Incinerate Elementalist - Speed Clearing League Starter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cUUMcn0YPM&feature=youtu.be
Here is my laggy, poorly recorded video of a T11 Shaped Underground Sea. If anybody actually reads this guide, I'll make a better video.

Elementalist Beacon of Ruin + Inpulsa's Broken Heart leads to some great screen clearing pops. With enough damage, it's really easy to shoot just a little bit of incinerate to destroy packs instantly.

The Elementalist Ascendancy points let us easily freeze, shock and ignite, and those proliferate, making it easy to freeze entire packs. This is mostly noticeable when there is an enemy with "Allies Cannot Die" mod, and you freeze the whole pack while trying to kill the rare.

There are several "More-juice" buttons that you can play around with to help you kill bosses very cleanly. I would never use all of them, but these include Vaal RF, Vaal Haste and a Scorching Ray totem, plus arcane surge.

The build should function with no uniques at all, but a few choice uniques help to get this build rolling.

I went for Elemental Overload to make gearing cheaper and easier.

I'm constantly tweaking my tree, but I have a few sample trees to show you to get started:

No MoM, no Acro: www.poeurl.com/b1Cr (104 points)
Doesn't have too much pathing, but is also probably the least safe because it doesn't take either of those great defensive keystones. It has the most damage, so if you're going to be farming low tier red maps or so this may be the one fo ryou

MoM: www.poeurl.com/b1Cs (105 points)
Slightly less damage than above, but this is probably the one I mostly recommend. Easy to hit 1k unreserved mana, which gives a great survivability boost. It can lead to some stupid situations where you have no mana from getting hit so you can't get out, but it's still a good solution.

Phase Acro: www.poeurl.com/b1Ct (104 points)
I have not used this tree yet. It uses a lot of points pathing, but you can pick up Melding and Written in Blood on the way to Acrobatics for some more life. In Incursion, Phase Acro is good because of the spitters, so this tree might be right for you.

As with all passive trees, make sure to tweak to your playstyle. These are just samples I'm putting out there, and you should make it work for you

Body Armor

Inpulsa's Broken Heart is the big one. The explosions are the reason Elementalist is seeing so much usage, and it's worth every penny. A 5L Inpulsa is easily sufficient to get you through low red maps.

There are other useful body armors, but Inpulsa is best in slot for mapping. Until you can afford it, here are some other gearing ideas:

Belly of the Beast - Lots of life, some resists. Would not recommend too much though, because getting 5 or more off colors would be really hard
Shroud of the Lightless - Easy pseudo-6L, but if you can afford this, you can probably afford Inpulsa
Kaom's Heart - I didn't try this, but you can probably pick up a pseudo 5-6L pair of gloves or helmets that are essence crafted or Shaper/Elder
Loreweave - A very strong defensive option. Make sure to get a high max res roll, which is the most important part.
A good rare - Temple mod or Elder mod can give %Increased maximum life, which is great. Look for the biggest life roll and resists as possible. An Elder Chest with %Life gained on kill would be HUGE for survivability.


Helmet

I've been using a Starkonja, but it's not really best in slot. Starkonja provides a fat chunk of dexterity, which is wonderful, since this build gets nearly no dex from the tree. It has a fat life roll too. The crit is useless because we are using Elemental Overload with controlled destruction.

I used Hrimnor's Resolve for a while as my league start item. It's OK, a bit of resists, some fire damage and some life. It's fairly common and dirt cheap, so it can be a good league starter.

If you are using Mind over Matter, Mind of the Council will easily keep your mana pool full. It has no life roll, though.

A good rare is very strong for this slot. Look for life and resists, and maybe some stats too. If you want to use Kaom's Heart, you can get an elder helmet with Fire to Spells, Concentrated Effect, Immolate or Essence of Horror crafted to end up with a pseudo 5 or more links.

With regards to enchants, +2 Incinerate stages is by far the most damage, but all the enchants are OK.


Main-hand

Doryani's Catalyst is a great starting point. Plenty of damage, some attack speed, and some leech. It can be pricey, but it's worth it if you can get a good deal.

If you can't afford Doryani's or you are trying to make something better, rares are your answer. A good sceptre can roll like 10 different things that are good for your damage. Just don't skimp on an attack speed roll, even if its crafted, to make your shield charge faster



Off-hand
I would recommend using a shield here. Shields can provide an array of defensive benefits, and let you use shield charge. The other option is to use a sceptre, which could provide vastly more damage.

Saffell's Frame is what I've been using, since it gives some fat resists, juicy max res, and a bit of spell damage. The downside is no life roll. If you use loreweave, don't use this.

Another good but pricey option is The Unshattered Will, but it doesn't provide much damage. It has a nice life roll, a ton of resists and some cool bonus effects on top.

A solid DPS shield can also go a long way. With a spell damage implicit, look for these affixes:
Life
%Spell damage
%Fire damage
Resists
Cast speed

If you want to get fancy, a Shaped shield lets you roll %Reduced mana reservation, which lets you free a good chunk of mana. Alternatively, an elder shield lets you grab %Maximum life.

Your other option is a sceptre. You would have to leap slam as your movement skill, but this provides a lot more potential damage. Good affixes -
%Spell damage
Flat fire to spells
%Fire damage
Resists
Cast speed


Gloves

There are two main options I've explored - Insanity crafted, or temple mod.



I'm using garbage I crafted once, with crafted life. There are good mods you can get, but Insanities are expensive. These are the best if you are only mapping quickly, because they provide a great boost to your clear speed.

The other option is the new temple mod, adds Fire Damage against Burning Enemies. This provides a great damage boost, and if you have the budget, you can find ones that dropped with a good life roll too.



Boots
Grab as much life and resists as you can, preferably with a 30% movespeed roll. The temple can drop some neat spell or attack dodge boots. I briefly experimented with Death's Door, but they're not that great.



Belt
For mapping It has no life roll, but rampage makes you faster.

Otherwise, just pick up a rare belt with life and resists. A stygian vise is best, but a leather belt will serve you well. If you have your resists covered, you can pick up flask related affixes instead.


Jewelry (Rings and Amulet)
This is where you can pump a ton of currency into the build. To get started, grab as much life and resists as you can. Once you are ready to up the budget, look for the following:

Amulet:
Spell damage
Cast speed
Fire Damage

Shaped mods:
Damage penetrates resistances
Attack speed
Quantity

Elder mods:
Fire leech
AoE
Life leech rate


Rings:
I will go into this again in the gems section, but try to get a Warlord's mark Elder ring. It frees up 2 gem slots (Warlord's mark + blasphemy), as well as 35% of your mana. Elder rings also have flat fire to spells, and fire to spells against ignited enemies. Both are nice DPS boosts. Rings can also roll cast speed and %fire damage. Mark of the shaper can be a nice DPS boost if you want to use it

A major choice you can make is -mana cost of skills on rings, through either Elreon or the Temple mod. Incinerate is actually cheap, and a single mana cost ring can bring your incinerate down to like, 2 mana cost, which is essentially nothing. This has a few upsides, including letting you reserve down to almost 0 mana, and letting you channel against nothing if you want.




Summary
You will need to cover your dex requirement on gear, or take the +30 dex nodes in the tree. Look for dex on gloves, boots, rings, amulet and helmet. One or two good dex rolls should get you where you need to be. Make sure to cap your resists, and get as much life on every single slot as possible!

This is my current flask setup. Ideally the life flask is instant.

If you want, feel free to use the Wise Oak. Triple balance is ideal for defensive benefit, but make sure Fire resist is highest for a solid DPS boost. I'm too lazy to balance my resists.

Both abyss and regular jewels are nice. Here is a sample search for a regular jewel: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Incursion%20Event%20(IRE001)/qZ0XGvCg

Don't skimp on life.

For abyss jewels, picking up one with Onslaught on kill is a nice clear speed boost.

There's a lot of flexibility in your gem links. I recommend using Path of Building to figure out damage, and don't forget to tick "Enemy is Ignited" and such. Do not use elemental focus even though it has a ton of damage, it disables all the ailments, which are critical to this build.

My main links right now are:
Incinerate - Controlled Destruction - Hypothermia - Combustion - Immolate - Faster Casting.

The big thing you can do is swap out the two lowest damage links for Cast While Channeling + Bodyswap. Bodyswap actually does a lot of fire damage, and this lets you keep channeling at max stages while bouncing around packs. I personally don't like it because it's really hard to control, proximity bubbles are annoying, and it makes it hugely difficult to hit architects in the temple while uncontrollably bouncing around. If you like it though, this is probably a clear speed boosting setup. Alternatively, experiment with Flame Dash, Flame Surge and Firestorm.


Next, make sure you have warlords mark somewhere. This is either on a Warlord's Mark + Blasphemy setup, or on your Elder crafted ring. Do not skip warlords mark. If you want, you can use Warlord's mark in your CWDT setup, but this is riskier.

A CWDT-Immortal call setup is very important. I use CWDT-Immortal call-Increased Duration. I generate Endurance charges through warlords mark, so the invulnerability actually lasts a very long time.

Next, I use all three heralds. With the Elementalist ascendancy Mastermind of Discord, they don't reserve much mana. Furthermore, the tiny amount of cold and lightning damage lets you freeze and shock respectively.

If you want to use Anger, grabbing Sovereignty in the top left of the tree lets you have a bit of unreserved mana. For more information, go to the Playstyle - Mana management tab.

Get a movement skill setup. I use Shield charge + Faster attacks + Fortify in Insanity crafted gloves.

Finally, pick some "more-juice" setups. I use Vaal RF for damage, as well as Flame dash + Arcane surge, and I even threw in a Vaal Haste to go faster. Another good alternative is Spell totem + Scorching Ray to reduce enemy fire resistance.

Mana management

How you reserve your mana is probably the biggest point of flexibility.

On one end, you can reserve just herald of ash and nothing else, giving you a huge mana pool for Mind over Matter. If you do this, none of the following applies to you.

On the other, you can reserve yourself down to almost no mana. This is doable in basically 2 setups:
Triple herald + Blasphemy - Warlord's Mark will get you down to almost no mana.
Triple herald + Anger + Sovereignty node in top left will also bring you down to almost no mana.

The more mana you reserve, the worse MoM is. If you have less than a couple hundred unreserved mana, do not bother with MoM. On the other hand, the more mana you reserve, the more damage you can do. It's a balancing act you have to figure out.

If you pick up an Anger Watcher's Eye, Anger can account for more than 15% more damage.

If you pick up -flat mana cost on rings, through Elreon or temple mod, you can be more aggressive in reserving your mana pool.

No matter what you do, you need to use Warlord's Mark to sustain your mana pool. You can comfortably sustain incinerate with 60 unreserved mana as long as you are hitting something, that's what I did.


Map mods you cannot run

Ele reflect

Depending on how you solved the mana problem:
No leech
No regen
Hexproof

90% chance to avoid ailments is totally doable, it's just really slow, annoying and more dangerous because you aren't freezing or popping packs. I reroll these.

Finally, a note. If you reserve your mana very low, and you depend on Warlord's mark to leech your mana pool, be careful of enemies you can't leech from. Things like Stygian spires in Abyssal Depths, Hexproof rares or the totem bosses cannot be leeched from, leaving you very pitifully shooting out streams of fire for half a second at a time. Just be aware of this.

I leveled with Incinerate as soon as I got the gem as my league start.

Take advantage of the +1 fire gem wand recipe in the early game.

Take freezing pulse and frost bomb, use those for a while. Get as many quicksilver's as possible and make sure your boots have movement speed. Pick up lots of life on the tree. I will expand this section later if people are interested.

Other ascendancies:

My elementalist build is not meant to be a boss killer. It's not super tanky and the damage isn't sky high. Occultist and Inquisitor are my two prime choices for boss killing, and I would go crit on those builds. They are more expensive and much less friendly as league starts, but can easily push over 2 million shaper DPS without insane gear. For occultist, I recommend Engineering Eternity's build guide, a Low Life Incinerator.

Major tree tweaks:
Going crit would require significant changes in the tree and gear, but would provide a much higher damage ceiling. If you have a big budget, I would recommend going crit.

Why do I die so much?

Get more life. I have 6k life and just shy of 1k unreserved mana with 79% all res and I still die because I'm an idiot.

This is my random build diary junk for anyone curious.

I found these while running around shaped UGS, I think it was from a Perandus box? Not sure.

*Added ascendancy progression