacrifice. Unfortunately, Cyclone should be used for the Trio simply because of the black smoke. If you use Flicker Strike, you will uncontrollably end up in the black smoke and die. Cyclone allows you to target where you are going. Take out Flicker Strike and Multistrike and replace them with Cyclone and Life Gain On Hit, respectively. The first boss you should kill is the Cycloner because of his red trail that deals a lot of damage over time if you stand on it. Second on the list is the TittyBitch. The reason for this is that she is quite hard to kill if you leave her for last. The last one to kill is the Double Striker. He shouldn’t be a problem if he is last. If you prefer to kill them in a different order, that works too. Don’t go into the black smoke or you will die. You can refill your flasks quickly after you kill the Cycloner from the TittyBitch mobs that spawn.
Use 3 Ruby Flasks, a Granite Flask, and a Dousing Flask.

Atziri:
For Atziri, all you need to do is Flicker Strike her then just stand near her. Dodge her Storm Calls and pop a Ruby Flask whenever she casts Flameblast. Her healing phase should be pretty simple. Just hold down Flicker Strike and watch them burn. Her split phase is the trickiest. What I do for this phase is I cast Flicker Strike and whichever Atziri copy I land on is the one I will take out (simply by standing next to her). You only need to cast Flicker Strike once during this phase and let your Righteous Fire do the rest. Remember that the effects of Elemental Equilibrium wear off after 5 seconds. Another way to take on the split phase is by casting Flicker Strike a few times so that all 4 copies are proc’ed with Elemental Equilibrium, then just choose one to kill. Through multiple Atziri runs, I found that using 1 Flicker Strike was easier, but do whatever is easiest for you.
Use 3 Ruby Flasks, a Topaz Flask, and a Dousing Flask.

I recommend you wait until level 80 before attempting Atziri.