[2.0 HC/SC] Lord of Leveling, Self-Found Incinerate and Flame Totem

Lord of Leveling is a high-speed clear designed to function for brand new characters who have little no uniques and very little experience in Path as a whole. Incinerate forms the functional core of the build, while flame totem providing valuable additional DPS and another warm body to distract the more potent enemies that a play might encounter.

The Lord is the embodiment of 'Offense is the Best Defense' although runs enough raw health from passives to take more than two of the most dangerous spells and abilities in the game. Although flame totem got hit in recent history, its lower level scaling problems is entirely mitigated by the focus on Incinerate.

Passive Skill Tree


How to play the build
Spoiler

This set is quite Simple, as it was intended to be.

1) Run around incinerating groups
2) Against Yellow packs and Bosses throw out the Chaos Golem for protection and drop a flame totem
3) If you are feeling uppity you can also curse the target, although incinerates base DPS is so high its unneeded.


Pros and Cons
Spoiler

Pros
*CHEAP
*Requires 1 three-link to function, everything else is gravy
*Good clear speed
*Can clear most map mods
*Get to watch to world burn

Cons
*Atziri is ROUGH
*Vulnerable to Corrupting Blood


Bandits
Spoiler

Normal: Help Oak
Cruel: Kill All
Merc: Kill All


Gems and Links
Spoiler

Incinerate - Spell Echo - LMP/Faster Projectile - Faster Casting - Fire Penetration - Added Lightning
Flame Totem - Added Lightning - Faster Casting - Faster Projectiles - Fire Penetration - Added Cold
Cast On Damage taken - Arctic Breath - GMP - Temporal Chains
Herald of Ice - Herald of Thunder - Clarity - Arctic Armor
Flammability - Vaal Molten Shell - Enduring Cry - Chaos Golem

(>' ')> Dear sweetness man that's a mess of skills, and you said this i was a 3 link build!
<(' '<) Yes it is a 3-link capable build, but these are the the 'convenience' options i recommend characters run if they have the gearing and the links. Allow me to explain each one:

Incinerate - Spell Echo - LMP Forms the core three-link of this build. This is because of the easy crafting recipe known as +1 fire (Selling a blue wand/scepter an orb of alteration and a fire resistance ring). When facing down a boss the LMP is traded out for faster Projectiles which spikes the single target DPS to silly levels and grants an extra buffer of distance for dodging. Faster casting takes the 4L priority for clearing purposes due to incinerates staging system.

Flame Totem - Added Lightning - Faster Casting forms our other 3L super team, and should be socketed into a +1 fire wand/scepter as well. By itself flame totem is a strong skill, combined with incinerate the clear is silly. The biggest thing it provides is a way to interact with reflect sources without risking your own health. Faster projectiles fills out the 4L slot due to both a damage spike and utility increase.

CoDT - Arctic Breath - GMP - Temporal chains forms an automatic defensive system that will lock down a massive area around the caster with the glorious combination of ice and temporal chains. GMP and CoDT should remain level 1 while Arctic breath should be leveled to 4 and Temporal Chains leveled to 7

HoI - HoT - Clarity - Arctic Armor is your Aura setup. Most of the time you are only going to be able to run three of the auras at once. For general clearing i recommend HoI - HoT - and Clarity. For hard fights and posses exchange Herald of Ice for Arctic Armor for a defensive boost. In most cases you should not level clarity beyond level 3 as it becomes inefficient.

Flammability - Vaal Molten Shell - Enduring Cry - Chaos Golem are your utility skills. Flammability provides a massive spike to DPS. Vaal Molten Shell provides both a DPS and a defensive increase. Enduring cry provides the always valuable endurance charges which mitigates some of the builds defensive weakness. Lastly is the valuable Chaos Golem, which provides a healthy distraction and a mitigation bonus.




Leveling guide for new players
Spoiler

At the request of some players this guide is aimed at new players which provides when and what to do in regard to skills.

Act 1
Spoiler

At the very beginning you have no choice about your starting skill until you kill Hilloc. Just wail on him until he crumples with your glacial hammer.

Once you get into town take Freezing Pulse as your quest reward. This will be one of your main early leveling skills until we get out later skills. To make your life easy grab the first two blue wands or scepters that you encounter, we will be using them later. Freezing pulse will crush the early stages of the game, as per usual however watch out for the stray Unique enemy as they can be difficult to handle super early on.

After you finish the Breaking Some Eggs quest, return back to Lions Eye and take the Flame Totem. Flame totem is a Bro, he will not only provide a source of DPS but will also de-agro mobs from you. At this point in time its good to look into crafting our leveling gear. By now you have hopefully gotten an Orb of Alteration (looks like a blue blob) and a blue wand or scepter. If things are going nicely you will have two orbs and 2 wands or 2 scepters.

You can force a blue name on a weapon by using an Orb of Transmutation. Once you have those, talk to Nessa in Lion's Eye and purchase a fire and a frost resist ring. If she doesn't have one then buy some iron rings and a red and blue gem from her that you don't care about. Sell a ring and a gem to get a resist ring of that type. It doesn't matter that you can use it because we are going to turn around and sell it, our blue wand/scepter and the blue blob of Alteration. This gives us a +1 elemental weapon.

Stick your freezing pulse into the cold weapon and the flame totem into the fire one and sit back and enjoy the easy ride. FP by itself will clear the world but if you are worried drop the totem and tag team an enemy down. In the ideal world you will do this on 3-link items.

Once you kill Brutus, return to Lion's eye and grab Clarity and Added Lightning. You can grab multiple Added Lightning to support both the Flame totem and your FP if you want. We will be leveling Clarity to level 3. Incinerate IS a mana hog, but we will only really be using it to crush bosses until we get a piece of Elreons.

Keep Progressing until you get to Mervil, then pop back for to town to pick up some new skills. Take Firestorm as the quest reward, and buy Incinerate from nessa. Swap out your +cold wand for another +fire source and socket both Firestorm and Incinerate you +gear. At this point we no longer need freezing pulse, Incinerate will take over the single target role. If possible support all three of the fire-spells with Added lightning as they play extremely well with it.

Run to Mervil, drop a flame totem, and Incinerate her face while spamming your Mana Pots. The fight should be over by the time you run out of mana.

Act 2
Spoiler

Progress normally through act two. Once you finish Intruders in Black pick up both Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder. It will be difficult to run all our auras initially, so turn them off and on as you are comfortable. You should be steam rolling Act two with your damage, just respect the single hits yellows and unique mobs can put out.

Clear out weaver and pick up Faster Casting and slap it on your Incinerate. The Holy Grail of early dps is Faster Casting - Added Lightning - Incinerate/Flame totem. Firestorm will slowly begin to take a back seat, showing up to deal with large groups, or when mana or mobility is of a higher concern.

Kill Alira and Kraiten, and help Oak for the HP. Kill the roots and tag back to town to pick up Arctic Armour. AA is going to always on from this point on as the chill and damage reduction while channeling Incinerate is just too valuable.

Ever want to see a boss made into a joke? Incinerate Vaal and laugh.

Act 3
Spoiler

Act 3 is simple for this build, Progress normally and when given the opportunity grab both Temporal Chains and Flammability when given the opportunity. Its worth noting that you do not want to level Temporal Chains over a level 38 requirement.

Piety is a joke to this build, sit on her face with incinerate and spam mana potions. Dominous Phase 1 is just as easy, although you want to make sure you have an anti-bleed flask and maxed resists before that fight. Phase 2 Dom might require a portable back, but just drop your flame totem and sit and burn him to ashes.


Act 4
Spoiler


Act 4 can be quite rough but this is true for every character at the moment. Farm out the desert that Voll is in until you are 4 levels above the area. Unlock the mines and grab our new Bro Chaos Golem Use the currency gained from those Levels of farm to acquire a faster-projectiles gem from trade chat. If you manage to get Elreon up to the the point where he is offering his specific gear take a piece of it and use it. Necklaces hurt your defensiveness the least, but the ability to go ham with Incinerate is well worth it.

Socket Incinerate with Faster Proj - Faster Casting - Incinerate in a +1 fire weapon, and start burning your way to Koam and Dereso. Remember to drop Flame totem on yellows and Uniques and keep our Golem alive.

Dereso is our first target, the open nature of his areas plays very well with out incinerate and flame totem. Fire storm can also truly shine in this section. Dereso himself is VERY easy for us. Flame totem and Chaos Golem area great for distracting him, just be wary of his damage when he puts on his 'red' buff.

In truth the trek to wreck Kaom is more dangerous than the boss himself. Be wary of unique monsters in this area, they pack quite a punch. Koam is easily distracted by out Golem and totem and the fact that he does both fire and physical is gravy for our Arctic Armour.

Trade in their items and head back to town, its time to grab the KING of our build - Spell Echo. Replace faster casting with Echo and give it to our bro the flame totem. At this time its also good to pick up a Greater Multiple Projectile and buy a Lesser Multiple Projectiles from Trade chat. If you have the currency pick up an Arctic Breath fro trade chat and Cast on Damage Taken to fill out the defensive 4 link.

With LMP (or GMP although i find its unneeded) we establish the 'clearing' and 'nuking' forms of our 3 link Incinerate. Clearing is Incinerate - LMP/GMP - Spell echo, and Nuking is Incinerate - Faster Projectiles - Spell Echo.

At this point Firestorm can be way-sided out of the build as Incinerate will take over our anti-group needs in clearing form.

Start clearing up to Piety the Hairdryer (shes not called that but her laser sounds like it). She is a relatively easy fight with out new and epic damage. Respect the laser however, and crack a quicksilver and kite around it when it comes up, just make sure to change to nuke form before the fight to speed up the kill.

Malachi's Organs are easy as well, switch to damage form, and respect their individual skills and you should clear them out without much issue.

Malachi himself isn't all that much more difficult. Keep re-summoning Chaos and Totem bros to distract him and help with Aoe, and burn him down. just stay away from him. His hammer is his most dangerous move, but he only pulls it out if you are in melee range. Punch out Piety when she turns, and roll your eyes at her final words.

Malachi stage 2 is a bit smaller, but not much more difficult. Be careful of the ground AoE fields he puts down, and burn the hearts down when he activates them. Congrats you have watched the world burn, and onto Cruel!




Gearing and Things
Spoiler

Gear for this build is arguably dumb to simple: Use the best gear that you find yourself.

Things that are of High priority on gear:
*Life
*Elemental Resists
*Armor
*Spell Damage

Your wands/Scepters will tend to be crafted variants in the beginning until something stellar drops for you. Using any magic wand or scepter you can craft it into a +fire version by selling a blue wand with an Orb of Alteration. By far this is the most valuable mod for spells, and even a good yellow drop will have a hard time competing with it.

The Difficult Stuff
There are a few things that this build really wants that don't come stock to either a Templar or a character in general. For these things you'll need to reply upon trade or self find. However those things that the build are missing (such as faster projectiles) are inherently cheap to acquire and by the time you hit the level for them you should have more than enough currency stocked up to trade for them.

Elreon
One of the Masters found in path, its vital to do his quests whenever you see him and level him up. This is because of his special modifier which he will eventually sell on jeweler to you which reduces the mana cost of skills by a flat amount. Incinerate is a mana HOG and one piece of Elreons will make your life easier in the long run.


As per usual comments and questions about the build and how to play it are always welcome.
EDIT
Spoiler

Added Leveling Guide
Last edited by FilthyPeasant on Jul 24, 2015, 5:57:42 PM
I'm starting a build based on this now, and I'll be sure to let you know how it works out! I'm *very* excited for it. Thanks!
Last edited by AkaPaulBunyan on Jul 22, 2015, 4:29:01 PM
Checked it out an was just wondering why you didn't hit up AoF or Holy Fire being a flame based build?
"
Seif_AlDin wrote:
Checked it out an was just wondering why you didn't hit up AoF or Holy Fire being a flame based build?


Holy Fire is relatively simple: Incinerate doesn't deal fire damage in significant enough chunks. Due to its highly rapid fire nature, especially with spell echo and faster casting linked Incinerate and Flame totem both deal their damage in rapid but small hits. This makes the burning application of their damage near valueless. While the 5% burn chance is indeed nice when coupled with the Celestial Punishment (left of Templar start) the burning damage is just not emphasized enough in the build for the node to be worth the diversion from the rest of the tree.

Avatar of Fire is more of a coin flip. While it can result in a 'flat' dps jump, it trades away the ever valuable shock source. Shock applies at a rate of 60ms per 1% of max hp done by lightning damage, with a minimum of 60ms. 60Ms is not the longest of time(.06 seconds), but incinerate and flame totem can reach this cast speed. If working together against a single target the random crits, chance shocks, and lightning sources on both spells results in a semi-consistent field of shocks providing its glorious +50% dps bonus without really heavy investment.

In short Avatar is a preference choice, that if taken does improve 'paper' dps but trades away the potential run away shock train of rapid hits. Its a three point investment that in later stages may be better, but early on (leveling through normal and cruel) serves only as a functional dps down.
"
FilthyPeasant wrote:


In short Avatar is a preference choice, that if taken does improve 'paper' dps but trades away the potential run away shock train of rapid hits. Its a three point investment that in later stages may be better, but early on (leveling through normal and cruel) serves only as a functional dps down.


Thank you. I now understand this a bit better.
Doing an incinerate build as well but my setup currently is VERY different from yours.

Spoiler
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwUABLMMXw3NFCAWbxcvGj4cpxzOJKoksCcvKS4pTytQMfs1kjbpOtg8LT0PQYdDyEbXSshPBFBHU6VVqVXWV5RboF7AXz9k52ZUZp5nm2jyagFuqnGFcg9yqXvDfA58S3y4fLt99YCkgpuC5INfg8yFe4haiq-LjIx2kBGQVZRvlnSXtJo7m1iePKBCogCnVa4-r6exQrXytoa3PsBmxBXE9sau1abYvdq54XPjauRR7DjtPO8O8B_yL_MR-d356PrS_gr-VA==?accountName=Dreadvg&characterName=Dreadvg


Filling out the end will consist of picking up arsonist cluster and filling out life nodes

Atm my incinerate is pulling ~13.5k displayed dps and I expect it to grow to just over 15k once I get my gems leveled to 20.
"
Dreadvg wrote:
Doing an incinerate build as well but my setup currently is VERY different from yours.

Spoiler
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwUABLMMXw3NFCAWbxcvGj4cpxzOJKoksCcvKS4pTytQMfs1kjbpOtg8LT0PQYdDyEbXSshPBFBHU6VVqVXWV5RboF7AXz9k52ZUZp5nm2jyagFuqnGFcg9yqXvDfA58S3y4fLt99YCkgpuC5INfg8yFe4haiq-LjIx2kBGQVZRvlnSXtJo7m1iePKBCogCnVa4-r6exQrXytoa3PsBmxBXE9sau1abYvdq54XPjauRR7DjtPO8O8B_yL_MR-d356PrS_gr-VA==?accountName=Dreadvg&characterName=Dreadvg


Filling out the end will consist of picking up arsonist cluster and filling out life nodes

Atm my incinerate is pulling ~13.5k displayed dps and I expect it to grow to just over 15k once I get my gems leveled to 20.


That is definitely a strong defensive tree, with a good focus on armor. Thats where the builds at same point differ, the trade off between damage and armor.

Your dps only severs to highlight just how strong incinerate is as a base as your + damage totals out to about +125% damage. You do have a very sturdy +128% life and the very strong +186% armor. My build ends up running out more hp at +177 at that level with some more points to come, and my armor is only a token 20%. The big difference is in damage where mine stacks out to be about +410%. So with your gearing under my build you would be at about 50k displayed when you gems hit 20, but missing all that armor.

I am curious at some of your tree choices as you heavily take +mana and -%skill cost. I take it you aren't running some Elreons gear if you need that much.
"
FilthyPeasant wrote:
"
Dreadvg wrote:
Doing an incinerate build as well but my setup currently is VERY different from yours.

Spoiler
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwUABLMMXw3NFCAWbxcvGj4cpxzOJKoksCcvKS4pTytQMfs1kjbpOtg8LT0PQYdDyEbXSshPBFBHU6VVqVXWV5RboF7AXz9k52ZUZp5nm2jyagFuqnGFcg9yqXvDfA58S3y4fLt99YCkgpuC5INfg8yFe4haiq-LjIx2kBGQVZRvlnSXtJo7m1iePKBCogCnVa4-r6exQrXytoa3PsBmxBXE9sau1abYvdq54XPjauRR7DjtPO8O8B_yL_MR-d356PrS_gr-VA==?accountName=Dreadvg&characterName=Dreadvg


Filling out the end will consist of picking up arsonist cluster and filling out life nodes

Atm my incinerate is pulling ~13.5k displayed dps and I expect it to grow to just over 15k once I get my gems leveled to 20.


That is definitely a strong defensive tree, with a good focus on armor. Thats where the builds at same point differ, the trade off between damage and armor.

Your dps only severs to highlight just how strong incinerate is as a base as your + damage totals out to about +125% damage. You do have a very sturdy +128% life and the very strong +186% armor. My build ends up running out more hp at +177 at that level with some more points to come, and my armor is only a token 20%. The big difference is in damage where mine stacks out to be about +410%. So with your gearing under my build you would be at about 50k displayed when you gems hit 20, but missing all that armor.

I am curious at some of your tree choices as you heavily take +mana and -%skill cost. I take it you aren't running some Elreons gear if you need that much.


Currently not running any elreon gear, makes sustaining very hard I'll admit but I feel that depending on one or even two pieces of elreon gear severely gimps your characters potential.
Hello!

This build looks very interesting, I'd like to try it out but I'm rather new to Path of Exile.
Could you perhaps include a 'Leveling' section, that explains when to start using certain skills, and when to switch? That would help me greatly.
"
Chocoholic wrote:
Hello!

This build looks very interesting, I'd like to try it out but I'm rather new to Path of Exile.
Could you perhaps include a 'Leveling' section, that explains when to start using certain skills, and when to switch? That would help me greatly.


A good idea and added!

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