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

Mapping update:

Did som regular blue mapping, and alching a few, highest i had was lvl 69's and one 70 museum. In general it felt easier than act 4 merciless. Hardest iv done so far was an alched, then vaal orbed lvl 70 Museum map, ended up being unidentified so dunno which mods (had 120% quantity).

Everything went smoothly, giant championpack skeletons hit me for about 25% of max hp, quickly regenerated back, rare big skeleton hit for around 40% of my max 7k ES. Trio boss was brutal, as I said, no idea about mods, but some of that incoming damage was impossible to face tank. Had to go up, then come down again rinse repeat. At this stage I have around 7400 ES and 720 Es regen per sec, Armor with no buffs running 1,5k, with molten shell up its around 3k armor.

This might be the final update, depending on which exact time they do the reset tomorrow. My final analysis:

Big packs with physical dmg bursting in will probably be the biggest challenge, bosses alone seems quite easy. Boss room is usually only challenging in the beginning with the massiv incoming dmg from a pack + main boss.

Compared to the other scion incinerate build here, going max block + EB + MOM + ghost reaver, this build seems to handle single target super easy, can almost go afk (CWDT kan kill the bsoses, just going quite slow haha). Max block build seems to handle big crowds better, controlling the amount of incoming dmg through block.

Upon release Ill either go my self made dual arctic totem build, or this CI max regen build or the max block incinerate build.

That's it for now! Might get more playtime tomorrow, depending

Cheers!
Avantor

Comments on running this build softcore beta 2.0:

1. Leveling with Flame Totem is quite effective. Considered keeping the flame totem all the way through, but came to the conclusion I didn't need to.

2. Very pleased with the results from running dual curse. Ran enfeeble/flammability. Suspect that enfeeble/temporal chains would be even better. With the 2.0 tree as currently written, it only costs 3 points to get dual curse.

3. Ran Discipline/Vitality/Arctic Armor. Very pleased with the results. Equipment issues forced me to substitute Purity of Elements for Vitality during merciless, which was doable. Shouldn't be necessary in a developed economy. (I miss my poe.trade!)

4. Got to level 63. ES was 5,000. Energy Shield Regen was only 250. (Need to figure out what I'm doing wrong there.) Absent adequate regen, a quicksilver flask is very helpful to get out of Dodge until shield recharge kicks in.

5. Was able to complete Merciless Crystal Veins. Ran a blue grotto map, which went well.

6. At the end, I was using a Chaos Golem, which seemed to complement the Arctic Armor nicely. I don't see any particular need to make it a CWDT. It's easier just to cast a new one when it dies. Also, it takes long enough to create itself that CWDT might well lead to your golem disappearing for a second just when you really need him. Was running CG/LMP/MD/MS, which seemed reasonably effective.

7. Corrupting Blood is a real issue. Make every effort to have a staunching flask in your kit. Granite flasks are also a real good idea.

8. Concur with Avantor that packs doing physical damage are the biggest threat.

9. I did my transition to CI about the end of Act II Cruel.

Thanks for the very nice build.

Thanks Avantor and AedwyneofFolkstone for your testing.

Any chance you've use http://cb.poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/ to show us what your build was in the end? :)

Build was

To put it kindly, it is not optimized.

One Jewel slot has a 15% fire damage 12% projectile damage jewel.

The second jewel slot had a superfluous Dex 20 6% all resist gem that I can now spec out of.

Hope this helps.

Right you are.

When you talked Dual-Curse with Vit-Dis-AA, my first thought was that you'd be working towards something like this for an utopian 123 point build (which Ghost Reaver for possible CwDT-Molten Shell-Firestorm-Life Leech shenanigans or for using the second curse for Warlord's Mark to support the passive regen when fighting groups of monsters rather than bosses)


(Or whatever... possibly I went a bit overboard picking up jewel slots, there, but it is a utopian build to level 100, so who cares. And 8 jewels devoted to spelldamage, +firedamage, +projectile damage, +cast speed, +ES%, and +INT - and +DEX/RES until gear could cover that - should add up to a nice total. And one Energy From Within for the slot between Scion and Shadow if they are not outrageously expensive. :D)

And just for fun, here is another utopian level 100 build that trades 32% maxES and a curse compared to the dual-curse version (including INT) for picking up the 20% projectile speed node, 30% stun avoidance, +0.2% regen, 24% armour/evasion, 10% elemres, and having all dexterity needs covered without equipment, such that it doesn't need a projectile speed wand to get a decent long range.


Yeah, I'm looking forwards to actually testing some of these things rather than playing around with them in the builder. :D

And, of course, in live we'll all be hunting the trade channel and site to buy the new Shaper's Seed amulet, which with its 2% life regen, +1% liferegen aura is BIS for this build.

http://cb.poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgABBg4J9gthDF8NfBFQFdcYVhpsGyUcpxzcIvQn7Sj6KU8spiy_LagvbzQKNbk3ZjeDSVFLrlOlVmNXyV9qaHRo8mwLbRlwu3xLf8aCm4LHgwmGrox2jxqP-pDWkyeUoJ2unjyhL6brpwinK69ssZC0DLaGt9a4k76KwcXE9sauytPQ0NR81abYTdkT2VvaYtrd21nkIukC6rrr7uwY7DjtIPDV98H56A==

This ended up being my tree before wipe. While lvling further I would probably take every single ES node possible, and later respec 10 nodes and get the marauder area regen nodes after I felt comfortable enough with my total ES shield for HC.

The tricky part with HC is you really dont know how you will handle the incoming dmg before you stand still and soak it all up. Too much incoming and you might RIP. A higher ES pool while lvling will help against this becuase you increase the initial buffer against the alpha strike. For end game i would then respec a few nodes to get the final maruader regen nodes. Atleast this is how I would do it for HC.

I have to recommend this build for a different playstyle, quite a few times i was standing in middle of the craziest number of mobs and just see the entire screen filled with firestorms overlapping. I mostly linked CWDT with 3 x firestorms (1 also including molten shell, others being firestorm + lifeleech + conc effect), last CWDT was for enfeeble and chaos golem.

It really is priceless to walk into a room just watch the entire screen kill themself why you enjoy the show. Though for HC it really feels risky at times becuase Im really not sure wether i can take all the incoming dmg or not b4 i actually stand still soaking upp all incoming dmg.

Thanks, Avantor.

Good observations on the difference between HC and normal.

If I understood you right, you were running:

CwDT-Molten Shell-Firestorm-Life Leech
CwDT-Firestorm-Life Leech-Conc. Effect
CwDT-Firestorm-Life Leech
CwDT-Enfeeble-Chaos Golem

Two questions:

1) Does the Chaos Golem provide its physical damage reduction as soon as it is cast or only when it is assembled? If the latter, having it in the CwDT might be contraindicated, but I am assuming it is the former.

2) Since you chose not to slot in either Frost Wall or Tempest Shield, I assume that your greatest problems were with ranged rather than melee mobs?

(Not that Frost Wall isn't useful with ranged; It can be very useful when it appears and pushes back ranged enemies who are at their max range, so long as your own range is longer, it is just that it is always useful against melee)

1) Chaos golem without supporting links dies too much and i like having him auto recast. Ill check the buff when i get high enough lvl after recent wipe, not sure.

2) reduced mana gem doesnt work with auras anymore so im slotting these in 3L, so i had 2x cwdt dedicated to firestorm leech and conc effect. ( and im leaving enllghtning out of the equation playing temp leagues and hv)

Melee was not the problem, it was usually the sum of everything incoming combined. Aa is a must imo, maybe aura nodes are worth it when you factor how they will buff aa too.

Any other questions?

No more questions. :)

I didn't think of you running your auras in a 3L rather than 4L, because I am using the Vertex headpiece, which means that the obvious choice for that particular 4L (when not taking a lot of aura nodes or using Elreon jewelry) is Enlighten-Vitality-Discipline-Arctic Armour setup.

As for Arctic Armour,
http://cb.poedb.tw/us/gem.php?n=Arctic+Armour

it does not appear to be classified as an Aura, so while it would benefit from mana reservation nodes it shouldn't benefit from aura efficiency nodes.

One interesting update, I think i found a very viable way to level this build. I started as templar but ended up specing up to the scion start to simulate a scion start build before doing Malachai. I successfully managed to kill Malachai Normal two times without death, best part its kinda based on the same concept. End cruel i would jump into the CI spec.

1) Concept is dual regen, rushing out the regen nodes on scion up to Mom notable + quick recovery ring and then rushing in the middle of templar area taking hp + regen and mana up to the templar start. Fill in dps nodes as see fit. By going dual regen (alot of hp regen nodes and also mana regen nodes) I didnt find Malachai fight difficult.

2) My stats when I faced Malachai fist time was lvl 40 with 1600 hp, 400 unreserved mana, 80 hp regen per sec and 70 mana regen per sec. I only had to use 1 hp flask and 1 mana flask during the entire fight. Flasks were also underleveled, white not rolled, tells you how much i needed flasks at all lol. Had 2 movementspeed white flasks, just to rush content in general. Last one was anohter mana flask i never used, and in fact not sure if ever used it haha.

3) Vital skills used was flame totem and firestorm (firestorm, conc effect, faster cast, spell echo). Fight was over really fast, not the 15 min long compalaints Iv read about. Entire fight took maximum 5 minutes.

4) I played self found, only died once at the beach @ lvl 1 hahaha (doorbell), I went standard this time to make sure i got a little practice time. In practice deathless run, self found, nothing particular great gear, just mediocre.

Not on my computer atm, so if people are interested I can post the tree b4 i killed Malachai when I get home. Imo the biggest challenge is to create a build that can handle Malachai normal (for hc that is, for sc you can just kamikaze him if you like hehe).