Glemmer's Elemental Molten Strike Build
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Snadelle’s Elemental Molten Strike
 I have finally completed my 2 Month project: The ultimate Molten Strike build. This build combines 91% Fire and Lightning maximum resistance, and 84% maximum Cold resistance. 30% chance to block spells and 16-18K Armour depending on gear (16K easily attainable). But the real bread and butter: A Minimum of 30K DPS. That’s right, this build puts out at LEAST 36K++ dps. The bigger the enemy, the more damage you do. Since target size determines the number of hits of your eruptions, you could easily put out 150K+ dps. The Tree:
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http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgABA5YEswx9D6sQfxGBFE0UdRUgFr8XLxmKGjgajx0UHaoksCaVJ-0o-imlKk0s6TKJNZI26TrhOyg_J0GHRnFKfUrITeNOKlFMUzVVS1XWVvpX4lnzW69gQ2HiY6dk52aeZ6Bqk2wWbj1uqm-ecql35XzZfVuApIGvgseDCYbRhxmHdow2j0aQVZu1ogCkwqZXpwinhKxHrKqxBbXytkG3PriTuNC-p8APwBrDOsaeykrSTdXt2L3aOt0N3UbhiONq6-7sOPAf9tr56PrS-wn8S_zF_gr-jw==
How the Build works/Design History:
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I love melee and smashing face. I wanted to build a character that could face tank any mob in the game, and also kill it in reasonable time. I knew things like mana, life, max resists, block and physical damage reduction were all going to need to be answered, even before design. Here is what I came up with:
Gear:
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Alpha’s Howl: Gives my 60% aura gems some serious power, while reducing their cost. Lightning Coil: Converts 40% of my incoming physical damage into Lightning damage. Saffel’s Frame (Legacy): Increases all maximum resistances by 5! Purity of Lightning and Fire: Increases all maximum resistances (those) by 4 at Lv. 20. With +4% from passive points I’m now left with 84% Fire and Lightning and cold resistance, so how did I get to 91%? I have 78% increased effect of Auras and Buffs. 4%*1.78 = 7% instead of 4% from both Purity’s! So now, 40% of all physical damage is hitting a wall of 91% lightning resistance. But there was still 60% coming in, which in many small doses (if not running Arctic Armour) can be fatal. I still needed more armour. Grace: Lv23 gives 2241 evasion. Thanks to Iron Reflexes grace becomes a beast. Then that 2241 Evasion becomes 3988 base Armour from aura buffs. Anger and Wrath: In Alpha’s Howl I’m running level 21 Anger and Level 21 Wrath, which are bumped up to level 23 each respectively. This is where almost ALL my dps comes from. Those then are multiplied by 1.78% to give me 280 Flat fire and 334 Flat lightning damage. This adds a whopping 13,200 dps when my increased elemental damage nodes and gear is applied. Weapon: 1H Weapon with a ton of Elemental damage and attack speed. Remember, since at least 70% of your damage is from Auras, attack speed will be more important here than the weapons actual elemental damage. Aim for 120-150 elemental damage on the weapon before attack speed is included and 1.9+ attacks per second. Evasion Gear: You’ll notice almost all my gear is evasion based. This is because the 50% in increased evasion nodes I picked will only apply to base evasion. I didn’t want to waste those. This can make socketing your much needed red sockets difficult though. I’m waiting until the next patch to 4 red my gloves . Point Blank: Because the projectiles travel no further than a range of 20, point black will award an additional 42.5% damage to ALL projectiles on average from Molten Strike. 50% at 0-10 range, and 35% at 11-35 so 50+35/2= 42.5%. The Damage:
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Molten Strike: This is doable with a 5L for considerably less investment, but I`ve been lucky so I have a 6L. Molten strikes fire balls erupt randomly around you and are themselves considered area damage. Concentrated effect was an obvious choice. The multiplier for my damage is as follows, variable Molten Strike Damage =MSd. (MSd *0.6)*(1.69) + (MSd*0.6)*(1.425)-(MSd*0.06)= Damage per projectile. Then multiply that number by the average fire balls per second you think will hit your target, and add your base MSd to that. The dps is insane… If all my fireballs hit per second (9), then my damage would be 16,000+9*20,300 =199K ish. You get the idea . Don’t forget, your attacks per second *2 is the number of projectiles you’re producing in that second.
1) Molten Strike: Free AOE? Yes please. 2) Blood Magic: No mana, this is a must! 3) Multistrike: More fireballs, more damage! 4) Life Leech: Gotta live! 5) Weapon Elemental Damage: A Must! 6) Faster attacks: Serious DPS. Optional however, and can be left out for a 5L My dps reads just above 23K. But that`s not where the real dps is. The real dps is the roughly 9 eruptions per second coming out dealing 6.4K each. As long as one of them hits my enemy (almost Impossible all 9 will miss) I`m doing a MINIMUM of 30K dps with this gear. I always like to leave a margin for error but it`s reasonable to assume the dps of this build is closer to 50K now, often higher. I’ve been lucky killing Dominus in 3 seconds if enough eruptions land on target. Gear " Video Description (Maps coming Soon):
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_yYNNrMm7Q
MAP:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKzfbeGWx4E&feature=youtu.be
Utility:
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4L Elemental Weakness: Elemental Weakness + Increased Area of Effect + Blood Magic + Portal
4L Cast on Damage Taken: CoDT + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Increased Duration (for immortal call) 3L Whirling Blade: Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic 4L Apha’s Howl: Grace Lv21, Anger Lv21, Wrath Lv21, Reduced mana lv20. 3L: Reduced Mana + Purity of Lightning + Purity of Fire Prose and Cons: 1) Pros
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Pros:
1) Insane DPS 2) Can be put together for 15-20 Exalted all in (4 Ex for a 5L lightning coil, 3 ex for Alpha’s, 5 ex for Legacy Saffel’s Frame). Note: You can use a normal Saffel’s for like 15C until you can afford legacy. 3) Can face-tank any Elemental based enemy (Atziri, Piety, Dominus etc.) 4) Fun as all HELL to play. Especially when 7/9 eruptions hit and Dominus he is dead in 3 seconds. 5) 1 Granite flask makes all physical damage disappear, completely… 6) 1 Ruby flask gives you 101 fire resistances. Face-tank Atziri? I think so… 7) 30% Chance to block all Spells 8) Elemental reflect = doesn’t matter 9) Can do Blood magic and no regen maps, many classes have trouble with these 10) Physical reflect = doesn’t matter 2) Cons
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Cons:
1) It can be difficult maximize all resistances (specifically lightning) 2) Low-ish life (around 4.2-4.4K life only) 3) All skills require blood magic gems 4) No Attack block chance 5) Poor gear availability (depends on the market, but it can be hard to find high life and weapon ele damage jewelry that is priced reasonably). 6) Chaos damage can be a problem. I’m still trying to max my resistances but can’t find a jewelry set yet. 7) Must always have a granite flask on you. Getting jumped by 30+ mobs shooting tiny arrows at you can hurt if you can’t leech fast enough. Perfect example is the chaos shooter dudes in Sacrifice. 8) No room for IIR or IIQ in the 5L, 1 slot in the 6L. It will prove difficult to get the resistance you need AND IIR and IIQ on gear without spending a TON on gear. But if you got, go for it! Like all builds, you can spend a little or a lot. All told on this I’ve spent around 130 Exalted (Thanks whoever bought my Shavs!). Insane to some, trivial to others. But hey, it’s standard, everybody is rich aren’t they? The most important things are to first maximize your resistances and THEN focus on improving dps. Otherwise reflect will destroy you when you least expect it. Progression: Early progression:
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Levels 1-30:
Your focus should be grabbing the starting life nodes and working your way through the tree grabbing all those first. Some nice cheap unique items will make your dps insane, so don’t worry about picking weapon elemental damage nodes yet. Mid-Game progression
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Levels 31-50: Grab all the maximum resistance nodes and finish off on all the life nodes. Late-Game progression
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Levels 51-75: Grab all the reduced mana reserved nodes to start adding your auras. Convert to blood magic. Convert from physical damage to elemental damage. End-Game
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Levels 76+: Finish off the tree. Be sure to grab all the +Auras and Buffs nodes, THEN grab weapon elemental damage nodes and finish off by taking point blank. Because of the design of this build, its not very open to options. Bandit Rewards:
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Kill all on Normal, Cruel and Merciless. You will need the 3 Passive points to reach everything needed by level 87. That’s 107 Passive points.
Q and A: This section is a work in progress. I will answer good questions here, as best I can! Q&A 1) Q: Why are you not taking Purity of Ice? A: I simply don’t have enough reservable mana. The 2 most deadly elements are currently lightning (Dominus, Piety, etc) and Fire (Atziri). 84% Cold resistance is enough to handle anything else. As well, I cannot be frozen from Alpha’s Howl. 2) Q: Why did you opt to go elemental instead of going physical and Running Hatred +Purity of Ice instead of Anger and Wrath? A: Literally a matter of preference. Note: I have not tried this option, but experienced players can take this build and modify it to run that way. I haven’t taken the time to properly calculate the nuances of a physical version. From what I’ve seen however, my build simply does more a lot more damage and has way more survivability (after a quick search for physical molten strike builds) 3) Q: Couldn’t I switch out Molten Strike for Cleave, or Ground slam? A: You certainly could! But your dps wouldn’t even come close! The base 120% weapon damage modification makes this skill completely broken with its included AoE. 4) Q: Do you have your Dream Gear? A: I wish! I really need gloves with 16 IAS, Life, more lightning and Chaos resistance. I also need a better left right with Chaos resistance, Weapon elemental Damage, Life and flat ele damage. But we can dream can’t we? 5) Q: If molten strike projectile damage is directly tied to the weapon's physical damage, what's the point of using an elemental damage weapon over a physical damage weapon? A: This first (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Molten_Strike). Now that we know that know that Molten Strike is NOT just directly tied to the weapon's physical damage, but its actually damage, we can see that elemental damage here makes a MASSIVE difference if you factor in Anger and Wrath. Right now (after swapping out conc effect for faster attacks) my tooltip DPS is 23.5K! Great question btw, and a very easy thing to misunderstand! In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS IGN RIP_DEEPS Last edited by snadelle on Aug 20, 2014, 7:00:30 PM
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Video coming soon!
In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS
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Can I see your tree? xD
IGN: Chundaziri
8/8 Ambush/Invasion Complete - 21/06/2014 8/8 Warbands/Tempest Complete - 10/08/2015 |
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forgot the tree. Doh!
In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS
IGN RIP_DEEPS | |
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added video
In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS
IGN RIP_DEEPS | |
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Can we see your rings, gloves, and boots to see what we should aim for?
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added all gear, and changed conc effect for faster attacks. My tooltip is now 24K dps
In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS
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Thanks for the update! I have a question. If molten strike projectile damage is directly tied to the weapon's physical damage, what's the point of using an elemental damage weapon over a physical damage weapon?
Last edited by fates13m on Aug 14, 2014, 10:08:44 PM
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updated dps, answered some questions
In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS
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added gamplay footage
In Game Name: RIP_DEEPS
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