[3.2] Scionic Flametank "16k ES ed." (ES-CI-ZO-GR, SR-CWC-FS, extensive guide)

The shotgunning of projectiles has been nerfed in the beta, this is the live version of the build, hence the use of GMP to have fun with it for the last few weeks of shotgunning's life.

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Individul wrote:

Why GMP, incinerate dont shotgunning anymore so everyone drop GMP, why you leave this gem ?

Because this is the LIVE build I am currently playing with, and Incinerate is still shotgunning. Removing GMP now would seem a bit of an overreaction. :)

The build will be updated to 2.0 when that goes live. Using the skill planner for the current June 5 beta I have a tentative plan for my 2.0 build passive tree, though obviously the tree may change further in the beta between now and 2.0, so who knows how it will end up?

With respect to GMP, I updated the client side damage spreadsheet I made for Incinerate damage with the current beta values, and I am likely going to be sticking with either GMP or LMP if things pan out as they are currently looking, for a small reduction in damage vs enemies that are close up compared to the current version while maitaining the current screen-sweeping effect of the flames... I can always swap out GMP/LMP for Slower Projectiles, if I am facing a solo boss and thing that the default killing speed is too low.

But as I do not have access to the beta, these are all projections based on the currently available datamining from http://cb.poedb.tw/us/

I am pretty good at making mathematical projections, but it might turn out that I'm better off doing without GMP/LMP as I am making projections based on incomplete information. Time will tell. (One obvious consideration: sticking to a single stream Incinerate that does an awful lot of damage is fun against bosses, but for sweeping large amounts of monsters when the casting is sustained by a mana draining gem it is a different proposition - even if one could theoretically kill them quicker by sweeping the angle of the Incinerate, one would risk the Incinerate sputtering due to a lack of mana at some points of the arc traversed.)

For those who are interested, this is the 104pt base I'm thinking of from the current June 5 beta, on top of which one would then start adding more damage, ES%, or cast speed from clusters nearby as one progressed into the endgame. (Especially the Nibleness and Explosive Impact clusters look delicious.)

104 point build

It has 8 jewel slots to use for damage, projectile speed, ES%, or unique jewels boosting regeneration, and so long as each jewel used is worth at least two ordinary passives (a passive for this purpose being valued at 6% ES, 10-12% damage, or 4-5% cast speed ), it will provide a net benefit over the use of normal passives rather than jewels.

Already by itself, with the jewels currently available in the beta as listed on the site, this should result in something that deals substantially more damage and has substantially more ES than is currently possible in the build so long as one manages to get rare jewels with 3 valuable properties out of the 4 possible on a jewel. (Four would obviously be ideal, but I expect acquiring 8 top quality rare and/or unique jewels to be prohibitively expensive.)

Hi, I would like to share my experience on this build as it's the third time I play it, my first scion char died to merciless brutus one shoted because I removed zealoth oad (bad mistake), second char I tried a similar buld but based on lightning elemental dammage with arc and lightning trendrills, and third char is actually doing fine on hc running maps, started as a witch.


So first point is you can play with any main skills it really doesn't matter incinerate, gmp or not, maybe you could try flameblast or fireball. This build is based on dyness build and main goal is to tank, I think the choice of offensive gems is a matter of the player.
I played with flame totem a lot and I didn't really like it I'm having more fun actually with fire trap.


This build is actually super low dps so if you play it on standard I would tweak the build to have a bit more dps with lightning trendrills, it has super high dps and similar aoe to incinerate.

I would trade the 16 botom passives that give 4.1%regen some armor, and 32%fire. Taking more dps passives or spending an extra 4 passive to get ghost reaver and avoiding some unecessary strength passives.

Skill tree would be something likethis :
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA34rpAkuuGyXZW20Zl_RSU5eVPV9MswQHHwI2xYt6AW_i94RIXGvDbdgkpwgyNOTsdhG4k-vuKPqCx_noaHTaYpSgna6a4EWdU1IabPfB5CIpT-w4gpvtILaGfEto8kNjms9xTXwOp1VboJ48jHZBh7c-xq4cpwxfU6VXyQ186ro0CjdmLKaQ1rQMkycc3H_GwcUsv4auFddWY-wYj_rw1UlRcLvZEy9v0NBHBtvnX2rviPk3189JsQx9EH_Gnrcx1aaaOzwF73wQWCycQkuFxbTFOq1vhP8clS4HHhFQNbkdT6cr

Main skill would be LT,mana-leech,life leech,spell echo, any others gems (this is without taking into acount the new jew passives).

Second point if you want to play this build on HC I would suggest you to spend at least 1ex to gear yourself with high es and res items before act 1 or act2 merciless.
The actual downside of this build OP should mention is that it is super shity before you have high es and ci keystone hence being at least lvl 55-60, you will have low armor, low life+es,low dps. So you should not play this build on a race event or if you want to play full self-found. But if you do and mannage to get 65+ with good gear you will really enjoy the tank aspect of the build.


Now I just have a question to OP, do you plan to get more es as I feel it's the main stats of the build ? And did you died on some maps or boss?

An interesting build variation, EzBreezy.

I tried plugging the stats from your modified tree into energy shield spreadsheet, and it would take my current ES from 10860 to 11793 as well as adding 6% block, BUT at the cost of reducing ES regen from 1488 to 1091. Taken together with the loss of 64% armour, that's unacceptable to me because the point of the build - to me - was to make something that was as safe as reasonably possible while not attacking, regardless of whether that was because of being inattentive, AFK, or half falling asleep at the keyboard, something that happens occasionally.

I wonder about one thing with your build; You've put 4 points into melding for 25%ES/15%life, the life only being useful for reducing the time you are frozen/stunned, where you could have been taking the Arcane Focus, where 3 points would have given you 36% ES. Why did you do that? Was it for the life?


As to your points:

1) Yes, any skill works; In my build the obvious choice is a fire skill due to the Arsonist cluster and I liked the feel of Incinerate, but any damage skill will work. Since it is a tank build the pressure to pick the highest damage skill that fits with the build is low and the player should go with what he is comfortable with.

2)I only played around with Lightning Tendrils a few hours soon after I started playing half a year ago, so pardon me if I ask a question with an obvious answer: How do you get Lightning Tendrils to cover the same area that a 70% increased projectile speed GMP does? (Which is what I get with 40% from q, 30% from wand). How much increased AOE is needed for that sort of coverage[/i]?

3) I've got trouble with the notion that this build should not be played self-found, since I played self found with it until level 82, and I was a newbie, this being my first character to develop post level 40. Of course I died several times during that leveling process, primarily due to not understanding the different monsters well enough and only gradually learning how to improve my gear and flasks via crafting. :) But I guess your point is that it is harder to play self-found than many other builds? Not really having anything else to compare to at the time, I wouldn't have noticed.

4) I've actually picked up a bit more damage, because I felt that my survivability was fine and the greatest upgrades there would come from better gear, while my damage could always use a bit of help. If I played on hardcore I'd have prioritize otherwise and picked up more ES%, but as I play in standard, the worst thing that can happen is that I take a 10% loss and have to remind myself why I shouldn't play when half asleep. :)

5) I died several times during the leveling process, but very, very, few times since level 80, and with one exception they were due to carelessness such as flaming down corrupted blood while half asleep and not activating one of my three anti-bleeding flasks, or attempts to challenge myself such as facetanking Shock and Horror (bad idea; especially when I only had 1100 ES/s regen at the time).

I came pretty close to dying tonight (my ES was down to ~50% before it began recovering) because I tried for the first time a 78 Courtyard with packsize/beyond and Zana's Domination mod in a group with one of my friends, and Haast spawned. I'd heard of Haast but not faced him before, and boy, was he not fun. My 1488 ES/s regen was enough to survive facetanking Haast's damage for the two of us, but with several of the the other enemies present added in it hurt a lot, and I was frozen much of the time when the flask ran out, only having one flask devoted to anti-freeze. Fortunately we were strong enough to burn down most of the rest of the monsters before I got overwhelmed, at which point my passive regen was a match for everything he could put out even when I was frozen solid.

It was too close for comfort, though. A few hundred ES/s less regeneration and I'd either a) have died fighting, or b) taken a portal out.

6) As for super low dps... I guess...

Currently mine does around 2500 paper dps per stream at stage zero, for 3200 dps against enemies without resistances when fire penetration is taken into account for the fire portion of it. That means that my shotgun dps when fully charged after a second is 4*5*3200 = 64000 against targets without resistances. Against targets that resist 75% fire and 7% electricity it is much less, only capable of shotgunning 4*5*1350 = 27000 dps.

It is enough to allow me to wave around the big flamethrower and watch things melt. :)


7) Currently my goal is to see what 2.0 brings. At the moment it looks as if I'll be able to make something that has both higher ES and higher damage based on the values of mods for rare jewels, but let's see what the last few weeks of beta balancing brings. Whatever I do, I am definitely not going to make any changes that makes my current level 92 Scion have less than 1500 ES/s regeneration when left unattended.

Yeah I definitely won't try some nemesis mod with this char on HC, and you're right I just forgot to put arcane focus on the tree.

It's true that with my theory build for standard(my char died in HC and I stoped playing with), you would have less es regen but you could get some es leech with ghost reaver keystone which is quite close to ci keystone, and it may scale very well late game, but you would lose one gem on your main skill.

To me you will hardly play this build easily on HC self-found and solo because you will hit a wall on merciless difficulty when you have to switch your character as a life+es build to full es build, at this stage of game you will have low dps (very few dammage passive taken), low armor because you need to have a few es on your gear and the increase es on the item of these levels is just too low, low es regen because your gear don't give enough es, and low-medium life. So the hardest part of the game to go from merciless to map is sadly in the same time where this build is at his weakest. Going through normal with this build is super easy but some lack of synergy start to appear during cruel and continue until you have decent gear to go CI with high es pool.

If you try to fight alone, vaal merveil or the spider on weaver chamber there is high risk that you die or have a hard time fighting them when some marauder with life passives a shield and heavy strike will just face tank them and kill them in 2mn. The synergy beetween your gear and all your passives isn't complete at this points and scale way better later. Maybe a vaal discipline gem would have save my second toon.

On standard you can just die a few times during this period withouy any issue to keep progressing.

About LT aoe you just need increase radius gem and maybe three or 4 passive nodes.I just find LT underated in my opinion with high single target DPS and decent aoe, the only issue with this skill is the huge mana cost and the fact that you have to stand close but you don't care as a tank. I'm not enough experienced to say which spell is the best I just feel that you can use different skills than fire, maybe cold skills if you skip the 16 passives botoms that kind of force you to play with fire gems.


Two strength of this build are taking big hit from boss with high es pool which activate curse and your es regeneration being stronger than surounding minons. The issue is when you have a boss or strong rare + minions and you take too much time killing minions so you can't stand the total dammage.

Where I lack experience on this build is the aura passives buff, how effective they are and how 2.0 will make a difference. Discipline is mandatory and vitality if you don't have the 4% regen from bottom.


6)I guess I need to start to up my herald and get better weapon,it may be the reason why my dps is so bad.

Have you ever tried or thought to use paua ring allowing ennemies to get two curse so you could run enfeeble + temporal chains ?

Greetings!

I dug through my old chat logs to find my old stats.

2014/12/13 15:33:15 89442034 203 [INFO Client 5696] QBotU_DyNess: 1366.1 per second

That was before I had a Shavs ring and was using a clairity aura to support my firestorm, so I had a bunch of mana nodes as well. I got accused many times of using a Shavs in PvP.

With that, the only thing I worried about was bosses and players. Achieving that was rather easy with gear and you should be able to self find enough ES gear to get there. I cannot speak for HC, but I choose CI very early, and died often for it. But I also play when I shouldnt :)

After you reach that point, finding more gear becomes much easier. Bringing enough regen to actually face tank the boss, that is where the challenge is. So yes the boss might give a lower regen more issues; it will still hold up very, very well. And that number was post patch. Before the December patch, my regen was only around 900 with about 7-8K ES.

~Dy'Ness

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EzBreesy wrote:

Two strength of this build are taking big hit from boss with high es pool which activate curse and your es regeneration being stronger than surounding minons. The issue is when you have a boss or strong rare + minions and you take too much time killing minions so you can't stand the total dammage.

Something that fortunately happens very rarely and usually leaves enough time to run out to regen and them flame them as they come, but it is a very real consideration.

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Where I lack experience on this build is the aura passives buff, how effective they are and how 2.0 will make a difference. Discipline is mandatory and vitality if you don't have the 4% regen from bottom.

AuraEffect and BuffEffect are addititive rather than multiplicative, so currently I get 42%+21%=63% more out of the Vitality and Discipline gems, which is very valuable. Merely looking at Vitality it gives a bit more than 1% extra regeneration, which is a substantial increase, and getting some sixty extra base ES from on top of the ~300 Discipline already gives is certainly nice, though it has less of an impact.

However, with BuffEffect going away in 2.0, the addition of other sources of life regeneration (unique jewels if the current ones in the beta go live and the new unique amulet), and the current betas ability to get pretty high spelldamage/castspeed/energy shield on jewels... It is not clear whether it will be worth paying through the nose to get all those aura passives or not... And then there are the considerations of whether one wants to run Herald of Thunder (25%) or Anger (50%) in 2.0, since Anger is currently changed in the beta to add a considerable amount of fire damage to spells, but.... well... Let's see what actually goes live. Between now and release any number of changes can happen to the auras, heralds, active gems, and especially damage effectiveness.

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6)I guess I need to start to up my herald and get better weapon,it may be the reason why my dps is so bad.

Sounds like a plan.

The weapon is undoubtedly what will make the biggest difference. With so few damage nodes taken, the weapon has an outsized influence compared to many builds.

The Herald doesn't provide a huge damage upgrade for me, but it is respectable for the investment. With my gear it is responsible for around 15% of total damage when fighting monsters without fire and electricity resistance (after taking into account fire penetration, that is - it is responsible for a higher percentage of the dps listed in-game, obviously) and about 9% of damage against enemies with 75% shock and electricity resistance.

Since you are running Lightning Tendrils, it will synergize a lot better with your build than with mine, where I primarily take it because I considered the dps increase of more value than the marginal survivability increase of slotting an Empower and benefiting from the Empower+Vaal synergy for Vitality and Discipline.

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Have you ever tried or thought to use paua ring allowing ennemies to get two curse so you could run enfeeble + temporal chains ?

Err, by Paua Ring I assume you mean Doedra's Damning, and I thank you for bringing my attention to that unique, as I didn't know of it.

No, I have neither tried nor thought of that one, but I have considered spending 4 skill points on picking up +1 curse from the skill tree in order to run the enfeeble/temporal chains setup.

I ended up not trying it out since I thought 4 skill points could be better spent on extra ES or damage, and, besides, there are enemies immune to curses, but it is certainly an intriguing idea to do it with that unique ring even though it costs one of the slots that is my go-to for resistances, extra base ES, extra intelligence, and can be enchanted with 5-20% maximum energy shield prefix.

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Pi2rEpsilon wrote:

Since you are running Lightning Tendrils, it will synergize a lot better with your build than with mine, where I primarily take it because I considered the dps increase of more value than the marginal survivability increase of slotting an Empower and benefiting from the Empower+Vaal synergy for Vitality and Discipline.

I'm actually running the build almost exactly like you and dyness, I just don't run flame totem. Right now i'm siting with 9.8k es and 1237.4 regen/sec. Still I'm almost riped yesterday was playing with lag (800ms) vs merveil the reflection boss, I was waiting the lag stop but he didn't. I was half es when I deciced to abort the fight pressed vaal discipline +ext char selection and nothing happend, I watched slowly my es go down to about 5% or less spaming vaal disciplin and raging at the game, then suddenly vaal discipline triger and get to me to full es, get out of the area with alt +f4.


I'm 77 but still a boss like brutus on 66 map is too hard because I need to get better gear which is quite hard.

So far as I can tell, from my characters and watching others, incinerate/gmp will still be very playable in 2.0.