[2.0] Flameblast Solo Map MF'er (20 IIQ, 230-330 IIR)

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Mindlapse wrote:

level 56 now with this build and it has been a smooth cruise

two suggestions:

1) can you make a progression skills tree for level 65, 75, 85? just to make it clearer specifically which passives to take priority in the progression upwards

2) I was looking at another flameblast build (non-MF version) where they used Kaom's Heart (non-legacy) for a big boost to fire damage and survivability. Seems like an interesting option especially if they nerf CwDT, you could move the lightning warp 4-link over to gloves and the huge life from Kaom's Heart should help with survivability a lot. The 40% fire damage from Kaom's also opens up other potential possibilities for moving things around.

1) From 55-65, if you're going to start/keep MFing at that point your priorities are to get influence and head to shadow like so (10 points from level, 5 from A2 & A3 merciless).

Your next 10 points finish up shadow life, pick up Quick Recovery, and start working on finishing Sovreignty.

Then from 75-85, you finish Sovreignty, Inner Force, and from that point on it's just stacking up damage.

2) Yes, if I was doing this in a DPS spec, I would drop carcass jack for Kaom's and pick up Blast Radius to compensate, avoid Influence/Shadow entirely, head up to breath & heart of flame, and down to the scion life wheel.

If I can go for IQ on say rings or helm do you think any amount outweighs the benefits of rarity?

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AtomicDoge wrote:

If I can go for IQ on say rings or helm do you think any amount outweighs the benefits of rarity?

From what I've heard, you would need roughly 1 point of IIQ for every 5 points of IIR you would be missing. So if you had a 30 IIR helm, you would need a minimum 6 IIQ to offset it. But in my experience, I wouldn't do a straight IIQ for IIR swap. Unless you could get gear that has both, I would prioritize stacking IIR and using the IIQ gem instead of the IIR in the 6L.

Couple of notes for you:

-You're better off starting @ shadow and not taking the regen/mana nodes at templar. They're weak.
-Generally speaking you don't need Chance to Ignite. With normal gear, you have 55% chance to ignite (50 tree+5 crit). Ignite chance gets calculated individually per each monster, and as long as 1 ignites, you ignite the pack. Thus as long as you hit a small group of monsters with your FB, you'll ignite just fine. The only times you'll even notice the absence of the Chance To Ignite is if you're struggling against 1 boss/exile.
-Since you're not one charge shotting everything, grab some cast speed, it makes a big difference. Getting to 2 charges consistently is a much bigger dps boost than any amount of fire dmg nodes will give you. I usually grab one of the 12% cast speed clusters (either near Shadow start, or Mental Rapidity). Hell, at the very least replace the 30 dex node with Coordination (shadow area)
-You should replace the 12% fire nodes near Celestial punishment with Elemental Domination (above Witch start). Same 2 points, but you get extra int and cast speed.
-Lastly, I didn't run the numbers.. but I think if you break the link between empower/Clarity you should be able to drop Influence cluster, you wont need the 4% reduced mana node -- unless you REALLY need the extra resist boost from auras. Dropping the cluster and pathing will save you 5 points.

Nice guide mate.

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j0zef wrote:

Couple of notes for you:

-You're better off starting @ shadow and not taking the regen/mana nodes at templar. They're weak.
-Generally speaking you don't need Chance to Ignite. With normal gear, you have 55% chance to ignite (50 tree+5 crit). Ignite chance gets calculated individually per each monster, and as long as 1 ignites, you ignite the pack. Thus as long as you hit a small group of monsters with your FB, you'll ignite just fine. The only times you'll even notice the absence of the Chance To Ignite is if you're struggling against 1 boss/exile.
-Since you're not one charge shotting everything, grab some cast speed, it makes a big difference. Getting to 2 charges consistently is a much bigger dps boost than any amount of fire dmg nodes will give you. I usually grab one of the 12% cast speed clusters (either near Shadow start, or Mental Rapidity). Hell, at the very least replace the 30 dex node with Coordination (shadow area)
-You should replace the 12% fire nodes near Celestial punishment with Elemental Domination (above Witch start). Same 2 points, but you get extra int and cast speed.
-Lastly, I didn't run the numbers.. but I think if you break the link between empower/Clarity you should be able to drop Influence cluster, you wont need the 4% reduced mana node -- unless you REALLY need the extra resist boost from auras. Dropping the cluster and pathing will save you 5 points.

Nice guide mate.

Can you link your passive tree with those info you said?

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j0zef wrote:

-Generally speaking you don't need Chance to Ignite. With normal gear, you have 55% chance to ignite (50 tree+5 crit). Ignite chance gets calculated individually per each monster, and as long as 1 ignites, you ignite the pack. Thus as long as you hit a small group of monsters with your FB, you'll ignite just fine. The only times you'll even notice the absence of the Chance To Ignite is if you're struggling against 1 boss/exile.
-Since you're not one charge shotting everything, grab some cast speed, it makes a big difference. Getting to 2 charges consistently is a much bigger dps boost than any amount of fire dmg nodes will give you. I usually grab one of the 12% cast speed clusters (either near Shadow start, or Mental Rapidity). Hell, at the very least replace the 30 dex node with Coordination (shadow area)
-You should replace the 12% fire nodes near Celestial punishment with Elemental Domination (above Witch start). Same 2 points, but you get extra int and cast speed.
-Lastly, I didn't run the numbers.. but I think if you break the link between empower/Clarity you should be able to drop Influence cluster, you wont need the 4% reduced mana node -- unless you REALLY need the extra resist boost from auras. Dropping the cluster and pathing will save you 5 points.

Nice guide mate.

Thanks =)

You might be surprised how often I clear entire packs (white, blue) with just 1 channel on this tree, even in 76 maps. As such, cast speed isn't really that required, and chance to ignite is necessary for when mobs break off from thick packs (especially things like Avian Retches or others that do a lot of running around). Even dropping down to 80% chance to ignite has a massive difference on net clear speed over time when you need to re-cast on those strays.

And I hate having to repeat fire on bosses or exiles. I'd rather ignite on the first cast and, worst case scenario, finish off on the second hit if they aren't already dead (they usually are). Maybe that last bit is a playstyle preference, but running 96% CtI means there's a LOT more fire and forget that I can do (especially on the breakaways). If I prioritized a lot more cast speed over damage, I would need to go past 2 channels a lot more frequently in higher level maps. I don't typically exceed 2 channels on trash until 76 maps, and investing a lot in cast speed just to hit a 2 channel flameblast a fraction of a second earlier isn't worth it.

If this setup was pre-20% nerf, I'd go for cast speed too, tbh. (In fact, I did). But I find it's more efficient now to offset that nerf by scaling up the base damage off the tree instead.

Given that with my playstyle (preferring to finesse the amount of channels I use with higher base damage), Elemental Dominion's actually a flat out terrible choice, since 4% cast speed on its own doesn't do much and "Elemental Damage With Spells" does *not* double dip into the burning damage.

I actually can't move the dex node with my current gear, believe it or not. I'm like 2 dex points shy, otherwise I would.

I retain Influence in order to be fully res capped with the purities running, but also to give that extra edge to run ele weakness maps without burning portals unnecessarily.

I ran this setup from Shadow initially a few leagues ago but found that I'd occasionally run into mana issues with an empowered AA unless I took at least two of the Templar mana regen nodes. So I opted to start Templar in order to get access to the two starting elemental damage nodes. But, this was before the change with Quick Recovery I believe so, might be worth trying it from Shadow again now.

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Mindlapse wrote:

You need very very specific affixes on your rare gear to make the balance work

It's a bit easier to offset if you run Aurseize and 1 Andvarius. You're not dealing with double resist penalty and you'd have one free suffix (after more dex) to add a resistance. You give up a little bit of rarity to do it, even with a 40%+ explicit IIR ring, but that's what you'd need to do if you wanted to drop Influence and move that dex node without somehow finding a better amulet than the type I typically run.

I'd replace those gloves with higher IIR version with +dex on it (ignoring getting quant), eventually upgrade to higher rolled legacy goldwyrms and then throw the andvarius back in once you can balance the rest of the dex off an amulet.

Just watched the Museum video. I laughed hard at the insta-death of the bosses and sheer quantity of loot.

Right now I run an SRS-based MF toon. I like it well enough, but this build looks promising. Some questions, apologies that there are so many:


1. I'm not too familiar with flameblast yet, so a question: How are you igniting large packs of mobs with a flameblast ring no larger than a stage one channel? Proliferation + chance to ignite that effective?

2. How does the build fare as an act boss runner (specifically, Dominus and Piety) compared to a map clearer? You say it's not the most efficient and was not built for something like this, but I'm curious what your typical clear time is on a Dom run. the SRS build clocks in at about 5:30 per run with a baddie like me at the helm.

3. You seem to get hit pretty hard in that Museum video; about how many times do you end up dying on a given day of MFing, particularly in higher maps?

4. For leveling, is flameblast a viable way to go from the beginning to mapping, or did you level with some other skill(s)? -- Nevermind. Missed this in the OP. Derping hard.

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ConsPark wrote:

Just watched the Museum video. I laughed hard at the insta-death of the bosses and sheer quantity of loot.

1. I'm not too familiar with flameblast yet, so a question: How are you igniting large packs of mobs with a flameblast ring no larger than a stage one channel? Proliferation + chance to ignite that effective?

2. How does the build fare as an act boss runner (specifically, Dominus and Piety) compared to a map clearer? You say it's not the most efficient and was not built for something like this, but I'm curious what your typical clear time is on a Dom run. the SRS build clocks in at about 5:30 per run with a baddie like me at the helm.

3. You seem to get hit pretty hard in that Museum video; about how many times do you end up dying on a given day of MFing, particularly in higher maps?

4. For leveling, is flameblast a viable way to go from the beginning to mapping, or did you level with some other skill(s)? -- Nevermind. Missed this in the OP. Derping hard.

1) 20% FB Gem = 30% Chance to Ignite. 44% from CtI gem itself, 20% from tree = 94%. Then proliferation along with Amplify + Carcass does the rest of the leg work

2) It probably skates to Piety a lot faster but the Dom kill probably takes a little bit longer. Not sure what the run time is but it's not really the run time that turns it inefficient, it's the actual MF values. You can one-shot dominus (10 channel) first stage with this setup, and 1-2 shot the second stage, but for boss runs like Dom you can party up with a culler or hell even Solo Flame Totem with much better MF numbers utilizing lowlife + Wondertrap, closer to something like 60/430. The significant loss in dom running vs maps I find is that you aren't getting IIQ in Sceptre like you do from rolling maps, so you see a MASSIVE drop in the raw currency that hits the floor, the chrome vends, the 6S vends, etc. Things that going full on boss-MF will make up for due to the sheer amount of rares you'll be dropping off one kill.

If you're curious about the actual clock on the Dom run though I'll try to remember to do that tomorrow and get back to you via this thread.

3) If I'm paying attention, and not running particularly dangerous maps, I don't really die at all, regardless of map level. But I have excellent flask management so more likely than not you'd see me drop down to 1/4 life before I hit my flasks. But often I'll run stupidly high IIQ maps with fleet, extra damage, vulnerability, chilled ground, -max and other dangerous stuff just to get more drops, which means more chaos recipes, more 6S's, etc. Most of my deaths in this build are just from running dangerous maps or flat out not paying attention.

It's worth noting that it's actually a fairly mechanical build in terms of fast reactions when you do get caught, and flasking appropriately rather than panicking and draining all your charges at once.

It's not until 77s where I actually get halfway concerned about the damage with only ~4k life, but if you're not careless there's really no reason you should die other than bad luck (savage devourers from a 77 Zana, for example).