[3.5] Doedre's Cosplay - Octa-curse CI Incinerate Occultist

Version


(1) Introduction

1.1) What this build is trying to do?

Do you like curses?
We combine 2 unique items [Doedre's Scorn]+[Doedre's Skin] to apply eight curses on mobs and by that 160% increased damage with hits and ailments (wich are applyed in addition to spell, area and other damage modifiers), thanks to the unique affix on the Helmet. The rest of the build is finding a good damage dealing skill and setting up how many curses we can get.
We are a non-crit fire spellcaster, using the channeling skill Incinerate. I started with Winter Orb and respec for Incinerate (as Winter Orb lacked damage) I believe that the build can work with a variety of active skills.

1.2) Pros and Cons
+ you get a lot of beneficial effects from your curses (leech, charges, lower resists on monsters, etc)
+ both required uniques ara off-meta and super cheap
+ no need to fully link your Body Armour
- Curses comes with downsizes [effect reduction for bosses (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Curse) and Curse immunity (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Curse_immunity), we care less for the fisrt, but the second is a pain to deal]
- Two-handed weapons are almost mandatory (the only way to get a six-link)
- Being off-meta means that you are less likely to find endgame stuff (the right enchant, for example)
- Elemental reflect is a no-no

(2) Gems, Passives, Gear and Other Build Recomendations

2.1) Gems links
All Gems at max lvl and quality, unless stated otherwise.

Main Damage Skill: Incinerate > Controlled Destruction > Faster Casting > Combustion > Immolate > Increased / Concentrated AoE
We use channeling skills because those are cheaper to run and easier on the mana, as we are self cast. Maybe Totens are the way to go, but I like the idea of self cast, even if totens are better (apparently). I wouldn't use blight here mostly because of Malediction, as we gain more Non-Chaos Damage as Chaos Damage.

Curse setup:
Helmet: Blasphemy > Temporal Chains* > Enfeeble - Vaal Discipline (no quality needed, neither need to be linked)
Body armour: Warlord's Mark (lvl 11, or as much your gear can handle) - Poacher's Mark (lvl 14, or as much your gear can handle) - Assassin's Mark - Elemental Weakness - Flammability* - Despair

*Those two are interchangeble, depending if you have a Solstice Vigil or a Impresence (Fire), more on that on Gear section

I like to run Defensive Curses (Temporal Chains / Enfeeble) on blasphemy and leave others on the chest. I found that 8 is a good number, because more than that started to feel sketchy (like using Condutivity without any way to deal lightning damage, for exemple). This page list all the curses in the game, 13 total, so if you want to change something, or use other skill, you can check what curses you can run: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Curse

Vaal Discipline is the closer you can get of a Healing Potion for ES characters. I wouldn't run normal Discipline in the place.

Movement Skill: Flame Dash > Faster Casting > Arcane Surge (lvl 8) > Increased Duration

Boots: Cast when Damage Taken (lvl 1, no quality) > Immortal Call (lvl 3, no quality) > Increased Duration > Vaal Righteous Fire (quality is nice, but not required)
Vaal Righteous Fire is a Spell Damage increase mostly for bosses.

Harald of Ash as a ring affix (more on that on Gear Section).

Those are the Skills I run, but as you lvl with the build, or when you are missing an amulet that grant a curse without reservation, one of these two setups can be used:
Orb of Storms > Curse on Hit > Any missing Curse > Arcane Surge
or
CwDT > Immortal Call > Increased Duration > Any missing Curse

2.2) Passives

lvl 93 current setup: https://pastebin.com/AARjazDg
My personal max is lvl 93, after that the much I have to grind to recover de XP loss on death mostly makes me want to quit PoE or start another build. Don't know what else to get, maybe the Jewel Slot Near Harrier, or Essence Surge for more flat Energy shield. If I can lvl more I edit and change here.

2.3) Gear

Two-handed weapon


Recommended
We use staffs because is our only way to get a six link in our build (other than crazy good shaper/Elder Scepters/Daggers with 3 support gems affixes). This staff is decent and so far have delivered the promisse of damage. A good rare staff could be way better, but I didn't want that way because those rares tend to be expensive Shaper/Elder bases with good stats. I could be wrong, but choose to went with a Unique anyway.
Edit: in the end the new crafting options are no joke. Just get a good ilvl (76+) shaped staff, alch until you get "#% elemental as extra chaos", regal to turn it in a rare, then annul until you got only the desired mod. From then you should multi-mod and the rest is story.
Crit based builds have better suffix options, so aside of cast speed, little else I had. Feel free to try another mod, I choose that because I changed my amulet too.
tl,dr: The Searing Touch with a the best #% Fire damage you can afford (all others are fixed), until you can craft a shaped staff (new crafts are INSANE!).

Helmet

Required!
This make up for owr build. The main stat we care for is "#% increased Damage with Hits and Ailments per Curse on Enemy", don't bother with any value less then 20%. Other than that a good energy shield base is a fine upgrade.
tl,dr: 20% increased damage with hits and... > ES >>>>> rest

Body Armour

Required!
This is the way we "cheat" the number of curses on the enemy, as the curses applyed by the effigy don't count towards owr curse limit. Here we look for a good ES base.
An overview on what is the Summon Doedre's Effigy Skill is found here: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Summon_Doedre%27s_Effigy
tl,dr: ES >>>>> rest

Gloves

Any ES base you can get. I tend to like Fingerless Silk Gloves, just so I don't need to care for enchantments or coruptions. Like most builds, rare gear tends to fill the needs of stats and resistances, so be awere of what you need and find a right balance of stats, resistances and ES. Here is a good place to get DEX, as all base gloves can roll it, even pure ES ones.
tl,dr: elemental resistances + DEX > 130+ ES

Boots

Again, a good mix of stats are what we are looking for. In this build I stress that a good movement speed roll is almost better than the a good ES. If I have to choose, I prefer the first than the later. A good unique could be Sin Trek. It comes with a lot of ES, movespeed and DEX. If you can make your resistances work with it, then is problably cheaper than a rare equivalent.
For enchantments you may look for 0,6% leech, for more sustain on maps (not nedded) or a 10% elemental damage penetration for bosses (interesting, but I did 20 Lab runs and never got it, so no)
tl,dr: sin trek if you can get your resistances to work
rare with 25~30% movespeed > resistances > 100+ ES

Amulet


Recomended
Here I choose to go with this amulet because it allow me to run a Temporal Chains for free. Other option is a Impresence that give us Flammability for free, but other than being cheaper than the fire version of Impresence, Solstice Vigil allow us to have a 2 defensive curses up at all times.
You can allway run a rare amuler with ES, spell damage, cast speed and what not, but good rare amulets with those stat are way more expensive!
Edit: dropped a pretty insane amulet, so I changed some gear. I will miss the double defensive curse, but I changed the build around to keep the same number of curses.
tl,dr: Solstice Vigil > Impresence (fire) > Rare amulet with ES + Spell/Fire damage + Cast Speed

Rings

Here we got the opportunity to fill owr resistances and stats requirements that we may still lack (DEX, mostly, as it is what we lack most from the skill tree). I recommend a duo rare rings with at least one Elder ring with "Grant lvl 22 Harald of Ash" affix. A good +fire damage for attacks and spells are great too. It is the most important that we get a free prefix slot so we can craft "-6/7 mana cost of skills". This way we can reserv 92% of our mana pool and still don't get mana problems.
Edit: Needed to get Warlord's Mark on the ring, so to keep the same number of curses. This one got expensive, but is another way to get a high number of curses going.
tl,dr: elder ring with Grant Harald of Ash + rare ring to fill the other stats + resistances.

Belt

Your options are a Crystal Belt or a Stygian Vise. Both have merits. Crystal Belt are better to get more ES, Stygian Vise are better to get one more Abyss jowel and more damage. In the end, more damage and being easier to find a good Stygian Vise With ES and resistances won the day. On a side note, fossil craft can get a lot of damage in a slot normally defensive. If you can afford a lot of RNG, or can manage your resistances elsewere, a fossil crafted belt with +#% Fire damage or +#% Elemental Damage can be BiS.
tl,dr: Crystal Belt if you want more ES, Stygian Vise if you want more damage

Flasks

Both Atziri's Promise and The Wise Oak are popular unique flasks we Can make good use for. For Atziri's look for a good elemental increase roll, as we deal no physical damage, and Wise Oak with the better elemental penetration you can get. Remind while you gear that your uncapped fire resistance needs to be your greatest, other than that the damage penetration will be granted for the wrong element.

EDIT: Stopped using Cynderswallow Urn. In the end the regen was not useful when we needed most (bosses) and the damage was minimal. I'm using a Silver Flask of Warding / of Dousing instead.

Other than that we run two Utility Flasks. I choose a Sulphur Flask, for the extra damage, and a Basalt Flask, for the damage reduction.
Be sure to always have one flask "of Heat", for freeze immunity, and "of Staunching", for bleed immunity. If you have space, another utility flask with "of Dousing" or "of Warding" could be good, depending on the situation.
Sidenote: As I'm playing two ES based char this league, it come to my attention that ignites can be dangerous in high tier maps. If I plan on taking the Guardian of the Phenix or The Enslaver, than by no means carry a flask "of Dousing" with you or you WILL die. Maybe even change one of the utility flasks for a ruby flask. But even the map mod of "All hits from monsters always ignites" can be deadly.

Jewels
I choose to run all Abyss Jewel, mostly because I lack flat ES from gear, not multiplier from the tree. That leave us with few relevant stats: 40+ ES > Added fire damage to spells / Added fire damage to spells while whilding a Two Handed Weapon > Other added elemental damage > Added chaos damage
Normal jewels have more relevant stats to look for, but increase less our ES pool, as % increase get diminishing returns the more you add. Look for: 7+% ES > Spell damage with staffs (roll higher) > Spell / Fire / Area Damage > Cast Speed (if you like, but wouldn't recomend it, got 9+ casts per second already)

I run two unique jewels, but are not required.
[Watcher's Eye] Recomended
No real great affix here, as owr mana only left us runing Discipline. I got this for other build and decided it was better to keep it. Maybe another Abyss Jewel is better.
[Energy from Within] Required / Recomended
We only use it to transform our Melding + Others in full ES nodes. Only spend points on these nodes if you have this jewel, otherwise don't bother, as another Abyss Jewel can be better.

2.4) Ascendancy
We use Occultist, as we both have the best incentives to use curses With Profane Bloom and Malediction, and ES incentives, in Wicked Ward and Vile Bastion. I would Fallow this orther for upgrades:
Wicked Ward > Vile Bastion > Profane Bloom > Malediction

2.5) Pantheon
For the majors are Lunaris or Solaris, depending on the situation - as we are both immune to stuns and chaos damage, reducing the use of Arakaali and Brine King
For the minors I like to use Gruthkul, but most of them have their use - except Shakari and Ryslatha, who do nothing relevant for us

2.6) Bandits
Kill all - 2 passives

3) Random stuff before I finish

Why Occultist?
Because it's your best option for a curse based character, on top of being a great ascendancy for ES based Characters.

Why Chaos Innoculation?
It's the only real option, really. Low Life without Shav is suicide (maybe with coruscanting elixir...) and life based / hybrid are far from ideal, as two required uniques doesn't give any life.

Why Ghost Reaver?
We have Warlord's Mark on our effigy, so ideally we always leech.

This build can work with X skill?
Does X skill Hits or apply ailments? Then it can! In fact I planned to make versions with Blade Vortex, Fireball, Magma orb, Volatile dead... in the end mana cost was a problem for most skills, that's why I would try to keep using channeling skills.
Before I changed to Incinerate I tryed Winter Orb and was good for most part, but the damage was worse (still manage do do my first Shaper Kill with it). I believe I will go back to the winter orb version again in the future, using some resorces I learned with this version. This was a copy of were I was before changing to incinerate, for those interested: https://pastebin.com/3A0uUkFF

Why non-crit?
I use some crit builds template and my crit chance was bad, even with diamond flasks up, assassin's mark and all I topped at ~60% effective crit. Maybe if instead a Unique staff I used a rare with 100% crit chance for spells I could get to a place I would like, but in the end all I could get was a DPS worse than the non crit version. For those interested, here a study of a crit based Incinerate, is outdated with some modifications I did and mostly a pre-study before I respected, so take it as a guideline, not a finished product: https://pastebin.com/kbC9ainv

That's it. Thanks for the patience, first build, lot of errors. If you like the idea, please suggest some improvements or variations you wanted to make on the core.

pretty sure Doedre's Scorn is not a multiplier, otherwise it would read as "Enemies cursed by you take X% increased damage"

Instead it's written: "Increased damage with hits and aliments per curse on enemies" which stacks additively with other source of damage (like elemental damage, spell damage and so on).

"

svarions23 wrote:

pretty sure Doedre's Scorn is not a multiplier, otherwise it would read as "Enemies cursed by you take X% increased damage"

Instead it's written: "Increased damage with hits and aliments per curse on enemies" which stacks additively with other source of damage (like elemental damage, spell damage and so on).

Oops, my bad. There is a lot yet for me to learn. You are problably right, I wasn't even aware of this. I will edit the post to add this observation and not cause a misundertanding.

Sweet, already waited for a decent Doedres Skin Build. What are your thoughts on using Whispering Ice? Didnt like till now, but maybe I will give it a try.

"

Raven_GER wrote:

Sweet, already waited for a decent Doedres Skin Build. What are your thoughts on using Whispering Ice? Didnt like till now, but maybe I will give it a try.

It was one of the considerations, at first, when I was building with Winter Orb, but in the end I decided to use Taryn's Shiver. One thing that is a problem is to fit all the stat requirements, as we spread out between DEX and STR pretty evenly. That becomes a greater issue with cold spell, as a lot os great support gems are DEX based.

I believe that you would need 1000+ INT for Whispering Ice to feel good. Maybe runing Astramentis [https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Astramentis] and Cyclopean Coil [https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Cyclopean_Coil] you can cover all your DEX + STR needs an can start to focus on fitting as much INT on other pieces of gear. One quick study here, and I got 800 INT and more than enought for the other stats. You lose the chance to run one Curse, thought, and can be rought to fit a Herald. So it's up to you see if it's worth it. I would like to see the result.

Hi,

Can Doedre's skin (with 6 sockets, but unlinked) be used with less curses and a support like increased area of effect/enhance? Or would the support need to be linked to all the curse gems?

"

grimlock9999 wrote:

Hi,

Can Doedre's skin (with 6 sockets, but unlinked) be used with less curses and a support like increased area of effect/enhance? Or would the support need to be linked to all the curse gems?

I did a quick test here, with my char. Enhance didn't affect summon doedre effigy, but Increase AoE at least appears to do. Enhance DID affect linked curses, same as Increased AoE, so my gess is that, to have a support to work for your curses, you have to link it. Sorry, but I can be 100% sure about it.

But if you want AoE, you could use one of these:

or Star of Wreaclast https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Star_of_Wraeclast
to increase the area instead.

"

Raven_GER wrote:

Sweet, already waited for a decent Doedres Skin Build. What are your thoughts on using Whispering Ice? Didnt like till now, but maybe I will give it a try.

In case you're still interested, I'm running Doedre's Skin with Whispering Ice: https://pastebin.com/mvNXkhtd

I only run the 6 Curses from the chest. I decided against Vixen's Entrapment because getting capped resists AND > 1000 Int becomes really hard/expensive. Also, I wouldn't get much from 4 more curses themselves, apart from of course Malediction and the Doedre's Skin damage buff.
I found it neccessary to use 2x Perandus Signet to get enough Int
Auxium is mainly to handle Freeze, but the flat ES is a nice bonus.

Alternatively you could try only 1 Perandus Signet + Dream Fragments, and then Cyclopean Coil as your belt.

It would be better to use Sin Trek instead of Rainbowstride, if you can manage to cap your resists. But I really needed the +20 All Res in this configuration.