[2.0.1] Mahesys's Tanky Firestorm/Flame surge build for HC leagues

Hi guys,

Since there is a lack of firestorm builds out here, id like to share with you my build that cruised me to level 77-78 maps and to level 91 in tempest league.

This build has as main attack, as the guide title says, firestorm and as support single target attack flame surge. This build was born casually while i was leveling with magma orb. I wanted to test firestorm and then got totally captured by it. Its clear speed and single target capability totally mesmerized me and i wanted to try to make a tanky version of a firestorm build.

Let's start with the pros and cons

Pros:

- Fast, efficent and safe leveling thanks to high armor and damage of firestorm
- Fast map clearer thanks again to high firestorm dps
- Fast single target clearer thanks to firestorm + Flame surge compo (i'll explain later why)
- Cheap to start with, doesn't need any GG unique gear
- Can tank most mob packs while spamming firestorm and flame surge
- high armor and high hp (can easily reach 10k armor and 5.5k life)
- Works well in melee and ranged situations

Cons:

- Reflect might be a problem, specially with low fire resist mobs
- tedious to run with no mana regeneration map mods
- Without endurance charges or fortify, sometimes lacks of tankiness, even with 30k+ armor
- Difficult to run in reflect elemental maps. life leech is needed in this case

Main and support skill explanation

Main skill: Firestorm



This skill has a basic radius in which a fireball will fall after 0.1 seconds and has a base duration of 2 seconds. This means that in those 2 seconds a total of 20 fireballs will land randomly in the designed area. Thanks to the very fast hitting fireballs it's quite easy, even with only 10% chance to ingite to burn enemies (which will be amplified to 24% with flammability curse). This burn will be very important because of out secondary skill flame surge:



Which deals 50% MORE damage against burning enemies. This combo will melt Any mob pack, rare or unique mob in seconds. All you need is to land 3-4 firestorms and then start spamming flame surge.

Passive tree

Here's my passive tree at level 91:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwUAA3UD7gQHBLMJqhBYFHEWbxo4Gmwc3B2-HwIkqiTYJy8o-iqNLJwyNDOHNZI2xTbYNuk6WDrhPAVBh0PIRZ1G10kbTeNPBFNSValVxlh3WfNfBF8qY_1mVGaeaGVo8moBcYVyD3Kpdqx65nxLggeCm4LHg9uFbYdli4yMdo8akFWRK5RvlnSXtJo7muCdrp_fogCmV6cIrJisqq2Nr7exQrcxtz64k8BmwJrPftWB1abYJNi92XzZ_Nq542rkIuoY6-Tr7uxV7TzvfPAf8WzyQfJF8933Mvjr-d356PrS_gr-jw==?accountName=Mahesys&characterName=SonOfOriath

Passive tree highlights:

- Marauder area life nodes: Extremy useful in order to reach even 6k life and more armor. Also the 1% max fire resist helps against reflect
- Celestial punishment and elementalist: Extremely useful nodes thanks to the total of 10% chance to ignite. This chance will be vital in order to burn enemies down
- Amplify node and AoE nodes: Useful in order to have an increased Aoe of firestorm, which will be further reduced by concentrated effect
- Mana regeneration nodes and deep toughts nodes: With a grand total of 140% mana regene and 28% increased max mana, this build can spam consistently firestorm and flame surge while running 2 auras, clarity and determination
- Sanctity node: Useful in order to have nore armor and a bit of life regeneration, which always helps
- Scion life wheel: Vital in order to reach 5k or 6k life
- Hearth of flame nodes: This build must do some damage too right? those nodes will grant an extra 3% fire penetration and a lot of fire damage
- Elemental resistance nodes: Very important to have a lot of possibilities with gear. We have a total of 31% elemental resists (with a peak of 54% fire resist) which is huge and helps immensly with equip
- Unyelding nodes: Those will give a total of 58% armor AND 20% less damage from critical strikes, which will boost survivability a lot
- Potency of will nodes: Those will provide 45% increased skill doration, which will boost firestorm duration from 2 seconds to 2,9 second, with this extra time is possible to overlap more firestorms on targets, VERY important nodes
- Cast speed nodes: The main goal of the build is overlapping the more firestorm. Cast speed will help immensly in this. With almost 4 casts per second is possible to stack 11 firestorms in 2,9 second which will literally melt everything
- Righteous Decree clusters: These two nodes gives 9% reduced mana costs of skills and 27% incresed maximum mana. Those nodes are useful in order to run a third 25% aura (an herald or arctic armour) IF you manage to get enough mana regen (around 140 to fully sustain a firestorm and flame surge spam)


For leveling, i suggest to get first all the nodes near templar area, then grab the scion life wheel, then nodes near which area and lastly the life/armor nodes in marauder area.

For bandits, i suggest Oak-kill or allira-kill

Optimal Gear for the build

Here is an example of gear you should look for this build (it's my current one):



NB: Mind, some of my gear is pretty nice but nowere near needed. With this current gear i have for example 150% all resist which are nowere near necessary and 16k armor isn't either. With a mid tier gear it's easy to reach 12k armor and 100% all resists

Basically, all you have to do is getting as much as armor as possible on each armor piece. The only one that can be a problem is the chest (5 link) for which you will need hybrid ES/armor (they can still reach 1500 armor tho)

A shield is higly recomended, it is possible for more offensive builds to dual wield wands or go for a staff, it's a matter of choices. As hardcore player i prefere life and armor over more damage.

It's really useful also to have 40%+ mana regene on two pieces of equip in order to reach 100 mana regenerated per second. Without AT LEAST 80 mana regene this build will heavily need mana potions in order to sustain the high firestorm mana cost.

As wand, a standard spell dmg + cast speed will do the job. It's obviously useful to have fire damage to spells, fire damage% or mana regene.

With this kind of gear, armor nodes from tree and determination i have 16400 basic armor, which is boosted to 37k whith a granite flask. This armor will help immensly mitigate most of low-medium physical damages.

As for flasks:



The granite with extra armor is a must have, that will boost armor from 15k to 35k. Mana potions is useful only if necessary in order to sustain high mana cost of firestorm or flame surge spamming. Also is NECESSARY an antibleed flask, since corrupting blood stacks will build fast with both firestorm and flame surge

Gem and Aura choices

For firestom, i suggest this links in order of importance:

Firestorm + concentrated effect + spell echo + faster casting + fire penetration + Life leech/iron will

The concentrated effect is imo a necessity, since with basic range and AoE nodes on tree the firestorm would be too huge and wont hit mobs consistently.

As sixth link, i would go with life leech or iron will, depending on the needs of survivability or damage

For elemental maps (or even mods), swapping fire penetration with life leech helps a lot

Flame surge + Spell echo + concentrated effect + fire penetration

Standard gems on flame surge in order to let it deal more damage as possible

Flammability + faster casting + Increased AoE

Extremely useful for burn enemies and reduce their fire resist, remember burning enemies is useful to have that juicy 50% more damage of flame surge

Determination + clarity + Enlighten

Both auras are a MUST. The first will boost armor by a 50% which will make the difference (from 10k to 15k for example, HUGE gain). The second is necessary to reach 90-100 mana regeneration per second. There aren't really other aura choices unless you want to spend points to reduce aura reservation

Flame dash + faster casting

Movement skill, necessary to escape bad situations and strongboxes

Chaos golem + minion life + minion resists

Useful to have 5% additional physical damage reduction, i really suggest this golem, since the fire one will give really few DPS boost

Shield charge + Fortify

I must test this myself and if it works with scepters, but this would be very useful in order to tank a pack even better

Build gameplay

Usually, all i do is gather a pack of mobs, quaff a granite flask and start casting firestorms, on particulary tough enemies i start spamming flame surge in order to kill them faster. If an enemy is too tough to face in melee range even with 15k armor (see: rakangos), i start spamming firestorm from distance.

On tough packs, i start preemptively casting firestorm near me and then cast directly on me, so the pack will be softened when reaching me. Usually a pack gets stunned in the process without even havinh the possibility to reach you.

For reflect rare mobs some caution is needed: multiple firestorm might be a problem and drain your life away quickly. Spam 2-4 firestorms and then wait for the to fade, use hit and run strategy

My actual stats

With the above gear and passive tree i have this stats

Firestorm offensive stats:



Flame surge offensive stats:



Defensive stats (no Granite):



Defensive stats (with Granite):



Videos

Gorge map full clear 8 minutes, facetanking pack on purpose for tankiness showing! (sry for questionable video quality tho) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbmWQzNXWo&feature=youtu.be

Will add other videos soon!

Of course i'm open to ANY critics on this build and passive tree/gear improvement!!!

Cheers

Hi, I'm trying a templar firestorm using a very similar build too. I'm still low level but I have a suggestion: golem + minion and totem resists + decoy totem. Decoy totem is a very very useful skill to our combo, it will tank very hard punches and will keep mobs in one place. Cheers.

"

DarkLink64 wrote:

Hi, I'm trying a templar firestorm using a very similar build too. I'm still low level but I have a suggestion: golem + minion and totem resists + decoy totem. Decoy totem is a very very useful skill to our combo, it will tank very hard punches and will keep mobs in one place. Cheers.

Decoy totem is indeed useful because you can gather a pack of mobs around it and then firestorm. However i've found out that by the time i use to cast the totem the mobs are usually dead. And even with minion hp + totem resists a decoy totem it's too squishy in hard maps. For leveling is for sure a good option tho

Updated with Stats image and level 90 Tree

very nice, add video pls

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igibek wrote:

very nice, add video pls

As soon as possible, sadly i was out for work and couldn't do a Vid :/

Added Gorge map full clear video!

Updated with level 91 tree and extra passive tre highlights

Oh damn - was the best leveling experience ever..

Got oneshotted with lvl 53 (2,8k life) by a powerful crit skele in the library which was hiding behind a bookshelf...will play this again - unreal dmg :D

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xXNightsageXx wrote:

Oh damn - was the best leveling experience ever..

Got oneshotted with lvl 53 (2,8k life) by a powerful crit skele in the library which was hiding behind a bookshelf...will play this again - unreal dmg :D

Damage specially while leveling is indeed very high. It keeps up later on even in 78+ maps

And i build hardcore, a softcore character can build even more damage and give up some survivability :)