1.2.0c AOF, Molten Strike, Herald of Ash

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TonyTravel wrote:

In that case using Avatar of fire is a bad idea, because you lose total damage. You would be better off investing in Psychical damage nodes and in the Lust for Carnage tree. In that case you do not need the life leech gem and can swap it out for added fire damage or fire penetration.

However, if you build for elemental & fire damage instead for physical damage, wouldn't you double dip the HoA ignite component just like it happens for "normal" (caused by crit or chance to ignite) ignites?

Without changing too much, I feel this is a better version of your tree. It gains 20 int, 1% amour, 6% life, 1.3% life regen, and 7% all res. The only thing you lose out on is 20% es, which shouldn't be an issue for the build. You could save another point by taking the int node beside the sovereignty cluster, but that will make you lose access to the elementalist node which you might want to take later.

Here's a further refinement of the above-posted tree:


I made some sacrifices to take the trip to the Witch fire cluster as well as the dual curse cluster.

All the increased fire damage nodes will make your burns super strong (while of course adding damage to your initial hits). The burning duration will make tough exile and boss fights a bit easier as you can spend more time kiting while the enemy is ignited if you need to. If you really want to go this route, you might want to invest in a Cloak of Flame. With a low-level Arctic Armor, it can essentially give you a free 20% damage reduction to physical damage. The extra ignite chance should help with lone big guys too.

The dual curse is sort of a personal preference. I like my builds to have a pair of corrupted gloves with vulnerability or elemental weakness in tandem with whatever other curses I run. Dual curses really benefit elemental damage builds as they effectively multiply your damage.

Seems like a fun build, I like the idea of doing lots of single-target damage. Do you think a Marohi would be another possible item to use with this? I think that hits about the hardest of them all.

I'm also running a herald/prolif build, but with a marauder and I'm using ground slam. In your case I don't see why you went Avatar Of Fire. Physical damage is also included in the overkill damage, and with AoF you lose half of it, which means weaker burns.

Here are my links:

Ground Slam - Melee Physical Damage - Added Fire - Weapon Ele - Fire Pen (I'm still experimenting with the 5th link on Ground Slam)
Herald of Ash - Prolif - Increased AoE - Burning damage

The idea is to scale the physical damage, instead of the fire damage only.

Higher physical damage -> higher fire damage (from added fire + wep ele) -> higher combined overkill damage -> even stronger burns. I believe that's triple dipping - physical component, fire component, burning damage.

Basically I slam once and the mobs in the ground slam aoe are 1 shot and the rest of the screen burns to death pretty quickly, including blue mobs. I haven't taken the burning damage nodes, I'm not sure if 60% burn damage is worth the 6 points that I have to spend, because I will have to sacrifice phys dmg nodes. Too lazy to do the math if it's worth it.

I'm running this build on Beyond, 4.6k life and 6k armour. Herald of Ash reserves around 60% of my mana, which is a bit of an issue because I can't run determination, but it's fine in 66 maps.

Anyways, congrats on build of the week, I'm happy to see people starting to use herald of ash + prolif!

Cheers

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dyankov wrote:

I'm also running a herald/prolif build, but with a marauder and I'm using ground slam. In your case I don't see why you went Avatar Of Fire. Physical damage is also included in the overkill damage, and with AoF you lose half of it, which means weaker burns.

Molten Strike converts the other half.

I liked your idea of ground slam fire prolif.



1 note on the build; what if just one -not to say two at the same time- of these encounters do happen:

Temporal Chains maps;
Chronophage mobs;
Chilled ground maps;
Supressing Fire dudes;
Any Stun/Knockback lock mob;
Any Cold damage mob;
Chilled Ground skills from mobs;
Artic Armour from dudes;

I mean, 'tis with no doubt a solid idea, tho for a melee character it does have some flaws.

interesting build looks fun i might try it out,

anyway i noticed your second life flask doesn't have a suffix did you forgot to augment it?


cheers and gz for winning build of the week!

Would infernal blow be a good alternative to molten strike?
Congrats on the BOTW as well.

Fun Build.

I had a 64 Marauder who's tree got reset that I had not decided what to do with yet. So, I gave this a try and had fun leveling up to 66.

Had to start with an unleveled Herald of Ash gem and Molten Strike Gem. Dps started out at 6.7k which is still pretty good. My life was ok at 3.6k

But... I just don't have the armor gear to match your armor rating. I was stuck down at 3k with determination.

Although I must say, doing a map with the fracture mod has never been so much fun. Seeing the fractures instantly ignite when they spawn made for a screen full of melting mobs.

Thanks for posting this! Once I get some gear upgrades going it will be really enjoyable.

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solidghost wrote:

Would infernal blow be a good alternative to molten strike?
Congrats on the BOTW as well.

Beat me to it. I run a similar build, but with Infernal Blow instead. What would you change if it were Infernal Blow instead of Molten Strike? One thing I'm noticing, is that the ignite/burn damage "steals" low life mobs from my IB so I sometimes miss exploding opportunities. I'm wondering if Resolute Technique would be better to avoid accidental crits, and no Herald of Ash.

Another question, I don't understand Elemental Proliferation on a Herald of Ash. I thought the fire already spread on overkill?

If you need more dexterity you could use the enforcer /precision keystone(+20 str 18% sphy, followed by 20 dex).

Switching to heavy strike/hatred would be better.

Grat on the build of the week.