[1.3]KuteKitteh's Firestorm Warlord - Insanely durable and affordable, Atziri viable on a 4L

Making a build without AA or MoM just because it's too meta - #justKuteKittehthings


My first Atziri run's drop costs more than the entire build put together. Just saying.

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Preface

Hey guys, what's up. This is KuteKitteh bringing you an immensely versatile and super cheap Firestorm build. This build is my first build that's designed specifically to start farming Atziri on a tight budget; as such, the defense mechanisms employed are obviously Atziri-viable, making map survivability extremely high. It does the job fairly well and it's among the best spellcaster builds against that pesky Trio.

I haven't had time to play the new league lately, so I had been trying to make a build that:
1. Runs Atziri at a lower level (as early as level 81)
2. Costs under 3 exalts
3. Synergizes its skills as much as possible
4. Has a high skill cap but is beginner-friendly.

Not so surprisingly, the design was so effective that I took down Atziri without breaking a sweat on my first try.

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Videos

Jungle Valley Kill
Because a KuteKitteh build wouldn't be a viable build without beating Jungle Valley. With 100% Immortal Call uptime and 79% chaos resist, this build doesn't even care about Jungle Valley. You can notice that my health bar doesn't budge more than 100 hp.

Atziri Trio
Damage? What damage? In all seriousness, that part is completely doable with 1 life flask (doesn't even have to be staunching).

Clearing a zone with just Molten Shell
This is just showing the massive damage potential that Molten Shell has. The proliferated burn makes it a worthy damage spell on its own.

~More Coming Soon~

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Pros and Cons
Pros:
-Super cheap.
-High elemental resistances. Without level 20 purities, it gets 83/79/82 resist. With +30% flask effect from the tree and lvl20 purities, the build can reach up to 97/92/96 resist.
-Super easy to stack 79% chaos resist. The tree and the purities give a ton of resist, which gives a lot of leeway for getting chaos resist on items.
-Very durable. Even without Immortal Call, 6 endurance charges + Molten Shell gives me 62% physical reduction. When using the build at its full potential, a skilled user can easily maintain 100% physical immunity for indefinite periods of time, even against single targets.
-Immune to Bleed/corrupting blood. Immortal Call gives the build immunity against any bleed sources, including the Atziri trio Cycloner or Corrupting Blood rares.
-Resistant to elemental weakness. 6 endurance charges = +24% to all elemental resistances.
-Atziri-viable.
-Immune to reflect nuking. AA gives the build pure reflect immunity, and even without AA the build can run reflect maps.
-Immune to stun. Unwavering Stance gives the build a new level of "lol I don't care."

Cons:
-It's Firestorm. It has all the cons of any Firestorm build, including:
--There's a ramp-up time for the DPS, meaning it'll be consistently weaker against mobile targets.
--The 1 second base cast speed significantly lowers your mobility and makes it slightly more difficult to properly cast EC and IC.
--You can't use Firestorm in parties because it clutters up the screen. For party play, I use Flameblast + prolif + ignite instead.

Other:
-Very involved gameplay. It takes a lot of skill and effort to manual-cast Enduring Cry and Immortal Call while syncing Firestorm and Molten Shell. The maximum-potential setup greatly rewards skill but is unforgiving of any mistakes. If you want a laid back mindless mapping machine, you can use the standard CWDT-EC-IC setup to avoid this.

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An Explanation of how the build works

There is a massive amount of synergy in this build that I will explain step-by-step.


This build stacks duration on top of duration. Firestorm synergizes strongly with duration, so grabbing Potency of Will and Exceptional Performance in the tree will give it (almost) 90% more DPS against high-HP enemies *coughAtziricough*


Because the duration nodes takes us down near Maurader, it would be most efficient to further utilize the duration by making a max-duration Immortal Call. We do that by taking the Endurance Charge nodes and helping Oak in merciless. This gives us a total of 6 endurance charges. With 6 endurance charges, self-cast Immortal Call lasts 12-13 seconds, depending on the quality of the gem.

That places the tree near Unwavering Stance, which gives stun immunity. Stun immunity is extremely important, since it lets us cast Enduring Cry and Immortal Call without worrying about stun interruption.

Because we take Unwavering Stance, Evasion is no longer a viable option. Energy Shield won't do anything for the build, and the gems utilized are generally red. Therefore, we stack armor gear and grab a few armor nodes like Juggernaut and Armour Mastery. Although IC gives physical immunity, there are plenty of times when IC isn't on, and armor substitutes for the lack of a strong AA in those instances.


Spell, fire, and duration nodes help Molten Shell. While it's up, it gives a solid amount of base armor, and the endurance charges + immortal call makes it extremely easy for physical damage enemies to proc Molten Shell and get nuked by it. Molten Shell is an amazing spell in this build, since it deals the damage of a stage 6 level 20 flameblast gem. With Life Leech, Elemental Proliferation, and Chance to Ignite, MS gives a massive offensive and defensive boost.


Another duration skill, Blood Rage, can be put to good use in this build. Why? BR is viable in this build for two main reasons. Firstly, the build gets a ton of health regen from the tree, making it fairly easy to counteract Blood Rage's degeneration effect. Secondly, the build runs 2 purities and gets a lot of elemental resistance from the tree. This means that stacking chaos resistance on gear is very, very easy. With 79% chaos resist, BR is taking away .8% of my 5.3% life regen. Essentially, I'm trading .8% life regen for 9% MORE DPS via the 3 frenzy charges that Blood Rage maintains.

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Passive Tree



Notes:
-The dexterity nodes are optional.
-Unwavering Stance should be obtained around level 70ish.
-Save the flask nodes for later.
-To obtain enough maximum mana to run Clarity and 80% of auras, I took the mana and MR nodes on the right side of witch. The alternative is to drop 4 nodes there and take Dynamo plus a Templar dual-regen node instead as in the tree that follows. The net change is -15% mana regen and -4% maximum mana but +.4% life regen and +12% reduced mana cost of skills. If you don't care for Arctic Armour, take Dynamo instead. The other alternative is to take Eldritch Battery for 5 points. This will massively boost your mana pool, allowing you to use a wider variety of amulets.

Bandits
Normal: Oak for +40 HP
Cruel: Alira for +4% cast speed OR passive point. I took the passive, but in hindsight I would rather have the cast speed.
Merciless: Oak for +1 Endurance Charge

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Gem setup

Firestorm

The standard setup. The Faster Casting isn't necessary but recommended. Quality on Firestorm is strongly recommended (and actually very cheap to get).

I strongly recommend a 5-link - it massively boosts survivability. Spell Echo'd Firestorm has very poor mobility, and that can prove to be a huge downside against Atziri herself.

Auras

Since fire and lightning damage are the most common types in Atziri runs, PoF and PoL are utilized.

Molten Shell


Vengeance and Leapslam

The build cannot utilize Lightning Warp because it has +90% duration. Like a true warlord, Leapslam is used instead to leap into the fray, and Faster Attacks improves the leapslam speeds. Vengeance + lgoh is just another anti-death mechanism that gives a vital source of survivability.

Enduring Cry

We use Enduring Cry on Spell Echo. This allows us to generate twice the charges for twice the Immortal Call duration. This is especially important for sustaining IC against single enemies. In fact, this build could not be possible without spell echo'd EC.

Immortal Call

Immortal Call is linked to ID and self-casted. Blood Rage is linked there to take advantage of the ID.

Immortal Call setup #2

This setup is for casual mapping when 100% IC up-time isn't priority. This setup is far more convenient but has major survivability issues, especially when elemental damage reprocs the IC.

When mapping, I use the EC-SE setup with the IC #2 setup. This has fewer downsides than the setup #2 alone and massively boosts survivability. For serious business like Atziri runs or more difficult phys bosses, the default setup is preferred.

Arctic Armour (eww)

I have a low level AA in my pocket in case I happen to run an elemental reflect map. At most, I will reflect 32 fire damage on myself, so a level 9 AA gives me pure reflect invulnerability. In fact, a level 6 or 7 AA is completely sufficient to run reflect maps, and I've done plenty of reflect maps with no AA at all.

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Gear

A SCEPTER is a must. If you use a wand, you have no mobility skill since you can't leapslam. A leech-crafted scepter or a Doryani's will work.


Saffell's Frame is fairly standard for Atziri running. Because we stack so much armor on top of endurance charges and IC, we don't care about the loss of block. The +4% resistances is huge, especially with the +4% to max chaos resist giving a max of 79% chaos resist.


Armor bases are strongly recommended. Because you'll need a lot of blues on the chest, an armor-ES hybrid chest is recommended. Life rolls are priority, and chaos resistance or dexterity rolls are strongly recommended.

Alternative: You can use a super high-armor chest and use a Rime Gaze as your 5L instead. The downside is that you'll lose a health roll on your helmet as well as a potential chaos resistance roll, so this is not recommended.

Your jewelry should provide life, resistances, and mana + mana regen. The mana is very important because of the lack of Eldritch Battery. In fact, I would strongly recommend Atziri's Foible as a very cheap way of getting a ton of mana and mana regen. Atziri's Foible also makes it possible to run less dex on gear.

Post reserve

Nice build, what is the dps on firestrom with 4l?

if you run RF your dps will be better but maybe you will need Rise of the Phoenix

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theonly0ne wrote:

Nice build, what is the dps on firestrom with 4l?

if you run RF your dps will be better but maybe you will need Rise of the Phoenix

You really can't measure DPS on firestorm :P so I couldn't tell you what my flat DPS is on a 4L. I can say though that a 5L has 28% more DPS.

I could sustain RF if I kept popping Ruby flasks (96% fire resist), but that's not something I want to worry about on top of managing endurance charges and Molten Shell. Doing an RF version of this build would require a lot of tree reworking and would only be viable past level 80. It would also require a level 20 Purity of Fire, which would push it out of the "new league viability" zone.

Do you think this build can go blood magic? I am thinking to use

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commonjunks wrote:

Do you think this build can go blood magic? I am thinking to use

There are two issues with going BM:
1. You lose PoF
2. You lose PoL


Both of those are vital for surviving Atziri. Without them, resistances are very iffy.

If Atziri running is not your concern, then BM is a very, very viable option.

Looks nice.
Was kinda bored of PoE but your build made me back into it.
Never played firestorm so let's go for it in BL.


About maping tho.. what auras are you using ?
Purity of fire/light ?

I have been considering something similar. Would really like to use the skill duration for both immortal call and a spell that would take advantage of duration - I was considering spark, but firestorm could be awesome. Didnt think of molten shell, but that's a good idea. Might try this on my scion :)

Lvl 45 right now.

Vaal Molten Shell is so funny to play around <3

love the build. damage seems a bit low at times but thats traded for practical immortality. congrats.

with all the duration nodes, have you considered taking vaal molten shell? constant uptime during mapping shouldnt be much of a problem!