Righteous Fire + Flame Surge High Life Build (in progress)

Hi all
I recently took a break from path of exile and am just now returning. I have always been interested in doing a righteous fire build. I've seen different builds through out the years of path of exile, I remember one from the past that was Mara + Freezing Pulse + RF.

Since then there have been some interesting skill additions that seem to like they would really benefit a righteous fire build, mainly Flame Surge (http://tinyurl.com/ktpkw66) and Herald of Ash (http://tinyurl.com/l34mjt8)

I am curious if anyone has tried using these skills in conjunction with a RF build. I am preparing to make a RF Mara with this kind of skill setup and wanted some imput from other people playing RF and to see if anyone out there is using a build like this or a spell damage build (instead of the cyclone builds I see everyone posting)



I will update this with my theorycrafted gear and gem setups when I have some more time :)

This is the initial passive tree I have come up with. The idea was to get as much %life and %life regen nodes so that we will never die and also have enough hp to sustain RF (provided you have the mandatory shield Rise of the Phoenix (http://tinyurl.com/k8vum7s) and to bring the damage of RF up (damage dealt based on %maximum life). We also pick up added fire and burning damage to make sure that RF hits as hard as possible.


The main passives to note here are
Unwavering Stance - This is going to help us immensely, not being stunned is going to be vital for end game maps.
Arsonist - This is 4 points in on the wheel; with 4 points you get +26% Fire damage, +30% increase burning damage, and that oh so important 1% life regen per second (no joke, this is seriously vital to sustaining RF)
Golems Blood Wheel - Again we see that tasty 1% life regen per second, but this one has an added 2 nodes of 0.6% life regen, WE CANT HAVE ENOUGH! (well maybe we can, I'll try to find out)
Holy Fire - A huge 45% burning damage plus an extra 30% from the two points to get there nets you 75% burning damage, possibly the best points we will spend in terms of damage.
Ash, Frost, and Storm - Increased Elemental damage is good since we are playing an elemental spell caster(specifically fire), this will improve RF damage as well as our other fire spells (Flame Surge, Fireball, Firestorm or whatever you choose)

Lets Talk About Skills
The first setup we will talk about is Righteous Fire (http://tinyurl.com/kuybm9d)

Righteous fire - should do a ton of damage with this build because of the huge amount of max life you are going to have. Furthermore it boosts our spell damage by 40% at level 1 and 59% at level 20. That might not look that huge but remember this is on top of our existing spell damage(multiplier).


The link setup I have in mind is pretty standard (I think almost everyone runs this setup)
RF > Increased Burning Damage (this only effects enemies) > Concentrated Effect > Increased Area of Effect


Next we will talk about our ideal 6 link setup

Flame Surge - (http://tinyurl.com/ktpkw66) this is a spell that was added in the 1.1.4 path (this was at a time when I was on a break from PoE). This spell looks very interesting to me because of the modifier "50% more damage against burning enemies". This is huge because almost every enemy will be ignited by righteous fire. The only possible downside is that Flame Surge is an AOE so it will not benefit from skill gems and modifiers like "Lesser\Greater Multiple Projectiles, Faster Projectiles, Chain, or Fork". However, as a Marauder we get a special gem that will help us out immensely...

Iron Will - (http://tinyurl.com/lxu8fs4) This gem used to be the Meta in the beta days, people loved to run Righteous fire with a freezing pulse build that used Iron Will. This support gems causes Strength to be added as spell damage to supported gems, +1% increased Spell Damage for every five points of strength to be exact. The only downside is a reduction in cast speed of 19% at level 1 reaching 0% at level 20. This shouldn't be a huge problem because:
1. Flame Surge should do massive amounts of damage to anyone who is inside our RF area which is pretty big.
2. We are going to use spell echo which should speed it back up to an acceptable casting speed.
3. %quality on Flame Surge increases the casting speed!


This is the link setup I have in mind for this build.

4L
Flame Surge > Iron Will > Blood Magic > Life Leech

5l
Flame Surge > Iron Will > Blood Magic > Life Leech > Spell Echo

6l
Flame Surge > Iron Will > Blood Magic > Life Leech > Fire Penetration (looking for suggestions for a 6th gem link)


Auras are next

This is almost self explanatory because we are a righteous fire build (purity of fire) and high lige (vitality) and obviously everyone is using (reduced mana) so that leaves us with one last aura.... Grace

therefor our aura link is going to be

Purity of Fire > Vitality > Grace > Reduced Mana


Lets talk survivability
If you've been counting sockets then you know we only have a weapon, shield and one 4l slot left. This setup could go in any of these slots although the last 4l would be the best option.

More when I have some more time to level and write =)

A few things:

Firstly, The DPS of Flame Surge compared to RF will be, bluntly, abysmal. The extra 50% damage from RF still won't make much of a dent in your overall DPS.

Secondly, if you are using flame surge, you won't be hitting enough targets to justify Life Gain on Hit or doing enough damage to justify Life Leech. This leaves you very vulnerable. If you're playing in Beyond league, this will earn you a quick insta-rip.

Thirdly, flame surge isn't an attack, it's a spell. Therefore Herald of Ash won't do anything. And even if it was an attack, you'd likely never get the killing blow on anything unless you tied it perfect.

Fourthly, RF is a spell, but it does not deal spell damage. Therefore iron will does nothing.

Not meaning to shit all over your build...just informing you that most of what you said won't work. Better to learn that now than @ level 65.

Yes I know herald of ash wont work, that would be for a melee type build.

I never said anything about linking Iron will to rightious fire though, I'm using it on Flame Surge.

I recently ripped on my RF Discharger on beyond to a lag spike.
(the joys of living in a shithole)

I'm considering posting a guide abbout it soon. Nonetheless, it's effective - high fire res, high life, burn mobs near you, armour gear, surge on single target, 7 endurance charges (enduring cry + echo), discharge for fast area clears. Safe against reflect.

It's really, really solid.

"

lucksickle wrote:

I recently ripped on my RF Discharger on beyond to a lag spike.
(the joys of living in a shithole)

I'm considering posting a guide abbout it soon. Nonetheless, it's effective - high fire res, high life, burn mobs near you, armour gear, surge on single target, 7 endurance charges (enduring cry + echo), discharge for fast area clears. Safe against reflect.

It's really, really solid.

.

I would love to see this. Do you have a link to your idea skill tree?

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEAxthYY1BQLv-iD18_458nL-8OvJ-krPIvqBhUSWoe0iGezVcNpzDZYZHOFHEUIBkuu-0OPAPGUEcn7TpSn8sGDhiR_EvE9jboY_1sFsQVPQ88LWSjCfaHGSSLxq4aVXy7HKe3PmEhOtjFigxfQYf-CoTvEuHsOC3S8B9Tpfno8kXYvXTtKU8aOASzogBodDrhNZJ67-QigpunhBRNAnHaYqZX_o9gSxpsgziUoE3jBS2drhZv73zEWBJpJKon1RccNulxeeNqPAWf34uM4XPtIEbXBVuQVQ==

Something along the lines of this.
I was using atziri's foible for mana and was restricted to running Iron Will (no manacost increase), which isn't bad with 350+str, but I'd ideally want to get more mana regen somehow to swap that for fire pen I guess. I was also a little shaky on whether Flame Surge should be the 5link, or Discharge. Had a pretty good sceptre, but Doon Cuebiyari and Doryani's are obvious upgrades.

Discharge - Chance to Ig. - Ele Prolif - Inc. Burning - Fire Pen - (iron will?)
Flame Surge - Faster Casting - Spell Echo - Fire pen - Conc. Effect - (leech/iron will?)

Reduced Mana - Purity of Fire - Vitality - Clarity
Blood Magic - Faster Casting - Flammability - Immortal Call

Righteous Fire - Increased Burning - Increased AOE
Enduring Cry - Spell Echo - Faster Casting

"

Discharge - Chance to Ig. - Ele Prolif - Inc. Burning - Fire Pen - (iron will?)
Flame Surge - Faster Casting - Spell Echo - Fire pen - Conc. Effect - (leech/iron will?)

Reduced Mana - Purity of Fire - Vitality - Clarity
Blood Magic - Faster Casting - Flammability - Immortal Call

Righteous Fire - Increased Burning - Increased AOE
Enduring Cry - Spell Echo - Faster Casting

Whats the thought behind Enduring Cry with Spell Echo? Wouldn't you want to run something like
Enduring Cry > Faster Casting > Increased Area > Cast When Damage Taken

Also I would think you would want discharge to just do an insane amount of damage, basically 1 shotting / finishing off everything around you. This makes me think

Discharge > Faster Casting > Fire Pen > (Increased Area / Conc Effect / Inc Crit Chance / Inc Crit Damage) ?

"

rufiothelostkid wrote:

Whats the thought behind Enduring Cry with Spell Echo? Wouldn't you want to run something like
Enduring Cry > Faster Casting > Increased Area > Cast When Damage Taken

Also I would think you would want discharge to just do an insane amount of damage, basically 1 shotting / finishing off everything around you. This makes me think

Discharge > Faster Casting > Fire Pen > (Increased Area / Conc Effect / Inc Crit Chance / Inc Crit Damage) ?

Enduring Cry with Echo causes you to actually use the cry twice despite the cooldown, so this generates twice the charges per pack. This means that if you use enduring cry (twice) in a medium size pack that would normally generate 3 charges, you end up generating 6.

You're right about the plan with discharge.
Faster casting becomes pointless since you won't be casting discharge more than once.

Fire Pen is a priority, the only reason I was running Iron Will over it is mostly due to mana cost multipliers.

Conc. Effect makes the area too small, also harms your proliferation.

Increased AoE, while nice, isn't needed if you get a quality Discharge (which I'd advise on strongly.) The problem with this is that it doesn't increase your damage at all.

Although speccing into crits would be lovely, it's just something you can't afford to do, as it would require an obscene amount of points to achieve, and sustaining Righteous Fire itself requires many points. So that's just not possible in my opinion.

Given that you don't have that many points, you probaby won't get to 50% crit chance on discharge, and the way the game works, when you discharge, it'll roll the chance to crit once regardless of how many mobs are in your screen. This means that if you're in a group of 10~20 creatures, you will either hit them all and achieve nothing, or crit them all for overkill. This is why the increased critical chance gem is not a good choice, critical multiplier even less so.

Chance to ignite, on the other hand, is rolled per target hit. So in the same scenario, 35% chance to ignite in a pack of 10~20 mobs will very likely ignite multiple of them. Elemental proliferation will then spread the burn to the rest of them. Ignites regularize the output because, although you are not 1-shotting the packs, the initial hit is rather strong, so the ignite will be based upon that initial hit.

Because you are a righteous fire build, you will profit from the burning damage nodes, as well as all the fire damage nodes, which will double dip, causing your initial fire explosion to deal more damage, and then cause your burning damage to be higher.