(1.3)(Obsolete)Walking in the fiery rain - Ultimate Firestorm! - 855k+ sustainable dps - EZ Atziri

***NOTE: I Broke the game after reaching 198% cast rate with my 0.05 interval firestorm. Everything on the screen just starts freezing up and most people just crash out of game. So I'm adjusting the tree to spec for ele damage rather than cast speed.***



*Shoutout to my guild Prosperity for telling me firestorm sucked ass!*

Intro

Hi! After browsing through google and poe forums I realized there were no firestorm builds worth doing. It seems as tho people gave up on the skill which is sad since with the proper theorycrafting, firestorm can be one of the best skills out there.

So I took it upon myself to come up with a way to make firestorm shine like never before.

Desynch? Nope.
Slow clear speed? Nope. Hellll nope.
Atziri viable? OMG YES.
Ez maps? Yep!
Reflect immune? Yep!
Uber viable? Don't push it...


The Build explanation

The build revolves around the fact that in order to maximize firestorm damage, you want monsters to stay in it for the whole duration. There aren't many ways to do that successfully. I tried cold damage and it's not all that reliable + the dps isn't really impressive.

Instead, we're aiming for the ability to be in melee range of monsters, essentially walking into your own rain of fire to force monsters to tank all of the damage.

Now you're probably wondering "How do you sustain taking that many hits on a crit caster witch?". The answer is Vaal Molten Shell. I link vaal molten shell to duration and life leech and it takes care of almost all of the sustain.

Next comes the right gem choices for firestorm. Firestorm scales off of duration, cast speed, AoE, levels and intervals between fireballs. Ultimately you end up with a firestorm gem that looks like this:



The Items

The price to make this witch can vary from very little to insanely high. And the more you invest, the crazier your DPS gets.

The dps with this gear is around 855k sustainable dps (using the calculator from the wiki)




However if you're mad rich and can afford 2x brimstone song wands, I calculated the dps with those to be well over 1 million.


The Gems

This is where people realize they've been doing it wrong this whole time. Here are the proper gems for firestorm:

Firestorm -> Level 4 Enhance -> Level 4 Empower -> Spell Echo -> Increased Duration -> Concentrated Effect.

We're running purity of fire, herald of ice, clarity, arctic armour and herald of thunder.

Because I'm taking so many hits and standing in the middle of all the monsters, I run a CWDT + Assassin's mark setup which (as you will see in the mapping video) mostly keeps me up at cap charges.


The Tree & Bandits

This is the tree at character level 88


Duration increases your immortal call, vaal molten shell and firestorm durations.
Unfortunately it also increases your lightning warp duration so that's a bummer and it slows you down a bit, but the build is still pretty damn awesome!


For the bandits, I killed all in all 3 difficulties, but you can help oak for the 40 health in normal if you want (haven't felt it was necessary yet).


Videos & Boss Kill examples

Piety Kill


Shipyard Boss Kill(almost instantaneous)


Vaals + Trio + Atziri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTRgXmDK5A

Palace + Pack Size + Domination(5 shrines) full clear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaujzGZnjNA



DPS Explanation:

Using the spreadsheet from the poe wiki gives us a good idea of our dps cap.

Current maximum sustainable DPS at level 88:


Remember that this does NOT take into account any additional damage you would deal with vaal molten shell.

*Wiki spreadsheet was fixed, thanks to Raics!*


Conclusion

You thought firestorm sucked? Think again! It's amazing and now you get to make a new witch and play it.

If you have any questions or things you'd like me to add to this thread, please don't hesitate to ask!

Looks very nice :)

L 21 Firestorm
L4 Empower
L4 Enhance
+1 gems Carcass

oh wonder it works with a shitty skill. just gotta push it high enough...

"

Carmondai89 wrote:

L 21 Firestorm
L4 Empower
L4 Enhance
+1 gems Carcass

oh wonder it works with a shitty skill. just gotta push it high enough...

Assume PoE economy is the real world.

I'm playing this build at upper middle class capacity.

I was doing atziri at level 74 with added chaos and added cold instead of empower/enhance and no +1 carcass. You can call that minimum wage or call center customer service salary.

If you're the equivalent of unemployed and can't afford a 6L or ONE level 21 gem, then no the build wouldn't be for you. Otherwise, anywhere from minimum wage to Bill Gates, this build works amazing.

"

Simplesim45 wrote:

"

Carmondai89 wrote:

L 21 Firestorm
L4 Empower
L4 Enhance
+1 gems Carcass

oh wonder it works with a shitty skill. just gotta push it high enough...

Assume PoE economy is the real world.

I'm playing this build at upper middle class capacity.

I was doing atziri at level 74 with added chaos and added cold instead of empower/enhance and no +1 carcass. You can call that minimum wage or call center customer service salary.

If you're the equivalent of unemployed and can't afford a 6L or ONE level 21 gem, then no the build wouldn't be for you. Otherwise, anywhere from minimum wage to Bill Gates, this build works amazing.

Damn, tell 'em kiddo.

Insane man, gotta try this out myself. :)

I added some visual to the DPS spreadsheet.

Wouldn't you get even more dps if you picked up the 2 power charges on tree + the one from Alira? Since your tree is only for lvl83, you can do that on your way to 90 :)

Too bad this isn't really viable for the type of leagues I like to play (temp HC), otherwise nice build!

The dps with this gear is around 640k sustainable dps (using the calculator from the wiki).

Can you give me a link to that calculator plz?. ty !

"

kjksdajk wrote:

The dps with this gear is around 640k sustainable dps (using the calculator from the wiki).

Can you give me a link to that calculator plz?. ty !

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7_jqIx4zJa5bFJyZmxVckR3M2s/view

This link should work.

Make sure you read the DPS calculation part in my thread. You gotta do something specific if you want to know the dps with a firestorm interval below 0.06.

"

therealjcool wrote:

Wouldn't you get even more dps if you picked up the 2 power charges on tree + the one from Alira? Since your tree is only for lvl83, you can do that on your way to 90 :)

Too bad this isn't really viable for the type of leagues I like to play (temp HC), otherwise nice build!

Your power charge uptime depends on getting hit and how fast you're going and is non-existent when you fight bosses with their own rooms like piety, atziri bosses, dominus, etc.

It's not like you CAN'T get the power charges, it's that realistically, the extra dps is needed for bosses only, everything else gets blown to bits with or without the charges.


And you're right, this wouldn't be viable for hardcore. It's a pretty "in-your-face" playstyle.