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

@chinhodado

Thanks for your review of the 3.0 Flametank. It is pretty spot on as far as I recall the performance of that revision. Some of the things you comment on in your review were warned about in the guide (such as the map mod limitations), others we all had to discover by playing the game since there was no way of knowing at the guide's release whether the tank would be able to tank all content since I hadn't been playing the game since 2.3.

I may please you to know that the experiences of playing a flametank in 3.0 and the feedback I received then formed the basis for the 3.2 revamp.

Apart from getting the most out of the new baby ascendancies, better performance on bosses in general was one of my primary goals since the tank was already ridiculously tanky given good gear, so slacking somewhat on defenses was an option.

That resulted in the 3.2 guide with a CHI-OCC focus for the strongest defensively oriented flametank yet in this build history that also dealt increased damage and should be able to tank just about anything even without good gear, and a CHI-ELE for a high damage version that (I hoped) would be able to tank and kill everything with good gear.

Based on leveling a new tank in 3.2 and especially on discovering how relatively cheap it is to acquire a Watcher's Eye with one good mod, such that anybody who plays the tank into the endgame can afford it, and on feedback from players since 3.2's release I'm in the process of making a further 3.2.1 update to the guide that will make a new CHI-ELE variant the main variant, doing even more damage and having better mobility.



@Shapic

The ES on hit while affected by Discipline is one of the four recommended mods to aim for on a Watcher's Eye for this build (great on groups, decent on bosses), since stacked Firestorms deliver an absurd number of hits on groups and even on a single target staying within firestorms like a typical size 4 boss we are still talking 26 hits per second from stacked firestorms.

My current Bestiary flametank is using such one with 30 ES per hit, so that's 150%*30 ES/hit*26 hits = 1170 ES/s recovered from the jewel.

Incinerate is alas a no-go. I love the look and feel of the spell, especially with GMP, but used as a substitute for SR in a SR-CWC-FS setup it suffers significantly by comparison because:

a) it has short range without significant projectile speed in addition to the 40% of its own

b) In a 6L Scorching Ray costs 23 mana and does about 3 casts per second with good gear; that's 69 mana/s, something that basic mana regeneration easily covers assuming half decent gear. By comparison Incinerate costs 21 mana and does about 8 casts per second with good gear, which is 168 mana/s - and this is something that basic mana regeneration will NOT cover unless the player has very good or mana-focused gear

c) the damage is significantly worse; While the Incineration beam itself does about a third more damage than the Scorching Ray beam, the loss of the 24% fire penetration debuff more than outweighs that where the firestorm damage is concerned; doesn't matter much against trash, but matters alot against bosses

And that's why Incinerate is, alas, still bad for this build. Trying to get around all of this in order to get some more recovery from Incinerate hits just isn't worth it.

The build started out as an Incinerate tank back in 2015 and I wish I could make it so again without feeling like an idiot, but after the 2.1.0 triple-nerf of Incinerate and the later introduction of fire spells that are clearly superior where this build is concerned I've had to abandon Incinerate.



@Bulix IV

With 95% mana reserved for two manas and a herald there's still 5% mana remaining, and based on the enormous mana pool granted from strength via Shaper's Touch, that is usually more than enough mana for casting to be entirely sustained by natural mana regeneration.

A full 6L SR-CWC-FS-IW-EF-CD only costs 23 mana/cast while the 5L is 18 mana/cast, and you get 2.4 casts/second if the only source of cast speed is a 15% Doon Cuebiyari.

So that means 43 or 55 mana/s depending on how you are geared.

The strength from the tree and required uniques alone (around 1020-1030) and intelligence is only enough to sustain 41 mana/second recovery with the pool being around 1250 or so, and 5% of that 62. And that's only when the entire core tree has been taken.

So that's not enough, but since the entire build is based around the premise of building strength, if you do so it will be. Well, mostly. It might be difficult getting those juicy high ES/STR/high INT/Res rings or you might find some really good ES helm and shield with no place for STR, or perhaps you happen to end up with some gear that while otherwise providing the right stats also greatly increases your cast speed and hence the mana needed to sustain casting, or...

and if any of those occur, or you are running a 6L early, and you find yourself lacking mana, it is advisable to also get some +mana or +mana regeneration on gear until stacking enough of the primary attributes resolves the issue.

Final note: If you get the regeneration on being hit enchant on your boots from labyrinth it addresses any and all mana issues during combat that might arise from wearing gear that is otherwise a bit insufficient for sustaining.

EDIT: Alternatively, spending 2 skill points on picking up Righteous Decree in the Templar area should tide one over until the gear catches up with 6L demands.


@Gryphenplay

Understand that I do not have much time to play this game so high-end content is something I only complete late in a league, if ever. I always design tanks such that they should be able to survive anything the game throws against them, but the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and I rely on the reports of others with more time to play for the bosses I don't reach.

That said:

Guardians are trivial. They were so in 3.0 and the tank is more tanky and deals more damage now. I haven't reached them yet in 3.2 but cannot believe they'll be a problem for anybody except players that have not encountered them before or try to kill them before level 90 with mediocre gear.

Shaper has so far in 3.2 been reported killed by one player, claiming it was easy facetanking and achieved in first attempt; He was using the high-damage CHI-ELE variant (designed for good gear and high/end content) with Arcane Surge added to the brew. His Watcher's Eye was the "increase energy shield recovery by 20-30%" version, which is the one of the four recommended for supporting the passive regeneration (the other that supports the passive regeneration well is the "gain 14-18% of max mana as extra energy shield") – since you say you have a problem with the screen freezing when Shaper/Elder uses a skill this sounds right up your alley.

Red Elder – I have had no reports from players either good or bad, and as I'm still in the process of filling out my map (only 82/157 so far) before trying to herd the elder somewhere nice, I'm nowhere near being able to answer this question. I certainly expect it to be the case, but unless somebody with more time playing gets there first I'll likely only be able to answer this in a month or so.


With regards to Esh's Visage + Righteous fire to speed up leveling and early low-tier mapping, without CI and running only two auras to avoid ever having low mana.... it really isn't something I've considered since I'm not a high-speed guy, more a laid-back-take-things-as-they-come guy.

I can't see why it wouldn't work if you added one or two sources of max fire resistance as well or were quick toggling it on and off as needed, but you try it out and see whether you like the playstyle. :)

I dont know what these people are talking about, but theres no way they can hit the same gear you have there. Thats the Reason its called "A Guide" its mainly just to help.

That Aside. I love it

i currently have 13.2k Es lv 90 with 3.7kes regen while in combat(not accounting leech for warlords). Will go higher. I've made a number of gem changes for my mental health.
First is:


Dropped Arctic Armour for Aspect of the Spider. It makes manages enemy positioning alittle easier and gives some def and offence is which is quite nice. Also gives off a pretty immunizing effect.

Dropped Warlords mark because i have some currency to spare and frees up a gem slot with this ring that i crafted(Spammed)


Next instead of warlords mark the helm CWDT> Flame-dash> Flammability>Summon stone golem is set up as an alternative CWDT setup that helps me NOT get bombarded if i get swarmed with 100;million projectiles at once with this set up it acts as lightning fast(lazy) dodging skills. It also jumps right the mob. to get though the lv20 CWDT setup the hit must be hard and its better to stand next to this strong mob so i can let loose the Cuebiyari's Molten Shell which does alot of damage since we have all this strength mixed with lv 30 iron will on the mace. This also saves you from having to walk and re-position which is effectively bumping up our firestorm casts per-second which is nice to keep the dps up. (Try it you;ll love it)



Also since i have 2 spare slots left over, i used Lightning Warp>Less duration which is much faster to move around the with mapping and i drop the 3 Duration nodes on the tree for now and i spec'ed them into more strength for the moment until i hit lv 95

Closing notes. Very tanky. Never die to lag again. Semi-immortal. Even ran t14 with reflect and 60% less recover with weakness still dident die (with careful playing) Afk'ed elder becuase of the CWDT flame dash and a bunch of other rippy t11-t14's).

Love that it focuses of survive'ability rather than raw dps.

Plan on pushing as far as i can. hopefully 95-100. Would recommend but its not for the everyone and you need to grind abit if you want to push it. But all builds are expensive to get progress.

Chracter Link.
Character name: Rawhiti

"

Rawhiti wrote:

I dont know what these people are talking about, but theres no way they can hit the same gear you have there. Thats the Reason its called "A Guide" its mainly just to help.

They should be able to do better! :p

Well, some of them. If they play until level 93 and shop assidiously.

The next revision of the guide will also include a level 87-88 POB link to my current Bestiary tank so they can see stats more appropriate to leveling when reaching core build completion before the end-game grind.

All that gear in the first post was acquired playing the 3.0 Harbinger League during the process of leveling ScionicWeirdo from 1-93 as my only character that league.

Given that in 3.2 you can still get all the same rarer random stuff from 3.0 that I used, so none of the items in the first post are legacy-items, as well as BETTER rare random items for some slots, not to mention how Watcher's Eye can completely change the game (that alone can add 1.5-2k maxES if anybody get the extremely expensive maxmana->maxES version, and the other three valuable versions also benefit the build a LOT), I certainly expect somebody leveling a flametank in 3.2 to end up with better gear than my 3.0 gear.

It may not be me as I have little time to play currently, but I would be sad did nobody succeed in collecting better gear this league.

(Granted that I have an advantage in that I'm a) the designer of the build, and b) a mathematician, so I'm likely better at setting up trade filters for poe.trade to find stuff for optimizing performance without having to go through long lists, but that advantage is one that ought to be beat by playing a lot and thus having more in-game currency to spend so they don't have to look for bargains like I do.)

My level 88 flame tank in Bestiary already has one rare item that is better than the one I used in 3.0:

Compare with

My 3.0 belt was awesome for its time and is still awesome: 51 STR, 123 ES, 68% elemental resistance... but 50 STR, 46 ES, 39% elemental resistances AND 11% increased attributes, that's just crazy.

I've currently got 963 base strength from trees and items without the belt (so x1.28 that's 1233 total), which means that that belt adds (50*128%)+11%*(50+963) = 175 STR, 46ES, and 39% elemental resistances.. as well as 11%*316 = 35 INT. That is (175-51) = 124 STR and 35 INT more than the 3.0 belt, which is (124+35)*.2 = 31.8% maxES% and 124*.4 = 49.4 maxES.

So comparing the tankiness, the 3.0 belt has (123-46-49.4) = 27.6 maxES more than the 3.2 belt, but the 3.2 belt has 31.8% maxES% more. Given the total maxES% and maxES values disregarding the belt slot, when wearing the belts the 3.2 belt narrowly edges out the 3.0 belt in ES, is worse in elemental resistance, and grants some (124/5 + 124/8)% = 40.3% increased damage over the 3.0 belt. I think that's a considerably better belt even with an implicit on the 3.2 belt that is nearly useless (and I shudder to think of how expensive one with a useful implicit would be).

And I bought that belt for 30c (a bargain, I know) when it had low rolls for STR, ES, and increased attributes (10%, lowest in tier 1) and spent a divine, saw 11% and high roll STR, and decided I was done.

(Should I ever be flush with currency and see no other potential upgrades it is time for the divine-roulette until I get a 12% attributes, high STR roll.)

"

Dropped Warlords mark because i have some currency to spare and frees up a gem slot with this ring that i crafted(Spammed)

Question: Why "faster start of energy shield recharge" mastercraft? ES recharge only starts when you've not taken damage for quite some time, by which time your regeneration and leech should have topped you up anyway.

Granted that it is a prefix and Elreon doesn't really have anything useful there save +ES, which you have covered, and granted that it might be useful in some border cases, if you are doing enough PVP to use Leo for mastercrafting in the first place, why not take 15 to 30% increased Damage over Time (to boost Scorching Ray damage, likewise requires Leo3) or 20 to 30% chance for Flasks to gain a Charge when you take a Critical Strike (because that's always useful)?

"

Next instead of warlords mark the helm CWDT> Flame-dash> Flammability>Summon stone golem is set up as an alternative CWDT setup that helps me NOT get bombarded if i get swarmed with 100;million projectiles at once with this set up it acts as lightning fast(lazy) dodging skills. It also jumps right the mob. to get though the lv20 CWDT setup the hit must be hard and its better to stand next to this strong mob so i can let loose the Cuebiyari's Molten Shell which does alot of damage since we have all this strength mixed with lv 30 iron will on the mace. This also saves you from having to walk and re-position which is effectively bumping up our firestorm casts per-second which is nice to keep the dps up. (Try it you;ll love it)

I don't walk and reposition during combat. I flame dash and reposition. I've got flame dash bound to my left mouse button and cast in place (or whatever it is called) bound to space, so repositioning is as simple as holding down space with my left thumb and clicking LMB. (Also means that I flame dash to any enemy I click on, of course, which has occasionally had hilarious results.. But mostly it is just very practical, allowing repositioning at will).


Anyhow, I'm glad you are having fun and experimenting. Keep pushing the limits.

Ps: Nobody has yet chimed in on how the build performs against Red Elder. I expect there to be few problems, but absent a report from somebody who's tried it who knows? If/when you fight him, let us know how it went?

Haha, its gear transferred most of it and picked up some cheap gear from Trade. Defiantly no where near optimized this was the stuff i grabbed to get running. But its all fitting somehow.
Im going to try red elder very soon, Yellow done, nothing really to scoff at just face tanked everything not too hard.

At the moment just testing some things and leveling gems to 20. Nz timezone does;nt have the best peak hr for trade activity with the majority of the decent gear are unavailable nor have i looked deep into elder/shaper mods. I wasted a lot of potential extra def and damage with just being impatient with not having enough res and going for the the lower side.

Thanks for your advice.

Three questions:

1. The Ele variant, is there any gear or stat priorities different going this path and how much less tanky will the build end up being.

2. Are there any gems to specifically try to get extra quality or levels on? Most builds level up the same gem or two in their off hand setup and I wasn't sure which to do.

3. Why don't you opt for Curses immunity on a flask? Are we immune to curses and I missed it? Same question with shock, but I see it would be the least useful to go for out of all the mods on a flask since we only have so many slots.

Just hit 71 and compared to zipping around maps with whirling blades it feels really slow in comparison. The damage felt bad, but probably gets better, which is why I was interested in the Ele more damage variant.

"

Forfex wrote:

Three questions:

1. The Ele variant, is there any gear or stat priorities different going this path and how much less tanky will the build end up being.

2. Are there any gems to specifically try to get extra quality or levels on? Most builds level up the same gem or two in their off hand setup and I wasn't sure which to do.

3. Why don't you opt for Curses immunity on a flask? Are we immune to curses and I missed it? Same question with shock, but I see it would be the least useful to go for out of all the mods on a flask since we only have so many slots.

Just hit 71 and compared to zipping around maps with whirling blades it feels really slow in comparison. The damage felt bad, but probably gets better, which is why I was interested in the Ele more damage variant.

Elementalist only loses the 2nd Curse, 1.5% regen, and having to spend 2 points for Unwavering Stance. They are all decent, but doesn't reduce your direct tankiness really at all, just a bit of your recovery. I just stayed at 1 curse, since we use CWDT for apply curses they aren't up all the time on trash and they have a large amount of reduced effectiveness on bosses.

Its always really beneficial to get level 21 for spell gems, its around a 10% dps boost on its own. They are actually pretty cheap atm because of the beastcrafting recipe. You can get Firestorm for only 1c and Scorching Ray for 30c. For support gems you get a modest boost out of getting them 20% quality, but its not nearly as big, only 1-2% dps upgrade.

I went for Curse immunity on my sulphur flask to get the most uptime for it, because of how common they can be on red tier maps. You have reduced shock effectiveness on your Pantheon, so I don't think its really needed generally. Can easily swap it in if you are doing a boss you think it will be an issue on.

The low movement speed is the main drawback to the build, but you can't have everything. It doesn't insta clear like some bow builds, but stuff dies pretty quickly by just doing a sweep of Scorching Ray across the screen.

"

endoscient wrote:

Elementalist only loses the 2nd Curse, 1.5% regen, and having to spend 2 points for Unwavering Stance. They are all decent, but doesn't reduce your direct tankiness really at all, just a bit of your recovery. I just stayed at 1 curse, since we use CWDT for cure enemies they aren't up all the time on trash and they have a large amount of reduced effectiveness on bosses.

Wouldn't you also be losing Arctic Armour for Herald of Ash? Not sure how much that really helps anyways.

"

Nukeithard wrote:

Wouldn't you also be losing Arctic Armour for Herald of Ash? Not sure how much that really helps anyways.

I dropped Vitality for the Herald instead of Arctic Armor. So overall was a loss 3% ES regen for going Elementalist, which I think was well worth how much damage was gained.

I went for the 2% life/mana regen boot enchant and +30% ES recovery rate with Discipline Watcher's Eye, which more then made up the difference.

@Endo

I was looking at your character+tree and had a question:

Do you have any leech at all? If not, why specc into Ghost Reaver? :)

Also I was looking at other baby ascendancies. What do you think about Inquisitor over Elementalist?

From what I can see the Pro's/con's look like this:

Pros:
+20 Strength
100% up time on Consecrated Ground vs bosses
More Damage vs trash (slightly) and almost the same vs Shaper/Guardians
Immunity to Status Ailments while on C-Ground frees up flasks by making a Sulphur a nice all-rounder

Cons:
Gotta take out Firestorm for Reflect maps
-1 Golem
+1 Passive point required. (This is without exploring the options of the Templar Start/split tree)

It looks to me like it's a very solid option compared to elementalist. Let me know what you think or if I missed something obvious.

I have %fire leeched as life from my amulet. Its not ideal as it won't be enough to cap you against single target. If I wanted more regeneration, I would switch to Vitality and a get a damage life leech with Vitality Watcher's Eye.

I think Inquisitor is worth it if you really want the better Consecrated Ground uptime and elemental ailment immunity. Personally I would rather the reflect immunity and the extra ~10% boss damage of Elementalist. You can mitigate element ailments with Flasks, and I have the glove enchant that casts Consecrated Ground when you take a critical strike.