1.2.0c AOF, Molten Strike, Herald of Ash

Whats the advantage of Molten Strike (w/o Point Blank) over Heavy Strike?

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Fleischtorte wrote:

Whats the advantage of Molten Strike (w/o Point Blank) over Heavy Strike?

Molten Strike converts 60% phys to fire and AOF converts 50%, so you have 100% fire.
If you took AOF and Heavy Strike you would have 50% fire and lose the other 50% phys.

I think this is how it works anyway.

I read through the whole thread and I quite don't understand the "I don't need more damage" thing...

So I found a Marohi Erqi yesterday and thought of your build of the week video. Do you plan to add some axe nodes at the end since your tree has 23 points left?

Additionally as I understand Culling Strike is BAD for Herald of Ash since it just kills the monster and doesn't generate over-kill damage from under 10% life. Was Kaom's Primacy a budget decision?

How would you see Marohi Erqi as weapon for this build? With your current tree you could just switch it around since you don't have any weapon specific nodes.

I've taken the OP's concept and designed my version of the build with it using Marohi Erqi as the weapon of choice and it's been 1-shotting everything so far at lvl 75. Even bosses die to a single
hit. Check out a video of my build in action here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWVB3BvZ-WQ&feature=youtu.be

Needed uniques are: Marohi Erqi, Astramentis, and Doryani's Invitation (fire).

Marohi Erqi is basically a free added link with increased area of effect. Your link setup should be:
Molten Strike + Weapon Elemental Damage + Melee Physical Damage + Added Fire Damage + Fire Penetration + Point Blank

Getting Astramentis helps a lot with the build by saving tons of skill points for your stats.

Taking Iron Grip also increases DPS by a lot, and synergizes really well with Astramentis. I currently have 518 strength, and Iron Grip basically gives me 100% increased damage on Molten Strike's projectiles as well as the initial hit.

This, plus the fact that I use the Point Blank support gem amplifies the damage even more.

I don't use Faster Attacks like the OP suggests because the point of the build is to hit hard, not to hit fast. I replaced that with Added Fire Damage which scales really well with the build. I basically 1 shot everything with this setup.

Getting increased physical damage with my build is important because the more physical damage you have, the more damage you'll do with Herald of Ash, and the more damage you do with the Added Fire Damage Gem. Also, increasing your physical damage will also increases how much overkill damage you do. Finally, getting more physical damage will help a lot in fighting against single targets, especially bosses. I think the OP might have underestimated the effectiveness of physical damage in the build, since scaling the physical damage will also scale the overkill and burning damage by a number of direct and indirect factors.

I don't use the Life Leech gem, but instead rely on Doryani's Invitation belt to get my life leech.

Instead of using Determination, I use Hatred to scale the damage even more. For survivability, I use Kaom's Heart to give me lots of life. But Kaom's heart is not necessary, and if you are squishy then you can use Determination instead of Hatred.

For Vall skill I use Vaal Molten Shell but that can be switched with a CWDT setup for survivability. Link to my tree is below for those interested:

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgUABLMFWxJpFE0WbxccGS4aOBo-GmwirySqJy8n7SkuKU8yiTbpOFM8BUbXVElXDVfiWGNZ818_Zp5sFnF5cql253flfLh82YcZi4yQVZ2un9-iAKeErKqvjcAawQTG2NIh2WHhc-Nq45_kIuw47SDvDu988az8S97BGenLQw4UnsUhNGDEtC9R5mvZFPaGO6lzOQ5qHqgY8i-Cm4M4LPshVeRRAnGiDy7_ns2nMBRxA8b9CyWtCfYYkVBHFCAOPDpSMn5QULyf

Note that on my tree I focus on getting a lot of life regen nodes because I have a lot of life with Kaom's Heart, and life regen synergizes well with having a lot of life. If you don't have Kaom's Heart, then go the increased max life / armour routes instead of life regen.

My gear:



OP has a very cool concept and I really enjoyed making this build around that concept. I'm still just level 75 but so far my char is 1 shotting everything in sight. I like the idea of hitting slow but like a truck.

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gilrad wrote:

I just thought of something:

Since you're using Pyre, how about instead of Molten Strike, you use Glacial Hammer? You'll get slightly stronger initial hits, but no fireballs. (which you shouldn't care about anyway).

Anyone have a good response as to why this isn't a good idea? That way you can run hatred without problems as well. I'm unclear on how pyre affects the proliferation...

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dyankov wrote:

I still don't understand why is everyone taking AoF? Converting your phys dmg to fire dmg doesn't increase your overkill damage, which is what we are trying to maximize for herald of ash.

We take a lot of increased fire/elemental damage passives. Using Avatar of Fire with an skill that also converts (at least) 50% of physical to fire (Molten Strike, Infernal Blow) means that, in total, 100% of physical damage is converted to fire all of which then benefits from the fire/elemental damage passives (as well as any physical damage passives), all of which leads to a higher initial hit = bigger overkill.

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tny wrote:

I think the OP might have underestimated the effectiveness of physical damage in the build, since scaling the physical damage will also scale the overkill and burning damage by a number of direct and indirect factors.

I quite agree. Ignoring for a moment the Herald of Ash on-kill effect, and just comparing the value of increased %age fire/ele damage vs phys. damage for the initial hit:

1K physical hit, converted entirely to fire.

with 100% increased ele/fire damage that becomes
1000 * 1.0 * 2.0 = 2000 fire damage

likewise with 100% increased physical and no fire damage mods the final figure would be the same:
1000 * 2.0 * 1.0 = 2000 fire damage

but with 50% phys damage and 50% fire damage mods we get a higher total
1000 * 1.5 * 1.5 = 2250 fire damage

See the wiki for more details.

So for the initial hit at least, fire and physical damage modifier %ages have equal value, but of course, passive nodes tend to be higher for physical damage (8% or more) than they are for elemental damage, so for a given passive point cost it'll be more in favour of physical damage passives.

However things get more complicated when you start to factor in the overkill -> burn effect of Herald of Ash. Given a mob of say, 200 life (remaining), that 2250 hit becomes 2050 overkill. At level 20 of Herald of Ash, 157% of the overkill becomes burn damage, i.e. 2050 * 1.57 = 3218.5, which is then affected by fire/ele damage passives and burning dmg. passives (burning damage nodes have a much effect than fire/ele nodes), so (theorising here) we'd get another 50% increase from fire and 75% from burning: 3128.5 * 1.50 * 1.75 = 8212.

Really, we need a spreadsheet to see the value of the different damage modifiers.

fire = elemental > physical WEAPON > generic physical

Don't bother with burn nodes since fire/elemental will double dip both the initial hit increasing overkill thus giving bigger burn damage and then enhanced again by those same fire/elemental nodes.

Also you can generate much larger overkill by scaling your projectile, i.e. point blank.

melee physical damage gem would be better swapped with fire pen since it only scales the initial hit and you actually can deal far greater damage with projectiles anyways. This will also generate greater single target effectiveness vs bosses.

Obtaining %Fire damage leeched (doryani belt, corrupted amulet, and if 1h Doryani invitation) as life allows you to drop LL in exchange for another DPS gem.

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Kartikdon wrote:

Don't bother with burn nodes since fire/elemental will double dip both the initial hit increasing overkill thus giving bigger burn damage and then enhanced again by those same fire/elemental nodes.

Hmm...

As I said, for a given point investment, you can get higher burn damage. Compare the Holy Fire burning damage cluster: 75% increased burning damage for a mere 3 passive points vs. the fire/ele damage nodes at the templar start - 36% for 4 nodes. Even double dipping those we'd get lower burn damage.

The Heart of Flame (North of Witch) is a another matter, 61% increased fire damage for 5 points, or 49% for the top 3. Certainly that fire damage cluster wins when we're double dipping, but most of the fire damage passives are a lot lower. Personally, if going up to the witch area I'd get both Heart of Flame and Holy Fire. Telling people to not bother with burn nodes they are more than twice the %age value of some fire/ele nodes is unhelpful.


About the scaling the projectile damage, do you have any figures for that? I tried IG and PB with a non-AoF Molten Strike build when it first came out and it seemed decent but I never put the effort in to work out if it was worth the damage.

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GregorEisenh0rn wrote:

Additionally as I understand Culling Strike is BAD for Herald of Ash since it just kills the monster and doesn't generate over-kill damage from under 10% life. Was Kaom's Primacy a budget decision?

I was wondering exactly the same thing. I'll try to do some testing.

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How would you see Marohi Erqi as weapon for this build? With your current tree you could just switch it around since you don't have any weapon specific nodes.

I immediately thought of Marohi Erqi too, but I'm guessing it was expensive at the start of the league when OP first made the build. I guess any 2 hander with big per-hit damage (i.e. don't worry about IAS) will do it.