[3.0] Freezer Burn - AB AoF MoM EO, Cheap, Fun, Screw the Meta

Welcome, Exiles! My name is Kwitch and I've enjoyed Path for over three years. In that time, I've played hundreds of builds (not all viable) and enjoyed toying with game mechanics much more than the average (see: sane) player. I hope you enjoy reading the build, and don't hesitate to ask questions!

Knee-jerk reaction is that we will likely drop Mastermind/Pendulum in favor of Beacon/Shaper. In which case we will care a bit more about elemental sources of damage and burn. Once I see the complete changes to Area that the 2.6 changes have hinted at, I will make a final adjustment on this.

Just know that this exists, and for Breach leagues will 100% be replacing our dependence on Astramentis. Not sure if it will make the build cheaper or not, but it's completely in theme and effective for us in terms of Repentance Gloves, Life based, Fire pen, Saving 3 skill points, and increased damage / slow onto enemies. Seems Good.
GGG comment about 'Covered in Ash':
On the Breach announcement page you showcased a unique with a new mod, "Cover Enemies in Ash when they hit you". What does this mean?
This causes enemies to take increased Fire Damage and have less movement speed. Specifically:
20% less Movement Speed
20% increased Fire Damage Taken

• Arctic Breath: 35% more damage.(At gem level 20) ~Woo-hoo!
• Frost Walls created by you or your allies are now no longer considered enemies for the purposes of projectile collision detection (your projectiles will not collide with your own Frost Wall). This has huge ramifications for CwDT + Frost wall combination for a DPS benefit.
Frost Wall can still function as a defense mechanic, doesn't help our single target shotgunning anymore. Has been entirely removed from the build.
• The damage bonus of the Less Duration support gem has been reduced. At level 1, it has been reduced from 20% to 10%. At level 20, it has been reduced from 29% to 19%. Given the strong utility of this gem, it doesn't need a damage bonus that high.
This only matters when using a 6L Chest piece with RRRBBG, and using the third red socket as alternating Less Duration / Life Leech. Following the build w/ Hypothermia, this will not effect us
• Pierce's mana multiplier has been increased from 110% to 130%. Its damage at high levels only has been reduced. Its damage at level 20 has been reduced from +29% to +19%. Given the strong utility of this gem, it doesn't need a damage bonus that high.
We incur a small penalty to the cost of our spell links. We lose some of our chest's implied bonus of pierce. Important to note that this only reduces our benefit damage from pierce at level 15 to 17% this is down from 24% more).

What this means for 2.4:
We take a hit on our mechanics with Arctic Breath + Frost Wall tricks, and less duration is not as acceptable as a fill-in for our 6-link if we can't manage colors easily. We still greatly benefit from this patch, with our total 28% more damage potential (-7 more from pierce, AB 35% more buff). This patch was good to us, but we do have to get better at positioning and rely on frost wall less.

From 113 point tree:
• 200% Increased maximum Life before jewels.
• 3.6% Life Regenerated per second.
• 104% increased maximum Mana (MoM)
• 666% increased elemental damage before jewels.. Yes, that's accurate (Before gear)
• 104% Fire penetration.
• 140% more damage not including penetration.
• 5 Jewel Sockets
• 25%-50% radius without quality gems. (discrepancy = Pendulum)
• 48% Increased Cast Speed (without gear)

Self-buffed tooltip Per Projectile (Note: Not counting all penetration).

Theoretical Maximum DPS with current gear +/- 600k.

Defensives using Tanky Golems (not pictured: AA Contribution)

Pros:
• Nothing needed to make the build work should ever cost more than a few chaos orbs, even in a new league. Can spend more to improve it later.
• Forgiving play style with few buttons required.
• Before Gear, easily reached 450% elemental damage. 50% reduced elemental reflect damage taken, and 106 fire penetration. With later upgrades to gear our spell % easily reaches 600% +.
• Spell effect creates a zone of chill that slows monsters from reaching the player, and overlapping explosions can shotgun.
• Large hp and mana pool to soak damage with, with multiple options to include Life/Mana Leech in the build.
• A lot of room for personal preference, itemization, or alterations to suit the player without falling apart.
• Can run difficult map mods: All curses, fire resistance, reflect, less regen/no regen, most imaginable monster mods. (afaik)

Cons:
• Will never be Flavor of the Month.
• We don't alternate a single target skill, thus bosses require positioning.
• Arctic Breath can collide with terrain, thus not reaching elevated targets. Requires practice.
• Doesn't have an MTX.
• Leveling requires the use of alternate skills until Arctic Breath becomes available at 28, and fully online by 38.
• Does not clear / move as fast as other builds. There are faster builds.
• Slows slightly in maps that are curse immune / Fire Resistant / Low Regen.
• Dislikes Hexproof.
• Reflect Maps require pressing weapon swap and results in lower overall DPS.
• Tooltip warriors will be disappointed. Actual DPS requires spreadsheet.

This is a Strength based caster who does not neglect defenses in order to tackle difficult content while still dealing good damage.


We use the often neglected Repentance gloves to instill Iron Will into Arctic Breath, which is fully converted into Fire Damage using Cold to Fire & Avatar of Fire. We can double the damage effectiveness in both fire and cold damage jewels and combo passives. We use a cold skill that still creates chilled ground despite being 100% fire conversion.

This chilled ground increases defenses by creating chilling fields in front of the caster. It removes additional crit damage by choosing the Elemental Overload keystone to prevent spikes of incoming damage from Reflect monsters, and focus on consistently high damage output. We ensure uptime of Elemental Overload with Orb of Storms linked to a curse to prime monsters for destruction, allowing our main skill to use Controlled Destruction/Elemental Focus for insane more multiplication.

We sneak in pierce in our chest for improved 'penetration' of explosions in groups for better overlapping Area of Destruction. This gives us a 'quasi' 9-Link if you care to think of it this way.

Finally, it reserves zero mana to utilize both "Mind over Matter" Keystone passive for increased survival, and a Clear Mind jewel for a spell power bonus.

Avatar of Fire

We convert ALL of our damage to Fire, with no loss to cold damage by using the Cold to Fire support gem. This means we cannot chill with our now fire damage. Luckily, our skill creates chilled ground regardless of it's damage type, and thus will still chill everyone it hits by the nature of the ability.

Mind over Matter

We don't reserve any of our Mana, the Clear Mind jewel competes with any aura we could choose, and heralds are awkward to use with Avatar of Fire. 30% of damage is taken from Mana when hit means we will need to keep a hybrid flask/divine mana flask for emergencies, but increases our Effective Hit Points (EHP) by a minimum of 30% against incoming damage after armor/resist considerations. This is great for surviving spikey damage or latency concerns. Do note that elemental reflect will cause our mana pool to dip dramatically, but this is far superior to just dying instantly. Pay attention to your fire resistance once you pick this keystone up, and keep it maxed from Cruel on.

(Additionally, Hybrid flasks can all run simultaneously without turning off if one or the other resource fills. Lets us have more hp/s or mp/s than with only those respective flasks.)

Elemental Overload

We choose this Keystone for several reasons, but first and foremost because it stops us from killing ourselves against reflect monsters outright. It's still possible in a perfect storm condition, however with a Ruby Flask and paying attention to what we're casting spells at, this is greatly negated by this passive. The second reason we take this is because although our crit chance is moderately low, we will have some portion of up-time for Elemental Overload to grant us 40% More damage, which is far greater than using a Controlled Destruction gem in our spell links. In theory, we have a quasi-8L when we have a 6L with EO & our Iron Will gloves. (arguable, because not many would ever use Iron Will by choice... however, we can without a sharp penalty!)

Link to Spreadsheet

Save a copy of this and input your own values, adjusting as you go. By default, my stats will be represented so you can see how I reach my DPS numbers in use by this guide.

42 points
By 42 points we are just looking at entering Cruel. We have completed most of our major pathing, and can pick up Avatar of Fire & Mind over Matter / Elemental Overload with very few spent points pathing. Pick these up when you feel like it, or when you start running Arctic Breath as your main skill.

I've gone ahead and placed the first 2 Points of our Ascendancy into Liege of the Primordial. No other Ascendancy will give us close to as much of a power spike, and it makes them considerably tankier for less stress in re-casting them.

64 points
Our 64 point tree shows an increased priority in our survival, as we increased our Maximum Life to 122%, and life Regen to 3.6%. We've turned 'on' Avatar of Fire, and have switched to using Arctic Breath to kill everything. We want the increased AoE nodes in Templar, and the Witch Blast Radius next. We also want to look at those 3 Jewel sockets coming up to utilize the damage potential w/ Avatar of Fire + Cold to Fire.

We put the Cruel Ascendancy points into Paragon of Clamity, but if you feel safe enough you can go for Pendulum instead.

98 points
This is our level 76 build. 98 Points marks the 'done' stage of the build. We have all of our Keystones, we've pathed up to the Constitution wheel and already have 4 jewel sockets. We picked up some additional spell damage with the Snowforged wheel, as well as the hybrid HP/Mana nodes near our start. Our next goals are to increase our Mana and Mana Regen.

Our 2 Merciless Ascendancy points go into whichever we didn't take in Cruel.

112 points
By the time we reach 112 points in the build, everything is simply 'more'. Adding on more Fire damage/penetration, some more cast speed, mana cost reduction and more mana now that we hopefully run a 6/7 Link. This is level 90, and the build has been 'finished' for some time now. We still have lateral choices, including cast speed, more mana or regen, another jewel socket, or grabbing Explosive Impact. Eldritch Battery is even 2 points away if you want to experiment.

All of these trees can be modified if your gear or stats have other requirements. We use hardly any dexterity gems, and should have enough intelligence from from our pathing that we shouldn't need specific fitting stats from gear. We should have zero problem putting on Repentance gloves with +302 Intelligence and +244 Strength from the tree alone.

Our Ascendancy focuses on the buffs to Elementalist in 2.3, however the sequence we choose to acquire our points is up to preference.

Our first two points from normal Ascendancy should be Liege of the Primordial. This gives us the most 'bang for our buck' to speed us through Cruel / Merciless in terms of damage potential, and we don't require reflect damage reduction or inc. aoe yet.

Feel free to experiment and determine if you prefer Pendulum first, it's perfectly acceptable.

I've also considered Shaper of Desolation instead of Mastermind. It's up to personal preference. I think Mastermind does more damage overall, but Shaper will definitely help with bosses if you time it right.

(All gems are in order of priority)
Main Skill:
6th link:(implied:)

(Optional:)
Arctic Breath - Cold to Fire - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Spell Echo (5L + Fire Penetration) (6L + Hypothermia or Controlled Destruction or Elemental Focus or Life Leech)
I don't feel Elemental Focus is worth losing Burning/Shock/Freeze early on, Controlled Destruction can work if you don't want to roll Hypothermia once we have our curse setup on OOS for Elemental Overload. I've been playing the build without hypothermia and instead prioritizing elemental focus, but really any of these supports can work. I'm not satisfied with burn frequency as we don't pick up burn chance or have any reasonable crit. If you instead choose to prioritize burn, obviously Elemental Focus is not optional!

Our curse only grants 13%, so test all, level the alternatives in your off-weapons, and decide which you prefer!

Our 6th socket has some flexibility, depending if you can't get 2 green sockets then CD/EF is acceptable in place of Hypothermia (with downsides). Also, if you have RRRGBB you can swap a Life Leech or Empower instead of Hypo or CD/EF. This is really just an alternative if socket colors aren't being kind.

If you choose to play Burn, run a Pyre ring, or prefer a different method of obtaining 100% fire conversion, Empower replaces Cold to Fire.

Curse 'Utility' 4-Link: Gloves
Orb of Storms + Increased Area of Effect + Curse on Hit + Flammability.
We used to be concerned with a single-target skill, but it never worked well and with the 2.4 buff to AB I really didn't think it necessary anymore. Having OOS curse for us feels great, and with Mastermind 10 seconds of 25% Fire Penetration aligning with the 10 second duration of the skill, it's great. The added AoE when Pendulum is up, paired with the nature of OOS 'arc' shocking, makes cursing targets even offscreen amazing feeling. You won't look back after trying it. If you make a deviation in the build and pick up whispers of doom instead, simply drop the Increased AoE for the curse of your choice.

Cast when Damage Taken 4-links: Boots
CwDT + Warlord's Mark + Immortal Call + Decoy Totem.
CwDT level 1, Immortal Call level 3, Warlord's Mark level 5, Max level your Decoy Totem. I placed this in our boots, and the Immortal Call is really optional I feel. Our Endurance charge production is not 100% up-time guaranteed, but it can save our life in certain situations. If you instead choose to run Decoy in your 3-link along with Vaal haste, then this can easily become another increased duration or any gem of your choosing.

Golem + Clarity + BM: Helm
Summon Flame Golem + Summon Lightning Golem + Clarity + Blood Magic.
Helms can give us +2 to minion gems, because we want the benefits of having high level golems + Hp. We don't typically run Purity, but we don't want to not have the socket available in case we needed it for reflect content. I've moved our Clarity from shield to helm, as summoning minions with BM doesn't hurt at all. That way, we can swap shields quickly and easily without breaking up the flow of gameplay and having to re-cast clarity.we reserve 546 HP, leaving us with 5454 to soak damage with our MoM. I say this is a fair trade-off.

We use Lightning Golem over Ice Golem because 18% cast speed is amazing quality of life, compared to the small '40% increase' having an ice golem would grant us.
(Thanks ProSC_Reak!)

Utility 3 Link: Wand
Lightning Warp + Faster Casting + Less Duration.
Lightning Warp is my go-to skill for opening strongboxes or Essences safely. Cast it as far away as possible, slap the scary thing, get teleported no matter if you're frozen or pacified or whatever. May take some practice since we have so much cast speed here, but it's better that it is more responsive than less.

Decoy Totem + Buffs: Shield
Decoy Totem + Vaal Haste + Increased Duration.
Giving Decoy Totem and Vaal Haste both Increased Duration means we get more out of each and re-cast them less, overall great extra mileage for us. For our Rise of the Phoenix on weapon swap, I have an Arctic Armour, Purity of Fire, and Empower. These are all on an 'as needed' basis, and I never find myself casting more than the Purity for reflect content.

I've dropped flame dash from the build completely in favor of Vaal Haste, but again build to suit your needs. Enduring Cry is also a candidate for a slot here somewhere.

As is repeated elsewhere in this guide, these links are very much open to self-interpretation and experimentation. Make it yours!

As we mentioned in our Objectives section, our goal is to limit the number of uniques required to make the build 'work', however more can be added as we find better rares that substitute our resists and HP to allow for them.

This is the big one, the rarely used and typically cheap to acquire unique that will keep you rolling Divine orbs to get the lowest possible reduction in spell damage. We expect to have 600-800 Strength in this build, meaning these gloves alone grant 120% - 160% increased damage to our spells before the reduction. Even at their worst roll (30% reduction) we end up with a net bonus of 90% - 130%.


This jewel ranges from 40% to 60% increased spell damage, but if we're on a strict budget even a low roll is useful. We are limited to only using one of these, however there is no level requirement so we can technically use this as early as level 15 if we were hell-bent on doing so. It's a nice chunk of mana regen to boot, so this should likely be the first jewel we socket into the build.

We have to discuss Doon / Doriyani's Catalyst and a Shield versus a Pledge of Hands at some point. However, I believe Doon fits the theme of our build perfectly (plus it's cheap!) and is the better choice. Using our earlier estimates of 600-800 strength, that means just equipping Doon for the 1% per 8 strength bonus is 75% - 100% increased damage for all sources. We don't gain much for the level 30 Iron Will (we can ignore that without too many spent tears) and more cast speed is always a plus. And just for being a mace, we get an elemental damage boost. All in all, a great addition to a strength based caster.

We have several options for shield, however I am currently swapping between my Saffell's for everyday use, and Rise of the Phoenix. I expect most monsters that can reach me in melee range will be either dead or well on their way to it. What causes me to panic is spell damage. +4 to maximum resistances is actually a lot. Spell block without having to be a duelist / Stone of Lazhwar or Rainbowstride is great, and some spell damage and resistances are neato. We cover other options in greater depth in the Luxury section.

Makes fitting our gloves much simpler, and still does what we want with our damage and mana pool additions. We could choose others (Luxury) but you may be hard pressed to find a good rolled rare that provides more Int.

We want to get this at least 5 Linked, and using it as early as possible. Besides the flat HP and Armour it gives, it supports our spell with Pierce 15, which is a huge quality of life improvement for how Arctic Breath collides with packs. Pierce 15 is 24% More damage, and we always try to seek out more, more! The only downside to it besides not having resists, is that being a pure armour piece makes rolling our color sockets on it very difficult. Endeavour!

Death's Door are really great for what we want out of boots. They aren't max movespeed or max resists, nor do they have enough life. But they have strength! and +1 to endurance charges! and most importantly of all... Staunching Flask 24/7!! Really great if you prefer not managing flasks for bleed/puncture/corrupting blood. (Thanks to R3N1G4D3/ElsaTheSnowQueen for the Link!)


We can consider Izaro's Turmoil for Fire/Cold damage buffs, however good Rare jewels outperform it.

Weapon:
Best: Rare Wand with hybrid cold/fire/spell damage, with a hybrid roll we can craft on even more spell damage. I need to make a guide on how to do this, but aim for a wand with 120 spell power combined.
Doryani's Catalyst - A lot of good stuff, more elemental damage leech, 110% increased elemental damage (still doesn't out-class Doon). We don't need a 4L elemental prolif though.
Pledge of Hands was covered earlier, but we'll go in greater detail with it here. First, it gives us level 30 spell echo and up to 160% increased spell damage. Juicy goodness indeed. The increase to maximum mana also works well with our Mind over Matter. However, we lose block chance and some of the fancier things that come with some shields. It comes down to whether or not you want to run Kaom's Heart to me, and if we're speaking strictly on budget Pledge/Kaom's isn't within our affordable budget. But that's what Luxury is for, after all.
A 6L Pledge with our Iron Will gloves, Elemental Overload keystone will make our AB perform technically as a 9-Link. You may have mana issues doing this, but there is the added benefit of just having more Tooltip damage. Lets say that Doon + Shield is the better build if you are on hardcore, and Pledge+Kaoms can be more for Standard. Especially with legacy versions.

Shield:
Best: Rare shield with HP
• HP
• Strength
• Resistances
• Armour / % Armour

Consider:Rathpith GlobeSaffell's Frame

Rise of the Phoenix - Rock this in your alternate weapon slot and swap to it when you run reflect maps. Turn on your Purity of Fire, keep finger near Ruby Flask, you're good to go. Not spectacular for our build for daily work, but needed by the time you get to 18% reflect maps.

Chest:
Best: Lioneye's Vision - Level 15 Pierce for free in our 6-Link translates into 17% More damage for only a 110% spell cost increase. All More modifiers are tremendously potent, and this build already is adding a lot of it's power from adding gem links secretly. Additionally, our Arctic Breath clears waves of monsters much faster when it Pierces, continuing to travel past the initial target and hitting more monsters just by striking inside of groups. It's an Armor base, which we adore, and has life on it. The Leech stat doesn't matter to us, and the +20% chance to be Pierced doesn't negatively effect us in any way. Only true downside is not finding resistances on our chest, or it being a pure strength chest may make for difficulty in chromatic orb coloring sockets for our 6-Link.
Second Best: Kaom's Heart - amazing for us as it grants 500 Flat HP which we will turn into 1080. The 20-40% increased Fire Damage is great also, however we sacrifice our best 6L location. I would only consider this chest if we were also using a Pledge of Hands, and could move our main skill to it.
Others: I also considered including Cherrubim's Maleficence, or any other strong chest armour such as Lightning Coil, Belly of the Beast, Carcass Jack, or Daresso's Defiance. They all offer their own benefits, but we could just as easily use a good rare. The main goal is to get our 5-6L here, so however you manage that.
Don't forget that chest is our main location for making our 6-Link, which is RRGBBB, so if we get a piece of gear that is Hybrid, we might spend less chromes buying Vorici 2 gem color crafts. Remember, budget is one of the goals of the build!

Boots:
Best: Good rolled rares with +90 HP, 35-50 Strength, any missing resistances we need, and 30% Movespeed. We don't ignore Evasion, so any Strength or Strength/Evasion base is good. This also makes rolling our CwDT setup a bit easier.
Others: Gang's Momentum isn't amazing, but it does fit thematically. I didn't raise it higher in priority simply because I'm against overloading builds with uniques, and boots are an easy place to acquire stats.
Consider Death's Door if you're super wealthy and have GG rings to make up for the lost stats.

Amulet:
Best: Astramentis - Single-handedly solves our Intelligence concerns for equipping our gloves, as well as providing boosts to our Strength calculations and improving our mana pool. An easy pick-up.
Second Best: Lapis Amulet (20-30 Int) rolled with Tier 1 +51-55 Int (of the Genius) and +29-32 All Stats (Of the Infinite). a Perfectly rolled Lapis for INT would give us 117 Intelligence, requiring only 2 Suffixes. This leaves open rolls for Resistances, Cast Speed, Spell damage, etc. Harder to find, but can be better than an Astramentis by far and sometimes people mis-price them. (Lapis cieling 117, Astra cieling 116).
Others: Rashkaldor's Patience lowers item requirements making our gloves easier, makes our burns last longer, and gives us some more hp/mana. We don't typically build power charges, so it's not terrible at all. If you have the budget for it, you could use Vicario's Acuity / Shaper's Seed / Blood of Corruption / The Aylardex / Voll's Devotion / Any Rotfeather Talisman / anything else random that suits your fancy. I also thought about Atziri's Foible for reducing requirements for fitting, but I would never use it past early leveling stages (Definitely lose it by mapping).

Helm:
Best: Any good-rolled Rare. We need Strength by the bucket load, resists and armour can be found here also. I always look for +2 to minions for minion survival, just makes life better.
Others: Black Sun Crest - flat % to Int/Strength isn't too shabby, and we can make use of the +1 to gem levels.
Hrimnor's Resolve - up to 40% increased Fire damage, lots of armour, and chance to avoid freeze/chill. Huge loss of other important stats though.

Rings:
Best:
(Thanks for letting me link UberNadra!)
Snakepit - New ring for the build, obviously amazing, but we lose a lot of other stats for it. Only consider this at very end-game upgrading.
Rigwald's Crest - Great in slot, but good luck finding one. league specific.
Berek's Grip is also game-changing, but we run into other problems of difficulty acquiring it in temp-leagues.
Essence Worm - If you want to run 1 Aura and be sneaky about it. Not required but a fun idea. Can run a Purity of Fire permanently if we want to. Don't even think about running Clarity here, or simultaneously with it.
Rare rings should have Increased Cold/Fire damage, cast speed, fulfil chaos/resistances, gain str/int, and just stack life.
Others: Shavronne's Revelation (if you can find one) would be a definite quality of life improvement when equipped in the Left ring slot. Could use a Romira's Banquet if you wanted to force Elemental Overload uptime. A Le Heup of All would be easy to use in this build.

Also, if you are just having too much of an issue with reflect, you can always fall back on a Sibyl's Lament - but you didn't hear that from me.

Flasks:
Best: Rumi's Concoction - nothing game-changing here.
Second Best: Dying Sun. New in 2.4, pretty awesome for us.
Others: We can actually utilize Atziri's Promise if we're really lacking chaos res, and it gives up a pinch more damage and leech.
Roll good Granite of Iron Skins, at least 2 Staunching flasks (I like making quicksilvers w/ Staunching), and at least 1 Mana/Hybrid flask to help with your Mind over Matter balancing.

Clear Mind obviously

All of these combo jewels are amazing damage multipliers. Not only can we get 30+ Spell Damage easily with these combos, but also other stats or resists we may be missing, more damage Affixes, and they are typically fairly cheap to boot! You should never have to pay more than 1C for these.

Help Oak in Normal for +40hp (no single skill point anywhere will grant more HP than this).

Kill all three in Cruel for +1 Skillpoint (You can help Alira if you want 5% Cast speed, but not required).

Help Oak in Merciless for +1 Endurance Charge or +1 Skillpoint. I prefer the Skill Point, but opting for the charge is just fine.

All of these videos were shot with only a 5-link, and during the Perandus league. EHC videos coming as soon as possible.
Pre-EHC 90 T12 Arsenal
Just wanted to test out the buff to AB, this is with our old (outdated) tree.

T2 Thicket
Level 80 in a Thicket Map, lol, nothing too hard just to show off the playstyle. Note here I'm only running a 5-Link, so no Hypothermia.

T6 Catacombs
Map is still only Tier 6, wanted to test clear speed.

T10 Plateau
Experimenting with Elemental Focus, and still only in a 5-Link.

A: By far the most frequent question, 'Why waste 3 passive points to get Avatar of Fire instead of just using Pyre?' is the most common. Here is my logic: Any three points I could choose to spend is trumped by a good rare ring. Look at our skill tree, I cannot find a single place where 3 more points would be more beneficial than a halfway decent ring. We need resists, strength, cast speed, and life on a ring. Not having good rings hurts the build dramatically, and we could only arguably gain very little without AoF. Some people don't want to use Cold to Fire, instead wanting to run Controlled Destruction, but this completely throws a wrench in our Elemental Overload plans. Also, it hurts our ability to use Purity of Fire / Rise of the Phoenix / Arctic Armour to mitigate reflect damage depending on where we're at in the gearing process. Finally, not having Avatar of Fire means we could receive small benefits from group play auras like Wrath or run a herald.... again, we're trying not to reserve for auras unless we have to. That's a different build.

So yeah, Avatar of Fire is core to the build. Pyre is not. You can run any derivative of the build you like, but I strongly dislike it.

Q: Would this build work as Blood Magic / +3 Staff / -Mind over Matter / -Other changes
A: Of course it can! In designing the build, our primary focus was creating a platform that can survive content and grow with upgrades to gear & levels. I believe the build is sufficiently well rounded that it can function admirably in several alternative forms. Here's what that would look like.

Q: Why did you choose to make a Witch version of this instead of Marauder?
A: Both seem to do the same task admirably, however there is a strong enough thematic difference that I felt both Witch and Marauder versions should exist. The leveling trees, gems available at each level, ascendancy, and calculations made me want to make a pure-witch version.

Q: Your guide says you do a lot of damage, I followed it but I just don't see how you are doing so much. What gives?
A: A lot of the build is invisible to the in-game Tooltip DPS calculations. You will have to input your own values for many stats in order to learn what your 'true' damage potential is. I've included a Spreadsheet I made in the 'Calculations' section, save a copy and put your values into it to see what your damage actually is.

Q: How come I am dying to reflect maps when the build says I shouldn't be?
A: You have not picked up paragon of Calamity yet! You can off-set this with Rise of the phoenix + Purity of Fire as a temporary fix until you get your final 2 Ascendancy points.