[2.4.0] Tanky RF Elementalist mjolner witch, volls not required

Mjolner underwent several changes in atlas of worlds. Firstly, mjolner skills now cast in sequence, meaning only one skill will trigger at a time. additionally, there is a 100ms cooldown on each skill, meaning they could trigger a maximum of 10 times each second. This would devastate the build, but they also altered the weapon so that it will trigger on every hit(IF YOUR MJOLNER DROPPED BEFORE AoW, YOU MUST DIVINE YOUR HAMMER TO GAIN THIS EFFECT). This means that the build, though worse is definitely still viable. I have only tested the volls version so far(i upgraded a little while ago), and it still can melt through bosses like nobodys business, and doesnt have too much issue on tier 14 maps. Also it really seems like the healing from kingsguard devotion actually became a lot more consistant.

Also, it is worth noting that sense the nerf the price of a volls devotion has fallen from ~25 ex to under 10ex, making the volls option much more obtainable.

The biggest practical change for this build comes from the hard 10 cast/sec limit. Though this does limit our damage, it also makes attack speed much less necissary. with arc and discharge socketed, you need 20 hits per sec to hit max casts (30 if you socket third spell). Previously, this build was getting around 47. However, by overkilling the attack speed, we can generate additionall charges for discharge, significantly increasing per cast damage. additionally, i simply replaced faster attacks with blind in the molten strike setup. no dps difference, targets are half as likely to hit you for a rather nice defensive boost. (still hits 30 times per sec, no problem generating charges or triggering blind with the low chance). Also, in order to self cast discharge for the penetration from mastermind of discord, you need to socket an additional gem in somewhere. BUt sense vaal haste became essentially pointless i just replaced it with the discharge

I may also do some experimenting with replacing the discharge gem for the non-volls version, once i find some time. Spark or shock nova may just be better now

TL,DR
Can only cast 10 of each spell per sec, but additionall attack speed lets us generate more charges per discharge to help compensate damage nerf.
If you are using old mjolner, divine it or its pretty useless. new version is better even tahn old legacy version.
Faster attacks replaced with blind to get some bonus defense.
Flare discharge MTX is amazing

Tanky
amazing life sustain
great damage
Great for running izaro (you can just regen through most traps without RF on)
Atziri farmer
mjolner and rise of the phoenix look really cool. and RF is pretty

melee range
NOT a budget build. expect to spend some ex to get equiptment going. still cheap compared to the usual volls devotion builds though.
reflect can be dangerous
ALL the particle effects. can be laggy as hell
flare discharge looks sweet
Leveling is slow and painful. Only hits its stride after 60

practically nothing changed in the tree for ascendancy. I didnt even use my respec.

As of the prophecy update, the elementalist tree has some rather notable improvements. Liege of the primordial has become quite powerful with the addition of a second golem. Lightning and fire golems will provide up to 18% increased attack speed and 80% increased lightning and fire damage. This is just huge, get it. Pendulum of destruction has also received +25% radius of area skills on its periodic cycle which is a definite boost. Though the constantly twitching righteous fire size is a bit annoying. Paragon of calamity also has an amazing new bonus that is 50% reduced elemental damage. You deal a LOT of elemental damage and this is an incredible safety blanket. Mastermind of discord has had the buff duration increased to 10 seconds, making this much more usable. A single manual cast of discharge gives you 25% penetration to all resists, so cast it to massively boost damage against tougher opponents.

also got these sweet boots


and this incredibly laggy hat

for those not in the know, righteous fire is kindof amazing. It is a buff that when activated gives you up to a massive 60% more damage multiplier to spells, as well as a 20% increase if you have max quality

it also burns enemies in a circle around you for half of your max health every second, which is pretty great. and looks pretty

However, the skill carries a heavy cost. Having righteous fire active causes you to take 90% of your health and energy shield as fire damage every second. To counter this, it is necessary to raise your fire resist as high as you can while investing in as much life regen as possible

Maxing your fire resist involves two things, the purity of fire aura and this shield


This wondrous little shield gives +8% to your maximum fire resist, as well as some normal fire resistances and low life bonuses. In addition, it has a really wonderful in game model. However, it has a moderately high level requirement, so really righteous fire isnt activatable until at least level 65. (not a big issue, cause mjolnir starts at 60) AND they can be acquired for a chaos or two.

The purity of fire aura gives additional max fire resist depending on its level. To sustain righteous fire, you really need it to be at least level 17. A level 20 aura will be even bettter. It also gives a large boost to fire resist making it pretty easy to hit the cap.

with a level 17 purity, rise of the phoenix, and +1% max resist from the tree, you should have 87% max fire resist, which would require a total of 11.7% health regen to sustain. with a lvl 20 purity that drops to 10.8%. This health regen is attained almoast entirely from the passive tree, though there is also a talisman and a map-only amulet base that gives %health regen, if you have access to them.

BOHOLD,IN ALL ITS GLORY


in terms of damage and attack speed, it really isnt anything spectacular., however it has 2 very beneficial unique mods.
The first grants a 100% chance to cast a socketed spell whenever you strike. This effectively bypasses cast speed entirely, replacing it with whatever attack you chose to use. However, as of the Atlas of Worlds update, the spells are hard limited to 10 casts per second. This is per socket, and the spells will cast sequentially. Really, there are three good attack skills to use; Cyclone, molten strike, and lightning strike. Out of these, molten strike is probably the best, due to the high number of hits the projectiles provide.
The second mod is the +1 chain on skills. This is a useful boost for arc and lightning strike if you choose to use it.

The main drawback of this thing is its gargantuan stat requirements. It requires 412 strength and 300 intellegence to equip. As such, you need to get equiptment with those stats whenever possable.

Recently, you have been able to buy these for a few ex. Which is great compared to how it used to be

This ring is important to getting Discharge to function. The passive effect lets you gain power charges whenever a skill hits, which keeps your discharge nice and fed.

The ring grants one charge per skill that hits, which means one each for discharge, arc, and the triggering attack, giving a guaranteed 3 charges for every discharge cast. You can get more for any attack that doesnt trigger the spell, so additional power charges wont be a wasted investment.

BEHOLD IN ALL ITS GLORY


jk i dont have one



This Amulet is mildly expensive, currently hovering around 8-10ex sense atlas of worlds came out (but hey, they used to be 30). But if you can get one it will be well worth it, as the endurance charges it grants will nearly double the damage of discharge, as well as providing durability and boosting immortal call. However, i have been able to handle end game content perfectly fine without it.



However, it is worth noting that if you have a volls, equipping a kingsguard chainmail will give you 3-5K health per second from discharge. Meaning you can drop the leech gem out of mjolnir and replace it with an iron will gem. Getting a volls, kingsguard, and iron will will quite literally double your dps. ( well, 194% increase. i did the math. probably more with better jewels). A lightning penetration gem would also be a good choice if you are doing a lot of boss farming, but its effectiveness really depends on the enemies resists, and it will rarely be a major improvement over iron will. However, sense kingsguard has no resists or stats, you will likely need to have some pretty good equipment to make sure you have enough resists/stats without any significant input from neck, chest, shield, weapon, and a ring.

this belt is pretty great. Gives high resists, armor, boosts your lighning damage, and provides a bit of leech and potion utility. It can easily be replaced with a good rare belt however.

Mjolner

Discharge-arc-life leech/iron will/item quantity (BBR)

The order of these gems are important. In order to properly generate charges, Discharge must be socketed before arc. You want your discharge and life leech to be high level and quality. Quality is nice on arc, but you cast so often that enemies will most likely be shocked by the base chance.

Iron will can give a massive damage boost, if you have enough sustain from another source. IF you are running underlevel content (labyrinth runs, dock/lake farm, etc) i usually just stick in a quantity gem i had lying around for the extra loot. Absolutely not necessary, but useful. Life leech is just great for defense, and can usually get you through any lag spikes unharmed. I usually socket it for high level maps.


Main attack
2 options here

Molten strike-GMP-Multistrike-Fortify-Blind/life gain on hit | determination (RRRGG-R body armor)
In this setup, Molten strike is capable of getting up to 8 hits per attack, one from the initial melee hit and 7 more from the projectiles. These projectiles will hit on a slight delay, and scatter randomely in an area around your target. GMP,Multistrike are utilized to get a high number of hits as fast as possible. Fortify and blind are used to increase your durability. Life gain on hit adds het another sustain sourse, though your weakest one. If you only have a 4 link, drop blind/life gain on hit. determination can be here or any spare slot, and is great for boosting armor. The important thing with this skill is to get above 20 hits per second. 20 hits/sec will trigger spells at the max rate, any additional hits serve to generate more charges. With my current setup, this gives me 30ish hits per second which reliably generates 5 charges for every discharge.

Cyclone-Faster attack-fortify-increased area-blind/life gain on hit
This setup is a bit less facetanky, but struggles to reach 20 hits/sec ageinst single targets. It is viable, but i prefer the molten strike setup.



Golems + second discharge
discharge-Flame golem-lignting golem-life leech/minion life (BBRR/B Helm/glove/boot)

With the addition of additional golems from liege of the primordial, it becomes worth it to support your golems rather than righteous fire. Golems will give you 18% attack speed and 80% damage increase. Life leech and minion life both increase the survivability of your golems. Minion life is probably more effective, though life leech will have friendlier colors. It's also possable to get +2 to minion level on your helm so it is best if they go there.

The second discharge skill here should be level 1, as you basically just use it to trigger 25% penetaration from mastermind of discord and higher levels take a larger chunk of mana.


Movement skills

Leap slam-Faster attack-shield charge (RRG rise of the phoenix)
You really only need one of these, but i have both. shield charge is generally more responsive for dodging/running cross country, but leap slam is capable of bypassing barriers/chasms/jail cells(never understood that last one). If you want to take only one, leap slam is of more general use, as getting stuck on a pile of rubble when you really need to be not there anymore can lead to severe deadness.

EDIT: Shield charge got pretty amazing this patch. now that ive spent some more time playing,its become obvious that shield charge is far better for clearing. It now hits every monster along your path as well as an aoe hit at the end. just by plowing into a group of mooks, you can trigger mjolner several times. This can usually just kill an average pack, really only using the molten strike for magic/rares that dont immediately die. this actually really improved clear time, so yeah, use shield charge.

CWDT setup + righteous fire
CWDT- immortal call-increased duration-righteous fire (RRRB/G Helm/glove/boot)
Immortal call is useful against volley fire, so is worth having. IT will be especially good if you have a volls devotion. Vaal haste used to go here, but is pretty useless for this build since Atlas of Worlds. Now righteous fire goes here cause it needs to go somewhere


Curse on Vengeance
Vengeance-curse on hit-elemental weakness/conductivity | purity of fire (RRBB Helm/glove/boot)
This setup has 2 purposes. Vengeance may be used to trigger additional hits for mjolner, as well as boosting your overall damage with elemental weakness or conductivity. conductivity is better unless you have a volls devotion. Like determination, purity of fire is here but can really be anywhere

My current passive tree is as follows





This build could also easily be ported onto marauder scion or templar. Scion in particular has some nice options available in ascendancy classes (berserker/slayer combo)

important things to note are

Resolute technique
not missing means more hits. Not critting means not losing charges from romiras banquet. win win

Barbarism
gives +1 to max fire resist

juggernaut
life recovery from flasks is not to be underestimated. also life and armor

The power charge near witch is taken to boost discharge damage. For the vols versions, the
endurance charges near duelist and marauder are also taken. In theory you can also get the 2 charges near templar, but that will basically require you to be level 95+ so is a very endgame option.

generally, you need to pick up a lot of strength and intelligence, as well as get at least 11.7% health regen in order to activate righteous fire.





Bandits

oak-skill point-alira
oak in normal for +40 life, skill point cause skill point, alira for extra power charge. All things you need, though kraityn can be taken instead of the skill point(i have him but mostly because its not worth it to refund the choice. attack speed used to be more important than it is now)

Leveling this build can be done with basically anything, but chances are it will drag a bit. Its worth sticking with it though. I personally used a rather oddball combination of molten strike and storm call. I would recommend grabbing the lightning damage nodes near the witch start, then just focus on acquiring your health regen, grabbing any life nodes along the way.If you want more clear speed , you can grab some of the elemental spell damage nodes near scion/templar, or some melee nodes near marauder/duelist if youre leveling melee. Just refund them later.it is nice to equip both mjolner and righteous fire as soon as possible, so just focus on getting as much strength, intelligence and regen as you can before level 60/65


Jewels

for jewels you want some combination of these stats

max health
spell/lightning damage
armor
stats and resists (more important if you are short on requirements)

generally you should prioritize them in that order. But getting some stats from the jewels can be very useful for reaching the mjolner requirements, and its not that hard to find them on jewels with other decent stats

EDIT: Most of the dps calculations are just wrong sinse atlas of worls. dont wanna recalculate, but be aware that damage is still pretty high (burns through merciless malachai in seconds)

First priority as always should be capping your resists.
After that, focus life, then armor. Get chaos resists if you can. Be aware that you also need a lot of intelligence and strength for mjolner.


with my current equipment, this build has about 19k armor giving 66% damage reduction. With its 5.6k health it is a challenge to find something that can one hit it. 12.5% health regen/sec gives 708 health, though most of it is eaten by the righteous fire, giving an actual regen of about 80/sec

my discharge with 4 charges does about 8.1k per shot, and my arc (currently level 19) does 2.7k. I do 3.95 attacks per second, with 7 projectiles, resulting in 31 hits/sec. With the 30% cast chance that gives ~9.5 casts per second each of discharge and arc. This results in a dps of 103.3k, with the molten strike and righteous fire damage boosting that to 115.2k. That may be even higher against groups where multiple targets/vengeance procs can increase the number of hits. with a volls devotion and 4th endurance charge, that can jump to over 165k.

If you need to chug your oh shit potion to turn off righteous fire, your total dps will drop to around 77.3 k. Which is still pretty decent, especially considering you become pretty exceptionally tanky.

flasks

Having an instant heal and ignite cleanse potion is an extremely useful as an OH SHIT button. pop it when you are low on life and taking damage, it is the only way to turn off righteous fire. You can still function fine without RF on, and having access to your full regen makes you a lot more tanky. The fire potion functions as a kind of secondary health pot for similar reasons.. The lightning potion is suggested for fighting atziri.

Enchants
For glove enchants, try to find something that gives you multiple attack hits. Word of fury is really good, as it triggers off your shield charge and causes 10+hits.
For boot enchants,Attack speed, leech and life regen are all great choices.
Helmet Enchants can be tricky to get. The best ones are probably additional arc chains, any of the discharge ones, or RF spell damage. I got lucky with arc chains on second try.

This build is generally very capable and versatile. The option of swapping out mjolner gems or running with righteous fire on means that we can deal with a lot of conditions. So i fugured i would have a little discussion about some of the mods that you may specifically affect this build.

- health and mana regen
at 20%-40%, you can keep righteous fire on and depend on leech/kingsguard sustain to counter the degen. At higher values, you can simply turn righteous fire off, which may slow you down a bit but still performs well. However, you cannot do no regen maps, simply because you depend on mana regen to keep attacking. May be doable with mana leech/mana gain on hit, i have not actually tried.

Elemental Reflect
paragon of calamity helps deal with reflect, but you do a LOT of elemental damage. Single reflecting opponents arent a problem, but when one spell hits a dozen or so reflecting mooks you can rapidly obliterate yourself. I was able to complete some white tier reflect maps with caution, but yellow or red tier reflect mods are real too dangerous to bother with.

-%max resistances
Yeah this one causes a couple issues. You cant run Righteous fire on it, and if you run without RF than you still take much higher elemental damage. I usually skip it if i can

Curses

Vulnerability: This does make your righteous fire degen health, but it is fairly slow so you can sustain through it without much worry. It does increase the damage from most enemies though so be aware of that.

Elemental weakness: This map mod will reduce your elemental resists by up to 34% on high tier maps. IF you have overcapped your resists to this point, there is no issue. If you dont, prepare to take more damage. I would highly recommend at least overcapping fire resist so you can keep RF on.

Temporal chains
This one will slow you down. shocking revelation, i know. but the decreased attack speed makes it more difficult to generate additional charges, drastically reducing you damage. It is still doable, just slow. Dodging with shield charge also trickier to do, so i would probably skip this if the boss is a real hard hitter.

chain/additional projectiles
These maps are professional at killing your golems. just be aware, they are pretty trivial to resummon. Chain may also increase the damage you take a lot if you have golems up, so if the map is already dangerous may not be worht summoning them back.

Im not going to go into too much depth here, there are other guides to tell you the gritty details on running atziri. But this build has a few considerations to make

Double Vaal construct

for these guys, theres a couple things to remember. If one of them starts shooting the giant doomlazer, walk around in a circle till he stops, dont bother trying to facetank it. When they shoot the ball lightning, you will actually take less damage is you just shield charge streight through it. Maby bring a topaz flask to reduce the damage. The main thing to remember is you want to get both of them as low as possable before you kill the one. the reamaining one gets a massive cast speed and damage boost and will actually become a real threat. So you want it to be low enough to kill in a few seconds before that happens.

Trio
For the trio, i would highly recommend killing the ranged attack one first (A'alai), as she likes to kite which can give you problems when she is buffed. I usually kill the on fire double striker guy next, though you can do either. DOing the cyclone guy last, chugging your oh shit potion and doing it without RF can make him pretty nonthreatening, as it will take him forever to put on enough bleed stacks to counter your health regen, after which you can just chug a bleed potion and make him start over again. Doing the fire guy last i believe can lead to much higher damage spikes, and deals fire damage to you for each hit which is hard to deal with even with you buffed fire resistance. Its possable but the cyclone guy is just easier.

Atziri

Ageinst atziri herself, you are fully capable of facetanking her little fireblasts and stormcalls. But be aware the stormcalls can overlap, and will one shot you if you get hit by enough. The double flameblast may be survivable if you chug a ruby flask, but it isnt worth the risk. shield charge can get out of the way pretty easy. When the yellow storm calls pop up, just find a clear place to stand. Make sure that you have enough fire/lightning resist over the cap to deal with the reflected elemental weakness. If you dont, just take it out of the vengeance setup.

When she splits into clones is the only time she is really a threat. Before they finish appearing, chug the oh shit potion and turn off RF. The increased damage and lack of regen makes the reflect damage you will take because of arc hitting the shield clone extremely hard to survive. Pick one of the clones and focus it down. The flameblast here can hurt, and it can be hard to avoid the stormcalls. stay mobile, try to bait out the fireblast and then charge into your clone, attack for a second or two then leave before the next flameblast hits. You should be able to recognize the flameblast timing with a bit of practice.

For the healing minions, just beat on azirirs immobile face. Anything that makes it through your arcs wont make it through the discharge.

cloudy2teen posted a great version of the build tailored more for hardcore play. It is on page 4 of the comments, if you are doing HC i recommend you go look at it