[2.0] Inexpensive Molten Strike Claw Scion Tank with Righteous Fire
 Are you interested in a low-budget melee tank build? This Scion build takes advantage of Life Gain on Hit and the multiple projectiles from Molten Strike to help sustain Righteous Fire. Two leagues ago, I created a Scion using this build and, with decent, reasonable gear with no piece more expensive than 2 Exalted Orbs, she was able to tank Dominus on Merciless at level 75+. Since then I have reallocated her skill points, and she still dominates in most of PvE as before but cannot tank Piety or Malachai (yet?) on Merciless. Gear The chestpiece should be a 5L Lightning Coil which if not legacy can be gotten for about 2 Exalted Orbs. Until you are high enough level to use Lightning Coil, use Cloak of Flame. The claw should have as high attack speed as possible to take advantage of Life Gain on Hit. If you have such a claw with high dps use that; otherwise use a claw with good life/mana gain on hit (like those new Gemini Blades) until you can find one. The shield should be Saffell's Frame. Until you are high enough level to use Saffell's Frame, dual wield claws. The rest of gear should provide enough life and resists to get you to 3000+ life and max resists at Act 3 Merciless with Purity of Fire and Purity of Lightning. Good, cheap rings to use are Mokou's Embrace and Pyre. Ming's Heart can be gotten for about 2 Exalted Orbs. If you want to be able to stack curses, use Doedre's Damning. The jewels should include all 3 Conqueror's jewels, Pugilist, and Brute Force Solution. Brute Force Solution will help you with the intelligence requirement for Purity of Lightning at high levels. The flasks should be 4 Saturated Divine Life Flasks not of Dousing + 1 Saturated Eternal Mana Flask of Dousing. Until you are high enough level to use them use the analogous lower level flasks with high duration. Skill Gems with Links 5L = Molten Strike + Multistrike + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Blind + Life Gain on Hit 4L = Righteous Fire + Increased Area of Effect + Concentrated Effect + Increased Burning Damage 4L = Trap + Multiple Traps + Flammability + either Enfeeble (to help tank Dominus) or Elemental Weakness 4L = Cast when Stunned + Summon Flame Golem + Flame Surge + Molten Shell 3L = Purity of Fire + Purity of Ice + Purity of Lightning 3L = Lightning Warp + Shield Charge + Faster Attacks Passive Skill Tree Bandits: Oak (Normal), Eramir (Cruel), Eramir (Merciless) Keystones: Resolute Technique, Iron Grip, Acrobatics, Phase Acrobatics, Arrow Dancing, Point Blank Skill Tree at Level 81: When leveling, get attack speed, life, resist nodes, and jewel slots. Claws of the Magpie will allow you to steal all of the charges of every monster you fight. The Spirit Void notable will give you mana gain on hit and will solve most of your mana problems. Get Resolute Technique, Acrobatics, Phase Acrobatics, Arrow Dancing, Point Blank, and Iron Grip as soon as possible and in that order. Why get Arrow Dancing? Blind will help you tank melee, so you can give up some melee evasion for ranged evasion. To tank Dominus, use the Enfeeble curse traps and spam Molten Strike. Do not use Righteous Fire in situations where you want to play it safe. Last edited by FredTheUndead on Jul 23, 2015, 3:22:36 PM
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I'm sorry to say this but your build is bad on so many levels :/
Let me explain why. First of all, what kind of damage are you scaling ? Elemental damage ? You have no flat elemental auras and do not take anything on your tree for it, so that's not it. Physical damage ? Once again, you pretty much don't get anything for physical damage on the tree except the claw wheel, which means that you'll be dealing very low physical damage, especially since you do not run any damage aura. Iron Grip helps a bit but it's still very very low DPS. Second, what do you use Righteous Fire for except looking cool and ruining your life regen ? You don't scale the damage from Righteous Fire in any efficient way so it does pretty much nothing and its more spell damage buff doesn't apply on anything you have, since you're attacking with your claws. Third, this build lacks life. You don't get a lot of life on the tree (130% increased maximum life is very low), so that means you're still quite vulnerable even though you're using Acro + Phase Acro + Arrow Dancing + Lightning Coil + Saffell's Frame + 3 Purities. Fourth, the gem setup. Using traps for cursing doesn't bring anything to your curses except a higher mana cost, you shouldn't be using that. 3 Purities help to tank elemental damage but without offensive auras your damage will stay low. Why Cast When Stunned ? You're playing a life-based build which means that if you get enough life to survive in maps, you won't get stunned very often. You should definitely get a Cast When Damage Taken setup. Fifth, the skill tree and some gear parts. The skill tree stretches out way too much for no real purpose (see the part on your damage scaling). I don't see how all 3 Conqueror's jewels serve any real purpose here (except providing a minor buff to auras or curses which aren't a very important part of your build since it lacks synergy with the way you deal damage). You recommend a Pyre ring or Mokou's Embrace. The first one doesn't bring anything for the build (you use this ring when you take advantage of the 100% cold to fire conversion, otherwise you simply do not use it) and Mokou's Embrace sure brings some attack speed but I'm pretty sure you would be much better off with a rare ring with life, resistances and weapon elemental damage if you can get that. Ming's Heart is a very good ring but you have to get enough life to compensate for the life penalty (and you really don't have enough life on your tree) and it is only really effective when you scale your physical damage to a high level and your tree doesn't do that either, so I think you would be much better off with a rare ring once again. To conclude, I'd just like to say that I'm not agressive at all here, I'm just trying to point out all the mistakes I've seen in your build creation to help you progress in this game. It seems to me that you're quite new and still don't have a good grasp on the mechanics of the game, which is perfectly fine since they are extremely complicated and we all struggled in the beginning. I would suggest that you read some guides on the forums and really try to understand why they made every decision about gear, skill tree, gems and jewels for their particular build. Over time, you'll start to have a deep understanding of the build creation process and you'll be able to efficiently create your own original build :) | |
" Ok, I will try to address these concerns that you seem to raise based on pure theorycrafting. I am scaling Molten Strike damage through attack speed because that increases the life gotten from Life Gain on Hit, and I am scaling Righteous Fire damage through life nodes. On top of that the multi-traps curse all monsters in the room with just one click, so it's very efficient for stacking Flammability and Elemental Weakness on all the monsters on the screen at once with Doedre's Damning. I've tried using Anger and Herald of Ash but they don't really increase my dps very much so I don't use them. Flame Surge and Molten Shell get boosted by Righteous Fire. I never really had anything to complain about concerning damage output with this build, even before I got a high attack speed, high dps claw, and I know this by playing it and leveling my Scion to level 81. The resistances, dodge, and blind together give a lot of damage reduction, the Life Gain on Hit from high attack speed Molten Claw with Multistrike, Greater Multiple Projectiles, and Resolute Technique practically gives me a ton of life regeneration and practically keeps me at full health even with Righteous Fire on, and Enfeeble takes care of dangerous spike damage. I use Cast when Stunned because this is essentially an evasion build with the way I use Blind. My skill tree stretches out so much because the keystones are very useful. Resolute Technique ensures that every magma ball from Molten Strike hits, and Iron Grip and Point Blank increase the damage significantly. Mokou's Embrace and Pyre combine to make a great combination with high attack speed Molten Claw with Multistrike, Greater Multiple Projectiles, and Resolute Technique because practically all monsters get ignited, and all monsters get destroyed on kill with Pyre. Even with Ming's Heart I have 3000+ life, so unless you are trying to tank Piety or Malachai in Act 4 Merciless there's nothing to worry about, as far as I know, because as I've mentioned before Enfeeble takes care of dangerous spike damage. I know the Conqueror's Jewels aren't particularly useful for my build, but I currently don't have any better ones because I'm not rich and this is an inexpensive build as I intend to describe it. Last edited by FredTheUndead on Jul 24, 2015, 11:35:32 AM
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If your jewels aren't efficient, you simply should skip jewels and use those skill points in some more classical use, it's more efficient :)
My concerns are not pure theorycrafting, I'm aware of how Molten Strike scales since I played quite a lot with it and even though you can scale it through attack speed, you require some base damage. Your DPS is always calculated as : base dmg * attack speed So at some point, getting a lot of attack speed is inefficient because your base damage is lacking and that is my main concern here. You do not use elemental auras to gain flat elemental damage and you do not scale your physical damage on the tree either, which means your DPS will be suboptimal (even if it seems enough to you). And I can say that without even knowing your real DPS, it's just a logical consequence of the way your build works. Herald of Ash + Hatred would greatly increase the DPS but only if you base your build and tree on physical damage. Anger increases the DPS if you're playing an elemental based build. Because you are doing neither of these things, you do not get much DPS from them. Having also played RF, I can guarantee you that the damage is underwhelming unless you play a build with a lot of life (I'm talking 5-6+ k life) and some fire/elemental damage on tree and gear (which you don't have). It's suboptimal again. You're trying to scale two different damage dealing mechanics at the same time, which is not a good thing to do in Path of Exile. I agree the build has many defence mechanims and the life on hit from claws makes for a very powerful way of regaining life but here Righteous Fire gives you minimal DPS for a big loss in tankiness since it eats a big part of the life you regenerate from attacking. But again, 3000+ life is not a lot. Even builds with 4k life are relatively squishy if they get hit in the current state of things where monsters deal insane damage. Tanky evasion builds, especially melee builds, should aim for 5+k life to be able to tank the hits that go through their defences. Ming's Heart works in the same way as Hatred or Herald of Ash, it only works great when you scale your physical damage on the tree and have weapons with a good physical DPS. The on kill effect of Pyre doesn't actually do anything except preventing prolif and being stylish, so that effectively means it is useless in this build (since you don't use the cold to fire conversion part of the ring). Mokou's Embrace is great for getting attack sped (if you get ignited often enough) and igniting but ignite is only powerful if you deal big hits of fire damage, and you do not specialize in that either (Molten Strike isn't a very good skill to rely on ignite). I agree the keystones you pick all contribute to the build and are actually very good but my point is, you're trying to squeeze too many different things in one build without actually focusing on one or two particular mechanics and this simply isn't the way Path of Exile was made to be played. To have a good build, you need to pick something to focus on and base your tree and gear around it to be effective. | |
" Well if anything this build is a counterexample. If it weren't, I could not have had the patience to grind it to level 81 :) Life is too short to be playing games like this in such a boring, risk-averse fashion (unless you're playing HC), and like I said this Scion build can tank Dominus on Merciless and that should be more than good enough for most people. Act 4 Piety and Malachai on Merciless are not going to be nerfed. Anyways, given my first impressions, the Path of Exile community seems to have more lock-step conformity of thought than I expected given the story of the game. Maybe I should exile myself from Path of Exile. |
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