[2.0] Molten Strike Build: Elemental Bulldozer
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Welcome to the Elemental Bulldozer build guide, feel free to expand every section and read the whole thing or skip to whatever interests you the most! For your information, I am playing this character in the Warbands League!
Build Overview
This build is a new and different take on an old build concept: the elemental buzzsaw. The original elemental buzzsaw builds utilized the spectral throw skill. The focus was and is on stacking as much flat elemental damage and attack speed as possible. Spectral throw has been heavily nerfed in 2.0, and traditional buzzsaw builds leave much to be desired. Fear not buzzsaw lovers, for with this melee molten strike variant on the buzzsaw concept, elemental builds are back, and in my opinion, better than ever. In the Elemental Bulldozer we maintain the original focus of stacking flat elemental damage and attack speed, while also stacking massive amounts of movespeed to let us clear quickly as a melee character, and taking advantage of some unique aspects of molten strike to scale our damage to massive proportions.
Pros
-Fast clear speed. -Extremely potent single target. -High mobility. -High sustain, very hard to kill in most situations. -Doesn't care about reflect or slower life/mana regen.
Cons
-Can be susceptible to strong physical hits, particularly spells like ethereal knives. -Enemies with very high elemental resists can take quite a while to kill (lol at the dual Gorge bosses in the video section).
Gear
Armor
Now why do we use Queen of the Forest? Well, for one, it's just a great chest at the basic level, with life and triple resistances, and gigantic evasion. Secondarily though, we use it to achieve giant levels of movespeed, which will be explained in the flasks section. If you wanted to sacrifice some movespeed and life (and spend a lot more currency) you could go with a Hyrri's Ire to get some more dodge and spell dodge, as well as a nice little bit of extra flat cold damage. Other options for scaling survivability in different ways are lightning coil and belly of the beast, though these suffer greatly in the evasion department, and are again both much more costly than a Queen of the Forest. For reference, my Queen only cost me 2 chaos, a pretty nice deal for your endgame chest don't you think? The helmet slot is a toss-up between Devoto's Devotion and Rat's nest. For me the decision came down to two factors, one was cost, currently Devoto's is WAY cheaper than Rat's Nest. The other reason was the 5% extra movespeed, I really wanted to focus on movespeed as hard as possible to have great mobility and smooth clear. Though Devoto's has 1% more attack speed than Rat's Nest, a Rat would likely yield slightly higher DPS due to the crit chance roll, and the item rarity on Rat's Nest is a nice bonus as well. Overall it comes down to personal preference between more movespeed or more damage, and Devoto's is by far the more budget friendly option at this point in time. The rest is as you would expect, rare's to cap out our resists and get as much damage as we can where possible. If you want to sacrifice some damage on your jewelry in favor of more resists, you could go with Atziri's step for your boots to get a bit more dodge as well as a nice evasion boost. Lastly you could swap in Maligaro's for your gloves, but in my opinion this would put too much pressure on your jewelry for resists so you likely wouldn't gain much damage overall, and Maligaro's are also very expensive currently.
Weapons
These weapons are one of the main reasons I said that I think ele buzzsaw builds are in a better place than ever before. With 2.0 claws got buffed basically across the board, with higher attack speeds, higher crit chances, and most importantly, life on hit now appears in large amounts on high level bases. I chose these two base types very deliberately. The new Maraketh claws offer a large amount of mana on hit which makes nearly any skill sustainable with 0 investment into mana on your passive tree. They also have a fast base attack speed and nice crit chance, you NEED to have a Gemini Claw in one hand for this build to sustain your attack. We only need one gemini claw to sustain mana so for the other hand we want a pure life on hit claw. In my opinion the best choice is the Eye Gouger. I believe it has the best combination of attack speed, life on hit, and crit chance. The only other option here is the Imperial Claw, you will gain a bit of attack speed going this route, but will lose life gain on hit and crit chance. As for mods, on both claws the two MUST have mods are attack speed and crit chance. Past that you want as much flat elemental damage as you can get, preferably lightning and cold damage for their status effects. Then you would want crit multi or accuracy as your last suffix.
Flasks
These flasks are quite carefully thought out. I had some insane RNG and managed to get exactly the mods I wanted on all my flasks in less than 100 alterations combined. Starting from the left, we have our eternal flask. For your eternal you definitely want Surgeon's, and ideally you will have of Heat like I do. This flask will always be up and you can basically spam it as you wish to keep yourself topped off on life at all times, and of course when there is something freezing you. Next is the Seething divine flask. You absolutely MUST have a Seething flask when playing an acrobatics and evasion based character. We don't get hit very often, but if a large physical hit does connect, it will chunk us hard since we have no physical mitigation. Hit this fast if you ever see your health drop hard to keep yourself up at full and you will be able to survive nearly any situation. This is where I chose to roll my Staunching mod, this is another MUST for this build, if you run into a corrupting blood rare you will INSTANTLY 20 stack yourself. If you want you can swap the Staunching and Heat mods around between flasks, but it is my personal preference to have Heat on a duration flask rather than an instant flask. Next is the luxury flask for basically any crit build, the Surgeon's Quicksilver of Adrenaline is pretty self explanatory, gotta go fast. This is especially important for melee builds, and with the number of hits we land this flask will have 100% uptime. Next is the big kahuna of this build, the Surgeon's Jade Flask of Reflexes. In my opinion a jade flask of Reflexes is a must have in any Queen of the Forest build, and is great in any evasion based build period. Make sure you bauble up this flask, with 20% quality, the amount of hits we land with surgeon's will maintain virtually 100% uptime on this flask. Without this flask up I currently have 9k evasion. Popping the flask brings me up to 22k evasion, that is a HUGE difference that grants a much higher chance to evade attacks, as well as nearly 29% movespeed from the Queen of the Forest bonus. Lastly I have an Atziri flask. This is really a no-brainer in any non-summoner build. More damage, more leech, what's not to love?
Jewels
In the level 80 build found later in the guide I allocate two jewel slots on the passive tree. In the slot between Ranger and Shadow you are going to want a Fertile Mind unique jewel. This one passive point with the jewel will take care of ALL the intelligence needs for the build. This takes all the pressure off your gear. The other slot we take is the one below the Duelist. I favor this one over the one to the right of the Ranger because we get 10 strength instead of 10 dexterity, this helps with being able to level certain gems higher. Put whatever you like here, or if you don't have a decent jewel you can use these points elsewhere until you do. I have a pure damage jewel there.
Skill Links
You can see the exact setups I am using in the gear section, but I will list them here as well. Main Attack: Molten Strike + Multistrike + Greater Multiple Projectiles + WED For your 5th and 6th links the choice is yours. I am using Slower Projectiles. With molten strike this doesn't actually affect projectile speed at all, but gives us a huge damage boost through another MORE multiplier. For a 6th link I would probably used Added Chaos damage most of the time and swap in Concentrated Effect for bosses. Mobility: Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic + Fortify This is where we stick our Fortify gem, most of the time it's not needed, but on bosses feel free to whirl into them for the survivability boost. We also use this to get around quickly in maps that have lots of backtracking (or to turn in a master quest T_T). We have to run this on blood magic because we only have a very tiny chunk of mana unreserved, not enough to whirl around. Buffs: Wrath, Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder + Curse on Hit + Assassin's Mark You could use anger instead of Wrath if you wish, but having more lightning damage means you can shock bigger enemies, Wrath is by far the better choice. Herald of Ice lets us blow up a pack with a single crit and the Herald of Thunder setup is how we generate power charges. Misc Stuff: Increased Duration - Faster Casting - Vaal Grace - Vaal Haste I didn't have this setup yet when I recorded the initial videos, but I will record some more videos with it later. Vaal Grace is great, especially for bosses with high physical damage spells, the extra spell dodge is wonderful, and Vaal Haste is a massive clearspeed and DPS increase. I like to have faster casting just so I can relexively pop them at crucial moments with less risk of getting stunned or anything. If you wanted you could just use another copy of one of the Vaal gems. CWDT + Ice Golem Use whatever golem you want, I believe Ice Golem suits this build best for the crit and accuracy. You have to waste too many slots to support the golem enough to keep him alive, so you are better off just using a single slot on CWDT to resummon him automatically all the time. Level these both all the way. CWDT + Arctic Breath + Greater Multiple Projectiles You can use whatever CWDT setup you prefer. I like this setup with level 1 gems as it constantly spreads chilled ground everywhere. BLOOD RAGE - You gotta have it somewhere, it's how we generate our frenzy charges, which we have 7 of, as well as giving us a flat attack speed boost, even with the nerf to 25% generation it's still amazing.
Bandits and Passive Tree
Normal: Oak Cruel: Kraityn Merciless: Kraityn I generally plan any new build for level 80, which is 100 points if you help a bandit in every difficulty, so I will show the level 80 tree here. I do this because level 80 is easily achievable for just about anyone, past that things slow down a bit: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIAAAYAXgUtCC4NjQ-rFHUV9ha_GYoZjhqPI_YkiyT9JpUqCy5TMHEwfDY9OkI-z0MxR35KfUtXS3hM_02STipRR1VLVYVaGluvX7Bh4mJ5YqxlTWegbIxtbG-ecFJ07XXLdwd67311gwmExYcTh3aMC4w2jX2Nfo2_lwabjZu1nKSdqqOKpMKly6_rtUi5fLvjvTa95r6nwOPDM8M6xKLKSs2Y02_TftQj2sHdqOOf51TqYuyw7YPuDu968bPz6vba-wn8xf66_94= I'm currently level 82. After the tree shown I picked up Master of the Arena for 1 point mainly for the HP regen and strength, but the extra range for your melee hit doesn't hurt. Next I am working my way over to grab the whole Revenge of the Hunted wheel and then will grab the jewel socket to the right of the ranger. That will put me at level 90. Beyond that it's whatever. For the leveling process I grabbed all the life and projectile nodes + point blank first, saving all the crit and frenzy charges for last. A note about Point Blank with molten strike. It is a MASSIVE damage boost. On average you will get the full 50% MORE damage boost that the keystone offers if you have no AOE modifiers. Molten strike fires projectiles within a 20 radius circle. This means a projectile can go between 0 and 20 distance, with the average distance being 10. 10 is the maximum distance at which Point Blank gives the full 50% damage boost. So the "average" molten ball will get the full bonus.
Stats
Defense
These are the defensive stats without my Vaal skills activated. Popping Vaal Grace puts attack dodge over 70% and Spell Dodge over 60%. I am currently working my way towards jewelry with enough resists to let me use Atziri's Step for my boots. This will give me over 75 spell dodge with Vaal Grace activated. I can also pop Vaal Haste for extra movement speed, bringing me up to 170% movement speed modifier. 
Offense
Bear in mind that the tooltip on molten strike means absolutely nothing. All of my scaling on the tree is in projectile damage, with the point blank passive and slower projectiles gem scaling 7 total projectiles coming from GMP. This tooltip is likely <10% of my actual damage. That's 27k DPS on the melee attacks that is basically just a 3-link with multistrike and wed, and no scaling from the tree. And again I can jack these numbers even higher by popping Vaal Haste. 
Videos
Kill Voll: https://youtu.be/JQ94UlUFT8U Level 71 Overgrown Shrine: https://youtu.be/eChgcKNX9c0 Level 72 Graveyard: https://youtu.be/7pfnlCE2TWE Level 73 Strand: https://youtu.be/GKi0IAxPlC4 Level 76 Gorge: https://youtu.be/GeC364woChg More to come!
Questions and Answers
Q: Miokemia asked, "do you think atziri and/or uber is viable with this build?" A: I am currently working towards doing Atziri, so yes, I do think it's viable. I need to level a bit more to finish the revenge of the Hunted wheel, this should push my life up around 5k, and I also am working on getting more resists on my jewelry so I can use Atziri's boots for the extra spell dodge. Once I accomplish those things normal Atziri should be quite doable, I'm honestly not sure about Uber though, as I have never done her before. Q: Xenochaos1 asked, "explain your defensive mechanism?! how do you deal with the Ele reflect?!" A: The defensive mechanism is acrobatics/phase-acro combined with massive evasion and big life gain on hit with huge attack speed. With Vaal Grace my attack dodge is over 70%, coupled with over 23k evasion. Once I make the switch to Atziri's boots my spell dodge will be over 75% with Vaal Grace active. Reflect is a non-issue. The build relies on a massive amount of relatively small hits, each providing large life gain on it, rather than a few large hits. Thornflesh and elemental reflect rares I don't even notice, and on elemental reflect maps I just have to spam my 1st flask a little more, which is not an issue. Phys reflect obviously does nothing. The one thing I do have to watch out for is the few enemies in the game that cast lightning thorns, that messes me up if I plow into it. Q: Xenochaos1 asked, "may i ask, what is the upkeep time on vaal grace? Can you cast it often? How much lgoh you have? Why not get more ele dmg add to attacks from other piece, boot, glove, helm, jewels? Do we really need that much movement speed if we mainly use whirling blade to move around?! Shouldnt we get reduced mana reserved node for more aura and elemental damage? did you try higher map? if u do atziri can u post video?! too? or video of higher map?! A: I can keep basically 100% uptime on Vaal Grace OR Vaal Haste. Vaal Grace is completely unnecessary for anything but bosses, so I generally spam Vaal Haste throughout maps and just pop Vaal Grace for the bosses. I have 45 life gain on hit. I have flat ele damage everywhere you can get it except for some slots where you could stick sub-optimal uniques, so I'm not quite sure what you are asking. We only use whirling blades to cover long distances and to dodge dangerous attacks. When you are plowing through packs it is impossible to use whirling blades efficiently, so maximizing movespeed is important. We do pick a mana reservation cluster between ranger and shadow, this is what lets us run Wrath + 2 Heralds. There is a video of a 76 map in the videos section, it's currently really hard to get maps much higher than that. I've run some 77's with friends but didn't record them, I will certainly record some more as I get them. And yes I will definitely record Atziri when I get there, I need to grind out several more levels for that. Last edited by Zambash on Jul 20, 2015, 4:53:21 PM
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do you think atziri and/or uber is viable with this build?
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can you post your stats?! offensive + Defensive?! and explain your defensive mechanism?!
how do you deal with the Ele reflect?! SHOP : http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/682434 Last edited by xenochaos1 on Jul 19, 2015, 9:36:56 AM
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I am adding a question and answer section to the original post now where I will answer the questions people are asking, also I will add a stats section as requested.
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" Thanks a lot, fast answer ;-) may i ask, what is the upkeep time on vaal grace? Can you cast it often? How much lgoh you have? Why not get more ele dmg add to attacks from other piece, boot, glove, helm, jewels? Do we really need that much movement speed if we mainly use whirling blade to move around?! Shouldnt we get reduced mana reserved node for more aura and elemental damage? did you try higher map? if u do atziri can u post video?! too? or video of higher map?! SHOP : http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/682434 Last edited by xenochaos1 on Jul 19, 2015, 5:44:07 PM
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Adding your latest question and answer to the OP now.
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if we go LGOH as method to sustain our life, shouldn't we get like more dmg mitigation instead of dodge/evasion? more like AA/endurance charge/fortify/armor?
otherwise u can get 1 shot kill if a hard hitting hit you?! wouldnt arctic armor be a better option?! do we have enought %life from tree?! is it worth taking the elemental dmg node at the start of shadow?! any map mod we absolutly cannot do? bloodrage doenst seem to affect you (hhurt you alot) is it normal do you have something to reduce the bloodrage dmg)? if i go rat nest instead of devoto, wont i lsoe lots of evasion?!, could you tell me your % evasion chance with out devoto!? do you recommend atziri step to get 16% more spell dodge?! OR Darkray vectors?, fore more movement speed, frenzy charge, and dodge? OR BloodDance?! for frenzy genereation+movement speed+life regen? and for armor if we can afford Hyrri's Ire, should we get it? or queen of the forest is better?! also for base claw, do you suggest :Eye Gouger OR Imperial Claw and why? (level 30 so far) btw ;p and thanks for your build and reply ;p SHOP : http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/682434 Last edited by xenochaos1 on Jul 21, 2015, 11:47:34 PM
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I would definitely try to switch in Frost Blades as AoE main skill and move Molten Strike to a 4L as single target with Conc. Damage seems decent enough but huhhh that range...
Also an ele build with only one of the ele auras and virtually no aura effect nodes is a bit weird. I'm proud I made the build that got hotfix nerfed by 80% in under a week :
Kamikaze Clones /1204796 (LL Mirror Arrow Instability Prolif) |
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" Woukd reave be a good idea too? SHOP : http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/682434
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Hey man, saw you bragging on reddit so just to check into this claim of yours, tank eva ranger in 2.0 :)
Please post actual screenshot with /deaths. Post in foreground of the char detail screen. Your two highest maps are also the easiest rolled in the whole game, sea witches and no damage mods. If you're saying you are tank buldozer, please back that up with man mods on the high lvl maps. You know, as how most of us that want to get far are actually rolling them. Also, those are strand and gorge with seawitches. Have you actually played 2.0 yet? Waiting patiently for backing evidence :) Last edited by OpieOpie on Jul 21, 2015, 3:25:56 PM
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