[3.11] Divine Ire Hierophant (Self cast)

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Xelnarox wrote:
^

Personally, I thoroughly enjoy playing Divine Ire with Storm Brand. I'm following this guide, but experimenting a tiny bit more offensively as I don't play it in HC.

Divine Ire - Phys to Lightning - Infused Channeling - Energy Leech - Added Fire Dmg - Faster Casting

Storm Brand - Power Charge on Crit - Innervate - Faster Casting

To enjoy this build more, (in my casual opinion) you need to :

- Work on your movement skills, because :
1. You can't facetank stuff for long.
2. Flame dashing between every Divine Ire hit will always keep up Arcane Surge, on top of teaching you the best defense mechanic in the entire universe - dodging.

- % cast speed is important to this build because it makes it very agile. Dmg AND dodging = DPS and Survibility in 1 package.

- Keep in mind that Divine Ire and Storm Brand are both LIGHTNING skills. Use that to your advantage in the passive tree by picking up easy nodes like Lightning Walker and Runesmith.

I find that Storm Brand really completes Divine Ire well in fights where you can't channel effectively, by keeping a constant DoT while dodging AND shocking enemies with Innervates 20% chance to shock. Effectively giving you even MORE dmg when you unleash Divine Ire (which really doesn't take long to fully charge, when played optimally.)

Playing this build is a ton of fun. It feels like you're a god teleporting all around the map, throwing storm brands like the first shy bite of a shark - only to INSTAGIBB multiple packs of enemies in a flashing lightning beam of fiery purification!

...This build is biblical, and the end-time has come to Wraeclast!


Thank you for your post! It certainly puts a nice spin on the build! I have a few comments though, which may help both you and others who read your post.

Innervate in Storm Brand is a nice touch, but ultimately not something I think is very useful. Storm Brand hits for relatively small amounts, but fairly frequently. This provides small shocks. Comparatively, Divine Ire is going to apply a shock that's much higher, even without Innervate. Blind as a defensive option is going to work better in that link, I think.

Your point about cast speed is very correct, and something I need to emphasize more in my guide. The faster you cast, the less you stand still. There are diminishing returns (sort of) when stacking it, but I think a goal of 120% total increased cast speed is a good one. This brings our cast speed down to 0.1, or exactly 1 second of channeling for 20 stages when dealing with a single unique enemy within range.

I wouldn't recommend Runesmith. The brand does negligible damage in comparison to Divine Ire, and therefor isn't really worth spending passives on. Lightning Walker is viable, and may end up in the passive tree soon, but as of yet I'm not using it. I did pick it up on my current char to help with lightning res though. We'll see if I end up pulling those points elsewhere as I get into later maps.

Regarding scaling lightning, I actually recommend against focusing on lightning damage. By all means, if you get it it's not bad, but because of our conversion shenanigans it's not necessarily the best choice. Lightning damage will scale all of our damage that is or once was lightning damage. We're getting several sources of physical damage added as extra fire, which would not be scaled by lightning damage.

In general, I think a priority of physical damage > generic elemental damage > lightning damage > cold damage will work best for this build.

I need to update the conversion section again, the example I give could be better, especially in regards to X% of Y damage added as Z damage situations.
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K9Advantix wrote:

do you think there is enough survivability? I'm hoping to be at least semi tanky due to the immobility of channelling


Cast speed greatly reduces the immobility problem. With 120% cast speed, which this build has and more, it takes exactly 1 second of channeling to get 20 stages when a single unique enemy is being zapped. This is further reduced when there's several unique enemies, or even white smaller monsters around.
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azrorz wrote:
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tululum wrote:
Hi, thanks for the build. Unfortunately, I find it too clunky and weak and will respec to something else for mapping. The divine ire spell benefits from standing in a pack of mobs (so the stages load up faster) but the defenses are just too weak to be standing immobile in a pack of mobs doing barely anything for half a second. It is possible to balance it by not standing in a pack of mobs, but then the stages slowly load up one by one and the DPS becomes rather low. I especially feel this issue at boss fights with large health pools - I have to dodge bosses' attacks often and therefore can only cast for fractions of a second which is barely enough for 4-6 ire stages which leads to my hits being very small. I am slicing through whites, but for rares or uniques I just can't get this build to work so I will respec. Maybe I am undergeared (SSF SC - rushed through story in 8h so no farming for gear or anything, but other builds i played recently didn't need any more gearing/farming/overlevelling during the story and performed much, much better still).

Anyway, good luck at SSF HC and thanks for the build. The guide is solid. I just couldn't get it to work for me (and I have 2.5k hours, but that doesn't mean anything ofc).

EDIT: Also, even though damage output for whites/blues is good, damage projection is rather bad. Area of damage around you is very small and the beam is also rather thin (in lower stages - and it often doesn't pay off to wait for one more second to load it up to be wider). Therefore, its literally impossible to hit everyone on screen with one hit, which makes you recast, which slows you down even further. Didn't matter much during the story, but I like full-clearing maps, so would hurt much more in the end game. Compared to autotargeting spells such as arc or brands, which have perfect projection but lower raw damage, I find them to be better (at least for me). Even though the raw damage output of those are lower, the damage is always projected onto the enemies reliably, which balances it (in my opinion).


I have the EXACT same feeling and experience with this build, I really like the skill and want it to work but I completely agree with everything you say here, I have tried to upgrade my gear a bit (as i'm not SSF) even then its still just underwhelming in regards to other skill options out there.
Any idea of something that would be easy to respec into as I do not have much currency yet,


I'm actually not having this issue. Herald of Ash helps tremendously with the feeling of poor clear. Cast speed is another huge thing that helps. Sure, you won't clear an entire screen with a single cast early on, but two casts will usually do the trick, and those will have 0.2-0.3ish seconds cast time. The shaped mace I linked in another comment will help with the clearspeed too.

On bosses, I tend to go for hits with 5-15 stages. The time between releasing and starting a new channel is miniscule, and there's no DPS benefit to doing a single 20 stage over two 10 stages, other than a higher shock value. Frequent flame dashing and shorter channels is melting bosses for me.

Regarding auto-targeting spells, I agree. They feel great. I find that the playstyle of releasing beams of doom is very enjoyable, but that won't be true for everyone!
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Thoromuerte wrote:
Well, i'm testing this bild right now, and it's pretty good. Would be wonderful if you give people damage oriented tree, though.
Aaaand, we all wait future updates


The build is actually quite damage focused already for a HCSSF build. With a unique enemy within range of the zaps, it takes about 0.5 seconds to get 10 stages. With 433k on average per hit with 10 stages, that's 866k DPS against shaper. It can go higher of course, but I've never been one to glass cannon.

What do you think about using Agnerod East as a staff alternative to link Divine Ire? I ultimately agree with not stacking lightning damage, and lightning penetration is useless, but that +2 to lightning gems is golden! More shock duration is always useful for a channeling skill like Divine Ire, I think.
Last edited by Xelnarox#1337 on Mar 12, 2019, 5:56:13 PM
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Xelnarox wrote:

What do you think about using Agnerod as a staff alternative to link Divine Ire? I ultimately agree with not stacking lightning damage, and lightning penetration is useless, but that +2 to lightning gems is golden!


Agnerod, in one of its versions, is a viable staff to use with this build. I don't think it's BIS, and it'd require some rerouting out of shield nodes and into staff nodes. In my opinion, you'd possibly get more damage out of a staff version, but you'd sacrifice survivability. We're really not lacking in damage, so I don't think the tradeoff is worth it, even in softcore.

EDIT: After some brief tests, the rare gear I have in my PoB beats out Agnerods. I did remember to switch out shield nodes to staff nodes. A shaped staff with Power charge on crit might end up beating out the 1h+shield setup, though.

EDIT 2: A shaped staff with PCoC, +2 to lightning gems, and lightning added chaos, ups our damage by a lot.
Last edited by Lilyliciously#1900 on Mar 12, 2019, 6:13:52 PM
So, I farmed up an Oni-Goroshi - thoughts on using that to level? Or is that a dumb idea because of X (like no shield, or some other reason).

Cant use POB atm. Do you mind posting the FPS against shaper without flask? Thx.
Last edited by loonger#5545 on Mar 13, 2019, 12:22:38 AM
Noob question:
You advice to use ES leech on six link as sixth gem. usually u will obtain a 6-link quite late in the game. Do you use any life leech before that?
I've gotten tired of Divine Ire and decided to make a glasscannon out of it in HCSSF, surviving for a single day dying to lag.

If anybody is interested this is the glasscannon version: https://pastebin.com/YiFcdD1X
The damage should be thrice as much and even more if you get proper gear. Crux of the build is having tons of auras and using Eldritch Battery in order for MoM to work, which still leaves us tanky, surprisingly. With only 3.6k life and this shabby MoM I survived a 2 dmg map mod breach in t7 pretty easily just blasting away.

Might be somebody will get insight from this PoB, or not, switching to melee anyways, this skill was fun for a couple of days, but the playstyle is not for me. Thanks for your experimental build.

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