[2.0] Skyflash's tanky Sire of Shards BM incinerator (8k+ life!)

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Introduction
If you have any questions please post them here.

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Last update 18/09/2015


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Pros & Cons
+ High survivability: huge life pool, life leech gem and high physical damage mitigation with armour, Fortify, Molten Shell and endurance charges
+ Damage in all directions and fast clear speed thanks to Sire of Shards
+ Don't worry about mana
+ Don't need to decide if you go crit or not (incinerate can't)
+ You can use frenzy charges for more damage and life regen.
+ Cool Incinerate blue flame MTX

- Hard to do reflect maps (possible but slow and you'll kill yourself if you attack a big pack)
- Slow vs bosses you can't facetank (malformation piety, cremetorium boss, etc)
- ???

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FAQ
Q: Is this viable for hardcore?
A: I'm not a hardcore player, but it probably is.

Q: Can I do this build with another class?
A: Yes, see the passive tree section for a Marauder tree (you can also start as a Templar if you like running without pants).

Q: Witch or Marauder?
A: I think Marauder is better, read the Marauder vs. Witch section for more info!

Q: Wich Uniques do you use?
A: Sire of Shards, Kaom's Heart, Clear Mind, Energised Armour, The Blood Dance.

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Passive tree


Note: going through the outside part of the tree to the Blood Magic keystone allows you to get there faster. I'll be respeccing in a few levels to take Unwavering Stance.






Other usefull passives you can take:
-The jewel socket in the marauder area for a good rare jewel (2pts).
-Righteous Decree in Templar area to reduce the cost of incinerate (very usefull for leveling) (2pts).
-Quick Recovery between witch and templar (3 pts).
-Life and mana regen nodes in templar area (4 pts).
-Endurance charges in Templar and Marauder parts of the tree (5 points because you also want the 0.2% of maximum life regenerated per endurance charge in Marauder area). I will probably be taking these once I find a CwDT setup to mantain endurance charges without having to use Enduring Cry.
-Practical application and Fire walker while leveling as a witch (2pts each).
-Energy shield and mana regeneration node at the witch start while leveling (1pt).

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Bandits

Normal - help Oak
Cruel - help Alira or kill all
Merciless - Help Kraityn, Help Oak or kill all (see the Gear and Skill gems sections for more details on this)

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Marauder vs. Witch

Leveling as a witch is definitely easier since you get acces to more spell damage, intelligence and gems you'll use. I did not level as a Marauder yet*, but the Marauder start looks way better for end-game.

Starting as a Marauder you loose:
40 intelligence and 10 dexterity (you might need those so be ready to spent 2 points in +30 nodes or get them from gear) but it's not a big problem.
74% Spell damage and 4% cast speed. This is big since we barely take damage notes on the tree.

you gain:
190% Armour (almost twice the armour you get as a witch!)
2 Jewel sockets. You can get jewels with +6-7% life and +25% spell damage. Giving you ~12% life and ~50% spell damage (see Gear section for examples). You can get a 3rd jewel socket in the marauder area (respec out of two 5% life nodes) to fully compensate the dps loss.
20% reduced damage from critical strikes
10 strenght

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Levelling guide
Coming in October 2015! :D

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Skill Gems
Main skill:
Incinerate - Spell Echo - Fire Penetration - Life Leech - Faster casting/Iron Will/Empower/Faster Projectiles*
*You'll need Faster projectiles until you get a 20% quality incinerate. I use faster casting as my 5th link (incinerate gets to last stage faster) but you can also use Faster projectiles for more aoe or any other of the gems if you like them more. Quality on the other gems is a good too, so try get them to 20% later.
You won't have enought dex to use a level 20 faster proj without taking dex from the tree or gear.
As a side note - the cheapest way to get a 20% quality incinerate is buy a 10-15% one (You can get them for a few chaos) and use gcp's to get them to 20%.



Utility:
Cast when Damage Taken - Molten Shell - Warlords Mark
Level all gems to 20. Quality on Warlords Mark is good. Quality on CwDT and Molten Shell is not needed.
A 4th link can be Increased duration for longer Molten Shell duration or Increased Area of Effect for a bigger Warlords mark area.

Another idea is to use two setups: CwDT - Molten Shell (high level) and another low level CwDT - Warlords Mark (it might help to mantain endurance charges, but it needs testing).

Summon Chaos Golem
You can link it to Increased Minion life and Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance to increase it's survivability. Another option is to link it to the high level CwDT setup if you forget to summon it when it dies.
Also, you can level a Summon Fire Golem to use when clearing low level maps.

Flame Dash + Faster Casting (or Lightning Warp - Faster Casting - Less Duration).

Fortify - Flicker strike (level 1)
We take the Resolute Technique Keystone to always get the fortify buff when using this combo.

Depending on your CwDT and Golem setups you can have a extra 4 link that you can use however you like. Some nice ideas to increase either defence or offence are:
Enduring cry (you can easily get +2 endurance charges from tree and help oak in merciless to get a total of 6 if you plan on using this).
Vaal Haste/Vaal Discipline/Vaal Grace - Increased duration
Vaal Summon Skelletons
Vaal spark + Lightning Penetration - Added Lightning Damage - Fork/Increased duration

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Gear


No comments - this staff is just amazing.
If you're wondering about Pledge of Hands - replacing the 5th link (faster casting in my case) for Lesser Multiple Projectile will give you about the same dps and you'll only be hitting 1/3 of the area you would with Sire of Shards.


With the increased life from the passives this chest gives you more than 1750 life and a nice fire damage bonus. It's the best chest you can get.
Other options are Lightning Coil, Belly of the Beast or a rare chest with very high armour and life (in that order).


Since we take the Blood Magic Keystone (our mana is not reserved it's just 0) there's no better damage jewel than this.


This jewel goes into the Templar are socket and combined with the Faith and Steel notable gives up to 78% increased armour for 5 points.


If you plan on using these boots, you can help Kraityn in Mercilles for an extra Frenzy charge. 4 Frenzy charges give you 4% life regen per second (for a total of 11.9% life per second combined with the regen from passives), 16% more damage and 4% increased cast speed.
If for some reason you don't want to use frenzy charges, an alternative is Kaom's Roots for a nice life boost and the oportunity to save 2 passive points by not taking Uwavering Stance and traveling to the Blood Magic keystone through the outside of the tree.


Helmet/Gloves: Try to get as much armour, life and resists as you can.


Belt: The best belt would be a rare leather belt with high armour, life, resists and strength (each 10 strength gives you +5 life).
Another option (usually cheaper than a good rare) would be Doryani's Invitation (fire version) wich won't give you life, but will inrease your fire damage and give you an extra bit of life leech.


Rings: As much life and resists as you can get. You can also get up to 7% cast speed on a ring, but the mod is a suffix (like resists) so you'll give up a resist for the cast speed.
Note that you can use Elreon to craft 5-20% Increased Armour Rating on rings or amulets for 1 exalted (the mod is a prefix).

Amulet: The ideal amulet should have life, cast speed, armour, spell damage, fire damage and atrributes you're missing or strenght for more life (and more damage if you use the Iron will support gem).


Jewels: For rare jewels useful stats are:
prefixes: life, fire damage, spell damage with staves, cast speed while holding a staff, cast speed with fire skills.
suffixes: projectile damage, spell damage, damage, projectile speed, attack and cast speed.


Flasks: After level 80 or so, you can replace the Ruby for 2nd Granite, Taste of Hate, Atziri's Promise or Rumi's Concoction. Take the ruby to -max maps for reflect rares.




All screenshots below taken with a lvl 18 incinerate.




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Videos
75 60% regen, crit chance & multi Dark Forest
77 easy Plateau
77 unidentified Necropolis (Merveil facetank)
77 Volcano extra boss life, beyond/nemesis mobs
78 Double boss + vulnerability Academy
76 Arid lake, mob dmg, extra fire dmg, abaxoth fight Only got the last 1/3rd of the recording for some reason. Died 5 times to it and it was a mess (my first abaxoth kill btw) but still managed to kill him.

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Credits
ComradeSerge for the guide style.
FoxTactics for the blood dance and flicker+fortify+Resolute Technique combo (don't know if it's his idea but saw it on his build).

reserved

videos?

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kompaniet wrote:

videos?

Uploaded a few 75-78 map runs.

Noice build!
Its amazing with reverse knockback support :D

I was thinking about build like this, when i drop mine Kaom's Heart. So far mine maraunder is lvl 74, doing highest map level 74 (zana daily). Must say it's super tanky and fast clear speed build.

I've change few things with passive tree:


Skyflash, you suggest to skip almost all damage nodes in tree as maraunder. Don't know how's damage when you do this. But when you take some damage nodes, DPS and clear speed is super good and super fast (about 11K buffed damage). In my opinion, damage is one essential component of character's defence (if i remembered where i first heard: Best defense is good offense). I feel more safe if i can take down hard boss in 5 sec than fightning him 15 sec. Another deal - more damage = more leech. So mine 2cents: take damage nodes as maraunder too, dont skip them for improvement of armour nodes. Mine next suggestion is: Remove -mana cost nodes. Mine 5L incinerate lvl 17 cost me ~24 life, it's nothing when i have more than 5K life. Slightly reduction doesnt help at all in mine opinion.

With mine current gear


I have like 10k armour unbuffed and ~6,5k life at lvl 74. Next nodes will go on life nodes, armour and life regen (+ jewel sockets).

I'm not ingame right know, will post exact numbers when i log in (this sunday).

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Blade_Master wrote:

Skyflash, you suggest to skip almost all damage nodes in tree as maraunder. Don't know how's damage when you do this.

I have a leveled marauder in standart and will test the damage as soon as Warbands ends, but according to the calculations I did - it's going to stay around the same as it is currenty. (see the Marauder vs. Witch section of the guide for my toughts on this)

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Blade_Master wrote:

take damage nodes as maraunder too, dont skip them for improvement of armour nodes.

I do take a few damage nodes as marauder (Explosive impact and Arsonist in templar and marauder areas of the tree. The thing is that it's not efficient to go to the witch tree (4 extra points of travel).
The best option imho is to get jewels with 25% spell damage and life (see the Gear section for a couple of examples). As an alternative you can just take damage nodes in the templar area if you feel you're not doing enought damage.
Let's take your tree for example:
You spend 12 points to get:
-90% spell damage
-4% cast speed
-15% fire resistance
-40 int, 10 str and 10 dex

You could respec to this tree:

and you get:
-121% spell damage
-12% to all resistances
-2 passive points you can use in another place (you'll probably have to spend 1 point in the +30 intelligence node between marauder and templar)

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Blade_Master wrote:

Mine next suggestion is: Remove -mana cost nodes.

Since the build is based around high life and kaom's: more life from tree means that kaom's and life from other gear has a bigger impact on your total life pool. Also, the more life you have - the more effective life regen is.
5 points for 20% life is not the best you can get, but there are no other life nodes you can take!
The life cost per second of incinerate is reduced from your life regen so by taking the -mana cost nodes (that reduce the life cost of incinerate because we're BM) you also increase the life regen you have when casting incinerate.

P.S. Thank you for the suggestions - I only noticed the damage nodes from the templar start while answering to your post! It'll be very hepful once I get to write a leveling guide for the build.

Hi skyflash I'm currently playing dual blood magic flame totems in the 1 month softcore. I've been getting bored of totems and bought a ton of regrets got about 40 respect points to play with and I think i can comfortably transition into this build, I got a few questions though.
I wanted to use a pledge instead of Sire. I was playing around with the tree and I came up with this:

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgMAA3UEswYOCfYLYQxfDc0OPBEtFCAUcRZvGJEZLho4Gj4abBynHM4kqiW8Jy8n7SkuKU8rUCycMtE26TpSOtg64TwtPfxBh0SrRUdN41OlVa5XDVh3XwRfP2ZUaPJyqXyDfLh82YIHghCDX4PMhXuMdozPj6aQVZErna6ePKIApletja9sr6e1BLc-vJ_AZsT2xq7PftIh1HzVpti92WHZfNtP37Dfv-DD42rkIuvu7DjvDvAf8azyQfJF9kj3Mvno_gr-VBBYh2WvtzI0HwIEB4PbVcYc3I8a

I went with a little more damage by losing 10% life and I also took a jewel slot instead of Righteous decree because you can roll reduced mana cost of skills + other useful mods as well on jewels. So what do you think?

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Errrsh wrote:

I wanted to use a pledge instead of Sire.

I tested pledge. You replace echo with lmp and you'll end up with around the same damage (when I tested with lvl ~18/19 gems it was a 50-100 tooltip dps difference in 5 linked sire/pledge). I prefer sire because it hits more mobs and you you rarely need to target them.

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Errrsh wrote:

instead of Righteous decree

I took Righteous decree while leveling to make it easier. It's not needed at all.
The tree looks fine to me, but keep in mind that you'll get stunned from time to time in 77+ maps (depends on rolls, mobs, your total life, armour, etc). Try switch to the Iron Reflexes route (see the 113 pts witch tree) when you get there if it starts to bother you.

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Errrsh wrote:

So what do you think?

Glad you're going to try the build, hope you have a great time with it! =)

Nice!