[2.0.0] CI spelltotem Incinerate build - 150k-220k dps / 9800ES

It would likely work, but he said he won't be updating the CI version. Hybrid is simply better for totems than CI, life flasks really can save your life. Would like the see that hybrid guide, but he's said in other threads he's extremely busy lately.

Just hit 70 on talisman mostly following passive tree, self-found except for infernal mantle and 20 quality incinerate. Went for survival first, just over 6k health+ES, trying to get the damage up now. Exp/hour is around 75 million like you said in dried lake, only did one tier 1 map which was quite easy.

I'm following this guid for now, I'm 74 lvl and it's quite cool. But I have couple of questions.

What is pain attunement for if it's not working with chaos inoculation?

And what is life leech with righteous fire for?

Edit: Redone with new gear/tree, +20% poison, and TL;DR added.

Continuing on talisman as hybrid, quite happy with it. I went a different direction in my tree. The big changes are going for the ranger +20 projectile speed node (and the chaos cluster on the way), dropping the fire/elemental damage cluster by double totems, and taking the ES witch path over stun protection. At first I thought I was giving up a lot for the projectile speed, but on further review not as much as I thought. ES vs. stun protection (which saves two nodes for dps later) is personal preference.

Chaos damage is a lot stronger than I thought (see below), so that accounts for at least 2 dead nodes. So is projectile damage, so that's most of one. I actually needed the +50 dex, so that saves more than a point from the +30 one I'd be taking. I also needed the +10 str, +10 int has a little ES, so I view it as something less than 1 node lost for pure +20 projectile speed. That is a trade I willingly make, and repeat if I could. Plus 12% chaos resistance on the way, which I also value.

I've also been crunching numbers a fair bit, and I thought I'd share: (I work nights and can surf the web a lot, but can't play games, so yeah...)

With 20% poison from incinerate (10% poison per second for two seconds base) and with my gear I find 10% increased chaos/projectile/damage-over-time damage to be roughly 15.7% increased fire/spell damage. Increases to poison act effectively as a net more multiplier, and more chaos damage double-dip, so it's very strong.

3% cast speed is edged out by 10% spell damage, and 4% cast speed loses to 10% chaos damage, assuming faster casting and my gear. I still want to test added chaos damage vs. faster casting for completeness, I have the next few days off and I'll get to it.

Assumptions: more chaos damage from void manipulation double-dips on poison from incinerate.

Cast speed and spell damage can be simply evaluated from tooltip dps. This isn't quite true, as totems don't last forever and incinerate has a charge up time. Especially when a hard hitting map boss is killing them often, faster ramp up and higher uptime makes cast speed have an additional hard-to-estimate value. For this reason, I'd suggest 3% cast speed in the witch starter area over 10% spell damage, even with faster casting.

Finally, jewels: With unlimited wealth, the three jewel nodes requiring two passive points each take priority. 10% chaos damage + 30% spell damage or equivalent become possible, which is a great deal. This is not realistic on a new league with limited currency, so I'm not really considering those now. I also only run rain of splinters as a jewel.

Edit: As if that wasn't long enough, I add that even at 20% poison, the damage over time and fatal toxins nodes are not worth it. 37% for 2 nodes works out to 25.2% spell damage total, 6 nodes for 125% poison a bit over 11.8% spell damage per node. (6 nodes taken on my tree) By the time that becomes respectable you should be getting jewels or more health. At 20% that flips, but I don't think its 20%. The 37% assumes skill duration has full value on increasing poison damage, it well may not. If not it's 10.5% per point.

Finally, both shadow and ranger are compelling starting positions. They have starting rows of increased chaos and increased projectile respectively, both of which double-dip on incinerate in this build. Witch has spell damage/3% cast speed, which aren't as valuable. By 90 I plan to have that shadow increased chaos starting line, so it doesn't matter too much. Ranger also works, but you take a *long* time to reach double totems leveling, may be painful. Witch has the advantage of the option of taking 5 ES passives instead of 3 stun protection/+20 str/dex ones, while shadow and ranger do not.

TL;DR: Chaos damage is awesome, double-dipping (at least) as poison.

Using my tree/gear
10% increased Chaos damage---15.7% Spell damage
3% cast speed-----------------9.66% Spell damage (take cast speed anyways)
4% cast speed-----------------12.9% Spell damage
37% increased DoT/2 points----12.6% Spell damage
125% Poison/6 points-----------11.8% Spell damage

If you don't have faster casting, 3/4% cast speed is much higher, and should be taken early. Even with, 3% cast speed is better due to shorter ramp-up charge time on incinerate, meaning at full strength a higher % of the time.

I can't view your tree on my phone, but make sure you're correcting the tooltip dos and cast speed for the actual DPS and cast speed (both will be wrong because they don't include 30% reduced penalty with spell totem or most sources of "increased cast speed" on gear or tree).

Also, don't forget increased chaos damage double dips in a big way. It increases the initial hit and the damage over time...gets a multiplier from void manipulation for the initial hit and damage over time...and double dips for the wither multiplier and damage over time...and is additive for every second of poison you have (at least 2 seconds base).

Continuing further offtopic on a build that isn't actually the original post anymore, I'm wondering if void manipulation actually triple dips. First because all damage is converted to chaos damage, multiplied by void manipulation. Then base poison is multiplied, as chaos damage increases/multiples affect it. Then increased chaos damage applying to poison is multiplied by more chaos? Not sure on the last, so reworking the above post will assume only double-dip.

Above post has current tree (now with url tags added, oops). Following is current gear. 5 pieces are still self-found, which is stunning me at level 83.
Currently trying to find good +30% movement speed boots. With life, ES and lots of resists I'm not sure they exist at any price.

Edit: Added Chaos Damage may beat out Faster Casting on a 5L. If so, that changes the values I had, and makes increased chaos even stronger vs. fire/elemental/spell damage. Frankly, the numbers get so confusing it's hard to keep up.