DonkeyFarts Incinerator Witch/Templar/Marauder/Scion Uber Atziri viable, updated as of 01/11/2015

92 Witch, my current 2.0 one

If you want to use another class, marauder, scion or templar, than just replace starter nodes in witch with the correlating class. Like before, witch's start has the most damage, scion has fastest exit so you save some points, templar/marauder have slightly higher life depending what pathing you choose.




Note that in my opinion, Witch is the best start, but only slightly, simply because of the more damage in the first nodes, as opposed to others. While the marauder tree is the "worst" because of the initial 3 nodes to get the the main skill tree build, and honestly needs one more level so 93 to sustain rf without degen with the node in scion starter area. Marauder has the best cast animation in the game though so it has that going for him. All in all I would say that the choice is completely personal and hardly influential, only for min maxing.

Towards higher levels you will be making a choice of taking some of this few things, flask nodes in witch tree, cast speed to the left of witch tree, elemental damage, life, or potency of will for increased duration on your vaal molten shell, that choice is completely up to you.

skill tree progression

I would not choose this build as a leveling option, although admittedly cybil+inci+echo+lmp is some of the easiest leveling process i have ever done, it's rather hard to die even on hc 1m race.


The best general advise I can give you for leveling process is to simply RUN and HIT, don't stand afk talking to people, don't read forums half your play time, don't waste time, put that time to use to bring slaughter and blood for the blood god.

As you hit late 50s early 60s, start farming docks in merciless, it gives you both great experience for the level, it's very easy as soon as you cap yourself on fire res (cold and lightning can wait when you first hit docks). And most importantly you will be starting to earn actual currency along those levels since there will be many cor zones and you will be saving up/selling sac pieces. If you feel like you aren't getting enough experience, and already have a few levels on your aa, you can farm solaris temple as it's a higher level zone and you will also start building your map base here.

As you get into early 70s-80s you should be currently mapping. Now the age old question, what do I do with my "map base". There has been a lot of research done in this area and i'm sure you can find a few threads here or on reddit that go into more details, but generally speaking, don't expect to "maintain" high level maps if you only have 2-3-4-5 of them, that's pure rng and you could go lower or maybe could go higher, all up to luck. You may get a lucky carto at 73 map (use up all your chaoses if you have to but get quantity/additional items/mirror afixes) and that will be that really, or you could be stuck doing 71s-72s well into 80s like I was, in either case, don't worry too much about it, it's a lot more important to simply PLAY the game, than sit reading forums and standing afk in city/ho. Generally speaking you want to have pack size magic packs etc in your maps for more experience as well as if you have enough alc/chaos you should be rolling those on maps but I would strongly recommend on using blue maps up to 74s or so as that would just drain your currency straight out of the more important things you would buy with that currency, especially early game. Pick up all you can, do vendor recipes for chaos/regal/orbs do everything efficiently, watch your bag space don't clutter with trash items. Experience makes perfect and soon you won't need any advice or help you will just know yourself what items to pick up and what to leave on the ground. It may look challenging and time consuming at the start, but believe me it becomes second nature very quickly.

Depending on how lucky you were with drops and leveling, you may be able to start doing atziri runs quite early. For instance if you get your hands on a few high level 18-19-20 gems or good gear, it could speed up the process of currency/leveling.

I would generally advise though to start doing atziri runs when you can sustain RF. That means earlier in leveling you should focus more on the life/life regen nodes in the skill tree, over the damage ones. Perhaps pick up the aura nodes later and only use one herald too before 90s. Things like that are your choice to make and I can't truthfully tell you the best way to go about it, as it will entirely depend on which items gems you get. But, again, generally speaking progression should look something like travel nodes>life/life regen/dps nodes as you level.

When to pick up eldrich battery? Honestly you can pick it up quite early, i'd say even 40s-50s as by then you should have a certain amount of ok'ish gear and some mana regen to sustain low level aa which will help a lot with survival, you want to put on cloak of defiance and phoenix shield as soon as you can, those are your first uniques on the buy list, after that are the others scold's/doryani's/belt. All in all your gear progression is highly rng dependent and there's no "best" way to go about it, for all I know you may already have the currency to afford all the items, they aren't that high cost. For example when i was doing it, cod+phoenix cost me 2ex each unlinked, which in current economy will be a LOT cheaper, as well as doryani's scepter cost me 9ex at the time and the belt 4 ex. Again, they will be more than twice cheaper at this moment. Problem is the scold's, now my first one dropped for a friend of mine, which i quickly "borrowed" and than paid for. Early in the league first week or two they were 7-8 ex, and than went down to 2ex. Which surprised me but hey, why argue. Currently the prices for that are rising, i guess awareness came and all that, they'r gona be more expensive I have no doubt about that. But, on the bright side everything else is cheaper than it were for me at the start.

If it is your new character and you have no currency, than I would not advise spending all you have on sets, simply because if you get a 20 flask spree you will be both heart and financially broken. Make sure you take wise decisions with your currency as it comes in, do not waste it on rng as of early. Later believe me you will be spamming those chaoses on 81 ilvl items and corrupting 6l cods and scolds and what not. Early on, not so much.

Whether you choose to run corrupt zones/atziri/uber atziri non stop at later stages of leveling is completely up to you. I currently sit at lvl 92, and the only major skill tree improvements i see for myself, are the fire cluster on top of witch tree and the cast speed nodes between witch and templar. Perhaps if one day i get a good corrupt on amulet for 1% all res or on 6l cod i will drop a few regen nodes and use those for dps/life nodes in the tree. But I'd generally advise to level to at least this current stage of my build as it is now that uber runs become stable. Before then you always lack something, be that some dps, some life regen, or unwavering stance, whatever.

As for bandits, i personally took skill point in all 3 difficulties to make it easier on the skill tree, THE reason for that is simple, i wanted to level into 90s as little as possible. If you choose to take cast speed for example in cruel difficulty, than you would need to be level 93 to have the witch skill tree i currently have. Equally if you choose to take endurance charge in merciless for a chance of longer Immortal call duration you could do that too, but again you will need to be +1 level.

old screenshots new updated numbers in mechanics
Stats in hideout without flasks
Incinerate

Defensive stats

Vaal Molten Shell

If you are poor, use Cybil's paw early on for normal atziri, as well as normal atziri is easily doable with 4l cod which would be VERY cheap, faster casting-spell echo-gmp-incinerate links. Phoenixes are cheap either way too. And you can start making currency on atziri runs already within 3-4 ex easily.



Choosing gear will be rather easy since you have so many uniques, there only really are so many combinations of what you can get in "free" slots. Generally speaking you want to have high life/es, caped res,as much es/es regen as you can get. Dps stats to take into account on gear and Jewels is CAST SPEED is by FAR the highest dmg bonus you could possibly get in this build, together with gem levels on vms. So if you'r looking to boost your dips look for those, but also +fire damage % and spell damage %.



As I was pointed out in my thread by "Ohjeah" you could actually use those, and I fully agree, they give full benefit of corrupted scold's at a cost of a few life/es/res stats. And it would definitely be a very good idea to use them, especially if you manage to +2vaal gem corrupt them and get empower 4, vms base dmg would be insane. Highly recommend putting them into if you manage to on other stats.

GG

Uber atziri bosses
http://youtu.be/dCWdgzp9gRk - vaals
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevS11uyh-o - trio
http://youtu.be/MOoxaOTeJYQ - atziri

I would like to add though, while this videos turned out great and fun, the reality is that it's an uber run. Deathless uber runs are quite rare, rng is rng and sooner or later you will die.

Raw numbers in my current stage on tooltip are as follows:
Incinerate Faster Proj: 11,463
Incinerate Added Cold: 12,573

To calculate the real incinerate damage we multiply 12,573x5(gmp shotgun)x3(last stage) and get
Effective Incinerate: 188,595

Vaal Molten Shell: 66,923 (with the fire nodes cluster on top of witch tree this number becomes 78k, alternatively with the unique gloves linked in gear that give +4 without empower and with empower 4 that number becomes 99k)

Now that's just the single hit damage on vaal molten shell, to calculate the real applied damage while i'm channeling incinerate we will have to multiply that number by my cast speed, 14.5

Vaal Molten Shell applied: 970,383

So overall dps with incinerate and vaal molten shell active: 1,158,978

Now whether or not that number is "true" and I calculated that right, I'm not too sure, since I know spell echo does some funky business and I don't care to figure out the exact real number I personally would be sure about. All I KNOW is in my videos, stuff dies fast, before it kills me. And frankly that's all that matters to me.

While most things is this build are quite meta, such as using Cloak of defiance with phoenix in order to both boost defenses and damage, a few things are new. For instance, I am using two heralds instead of just one compared to raizqt's build of the week version. In my opinion those aura nodes are very close on the skill tree, and reaching them you have life nodes near to pick up too, so it was a good damage improvement to also use herald of thunder.

With the new 1.3 tree, incinerate finally can apply elemental effects such as shock/freeze/burn, which are VERY good to have, as you apply them next to instantly due to high cast speed and and 10% chance from the skill tree. +75% increased damage to targets overall, good stuff.

The absolute key to the damage output has become the combination of Scold's Bridle with Vaal Molten Shell. As you can see it's crazy high damage. Most bosses are simply one shot with good positioning and reactions to their movement. Which is the key new feature that you will have to adjust your playstyle to, vaal molten shell + conc effect will have a rather small effective radius, so you really have to hug bosses with this. But, you get around 24 seconds of duration for each boss, which is plenty. If you will find it hard you can always use Increased Aoe gem instead of concentrated effect, I have used it a few times on trash but stopped simply because I already one shot groups of monsters easily with incinerate alone, however, in party it works like a charm, really speeds up those zana rotations. With good movement and positioning you can maintain vaal molten shell constantly up and easily carry the whole group.

Right so, I won't go into the basics and just speak about the details of the instance for this particular build. First of all, when I do uber, I clear trash rather slowly, just because I go through all the gear on the ground, ilvl items etc etc, as well as it's still an uber instance and there are many scenarios in which certain trash mobs with certain magic mods may one shot you, so, better safe than sorry, take your time clearing trash play safe. When you open a door walk away first give yourself safety margin. Watch out for bleed from snakes and don't for whatever reason let mace dudes come up to you and melee, don't risk a valuable portal.

About your SOULS. Managing you souls for vaal molten shell in uber instance is a very important matter. Do not, for whatever reason, activate vaal molten shell on trash clearing, and make sure to fill the souls up clearing the place. For the first two boss fights you want to have the increased duration gem in your scold's bridle together with vms+conc+empower. While for the atziri herself instead of increased duration my personal preference is to use two vms gems instead of using one with increased duration. First of all thanks to 45% incr duration from the talent tree you get 14.5 sec duration which is already plenty x2 so 29 second duration together. While filling those souls in the third area of trash mobs, you may run a risk to not fill your second gem if you put it into your helmet after trio fight. What I do is, after I have filled one vms before the first boss, i put the second one in, so it gets the souls from the first area, than switch it out, put in the bag, activate only one with increased duration during vaals, move on to the next area, make sure one vms fills up, when it does, i switch it for another which still needs souls. ETC, in my experience the third area of trash mobs, is rng, it may or may not fill out both vms itself, but you may want to have previously had a few souls left over from the previous zone, so, better safe than sorry, switch the gems around a time or two as you go.

As for the bosses themselves,

Vaal is VERY simple as soon as you have scold's bridle +empower+conc effect+20 vaal molten shell, run up to the spawn point, activate it right before the spawn, kill the first spawn, run up to the second kill that. Sometimes, vaals bug out, and jump right back down, in which case tough luck, the fight may get sketchy if both of them are up at the same time, but, with the 24second duration on vms+increased dur gem you still should have this fight rather easily. If you do everything right, this fight should never pose any real danger of wasting portals.

Trio is also in fact rather easy as you saw from the video. Most of the time you are "lucky" and they all stack on top of each other when you run up to the ranged one, so it's just a blur of spamming your flasks to stay alive for 3-4 seconds and everything in there dies. Generaly speaking, don't stand in rain of arrows and don't stand in corrupted earth or whatever it's called. In my video at the end I actually had the "worst" scenario the Cycloner survived last, so i was taking a lot of damage from both corruption stacks, AND as you can see on the video the vms animation isn't actually on top of me, that is because I desynced and actually stood on corrupted ground as well, alas the dmg output was enough to quickly kill him and survive. Depending on a few rng factors of this fight, such as their choice of behavior where they will run first how they will move, the fight may go differently. In the perfect scenario you kill either the ranged or cycloner first, as those two are two that pose real threat, the dual wield one should be left last in perfect scenario as he deals the least damage. Also take note that you still use increased duration with only one vms in this fight so 24.5 seconds of vaal molten shell should be plenty to kill all 3. If all else fails and you find yourself in worst case scenario where the room is filled with corrupted earth and cycloner is last standing and no vms active, move as much as possible outside of the danger on the ground, while filling up flasks with the spawning adds. Here bleed flasks are our best friend.

Atziri herself, is also rather heavily rng based fight for this build, although if previously the run has been done well, you should have a rather high chance of success no matter what. If you die once, don't panic, don't rush, analyse the situation and adjust your behavior. Before you run into her room, make sure your vms link is ready, for her fight I strongly advise to use 2xVms+conc+empower. Reason being that most of the runs one of the cooldowns will be ruined through whatever rng, whether a strange healing phase out of nowhere or the need to move out of her melee range to avoid damage. When you first run into the room, in my experience 95% of the time after a few animations and some dmg dealt to her she will quickly go into healing phase. That's why we do NOT activate the first vms as we run in, but right after or as the healing phase ends, with practice your timing will get better and better. For the split phase, i'm sure you understand, but no matter what, do not hit the mirror image you will one shot yourself AA will not save you. Split phases i'd say are the most difficult ones to "recover" from as if you die during one, it's generally hard when you enter the room again, I might post a video of one of my fail "deathless" video where I just straight up get one shot by a spear as I enter the room. If that happens, have your fingers ready on the flasks but don't use too many charges at once, in fact that is the most key thing about success on uber atziri herself, do not waste flask charges, even though you refill them during the healing phase, you still can easily panic and waste them when you don't need to. When preparing for this fight, know that no amount of armour will make her spears "safe" so there is no incentive to invest much into it. Have your rumi flask up for the split phase and hopefully your vms is up which makes this phase very fast and easy. Usually though you would have one or two split phases without vms up and that's when it's KEY to have already have full incinerate stacks at spawn and be good at positioning. All in all, i'd say dps>survival in this game, but do not die silly, move from lightning strikes when you can as you can as well as the double flameblast, one flameblast you can survive however, at the end of the day though avoid damage that you can.

As I personally see it, when GGG added scold's into the game, they already had something similar in mind, since they put 15% reduced cast speed on it. That to me, is the most straight forward stat to nerf/buff the output of this build in its current stage. While changing souls machnics or reducing required numbers of souls woudl be useful, it would mostly be a QoL change, cast speed is our biggest friend here and thus would be the first thing they may target IF they decide to nerf it. What I would like to mention however is from what I have noticed so far, and I may be wrong, the way crit is determined on vms is rather strange to me. It has 5% base crit and I have no crit at all. What happens rarely though, and not shown on this videos of mine, is it seems to proc crit, when you activate it. Meaning, every single explosion for the whole duration IS CRIT. That, is pretty insane to me. Because you just see how SILLY it is sometimes. If I were GGG I'd change that to the crit being determined per explosion.