[1.3]PewPewPews Witch Incinerate Guide [ TheoryCrafting // W I P ]

Please keep in mind, this is a work in progress. What you see in this post will differ a lot from what it's going to be in the end. I won't be updating this post until I settled on a solid tree, which will be soon though. Until then, feel free to read the guide, and if you are curious where I'm now with the build, just read my last post. It should contain the new tree with an explanation.

Pew? Are you for real? Do we really need another Incinerator guide?
Before you ask Yes. I have a legitimate reason for making another incinerator. I came to the conclusion that some of the changes I want to get through, just demand for a different incinerator.

For those who don't know what my incinerator is all about, check out this guide. Don't be too intimidated by the wall of text, if you have a basic understanding of the game, you can simply skip to the parts that matter(Gems/Gear/Tree/Etc). The build had it's fame during the Domination league, but never really disappeared from the game. Over the time, it has always remained strong and cheap.

Well, after the changes in the Templar tree, I saw some new potential in the witch tree. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, I could not play a lot during the first few months of the 1.3 patch, and only recently found some time to put into the game again. While testing some other new gems, I found a few things that were interesting for the incinerator. But one thing blew my mind. GGG, are you serious??

Warlords Mark, the new meta?
Let me get this straight. So Warlord Mark gives us:
- Life leech
- Mana leech
- Stun chance
- Reduced enemy stun recovery
- Chance to obtain an endurance charge upon kill

And this all works on spells now? Well, on a CwDT, it's not that powerful. You need to get hit before it casts, and the AoE is limited. It will be more effective on bosses, but you will lack regen on most common whites/blues. But this will get increasingly better when you combine it with Herald of Thunder. Even though the cast rate of HoT is not the strongest, it will still keep firing, as long as you can uphold HoT. Add Curse on Hit with Warlords mark to it, and it will always hit targets around you, meaning there will always be targets to leech life and mana off nearby. And this is huge. This mean, we can drop both life leech and mana leech from our set up, and get other gems instead. Which in turn means, we can drop uniques like the Infernal Mantle, and still be able to melt everything with ease. Which means, we can probably do this build completely self found(and still be able to nuke any map with almost any mods). Yeah, Curse immunity will be tough, but I'm sure there will be a way around it. I'll make sure I'll find a way around it :P

The basic Idea behind this Incinerator
Herald of Thunder and Incinerate. Due to Incinerate's high cast speed, it's rather easy to shock monsters. With the nodes Elementalist and Celestial Punishment, we will be able to easily lay down those shockstacks on whatever we want, and thus uphold HoT for long amounts of time.
Herald of Thunder will be casting Warlords Mark on everything around me, and maybe also another curse, like Temp chains or Enfeeble. Or elemental weakness, if we don't need the defensive option.
We will still be using Eldritch Battery, Mind over Matter and Arctic Armour. I see no reason to drop that setup.

The infernal mantle won't be necessary as well, which in turn, will make Saffell's Frame also less important(Saffell's was mostly used to mitigate the double spell damage taken on low mana). So a lot of other options will be open. The Cloak, for those who want to save ~10 points, or Lightning Coil, as an defensive option, or just a rare. Honestly, everything should be possible, making this build save to play with no costs involve, and upgradeable to become insanely strong and tanky.

Tree/Gems
This is how I imagine the Tree around level 85.

This is how I see the gems.
[6-link]
Incinerate - LMP/GMP - Fire penetration - Spell Echo(- Faster Casting - Added Chaos damage)

[4 link]
Herald of Thunder - Curse on Hit - Warlords Mark - Enfeeble/Temp Chains/Elemental Weakness
Herald of Ice - Increased AoE - Reduced Mana - Clarity
Cast when Damage Taken - Frost Wall - Lightning Warp - Faster Casting

[3 link]
Cast when Damage Taken - Increased Duration - Immortal Call
Lightning Warp - Faster Casting - Reduced Duration

Final thoughts
This is really stupid. And I can not imagine no one abused this yet. Hell, this could be used on any caster. Goodbye mana costs forever. Hell, you could even go with three curses, put one of those three in one of the CwDTs. Especially if you plan on playing without the LW + CwDT, there is room for another. Windscream is a really good option for this build anyways.

I am starting this build soon, most likely tomorrow. I will update this topic, and slowly turn it into another guide. Feel free to comment, think alongside and whatever more. Once this build is finished, I will transform this topic into it's official guide!


Usually, I do the build first, to see if it's really working as I plan, but this time I'm doing it the other way around, because I know this is going to melt everything.

Reserved

Reserved(Yes, I think I am going to need three posts ._.)


(I swear, this is going to be a hell to update .____.)

"

Appels_Zijn_Gezond wrote:

Reserved(Yes, I think I am going to need three posts ._.)

Upper limit is 5000 characters (if i remember it right) per post. Got there once with the witch builds list and had to outsource some stuff to an archive.

Looking forward to a guide that challenges War and Peace in length:)

Hey Pew. Your original incinerate guide got me my first real endgame (late-80s) character in Rampage, so I was eager to try out what you're starting here. I'm at level 45 with this build now (Cruel A2) and am really happy with the feel of it so far. Damage & HoT+CoH leech really takes off after you pick up Celestial Punishment + Elementalist.

Leveling is a breeze with a Reverb Wand (L1 spell echo "4L") + Incin + LMP + Faster Casting. Things just melt with that many hits per sec of Incin, since the 25% increased damage from Celestial Punishment triggers almost immediately. Can't wait to see how a 6L incin does w/o the mana/life leech requirements. Now that the chest armor is freed up, too, you can reclaim a huge number of points from this build if you end up running with a CoD.

Cloak of Flame + Mokou's Embrace might be fun to try with this now, too.

Herald of Thunder - Curse on Hit - Warlords Mark - Enfeeble/Temp Chains/Elemental Weakness


This does not work. HoT wont transfer CoH-curses to the Incinerate. Or did i misunderstood some fundamental part of this build? :D

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KB33 wrote:

Herald of Thunder - Curse on Hit - Warlords Mark - Enfeeble/Temp Chains/Elemental Weakness


This does not work. HoT wont transfer CoH-curses to the Incinerate. Or did i misunderstood some fundamental part of this build? :D

Yup, the point is that when you shock enemies with Incinerate, you proc HoT which will then proc curses.

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Nahkalaukku wrote:

"

KB33 wrote:

Herald of Thunder - Curse on Hit - Warlords Mark - Enfeeble/Temp Chains/Elemental Weakness


This does not work. HoT wont transfer CoH-curses to the Incinerate. Or did i misunderstood some fundamental part of this build? :D

Yup, the point is that when you shock enemies with Incinerate, you proc HoT which will then proc curses.

And the key is that the only way that the lightning damage added to Incinerate by HoT is sufficient to shock is via the Celestial Punishment + Elementalist notables, which gives each hit 10% chance to shock. Since Incinerate hits so fast, this still happens a LOT, despite the low sounding percentage.

And as I progress through the game, I can confirm this is happening a lot, even at lower levels. I started using the full combo around lvl 30. I noticed that on some spots, my damage was too high to really let the leeching happen. But as I progressed, and monsters started to scale better, this became much better. I barely ever had to even use a flask, and my HP stayed nice above the 50%(considering I had around 600 HP, that is quite good).

The only concern I have is: what if the area starts off with a strong mob? I had a few cases where an exile was the first thing I encountered. But this could also happen with certain bosses. Maybe you just need to fight that one thing in the room. How will you do it then?

I see two solutions. Either manually have another Warlords mark ready, or have on in a decently levelled CwDT(I am thinking about lvl 10 - 15), so that if we really start taking damage, it will cast, without overwriting the CoH Warlords mark.

I will be doing another run sometime later on tonight, or tomorrow - keep an eye on my stream if you are curious!

"

Appels_Zijn_Gezond wrote:

Usually, I do the build first, to see if it's really working as I plan, but this time I'm doing it the other way around, because I know this is going to melt everything.

I believe you, your "old" build gave me back the good Poe feeling. I will defo try this.

I can´t find your Artic Armor gem in the proposed set up?