[2.2] Electric Righteous Fire | 8.4k life | 18k Armour | 1.3K Regen | Double Auto Curse

Patch 2.2 (Ascendancy) has many changes and some affect this build as well, some good and some bad. Note that the sections below are not updated yet with the new changes in mind so make sure to read this section.

The good:

- This gem:

Before I was using increased rarity for a lack of a better option, but now we can use this gem to further increase the damage of RF. Again you can use concentrated affect if you want for some bosses.

- Summon Stone Golem:

This gives you a bit more regen. You can use flame golem if you want more damage but the benefit of having more regen is that now you can stand on shocking ground without losing life

In the past one problem that I had was exploiting the sockets in the most efficient way possible. This is still a problem but I figured, I can drop vaal molten shell and put vigilant strike in its position. Vigilant strike needs only 6 mana and my character has 6 mana unreserved! It's a close call but practically it's always available because of the vigilant strike cooldown. So you can now put stone golem in the position of vigilant strike.

- Ascendancy classes! See more on this below

- Enchantments. While these are in no way necessary for the build to work they can give a nice boost. For the helmet I would prefer more aoe and for the boots regen when being hit. However I am not the type who grinds the labyrinth so I will probably wait to find one to buy.

The bad

- No more talismans. As I explain below talismans give a nice boost to regen that is really valuable. Unfortunately they are no longer available especially in perandus leagues so unless you can afford to buy or craft a +1 to maximum curse shaper seed there needs to be a solution to this. Fortunately the Chieftain subclass solves this problem.

- Nurf to utility flasks. Now the ruby flasks no longer give +10 to maximum fire resistance but +6. This change was enough to make ruby flasks not viable for life recovery.

Now some of you may wonder, what about the new alchemist mode:




The truth is that this practically only gives +1 to maximum resistance and thus it's not enough to provide a fast life recovery. This is true even if you get purity of fire to 23lv (+5 to maximum fire resistance). In addition it reduces the duration of the flask significantly.

From the experiments I did i found that the best solution now is life flasks. I think a catalysed eternal with 20 quality is the best option:



In addition life recovery from the belt is important:

Currently I am using 1 bubbling divine and 2 catalysed eternals but I am still experimenting. An alternative is 3 bubbling divines, but the problem is that because of the large life pool you need 3 charges to fully recover your life while with catalysed eternals you only need 2.

I also want to experiment with the new Sulphur Flask (and have only 2 life flask instead).


Finally another addition that could be an alternative is to use the new Elemental Overlord Keystone (triggering it by using shock nova) with the expense of losing 200-300 life. I did try it and while it gave a nice damage boost when active, it didn't happen often enough for me to like it. But I am mentioning it here in case someone wants to experiment.

Pros:
+ Fairly tanky because of life pool and armour
+ Good clearing speed because of EE and double curses
+ More active gameplay than the traditional Righteous Fire build
+ Can do many map mods for a Righteous fire build
+ Not exactly a cheap build but certainly not particularly expensive

Cons:
- Leveling is tedious and there is a need to reach end game for the build to really work well
- Not beginner friendly because of complications of the Righteous Fire skill
- Not a boss killer, the build is optimized for clearing packs
- Not great mobility, because of having to use flame dash
- Not so much life as a traditional RF build because of some uniques needed with no life and not that much strength.

Unfortunately there is no tooltip for Righteous fire.

This is the shock nova stats although they are not meant to be compared with a shock nova build:



This is the defense tab:

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAEBAQHcAecEswUtBg4J9gthDF8UIBRNFrsYVhiRGS4aPhpVHKcc3CFgJ-0o-ikuKaUuUzWSNug64TwFPC09_EGHQzFDyESeRZ1Hfk3jUEdTUlOlU7tXDVhjW6BfP2EhZKNlTWhlaHRo8nTtdPF2rHrvfA58uIIHgpuCx4Nfg8yE2YTvhymMz48alKCYrZo7muCezZ_Ln9-iAKZXpzCnVa2Nr2y3PriTvJ-9Nr_VxFjE9sauxtjLHs9-0iHSONNv1HzYvdlh2XzaYtrB4XPr7u8O73zwH_Gs8i_yQfJF843zm_SD9kj3ufno_Ev-Cv6P

Main gear:



Flasks:



Jewels:

There are 3 options Juggernaut, Cheiftain and Berserkser. Berserker has a node to give more damage but with increased damage taken. I don't like this option as this will make it harder to sustain RF without degenerating.

Generally there are 2 cases:

- If you have (or you can access) a talisman, or if you can afford a corrupted shaper seed with +1 to maximum curse, go for Juggernaut. With Juggernaut you gain better movement speed and armour and also some damage/regen when having fortify:



- Otherwise (for most people in perandus league) go for Chieftain:

Weapon:



There is no better weapon for this build than Doryani's Catalist. The elemental damage fully buffs Righteous fire (spell damage from simple wands does not, since the damage done by Righteous Fire is not spell damage). In some RF builds they use doons but this is sensible because in those builds there is a focus on STR from gear. In this build we need various attributes so it doesn't have that much STR to justify using it.

In addition we need doryani's for another reason as well: exploiting the fact that it also supports the active skills in it with elemental proliferation, which is important for shock nova (and gaining effectively an additional socket using this method). The elemental damage, cast speed and critical also buffs shock nova making it more effective.

Shield:



This is mandatory for most Righteous fire builds and this is no exception. The +8 to maximum fire resistance is critical for the build to work.


Body Armour:



For a Righteous Fire build you need as much life as possible since it buffs both survivability and damage. A life based armour/evasion chest can be ok for a start, but for end game you need something better than that. One solution is belly of the beast and it has the benefits that it has sockets which you can use to enhance the build further. In the past this was an option because it was cheaper than Kaom's heart but now Kaom's haert isn't so expensive and it gives you more life and also fire damage. Also considering that we use some uniques with no life and that we can't get that much str we need as much life as possible from the chest for the build to work well. You can try belly of the beast but I think that Kaom's heart is the way to go here.

Helmet:



Normally for a Righteous Fire build you would go for an armour life based helmet with strength. However for this build to work Alpha's Howl is mandatory. You are losing life from the helmet this way, but really there is no way to skip this item in this build. It is mandatory because of the 8% reduced mana reserved mod. There are similar nodes on the tree, but taking them is a waste of precious other nodes. The reason we need the reduced reservation is because of the need to run grace, herald of thunder and of course purity of fire. In addition Alpha's Howl buffs grace and purity of fire levels. Finally it gives the benetit of being freeze immune.

Gloves, Boots and belt:



Get as much as life life/str as possible and also enough resistances for the build to work. Ideally the bases would be armour based and a leather belt but this is the most expensive option. I went for armour/ES glove/boots because I need 3/4 blue sockets and getting them on a pure armour variant would be harder. Notice that I got intelligence for the boots instead of str. It turned out this was a better option because it allowed me to skip the 2 +30 inteligence nodes and get more %life increase nodes.

For the boots get nothing less than 30% increased movement speed. The build isn't so fast anyway so having slow movement speed from the boots would be a problem. That's the main reason I dismissed Windscream as a way to have an additional curse

Ring one:



Get as much as life, str and attributes (unless you can get the attributes elsewhere for example the gloves). Ideally you would want to go for a coral ring but this would make it a bit more strict in the stats you should get from items so it is a bit of a more expensive option.

Ring two and amulet:


I am putting these two under the same category because you effectively have 2 options:
- Doedre's Damning + Primal Skull talisman
- Rare ring + corrupted Shaper's Seed with +1 maximum curse

I don't know if talismans will be available in the following leagues but the first option is better (because it is easier getting attributes in an amulet) and probably much cheaper.

I recommend getting a Primal Skull Talisman with as much life and attributes as possible and if possible resistances as well. Using this method you can skip using Vitality and make this build possible. Some could argue that you don't need that extra 2% regen because you can make it possible to sustain the regen without it, but this would make the build highly vulnerable to curse/shocking ground and you will effectively have very little regen when RF is active.

The Doedre's Damning is there for getting the +1 curse that helps a lot with the clearing speed for this build. It also gives you some resists and intelligence.

Flasks:


I am using a bubbling life flask for hard situations and 2 ruby flasks. When using the ruby flasks you are effectively going to have great recovery from a normal life flasks and also have the benefits of very high fire resistances in some situations. Also because they are duration flasks they are better for getting mods like warding or staunching.

I use a rumi's flask for some additional block that works well in packs, but I only did because I happened to find one. Alternatively get a granite flask of iron skin. This build has some decent armour for a righteous fire build, but using a granite is important for hard situations.

Ideally I would want to use a quicksilver flask but I decided that using an amethyst flask is more important for cases where I take high amount of chaos damage, for example the Jungle Valley boss, beyond monsters etc.

Regarding flask mods:
A righteous fire build works as long as you have enough regen and fire damage mitigation as possible. However elemental weakness/vulnerability curses from enemies and shocking ground can result in you taking more damage than normal and as a result losing life. Even though this build is very good at dealing with such cases it's best to have flasks with such mods. I have 2 flasks that remove curses, 1 that makes you immune to shocking and of course one staunching for corrupted bloodlines and bleeding.

Regarding resistances and attributes in general:

For resistances it is very important to get as much fire resistances as possible. This means having enough fire resistance to be overcapped (ideally 88% fire resistance) even when you are cursed with elemental weakness in maps. This is very important because you will be able to do elemental weakness+vulnerability maps.

Also please get at least 2 items with 25+ chaos resistance. If you have only one such item chaos damage will be a problem. You need to get the first item ideally from act2/act 3 merciless for smoother leveling.

When it comes to attributes you need a lot of dex and int, more specifically you need 155 dexterity and 155 intelligence. Initially you can get this from the +30 nodes on the tree but when you reach maps you should try to respec these and get the attributes from the gear. Personally I also got some dexterity from one of the jewels to achieve that.

Jewels:



For each jewel get nothing less that 7% increased maximum life. You can also get some attributes/resistances if needed and also try to get damage as well. Ideally increased damage and increased area damage are the best because they buff both RF and shock nova. If you can't you can also get increased fire damage and damage over time that only affect RF. 2 of the jewels I got buff lightning skills but I mainly got these because they were cheaper versions, but later I felt that it was not needed to upgrade.

Finally I tried to get shock duration from 2 of the jewels to help shock nova be more effective. Since shock nova doesn't have that much damage, getting shock duration is the best way to increase the effectiveness of shocking. I wouldn't say that it is mandatory to get this from jewels (and it's a bit hard finding ones with top roll life/damage/shock duration) but if you can get them it will be better.

This build is very limited on sockets and ideally I would need some more for the build to be more effective, but here is what I have come up with:

Shock nova:



This should be put in the doryani's to also have shock nova supported by elemental proliferation to increase the chance that you shock as many enemies as possible and thus killing one of the enemies while shocked. Blood magic is mandatory because this build has no mana left. I used lightning penetration as opposed to for example spell echo because the important here is that shock nova to do hard enough hits to be able to shock as many enemies as possible and in cases where the enemies have resistances.

20 quality on shock nova is quite important because it gives you 40% increase shock duration. Even though you can't shock all enemies in all situation, generally it is effective enough to have double curse running in most cases. Elemental weakness buffs shock nova further and in addition you exploit the buff from Righteous fire to make shock nova even more effective.

Righteous Fire:





I support Righteous Fire with increased aoe and burning damage and for a lack of a 4th gems that could buff damage, Increased Rarity. Increased rarity isn't going to make you a culler, but it gives a nice boost in the number of rare items you get.

What about concentrated affect? This buffs Righteous fire significantly, but the impact in the area of effect doesn't make it suitable for clearing maps in my option. I have it in the second setup of weapons and use it occasionally on some boss fights if needed.

When the patch notes of 2.1 were announced the introduction of Rapid Decay made me think I could use that one as the fourth gem. It doesn't work though because Righteous fire is not a duration gem. It only works if you support it with spell totem which effectively make RF a duration skill.

You can put righteous fire in the gloves or the boots

Herald of thunder and curses:



This build is based on using herald of thunder to automatically cast 2 curses, Flamability and Elemental weakness.

You can use this setup only when you get RF working and only when you get Alpha's Howl, enlighten gem and ideally Doedre's damning.

This setup can be put in the gloves or the boots.

Auras and Vaal Gem:



It is quite important to put the auras in the Alpha's Howl to benefit from the + 2 to level of socketed aura gems. You also need enlighten level 2 for the build to work. Either buy a level 1 gem and make another character to level it (if you are planning on RF later) or buy a level 2 enlighten gem as soon as possible when you get to maps.

There is one 4th socket that remains and since you can't put any skill that has a mana cost I decided to go for a Vaal Gem. I think Vaal Molten shell is a good option that gives armour and additional damage and fits with the character's theme.

Flame Dash and Vigilant strike:



Here comes the main issue with limited sockets: Mobility and passive mitigation.

Ideally I would want to use the classic setup of enduring cry+ CWDT immortal call. However this is just not possible. So I decided to go for Vigilant strike because mitigation from the fortify effect is strong. The main issue with vigilant strike is that you can miss if you are not close enough to the enemy and hit them directly. Alternatively you could just use enduring cry which can also taunt enemies and you don't have to be near them to work, but mitigation is not so great as fortify. However this is something you may try yourself to see what you like the most

For mobility I use flame dash because:

1) This build doesn't have great attack or cast speed to get lightning warp or leap slam
2)There is only one socket to spare and in this case flame dash is the only option that can be effective.

Flame dash is not amazing though when compared to other mobility skills and perhaps ggg should consider improving it. I suspect though that this would need more support gems.

Blood magic support gems is again mandatory because of no mana left to cast anything.

I am not particularly good and being efficient in leveling so I will not go into much detail here when it comes to gearing, but I will describe how to progress in the tree in detail because this is a complex enough build when it comes to this.

The biggest problem with Righteous Fire when it comes to leveling is that it just can't be used before level 65. So you have to level your character using other skills. Personally I used molten strike and searing bond. I also tried flameblast but I felt it wasn't so effective in the current meta.

Generally try to do various gear upgrades while leveling roughly every 10-15 levels for example getting Geofri's Baptism at level 27+ then get a good rare 2H at 35-40. I recommend leveling with a 2H because you won't be having enough damage nodes and thus you need a way that it is effective even without them.

Also, it is important to get some gems as early as possible so you can level them in time, especially purity of fire.

In addition this build in particular is even harder to level because you need to spread quite a lot. Until level 50 I was mainly getting attributes from the tree and I had around 1500 life! If you decide to do this in hardcore you need to find a different strategy though since you need more defenses even up to that point.

If your are playing in SC (which I think this build is more suitable for) here are some passive trees at various levels I recommend going for which is the strategy I used:



Take the life/life regen in the begining and an armour node


Take Diamond Skin, some armour nodes, the barbarism life cluster and some attributes towards the templar tree.

Remember to Help Oak.



Get all the attributes until the 4 big +30 dexterity/intelligence nodes including those. Take the Arsonist damage cluster.



Take all the skill points up to iron reflexes.



Take all the attributes towards the scion life wheel and also take Constitution. Take the 2 attributes toward the templar area



Get all the attributes etc up to the quick recovery cluster. Kill all bandits and take the skill point.



From now on we need get as much life as possible since taking all these attributes means we didn't take so many life nodes so far.

Take Sanctity and the Discipline and Training life cluster in the templar area. Also take the Bloodless life cluster in the marauder area.



Get the Golem's Blood life cluster nodes in the Duelist tree, the elementalist cluster damage nodes and some life nodes from the Scion's life wheel.

In act 2 kill all bandits to get the skill point.




Get the life recovery cluster, the Combat Stamina cluster and the Master of the Arena. These should prepare you into having enough regeneration to run righteous fire in the 65+ levels.




This is the important part where you should be able to use righteous fire. Get the remaining life nodes in the Duelist area and some regen nodes in the start of the Templar area. Use a primal skull talisman (even if it's not your final/end game one) and the Rise of the Phoenix shield to be able to use Righteous fire.

It's also quite important to have enough fire resistances. Purity of fire (if started leveling early in the game which i highly recommend) should not be of high enough level to give you +3 to maximum fire resistance. If you are having a problem, buy a +2 to fire gems sceptre with fire damage until you get Alpha's Howl.

Until you get Alpha's Howl and level 2 enlighten you can't use the herald of thunder setup. Until you do just play Righteous fire as a normal RF build and manually cast Flammability.



Get the remaining life regen nodes in the templar starting area and the life regen nodes in the scion start. Also get elemental equilibrium.



Try to get your final gear and respect the 2 +30 intelligence and one + 30 dexterity nodes so that you can take the Juggernaut life/armour cluster.
After 75 get the increased aoe nodes in the templar area one life node from the Scion's life wheel and the life/mana node in the start of the Templar tree




After level 80 go for Unwavering stance, the rest life nodes from the big life wheel near scion and all the jewels.

If you want to go past 90 just aim for even more life!

Gorge Enfeble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daLVihy16f0
Zana of the above (T9 courtyard): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9wUHpRWcjA

- What map mods can this build run?

It can run all mods except for: Blood Magic, -Resistance, -40/60 life recovery and no regeneration. You can run elemental weakness+vulnerability maps. You can run shocking ground maps, there is some slight degen when being over shocking ground but it is minimal enough to not be an issue. Be careful of: combining vulnerability with shocking ground, elemental weakness + added cold/lightning damage unless you have overcapped resistances for all resistances.

- Is this build hardcore viable?

This build is probably hard to complete in hardcore. Perhaps you probably need to level even higher with another build (up to 75-80) then respect to RF. Generally it's tanky enough because of life pool and some armour, but to be honest I don't highly recommend doing RF in hc because RF has many risks (for example curses etc and something could go wrong) and also is effectively a melee build, but it doesn't have so much armour as a pure armour build. I guess it's possible to do, but I would not try it, unless perhaps I already had a high level character and respeced into it.

- Is this build Atziri Viable?

No. I tried doing here and it went bad. This is because for Atziri you need builds with good mobility and very high damage (especially for bosses). In addition I encountered an issue I didn't realise at the beginning: Because of curse reflection I was dying at some points pretty fast. If you want to try her, just switch off herald of thunder, after all curses are not so effective to bosses anyway. Also use concentrated effect.

- Why grace/Iron reflexes?

Considering the fact that we are using Kaom's Heart the armour you can get from the gear is limited. Using grace and Iron reflexes is a great way to buff the armour of the build.

- But why armour? Since life buffs damage and since you can get so much life from Kaom's Heart, why not go full life

First of all most of the armour nodes are part of life nodes/regen nodes etc that you would need to take anyway. The few armour nodes that you could skip are the armour nodes in the beginning of the marauder tree (but you would lose 0.5% regen anyway) and the evasion/armour nodes near Iron Reflexes (but they also give good resists).

More importantly, in the current meta (after awakening) the monster do more damage and thus not having any armour is going to make your life pool drop very easily, especially considering the melee like gameplay. So even if you have a bit less life, the armour investment is going to make the
gameplay much smoother.

- How much fire resistance does this build have?

88% which works fairly well. If you buy level 21 purity of fire though (or if you manage to corrupt it yourself to 21) you can get this to 89% since 21lv+2 from Alpha's Howl=23lv. In 23lv purity of fire gives you +1 more to maximum fire resistance. I didn't get it because I think the build works great without it, but I may consider getting one at a later time.

- Why so much regen? Can't you just skip some life regen nodes?

It's possible to skip but this will make the build more vulnerable to curses/shocking ground. I don't see why you would not try to make the build as stable as possible.

- Is this build good for parties?

It's possible to play in parties, especially if you curses help the builds of other party members, but personally I feel that I can enjoy more this build by playing solo.


- Can I use any other skill other than shock nova to trigger herald of thunder?

I suppose you can, for example use arc, but I think shock nova matched more the way RF works and also with 20q it gives you a significant shock duration bonus.

- What about triple curse?

I thought about it but in the end it would require too many compromises and it would probably make the build to have bad survivability.

- What about curse immune maps?

You can certainly run such maps but the clearing speed will not be so good.

- Doesn't elemental equilibrium reduce the dps of shock nova?

It does, but since the goal is not to do damage with shock nova this is not a problem. Also for herald of thunder to work usually the first hit is enough for packs.


If you have any other questions, or if you think a question should be added here, please add a comment or PM me with your suggestion!