[2.1]Righteous Fire Blade Vortex, aka The Thermomix™ Hc/Atziri viable, 6k+ hp

I love the way the build plays but I'm having trouble gearing for it during the leveling process. I just killed cruel Malachai and, honestly, I probably shouldn't have made it through alive.

I'm playing in Tempest HC. Life and defenses aren't the problem at the moment - I'm just not doing enough damage and it takes too long to kill things. My tooltip dps for Blade vORTEX is only 531 with Flame Golem and Hearld of Ash up. I'm currently level 57.

I've seen other BV builds do significantly more damage with less. Would anyone mind taking a quick look at my gear and build? I'm not comfortable proceeding with A1 Merciless until I can get this sorted out.

My Gear:


Current build: Passive skill tree build

@Rybaka

Your blade vortex is significantly under your level. You need to find more dex so you can level it up. just leveling it up to your current level would increase it's base damage by 54%(essentially increasing total damage by 54%).

LOL well that's an easy fix! :D

As to the concern of using the build at lower levels... Of course, Rise of the Phoenix is a much later addition, so you don't really 'turn on' until 63... but many forget or disregard leo 3 crafted shields.

We tested some, 15% was cutting it close, it would be much safer the closer to 20% you can get... but it would allow the build to run a 1000 armor, 90hp shield with resists. Adding a lot more to the tankiness of the build, adding a pinch of damage to the RF, and making other jewelery for resists a bit easier.

Just a thought, if you have the time to get the leo craft, it might smooth the transitions through Merci.

P.S. I prefer inc. duration on BV over iron will before you have 400 str, but that was me. I just liked having more blades up while moving for boss fights, seemed to give me a bit more survivability while still outputting some damage. I agree completely though that Iron Will is ultimately a better 4th socket.

@Kwitch

Would you mind explaining the crafted Leo shields in more detail?

I can grind out to 65 in safety but I would be interested in learning what a leveling character would do with level 3 Leo shield mods to benefit this build.

Thanks

Certainly.

Leo is a PvP daily quest master, and you can level him in about 3 days from doing ONLY his dailies (if you don't care to pvp much) to level 3. At which point he offers the following crafting option for shields:

"(10-20)% reduced Damage taken from Damage Over Time"

I mentioned that a 15% would be enough to technically turn on RF, but clearly a 20% would be superior. Assuming you don't have any ES (Since you aren't forced to have RotF shield with ES now)...

You still take 90% of hp damage/sec to fire.

You have 76% base Fire res from barbarism, hopefully PoF +3 (+4 if you have a +fire gems one hander). Lets assume ideal conditions, 80% fire resistance. And 2000 HP.

90% of 2000 HP and 0 ES is 1800 damage per second.
20% reduction of 1800 is 360.

Sum Fire damage/sec is now 1440.
Your resistances should remove 80% of that, due to fire resistance. Which brings current burn value to 1440 - 1152 = 288.

Looking at your tree at your current level, you are already at 8.9% hp regen/sec. More when you reach Golem's Blood under duelist. but 8.9% of 2000 is 178. We're still shy roughly 110 degen per second. Getting Golem's Blood brings that to 10.5%/s, for a total of 210. Imagining finding your dexterity somewhere other than your amulet, and putting on a shaper's seed (currently as cheap as 1c on Talisman HC) brings you to 12.5%/s, for a total of 250hp. At which point RF is actually really viable.

RF means you gain that sweet damage buff, the increased damage from the ability itself, and of course you get to look bad-ass. I'm all for getting that to happen asap.

For what it's worth, 14.4% is the amount you would need with a leo shield at 20% and 4% resist from PoF to completely negate the burn from RF without using RotF. Completely doable, depending on the budget, and in my opinion ultimately worth it. I hate ES in RF builds.
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Also, looking at your gear again, you might move your flame golem to the CwdT setup currently attached to your warcry, as it can no longer trigger from CwdT anymore... also, reduced mana on hatred seems a bit off.

Leo has a crafting mod that is 10-20% less damage taken from DOTs, which includes righteous fire damage.

Assuming 79-80% fire resist from the 1% node and purity of fire you're looking at Rise of the Phoenix giving you a 37-40% reduction in damage with the 8% higher fire resist cap.

Putting the Leo mod on is about half as effective as using a rise of the phoenix but may be enough to sustain righteous fire. Being able to use righteous fire should at least double your damage.

"

Syclic wrote:

Leo has a crafting mod that is 10-20% less damage taken from DOTs, which includes righteous fire damage.

Assuming 79-80% fire resist from the 1% node and purity of fire you're looking at Rise of the Phoenix giving you a 37-40% reduction in damage with the 8% higher fire resist cap.

Putting the Leo mod on is about half as effective as using a rise of the phoenix but may be enough to sustain righteous fire. Being able to use righteous fire should at least double your damage.

Thanks for the TL;DR version! heh. Project PT also was able to show leo crafted shields as entirely feasible in HC leagues. I think he has a build guide about them.

I also just wanted to add that with the warlords mark/bv part of this build, as long as you're hitting things, RF becomes very negligible damage. I was just posting my damage calcs to show you what sitting afk rf damage would be like.

It looks good till you see your blades do the same damage as RF or more

These are the shields Kwitch was talking about, i tried to work around these for quite a while, but in the end i dropped the whole idea since you would need both a lv20 purity of fire and a 20% crafted shield with a Shaper's seed to be able to run RF without losing hp. Overall, i felt that since Rise of the Phoenix is cheap nowadays, the investment just doesnt pay off for the Leo craft.