[Video][1.2.0 ready]Infernal mantle | block | EB | MoM | Firestorm | 0 armour build

with the new tree the survival stats stayed around the same, however:

- cast speed are greatly increased !
- now with even more skill effect duration!

Ever since infernal mantle was released I have always wanted to make a build for it. Unfortunately there was no keystone like MoM in Open Beta that could utilize a abundant mana pool(which you should have to prevent high level map spells to kill you)

After release, I still didn't quite see the possibility of a build for it, since aura's costs are mostly % now and it's even harder to have abundant mana pool now if you want to utilize any of the % auras for defence purpose. That is until recently I accidentally 6-L'ed my infernal mantle and went 'no grace, no IR, clarity only, final destination'. Now I'm level 81 and doing pretty well up to level 72 maps solo(only dipped below 50% once since started mapping) and really well in groups for 74+ maps.

Q1: Why not use increased duration gem for your guide?

First of all, using my current stats:

A: with inc duration(LVL 17 with 12% Q; replacing added chaos, for example) you can stack 5.0 firestorms max on the same area

B: without inc duration you can stack 3.4 firestorms max on the same area

However each firestorm in B will deal 25% more damage than A cuz of the added damage, so eventualy you are looking at 4.2 firestorms equivalent to A. Now inc duration's advantage is still about 19% more dps after ramped up

secondly:

I'm mostly a solo player, so no inc duration solution can provides me with a faster solo clearing speed, explained as following:

with fire pen / added chaos I can output significantly more damage during the first 1.8x sec since start of continuous casting. and only after that my dps reaches plateau. while for inc duration solution, it will start catching up in terms of total dmg dealt after 1.8x and eventually reaches the same amount of damge dealt as no inc duration solution, as graph:


(graph is not for scale)

as you can see, if you burst mob packs fast enough (which is my case in solo), you can move on to the next pack faster with no inc duration solution.

above is my reasoning for not using inc duration gem.

Strand:
http://youtu.be/S2Fvrf8zgTM

More videos with better quality coming!

Firestorm - Fire Pen - Spell Echo - Conc Effect - Life Leech [ - Added Chaos ]
CwDT - Inc Duration - Immortal Call [ - Gem of your choice, mine is molten shell]
Quality Shock Nova - Ele Prolif - Trap - Multitrap
Enduring Cry
Arctic Armour - Empower

fire pen can be replaced by inc duration gem for party play

The damage is quite good (according to other people in my party lol) though personally I think the clear speed is not as good as some other builds which focus on frontal burst( melee builds / crit builds etc), because firestorm excels at ramping up the damage over one area( a bit like incinerate). I can usually clear one white pack with 2 casts of firestorm though. So this build works wonder in party cuz of the ramping up damage, but can still handle solo well.

always start approaching a pack with shock nova traps.

All in all I still think Firestorm needs some tweaking about its fireball dropping algorithm, or even just straight up area buff to the fireballs' AOE, as currently the area damage is not quite stable for single target purpose.

Even with 0 armours you will find yourself to be pretty tanky against most phy mobs due to multiple layers of defences: block -> enduring charges -> AA

You need to keep end charges on at all times with self cast, since it's a great measurement against Corrupting Blood and other physical damage, and also since you have the inc duration on tree and on link, each single charge will provide you 1+ sec (mine is 6 sec for 4 charges) IC duration.

Reflect / lightning thorns will be the least of your concerns, mostly because you will have max spell block. Besides that you will also be running Arctic Armour, and 40%(25% if you don't have the 6-L) of your damage is chaos.

You shouldn't be worried about the low mana penalty from infernal mantle in the case of heavy spell damage from maps. cuz even in the case of one-shot death, you will still be above the low mana status by the time you are dead. while for other cases, you can easily pop your Lavianga's Spirit and regen to full mana easily. Even if you slipped off your attention, the max spell block can still give you enough time to react to pop laviaga's / your hp pots.

Corrupting blood is the bane of this build. You can easily die from it if you are not careful enough. When approaching a CB rare, always enfeeble it and stack up the enduring charges before start tackling it.

The 6-L infernal mantle is not required. 5-L can do the job as well

Since most of you damage can easily go through mob's defence ( fire pen, and chaos damage). offence curse is not necessary, but nice to have. Defence curse I recommend temp chain, as it's quite useful against fast moving mobs as well.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgAACGdX4ZM6-WW9JyHDGDyQ1vnogsdBhyj6tz7r7v4Kxq6a4LiT1YHyRdi9PC1FnTLRzfqFbTrhNZLE9lNSRUd8gyTYple18v6PJ-0nYREtTeNuqvxLrKoG6SycSshfmGwWM4fzvkmyK3g_J1lthxkdvgLjH8cqTc8yA-4HpS2LFSCCEG0ZIuLRNizp37C9gpf0CPRH4gkz3Q1XK1JTwFTQgeIsW6_-s5eVPV9qQ7zqpDkY20yzdPEtHysNBAeFMpUgQkvr5IPbwfOFxV8qVcaCHt--OljbCw==

clarity + tempest shield

help oak/kill all/ kill all
OR
help oak/kill all/ help oak

hp/mp

firestorm:
Firestorm is only at 18 + 1, will reach 20 + 1 later on.

defence:
using tempest shield now, so don't have to invest in 2 more points for 4% block

Yes this build can do a bit of PvP as well due to its nature of chaos damage and current meta of life builds, and also the fact that this build is block oriented.

Just keep temp chain on your enemy and predict their movements should do the job most of the time.

this build is very annoying to all melee build due to temp chain + AA + molten shell(just the chaos damage for the explosion is already near 2k). don't play against your melee friends. they will be depressed for a long time.

utilizes corners in arena to play against trapper, as they need to land the trap directly on top of you to do damage. any other tactical traps will be destroyed by your firestorm.

Degen builds / Spell block / CI builds are counters for this build.