[3.5]- The FireWood Tank Champion | Molten strike sword Dual wield | Shaper down

Hello Exiles!!

Welcome to Sthyrael's and Sh4d0w93's Firewood tank build guide




Patch 3.5 update changelog
With patch 3.5 there have been a few changes to Molten strike with a nerf to the number of projectiles ( we've lost 2 projectiles since the threshold jewel is now limited to one) however, to compensate, the skill's base damage for both the melee hit and the projectile component have been buffed plus we can replace the second wildfire jewel with another abyss jewel.

On top of this, the buffs to Grelwood shank and razor of the seventh sun mean the build has lost almost no damage at all while the ignite chance has now gone up to 100% which means razor's life recovery is now permanently up

The cost of making this build might have gone up since the deep rates of Grelwood and razor have been changed and Grelwood is quite sought after as a counter to the projectile nerfs. As a result the build may not be strictly budget anymore.

Overall this build is still very much viable and just as strong as it has ever been

Patch 3.4 update changelog
Tree changes -
The tree for the build has been updated with better pathing to give improved access to Life nodes and damage. Also with the change to the Templar area, it is now better to path through the new cluster there which adds more damage and penetration. On top of these changes, the new tree has an extra jewel socket. Further based on whether or not we have a corrupted Grelwood/Razor with Fortify on hit, we choose to take First to Strike Last to Fall

Itemization changes -
For the absolute endgame I have chosen to use a two socket Tombfist over a pair of rare gloves as well as a corrupted Grelwood Shank with Chance to Fortify on Hit. A watcher's eye with Life gain on hit when affected by Vitality has been added to further shore up our recovery.

Do note that these itemization changes are not mandatory and have simply been chosen these to be able to push the build as far as possible.

As a further note, it would seem that the vitality watcher's eye jewel has become pretty expensive. At the time of considering it as an option, it was around 50c minimum. Now it's over 2 ex and as a result is not worth the opportunity cost. If it does drop to an ex or less then we can consider getting it for the build. In the meantime feel free to use a different jewel or repurpose the three points spent on the socket to get more life/ damage from the tree

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Patch 3.3 update
The build remains unchanged in patch 3.3. If anything we have received a minor buff to damage by the way of the combustion support (previously chance to ignite) reducing enemy fire resistance by 19%.

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INTRODUCTION

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So this build was first made in Abyss league using molten strike as the main skill along with being tanky at the same time whilst also being on a modest budget. The build is currently being remade in Bestiary just to showcase that it was not the OPOP abyss jewels carrying it. The build utilizes the interactions between Grelwood Shank, Razor of the Seventh Sun, Eye of Innocence and Mokou’s embrace to obtain ridiculous life recovery and pretty good damage for the cost spent.

We chose Champion as our ascendancy of choice for the fortify buff back in 3.1 but now after the ascendancy revamp in 3.2, Champion is now much stronger as a class giving us a lot of offensive and defensive options in one package


VIDEO

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Guardian of the Minotaur

Guardian of the Chimera with minus max, hexproof and poison on hit

Guardian of the Phoenix with Enfeeble and no regen

Guardian of the Hydra with 94% extra damage as lightning, Vulnerability and chain

The Shaper


Bonus clip - Ghosted Phoenix with a Tul breach in the boss room (Not without deaths though)



OVERVIEW

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Pros:

+ Tanky with 15k+ armour, permanent fortify, other Champion bonuses
+ Quick recovery mechanics ( Life gain on ignite, leech, regeneration )
+ Most of the uniques used are pretty cheap (<5C each)
+ Great Uber lab farmer
+ Can do all map mods except Elemental reflect and no leech(no leech just because we can't leech back mana)

Cons:

- Melee
- Not a league starter build cos the guardian uniques are expensive at the start of leagues
- Molten strike can cause huge FPS drops so its recommended to run on Dynamic resolution(you have been warned)


SKILL TREE

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Duelist - Champion

New Revamped skill tree ( 115 points Level 92 ) Pathing has been improved to allow for better access to damage and life nodes while also getting an extra jewel socket over the older tree

Old 115 point skill tree (Level 92)

Ascendancy Points:
Champion
Normal Lab - Conqueror
Cruel Lab - Worthy Foe
Merciless Lab - Unstoppable Hero
Uber/Eternal Lab - Fortitude

I chose this order of ascending since you can obtain the benefits of taunt early on as well as ignore accuracy problems thereby making gearing a bit easier. This isn't a hard and fast rule though so do change it up as per your personal preferences.

In case you have a corrupted Grelwood Shank or Razor of the Seventh Sun with the chance to Fortify on hit mod, we would no longer need to take fortitude and can instead take the node First to Strike Last to Fall which gives us Adrenaline on low life

Bandits:Kill all

Path Of Building Pastebin (Updated with new tree and current items) - https://pastebin.com/pr5rWdFU

Path Of Building Pastebin (Old ) - https://pastebin.com/Py9rHTR5

SKILL TREE EXPLANATION

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This build utilizes 3 keystones. Iron Grip to buff the damage of the molten strike projectiles since that is where most of our damage is coming from. Also, keep in mind that molten strike projectiles are not scaled by melee damage nodes https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Molten_Strike. Avatar of Fire for 100% fire conversion and Elemental Overload since we are going non-crit.

Before you are able to get good jewels to use, you can drop the 3 point jewel sockets and instead spec into some other damage nodes. For example, catalyse and the fury bolts wheel are good options for 3 points each.


PANTHEON

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For the Major Pantheon power, go for Brine King initially until you can get Unstoppable hero since stuns are our biggest enemy more than anything else.

Once you've got Fortitude/Unstoppable hero, you can spec into any of the Major powers (based on the situation).

For Minor Pantheon power, Gruthkul is recommended as it is always at full efficacy since we are always hitting ourselves with eye of innocence. So it ends up giving us a free 5% physical damage reduction as long as you've hit something recently.

If you're not using Gruthkul, then you're free to choose from any other Minor power based on the situation (Ryslatha, Yugul, Shakari etc.)

For Major pantheon upgrades, an upgraded Solaris power would help improve our resistance to crits. The rest of the major upgrades are not required.

For the Minor powers, Shakari should be upgraded (who doesn't want poison immunity). The second priority is Ryslatha. The rest of the minor upgrades are not required.

GEAR

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Abyss League gear


Bestiary League gear (BSC)



JEWELS

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We use two Wildfire Jewels in the sockets shown below





The remaining sockets can be used for normal/abyss jewels.

For Abyss Jewels the one socketed in the stygian vyse below should give an idea of what to look for (The crit multi on the jewel below has no effect. Instead try getting life if you can)


For normal rare jewels look for any combination %increased maximum life, %increased damage/physical damage ( damage with swords, while dual wielding etc.), %increased fire damage, %increased attack speed ( similar to the physical damage variants above)

** Please Note - Melee damage/ melee physical damage will not work on the magma balls so be careful of that while purchasing jewels

GEAR EXPLANATION

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There are a few required uniques for the build to function as mentioned in the introduction. The mechanics involved are as follows:
-> Eye of Innocence causes us to take 100 fire damage as a hit everytime we ignite an enemy.
-> Grelwood gives us 2 additional projectiles if we have been hit recently (which is pretty much always cos we get close to 80-90% ignite chance). The iron reflexes while stationary also lets us face tank quite a bit of stuff while wailing away with molten strike.
-> Razor recovers 1% of our maximum life everytime we ignite an enemy (even if the enemy is already ignited). If our attack rolls an ignite, every single one of our projectiles will also ignite and give us the life recovery, as long as they hit the enemy. Since this is life recovery, it is instant (life gain).
-> Finally, Mokou’s gives us a chance to ignite ourselves from the self hit damage of Eye of Innocence to take advantage of the “while ignited” mods on both items.

The rest of the uniques were used simply because they were cheap options that synergized well with the above items, primarily by providing either ignite chance, benefits while ignited or against ignited enemies.

Since we use several uniques, our rares will have to focus on primarily life and resists, with the gloves and belt slots ideally picking up most of the slack.

The prices we mention for our items are generally post first week of league. Some of the Guardian uniques can be extremely costly at the start but then quickly drop once people start farming them.


Weapons



As mentioned, we will be using Grelwood Shank and Razor of the Seventh Sun as our weapons of choice. IMPORTANT: Grelwood must be in your main hand and Razor in the off-hand. This is because Grelwood is the (much) faster weapon and movement skills like leap slam typically use only the main hand weapon’s attack speed.

Second week of league, we managed to get top rolled versions (<4 DPS off of max) of both for <3 C each.

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Helm



Hrimnor’s Resolve is probably BIS here for the freeze and chill immunity if we have used a fire skill recently which is pretty much always. This lets us drop a freeze immunity flask and instead use a DPS flask instead. The helm also provides decent amount of life, armour, cold resistance and increased fire damage. We managed to get a well-rolled one for ~2C around 2 weeks into Bestiary.

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Chest

Use any good rare str base here. Example of something to shoot for -



As to obtaining a six link, you can either roll with a tabula or try farming the Celestial Justicar card https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Celestial_Justicar or even buy any cheap white six link on worse bases ( str-int bases or lower str bases ) as a stop gap until you can get a decent chest. These can be bought for 30c http://poe.trade/search/araugusekaheya

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Gloves



Any good str/str-dex base will work here. Focus on getting resists and life here since this one of the few non-unique items we are using with not many other desirable mods (maybe attack speed if you can manage)

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Boots



We chose to go with Gang’s Momentum as our boots. They give a ton of fire resist, decent chance to ignite and movement speed, and increased damage against ignite enemies. These should cost less than 1 C for one with top rolls.

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Amulet



Eye of Innocence is mandatory. The self hit damage enables most of the secondary effects of the other unique items used. Once we ignite ourselves from Mokou’s, the increased fire damage is also substantial. Try to get a roll >60%. This is generally the costliest unique in the build. In the first week of BSC this costed >50C. Second week, it dropped to around 10 C. We bought ours for 11 C.

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Rings



One of the rings is a Mokou’s embrace for the self ignite chance. The normal ignite chance, cold resist, inc. fire damage and attack speed while ignited are all nice extras.

The other will be a rare ring. The mods that you want here depend on your other rare gear. If you don’t have good gear yet, get a resist ring with life and maybe some flat damage or elemental damage to attacks. If you are good on resists, go ham and try to get a good opal ring with elemental damage to attacks and life. Generally, increased elemental damage is a more useful mod for us than flat phys or fire damage.
This is one of the slots where the price depends on how much you want to invest. You can get a decent ring for anywhere between 1 C to 20 C, but a good opal could cost you 1-2 Ex.

An example of a ring for end game -

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Belt



Use a good rare belt here. Life, resists, elemental damage to attacks are a priority. Start off with a normal base and eventually switch to a Stygian Vise once you can get your hands on one.

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Flasks



You can use a regular utility flask as you see fit. Unique flask options include Dying Sun and Wise oak which give a big boost to DPS but both are by no means required at all (even for Guardians and Shaper)

LINKS AND GEMS

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Main DPS Setup


Molten strike is our main skill. Elemental damage with attacks and multistrike are obvious support choices to start off with.
Since we care about igniting enemies reliably, we use a Chance to Ignite support. This also gives decent amount of more fire damage.
Since we are attacking enemies who are always ignited, using Immolate gives us a bunch of flat fire damage to our attacks.
Final link is Ancestral Call for clearing and Fire Penetration for bossing. You can get away with using Ancestral Call for 90% of bosses in the game, especially if you use the attack in place trick to proc the extra attacks on single targets.

Attack-in-place trick for Ancestral Call




CWDT Setup


Since we need to proc Elemental Overload with crits, we use a CWDT-Blade Vortex setup. We also use an Orb of Storms to manually ensure crits. Both are linked to an increased critical strikes gem. Keep in mind that since we take self hits from Eye of Innocence, we keep proccing this CWDT setup even if we are not taking any damage from enemies.
Keep the CWDT at level 1 to proc it as often as possible. This means that Blade Vortex cannot be above level 8.
While Orb of Storms cannot be supported by CWDT, it should still not be levelled past level 15 since we get only 124 int from the tree. Any higher and you will need int from gear to equip Orb of Storms.
Increased Crit Strikes can be maxed out.

Mobility Setup


It is your personal preference as to whether you want to use Leap Slam or Whirling Blades. Both have their pros and cons. In either case, link them to faster attacks and blood magic. This lets us spam them without having to bother about mana issues.

Aura Setup


We run a Blasphemy-Flammability setup and a Herald of Ash. this leaves us room to run another 35% reservation spell. You can use either Arctic Armour, or any relevant purity if you are taking on a tough boss fight and would like the extra max resists.

Beyond the gem setups mentioned above we do have an empty four link in which you can run an additional CWDT setup with immortal call and a golem of your choice or use a Tombfist for the intimidate and extra abyss jewels.


LEVELING

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Leveling is just the standard tabula, goldrim wanderlust stuff. You can use any melee skill of your choice to level up (frost blades or molten strike itself). No specific leveling process is needed


THE END

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HC viable?

I played this on SC so can't really comment on viability in HC. But given that I did put it through some really dangerous situations and survived more often than not, it might be HC viable.

Just wanted to say really enjoying this build. Having so much fun speeding through mobs its hilarious. Thanks for the post

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St4rwolf wrote:

Just wanted to say really enjoying this build. Having so much fun speeding through mobs its hilarious. Thanks for the post

Glad to hear you're having fun with the build mate. Cheers!!