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

Great feedback, SephMoon. A few days ago I went back to try Maegara...this time with 15,500 ES and 2300 regen. She was still able to drain my life down, but it took a while...and sure enough the main reason was that I was getting stun locked. I was able to break away and keep moving around and roasting her with Incinerate...but it took a while and there were some close calls (Vaal Discipline become very important). She gets stunned a lot so I have been considering getting Unwavering Stance...especially after what you shared.

On the other hand, my Lv 92 Chieftain who is life based with 7700 HP and 15% regen (also an Incinerator) has always had Unwavering Stance. On a whim I decided to take it off and after running a few maps I only heard him grunt once...no stuns or stun locks. I even tried facetanking the nasty Volcano boss and was able to make short work of him without taking much damage...but then again his regen goes up to almost 20% when endurance charges are up. So US is not so important for high life, but for CI it seems almost mandatory. Right now the only weakness my Witch has are the stuns and perma freezes.

Or maybe I can just carry around an Eye of Chayula for boss fights...worth a try I suppose!

Yeah, that's one of the major weaknesses of CI. The durations of stun, freeze, shock, burning, etc are determined by how much damage is inflicted in respect to a target's maximum life. Unfortunately, while CI users tend to have a high "effective life" pool due to ES scaling, it doesn't change the fact that a CI user's max life is still 1. As such, all those listed debuffs end up having a longer duration when used on a CI user.

While freeze and stun aren't as dangerous to this build as the standard CI build due to the passive ES regen, that doesn't mean this build is completely unaffected by freeze and stun. If you're fighting an enemy that has attacks you need to avoid, getting locked at the wrong time can get you killed. From what I've seen, Piety and Megaera are pretty much the embodiment of this concept. They can usually do enough damage to beat down a player's ES, and the rapid barrage of moderate damage attacks locks the player in place to be hit by said beat-down.

I have been meaning to post for a while so figured I would now to let you know how I am doing.

I am older and my reactions are not as fast as others and I have to say I am so much enjoying this build and how friendly it is for someone with limited skills.

I played a 80 plus Ranger and Marauder and would die very easy in Tier 2 maps, would run away from Rogue Exiles, not open chests and skip the boss. Now I just stand there a fight and for the most part win.

With this character I am actually surprised when I die in Tier 7 maps now. My progression is tremendous. And after a long day at work the enjoyment level of doing mid tier maps is off the scale.

Not sure if you can view my character but I have to keep reminding myself not to run away form huge mobs because my character now is geared enough to take a huge beating and live and it helps if the enemy is in your face.

I still have problems with the last difficulty on the Ascendancy boss ( have not finished the last 3 points yet. Each time I level I just try once but die quickly), the spider boss with the huge mob, arena mob and the one boss was all the ice but all in all I am leveling and having so much fun.

I am slow in general and the play style fits me. If you can see my character any pointers would be great as far as gear.

I am now level 87 and climbing.

Once again THANK YOU for this build!!!!!

Thank you for the kind words, dsteere. I know I'm 11 days late so I don't know whether you still need any advice, but if you do I cannot see your character. To make your character visible, click yout nickname at the top ("Logged in as desteere"), then select privacy options, and remove the ticks that hide everything and the character tab respectively.


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I've been absent some time but see that there's been a discussion on one the nastier stun encounters that risk stunlocking for those not swift on their feet, Megaera, the other being Atziri's trio.

I was unaware that Malformation Piety had the same problem, because I've been turning most of my T9 maps into T10 rather than playing them, so thank you for this update. I will make sure to add this information to the next update of the guide.

As always, the way to easily deal with the few stunlocking bosses is choosing between investing 4 skill points for unwavering stance or choosing Juggernaut as a baby asccenancy, either for a more permanent solution or pooling all relevant maps until you can do a lot in sequence and then respec back afterwards for a temporary, or alternatively to have an Eye of Chayula available to swap in for those few encounters where it is important.

Perhaps I should update the baby-ascendancy example from Berserker-Occultist to Juggernaut-Occultist. I prefer playing the former, but the latter probably is the better choice if you are not quite comfortable with the playstyle yet or don't want to have to consider stun at all no matter what you engage.

I think I made my characters visible.

Up to 89 now and farming Tier 5 - 8 maps and having really no trouble. I do stay out of boss fights on some because I want to level to 100 so do not want to die much if I can help it.

I have a 6 link but picked up like 1,500 ES with the 5 link.

Almost at 11,000 ES now and can take a lot of damage in mid-tier maps. I know I got a lot to upgrade and not as good as everyone here yet.

1. Is trading resistance for ES ok to do. For instance losing 40 but picking up 400 ES a better tradeoff as long as you do not go negative in resistance?

2. Farming to get my gems at +20 quantity. Very slow is there any order of gems to make farming easier?

3. Upgrades are coming very slowly now. Can not afford better items yet. Any suggestions which items I should upgrade first?

Once again great build for someone who has trouble clicking multiple buttons, rotation, so on.

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dsteere wrote:

I think I made my characters visible.

Up to 89 now and farming Tier 5 - 8 maps and having really no trouble. I do stay out of boss fights on some because I want to level to 100 so do not want to die much if I can help it.

Your characters are visible now. You really shouldn't be dying on tier 5-8 maps to any but the nastiest of the bosses with your current equipment, but since your damageoutput is fairly low (due to gear choices) I understand your choice.

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1. Is trading resistance for ES ok to do. For instance losing 40 but picking up 400 ES a better tradeoff as long as you do not go negative in resistance?

You want 135%+ resistance to fire and cold and 136%+ to lightning, such that you are capped in merciless (75%/75%/76%); everything beyond those limits is luxury (that is nice to have when cursed or playing elemental weakness maps), everything below needs to be remedied immediately.

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2. Farming to get my gems at +20 quantity. Very slow is there any order of gems to make farming easier?

Of what you are wearing:

Priority
Highest: Incinerate. (You've got that sorted.)
High: Faster Casting (10% cast speed), Lesser Multiple Projectiles (10% cast speed)
Medium: Mana Leech (10% increased mana leech/s; if you are having trouble with mana this might be high rather than medium.)
Low: Most everything else.
Don't bother: Discipline, Vitality


Unless you intend to play the Vaal game in the hope of truly maximizing the potential of every gem, start turning those L20q0 gems (and the L20q2) into L0q20 via GCP+L20 recipe and level them from scratch. The period of time where you are less effective than now will be very short. (E.g. L20q0 faster casting gives exactly the same cast speed improvement as L10q20 faster casting, and it only takes 4.4 million gem xp to level it from L1 to L10.)

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3. Upgrades are coming very slowly now. Can not afford better items yet. Any suggestions which items I should upgrade first?

YES!

I don't know what price range you can afford, but so long as you can afford to pay a few chaos orbs, which you can trivially get by using the chaos recipe, there should be major upgrades available in standard where you are playing.

Jewels: Poacher's Aim gives you 10% damage, Survival Instincts gives 20 dex and 6% elemental resistances, and your remaining two jewels all give you resistances only. The first must definitely be replaced immediately as it is awful. The other three should be replaced as soon as possible once you compensate for resistance loss elsewhere.

For jewels damage > cast speed for this build (because the build stacks so few damage modifiers)

Link - search giving you at least 2 of the best damage/ES modifiers online in standard. Price typically 1 fusing and up. Any and all of these are better than any of the four non-EFW jewels you are using, so long as you ensure you compensate resistances and dexterity elsewhere.

Link - search giving you at least 3 useful damage/ES modifiers online in standard. Price typically 5 chaos and up.

Link - search giving you at least 3 of the best damage/ES modifiers online in standard. Price typically 20 chaos and up.

Link - search giving you energy shield and at least 2 useful damage/ES modifiers online in standard. Price typically 10 chaos and up.

Link - search giving you energy shield and at least 2 of the best damage/ES modifiers online in standard. Price typically 30 chaos and up.

Using 4 such jewels, even of the cheapest sort, in place of your four current non-EFW jewels will significantly increase your damageoutput.


So how about those resistances?

Well, at first glance, the obvious thing is to replace your rings and amulet. Jewelry is your primary source of resistances when you aren't fortunate enough to get it on your armour. Moreover, amulets can get the random maximum ES% modifier, so using an amulet that doesnt' have that is a shame. And there is a LOT of relevant jewelry for sale in standard, and cheaply too.

Sooo..... Let's say that we want to solve all your problems in one fell swoop. Here are a few possible searches - tweak them depending on your needs. (Again, all prices are based on what the search returned when I wrote this, but they are pretty typical.)

Link - Ring with at least 80% total elemental resistances and 40 base energy shield, and costing at most 10 chaos. Price: 1 chaos and up.

Link - Ring with at least 100% total elemental resistances and 30 base energy shield, and costing at most 10 chaos. Price: 2 chaos and up.

Link - Ring with at least 120% total elemental resistances, guaranteed NO ES modifiers (so you are guaranteed you can craft it on if the ring has a free prefix). Price 4 chaos and up.

Link - Amulet with at least 40% total elemental resistances, 41 dexterity, and 14% maximum ES, costing at most 10 chaos. Price: 2 fusing and up. That 2 fusing is an outlier, more normal is 5-10 chaos for something like this.

Link - Amulet with at least 41 dexterity, 40 intelligence, and 14% maximum ES, costing at most 10 chaos. Price 1 chaos and up.

On those items that don't have a +ES modifier of their own, remember to check whether there is a free prefix so you can craft it.

Tweak searches to fit your gear needs... but given the lack of resistances on your armour pieces, do start by getting yourself some decent resistance rings with intelligence, ES, (or possible dex if you don't get it from amulet) as secondary characteristics. If you play in standard and don't play self-found, there's no reason not having 80%+ total elemental resistances on each ring when there are so many great rings cheaply to be had. Getting resistances from equipped jewels is such an inefficient way to go about it.

Once you've sorted out both your jewels and jewelry, which shouldn't take all that long time, you'll have significantly improved offense and defense even if going with the cheapest things you find. It is better to buy really cheap rings/amulets at first so you can easily mix and match resistances to cover than to buy something expensive and then discover that you overlooked a resistances hole that needs to be covered.

Thank you so much for all the information. Will report back from time to time to let you know how I am doing. Thanks once again!

thank you for a great build, made my first ever ES toon following this guide.

made some slight changes to the skill tree -



I didn't go dual curse, I went unwavering, I use consuming dark with withering totem, occultist/chieftain and I use 2 elron rings instead off mana leach.

my first normal atziri was at level 84 with 10K ES and 5000 dps ... beat her but no portals left at end :D . I solo self found most of my gear, very cheap and easy build to follow.

once again thank you for the guide.

Hey, can i use Infernal Mantle for my chest?

Hey what's the haps these days? I've been busy grinding for my Pathfinder (Lv 95 and rising) but tonight I didn't want to risk facing the Wasteland boss who has one shotted my 6500+ HP characters much to my dismay. Brought in my poor ignored CI Occultist who uses this build with her 15,000 ES and although slow going, I took that stupid boss out.

Regen wins out over DPS, this day. I only got my Occultist up to 90...will have to get her higher one of these days.