[2.3]FoxTactics Hellfire Arc build [Full conversion fire arc] Vaal righteous fire one shot

@Mothren - I was curious how that build would end up, because it was clearly not finished in the video you linked (build with 3-4k hp and no mitigation is not worth discussing imo). Luckily he posted a follow up, and even included a little gorge footage (the standard to compare clear speed). https://youtu.be/ZqCsne2X_0I?t=18s. This is what I'd expect from a skill with a small aoe and centered around the player, there's a lot of 'leaving the path' in any map that isn't a really narrow hallway, which definitely slows overall clear speed. Not saying there is anything wrong with BV, but it is really good at some things (lab for ex), but not as good at others (such as clear speed). This is more of a build specific thing, but mathil's char has just barely over 5k hp and no mitigation.. which will make volatiles and other sources of high single-hit damage pretty dangerous for the build.

You keep saying that hellfire arc is "inferior" or "MUCH inferior", which is really silly. The only criteria that matters for a build is how much you enjoy playing it, but I'll give you that it generally correlates to clear speed, survivability, ability to do lots of different map mods/content, etc. You seem to be suffering from the "grass is greener on the other side" line of thinking, trying to convince me that a build you haven't even played is better than mine in every meaningful way. You aren't even playing a finished hellfire arc char yet, you made your own variation (good for you), but you're missing a 6L and 5 of the grand spectrum ele jewels.. which is a HUGE part of your damage in a grand spectrum build. It's interesting that you are complaining the most about damage and cost, when you chose to make a very expensive version and not even finish the damage portion of the build.

Played this build up to lvl 90 atm, half to lvl 91.

Life version, so unlike versions mentioned above I use mostly the same version as in the guide.

From my observations:

a) Decent build on a budget. I still use a tabula at lvl 90, and don't really see a problem with it. I think my total gear cost is under 1ex. LC would obviously be better, at like several hundred times the cost. Right now having 5500 life.

b) With under 1ex budget you can oneshot most bosses in the game. Exceptions are the ones that can't be ignited (like Atziri), or have multiple phases (Daresso, Core). Just did a Pale Council map, no problems there, it is actually fairly easy. The trick is to survive before you can use VRF. Just the other day on a Vulner Village Ruin I got oneshot from full hp by non-enraged dog, so fuck that map. Uber-Izario is also a no-go - not nearly enough damage to kill him quickly (no VRF), and your life flasks will be gone in a flash with most of his hp still remaining.

c) Life-based build is vastly inferior to any crit + CI / LL version. With same amount of damage nodes, crit build (with Assassin ascendancy for example) will have significantly higher damage (like 5 times higher or more), at least 2 times higher EHP (because ES gear), and much better defense (Surgeon flasks and more slots for utility flasks)
So unless you do not plan to invest much into a character, going life-based and non-crit is a huge mistake.
Also, life-based build has pretty much zero defense without a unique chest / flasks. You can compare this to many "melee" builds, like Reave / Sunder / EQ, that will either have maxblock or 30k+ armour, more life, and still oneshot everything same as you.

d) Life-based non-crit version severely underperforms in terms of clearspeed compared to most other builds I've seen in parties. Basically you can oneshot most stuff, but limited by running speed, and other builds either use movement skills or have much higher movespeed.
Oh yeah even 4L LW is absolutely terrible for constant movement, I don't know how anyone can use it for that. Great for evasion though.

c) This build is quite terrible to play in parties. Simply does not have the damage to keep up with higher enemy hp in higher maps, pretty much everyone I encounter deals more damage.

Conclusion:

Build is certainly good and can handle most content, but just about every archer build for example, within same budget, would be much better in all aspects (survivability / boss kills / clearspeed)

Oh and also one remark: Vortex can deal with bosses significantly better than Arc in situations when you don't have VRF. Vortex has much higher average dmg, and then you use Conc Effect gem for 60% more dmg. Less tanky T12+ bosses die in around 2-3 sec from that.

Oh and just for people to realise the enormous difference in damage between crit and non-crit.

On this build, with dual Catalysts, if I slot Vortex instead of Arc and add Conc effect, I get 32k DPS in hideout, and probably 40k on Overload which is almost never up.

Now we take a generic crit Vortex build, with partial conversion to fire:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1680690/page/1

255k DPS

If he'd slot Arc I'm sure he will get something crazy like 300k dps with it.

That crit build has more EHP too.
And better AoE coverage because of HoI chains.

I'll probably respec to it, shouldn't take more than 30-40 regrets as core pathing is similar.
And with 5L Carcass I will deal far more dmg than Hellfire ever will on a 6L.

You don't need a very high burn for bosses when you deal 8 times more base damage...

Another crit build that I linked somewhere in this thread also dealt around 8-8.5 times more damage... I am starting to notice a pattern here

@Shajirr

1. Comparing tooltips between different builds is absolutely meaningless.
2. You are comparing a crit build with 35 damage nodes with a non-crit build with 18 damage nodes.. and you attribute a tooltip difference to being crit vs non-crit?.
3. You are comparing a hideout tooltip to a tooltip warriored screenshot.

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Aderp wrote:

@Shajirr

1. Comparing tooltips between different builds is absolutely meaningless.
2. You are comparing a crit build with 35 damage nodes with a non-crit build with 18 damage nodes.. and you attribute a tooltip difference to being crit vs non-crit?.
3. You are comparing a hideout tooltip to a tooltip warriored screenshot.

1) How exactly? If one build deals many times more damage using exactly the same skill in the same way, it is crystal-clear to me. Maybe not to you.

2) Crit build has more EHP and better defense / survivability.
Regardless of nodes distribution on the skilltree. What matters is the result.
I can take off 2k life worth of nodes on tree, pump all those nodes into damage, and will not even reach a third of the crit build's damage output. Because non-crit damage scaling sucks.

3) Even if we exclude all the temp buffs, the damage difference would still be enormous.

Anyway, since I don't really plan to level any more, I can just do whatever with the char at this point, so I'll just respec the build and see how things will change for myself.

Really having a lot of fun with this hellfire arc.

I dont even use the one shot aspect. Went a different direction with the passives and went for high crit build. Instead of paragon of calamity and beacon of ruin i went over to mastermind of discord. With that , Elemental weakness gloves, and fire pen looking at 93% fire res penetration on 68k dps with 5 power charges on the high end of pendulem, 63k on the low. Running wrath instead of arctic shield most of the time.

Everything dies very fast!

4.5k life and 2.2k es is a little low but thats the cost of missing on constitution.

gear:


Tree:


Thanks for the great ideas and inspiration!

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Shajirr wrote:

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Aderp wrote:

@Shajirr

1. Comparing tooltips between different builds is absolutely meaningless.
2. You are comparing a crit build with 35 damage nodes with a non-crit build with 18 damage nodes.. and you attribute a tooltip difference to being crit vs non-crit?.
3. You are comparing a hideout tooltip to a tooltip warriored screenshot.

1) How exactly? If one build deals many times more damage using exactly the same skill in the same way, it is crystal-clear to me. Maybe not to you.

2) Crit build has more EHP and better defense / survivability.
Regardless of nodes distribution on the skilltree. What matters is the result.
I can take off 2k life worth of nodes on tree, pump all those nodes into damage, and will not even reach a third of the crit build's damage output. Because non-crit damage scaling sucks.

3) Even if we exclude all the temp buffs, the damage difference would still be enormous.

Anyway, since I don't really plan to level any more, I can just do whatever with the char at this point, so I'll just respec the build and see how things will change for myself.

1. Because tooltip neglects a TON of what matters.

For example, penetration is not included in the calculation. The crit vortex build you linked has none, hellfire arc has ~37 penetration. The amount that penetration helps is dependent on the situation, but worst case it is equivalent to 37% more damage. In a case where you're attacking mobs with high resists, say a mob with +80% resist.. that pen is now equivalent to ~285% MORE damage (assuming no other sources of -res such as ele weakness). So that is a pretty significant thing to leave out of the mix.

Another big one is ignoring burn.. crit vortex basically ignores it, and is going to be near base (20% of initial hit damage/sec for duration of burn) which means the burn is basically going to match the initial hit over a 4-5 second burn. Hellfire arc invests much more into the burn, and easily scales it to around 400%+, meaning the burn accounts for ~80% of the initial hit every second (~400% of the initial hit damage over the course of the burn).

There are many, many other examples of similar things that tooltip doesn't account for. Chain for example means one cast can hit an enemy (or several enemies) multiple times, curses aren't accounted for in tooltip, etc. That's not even mentioning the bugs in many tooltips that never get fixed (thinking of you CA), or that many tooltips don't even display a DPS. Traps/mines give damage for a single trap/mine, WI/BV give per icicle/blade, no idea what VRF tooltip is doing (tooltip shows 2k and yet it one shots nearly anything in the game).

Having said all that, what it is good for is comparing against a very similar build. For example, if I want to compare two jewels to see which gives me more damage - it will generally do that okay (all the things that were left out were left out for both of them). It can also be used to see how I stack up against other people with very similar builds (aka other people in this thread), but comparing to another skill that is nothing alike arc is not useful at all. Oh, and tooltip says nothing about clear speed, which is what most people are concerned with anyway.

2. No it doesn't. I have no idea where you came up with the idea that the vortex build has better survivability. Fox's hellfire arc char has a little over 7k life, the vortex build you linked had 4.3k life and 2k es (total 6.3k pool). But total pool is not the whole story. We can start with fox having LC, for an effective ~25% less phys damage coming in, +4max all resists which is around 20% less ele dmg coming in. Then fox gets endurance charges for less phys dmg taken and longer immortal call, and that the hybrid combo is worse than straight life. 4.3k life means it's still pretty easy to get shocked/frozen/chilled/stunned, the es doesn't help at all against chaos dmg, and he has to rely on ES recharge to replenish the ES (not reliable - see his overgrown ruin vid). Oh, and vortex build doesn't grab paragon of calamity (more defense for hellfire arc, ESP vs reflect).. and let's not forget vortex is essentially melee range. I can't think of a single metric where the vortex build has better survivability. Absolute nonsense.

Your claim about not being able to reach a third of the dmg output of a crit build using non-crit is demonstrably false. And crit scaling is great for initial hit, but if you want to focus burn damage for example (such as this build), stacking fire/ele dmg which double dips is FAR superior to stacking crit.

3. Prove it.

You mention Coil, but for me it is impossible to get it, so I don't count it for dmg mitigation. Any life-based build can use it really, just a question of price.

Since I ran one build and then respecced to a crit version, I can compare them directly:

a) 1 alch wands now seriously outdamage the Catalysts. Crit dmg scaling.
b) I gained around 500 more EHP because of additional ES from Carcass + some trash ES gear I was wearing. If I actually use proper ES gear, I can probably get another 1000 ES. Atm 5250 life and 1070 ES, before I had just 5400 life.
c) Went from 22k hideout Vortex damage in a 6L to 26k on a 5L.
In both cases using the Penetration and Inc AoE gems.
This is with the same 1 alch wands vs Catalysts from initial build, which cost me significantly more.
Catalysts were best in slot and not upgradeable, these shitty wands however can be replaced by a significantly better ones, further boosting the damage.
d) I did unspec VP so no more VRF, can't oneshot bosses anymore. Up to T10 bosses still die very fast when using Conc effect on Vortex, need to test higher maps still.
e) Clearspeed is much higher now due to HoI chain reactions. Most mobs get frozen too so in general vs trash survivability is better. Exiles and Beyonders except the last tier can be freezelocked. This also allows time for ES to recharge if depleted.
f) No Warlords so no endurance charges charges.

@Shajirr

I just explained why you cannot compare tooltips across builds, and instead of addressing anything I said.. you just continue doing it. Then you go on to say survivability is better on the vortex build.. the fact that the vortex build has ~150% life vs ~200% life on hellfire arc (both neglecting jewels) and you're saying you went from 5400 to 5250 life just doesn't add up. I'm betting you're just trolling now, either than or willfully ignorant.

So I started the build as a starter for PSC.

And I'm wondering if I should still go with it?

Or it won't work w/o the budget to get CotB, doryanis etc?

And if I could proceed, when should I get AoF and with what should I level?

I'm leveling w/ firestorm now, seems slowish.