[1.3] CI, Incandescent Heart, Reave Witch

Chaos Inoculation, Incandescent Heart, Reave, Dagger, no Vaal Pact
I'd conider this more of a presentation of an idea, but it can probably serve as a build guide as well

The idea is to use Incandescent Heart to create a melee CI build that sacrifices a reasonable amount of buffer against physical damage in order to increase one's defense against elemental damage.
By utilizing a handful of block and shield defence nodes with an EV/ES shield (which is relatively cheap because it has no spell damage) this build tries to compensate for the lack of energy shield on IH and provide mitigation against attack.

It's not particularly original but i have not found many Inc.Heart builds, so i guess this might have its place.
Why would you do this?
It's a melee CI character that uses a 5L and a 1,5ex dagger to achieve >7K ES (at 91) and 67-87k dps.
To me it was also a test for a number of things:
-finally playing a CI character: more cost efficient than i expected.
-not using Vaal Pact with CI
-not using stun immunity: life from IH and some from other pieces + hybrid nodes mean that stun is not a real issue
-using power charge on crit in secondary gems
-not using a life leech or crit damage gem

Cost: Shield: 2ex , Helm:20c, dagger: 1,5 ex, chest: self linked/worth ~3ex, jewlry/belt about 15c each, boots 3c, gloves 1c or 1-2ex
It's no 20c build, but it's affordable with what you will likely find on the way to level 85+, works at a fairly low level(leave out the dagger cluster between shadow and ranger), with a 4L (not using concentrated effect is not a huge loss in <74 maps) and has a lot of potential for improvement (like diamond rings with mana leech, a decent dagger, etc...)

Skills/Auras
Discipline
Hatred: the idea was to freeze but that turned out to be unnecessary, so Herald of Ash + prolif is probably better but also a matter of taste.

Reave: Straight forward gems; used for large packs and non-white enemies
Whirling Blades/Flicker Strike : WB for movement and the occasional small group of white mobs,
Flicker strike to clean up or engage single enemies - these spells provide power charges against weak enemies
Reckoning/Vengeance provide some additional damage and power charges against stronger enemies - where i stand still and get hit rather than moving to the next pack, thus complementing WB/FS

CwDT Setups: lvl 8 Blood Rage grants 5% leech (=> 10% total) and provides frenzy charges without additional effort. enfeeble is chosen to improve the characters performance in situations where a good buffer alone is not enough and compensates for not having vaal pact or more than 25% evasion. enduring cry and immortal call simply help with physical damage, saving me when hitting reflect packs.

Ondar's Clasp vs Maligaro's Virtuosity:
Maligaro's gives you some evasion and better dps in almost all cases - especially with a high crit dagger.
Ondar's costs 1c, causes smaller damage spikes(no crit damage), helps a little with stacking reave and can be corrupted if you prefer vulnerability (or have a +1 curse amulet)
It hardly matters overall, but maligaro's is probably the better choice especially with HoA








Opinions, Suggestions ?

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Jackdaniels2377 wrote:

By utilizing a handful of block and shield defence nodes with an EV/ES shield (which is relatively cheap because it has no spell damage) this build tries to compensate for the lack of energy shield on IH and provide mitigation against attack.

I've used that same approach for my Bloodlines CI wander witch, sadly she ripped at 91 :(
It worked very well, I had over 9K ES with disc which was insane for a ranged char with 1-shot dps and hardly any defensive nodes in the tree. You need a really good shield though, mine wasn't quite as good as yours (450/403 but more res).

I really like the general idea of this build - CI melee witches are just cool as hell :D
I guess the only thing I dislike is the "wasted" armor on IH, as it doesnt scale properly with the whole ES/EV setup. Other than that, it looks fun.

Since I only play HC, I gotta ask: Would you change your tree for HC, if it is at all viable? I'd say it is though.

Edit: One problem is foresee is strength. Unless using a double STR belt, you won't be able to run CWDT, reduced mana etc.

Edit2: How about this for HC? Dropped Throatseeker and Mind Drinker (get leech from gear), grabbed Ondar's and Void Barrier.

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgMA34rpAkuuGyXZW20ZEVCX9CL0NblSU2wLpys9Xw2NHNx_xpMnEZbBxbQM74gOSAcekBssv0Zx6rr5N13yY0OVLnBWhq6DCQ1818-293DV8uHw1ZoTFddJsSsKidNHBklR29RWYxEvcFLYdtvn62O5Plb1X2q0xZmarGbbbjqttUgs4ZfQb4QFtaZ_feOOiv8c6NaNv-1BIupRR7GzIQM-z-dUFr9LxL3mJP1l8flj_97QCaOKLVVMYOn-18sEsQV9PeKVZkjueK4brdN-d_3Win8rMHxtbOd0vjoQe9sa

Removing damage for ES is fine, but with mind drinker you're getting into the primary limitation of this build: stats - i couldnt find a mana leech item with accuracy, added physical, resistances AND mana leech. Mind drinker also helps with the low unreserved mana, but that would become irrelevant with Herald of Ash.
Strength is not a huge issue thanks to master crafting, a double strength belt is not as bad for CI as it is for life characters and beyond that you should only need one item with strength.

I dont play HC but i would probably try a similar build with VP + claw or just bloodseeker and take a little less crit overall. i wanted to play this with claws initially until i realized that the crit gem nerf killed claws for SC at least. but given the insane survivability you can get out of 20% instant leech on 8k ES i would certainly try that(i played life-bloodseeker last season). An additional problem might be economy - getting similar items in HC might be significantly more expensive.

melee CI seems really good atm, even without crit this would get to respectable dps levels - or at least more than most marauder/duelist builds get...

edit: i just realized that going low crit could open up a lot of item budget(less accuracy becomes acceptable) to allow compensating for the ES loss of an alpha's howl in order to boost discipline + hatred as well as allowing you to run herald of ash on top of those 2 auras. You'd also push your evasion to more serious levels and get freeze immunity, freeing up a flask slot. i think this might be my starting point for next season in case non crit builds get "buffed" even more.

You mean Bloodseeker with shield? Meh, that won't get any DPS, will it? I tried a Dual Claw CI in 1.2 (and failed during lvling), but you can't dual wield while wearing IH. Hmm...
I may play HC, but I don't do low DPS builds. Not anymore anyway, lol - too annoying.

I dont think VP is absolutely neccessary, with enough ES the cap rate is quite high, 1600ES/sec for 8K. With the sheer tankyness of CI/IH, that could be enough. VS hard phys hitters I'd temporarily swap hatred for grace.

I'll shut up now though, and let you continue planning for SC ;)

i don't mind HC discussions, i just dont play it because i think desync puts too many limitations on what you can -or should- do (and i'd probably toss some valuable hardware around the moment i die to desync).
i think Bloodseeker is underrated because its good speed allows you to make really good use of added physical damage. add to that the cost of getting vaal pact, additional leech and a claw that significantly exceeds BS in dps and you'll find that BS does not suck nearly as much as people seem to think.
If you're fine with 8k ES on HC then slight modifications of my build will obviously work, also note my edit on the previous post, bad timing there...

I see... thought about it, and it actually makes sense to use Bloodseeker + shield.
Also solves the mana leech problem, since it's built into claw nodes :)

Like so:

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgMA34rpAkuuGyXZW20ZEVCX9CL0NblSU2wLpys9Xw2NHNx_xpMnEZbBxbQM74gOSAceLL9Gceq6-Tdd8pUuhq6DCQ1818-293DV8NUV10mxKwqJ00lRVmMRL3BS2-frY19qtMWZmjqttUhvhAW1pn__HOjWjb_tQSLqUUexsyEDPs_nVBa_S8S95iT9ZfH5Y__e0Amjikxg18sEsT3ilWZI7niuG63TftaKfyswfG1s53S-OhB72xqSgJoXapVvV0X0ZK-KOBX91gePwUscjYHdSLjZAQnC7A==

If I feel like playing melee ever again after the block nerf, this just might be it.

Edit: Are you sure about stun not being a problem?
Cause my CI wander got stunned on basically every hit, IF she got hit, that is...
More testing or information on stun thresholds/required life pool is needed I think.

"If the chance to stun would be less than or equal to 20%, it is ignored" wiki

i think this is why small amounts of life and armour can have a huge effect. Against small hits even 1000 armour and a few hundred more hidden life can have a huge effect by pushing them below the minimum threshold - reducing your chance to be stunned from 30-20% to 0%.

without any bonuses i'd have around 1200 life according to the passive skill tree planner. 120 damage would be enough to get above the threshold and would get you stunned very often.
with 35% more life and ~150 from gear i'm at 1350*1.35= 1822 life (=>180 minimum) and my 1250 armour pushes this to 250 minimum damage (calculation)

250 minimum raw damage is enough to prevent trivial mobs from stunning me and for most realistic hit sizes above that it cuts the stun chance roughly in half preventing stunlocks from packs. against really hard enemies i find getting stunned every 4-5 hits acceptable but i never really noticed that since a crit freezes quite reliably if it does not simply kill them. (i'll have to find something with enough hp to test that again - but even if it didnt freeze you can also stun enemies).

edit: if i were to use bloodseeker i would completely ignore evasion and remove immortal call to use endurance charges as additional mitigation, this gives me additional 2 gem slots (IC + duration) which means i can use the 3 slots in my weapon for something else.

Well. I pushed some stuff around and used one of my old Standard chars to simulate the build - and I have to say, sadly, that I dont like it.
Yes, the leech is fucking insane. You go from 1/3rd empty to full ES in 0.5s.

But, the dmg just doesn't cut it. With good gear I'm at 18k Reave with frenzies up, that sucks.
It's just nowhere near the 50k ish I want/need, not even with a 6L. Plus, the AoE with conc. effect is really too damn small. Map clearing (for me, at least) is a pain.

Defensively it works great, 6K ES without disc, 7300ES with, 4K EV with my gear.

Gear used (ignore empty/wrong gems):

you're lacking ~25 added physical damage and you should look at the damage with power charges, since they're actually quite easy to keep up once you get used to using WB/FS. my sheet says i would get around 40k with HoA + hatred but that's of course nothing to brag about either.

btw, my dagger character(18 useless nodes) has 23.3k dps with bloodseeker(103% roll), hatred and full charges.

Seems like a pretty nice build. The thing is i hate using reave. I know its powerful and stuff but i just dont like it.

Ill probably go and play this build with static strike. (Aka i planned out a pretty similar build and will adjust it :D)