Incinerate | 2 totems | CI | 2 curses | Awesome DPS with low gear requirement

This build is so much crazy fun. I'm comparing it to a highly defensive frost pulse / life leech build, and I just fly through the packs now.

With fairly crappy gear at L41 I just fly through most mobs... the only danger is flicker mobs and the only slow down is fire resistant mobs (I don't have elemental weakness yet).

A few notes on helping the totems survive:

1) When fighting melee, drop a flame trap right in front of the totem. The explosion plus burning ground plus the totem with GMP will melt mobs

2) When fighting melee, use a frost wall to delay when the melee will arrive at the totem. This gives the totem time to ramp up. Usually it just takes 1-2 frost walls

3) When fighting ranged, use frost wall as the OP described to block incoming

4) When fighting ranged, put a totem on either side of the group to ping pong their agro

5) Also as mentioned by the OP, temporal chains really helps survivability of totems for both ranged and melee

this build should have a lot of fun when play with it.but i got 1 question here:is it possible to shock mobs with add lighting dmg?with my calculations i guess not.i do need some fact to prove me wrong and thats very first time i would like to make some mistakes.Thanks in advance!

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MrButterrs wrote:

Stat priority for DPS?

Cast speed > Spell Damage % > Fire Damage % ??

Does having mods like adds xx-xxx lightning damage (for example on a ring) affect incinerate? How about if it was on a weapon?

Ive been worrying about survivability since I play HC, but curious on the best way to increase dmg. Thanks

Stat priority looks about right. Cast Speed is not always better than spell damage, though. But with the given gem setup, you want to prioritize general spell damage over fire damage.

Flat damage increases, no matter if on a weapon or not, do not work for spells ever. The only exception being the support gems.

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rsrogers4 wrote:

[...]

1) When fighting melee, drop a flame trap right in front of the totem. The explosion plus burning ground plus the totem with GMP will melt mobs

[...]

Especially the quoted part is very true. You can really overwhelm enemies by making excessive use of Fire Traps. Since the totems are cheap, it's no big deal to run 2 or even 3 Fire Traps. Just throw them around like crazy, on melees and ranged. It always helps and I personally really think those traps are crazy.

Brutal dps, when combined with your two flame-throwers.

Hi, what about bandit quests?

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Kiri2k wrote:

Hi, what about bandit quests?

Skillpoints all the way. Maybe cast speed in cruel if you want to.

With the same crappy gear I just easily solo 1-shot Vaal in Cruel when I was only 2 levels higher than the map. I used the elite tactic of dropping totems and traps, running around in circles with movement speed boots, and boom! Vaal suddenly and quickly fell over dead.

Just flying through content. I'm using whatever non-crafted junk I've found. I did get lucky and find a 4L chest with the right colors for totem-GMP-lightning-incinerate, though the chest has no ES.

Another tip for fighting ranged: move the GMP/Incinerate totem(s) to right on top of the ranged. Not many guys can take 5 or 10 jets of fire to the crotch for long!

Obvious tip to those who play the build... Passing it along to generate interest in others.

I just got level 50 with this build, flying through cruel content. So far so great, but there are some remarks, based on my experience so far.

1. You should use zombies. They make everything easier, even without any passive nodes dedicated to minions. I use the standard 3 zombies, supported by speed, damage and life gems. Whenever the zombies are up, hardly any mob is ever interested in my toon. I can dance around and between them, they only hunt my zombies or my totems. During whole Act 2 I got hit maybe 20 times in total, and not a single time my shield went down. In the moment I´m thinking about pouring some passives into minion life nodes to make them even tankier than they are now.

2. Frost Wall doesn´t keep projectile using ranged mobs from hitting whatever is behind the frost wall. Nevertheless, Frost Wall is great to keep those nasty mobs from you if something goes wrong and they are after your toon

3. The part that troubles me most. The whole build is only working because of the lousy AI in this game. I know no other game where mobs are climbing over each other to be the first killed by a totem, while completely ignoring the toon that placed the totem. So let´s hope GGG doesn´t hire a real programmer who knows how to code AI, because as soon as this happens, this build will be broken. :-)

I finally got my incinerate gem high enough today to give it a fair shot (17).

I usually run EK totems

Incinerate does great damage when it is on top of the enemy but the damage is just mediocre at a range.

The AoE is just alright, similar to EK in it is more mobile but doesn't have the distance.


Conclusion, Incinerate is the only other totem at this point I find comparable to EK in damage. Spark scales well once it is high level since the shocks stacks will last longer.

Dropping two GMP incinerate totems on top of an enemy (assuming they don't eat it immediately) will deal A LOT of damage.

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3. The part that troubles me most. The whole build is only working because of the lousy AI in this game. I know no other game where mobs are climbing over each other to be the first killed by a totem, while completely ignoring the toon that placed the totem. So let´s hope GGG doesn´t hire a real programmer who knows how to code AI, because as soon as this happens, this build will be broken. :-)

I'm 48 with this build atm and I disagree with this statement. I know exactly what you're saying about how "cheese" the build is right now due to their AI, but to claim that it would be "broken" if the AI changed is quite an exaggeration.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, I DO get mobs diving for me, even if it's just an auto-attack. This isn't much harder than them ignoring me and is no different than kiting with any other build. You run around, drop traps and totems behind you as you go, and try to utilize choke points to really lay down the AoE. Fixed.

If the AI got smarter, this build is still strong, it's just more challenging now and you don't get to just stand there while all your summons/totems do the work. Which reminds me...

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1. You should use zombies. They make everything easier, even without any passive nodes dedicated to minions. I use the standard 3 zombies, supported by speed, damage and life gems. Whenever the zombies are up, hardly any mob is ever interested in my toon. I can dance around and between them, they only hunt my zombies or my totems. During whole Act 2 I got hit maybe 20 times in total, and not a single time my shield went down. In the moment I´m thinking about pouring some passives into minion life nodes to make them even tankier than they are now.

I STRONGLY agree with this, although I went the Skeleton route because I don't like relying on corpses, especially boss fights. Same idea though. I have Summon Skele linked to +Life and +Damage. I usually start fights by summoning 5 skeletons right on top of packs of mobs, then I throw in both totems and a curse, and then laugh maniacally while I throw traps into the chaos.

I've had some success with Frost Wall, but because I don't have it linked to Increased Duration, its duration is so short that I find minions to be more reliable for protecting totems. I'm waiting to hook up the Increased Duration gem before taking it off my bar, but I think summons could end up being stronger, and available earlier.

TL,DR: If mob AI gets updated, this build can still kite like a beast. This build really benefits from tanky minions, and Frost Wall is too short/unreliable without Increased Duration support gem.

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Nyruami wrote:

Spoiler

I just got level 50 with this build, flying through cruel content. So far so great, but there are some remarks, based on my experience so far.

1. You should use zombies. They make everything easier, even without any passive nodes dedicated to minions. I use the standard 3 zombies, supported by speed, damage and life gems. Whenever the zombies are up, hardly any mob is ever interested in my toon. I can dance around and between them, they only hunt my zombies or my totems. During whole Act 2 I got hit maybe 20 times in total, and not a single time my shield went down. In the moment I´m thinking about pouring some passives into minion life nodes to make them even tankier than they are now.

2. Frost Wall doesn´t keep projectile using ranged mobs from hitting whatever is behind the frost wall. Nevertheless, Frost Wall is great to keep those nasty mobs from you if something goes wrong and they are after your toon

3. The part that troubles me most. The whole build is only working because of the lousy AI in this game. I know no other game where mobs are climbing over each other to be the first killed by a totem, while completely ignoring the toon that placed the totem. So let´s hope GGG doesn´t hire a real programmer who knows how to code AI, because as soon as this happens, this build will be broken. :-)

thanks for your input. I've posted a variation of the original build to include some minion passives for those who are wanting better survivability for them and their totems; especially solo.