Guide: Fireball CI Curser - Proliferated Burning Critical Fire Damage | In-depth | SC |

In the beginning... they said it could not be done. They said you should invest most of your energy into defense to even stand a chance against the forces of Wraeclast... One witch defied them all! Khaop, the Queen of Witchcraft herself, and the protector of the Ancient Flame stood tall. As terrifying as she was powerful, she alone studied the primordial scrolls before they were lost to a mysterious fire, and till this day there are still dark whispers of her powers. They say she could weave the thoughts of those who would oppose her, turning their minds upon themselves and even call upon their service in death. These are her teachings.

This build is originally made for standard league.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: Guide is not fully updated for release version of path of exile, and now probably will not be.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/60422/page/43/#p5132867.

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--------------------------------------------- THE BASICS ---------------------------------------------
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What the build is all about

- Burn damage through heavy single critical Fireballs with Elemental Proliferation
- Very high damage
- Energy Shield
- Curses


Style of Play

This is a very simple caster. Curse, Fireball, loot, rinse, repeat. A mobile caster that excels at both single target and aoe damage, as well as slowing enemies to a crawl.

You will generally want to stay at range, landing critical fireballs in the middle of monster packs, which will most often kill the whole thing.

In order to survive you rely mainly on Temporal Chains and Arctic Armour, a combination that matches exceedingly well with Energy shield. You will constantly be moving and so you will create breaks for your Energy Shield to regenerate naturally. Cast when Damage Taken will be used to summon a decoy totem and minions to act as a temporary meatshield should you take damage.

The Fireball CI Tri-Curse is easy to learn, and can kill any content with very basic gear(except No Regeneration and Blood Magic maps), but it can be hard to master when undergeared. With insane gear and high level, this build absolutely abolishes everything.


Active powers

- Fireball
- Temporal Chains, Critical Weakness, Elemental Weakness
- Lightning Warp


Passive Powers

- Clarity, Discipline, Purity of Fire
- Arctic Armour
- Cast when Damage Taken (Decoy Totem/Summon Skeletons/Raise Zombie)
- Bloodrage








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--------------------------------------- GETTING STARTED (SC) --------------------------------------
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Required Gear

There are no requirements to getting started with this character, and if you are all new you can just head out there.

There are, however, 3 essential items you will need at endgame, and i suggest anyone to acquire them beforehand if possible, as they can be used at low levels.


In addition there is one non-required item that will drastically increase your leveling speed and is even strong enough to be used in maps.


As you are leveling, you should expect the greatest difficulty with surviving around the end of cruel act 2 and during cruel act 3. As soon as you get into merciless your goal is to farm one of the low risk zones like fellshrine until you get a fair chest and head for high pure energy shield.

If you do not have any gear with fair ES, it is going to be hard to survive with CI past cruel act 2.


Skill Points(Outdated)

For early levels i would suggest you go over to templar area to complete your aoe, get some basic mana regeneration and good burn damage. Something like this:

After that i would get mana and curses:

Then i would work on my energy shield, inner force, and critical strike chance:


Above builds are just very rough guidelines, and the build has changed since i leveled. Refer to the full build when in doubt and decide for yourself what you need. You can adjust the number of attribute points according to your gear as well. I suggest 1500+ Energy shield before picking Chaos Inoculation.

As of writing, I am currently level 86 with this build:




Bandits

Kill Alira on Normal difficulty for +40 Mana.

Note: This entire guide is focused around killing all bandits on Merciless and Cruel, including the passive build, but alternatively you could create a leveling version of the build that uses Power Charge on Critical instead of Faster Casting on fireballs. It would require you to kill Alira in Western Forest on Merciless difficulty to gain an extra power charge, and will cost you 20 Orbs of Regret to change back later.

Choose your path:



Gems and Leveling

Fireball: Concentrated Effect > Elemental Proliferation > Fire Penetration/Faster Casting > Increased Critical Damage

You can use Chance to Ignite with good effect if you have mana or critical strike chance issues at low levels. You can also use flammability instead of elemental weakness when you have low critical strike chance. Elemental weakness is only better than flammability with quality bonus(it further reduces resistances with quality bonus), or in group settings where others do damage with different elements.

Auras should be linked with Reduced Mana. Link Faster Casting with curses to reduce the killing speed of packs. Lightning Warp teleports much faster when linked with Reduced Duration and it also benefits from faster casting.

Arctic Armour should be kept low level and linked with Increased Duration, I recommend level 2 unless you are confident you can handle higher mana costs. You pick it mainly for the ice on the ground and the quality bonus, the damage reduction is just a high-end bonus.

Cast when Damage Taken should not be the highest level. I suggest to keep it the minimum level required for it to support the highest level of Decoy Totem that your Strength allows you to equip. Below is my CwDT setup for comparison, i have 120 Strength.


Note: Increased Item Quantity/Rarity gems linked to your spells will not affect monsters if they die due to burn damage over time. Your IIQ/IIR from gear still applies to all kills.


Group play

An ideal group benefits from your curses by both being able to critically strike and by dealing elemental damage. A group that shocks enemies will also vastly increase your damage.

Have your mind on the next pack while your burn does its job, curse them up fast and land good fireballs quickly so you can do burn damage. By making it your priority to curse targets fast, the party will clear much faster since everyone benefits from your curses.

Be aware that Burn does not stack, so there is ideally only room for one good burner in each party.


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http://www.sott.net/article/258468-Fireball-explodes-over-Russian-city-Widespread-panic-and-structural-damage-Thousand-people-injured

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----------------------------------------------- GEARING -----------------------------------------------
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Preparing for maps

The beautiful thing about this build is how easily you can outplay the content by simple use of your Temporal Chains and burn damage. It is surprisingly safe to play in most cases. That being said, it is a Chaos Inoculation build, which means you need some basic gear to avoid being easily killed by Flicker Strike and Puncture monsters.

To do this you first need the basic jewelry mentioned earlier:


Using those items, you can farm safely in fellshrine or a similar area, and work your way towards the next two items that will make early maps easy for you.

a chest with roughly 500+ Energy Shield
a head with roughly 300+ energy shield

You need to know that this build is theorycrafted in manacosts/regeneration to have just enough to use an all-damage 6L with faster casting and 3 auras, therefore it is essencial that you get some +mana on gear and as much mana regeneration as you can get your hands on. Mana regen you can only find on your weapon and shield from your free gear slots.

Note: You can kill monsters from afar with fireball, even offscreen, and if you are undergeared you can take advantage of that until you grow stronger.


Resistances

Chaos Inoculation provides complete immunity to chaos damage, therefore we only need to worry about the remaining elemental resistances.

To do basic maps with this build you need around 20-50 all resistance. It is recommended to always have your fire resistance capped in order to protect you from reflect. Purity of fire will take you a long way towards that goal.

Resistance should be found primarily on your gloves, boots and belt. The chest and head pieces are prioritized for Energy Shield, but any additional resistances found there are more than welcome.


Attributes and Gem Requirements

Reduced mana: 109 Str
Fire Penetration: 109 Str
Increased Duration: 109 Str

Bloodrage, up to 151 Dex

In the build there are two +30 Dex and two +30 Str points untaken. This is because you can later cover that with gear. Until you get that gear, any attribute requirements can be easily covered with those points, assuming you are using an Eye of Chayula which gives additional all attributes.

While Blood Rage may require up to 151 Dex, it is not required to have it at level 20. The only benefit you gain from leveling it up is increased duration, so just keep it as high as your dex allows.

Some uniques that may help you to gain additional attributes while gearing up are these:



An example of items that could be used later on to cover your lack of attributes is shown below:




Gem Quality Bonuses

bla blaa


The Searing Touch vs. Wand & Spirit Shield

If you are still using "The searing Touch, Long Staff" as your weapon, it will be a large upgrade to get a wand and a spirit shield. It will give you more damage, more energy shield, a chance to block and greatly increased mana regeneration which is required for a 5/6 linked fireball with faster casting. I used the staff for the first around 50 maps or so without issues.

It is imporant to get Increased Mana Regeneration on both the shield and wand. On the wand you should go for very high spell damage and ideally some critical strike chance, although that may be expensive. On the shield go for some spell damage and high critical strike chance. The reason you want crit is so that you will more reliably cause critical proliferation burns, which will help your clearing speed greatly.

Here is an example of upgrades as well as the staff to compare:



Flasks

Being that you use Chaos Inoculation, you have no use for healing potions, and mana potions are not needed with decent gear. Therefore we can pick some more interesting flasks for situational use and to cover whatever weaknesses we experience.

I advice you dont stray too far from 1-2 granites and 2-3 Quicksilvers. For example these could be used:

Ruby flask are used to protect against elemental reflect monsters and in the above case also to dispel bleeding damage such as puncture. Granites are used for dangerous situations such as flicker strike monsters. It is not advised to go without a dispel bleeding flask.

For Diamond Flasks i have made this little table showing their effectiveness.






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---------------------------- DEALING WITH YOUR GREATEST ENEMIES ----------------------------
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Reflect Elemental Damage

Use a Ruby flask for extra maximum resistance. I always wear one at all times for this reason. When your damage is improved with gear and levels, elemental reflect will become very hazardous, due to you building critical damage to increase the size of your burns. Try to avoid elemental reflect maps. Some ways to reduce your self-kill potential are shown below, depending on group composition. Reflect is the only threat to this build when it is complete.

Reflect Maps:

- Use Enfeeble instead of Critical Weakness
- Use Chance to Ignite instead of Increased Critical Damage
- Use Flammability instead of Elemental Weakness

Rare Monsters:

- Do not Cast Critical Weakness
- Use a Ruby Flask

Or just do like I and use Critical Weakness and full power on everything while being careful when letting loose the cannon!


Dealing with 50% Regeneration Maps

Replace Faster Casting with Increased Critical Damage > Power Charge on Critical/Increased Critical Strikes. You can also use a Mana Flask.


Flicker Strike

The basic way to overcome flicker strike monsters is to get better energy shield and higher damage, killing them before they become a threat.

Use granites at all times when there is risk with flickers involved. Corners can be used to break their line of sight giving you time to regenerate, avoid fleeing in a straight line of sight or it will simply chase and kill you. Most Flicker Strike monsters will not flick again if you stand still, pop a granite and nuke them down. In group play be aware that if you stay too close to party members they will flick between you.

Another possibility is to simply out-range flickers, they need to get rather close before they can flick, maybe they flick at 2/3 of a screens distance.


Puncture

Puncture can be lethal when you have low Energy Shield, but will be much less threatening as you get more. Puncture damage is based on the size of the initial hit, so granites will reduce the damage of puncture by reducing the original hit size.

Always keep one flask to remove bleeding.


Shock Stacks

Due to you having low health, most lightning critical strikes shock you for 5-6 seconds. You should not take risky chances when you are shocked. You can use a flask to dispel shocks if you find it to be a big issue.

Kill lightning monsters first if possible.


Long range chain lightning mages

These can be annoying like a swarm of angry bees, particularly when your Energy Shield is low, when they are grouped/champs or when you are near a party member so that it chains.

Kill them first when possible. Usually i pop a quicksilver and run over to kill them first and fast. Sometimes they are too many and i have to nuke them offscreen then quicksilver in to finish survivors, but now that i have decent energy shield i rarely have issues with them.

One thing you should never do is ignore them, they are usually your main priority, and can shock you too.

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------------------- GRIMOIRE OF BURNING WHISPERS - ADVANCED SECTION -------------------
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Though nights can be both dark and long, it is quickly forgotten under the rising sun.

This section is under construction/in chaos... and now im slacking a bit taking a break to recharge my inspiration :)



Understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses



95% decync proof - made to counter desync

duality of burn damage, double dipping

who to strike first - land the perfect fireball (expiration speed, size of burn)



Use 0% quality fireball in the lategame. You do not want it to proc non-crit ignites, because then some monster types will flee without dying. When it is a crit ignite the damage is so intense that most monsters die almost immediately, and therefore do not have a chance to escape. Not to mention that the real damage comes from crit ignites so you gain very little benefit from non-crit ignites.


Arctic Armour on a Fire Witch, you must be kidding me?

The greatest Invokers learned to constantly absorb energy from their surroundings, which they stored to later unleash as flaming fireballs, igniting material and air. This process leaves behind a trail of frost where energy has been drained, and it is the source of their exceptional energy bursts, as well as the protection against their own fire power.

Unlocking the true power of fire:

Stacking Single target damage is stacking Aoe damage.

Ignite does 1/3 the damage of the initial hit per second, for 4 seconds.

That doesn't appear to be much at first glance, especially since everyone seem to use faster attacks/casts with smaller hits, such as Incinerate, and Ignites on the same target will not stack but rather extend duration with the most powerful one being active. No wonder it appears weak. However, a true master of fire will play on its strength by using the heavy hitting fire spells. Fireball is the most reliable and usable of those. Temporal chains doubles the duration of ignite without affecting it's damage per second.

Concentrated Effect affects only direct fireballs and it does not show on the tooltip

Now i'm gonna show you how much more damage a critical fireball will do compared to a regular one. Based off the passives from this build, temporal chains, 20% lvl 20 increased critical damage gem, 20% quality lvl 20 critical weakness, 20% quality elemental proliferation and the searing touch staff.

calculations are outdated.

Total burning damage = 100% + 80% + 70% = 250%

Total Critical multiplier = 150% + 90% + 70% + 149% = 459%

The instant damage of the fireball crit = 459% * 199% = 913%

The burning damage of the Fireball Crit = 459% * 199% * 4/3 * 2 * 1.15 * 250% = 7003%

Instant damage plus burning damage = 7916%

Sadly, we eventually have to replace the burning touch, and even though we gain greater overall damage increases, we cannot boast the mighty 79 times multiplier on a crit and will be a reduced to about 59.

The calculations also assume a fire resistance of 0, which must be taken into account when dealing with real situations.


Fire penetration and Flameability:

The keen scholar may already have noticed that the damage of ignite is based on the size of the "initial hit". Reduced fire resistance of a target will result in higher burn damage due to a greater initial hit.

Flammability or Elemental weakness will increase the damage of ignite through the size of the initial hit, and by extra damage taken from the already once increased burn damage.

Fire Penetration applies only to the hit, and not to the following ignite, and so scales normally. Fire Penetration may appear weak in this regard, but it has the added bonus of applying even to curse immune monsters, or monsters whose fire resistance is far beyond 75%, where it will just assume they have 75% max res before reducing it.

It should be noted that resistance above 0 will reduce your burn damage twice, since it first reduces the size of the initial hit, and then how much damage you will take from the burn. In the same way, negative resistances will increase your burn damage twice. Curse immune mobs with high inate fire resistance can be annoying due to that fact, but in these first 150 maps or so that i have cleared, only 1 single monster provided any challenge, and even that was easy. I think it was a fast molten golem curse immune with regeneration.


Crit stability

When you approach endgame, and high levels of gear, you may want to start considering your crit stability. This build has a mediocre crit rate while leveling, especially if the monster is curse immune, and getting 100% increased spell crit chance on a weapon/shield, or picking up 60% by 2 passive points will become more attractive as you approach the final stretch of your power growth. You can potentially reach about 45% critical strike chance.

Crit stability is also, in great part, why faster casting is better and more important for your fireball than increased critical strike damage.

When you have a 5L chest and the mana regen to support it, so that you can use faster casting with your fireball, it is worth changing the 3 passive points near the witch starting point from 9% casting speed to 55% critical strike chance for spells.

Improving crit stability in conjunction with using faster casting is the best way to gain efficiency with this build.


Blackspeech, the power of Curses

You cast Temporal Chains first to control followed by your other curses. For easy content you may skip Temporal Chains or even elemental weakness.

Bosses reduced power of curses

A level 20, 20% quality Critical weakness will cause your critical hits to cause 99% more damage, which effectively doubles the power of your crits. Very potent.

As explained above in the fire section, Elemental weakness and Flammability will superscale with burning damage. A very high damage increase.

Critical weakness and flammability/Elemental Weakness may steal the attention, but Temporal Chains makes this build possible in the first place.

Temporal Chains is the true hidden power of the build. Without Temporal Chains there is no build. It gives you all the defensive power you need by crippling enemies, slowing their attacks, casts and movement speed to a crawl. You can basically dance around them in circles, gathering them up for one mega nuke if you wanted to. Temporal Chains has the additional benefit of causing buffs and debuffs to expire 50% slower, which means your Ignite will last 8 seconds instead of 4. Not crucial, but it is very powerful as an added bonus from a defensive curse.

Temporal Chains Awakens the Dead inside, Zombiefying One.


Rounding up the build


How energy shield and Chaos Inoculation affects and interact with the build:


You may wonder if you really need both cannot be stunned cannot be frozen

By going for Energy and chaos Inoculation instead of life, we will free up extra points to use offensively. These extra points come at a price.

The duration of Freeze, stun and chill is directly proportional to your health, and since we are using energy shield we will be very explosed to status ailments. Even though CI sets your max health to 1, it will still assume that you did not have CI for these calculations, but since we do not stack hp we are still very susceptible. That is why we use Eye of Chayula, and Dream Fragments to prevent being frozen and stunned. That still leaves us weakened to chill and shock which is one of our few weaknesses.

On the other hand, by using Chaos Inoculation, we are completely immune to Chaos damage which is very very powerful. Energy shield also works well with our kiting temporal chains / ignite playstyle, it gives us time to regen the shield, keeping us alive.

Energy shield mechanics work very well with the playstyle of this build. We just need to land a crit or two and we can reposition ourselves, curse/kite, do whatever, giving us small breaks to regen when done well.

120 Builds will be near on impossible to get but you've peaked my interest. What level are you currently on with this build and path are you following initially. I think I might give It a go as I have most of the uniques sitting in my bank anyway.

What is your suggest for 4-L fireball?
Thanks

"

Blaydes wrote:

120 Builds will be near on impossible to get but you've peaked my interest. What level are you currently on with this build and path are you following initially. I think I might give It a go as I have most of the uniques sitting in my bank anyway.

I am currrently 81 using



I wrote in the guide which path i went initially if you want the details :) Basically i build damage, curses then energy shield as content toughened up.

Realistically i'm aiming for around 91 on the build, but i always create my builds for 120 points, keeping in mind that the last 10 should not be essential in any way.

Even at 81, and without quality on most of my gems, i'm still butchering the content :D

"

sunglin wrote:

What is your suggest for 4-L fireball?
Thanks

I would go for Fireball, Elemental Proliferation, Concentrated Effect and Fire penetration, best 4 by far i think.

You choose fast casting 3% (total 9%) at begging.
Why not choose cri chance (total 55%).

Did you get all the Witch nodes first then head to CI then over to Templar ?

"

taiwandaisy wrote:

You choose fast casting 3% (total 9%) at begging.
Why not choose cri chance (total 55%).

Both paths are strong choices, it depends how you prefer playing.

Those 3 crit talents will give me roughly 9-15% more crits. The casting speed will give me 5.5-8% more crits, and normal hits.

Judging from that alone, the crit points are best but there are other game-play bonuses to having faster cast speed, such as casting speed of curses and mobility granted by faster casted fireballs is something i value greatly.

It's hard for me to estimate how much this mobility is worth, but i've come to find that with temporal chains this build is suddenly possible without issues, whereas without it was very hard to survive. I also know that chill is some of the most dangerous i can come across, partly due to slowed movement but also in great part due to slowed casts.

Currently my chest is 5 linked, but when i 6link it and get the faster casting gem, then i may change those 9% faster cast speed into crit, but only when i have my 6 link will i know how my mana pool deals with it, its gonna be around 258 mana/s to chaincast with the 9%, before quality on concentrated effect, where my regen will be 180-200 mana/sec.

EDIT: Yea, i will change them to crit when i get a 6L, it will help crit stability there is no question. Thanks for pointing it out.

"

Blaydes wrote:

Did you get all the Witch nodes first then head to CI then over to Templar ?

I went something like this:



Then i went for curses, and then energy shield

Needs video.