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Hi,

I have the best possible Elemental Equilibrium build for you guys. I put a lot of thought into this and searched the entire forum to find out about all the different mechanics that it combines.

Here's a summary of the build.

Name: Burnhard
Class: Templar
Level: 51
Progress: Merciless, Prison
Weapon: A fast Bow
Damage Type: Mostly fire, but also lightning and cold with weapons
Primary Skill Combination: Burning Arrow + Chance to Ignite + Elemental Proliferation + Weapon Elemental Damage
Active Auras: Anger, Wrath, Clarity (might get replaced when I find Mana Leech)
Other Skills (in order of importance):
1. Elemental Weakness
2. low level Spark + Totem + Add Cold Damage + Faster Projectiles (Pierce would be better, but I don't have it)
3. Fire Trap + Add Cold Damage
4. Molten Shell + Add Lightning Damage (optional)
5. Detonate Dead + Add Lightning Damage (optional)
Passive Skill Tree:
Click here for Burnhard Level 50
Important stats form passives:
+98% increased (weapon) elemental damage
+80% increased burn damage
+30% increased effect of Buffs
and of course Elemental Equilibrium
(rest: life, resistance, fire damage, accuracy and dex)

Playstyle:
Scout ahead with the cheap Spark-Cold-Totem. Once the horde runs towards it, trow a Fire Trap or two right next to it. Then cast Elemental Weakness and unleash Burning Arrows. If you like more adrenaline, you can also gather a group of monsters first and curse them while running, then place the totem behind you and the fire trap right underneath you and fire at the closest monsters. For this you have to be a bit quick with casing and taking potions.

Explanations:
The idea behind this build is to lower the monsters' fire resistance (and others) as much as possible and then ignite them with Elemental Proliferation for enormous AoE burning dammage.
To ignite monsters, I use Burning Arrow, Chance to Ignite and Elemental Weakness, giving well beond 50% ignite chance. So I'm not dependent on crits as other burn builds that I've seen.
The trick about Elemental Equilibrium is to firstly hit a monster with a cold+lightning spell, lowering their fire resistance by 50%. By adding cold and lighning damge to my bow-attacks, this effect is not removed by the Burning Arrow and will continue for at least 5 seconds. Because I do not want to stop attacking every 5s, I use a Spark-Cold-Totem to activate Elemental Equilibrium. Together with my main support curse Elemetal Weakness, even a fire restistant monster has negative fire resistances (up to -100% fire res).
Negative resistances especially benefit the Burning-Ailment because the initial fire damage is increased and the burn damage over time is again increases, thus the total burn damage is effectively multiplied by RES^2.
By taking every "burn" passive, I also maximized the degeneration damage form the Fire Trap which conveniently stacks with the burn ailment. So the damage over time can easily go through the roof.

Future Develoment:
The very offensive core-build is complete. Now I will focus on getting more life (I have 1350 HP and 250 ES atm.) and more dexterity to use better bows. If I can incorporate a Mana Leech gem into my Burning Arrow, I might be able to support the Hatred Aura as well, or raise the level of my Spark gem to get even more damage with the shock ailment.

In conclusion, here are some reasons, why my build is perfectly suited as a build of the week:
- It's a complex and creative build (I heard you like that)
- It's a very nifty build (with very many synergies)
- The build is completely different from all the previously presented builds
- It shows that even a Bow Templar build is viable in PoE
- It shows that elemental damage builds are still viable after the patch
- Burnhard is actually wearing pants and can go out in public
- This is the best Elemental Equilibrium build (yeah, I said it! Prove me wrong!)

Please place your questions, suggestions and critique in my thread here.

Edit: See, pants!

^ I like that one. Pick that one until I finish my Righteous Fire Templar!

Hi everyone this is my very first post here. Have to say im very impressed with the game so far and can only see good things for it in the future.

Ok now down to the character build:

Character name is Jongar, still working on him. He is mainly a evasion build but im looking for equipment that give decent energy shield and evasion too. He is only level 31 and working my way towards arrow dodging and crystal skin on the passive skill tree. With the possibility of getting acrobatics and phase acrobatics.

first of all the main goal is to squeeze as much fun out of the game as possible and so far its working. The main skill set is traps, most noticeably the fire trap with added cold damage to keep them in the flames, with bear trap to thin the herd a little bit. Temporal chains also help with keeping the buggers in flame and allowing me to quickly dart back and forth while everyone is slowed.

I also newly accquired conversion trap which is great and will hopefully be able to find support gems to increase the duration and radius of it. To top it off freezing pulse gives me good damage and slow on enemies and with grace to add to my evasion.

I truly want this guy to have a good guerilla warfare style of gameplay and as I progress will hopefully be able to find the right path and items. Thank you for your time.

I'd like to see some interesting party builds too.

As soon as I learned of charges and auras being stackable in this game I've known what I wanted to play, though it took a bit of thought to do it. I love playing support builds, even if they're normally not exactly intensively skill-based or supported in most action RPG's. This game is a welcome exception.

Currently I'm progressing through default with a witch named Altruism. The idea behind the build isn't personal power so much as seeing just how unbelievably powerful a party can be made by a single character.

As far as the passive trees go the build focuses entirely on reaching all of the added charge duration passives first and foremost so as to make it possible to maintain all three charge types at once; this just about exhausts the passive skill progression for a good many levels. The keystone conduit is absolutely essential to this build, as are the increased aura radius passive nodes to give parties the full effect of skill investment.

For active skills I've worked to attaining a wand using power siphon (for power charges on kill), frenzy (for frenzy charges on hit) and endurance cry (for endurance charges on use). These exhaust the active skills simply because it's such a (rewarding) challenge to keep the maximum number of charges of each type up at once.

Passive skills eventually include an aura gem for every QWERT slot such as anger, haste (some point in the future!) and wrath, stacking even more damage output and survivability for the party.

With all of this in mind what surprised me the most is the emergent nature of the challenge in playing the build; it's immensely mana and attribute hungry with having to maintain enough strength and dexterity to level the right skill gems, and reserve energy for every aura alongside keeping a pool large enough to cast the three main active skills.

Gear is massively demanding of +mana, +intelligence, strength and dexterity, and to a lesser extent accuracy, damage, attack speed and survivability. The attack/damage/accuracy is needed so the witches wand attacks can actually connect reliably with monsters in the limited time constraints that charges stay up. The survivability is especially important because endurance cry will have swarms of mobs rushing to murder you. Thankfully having high numbers in all three attributes means any armor item is fair game to equip, making the best mods easier to come by.

Even deeper still, the endurance cry not only helps the party but gives them a tactical incentive to protect you. The power siphon's power charge given when you strike near or at monster death also means you must remain aware of which monsters your allies are focusing on at the time to maximize power charges.

The only downside to how surprisingly challenging and deep this build is (It's a pure support! You're supposed to stand back and spam the heal button, right?), is that I've not yet progressed into much higher difficulty levels with it. The increasing mana reserve demands of skill gems, accuracy and damage demands for the wand and survivability requirements implied by endurance cry means there's a tough but hopefully rewarding road ahead!

"

Semptimilius wrote:

I'd like to see some interesting party builds too.

Dual conduit discharge build would totally deserve build of the week.

"

OverUsedChewToy wrote:

*snip*

You can bind all auras to same slot and just swap every recast. Also,with party play you should consider getting some curses too (maybe even double curse)

"

Targuil wrote:

"

OverUsedChewToy wrote:

*snip*

You can bind all auras to same slot and just swap every recast.

Or, you can put all your aura skillgems in your secondary weaponset, if you're not using it.

"

Githian wrote:

"

Targuil wrote:

"

OverUsedChewToy wrote:

*snip*

You can bind all auras to same slot and just swap every recast.

Or, you can put all your aura skillgems in your secondary weaponset, if you're not using it.

I meant skill slot, like T and rotate it and eventually use that slot for some active skill. But what you mean is actually quite good idea. I might use it if i run low on sockets.

"

Targuil wrote:

"

Githian wrote:

Or, you can put all your aura skillgems in your secondary weaponset, if you're not using it.

I meant skill slot, like T and rotate it and eventually use that slot for some active skill. But what you mean is actually quite good idea. I might use it if i run low on sockets.

Yeah I know what you meant :) but swapping weapons also swaps the skill slots. So you can keep all your auras in your "secondary" skill slots. Pressing X is much quicker than changing your skill slot for each aura you have to activate.

I am not sure if my Build is Unique but it has some nice Special Features.

Char Name: Takahiro
Class: Triple Aura Flame Caster Necromancer
Level: 60(need Map to try End Game)
Weakness: I don´t have any Armour also its better to have my Minions protect me from it! Casting Zombies have a little Delay cause it cost 135 Mana and have only 150 Mana left (cause of Auras) but its ok most of the Time (one to two seconds and i cast another Zombie).
I could Die easily if i am not near my Minions (mostly cause of Fast Physical Damage Mobs).
Strength: I have my Resistance at Max (75%), my Mana Regen is very nice (I ONLY Need a Mana Pot while Recasting my Auras) and i have much ES (something like 1600+ whit buffs).
Specialty:
I got 3 Auras Anger, Discipline and Clarity to Support my Minions and my Team whit Fire Damage, ES and Mana Regen, can summon up to 8 Zombies and 17 Skeletons (More i dont need^^) i have a Ice Spear Totem to Support us from the Back and i use the Spells Fire Ball(Item Rarity and Quantity) and Freezing Pulse (Faster Casting-Cold to Fire) to weaken or Finish off my Foes, but my Main Damage are my Zombies(Minion Life, Minion Damage and added Lightning Damage) and my Skeletons(Added Lightning Damage).
Playing Style:
After activating my Auras i kill or weaken some Foes whit Fire Ball or Freezing Pulse and throw some Skeletons to Protect me from Danger, then i Call some Zombies and my Army moves Forward.
If a Big Group of Foes appear whit a Strong Yellow or Rare Mob i Summon my Ice Spear Totem to hold them up, spam some Skelli´s and Call some Zombies while Casting my Spells on them, i am always near my Minions this Build is Easy but Funny and entertaining^^

I played MANY different Games in the Past where i could be a Necromancer/Summoner but this Game is the Best right now, cause i can easily Beat any Mob or Boss whit my Proud Army of Death^^

It would be very nice my Build gets Tested in the Weekly Builds, cause i like this Build so much i think i will go the Same way in the OB!

/Edit Made a Short Video about my Build click!