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How to use this guide
This guide is quite detailed so I added codes to quickly jump to a certain chapter. If you do not care about the explanation behind the guide, check out the tl;dr just below the index :)

[PFS010]What is this guide about? - A quick introduction to this guide.
[PFS020]Mechanics: What do we need to know about Firestorm - The basics, all you need to know to understand firestorm
[PFS021]Mechanics: Minions, the Why and How - Why we want to use minions, and how they work.
[PFS022]Mechanics: Ascendancy, Why the Elementist? - An explanation why we pick the Elementist, and why it's so good.
[PFS023]Mechanics: Orb of Storms. Deceptively versatile - How we are using Orb of Storms, and how you could use it as well.
[PFS030]The core build: Passive tree, our path to firestorm - Passive tree and our leveling tree!
[PFS031]The core build: Gems, our little bauble collection of destruction - The list of gems, where we get it, and what level we get it
[PFS040]Gearing your character, what she should wear - Basic gearing for both early and end game!
[PFS041]Recommended leveling uniques - Not here yet, working on it!
[PFS042]Upgrading your end game gear - Not here yet, working on it!
[PFS050]Video's - Only 2.6 for now, will add 3.0 video's as the league continues!


[PFS010]What is this guide about?
Welcome and thanks for checking out my guide!
I designed this build with new players in mind. Even so, it's still very suitable for experienced players, and players playing Solo Self Found(SSF). The build is cheap, easy to play, easy to gear, yet still strong enough to bring you into the higher tiers of maps(end game). Interested? Read on.


[PFS020]Mechanics: What do we need to know about Firestorm
According to the wiki: "Flaming bolts rain down over the targeted area. They explode when landing, dealing damage to nearby enemies."

A few things are important here. You target a specific area on the ground, bolts will fall down on that spot for a set duration(or a specific number of bolts), those bolts will explode and deal damage in a small area. Add in the damage of firestorm, and you will have three important keywords for firestorm: Area of Effect, Duration, and Damage. But there is one more to it, the wiki doesn't directly refer to. Cast speed.

Damage. There are a few sources that directly increases the damage of our Firestorm. % Spell damage, as firestorm is a spell, % Fire or Elemental Damage, as firestorm deals fire damage, Adds X to X Fire/cold/lightning damage to spells as it explicitly says it adds damage to spells, and % Damage in general, which increases all sources of damage(and is also quite rare). There is also Fire penetration, which adds a lot of damage by bypassing enemy resistances. Even though it doesn't add visible tooltip damage, Fire pen is one of the best ways to scale your damage.
The follow do not increase the damage from firestorm: (Elemental) Attack damage, as attack damage does nothing to spells, adds X to X Fire damage(Common stat on rings and weapons), as those only increase weapon damage

Area of Effect. Less important then before, but still important to understand. There are two sources of Area's in our skill. First is the cast radius. Second, the individual bolt Explosion - also the part that deals damage. The proportions between the bolts and the area radius are always the same. Meaning, more Area of Effect don't increase the amounts of bolts that can fall in a area. This also means that, the less Area of Effect we have, the more Single target damage we have. Check out this image for the explanation.
Sadly Area of Effect has received a pretty big nerf in the 2.6 update. In short, getting more Area of Effect after a certain threshold barely increases the Area of Effect from that point on(Diminishing returns). We won't play around with different Area of Effect gems anymore, nor will we need more area of effect from our items or gems.

Duration. Firestorm rains fire for a certain duration. During that time, you can do whatever you want. Casting multiple firestorms will create multiple firestorms instead of increasing the duration. This means, our firestorm can stack. Having a longer duration will therefore deal more damage, especially to high health enemies and bosses. Duration will only increase the time firestorm is raining bolts. The time between the bolts is set, and can not be changed.

Faster Casting is not influencing individual firestorms. Faster Casting only speeds up the casting animation. As firestorm stacks, this faster casting allows you to stack more firestorms on top of each other - and it also reduces the time you are standing still in the casting animation. This last part might seem insignificant, but it is very important, especially if you are nearing the end game.
In 3.0, many bosses are added to the game, and many of those come with complicated mechanics. They all are avoidable if you are fast enough. Having longer cast times means you have less time to actually dodge an enemy attack. This is the reason why I value cast speed in this build, even if it doesn't directly add visible damage.

[PFS021]Mechanics: Minions, the why and how.
It might seem a little unorthodox, as most builds pick one thing and focus on it entirely. But it is what makes this build suitable for new players, and very easy to gear. We use minions as our meat shields. Due to our pathing, we don't need to invest too many points in them, which turns them into a low investment, but very strong defence. There are two minions we'll be focusing on. Raise Zombie, and Summon Skeleton. There are two Golems we'll be using as well, but they are in the build for different reasons. We'll get to them soon.

Raise Zombies. Our Raise Zombies will be our main summons. They are raised from any corpse, and stay with us until they die. However, they have no innate support, so early on, they will die, and you will have to resummon them over and over. Until we get to later levels, when we get some life regen for our minions in the tree, they might feel a little clunky to use. Once you do have them, you'll find them being very reliable.
It's important to understand how they target their enemies. Zombies usually run to the place you last used an action on. To be more precise, they run to the location where you mouse was pointing at, when you used an action. Simply moving your mouse away does not redirect them to a specific. And this good for us. Because most of the time, we will be casting our firestorm at a certain location. And we don't want the enemy to move from that spot, so having zombies engage them usually keeps them longer in our rain of fire!

Summon Skeleton. We also use Skeletons. Not just skeletons, but skeletons linked to a Spell totem. This means, we'll summon a totem that summons skeletons for it's duration. A very useful tool for hard fights, or for when you suddenly need more meat(bone)shields. While we won't use it for most normal enemies, it's a good strategy to always have one up for bosses. From the very first boss and on, you'll find this a useful little tool.

[PFS022]Mechanics: Ascendancy. Why the Elementist?
As mentioned before, there are also golems. But we can't talk about Golems until we talk about our choice of Ascendancy: the Elementist. For more information on the labyrinth, were you can get your ascendancy, check this out.

The Elementist grants us many sources of damage. We are going to use Liege of the Primordial, Pendulum of Destruction, Mastermind of Discord and finally Paragon of Calamity. Some might notice we aren't using Shaper of Desolation anymore. Don't worry, we won't be need it's chance to shock anymore :)

Liege of the Primordial. This does a few things for us. First of all, we can summon two golems. Golems each give us a little boost while boosted. On top of that, the effect of our golems buffs are also increased. On top of that, we even get a little damage boost on top of this all for the elements we use a golem of. Well, since we us a flame golem, we should be solid :)
This is the first major point we pick up.

Pendulum of Destruction. Less impressive then our previous point, but the buffs are nice, even if they only activate for 4 seconds, every 10 seconds. The main reason we pick up this point, is so we can travel to the points behind it. Namely:

Mastermind of Discord. This is giving us 25% extra Fire penetration, if we used a lightning skill in the past 10 seconds. The core word is "use" as triggering lightning spells with a Cast when Damage Taken do not count, nor will the activation part of Herald of Thunder. We need to use the spells ourselves. This is the reason why we use Orb of Storms. I'll get back to the skill itself in the next chapter, but for now, all you need to know: Orb of Storms is a lightning spell, with a very short cast time. This allows us to quickly cast OoS to gain Mastermind of Discord's extra fire pen.

Paragon of Calamity. And finally we get this point. While the reduced reflect and damage seems nice, it won't have a big of an impact endgame. With careful firestorms, this passive allows you to run elemental reflect maps, but I'd still advise never players to skip on them anyways.

[PFS023]Mechanics: Orb of Storms. deceptively versatile!
As mentioned before, using Orb of Storms gives us 25% extra fire penetration. There are more benefits to Orb of Storms. First, we need to understand how it works. Orb of storms is always cast right in front of you. While it seems it has a range around it, monsters just standing in the circle won't necessarily be attacked. Everything standing in the circle can be attacked by the ball. Attacks on enemies can be chained to enemies outside the circle.

Even though we need to recast it over and over, it can also be used to apply curses. It's not a very reliable way of cursing against most random mobs, but it's very effective for bosses and other high health enemies, which is why we use our Orb of Storms to apply our curses.

Orb of storms is also frequently used to gain Power charges. Simply by adding in a Power Charge on Crit to the setup. While it's not included in the build, if you run a slightly different setup, and have room for one support, this could be it :)

[PFS030]The core build: Passive tree, our path to firestorm
Welp. With all the basics out of the way, let's get to the builds. This is the core build, the build I recommend for new players. There will be an advanced build with more damage, and less defenses, but you can always swap between the two builds as it only requires a different gem setup.

Passive Tree This is our end game Build(around 85)(Click).
The tree hasn't changed much for us. Our tree is a little different however.
First off, we do not pick up dual curse(Whispers of Doom). This mostly due to Mind over Matter, and due to Orb of Storms only being a reliable curser for bosses.
Second, we are picking up Mind over Matter. Mind over Matter redirects a portions of our damage taken to our mana pool. With the new nodes behind Mind over Matter, we can easily hit 1000 mana with just basic gear, which turns MoM into something quite useful. Due to our high mana regen, we should easily sustain Mind over matter and our firestorm costs!
We still have Elemental Overload in our kit. This removes our extra critical hit damage, but instead increases our damage for a few seconds if we recently crit.

BanditsIn act 2, we need to either help one of the bandits, or kill them all. For this build, we have two options. Either we Help Alira, or we kill them all. If we help Alira, we get mana regeneration, A bit of Critical Chance and Elemental Resistances. I recommend any newcomer trying this build to help Alira. The resistances will make gearing so much easier, the mana regen we get works fantastic with Mind over Matter, and the extra Critical Chance we get has good synergies with Elemental Overload.
If you think you can manage your gears without the resistances, you could also go for the two passive points. Keep in mind, with the amount of new itemmods, it's harder to roll an item with good stats.

Leveling section. Please note that I'm using Poeplanner temporarily. It's not using the correct tree, but it shouldn't matter for us. Shouldn't. I will update the links when we get access to the 3.0 planner :)

10p
23p
32p
48p
65p
77p
90p - This should be the point when you're ready to map.
End game Build
Example 121p tree(lvl 98)

[PFS031]The core build: Gems, our little bauble collection of destruction
With all the new gems, we have so many more ways in scaling our damage. Please note that we don't need to get all the gems when they first get available. You should be fine with a 4 link for your firestorm, a 4 link for your zombies(starting from act 5 onwards), your skeleton totem + Clarity. Make sure you get everything setup before you head into maps however(~level 68).

FireStorm/Fire Penetration/Elemental Focus/Arcane Surge/Controlled Destruction/Efficacy
Firestorm(Act 1, lvl 12) - Our main damage
Fire Penetration(Act 3, lvl 31) - Doesn't increase the tool tip, still high damage increase
Elemental Focus(Act 2, lvl 18) - Big damage increase
Arcane Surge(Act 1, level 1) - Gives us a strong buff, See note*
Controlled Destruction(Act 2, lvl 1)Lowers Crit chance, still nice damage buff(Can be swapped for Efficacy)
Efficacy(Act 3, lvl 31)Buff to Duration and Damage(Can be swapped for Increased Duration, or Faster Casting)

*note: Arcane Surge gives us Extra damage, Extra Cast speed and []extra mana regeneration[/b]. While in terms of damage, there are better supports, but the buff to both cast speed and mana regeneration makes it really valuable. It is possible to link Arcane Surge to another skill, like Flame Dash. As long as we trigger the buff, all the spells will benefit! In this guide, we won't however. Mostly since it would require too much micro management. And in the end, it could also bring us in trouble(since it would force us to use our flame dash, even when we don't need it).

Raise Zombie/Minion Life/Minion Speed/Minion and Totem elemental Resistance
Raise Zombie(Act 1, lvl 1) - We love 'm.
Minion Life(Act 2, lvl 18) - Gives our meats more meat
Minion Speed(Act 2, lvl 18) - Gives our minions enough speed to intercept our enemies
Minion and Totem elemental Resistanc(Act 3, lvl 31) - Gives our minions more elemental resistances.
Don't forget to put these four in your helm!

Cast when Damage Taken/Immortal Call/Convocation/Increased Duration
Cast when Damage Taken(Act 4, lvl 38) - This will cast linked spells once we take enough damage. Quite useful!
Immortal Call(Act 6, lvl 34) - Makes us invulnerable to Physical damage for a (very) short duration. Especially strong when linked to CwDT
Convocation(Act 3, lvl 24) - Teleports all permanent minions near you. Since it triggers after taking damage, this is very useful. It will also heal your minions by a bit.
Increased Duration(Act 6, lvl 31) - Makes both your Immortal Call and Convocation last longer.
Make sure your gem levels are below your Cast When Damage Taken gem! You can level this setup to max level.

Flame Dash/Summon Flame Golem/Summon Lightning Golem/Faster Casting
Flame Dash(Act 1, lvl 10) - Our dodge ability. Press it to quickly dash. A must for the harder boss fights!
Summon Flame Golem(Act 4, lvl 34) - Our Prime Golem. We always want one of them summoned(Summoning two won't double the buff sadly)
Summon Lightning Golem(Act 4, lvl 34) - Our second golem. Can also be changed for the Chaos Golem if you want more physical damage reduction. I recommend newer players to stick with Lightning.
Faster Casting - Speeds up all casting, and, most importantly, our Flame dash.

Summon Skeleton/Spell Totem - Clarity
Summon Skeleton(Act 1, Level 10) - Our bone shields! Since they are recast over and over, we do not need to link them to minion life or resistance.
Spell totem(Act 1, lvl 8) - This totem will cast anything linked to it. Spells linked to this spell totem can not be cast normally.
Clarity(Act 1, lvl 10) - This will be our one and only aura. It gives high mana regen, and will fix our mana problems the moment we get our hands on!
Please note: The weapon or shield you've put this set in, can not be fully linked. Clarity needs to be unlinked, as it is a spell. If you link it to spell totem, we won't be able to use it as an aura!

Orb of Storms/Curse of Hit/Warlord's Mark
Orb of Storms(Act 1, lvl 4) - Our Extra fire penetration once we get our Third Ascendancy! No need to use it early on.
Curse on Hit(Act 4, lvl 38) - Spells or attacks supported by this gem, will apply curses on everything they hit.
Warlord's Mark(Act 6, lvl 24) - Our recommended Curse. Enfeeble is a great defensive choice, and Flammability for more offence.

[PFS040]Gearing your character, what she should wear
Items have changed a little bit from the 2.6 build. There have been many new item mods that are both great and bad. Great because it offers us more options. Bad because it makes it harder to get the exact mods we need on our gear. It's especially harder to get good elemental resistances on gear now.

Well, If you've picked up Alira, by the time you get to higher content, you should have a base resistance of 57% Fire, 42% Cold and 42% Lightning. This is a lot and will make obtaining items so much easier. It means we need an average of 35% Res on our gear for mapping, and around 50% res for end game mapping. This is perfectly doable Solo Self Found. Let's talk about each equipment piece.

I'll refer to two different stadia: Early game is mostly Pre maps(before lvl68). Late game will be during maps and after(lvl68+). In general, you always want Life and Resistances on your end game gear.

Helm. Early Game, Both Resistance and Life are important. If you can get your hands on a goldrim you should be fine until end game(even though it lacks life).
For Late game, it's important to get a +2 to minions stat on your helm. You want it on an Intelligence based helm. Ideally, you'll have +2 Minion levels, Life and Elemental Resistances on your helm.
Please note that the Baron helm, no matter how good it looks, isn't ideal for us. Mostly due to it's strength base, which makes getting 4 blue sockets on it quite hard.

Body Armour. Early Game, Both Resistances and Life are your friend. However, if you can get your hands on a Tabula Rasa, use it. While the Tabula Rasa doesn't offer any stats, it makes up for it, by having 6 linked slots. This will make both leveling and end game very easy.
For End game, A Tabula Rasa works, but it might leave you a little vulnerable. A 6 link will be quite expensive, but a 5 link should be quite affordable. For your body armor, value links over stats. Statwise, you want high Life, Resistances. Especially with the new life mods, aim for around the 100 health on, again, Intelligence(or Strength/Intelligence)base. Once you have leveled Catarina to level 6, you can craft +1 additional Zombies on your Body Armour. If your gear allows it, this is a nice pick up!

Gloves. Early Game Again, look for Life and Resistances. Nothing else really matters. My personal favorite leveling gloves are the Lochtonial Caress. It's nice for the build, but you should be perfectly fine without one!
End Game, not much changes. Aim for high Life with resistances. Either on a Intelligence base, or a Strength/Intelligence Base. Once you've got Catarina on level 2, you can craft additional Minion life on your gloves(if it has room).

Boots. Early Game, movement speed. That's the only important stat. Sure, it's nice if it has additional Life and Eesistances, but for leveling, [v]movement speed[/v] is key.
End Game, The need for movement speed stays. Try to get a high roll, 20%+ movement speed. Besides that, life and resistances are other stats you want to find on your boots.

Main Weapon. For early game, almost any weapon will do. Our damage does not revolve around our weapon, so you'll be fine with anything you find. Spell Damage and Fire Damage are the stats you want to be looking for. They are mostly found on Wand Bases, but some Scepters and Daggers have nice Spell damage mods as well. There are many leveling weapons. Instead of listing them here, look for them in the Leveling Unique Section!
For end game, besides Spell damage and Fire damage, increased Critical Strikes(not multiplier!)are all good options to have on your weapon. Once your Catarina is level 5, you can craft Fire damage leeched as Life on your weapons. Not necessary, but certainly a nice stat to pick up.

Off Hand. Early Game, I recommend picking up a second wand for the early game. This will increase your damage by a bit. If you are struggling to stay alive, you can pick up a shield as well.
End game: You can pick up a second weapon, or a shield. I recommend a shield for newer players, as it can add good balance between damage and offence. For shields, look for Life, Spell damage and Resistances, in that order or importance. Try to get an intelligence base.

Rings. Early Game, again, as always, Life and Resistances are important. There's also a damage mod but please note: "Adds # to # fire Damage to Attacks" Does not work for Firestorm, while "#% increased Fire Damage" does work! It's also possible to use a Essence of Fear on a ring, to give your minions extra movement speed. This is especially nice for leveling.
End Game Especially []b]high resistances[/b] is important on rings. We won't need too many resistances, but getting many resistances on your rings means you can cut on other pieces(and get other stats instead). Life is also very important.

Amulet. Early Game I recommend getting an amulet with mostly Attributes. Life and Resistances are also important, but attributes are easiest to obtain from your amulet. And there is a possibility you will be lacking either Dexterity or Strength. If so, this is the place where you want to get those stats(That, or you can pick up a +30 Node in the tree of course!)

Belt. Early Game, you guessed it.. look for life and resistances. If you are lacking strength, consider picking up a heavy belt. Otherwise, I'd always recommend using a leather belt for the additional health.
Late Game, not much changes. Life and Resistances are the most desirable stats. Again, aim for a leather belt as base, as those can have over 130 flat life total.

[PFS041]Recommended leveling uniques
This will be a list with uniques we can use during leveling(and also during early mapping). Will be, I really need to take a break now :D

[PFS042]Upgrading your end game gear
Also something to look forward to! Since many mods have changed, I feel uncomfortable leaving up the current links etc. I will most likely update this during the first few days of the Harbinger league so I know what we really should be aiming for in our end game gear!

[PFS050]Video's
I'll try uploading new video's soon. But here are the 2.0 video's for those that still want to see them?

I tried some kind of this build earlier, w/o MultiStrike, and have to say it's really awesome. But playing HC I grabbed more hp/hp regen nodes to cover up Blood Rage, something like this - http://tinyurl.com/c59t996

Thing is, without multistrike, you will be struggling a lot on merciless - you won't kill anything, end up without stacks all the time, which would be really devastating if you ned up in a group with half dead mobs.

Also, Unweavering stance and Resolute technique are imo a must as well. Flicker strike can miss, or get blocked. Luckily not many enemys block, but many enemys will have some decent evasion: if you miss one flicker strike, you will lose a stack of your frenzy charge. Maybe not a problem with multistrike, but without multistrike, this is killing, you won't have enough stacks left to kill magic, or rares mobs. And without unweavering stance, you can get interupted a lot, might not matter on lower difficulties, but on merciless, everytime I jump around a mob, I get hit a few times(That's why I carry a granite flask on me).

Well, ofcourse these are just based on my personal experience, maybe it works out fine for you that way ^^

i'm new here, got a ranger and witch finishing actI only

could i go far away with a flcker duelist? only wanted to use him (or rather the skill) bec it looks awesome xDD
i know there's some concerns with the skill tho....what about mana consuption, is that a issue as well?

I have no idea what just happened on that video, you spammed flicker ? That seemed weirdly easy