Everliving Incinerate

Playing in the standard-based leagues all the time, I always made less-than-tanky characters, so I wanted to try my hand at something that was tanky but had the dps to clear 78 maps. This is what I came up with.

This character uses incinerate for dps. The tooltip is 902 dps, meaning I have just over 18k top-end dps. This is probably a third of what Three Dragon's incinerators achieve, but the advantage this build has is that it can solo almost anything.





Brief overview of stats:
HP: 4040
75% block, 40% dodge, 75% enemy miss via blind, 1800 evasion ~= 97% chance to avoid physical damage
75% spell block, 30% spell dodge = 82.5% chance to avoid spells
Factoring in 75% elemental resists, that is effectively 95.625% elemental dps reduction.
With 8 lgoh from Cybil's Paw, that is up to 40 lgoh per cast, and with 6.33 casts per second, that is 253.2 life/second for just one target.
I have 60 life regen/second and 61 mana regen/second.
I have 300 mana left after reserving auras, 54 if I run purity as well for ele weakness maps (more than enough due to mana leech).

Mana leech allows me to indefinitely cast incinerate, even with arctic armour running.

This build can do any map mods. Half regen is probably the most annoying, followed by no regen. Blood magic is not an issue, as it just means I only run tempest shield, and slot in life leech and added cold.

This build is completely capable of solo'ing things such as double boss courtyard, palace Dominus, shrine Piety, the Jungle Valley spider boss, etc. The only ones I haven't beaten are torture chamber and crematorium. The former because it seems its beam can't be blocked/dodged, and the latter because standing in fire storm hurts (although I haven't tried a ruby pot).

Level 21 incinerate is not a requirement, I could do these maps with a level 19 and 0 quality. The belt is not a requirement either, it just gives me a bit more dps.

You can also use rainbow strides and replace the amulet with The Anvil to gain its life/mana benefits (good for pvp'ing other incinerators). If you have a 6L Lightning Coil, you can drop the Bringer of Rain to gain some dps, while retaining a high amount of survivability. I wouldn't recommend Infernal Mantle since you are always on low mana, but it might work.

Bandit points are Oak, Alira, passive or Oak.

Ideally my Cybil's would have 3R so I could use inc dur/end cry/imm call, but getting 3R's is pretty tough. I did try an Atziri run once, but couldn't beat the second boss fight, mostly because I went in without much knowledge. It should be possible but would likely take awhile. My only concern for Atziri is killing the adds before they reach her.

If I had better gear, the one issue this build has (chaos damage) wouldn't be an issue.

This build does very well in PvP. I don't believe I've ever lost to anything unless they use spells, and I usually win vs. spell casters as well. Knockback seems to be the counter to incinerate, though, even more so than arctic armour.

so besides having the blind.. what exactly is the benefit using a dedicated melee helmet with the drawback not beeing able to use a chest? using some helmet with firedmg on it and a 5L chest would be more beneficial at first glance, and a 5L chest doesnt cost the world.

15% block, endurance charges on block. With the tree used, this is probably the only way to get 75&75 block.

I used several variations of the build, three dragons + 5L, double cybil's using dual wield block nodes, etc. While this version has the least damage, it has far and away the best survivability, and the damage is good enough to clear 79's anyway. Other incinerate+block builds have more limitations on map mods and can solo fewer bosses. 97% physical avoidance and 82.5% spell avoidance speaks for itself.

Off the top of my head, the only potential improvement would be to get a 6L lightning coil, slot the incinerate gems in it with blind and your choice, dropping Lazhwar, BoR, and the boots, and putting on some helmet with The Anvil and Rainbow Strides. This would give 70&~57% block, but you'd gain the equivalent of 30% physical reduction. With a +block corrupted Anvil you could basically be up to the 97% physical avoidance again, and simply be more prone to taking spell damage. This can be remedied to some extent by swapping Lazhwar in when you need more spell block.