[2.4] The Head Banger: Cast When Stunned, Righteous Fire Juggernaut

Hugs, for everyone!



CwS setups are as follows:
Arctic Breath - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Slower Projectiles - Iron Will - Cast When Stunned (corruption)
Arctic Breath - Vortex - Iron Will - Life Leech - Elemental Focus - Cast When Stunned

In the past, the only way to make a CwS build work was to use a pair of Skyforth boots combined with the blood magic passive node. You also need to take the Eldritch Battery passive as energy shield gives a 50% chance to avoid stuns.
There are two problems here, the first being price; as of 14/10/2016, the lowest listed price for some Skyforth boots was 39 exalted orbs.
The second problem is passives; Eldritch Battery is on the complete opposite side of the passive tree to Blood Magic, which stretches your passives very thin.

The solution is to get your stun threshold as low as possible using a Valyrium Ring which is inexpensive and doesn't require any passives to make it work with a CwS build.

Now by getting as little energy shield as possible, the character's stun threshold is so low virtually anything will stun it.

But this doesn't solve the problem of stun avoidance gained from energy shield, clearly the only solution is to burn it away with RF. By reducing the character's current energy shield to 0, the stun avoidance from energy shield no longer applies. Although the character's energy shield is so low that the first couple of hits removes it anyway, having it permanently at 0 due to RF means you don't need to stand still quite as long before you finally get stunned
Using RF also gives the build consistent damage directly from RF and a huge buff to spell damage, resulting in a high amount of AoE fire damage.

You don't need a corrupted Valyrium ring, however i corrupted mine because it lowers the character's stun threshold even more by removing the energy shield implicit mod. This turned out to be completely unnecessary as this build (at the time Lvl 88) gets stunned by Lvl 40's.


As before, you can opt for a Rise of the Phoenix which has a minimum roll on %increased armour and energy shield and no quality to keep your stun threshold as low as possible. Also as before, this is largely pointless.


CwS works best when there are at least two spells linked with it, as this increases the chance of at least one spell being cast per stun, and potentially casting two spells per stun. But on their own, even with the damage buff from righteous fire, you need at least one damage support to make the spells useful. Life leach is also essential, particularly early on to regain health after taking a particularly savage hit. As such, this build requires a 5-link at the very least.

Using pyre not only buffs righteous fire with it's %increased burning damage mod, but also means that you can use spells such as vortex and arctic breath to greater effectiveness. By converting the damage to fire they now benefit from your flammability curse, and they also benefit from %increased fire damage from passives. This makes your passives and damage mods more effective, especially by using AoE cold spells. Now you can stack Area damage, fire damage and elemental damage which all increase your RF damage and your spell damage. It's also really cheap.


It goes without saying that you don't need a max roll (although it certainly helps), but Doryani's Catalyst not only gives a huge boost to elemental damage, but also gives you a bit of leech, which is very helpful when your build relies on being bashed in the face.


The increased life helps enormously with survivability and also increases the damage caused by righteous fire. However, depending on what spells you want to use, you may find it difficult to craft the socket colours you want for the supports as it will have a tendency to roll green sockets.


Finding a good pair of corrupted gloves (or helmet) with "Socketed Gems are supported with level 12 Cast when Stunned" is pretty tricky although not enormously expensive. This gives you a pseudo Five-Link so you don't have to waste a socket with an actual CwS gem.

These talismans are not hard to acquire or expensive and allows you to have yet another spell linked with CwS. However it only has one damage support and it blinds enemies, reducing their chance to hit and therefore stun.


Koam's heart and Righteous Fire were just made to be, but alas the lack of sockets makes it largely useless for this build, and you're just better off with a 5 or 6-link rare.

For all other gear, this build works best with armour only base items, for obvious reasons; if you evade an attack it won't stun you and energy shield will raise your stun threshold. It is also possible to get %increased stun and block recovery mods on armour, which reduces the likelihood of getting stun locked by giving you a bit more time to move out of the way. It also makes you headbang faster.

Getting gear with strength rolls on them as well is an easy way to get far higher total life and means you can easily justify using an iron will support gem in your CwS setups.

Fire and cold damage jewels will both increase your spell damage, and it's also possible to get increased stun and block recovery as well. Keep in mind that a perfect jewel will have mods which buff your RF and spells at the same time.

eg;

% increased area damage
% increased fire damage
% increased damage

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Shield charge is an excellent way of closing gaps between mobs and getting into the middle of a pack to get stunned as quickly as possible.
You can use cyclone (which makes you immune to stuns while using the skill) to give yourself a method of escape from a situation which could lead to you getting stun locked. However during this time you will obviously not be casting spells and shield charge grants a move-speed buff, which in my opinion makes it superior.
Because this build relies on having all of it's mana reserved for two curses and Purity of Fire, whichever skill you use needs to be supported with blood magic and preferably fortify as well.
Not only does fortify reduce the damage taken from hits (which you take a LOT of), but it also gives health regen and a damage boost from the juggernaut ascendancy.

Ranged mobs can be a problem for this build, or at least ones which stun lock the character through high rate of fire. This is easily solved by having Arctic Breath linked with Greater Multiple Projectiles in a secondary CwS setup.
Not only will this give you a method of dealing with ranged mobs, the explosions caused by arctic breath can "shotgun". That is to say, each projectile, when it explodes, is capable of hitting the same target if they hit closely together.
This makes arctic breath linked with some form of multiple projectiles an excellent choice as it gives both a ranged damage boost but as well as a huge close ranged damage boost.

The RF and dual curses are enough to take care of any white packs and most magic packs without even triggering a single CwS. Against slightly tougher mobs, virtually every hit triggers anywhere between 0 and 3 spells simultaneously (actual results may vary depending on your own CwS setup), and a good portion of that damage is leeched back as life with a life leech support gem.

For bosses which hit really hard it's possible to dodge their attacks while you regenerate health and just use your RF to keep damaging them. Once at full health again, just stand still and wait to get stunned again.
In the case of bosses which are surrounded by other enemies, avoid killing the smaller enemies for as long as possible, particularly if they are ranged, as they will actually help you stay alive by triggering your spells more often, thus granting you more life leech.

There are a few ways to stop yourself from dieing by being stun locked. The first is to simply remove your valyrium ring and continue the fight just as a dual curse RF build. your damage will suffer but you will only rarely get stunned.
This method is very effective against bosses such as piety in malformation where getting stunned will likely end up leaving you in the path of her laser, which is an almost certain instant death.

linking flame dash with Cwdt will get you out of stun locking spells such as firestorm. Usually firestorm (and other similar spells, such as the ice version used by merveil in underground sea) hits so frequently you can't get out of it until it runs it's course.
In the case of Merveil, she tends to cast it on you a bunch of times, meaning you stay stun locked for a VERY long time.
Flame dash teleports you on top of her, away from her spells and within range of your RF, dual curses and closer ranged spells.