[3.0]PewPewPews Official Cheap Firestorm Build - Perfect for Newcomers/SSF

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VDL_ALLCAPS wrote:

Hello everyone,
First off i'm kind of a newb (i had a 80+ char last league and that's it)
I accidentally ended up in SSF (lol yes i literally didn't pay attention while creating) but i decided to stick with it. The drops are pretty impressive so far, i haven't nearly as lucky with the last char i played.
That being said, i was going for the 4keystone spectre summoner by Ghazzy, like the last league. But then i realized (yes, noob mistake) that certain summoner gear items necessary for that build might never fall into my hands. Now, ghazzy's build uses firestorm + searing bond for lvling till act 3 cruel where we transform into summoner and get spectres from the lunaris temple.

and this is how i ended up here. since i wasn't sure i should be following the summoner build, i started looking for alternatives given what i've already got. I did put some points into elemental damage to aid with the firestorm to level. Also, i found a Nycta's Lantern, and then a tabula rasa. it so happens the gems used in the 6L for the summon spectre are very similar to what you use for the firestorm build. at lvl 54, act 3 cruel i'm torn. i could still try to go for summoner, knowing i might not be able to get the +spectre items i won't be optimal. or i could potentially respec a lot (most if not all) points to go from my current skill tree to the firestorm build. i got the gems and ran for a couple of hours, and it's pretty fun.

here's where i am now
Passive skill tree build
as you can see, a part of the skill tree is the same, except in the beginning and what follows next.
i have all my respec points + 4 regrets.
here's my current gear:

Spoiler

i would GREATLY appreciate any help/advice with what i should do next with my build.. i'm not fixated on getting the spetres, i wouldn't mind switching to being an elementalist, or doing a hybrid or something. i've simply never played elementalists (always picked eitherfull on summoners or paladins in all AARPGs)

Here's my two cents, for what its worth. After a while, once I realized I preferred herald of thunder versus anger, I didn't focus on utilizing the two-curse portion of the build. The mana reserve wasn't really for me and didn't match the style I wanted to play.

This build offers a lot of ways to play around. So you could maybe opt out of the double curse portion of the tree and add more early on to your other minions until you feel its necessary to do otherwise.

Also, if you can, I got this early on as an item I didn't trade for and kept it because apparently its pretty common.



It definitely is a live saver, honestly! Also the other two items below are pretty common uniques from what I've seen as far as drop rates later on.



So if you can find certain uniques along those lines, they can definitely give your build a boost, but the Tabula Rasa you have is pretty great as well!

If i put flame golem in a Redblade Band and anger in either my ring or amulet and dropped skeleton spell totems what could i do with the four open sockets that could be linked.

Also I if i use scourge took the increased minion nodes would putting Raise Spectre in my 6link and dropping one support gem be beneficial? I figure i have a ton of minion damage double dipping in my jewels and everything for scourge it would be good to get some more dps out from minons.


Why drop anger on the necro?

I have been using this build on hardcore up to 82 so far, but playing cautiously since this is the first time I've ever gotten into mapping (only doing tier 5 right now).

1. I have only been using a 5 link so far. I use inc duration, fire penetration, faster casting, and spell echo to support firestorm. What should I pick up for 6th link? I don't really want inc area of effect. I am thinking concentrated effect? I see many one here still using controlled destruction though, which leads me to #2...

2. It doesn't seem like elemental overload procs enough at 9% crit. Wouldn't just using controlled destruction be smoother and then spec out of elemental overload?

How many of you guys actually use elemental overload? I was looking through several posters here and it seemed to be about half and half.

Also thank you for this guide! Very easy to follow and has felt very smooth in playing so far!

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Bairemuth wrote:

I have been using this build on hardcore up to 82 so far, but playing cautiously since this is the first time I've ever gotten into mapping (only doing tier 5 right now).

1. I have only been using a 5 link so far. I use inc duration, fire penetration, faster casting, and spell echo to support firestorm. What should I pick up for 6th link? I don't really want inc area of effect. I am thinking concentrated effect? I see many one here still using controlled destruction though, which leads me to #2...

2. It doesn't seem like elemental overload procs enough at 9% crit. Wouldn't just using controlled destruction be smoother and then spec out of elemental overload?

How many of you guys actually use elemental overload? I was looking through several posters here and it seemed to be about half and half.

Also thank you for this guide! Very easy to follow and has felt very smooth in playing so far!

I got rid of increased duration for controlled destruction and then my 6th link is elemental focus. 3.3k tooltip dps per impact right now. Over 5k when Elemental overload procs since I'm using scourge

@Socos: Is it really damage you are lacking? I feel that this build is already overwhelmed with pure sweet Deeps haha. The survivability becomes more and more important, the higher you get. And getting mixed ES and Life won't help with that.

There was a guy here, who kept dieing in red maps. He has around 3K es, 3K life. You'd say a 6K EHP pool is nice but. We have nothing that will increase our ES - which means, in tough fights, where you keep taking damage, you'll only have your life pool as your EHP. Just a side note :)

Having that said, the Infernal Mantle is amazing for the build. A huge damage increase. Just make sure the tradeoff(more spell damage taken)does not take your down.

@johnny_is_alive: just wait until you facetank Uber Izaro ;)
If you were still wondering, the best point to get them, is when you picked up both Area of Effect clusters from the tree, so your blasphemy has more range. But you can pick them up at any time really.

@VDL_ALLCAPS: The elementist version is designed to be played in SSF. It's not gear reliant, and should work even on a 4 link(which isn't the case in your case haha). Since Firestorm can give you some sustain(with warlords mark), I say, this is better then the summoner. The Tabula Rasa has as a downside, that it doesn't give you anything besides the 6 link: Your character will be quite fragile. So sustain is important, just being summoner could provide some issues, especially if you start to do the higher maps.

@Hdream: I wouldn't get rid of the spell totem with summon skeletons. I'd rather spend a 4 link on them really(faster Casting + Minions speed for example). They are a life saver whenever you encounter a boss that completely obliterates your zombies. You only have to pop the totem to have a little breathing room(for summoning more zombies, or just kill the boss).
As for anger, we simply don't have the room to run it. We need the reservation to run our blasphemys(even though it is possible to put Warlords mark in the helmet, and free up one blasphemy that way.. not really recommended, quite unreliable)

@Bairemuth: Area of Effect will make mapping easier, it'll give you more places to stand in(whenever you stand in your rain, you can be sure nothing could reach you). But controlled Destruction is a very viable option indeed. I'd only use concentrated effect for bosses, as the loss in AoE does hurt your clearspeed(and again, make things potentially less safe).

I only need Elemental Overload to proc on bosses, which it usually does from my experience. If you don't find it proccing enough, it's perfectly fine to drop it. You could invest the two nodes on a jewel slot instead for example :)


Thanks everyone for asking and replying. I'm happy you're all enjoying the build :)

Thank you for the build and for helping out!

So i went with elementalist, just got my norm lab done and im on my way to gank Malachai in cruel. It's working great, even though im not yet completely respecd and i dont have the skeletons/totem yet.

i AM using my spectres (bcz i leveled the gem so i figured i might as well use it) like this:

so i got 2 flame sentinels that do 470 tooltip dps, it kinda goes with the whole "i do massive fire damage" gig we got going. plus anger gets the lvl bonus from the weap (i havent found any better weap so far)

i have a question though. i noticed that the "cast when damage taken" setup triggers immortal call, but i've never seen it trigger convocation. i even died on purpose testing it, my minions never recall to me when im getting hit.. any idea why?

Hi there,

I'm new to this game, and this guide actually helping me a lot. Just wanna say thanks first :)

currently im using lv65 witch follow necromancer path, no much trouble yet lately. But then im curious about vaal gems, which i haven't seen it in your guide. so: Should i use val orb on my firestorm skill? is it possible? when's the best point to use it (my gem is lv 16 now)? what's the worst consequence/profit should i expect?

@VDL_ALLCAPS: Don't worry about the skelly totem. They get really important when you get to high mapping imo, but even then, there are plenty of people who prefer to play without, or with the vaal skeletons instead. I can see the flame sentinels working, but as we don't really invest into getting more of them, you might want to transition into something else when you're going to map. Nevertheless, they should be great for leveling.

Your convocation doesn't trigger, simply because your convocation required level is higher then the required level for Cast when Damage Taken. Remember, Cast when Damage taken can only trigger gems that are of an equal level, or lower. Just don't level up the gem until Cast when Damage Taken is the proper level.

@tuannaff: If you want to vaal your firestorm, do it only when it's level 20 and 20 Quality. And even then it's a risk, as it can delevel your firestorm to 19. The flipside is, that it can get up to 23% quality, or even level up to 21. Both a nice boost in damage, but it's nothing you necessarily need of course :)

So, after my troubles with the malformation map, I'm now running quite well with the necro build. Still have trouble in maps where I can't rely much on my zombies. I feel that damage wise i'm doing fine - The Scourge really helped - and I can kill t10-11 bosses quick. Haven't gone through tier 12 yet because the only t12 I got is Vault, and I always end up dying to one of it's guardians while my zombies are in some other part of the map.
But that part is probably just me being a really bad player, and the fact that I'm doing maps up to that tier easily (and probably could do other tier 12 maps with more ease, if I had tried any) speaks for the build - if I can do it, then the build is "stupid player proof".


Since I'm still learning how to play this game, I still got a few questions:
- I'm using Controlled Destruction instead of Increased Area of Effect. With IAE my spell crit chance is 6%. With CD it's 5%. Am I missing something here or is CD really the best option? 1% crit chance doesn't seem like much for me (even considering I do have the Elemental Overload passive, so crit is nice). In low tier maps I do use IAE for faster clearing, but on higher ones the lesser damage would mean casting firestorm again, so I don't see the advantage.

- Flaskwise, I got the following:


When doing easier maps, I just swap Rumi's Concoction for a Quicksilver. On higher tiers though, I take those I linked - which means I can't run around fast. I guess that if I want to squeeze a quicksilver in that setup then I'd be better off removing the second life flask (the one with minion life), right? Or would it be easier to take one of the other ones out of the setup, as in this option I'd have almost no life recovery from flasks?

- Would there be anything I can upgrade for a reasonable price (I got 6 exalts in total, wouldn't like to spend much of it though, unless the upgrade makes a considerable impact), gear wise? Besides getting quality on gems/getting them to lvl 20, and getting a better 6-link armour.

I am sure this has been posted before but i have spent the last hour sifting through all the content on this feed and am just more confused so i will just ask. In the guide for elementalist you have curse on hit, warlords mark, temporal chains, and hearld of thunder. I have all of these in my gloves and the curse on hit doesnt proc. After some reading through the curse on hit from PoE website it says it doesn't proc unless you are casting something. So based upon this knowledge, what did you do to change the build? Thanks for your time, any answer would be much appreciated