[1.2] Whaitiri's HC-viable CI Aegis Incinerator

Enki, I need advice, as usual...

I'm almost to the point where I could respec into RF and run low-life/RF.

However it occurs to me that it will be substantially less tanky than my current pain attunement set-up because I'll lose the spell block of rathpith AND IR.

So I have two choices:

1 Low-life/RF with rise of phoenix. The best defense is a good offense. This is a big sacrifice in durability but the substantial damage boost should compensate.

2 continue to work towards the aegis aurora, and go with pain attunement/aegis, because as you have pointed out this makes the build substantially more tanky.

Lately I've been thinking that I should maybe just stick with pain attunement and continue working towards an aegis. The most important reason being that it will save me 50 regrets ! The next most important reason being that I already have a phoenix in standard, but i do not have an aegis.

I seem to remember you saying that you ran low-life/RF incinerate for a while so I am wondering what you advise.

Thanks!

BTW. i recently hit level 20 on most of my gems. my first level 20 gems ever ! all thanks to your excellent build. i just can't bring myself to make them 20% and start leveling again, lol. no - i didn't make any "backups".

Depends. If you plan to map beyond Lv90, solo or in a party, go for the tankier Aegis version. If you want to farm Atziri or burst through maps in a team, go for RF.

I'd say go for Aegis and check if you're satisfied with the killspeed. If you'd like to kill even faster and don't mind being a bit squishy in really hard maps, you can always sell the Aegis and respec over to RF.

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Enki91 wrote:

I'd say go for Aegis and check if you're satisfied with the killspeed. If you'd like to kill even faster and don't mind being a bit squishy in really hard maps, you can always sell the Aegis and respec over to RF.

That sounds like a good plan. I'm going to go for the Aegis. Almost there...

yay!



wow Enki. I sure wish i had obtained that shield sooner. What a difference. Even though I lost almost 500 ES instead of using Rathpith, I'm much tougher.

and fortune continues to smile on me, I sold my alpha's howl and got this :



my dps went up, mostly because of the increased cast speed, and the extra 1% leech is certainly a very powerful mod for this build. Really I bought it for my RF build in standard ;-) but I thought i would give it a try and it does work well. So now i am up to 3% leech (2% fire from belt and corrupted ammy, 1% elemental from catalyst), I'm wondering if i can give up the life-leech gem and replace with faster casting ?? That would boost my damage quite a lot. It would also give me mana problems. lol.

You know, believe it or not, I think the shavronne's makes this build weaker. Very bad chaos resistance (-60%), means that you take a lot of damage from chaos. I ran into a rare spitting snake the other day, and died! I was taking incredible amounts of damage. I've since rolled a couple of very useful amethyst flasks to help and I'm looking for chaos resist on gear.

The problem is that pain attunement does not seem to provide enough of a damage boost to compensate for the fact that I have lower ES and take damage from chaos, i.e. overall I'm less tanky (well, better now with aegis, of course!)

Being able to run PoL and PoF is a major advantage. However against really tough bosses, I think you need the ES more than the extra 5% max resist you get from running the purities. It's really difficult to judge the various trade-offs so I think that I will respec back to CI and see how that works. Now I understand completely how much trouble it must have been for you to perfect this build.

This is the first build I have ever "completed" and is the highest level build I have had since I started playing, and I had such fun playing it too. I will carry through in standard, and keep pushing to level 90 !

edit. p.s. forgot to mention. the elem prolif built into catalyst is quite nice ! now i can attach lightning pen to my CwS/Arc set-up which makes it even stronger.

Grats, finally you got the shield :D I think, with all that leech and Aegis you can safely switch LL with FC, just gotta be careful at some harder bosses like map Dominus.

Interesting, looks like Low Life alone isn't worth it then. My Low Life RF setup wasn't as tanky as the CI version either, but it dealt substantially more damage and RF itself provided a bit defense against stuff charging at you too.

As for upgrades, definitely try to get a cheap Vertex. That helmet is awesome for any low life caster, even for CI i would use it for the sole reason of having high ES + EV for an acceptable price.

PS: If you want, we can map together once you're in Standard :P

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Enki91 wrote:

Grats, finally you got the shield :D I think, with all that leech and Aegis you can safely switch LL with FC, just gotta be careful at some harder bosses like map Dominus.

Interesting, looks like Low Life alone isn't worth it then. My Low Life RF setup wasn't as tanky as the CI version either, but it dealt substantially more damage and RF itself provided a bit defense against stuff charging at you too.

As for upgrades, definitely try to get a cheap Vertex. That helmet is awesome for any low life caster, even for CI i would use it for the sole reason of having high ES + EV for an acceptable price.

PS: If you want, we can map together once you're in Standard :P

sadly i ripped to residence dominus yesterday :-( full party and the first time facing him. he just does so much damage. when i watch your video i can see that he hits really hard, you almost RIPed at least once. hopefully i can get another residence map and try solo.

however i'm very excited about trying faster cast. if i spec back to CI, get my ES up, i think that my damage will be almost the same. so that could work very well.

I will find out when i switch back to CI, but as of right now low-life-only does not seem to be an advantage. the funny thing is that i've heard GGG does not nerf shav's because people with shav's RIP a lot. i believe it. it's not a very high ES chest. you take a lot of chaos damage. the combination is deadly. again, i think if I do something about chaos resist that would help.it will be very difficult for me to get good ES gear that also has high chaos resist. only the gloves and helm are available to me, so i think i will try switching to CI first.

btw, the other thing i plan on trying is to run determination on low-life. i noticed that you ran determination that in your videos. so i will do that _before_ i try CI again.

I will get a vertex as soon as i can, but i'm broke ! lol.

it took me almost 4 weeks to get the chaos together to buy the aegis, but well worth it.

regardless i have to upgrade my helm no matter what.

as you know, i was thinking about going RF (i've even saved over 30 regrets to put towards doing it). look what dropped for me yesterday:



isn't that funny ? we are too close to the end of ambush for me to try the respec i think, but it will make a nice project later on, especially if we get full respecs. if only it were worth enough to trade for a vertex ! lol.

mapping with you in standard would be great ! i will look you up when the leagues end :-)

hi Enki,

substituted faster casting in place of life leech and what a difference !

my tool tip is now about 3.6k but i can't sustain using lazhwar. That's ok, because i only need it for tough fights, and then i just bring a mana flask. i use an ammy with mana regen when not using lazhwar and i can sustain the incinerate.

doing great damage now. going to start trying some of the really hard maps again, crematorium, residence, etc...

also, i am running determination on blood magic (+ PoF) and that is a major buff to tankiness too, especially given that i now have aegis.

my base armor is about 16k before i use granite/jade.

elemental damage can still cause trouble, especially as i can no longer easily substitute PoL.

i'm trying to get a hold of some gear with chaos resist to solve the "shav's problem".

meanwhile as long as i bring an amethyst, everything is ok on the chaos damage so once i get gear with chaos resist, things are going to be much, much better.

Finally revived this char to update for Spell Echo, and took the opportunity to improve the build with GMP and Arctic Armour while completely reworking the guide.

Will be working on new videos in the next days.

Alright interesting changes to the build.

Running AA, can't wait to see how that works. It's a major survival boost if I can get my regen high enough to support it.

Meanwhile it looks as though i'll have to do some substantial testing with wand vs catalyst.

catalyst gives elemental boost + leech.

but spell damage from a wand will boost chaos damage.

i'm really interested about the faster projectiles gem. I assume that it's to be able to start doing damage sooner, before things can get to you, i.e. make incinerate more of a ranged attack.

Meanwhile, I see you have decided that GMP is better than LMP. What changed your mind ? does it really provide enough of a damage boost to overcome the additional mana cost ?

can't wait to try out the changes !

Definitely a wand, you need Mana Regeneration everywhere possible.

Faster Proj for the reason you figured already, and also for the way lower Mana Multiplier, which makes it easier to sustain Incinerate. On top it comes with Proj Dmg, which boosts both the Fire and Chaos part.

GMP vs LMP is still very situational for me:
GMP is better for area coverage, LMP for single target. All in all, i think GMP is more beneficial when it comes to clear speed and the recent changes finally made it sustainable.