[2.02 HC]Merk's Ultimate Life Incinerate Guide

If you like the build please go to my Reddit post and give it a thumbs up.

This build is a hardcore build and can be BOTH a budget build or a expensive one as well, here is the guide enjoy!

This is my first guide i have posted on the Path Of Exile Forums more are sure to come!
please let me know if i forgot any information that you wish to see.

I will start with the general breakdown of the build such as skill tree and gear, and will add things over time.

The best way for me to add more information is you asking questions.




Current Build Level 85 Link

Some Other Options for the build that you can think about doing vs my current build are

Option One Link

Now for Option One you end up going from 217% life down to 198% but you do end up getting some more +flat life and your going from the 115% mana regen to 160% mana regen but your losing %max mana and losing 100 int for 100 strength but Option One isn't bad by any means you get access to Iron Reflexes and that will in turn allow you to get way more Armour, then you get access to 2 more Endurance Charges again another really good thing that Estimated Physical Damage Reduction % is crucial in allowing a caster to survive doing higher level maps, then there is Unwavering Stance that you are also picking up so you cant be stunned thus also allowing your incinerate to never be interrupted while casting and you don't have to worry about getting chain stunned to death.

Unwavering Stance makes it so you can't evade attacks but with Iron Reflex you have no evasion so the synergy there is just simply really good

Option Two Link

Now for Option Two its pretty close to what im currently using it just has a few more points in it and life nodes are swapped around and a few points are moved to grab the most damage i could get in the tree while still maintaining 200% or more life.

All 3 skill trees are fine and each have there own perks and you don't NEED Mind Over Matter if you don't want it its just another layer of defense, there is also a CI Tree respec you can do with the build and i will add that soon and a EB Tree that's pretty neat that has 100% mana reserved for aura's and uses EB to cast incinerate.

Bandits
Help Oak, Help Alira or Skill Point, Help Oak

Aura's

Im using Clarity and Arctic Armour for my aura's - you COULD drop MoM and fit a Herald of Ice/Thunder or if you wanted to use Blood Rage for more DPS and didn't have enough life regen to sustain it you could use Vitality or you could just use MoM and use another aura but i wouldn't recommend it as the purpose to MoM is to increase your eHP(eHP is effective HP)/Defense and MoM is normally only really good when you have a high amount of unreserved mana.

Layers Of Defense

Mind Over Matter
Endurance Charges
Arctic Armour
Decent/High Armour
79% All Resist
High Life Pool
High Mana Pool - when i get mana on all my gear it should be around 1800-2k
High Mana Regen 200+ a second
And i guess we will put the little guy Chaos Golem in here because he actually does help

Note: If you are going the expensive route Lightning Coil will be in this list also




You can swap flasks to what you are most comfortable with but generally for me i always have 1 instant heal flask and 1 heal over time flask the Quicksilver Flask and Granite Flask need to be rolled to have Increased Charge Recovery % I use the Quicksilver Flask for pure mobility and that's why i decided to go with freeze immune on it to prevent you from having a headache in any freezing tempest/chilled ground map and to prevent you from ripping to a crit freeze or a freezing strongbox, the Ruby Flask is there to help you with Ele Reflect now incinerate doesn't have to much of a hard time against Ele Reflect it can still be deadly if you are not paying attention but with Saffell's and a Ruby you are going to be okay but that's also why i decided to role Bleed Immune on it so not only does it serve its purpose for reflect but now it will also protect you from Corrupting Blood since you are casting incinerate 10+ times a second Corrupting Blood IS SCARY but even at 20 stacks it will take 5-6 seconds to actually kill you plenty of time for a flask reaction if you are decent at micro managing your flasks CB is a joke obviously. For the LAST flask i am using a Granite Flask with 100% Increased Armour During Flask Effect im at a point where im going to be swapping my pieces of gear around to get the maximum amount of Armour but until then this flask is great at boosting your 30-50% Physical Damage Reduction to 80%+ it does really well in the higher level maps(77+) against pure physical mobs that hit really hard it also has 100% up-time if need be

If you are comfortable with your Armour and don't want the 100% Increased Armour Affix on your flask i would suggest rolling the flask to make you immune to shock




Now for me personally my end game chest piece is a 5-6 Link Lightning coil you can use a Belly or play around with just about any unique you want there is a lot of leniency with the build just remember to keep those resists capped:P , but the Cybil's Paw and Saffell's frame are included into the build for more survivability the Saffell's 4% to all max resistance is pretty self explanatory as you start to progress threw higher level maps that 4% to MAX res starts to become more and more important and useful those dangerous -max maps are still going to be dangerous but with Saffell's it ends up helping a ton on 74+ maps, Cybil's Paw is MAINLY there because it provides a lot of life gained on hit for spells, then it also gives decent spell damage and good cast speed my incinerate tooltip will be below.




Now granted i could have gotten more damage on my incinerate 6.7k base and at stage 3 it's only 20.1k dps, I do have a 6-link i can add in to get more damage but i will probably test out life leech first to see how i like it with incinerate or if its even needed at all. NOTE: this damage is on a level 19 incinerate so it's not fully leveled and yes i will 20% the rest of my gems as well. After getting the gems to Level 20 i will update the tooltip image with the gems and quality both being 20. My DPS on tooltip should be around 8-10k after that making it go to 24-30k at stage 3 with only a 5-link and no blood rage up, so as you can see incinerate is SUPER strong in terms of scaling.



Here is my current health and mana using my Current Build at Lvl85 with a lot of sub-par life rolls on my gear my mana is going to go up another 600-700 after i fix my gear and get mana on every piece that i can get, and for my life that will also go up by a few 100 aiming to get around 6.7k - 7k HP


That about wraps up the guide i have put together here are some unique's you can consider for the build


Rathpith Globe - If you wanna try to go the EB route or just want to go a hybrid route
Sire of Shards - i really like this one :P
Pledge of Hands
Belly Of The Beast
Lightning Coil
Rainbowstride Boots
Atziri's Step
Searing Touch

If you are using a staff and decide not to go Cybil's Paw and Saffell's Frame you could probably get away with a Kaom's Heart but that is also just something to consider if you wanted to go staff id recommend Sire of Shards

there's a few more but i cant think of them atm

also a shout out to my buddy/guild mate dvs_m0rph for some of my builds suggestions while it was still in beta testing phase
if your looking for a super fun build to play with friends/get the most loot from a ghost tempest be sure to check out his Ghost Buster Build here

Thanks for viewing my guide i hope you liked it!

Fixed a few things. also bump

Bump-erino

bump

Made some fix's again

Just started playing PoE was looking threw some builds to play i dont really understand all of what your saying since i have no in-game knowledge but im going to try your build thank you for sharing i hope it works out well.


Question: should i start playing Hardcore first or should i start with Standard?

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PoE_Sterben wrote:

Just started playing PoE was looking threw some builds to play i dont really understand all of what your saying since i have no in-game knowledge but im going to try your build thank you for sharing i hope it works out well.


Question: should i start playing Hardcore first or should i start with Standard?

To be completely honest if you have time to sink in and don't want to rush things i would suggest you make your first character on softcore. PoE is a VERY VERY complex game right down to the core, anything like the skill tree/monster affix's/crafting etc i mean i have been playing this game on and off since alpha and im still learning things softcore was also my first few characters and then after i understood the things that would instagib(die in 1 second or less is what instagib means) characters i could correct plan the engagement just level to 70-80 on a character in softcore learn everything you can and then move to hardcore if you want to jump into hardcore/tempest right away you can but be prepared to have a few RIP's and this build would be great for a new player since it is pretty easy to understand

if you TL;DR basically i said you should start on softcore and get to 70-80 if you have the time you CAN jump into hardcore right away but be prepared for some RIP's and i think this build would be good for a new player since its easy to understand

Thanks for taking a look at the build!

Leveling passive trees please