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

@dsteere

Necromancer ascendancy talent Beacon of Corruption specifically spreads caustic clouds on death as chaos damage, which means that CI builds are immune to it just like the clouds of chaos damage left behind when you whack normal zombies.

This is the only source of "caustic clouds on death" I can think of, but if there are others I would assume that they deal chaos damage as well, which will be ignored.


@Aklyon

If you choose not to go Incinerate, you'll need to change very little since so few skillpoints are spent on offense in the first place, and of those most are entirely generic and will apply to all spells by focusing on spell damage, cast speed, or jewel slots for customization. In the case of going Firestorm,

1) Get rid of the Sniper node and the projectile node leading to it. This saves you two skillpoints points, and they only helps projectile spells.

2) Spend three skillpoints on picking up Potency of Will for a great +45% increased duration.

3) Since Firestorm can crit on its own, you may not need the full CWDT(1)-ICS-Ice Spear-Fireball (or equivalent) setup to ensure Elemental Overload when fighting dangerous enemies. OTOH, you may want to kill Firestorm's own crit chance% for more damage with Controlled Destruction, in which case you'll need it anyway. Up to you to find a proper balance.

4) Find out which links you want to run. Probably something along the lines of Firestorm - Mana Leech - Spell Echo - Fire Penetration - Concentrated Effect - Elemental Focus for a regular fire approach, and Firestorm - Mana Leech - Spell Echo - Concentrated Effect - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destruction for After Dark.


@Gwmngilfen

The reason I didn't include it is that it does not bring something that significantly benefits the core of the build but rather provides a bunch of offensive bonuses that, while nice, do not cause a reevaluation of other choices.

Contrast with e.g. Berserker, which is not chosen for inclusion due to its 10% MORE damage, but because of its defensive benefits to the build, just like all my other suggestions are based on how they improve the defenses.

But perhaps I should have included Deadeye, at that. That I find it hard to imagine any situation where I'd pick it over two of the five others does not mean that nobody would like to use it and perhaps it should be included simply for the option of getting projectile speed for people without a quality Incinerate. But on the face of it, it is a very unattractive baby ascendancy compared to the five I have listed.

50% chance of Projectiles Piercing - worthless, Incinerate already pierces.

20% increased Projectile Speed - valuable for people struggling to get projectile speed, in particular those without quality Incinerate.

Projectiles gain Damage as they travel further, dealing up to 30% increased Damage to targets - nothing special; this is damage increase like that provided by most other baby ascendancies, a bit more at long range, less at close range or point blank.

Skills fire an additional Projectile - this is insufficient to replace LMP's 3 extra projectiles, and whether you have 4 or 5 projectiles makes little difference to the field of flame you generate; that said, if you take this and drop LMP in favour of another multiplier you'll get a 2-rayed Incinerate that deals more damage at the cost of missing the large conic field of flame effect you get with 4 rays.

I've been using a witch variation of your build ever since I came back, and I can confirm that the sulphur flasks are every bit as amazing as expected for this build. It's an easy to craft flask that doubles as both a dps flask and life flask all in one, and it has low charge usage to top it all off. I stumbled across two of them so far while running the labyrinth, and I replaced a couple of my element resist flasks with them. So far, they've proved to be a lot more useful than my sapphire, ruby, and topaz flasks simply because I can use them in a wider variety of situations.

Also, the synergy this build has with the witch Occultist is amazing. I used to fear trying to engage large groups for fear that they could overpower my regen. Now, with Vile Bastion, I pretty much become immortal. Once you get those first few kills in...that's it, they can't touch you unless they can somehow one-shot you. My record for Vile Bastion stacks so far is 57, meaning I had an additional 28.5% ES regen at the time. Void Beacon should prove fairly useful, too, since I eventually plan to get a Consuming Dark, and Void Beacon is pretty much 20% chaos penetration on nearby enemies.

As for caustic clouds, every instance of caustic clouds I've seen in the game so far is chaos damage, and thus shouldn't be an issue. I think CI is pretty much immune to anything with a "poison" or "acid" theme to it.

Sorry if that post was a little wordy. I felt I should leave some sort of feedback here since I've had so much fun with the build.

"

SephMoon wrote:

Sorry if that post was a little wordy. I felt I should leave some sort of feedback here since I've had so much fun with the build.

It is appreciated!

And don't worry about being wordy; Anybody who's survived reading through a few of my posts in this thread answering questions must surely be used to it by now. ;)

Solid reply on Deadeye there - I did follow that the leech was the primary reason to take Berserker, but I was idly browsing the other options and thought that Deadeye looked interesting. I came up with much the same analysis, although I probably over-rated the Far Shot effect. Thanks for setting the record straight!

Also props to you and DyNess for the builds, I love them both!

Oh, something else to add on the levelling theme - Stone Golem. It's not an end-game option, but for levelling, it's great.

With my current (awful) self-found levelling gear (lvl 58) I sit at 1829 es with 201 es/s regen. With a Sulphur Flask, that goes up to 274 es/s, but the Stone Golem is a flat addition, currently 72/s for a total of 346/s. In other words the combo of 2 sulphurs for 100% uptime and a CwDT stone golem nearly doubles my ES regen which is very handy until the regen reaches the point where a flat addition is wasted vs Fire/Chaos options.

@Gwmngilfen

Let's just say that if the Far Shot effect had been more damage like it is for the parent class, rather than the inferior increased damage, then the Deadeye baby ascendancy would have looked like an interesting option for people desperately wanting more damage. :)

Regarding Stone Golem while leveling - great tip! I completely overlooked that due to only considering its value to the completed core build. I'll update the build guide to include mention of this.

EDIT: Done.

First off, love the idea of this build as someone with a not so great computer and not so great skill. It seemed like a great build with the wiggle room I need to suck less.

I played a similar but not so tanky scion a few leagues ago and enjoyed it so I figured I'd give this a try with the lab content.

Currently working my way through normal, and it's been slow on the dps side but tanky enough to warrant it in my opinion.

Decided to go for normal izaro at 36 after picking up my skill point in act 4, and I have just been getting absolutely wrecked. I figured I might not be able to face tank most of his stuff at this level and gear, but that is an understatement. On top of that my dps cant kill his buff minions fast enough so then he just wrecks me harder. Am I missing something? Should I not even be trying him until cruel? After all, it's not like I need those first two ascendancy points that bad.

Any help would be much appreciated!

I'll have to punt your question to somebody leveling a new flametank in Ascendancy, sgtpepper83, as I'm not currently leveling one.

Were it me, I'd probably attempt the labyrinth again and again, gaining levels and equipment in the process, until I could beat him... but then I've been known as a somewhat stubborn person and it may be smarter just to bypass the labyrinth the first time around until you outlevel it.

I do know that early in flametank's life your weapon and 2-3 early jewels means everything for your damageoutput. What are you using currently, and can you self-craft anything better?

EDIT: If you'd like us to look closer at it rather than giving general advice (or lack of same, as the case might be), you'll have to disable the privacy protection for your characters.


Anybody leveling a new flametank that can help sgtpepper83 out with advice on when they defeated Izaro in the normal labyrinth?

Sorry about that I didn't know my characters were hidden. I think I enabled public viewing (I hope). The character in question if purple_blaze.

Currently I'm just using some random 10% ele dmg 23% spell dmg scepter. As for jewels I'm using the survival instincts jewel from normal act 2 and a 6% es 8% dmg jewel. That's basically all I have for jewels at the moment. Working on alting some more fore es/dmg but not luck so far.

UPDATE: Decided to finish act 4 and hit 41 before going back to norm izaro. I can definitely say he is much easier with a few more levels/dps and cwdt curse. Sorry for the trouble, and thanks again for the build.

I'm playing in HC so I went safe and did Normal Labyrinth at 50 :P - also I did it on a day with Conduits and Charge Disruptors, so no adds to handle until phase 3, went very smoothly. I generally found that screwing up the traps was far far more dangerous than Izaro is - I had several close calls with that.

Izaro is actually fairly easy to facetank with this build, due to the stupid regen - wait until Act 4 for a Stone Golem and a Sulphur flask and you'll be laughing. Just watch out for the bigger abilities from the Spirit of Justice on his back - especially the teleport circle in phase 3.

As for dps, I agree it's rough at first. I bought a cheap white 5L staff for a couple of chaos and crafted it - I find the shield isn't so important until you start to beef up the ES in late Cruel/Merc. With a 5L that isn't my armour (which needs constant upgrading ofc) it was easier to get dmg. Mana is an issue though, I was running 3 separate mana flasks to sustain the 5L.

Hang in there though, it definitely improves. As you tank gets stronger, you can spend more time channeling full-stack Incinerate, which helps a lot. Until then, there's a lot of repositioning that hurts dps.

EDIT: it seems the patch notes for 2.2.1 also include "Emperor Izaro has been made easier in Normal difficulty" :D