[3.9] Fists of Fire | Boss Killer | Unarmed Cyclone | Cheap [Unique Heavy]

After testing some other builds I'm coming back to this char to try a bit more "melee" hehe.

I'm doing good so far. I just changed my setup to cap 90% physical (even without endurance charges) unspected Vaal Pact and am feeling way better.

I also got watcher's eye which seems pretty decent damage boost (10%)

Killed all guardians deathless and shaper deathless, now just waiting for Uber Elder to respawn to try again the fight. Unfortunately I suck as melee since is my first league so last time I tried (with old setup) I switched chars after dying twice.

With this regen setup I'm able to farm uber lab running brainless thru the traps and is very easy to manage blood rage since I take no damage from it.

To me is clearly what I have to upgrade now and also that I have to improve my gameplay.

For me this build is insane. You can easily reach 3m DPS with 1 ex budget maybe less, you really did find something here, congrats.

I'm still going to try some other stuff with other shields since I feel like I do too much damage, I can probably be more tank, maybe immortal. I don't care that much about damage but I hate dying.

In case someone is interested here is my char level 90
https://pastebin.com/zEnyq3Bz

I recommend you to make a workaround on the Transcendent Flesh Gem - PoB with +56% to Critical Strike Multiplier, since it highly increases the final damage of your character.


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Btw, since you are looking for damage increase have you looked Belt of the Deceiver? I'm think it increases your damage overall if you use a Onslaught flask.



Thx again for sharing your build.

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MetalCrawler wrote:

I'm doing good so far. I just changed my setup to cap 90% physical (even without endurance charges) unspected Vaal Pact and am feeling way better.

Welcome back!!!

I'm interested to see how you got to 90% ... that's awesome! Phys resist is definitely the biggest challenge with this build. Vaal Pact is a bit tricky to run, and takes some practice. It really requires two things to feel good: the right life flask (I use a +% amount, reduced rate) and the upgraded Minor Pantheon Soul of Ryslatha (Life Flasks gain 3 Charges every 3 seconds if you haven't used a Life Flask Recently; 60% increased Life Recovery from Flasks used when on Low Life). Vaal Pact really does suck for Lab (I usually just unspec for it), but it's bonkers strong for mapping and bossing.

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MetalCrawler wrote:

I'm still going to try some other stuff with other shields since I feel like I do too much damage, I can probably be more tank, maybe immortal. I don't care that much about damage but I hate dying.

I'd really suggest taking a look at Vix Lunaris with the +1 socketed gem corruption. With a lvl 4 Empower and a lvl 21 Herald of Purity, you'll have a lvl 30 HofP. This results in insane damage when paired with Circle of Guilt unique rings, and doesn't give up much to Signal Fire ... plus the benefit of block + life + cannot be frozen.

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MetalCrawler wrote:

I recommend you to make a workaround on the Transcendent Flesh Gem - PoB with +56% to Critical Strike Multiplier, since it highly increases the final damage of your character.

I'm not sure what you mean by "workaround" ... does PoB not calculate in this damage?

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MetalCrawler wrote:

Btw, since you are looking for damage increase have you looked Belt of the Deceiver? I'm think it increases your damage overall if you use a Onslaught flask.

I have played around with this belt in the past. The challenge with it is the only flask to lose is the Quick Silver flask, which really chops the overall mapping speed in a big way. The loss of the massive cold resist on Perseverance (up to 40%) would also require drastic changes to jewels which would result in dps loss that would probably exceed the 10% "more" damage from Intimidate. Ideally I'd like to get the intimidate off of a Lethal Pride, but just haven't been able to divine a decent one this league. Other than a Headhunter, I really think a good corrupted Perseverance is the way to go. Soul Tether is also another interesting option since it negates the effects of Blood Rage and is a great source for intelligence.

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MetalCrawler wrote:

Thx again for sharing your build.

You're so welcome! It's really been my pleasure!

EDIT: I just took a look at your PoB and I now see how you got to the 90% phys resist ... aspect of the crab. I'm curious how much uptime that has, and how often you are playing with max barriers. Do you ever keep track of that? Seems like it really only offers protection when initially heading into a fight, and with so much damage in the build, everything (except for maybe Minotaur and Uber Elder) should be long dead before you can actually accumulate any significant quantity of barriers. Hmmm ... I'm not sure the value is there versus full uptime of something like Herald of Ash, which has an amazing AoE effect for clear, plus lots of raw dps.

Also, in your configurations, I notice that you don't include either Endurance or Power charges. Was there a reason for this?

Finally, on the gearing front, you might want to look for a corrupted pair of Facebreaker with Elemental Weakness ... this is a multiplier for your dps, and can work in tandem with your Assassin CWDT setup even if you only apply one curse, your still generate plenty of Power charges. It looks like you're also leaving a lot of dps on the table with your unset ring. Switching to a Steel Ring (crafted with Essence of Contempt) will add a surprising amount of dps, perhaps at the cost of losing your stone golem. Maybe this is just a personal philosophy, but I feel like offense trumps defense in the end game.

All-in-all though, really great character you have here!!! Nice work!!!

Hey SaintCabal,

First off thanks for this build, I am having a ton of fun with it but only at level 23 right now.

My one concern is the current cost of The Signal Fire is 20-45c, not bad but as a starter I won't be able to get it for a while. What do you recommend to replace The Signal Starter as the offhand only?

I was thinking a different unique shield or quiver but I was wondering what your thoughts are?

Thanks again and appreciate the clearly presented build guide!

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Golden710 wrote:

Hey SaintCabal,

First off thanks for this build, I am having a ton of fun with it but only at level 23 right now.

My one concern is the current cost of The Signal Fire is 20-45c, not bad but as a starter I won't be able to get it for a while. What do you recommend to replace The Signal Starter as the offhand only?

I was thinking a different unique shield or quiver but I was wondering what your thoughts are?

Thanks again and appreciate the clearly presented build guide!

Glad to hear you're enjoying the build! Wait until you hit lvl 28 and can convert over to cyclone and all the pieces :-)

So the cheapest route for The Signal Fire might be to buy a Blackgleam and the Fire and Brimstone prophecy and make your own. If that's still a little too much, other offensive-minded options include Asphyxia's Wrath or Hyrri's Bite (both unique quivers). If these are cheap enough, maybe corrupt a few and see if you can hit one of the extra ele damage mods. If you're looking for a little more defense (and some offense), Crest of Perandus, Kaltenhalt, The Deep One's Hide and Matua Tupuna are decent options, unless you find a real good rare. Matua Tupuna is especially good at it can give you some decent damage if you socket you Herald of Purity there.

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SaintCabal wrote:

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Golden710 wrote:

Hey SaintCabal,

First off thanks for this build, I am having a ton of fun with it but only at level 23 right now.

My one concern is the current cost of The Signal Fire is 20-45c, not bad but as a starter I won't be able to get it for a while. What do you recommend to replace The Signal Starter as the offhand only?

I was thinking a different unique shield or quiver but I was wondering what your thoughts are?

Thanks again and appreciate the clearly presented build guide!

Glad to hear you're enjoying the build! Wait until you hit lvl 28 and can convert over to cyclone and all the pieces :-)

So the cheapest route for The Signal Fire might be to buy a Blackgleam and the Fire and Brimstone prophecy and make your own. If that's still a little too much, other offensive-minded options include Asphyxia's Wrath or Hyrri's Bite (both unique quivers). If these are cheap enough, maybe corrupt a few and see if you can hit one of the extra ele damage mods. If you're looking for a little more defense (and some offense), Crest of Perandus, Kaltenhalt, The Deep One's Hide and Matua Tupuna are decent options, unless you find a real good rare. Matua Tupuna is especially good at it can give you some decent damage if you socket you Herald of Purity there.

Wow, thank you so much for the detailed response!! I ended up getting to level 40 last night and once I switched to Asphyxia's Wrath/FB with cyclone it was a breeze! Great job on the build!

I can already tell this build will be very stable to end game and it's exciting for me since I never played a cyclone character before. My goal is to get The Signal Fire after farming and/or the upgrade recipe as you mentioned, but there are a tons of unique offhands that you mentioned I can get for really cheap and play around with until I get The Signal Fire.

One question, Do you recommend going for Resolute Technique while leveling or Elemental Overload? Thanks again for the build!!

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Golden710 wrote:

One question, Do you recommend going for Resolute Technique while leveling or Elemental Overload? Thanks again for the build!!

The advantage of RT is you don't have to worry about accuracy or enemy evasion. Your chance to hit will be relatively high until you start to reach higher levels (lvl 50+). So I'd say start with Elemental Overload, but periodically check what your hit chance is. Anything below 100% is basically a 1-to-1 reduction in your dps. You'll probably want to shift over to RT if you fall below 85% or so.

For Elemental Overload, the best setup is really a low level CWDT setup with Orb of Storms.

In general though, the best dps setup is using neither RT nor EO, but instead, equipping a Rigwald's Curse amulet (which offers a base crit of 7%), then getting the necessary accuracy through a combination of allocating points in the skill tree, Precision and War Banner. You'll also want to load up on crit chance in the tree. With Power charges up and some pretty good jewels and gear, you should be able to get up 40-50% crit chance with 400%+ crit multiplier. This is essentially 200% more damage full-time, while EO only offer 40% more damage, and only some of the time. This is all especially true if you run with something other than The Signal Fire since you'll only be converting 50% of damage to fire, and OE only benefits ele damage.

Update on my post from last week.

I got confused between bleed and freeze immunity on my flasks. The 20q life flask from my old character had Freeze resistance, so I just adopted it. That's why I added the Rejuv flask for bleeding. How did you handle freezing, before that new shield?

Regarding The Red Nightmare gem not appearing in PS4 Standard trade, I finally spotted a few Red Dreams, lowest listed price of 20 Exalts. That's 18 more than I have :) I've been looking for other options to generate endurance charges, within the frame of the initially posted RT build. There does seem to be some room in that build for Blasphemy+Warlord's Mark (you had Flammability), but I'm finding that running Blasphemy, Ash, Purity and Blood and Sand all at once leaves me with 46 mana, even with Enlighten. What did you drop to get Blasphemy to work in that build?

Any other ideas? The best option I can see right now is Enduring Cry. None of the gear options that provide endurance charges seem viable. Dropping Elemental Damage or Physical Damage support to use an "Endurance charge on stun support" is a huge DPS drop on my 5-link Cyclone, and I'm not sure how often stuns would even occur.

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easypoints wrote:

Update on my post from last week.

I got confused between bleed and freeze immunity on my flasks. The 20q life flask from my old character had Freeze resistance, so I just adopted it. That's why I added the Rejuv flask for bleeding. How did you handle freezing, before that new shield?

Regarding The Red Nightmare gem not appearing in PS4 Standard trade, I finally spotted a few Red Dreams, lowest listed price of 20 Exalts. That's 18 more than I have :) I've been looking for other options to generate endurance charges, within the frame of the initially posted RT build. There does seem to be some room in that build for Blasphemy+Warlord's Mark (you had Flammability), but I'm finding that running Blasphemy, Ash, Purity and Blood and Sand all at once leaves me with 46 mana, even with Enlighten. What did you drop to get Blasphemy to work in that build?

Any other ideas? The best option I can see right now is Enduring Cry. None of the gear options that provide endurance charges seem viable. Dropping Elemental Damage or Physical Damage support to use an "Endurance charge on stun support" is a huge DPS drop on my 5-link Cyclone, and I'm not sure how often stuns would even occur.

Prior to the shield, I had freeze immunity on my diamond flask. Enduring Cry might be the way to go. You might also be able to get it out of the chieftain ascendency too if you zip around with flame dash a lot, but of course that will create its own challenges too. You could set up a CWDT with Warlord’s too. I run with a CWDT Assassin’s Mark, and I often have a full load of power charges.

Any chance you'd be interested in taking a look at my dude /u/SaintCabal ?

I got a bit confused with what was up to date and what wasnt when making my guy so I could be a bit outdated with my gear/tree.



https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/lobsterzilla/characters

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lobsterzilla wrote:

Any chance you'd be interested in taking a look at my dude /u/SaintCabal ?

I got a bit confused with what was up to date and what wasnt when making my guy so I could be a bit outdated with my gear/tree.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/lobsterzilla/characters

Hey Lobsterzilla,

The latest and greatest is a crit version using Rigwald’s Curse, dual Circle of Guilt rings and a Vix Lunaris shield. Check out the 3.8 PoB link at the top of the first post in the thread. Tree is slightly different than 3.7 (more crit-focused/accuracy nodes and a few other changes). You have most of the pieces in place. Also, if can’t find/afford CoG rings, using Essence of Contempt on steel rings is also another way to get good rings. You can also probably find a max roll Pair of Facebreaker for next to nothing ... buy a few and start corrupting.

Thanks for checking out the build!