My Molten strike scion is broken.

Hello folks,

I have made a Molten Strike build in soft core.
I tried to get everything from the forum to build my passive tree, I mostly used the Marauder community's Molten Strike build.

Everything was good in normal, Molten Strike is a great attack and deal massive damage.
In cruel, things became a bit more complicated, I had to grind experience and keep myself 3 or 4 levels above zones. I died several times in cruel, most of the time for pushing it to the limit.
It became easier since I switch to CwDT + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Molten Shell. But I was a bit low in damage, so I used Multistrike and find my way to Merciless (I died 2 times against Dominus).

And that's where the nightmare begins.
My scion is level 56 and I keep dying in act 1 merciless (the first two zones), I mean, it's unplayable if I get too much aggro it's done... And my damage are awful...

So questions are, what have I missed? Is my passive tree broken? my gears? or it's just that i'm bad?

My current tree

My passive tree goal for 90 points





Thank you all.

Edit : images were broken

Your life is too low. Your damage mostly scales off your weapon damage, so you really need to get a better one. You have practically no defensive mechanics and your planned build is pretty inefficient. I'll look into it further now and post a few suggestions that may help you out.

So, this is what I would do. You max swap out a little bit of damage to increase your block chance. Could be that you have to take the mana nodes from the duelist area to sustain you mana costs.

Let's talk about your damage now. If we have a look at Molten Strike we can see that it is labeled as 'Fire, Projectile, Attack, AoE, Melee'. Molten Strikes deals 120% of base damage and 60% of your damage is converted to fire damage. So how to scale it properly?

Fir of all you need a base weapon with alot of physical damage. The weapon type doesn't really matter as long as it is a one-handed melee weapon. Alot of people are promising that you'll have the best damage with Doryani's Catalyst.


Note that Melee Physical damage increased your entire damage, whereas Fire damage only scales 60% of it. So you really want to focus on Melee Physical damage.

Furthermore there are alot of items that will grant you a huge damage boost. Have a look at


The flat damage added by these items is added to your weapon's flat damage and is scaled by your passive nodes and the rest of your gear. Abyssus will add alot more damage, but you'll need good armor values to sustain the extra damage. Bringer of Rain also adds alot of flat Life and a decent Block Chance. You could build your tree around it and grab the Block nodes from the duelist and Marauder area. Block is a very powerful defensive mechanic.

Anyways, I hope these suggestions will help you out a bit. If you have further questions feel free to throw a message or whisp me ingame (@TripTrapper).

Wow, that's quite an answer !
First of all, thank you for taking time.

The passive tree you post, is it a standard contact character or tank passive tree?
Because it's not taking advantage of the "Projectile" side of Molten strike?

Anyway, I will try it soon; maybe in HC to make me think before acting :D

Thank you :)

I didn't take the projectile nodes because I don't think that they are worth it. I'd rather increase the damage of a single molten strike hit which will also increase the projectile damage.
About the tankyness of this tree - it really depends on how you specialize (%block for example). I think it should be viable for hardcore, but don't take my word for it :P