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

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Nemezile wrote:

Just of the top of my head, how about making a lightning themed build like this, with Thunder herald, tendrils as main attack? I am sure there are tons of spells that can be made passive that would work well :), Ty for the nice old slow guy guide :) suits me well.

Lightning Tendrils would probably do great.

+much higher base damage and built in AOE
+doesn't require any projectile speed, making gearing much easier
-needs a lot of Increased Area of Effect to match the same area that a long-range Incinerate covers.
-doesn't take advantage of the 40% fire spell damage from Arsonist.

Probably something like this at level 88, 110 pts, for 36% increased AOE from skills, 49% from q20l20 IAoE support.

Though I love HoT and it was a valuable part of the build in 1.3, I have a hard time fitting in a Herald of Thunder in 2.0 except by losing Arctic Armour, and that would seem a crying shame.

More generally, it is hard to think of which spell the core build wouldn't do pretty well with. It is a very generic "be a strong regeneration-absorption tank with a bit of life leech to tide you over on huge packs" build that allows just about anything to be bolted on... And if one is willing to give up the "with a bit of life leech" dual-curse part, then that's another 5 to 7 points to allocate as needed.

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reThenok wrote:

Doesnt CI require stun/freeze immunity?

No.

They are very handy to have, but unlike with a Leech-CI build, that requires constant damageoutput not to die, they are not required for regeneration builds.


That being said, playing a regeneration build without an anti-freeze flask would be a bad idea, as there are situations where one suffers damage overload while perma-frozen otherwise.

In my case, i chose to make one of my two lightning resistance flasks do double duty as anti-freeze with 4.2s immunity and don't recall ever dying to being frozen since the patch where anti-freeze granted immunity, but if you consider freezing a major concern, the smart thing would be to have one of your flasks be of a type with a very long duration. IIRC the Sanctified Mana Flask has the longest duration of any flask, but look it up if it is a concern.


With respects to stun, in almost all situations your regeneration will be strong enough to keep you alive while your enemies die or you run away, depending on how dangerous the situation is, but perma-stun is a threat and more of a one in 2.0 than it was in 1.3 due to the across the board increase in enemy damage output.

So I'll just point out that once the 96 point core of the build have been taken, there's nothing to prevent you from spending the 4 points it costs to take Unwavering Stance (and the worthless 3x10 STR that leads to it).

I didn't feel the need to do so in 1.3, and I really didn't want to lose out on the nice evasion I got from my Vertex Mask, but that issue is one that I'm currently reconsidering due to the more lethal 2.0 environment.

Flame Dash is without shadow of a doubt my favourite new spell!

I got myself some upgraded ES boots without movement speed and looked around for movement substitutes. Flame Dash fills that role admirably over short distances between groups of monsters. (I set it up bound to left mouse button and with the "cast in place" key changed from shift to space for ease of use.)

That it can also be used as an escape mechanism (if not stunned while casting) just makes it even better.

On tempest league I got to lvl 86 and despite insane defenses managed to RIP lol. Was on temple map with freezing tempest, had a lag spike and got hammered by layered lightning storms.

I had 13.200 ES with 2k regen per sec, it was glorious. Too bad i died lol. Now the big question, make similar build or try something else!



Cheers!
Avantor

Too bad, Avantor. At least you died to a real challenge and not an artificial one.

My own last death in standard was testing the hypothesis:

13k ES and 1.8k regen will let me facetank Tunneltrap in melee range, when 75 Orchard grants it following bonuses: +87% cold damage, +88% lightning damage, frenzy charges, +24% increased movement/cast/attack speed."

Answer: no, it won't. I died in 3-4 seconds. (Of course, Tunneltrap's damage is easy enough to tank at range, even boosted, but those melee attacks were just too much.)

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For your next build, try making that lightning tendrils build variant. On paper it looks interesting and powerful, but the question of how many skill points needs to be invested in increased AOE for it to rival - or surpass - the incinerate version can only be discovered through testing, and skill points are in high demand for this build as you well know.

Pi2rEpsilon, can u answer me? This buil is good for HC?

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mystic5 wrote:

Pi2rEpsilon, can u answer me? This buil is good for HC?

Having never played HC, I cannot personally vouch for it being good in HC.

It seems reasonable to assume it is since the core of this build is very, very, hard to kill if you don't fall behind the gear curve in ES items, though you will probably want to spend your skill points outside the core regeneration aspects of the build (the first 90-96 that grant 11.1% reneration, armour%, CI, and bulk of Max ES%) differently in HC than in SC, e.g. picking up more Max ES%. (And having one or two Increased Duration-Vaal Discipline around for dangerous things such as opening strongboxes.)

I can say that other people have played it in HC and apparently had fun, such as Avantor who played it in beta and in 2.0... and who just announced his unfortunate death at level 86 in Tempest during a lag spike a few posts above this one.

A death notice is perhaps not the greatest advertisement for a hardcore build, except insofar as in this case it shows survival well into the mapping endgame.

Pi2rEpsilon, thx for ur answer. And i have some question now, i want to try that buil in Tempest. Above you wrote about "Flame Dash", i think it's a great defensive skill, but i don't know which skill i can change on this skill.

P.S. sry fo my bad English, i hope u understand me :)

The essential links (apart from Incinerate) I use are

(Enlighten)-Vitality-Discipline-Arctic Armour

And in two or more CWDTs: Enfeeble, Warlord's Mark (or Temporal Chains), Molten Shell, Chaos Golem.

Everything else is free for variation, adding a bit of damage or survivability depending on what you prefer, though I like having at least one Firestorm present (with or without Conc. Effect). Heck, one could even replace Chaos for Fire Golem on all trivial content.

For HC, I would probably run something close to the following.

(Enlighten)-Vitality-Discipline-Arctic Armour
Increased Duration-Flame Dash-Vaal Discipline-Vaal Discipline*
CWDT-Enfeeble-Warlord's Mark
CWDT-Chaos Golem-Frost Wall
CWDT-Molten Shell-Firestorm-..errr, possibly Summon Skeletons as 4th? It will generate a few skeletons that die to one or two hits, which isn't worth much, but on the other hand those are hits that don't hit you, so... Or perhaps just a Fireball, Cold Snap, or Conc. Effect.

* or Increased Duration-Faster Casting-Vaal Discipline. The first variation allows to charge two so you may have one available while the other recharges, the second cuts down on casting time making interrupts less likely. Of course, it only costs 4 points to pick up Unwavering Stance if you want that, in which case you'll never suffer interruption, making Vaal Discipline more useful as a reactionary spell rather than something you use just before doing dangerous things like opening strongboxes.


But again, it all depends on the situation. One variant I played had a bit more evasion mixed in with the ES (from Vertex Mask, rings, etc.) and in that case I got a lot of mileage out of Blind in the following CWDT:

CWDT-Chaos Golem-Firestorm-Blind

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Pi2rEpsilon wrote:

The essential links (apart from Incinerate) I use are

(Enlighten)-Vitality-Discipline-Arctic Armour

And in two or more CWDTs: Enfeeble, Warlord's Mark (or Temporal Chains), Molten Shell, Chaos Golem.

Everything else is free for variation, adding a bit of damage or survivability depending on what you prefer, though I like having at least one Firestorm present (with or without Conc. Effect). Heck, one could even replace Chaos for Fire Golem on all trivial content.

For HC, I would probably run something close to the following.

(Enlighten)-Vitality-Discipline-Arctic Armour

Question: I haven't had a chance to play around with enlighten in 2.0, but, once I could afford a Vertex, I was debating between using Enlighten or Empower as the fourth gem in the helmet, to add to Discipline/Vitality/AA. Does Enlighten allow you to run incinerate without Mana Leach?

Thanks for all your help with this great build.

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AedwyneofFolkstone wrote:

Question: I haven't had a chance to play around with enlighten in 2.0, but, once I could afford a Vertex, I was debating between using Enlighten or Empower as the fourth gem in the helmet, to add to Discipline/Vitality/AA. Does Enlighten allow you to run incinerate without Mana Leach?

Thanks for all your help with this great build.

All Enlighten L2+ (or L1+ with Vertex) is allow you to a slightly larger free manapool to smooth things out when changing targets and not hitting enemies with every cast.

Dis-Vit-AA reserves 95%, which can be too little to cast a 6L Incinerate if using equipment without extra intelligence/mana. With the recommended Infiltration wheel's 4% reduction that becomes 92%, which is enough... but I don't find it comfortable. Hence my recommendation to use an L2+ Enlighten to make it more comfortable in use; Another option would, of course, be to spend skill points on the Leadership wheel, but I don't find the 4% reserved mana reduction and +12% aura effect to be worth 3 skill points in general.

As for Empower, it is not an option in the helmet unless you ditch AA or pick up LOTS of extra reduction (Charisma or Sovereignty wheel). Empower-Dis-Vit-AA reserves 117%, so you need at least 22% mana reserved reduction to bring this down to an acceptable level... and that's just too expensive. Empower-Dis-Vit only reserves 86%, so if you prefer Empowered Dis-Vit to running AA and unempowered Dis-Vit, it is an option. (If I had a level 4 Empower, I would actually prefer running that in the Vertex rather than AA because by that point the boost is quite significant and it is active at all times, not only when standing still, but I don't.)