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

Better question is, did your Pathfinder have Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics.

My ES is only 7300-ish, 8500 with Discipline up and I couldn't facetank Piety's beam in Merciless. I could however take a few hits of it. Only Merciless boss that was one-shot capable on me was Malachai.

But man did killing Malachai take forever.

No Acro or Phase Acro. She had around 4600 life and 1600 ES. But, she was also built with 48% increased effect of flasks and is a COC build with legacy Surgeon's prefix flasks. So I had my flasks, including a Rumi's which was giving her I think 70/75 block up the entire time. It got so ridiculous at the end that my ES recharged to full and only went down a little bit.

But...one big shot on her and she's toast...it's always something. Things that my CI Witch using this build can laugh at (my favorite is to just leave her in the map while I go grab a brew) will destroy my Pathfinder instantly if I leave her still.

However...I have been theory crafting a new Witch with the best of both worlds - CI with 15k+ ES and my same crazy COC setup. But...doing crit with all the regen would be about impossible...so I have to go with regular recharge which may end up being crappy. We'll see...if I could combine even some of my Occultist's tankiness with my Pathfinder's ability to tear through maps like Taz then I think I'd have a good balance of offense and defense.

"

SasoriOtoko wrote:

SephMoon,

I also did a Witch Occultist variant of this build that I got to Lv 90 in Standard. I had the same problem with both bosses. Malformation Piety destroys just about all of my characters so I tend to avoid her...but Maegara did the same to me...she was the only other boss I could not facetank. I don't recall getting stunlocked...moreso that my ES regen (which was 2000+ at the time but I was still a Witch and had yet to Ascend) just couldn't keep up with the damage Maegara was doing to me. And the map mods were normal, nothing weird. I think just like using Wanderlust shoes to fight Merveil, you will probably have to make some gear/tree adjustments to take out Maegara.

Question, where you using AA during the Maegara fight? I only ask because I did not...and again even with over 13,000 ES and very high regen I couldn't withstand her Firestorm. But then I fought her with my Lv 92 Pathfinder who had all of 4600 life, no leech or LGOH and piddly regen (like 2%) and using AA, Purity of Fire and flasks I was able to facetank Maegara with -max resists AND extra fire damage map mods and it was almost laughable how easily I destroyed her. Made me rethink why things failed so bad with my Witch.

I've stopped leveling my Occultist to work on other characters, but she now has about 15,500 ES and I've considered giving Maegara another go. I'll give it a try when I get a chance and report back on results. I know AA will be essential and PoF couldn't hurt...but I'm hoping my regen will be high enough to only need one of them.

I always have AA activated when fighting enemies. I will admit I don't have anywhere near as much ES regen as most other users of this build since I only have ~9500 ES and the only auras I use are Disciple and AA. Since my body armor is Infernal Mantle, I have to make sure to stay above the low mana threshold or else I take 100% increased spell damage. I'm not trying to facetank Piety or Megaera, though.

After doing some research into CI, I guess this stunlock issue isn't really that uncommon. Since a CI user only has 1 life, even moderate amounts of damage can affect me when a normal life-based player would be unfazed. Since Megaera's firestorm and Piety's blood cyclone projectiles deal moderate damage hits in rapid succession, they can easily stunlock me and pelt me to death. I can sometimes break free with the inherent 50% stun resist of ES, but most of the time that doesn't seem to help. Even getting grazed by one of these attacks is usually a death sentence for me.

Haven't really had a lot of problems with Merveil, though. An antifreeze flask seems to be enough to get me to safety so far, and the full chaos conversion of IM + a legacy Consuming Dark works really well with the reduced chaos resist of Void Beacon for melting down enemies. The only time Merveil was a problem was when Zana gave me a daily in twinned Necropolis.

"

Starfires wrote:

My ES is only 7300-ish, 8500 with Discipline up and I couldn't facetank Piety's beam in Merciless. I could however take a few hits of it.

I don't try to facetank that beam, either, since it has a really deadly bleed on it. A couple of hits can usually stack enough bleed to beat down my regen. That beam's never really been an issue for me, though, since I just use Flame Dash to dodge through it.
It's those blood cyclone projectiles that always get me. I try to stay near one area when she shoots them so she doesn't fill the entire room with them, but if one even so much as grazes me, I'm usually stunlocked to death.

Not sure what to say, I was facetanking the red things in order to proc my CWDT/Vengeance setup.

My regen isn't even as high as others since I am not using Vitality (frankly, I think it's a waste of reservation). However, I do have endurance charges, usually 5 and 1% regen from that. So the physical mitigation from that helps (I can also manual cast IC, which helps a lot with Malachai).

And yeah if you're having 70/75 block, obviously you're flat out not taking any damage. 75% block is actually super effective against Megaera because of how often she hits. Since she's hitting very quickly, you're getting close to the 75% mitigation and not subject to much RNG streaks.

I run a Rumi with my setup as well. It's fairly noticeable.

Double-posting, but checkout my "Thunder" tank in action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYZ2ybtUhYg

Just had this drop for me. Until I get a Fiend Dagger is this any good since it does deal a bit of Chaos damage?

Seen your tank, Starfires; I like the idea of making an attack-based tank based around the core CI-ZO regeneration concept and I guess Mjølner was right way go.

"

dsteere wrote:

Just had this drop for me. Until I get a Fiend Dagger is this any good since it does deal a bit of Chaos damage?

No, it is horrible for this build.

a) It has an atrociously low damage% modifier to your fire damage (16%), no cast speed, no added fire damage to spells, no projectile speed.

b) Its physical damage as extra chaos damage is worthless as Incinerate doesn't deal any physical damage

c) That 20% of the enemies you kill will deal 25% of their maximum life as chaos damage in an explosion is a nice trick that will help you clear out large packs of enemies where new enemies keep adding to the fight, but it does nothing when fighting solo bosses and even when fighting normal moderate sized groups it will in no way compensate for the utter lack of useful stats boosting the incinerate damage.

d) This build takes very few damage increases except through jewels and equipment. You NEED to get stats boosting your damage on your weapon. You really, truly, do. Any half-decent rare one-hander will beat the Obliteration dagger where this build is concerned.

A little update on my stunlock situation with Malformation's Piety and Crematorium's Mageara. After I hit a level up, I respeced the 3 Ghost Reaver pathing points so I could reach Unwavering Stance. I may not be able to leech life anymore, but I was trying out Temp Chains and Enfeeble for my dual curse anyway, so I didn't have Warlord's Mark to provide life leech.

As it turns out, Piety and Mageara become pretty easy when you can actually move. Since Piety's blood cyclones no longer lock me, I can easily reposition as needed to prevent her from stacking several of the things on me. That only leaves the beam to worry about, which becomes trivial if you dodge it or have a decent bleed flask. As for Mageara, I pretty much Flame Dash circles around her, jumping to a new location any time she throws down a Firestorm on me. I'm amazed at how this one node made those two boss fights go from "virtually impossible" to "pretty much a free boss kill" for me. Of course, they can still be dangerous if you get a map that stacks a lot of damage mods on them.

Also, I've been experimenting with what kinds of things work on CwDT and Contagion seems to work out pretty well as an offensive CwDT option. Once Contagion lands, you don't have to worry about the enemy moving out of it like they might do with a Firstorm. Contagion can also persist for a decent amount of time vs. larger groups with its ability to proliferate itself via enemy kills. Can't say I'm as enthusiastic about Essence Drain, though. I tried it out on the same CwDT link as Contagion, hoping the regen aspect of it would be useful. Unfortunately, the damage it does is so low that the .5% regen doesn't really amount to much, and it was even linked to a lvl 19 Controlled Destruction at the time I was testing it. Figured I'd throw this little bit of info in here since I think someone was asking about Contagion and Essence Drain earlier in the thread.

On another note, I recently got the Decree of Flames enchant from the lab, and I have to agree with Pi...it's not really as impressive as I would have hoped. My problem with it is that the range of it is just too small. Most enemies die to Incinerate before they can get anywhere near close enough to be hit by the fire nova effect. To be honest, I was actually starting to have similar issues with Decree of the Tempest, but at least it had enough range to hit a few enemies when it went off. I find myself wondering if the "Decree of the Inferno" that I saw on the wiki is a fire counterpart to Decree of the Tempest. I wouldn't mind having a fire version of that. Since Tempest is lightning, I would sometimes get smacked in the face by ele reflect since only my fire damage gets converted to chaos.

Also, when are you on, Pi? I have a little gift for you, if you're interested.

You can also use the Juggernaut baby-Ascendancy to get stun immunity OR pick up the 65% reduce stun boot enchant. It works really well. You do however have to give up 42 fire damage enchant to get this.

As far as gloves, I think Decree of Reflection ends up being the best. Although the projectile one isn't to bad either (Decree of Blades). Decree of Light sounds awesome, but unfortunately you need to be crit for it to trigger. It doesn't trigger to often.

And yes, this is by far the biggest deal for Malformation's Piety, it was the initial reason why I went Juggernaut baby-Ascendancy actually -- once I realized I was getting stunned.

I too found Essence Drain pretty useless. Contagion is interesting however because there are a few DoT damage nodes.

I'm a Witch Occultist instead of a Scion, so the only stun immunity I have is a part of Vile Bastion, where I have stun immunity at full ES. Works pretty well vs. large groups, as the regen part of Vile Bastion can easily keep me topped off. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well vs. bosses that don't use adds since I have nothing to kill to boost my ES regen rate. I did consider the boot enchant, but I think I'd rather stick with the life/mana regen one I have since I don't use Vitality. And since I use a -8 Elreon jewelry set to sustain Incinerate's mana cost, Unwavering Stance was pretty much the only option left.

I did have Decree of Reflection for a little while and loved it from a defensive standpoint. Made for a nice, tanky little minion that could run around distracting enemies. I also loved watching a copy of myself randomly running around wanding things, as I didn't have my Consuming Dark at the time.

Decree of Blades was the EK-ish one, right? I was thinking about trying to get that so I could have an offensive enchantment that could match the range of Incinerate. Although Decree of Flame/Tempest were great in theory, application proved less than stellar.