2.2 Crit Vaal Molten Shell - 1 000 000+ DPS because why not?

This build was made with an emphasis on damage. There are options you can take to be safer while remaining very effective.

Montage of the build in action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lZ5EyvERak

Tier 14 Palace Full Clear + Double Boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6h0EZIvH8c

Arid Lake Run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOQSXHcKW24

How to do the full Atziri fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDf2pAWAe9E


How it works
It's rather simple. The build revolves around the Scold's Bridle item and the fastest cast per second spell; Incinerate. This, in turn, triggers Vaal Molten Shell at an extremely rapid pace. Due to the lack of AoE VMS has, cold damage along with Herald of Ice play a significant role in the quality of life during mapping.

***Very important notice!***
Very few people know that Vaal Molten Shell's chance to crit is either 0% or 100%. It is based on your crit chance at the time you cast it. If that cast was going to be a crit, your VMS will crit for its entire duration. If it wasn't, then it will not crit for the entire duration.

This means that your most important flask should be a Diamon Flask. Popping it before recasting VMS is crucial to ensure the highest possible chance to have crit for the duration of that cast!

**2.2 disclaimer**
- With the Occultist class we get power charges on crit which means we can drop assassin's mark. It'll be replaced by arctic armour.
- Tree has been updated.
- Overall the build is now slightly tankier and does even more damage.

For those with some spare funds who want to see bosses melt even faster, use:

It is pretty ridiculous how fast you kill bosses with this. Just look at my double boss palace video and you'll see. I just recently introduced this to my build and it's one of the best decisions I took lol



Bandits
Normal: Kill all
Cruel: Kill all
Merciless: Help Alira for the power charge.

Occultist Class
Notables to get:
Forbidden Power (Power charge on crit)
Profane Bloom (Free damage)
Void Beacon (free damage)



Gems

Blasphemy -­­> Arctic Armour -> Warlord's Mark -> Herald of Ice
Dual curse to sustain endurance and power charges. Herald of ice is a key aura to get shatters and virtually increase your rather small VMS AoE.

Vaal Molten Shell -> Increased Duration -> Elemental Focus -> Added Cold -> Empower Level 4 -> Increased AoE/Conc Effect
Added cold again to help with the shatters. Added chaos is to complement consuming dark since fire penetration wouldn't do us any good with it equipped. Increased AoE for mapping and tier 12 and lower bosses. Conc effect for tier 13+ bosses.

SWAP
Firestorm -> Empower -> Reduced Mana/Life leech -> Increased Duration -> Conc Effect
Life leech if you have enough mana on tree and items to sustain spam casting. Reduced mana if not. Added benefit of reduced mana is that it also reduces the damage done to yourself from scold's.

Incinerate -> Faster Casting -> Culling Strike
There isn't anything better than these for a 3 link. You don't need damage, you keep incinerate at low level. Culling strike makes boss kills even faster. Faster Casting is all you can use for incinerate now, no more spell echo :'( R.I.P.

Whirling Blades -> Faster Attacks -> Fortify
Neat little way to have fortify up at all times and zoom through the map. Gotta get some tankiness somewhere, right?

CWDT -> Immortal Call -> Increased Duration -> Summon Flame Golem
You don't have to have the summon flame golem at the same level as the CWDT. I'm just too lazy to self cast him. Ultimately you only gain annoyance and 2-3% damage from self casting it anyway.

CWDT -> Cold Snap -> Ice Nova -> Added Cold
Again, shatters (even more useful if you want to put a chill of corruption somewhere in your tree). Shatters and safety since I'm going all out damage. Freezing is the next best thing if you don't get immortal call.



Tankier Options

Don't be afraid to switch things around. This build absolutely destroys everything, but reflect WILL 1 shot you. So if you want to avoid that, you can run a purity of fire instead of a curse and saffel's frame instead of a dagger. Or you can run The Consuming Dark which solves a lot/most of the reflect issues.


Conclusion

This build makes you feel like everything is butter. It's fun, it's fast, it's flashy. It's just what I like to play. You can build it for relatively cheap or for a ton of exalts and any bit you invest will shoot up the DPS.

Hope you guys enjoy my version, have a good holiday season (yay, politically correct!)

VMS is always fun. Thanks for writing it up.

"

mhm83 wrote:

VMS is always fun. Thanks for writing it up.

NP!

edited for speed...

"

Rayzabladez wrote:

edited for speed...

Hmm? The video is not sped up lol, the sound would be distorted otherwise.

Mmm.... I love how melty atziri is in your montage.

"

demopolos wrote:

Mmm.... I love how melty atziri is in your montage.

If only she didn't heal back to 75% when I do that :(

Sorry mate, I didn't mean that you had edited your video and sped it up.

I was trying to edit my own post that I had put up about the build.

I just mucked it up as I had an urgent call as I was editing.

I tried this build and whilst it works well, I found that the molten shell would drop out on me at the worst times.

Apart from this, it went fine. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the potential is certainly there.

"

Rayzabladez wrote:

Sorry mate, I didn't mean that you had edited your video and sped it up.

I was trying to edit my own post that I had put up about the build.

I just mucked it up as I had an urgent call as I was editing.

I tried this build and whilst it works well, I found that the molten shell would drop out on me at the worst times.

Apart from this, it went fine. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the potential is certainly there.

I have 100% uptime unless I take forever to pick up items or I hit a super deep dead end in a map.

Open area maps are 100% uptime. I could even drop the duration gem for those maps.

bump