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Normal: Kill All
Cruel: Help Alira (up for debate - you can kill all if you have some good cast speed gear)
Merciless: Help Alira

1. Shaper of Desolation
2. Beacon of Ruin*
3. Pendulum of Destruction
4. Mastermind of Discord

Shaper of Desolation is not only a requirement of Beacon of Ruin, it is an absurdly good node. It provides both Shock and Burn prolifs and near permanent Shock on bosses.

Beacon of Ruin is obvious: free proliferation. It's range is smaller than the Elemental Proliferation gem itself, but in reality I have not noticed a clear speed difference. Not to mention the Elemental Proliferation gem at level 20 reduces your damage by 20% Less. Less means it's multiplicative for those who don't know, which means it's MUCH hit to damage than "reduces damage by x%".

Pendulum of Destruction is required to get Mastermind of Discord, and it's mechanic is straightforward: you either deal increased damage or have increased radius, which are both nice.

Mastermind of Discord is our last Ascendancy node we take, and we will trigger it constantly due to us casting Orb of Storms to apply our curse and gain our Power Charges. 25% Fire Penetration is HUGE, especially for bosses.

*I will be testing out map clear speeds when I get around level 80 tomorrow and finish up my Ascendancy points to see if dropping Beacon of Ruin to grab Liege of the Primordial will increase our clear speed. For leveling in general, Beacon of Ruin is a godsend... but at higher levels there may not be a huge need for proliferating our burn, as the Flameblasts will be cast fast enough to wipe out packs on their own without stragglers. If there is one or two that didn't get hit by the initial blast, it is always possible to simply dab your totems to pop them quickly.

Notice: Only had around 600 life while fighting Malachai, so be good at dodging shit!

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At this point I am still using dual Bladefall Totems, because Flameblast Totems suck without Increased AoE and a ton of cast speed. Will probably make the switch around level 60-70 or so.

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You can take more life as you see fit - tracking either to the Shadow life nodes or up top to the Witch life nodes... there's even a few decent ones right next to your routing in the Templar area.


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Be aware that since the league is like a month old or so, I do have decent leveling gear... I tested this character without any (self found, didn't use anything from my stash - not even currency) and it performed about 80% as what this version is. Stuff literally dies as soon as you drop a totem, having what I am wearing is literally 110% overkill and not needed.

Notice: Only had around 1500 life while fighting Malachai, so be good at dodging shit!

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I was using dual Bladefall totems up until level 52 or so, then swapped over to Flameblast. Either one would work, and in reality I think Bladefall still would have outperformed it... but I wanted to play my end build.

Going through Cruel you need to be very aware of what can one shot you, as you are still squishy as hell. Scout with totems, they'll one shot everything anyways. When I switched to Flameblast I 2 shot Kaom and Daresso, so the damage is already insane - and I don't even have any ascendancy points yet.

One thing you need to really get the hang of is "dabbing" like the old Flameblast builds, however it's a bit trickier with totems as you need to keep track of which totem is doing which blast so you don't interrupt the wrong one early.

Anyways, on to the tree and gear...

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I purposely didn't take life nodes, but if you don't know the mechanics of literally every mob/boss, and you aren't good at dodging (not only do boss projectiles one shot you, but almost any projectile one shots you with this tree, especially chaos spitter snakes. I HIGHLY advise taking more life nodes than I did, and probably getting better gear than I have in terms of life (as seen below).


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Alright, my gear has no life on it whatsoever. Ok, my shield has 75 and my belt has 70 - that's literally it. Again, I HIGHLY recommend you take a few more life nodes than I did, and definitely get more life gear than I did... especially if you don't know mechanics inside and out and can dodge them without problems.