Witch - [3.0] Max Spell Block "Bone Storm" Firestormer (Cheap, Tanky, HC, League Starter) - Forum

If you are looking for a safe, ultra budget build, this could be for you! I've been absolutely loving the affordability, playstyle, and viability of this build, and wanted to share it and get feedback! It was my HC League Starter for 2.6 and was for Breach SC as well and is my current build in Harbinger. Lots of credit to PewPewPew for the famous Firestorm build which this is heavily inspired by, yet heavily modifies. Definitely check that out if you want to get even more details on the mechanics of Firestorm. Pros: very cheap (no need to spend more than 1-3 chaos on each item, except maybe 5-10c if you want a passable 5L armor) super tanky! We have max block and spell block (75%), 600+ life gained per block, 8 life gained per firestorm hit, plus almost 300 life regen per second. Life on block makes us literally immune to fast repetitive damage (yes, Tentacle Miscreations and Chimerals will actually HEAL you) so many meat shields: 6 super tanky zombies that Convocate on hit around you, as well as a golem and a skele totem to keep up 11 skeles around bosses. a monstrous 125% fire resistance penetration trivial to cap resistances since we have +47% to all Elements (62% Fire) naked, plus 41% Chaos. not dependent on ANY status ailments (we can kill bleed/poison/etc immunes no problem) Cons: clear speed can be decent, but isn't top tier we have to self-cast Bone Offering every 10-15 seconds to get 100% uptime of dmg and safety boosts. You could throw it in CWDT if you want, but this makes you a lot less likely to block a one-shot, and we want 100% uptime for its huge damage boosts (covered later) barely a con, but if you do this as a league starter, Rathpith is going to be expensive in the first week. That said, I did this as my Breach starter and was able to afford a Rathpith by the time I hit 68 at day 3 anyway (for about ~30 chaos). Later they can be had for a couple chaos. 3.0 Changes (This is a buff!) Spoiler The biggest offensive buff is the addition of the Immolate gem. Because Scorching Ray insta-burns, and the Immolate damage is even higher than that of Firestorm itself, this is an incredible gem. The Pantheon has some really synergistic souls. With Lunaris and Tukohama + Tore, we have an additional 16% physical damage reduction and 2% life regen. That's awesome! How does this build compare to PewPewPew's? Spoiler This build is similar to PewPewPew’s Necromancer version! Notable exceptions: we invest much more in Block to get max Block and Spell Block we cast Firestorm via Cast While Channeling + Scorching Ray. It’s slightly slower for clearing, but way easier to maintain from a mana perspective and gives us more damage and fire penetration. we use Flammability instead of Warlord’s Mark. With 40% increased Curse Effectiveness, this is a huge damage boost and leech is not needed for mana with CWC or life with constant blocks + life on block (and Cybil’s) we self cast Bone Offering instead of using CWDT / Kitava’s Thirst. This allows us to have more control of the uptime (at the expense of more work) which I find helpful for HC, and also allows us to get a nice minion helm with life, ES, and resistances, which is a huge buff to us and our Minion gems and Bone Offering How it works! (Build Mechanics) Spoiler We take the Mistress of Sacrifice from the Necromancer Ascendancy so our offerings also apply to us. This lets us become super tanky w/ Bone Offering, which grants us not only a nice amount of Block and Spell Block, but also life on block. This means that at max block, not only are we completely avoiding 75% of attack and spell hits, but we are gaining 600-700 life per hit! It totally “turns the tide” on damage and as mentioned, many forms of small repetitive damage actually heal us. This might seem like a more defensive Ascendancy choice, and it partially is, but it is also very offensive with this build. The max block we achieve via Bone Offering gets us 120% spell damage from Cybil's Paw, as well as 30% Inc Skill duration which allows us to stack more Firestorms for a big DPS boost. With Spirit Eater, we also get an additional 40% Increased Damage for 4 seconds each time we use Bone Offering, plus 16% cast speed (w/ the max of 8 corpses consumed). We also use a Lvl 1 Clarity to trigger Commander of Darkness, which for a paltry 34 mana reserved (!!!) gives us +20% to all Elemental Resists, 10% Inc Damage, and 5% Cast Speed. So combined with the two 4% cast speed nodes, the Necromancer Ascendancy gives us 50% Inc Damage, 29% Cast Speed, and 30% Skill Duration. Remembering that Cast Speed and Skill Duration give us more stacks of Firestorm, these add up to a huge DPS boost. If you compare these offensive benefits to PewPew's Firestorm Elementalist build, they are eerily similar, yet we get Bone Offering as well! As a result, the main dangers are one hits and damage over time. To protect against one hits, we use Enfeeble and go for a decent EHP pool (7-8K with budget gear), and remember that 75% of one hits will be blocked, plus bosses will be very distracted by your zombies/skeletons/totem and you can be very far away. For damage over time defense, we get a good amount of life regen nodes, plus run a Stone Golem to achieve ~300 life regen per second. We also have decent chaos res (you can hit 40-60% in Merc fairly easily), and 2 life flasks, so DoT isn't that scary even if we aren't able to be hitting enemies to trigger Cybil's life per spell hit. However most of the time you won't even notice bleed or poison from the life gain on block and hit. Bandits: Kill them all. Pantheon: Spoiler Grab Soul of Lunaris for the physical damage reduction and movement speed while mapping. Get Tukohama (and Tore) and you'll be extra tanky for harbingers/breachers/etc, especially when standing your ground. Solaris and Brine king are also decent choices depending on your preferences. Leveling Trees: Spoiler Level to 12 with Spark/Freezing Pulse + Added Lightning Damage. From 12, use Firestorm with Added Lightning Damage and Faster Casting. Start looking for wands with spell damage, +X to Fire Gems, and +X fire damage TO SPELLS (plain +X fire damage doesn’t help). Huge credit to PewPewPew for these mostly unmodified leveling trees: 15p 30p Try to get a 4L glove/helm/boot/armor around A4 and run Firestorm + Controlled Destruction + Elemental Focus + Faster Casting 49p/2ap Now you can switch to Firestorm + Spell Echo + Elemental Focus + AoE (Conc Effect for bosses). I recommend swapping Spell Echo + Ele Focus for CWC + Scorching Ray once you get a 5L and can add Immolate 64p/2ap 79p/4ap. At this point you've got Whispers of Doom and can add Flammability to your Blasphemy set up. lvl ~75, w/ lots more life, chaos res, and Elemental Overload! lvl 82 more fire damage and curse AoE lvl 88 (20% inc curse effectiveness, two more jewel slots, and more life regen) Past 88, I'd recommend grabbing your choice of Endurance (if you have a source of Endurance Charges), Grave Intentions (for minion buffs), and if you a nice ES gear (especially chest) consider Faith & Steel and/or the Melding cluster Ascendancy: Necromancer! Grab nodes in this order: Mistress of Sacrifice -> Spirit Eater -> Commander of Darkness (optional) -> Beacon of Corruption (very optional). You’ll be much tankier once you get Mistress of Sacrifice, so be careful until then. Commander of Darkness and Beacon of Corruption are certainly buffs, but it is not a big deal if you don’t run Merc/Uber lab. Flesh Binder is also a very strong choice for the extra phys damage reduction, which can really add up with the Pantheon bonuses and endurance charges (if running Warlord's Mark or Red Nightmare). Auras: Spoiler We run Blasphemy + Flammability and Enfeeble. We have 30% Inc Curse Effectiveness from the tree and a 20% Blasphemy will bring you to 40%, making Flammability reduce enemy Fire Res by 61% :) You can use Temporal Chains instead of Enfeeble if you prefer, but Enfeeble is IMO much tankier with our life on block setup; it really increases the amount of damage we can tank without losing life. If you have some currency and can get an Anvil amulet corrupted with +1 curse, I'd replace Enfeeble with Warlord's Mark in your Blasphemy setup, and move Enfeeble (lower lvl) to a CWDT. Accomplishments w/ build (solo, deathless, and w/ a 5L): * Atziri no problem * Xoph / Esh / Tul * twinned T15 Colosseum map EZ * Chimera & Hydra down * to test/kill: Uber Atziri, Chayula, Phoenix + Minotaur, Shaper Gems: Spoiler Body: Scorching Ray + Cast While Channelling + Firestorm + Increased Area of Effect (swap in Concentrated Effect for bosses) + Immolate (5L) + Fire Pen (6L). For a 4L/5L, try to get one extra unlinked socket (generally not more expensive) for Clarity (lvl 1. What level is Clarity? One!). However, you don’t need to worry about Clarity until you pick up Commander of Darkness from Merc Lab. 4L: Desecrate + Spell Echo + Faster Casting + Flame Dash. This let’s us get 10 corpses really fast for Bone Offering, super useful for boss fights and just in general. Don’t worry, Flame Dash isn’t supportable by Spell Echo :) 4L: CWDT (lvl 1) + Immortal Call (lvl 3) + Convocation (lvl 5) + Vortex/Frost Wall/Tempest Shield (lvl 4). Convocate is an amazing defense, dont underestimate it! I prefer frost wall as we are mostly at range and it protects us nicely from ranged enemies and bosses. Vortex is a “poor man’s temporal chains”; it will slow down melee enemies nicely, if you like to stay up close. You could level all these more if you like; I find the defenses used here are better “early and often” personally. 3L Shield/Weap Blasphemy + Enfeeble + Flammability 2L+1L Shield/Weap: Summon Skeletons + Spell Totem, with an UNLINKED third socket for Summon Stone Golem or Clarity depending color. For Breaches/Harbingers (and general HC leveling) I swap in Decoy Totem for Spell Totem. The cool part about this is that you can still self-cast skels if you need extra distractions. If you can get +1 curses from a corruption (like on The Anvil), I'd recommend swapping the Skel Totem for CWDT+Enfeeble and using Warlord's Mark instead in your Blasphemy. 4L Helm (w/ +2 Minion Gems): Raise Zombie + Minion Life + Minion & Totem Elemental Resistances + Bone Offering. I played around with various minion gems in here, such as speed instead of resistances, but they don’t survive nearly as well. Gem Quality: get a 20% Raise Zombie if you can when they’re cheap, it gives 20% Life AND 20% Speed, which is crazy for how cheap they are. A 20% Blasphemy will also give you 10% curse effectiveness, nicely aiding Flammability and Enfeeble. A 20% Minion Life is great too. And consider all your Firestorm links. Honestly all the gem set ups are pretty flexible, except for the armor. I tried putting Bone Offering w/ a Faster Casting, but I couldn’t notice a difference. The CWDT is pretty flexible, but I wouldn’t recommend removing Convocation for HC. It helps a lot to be surrounded by zombies when it triggers. However you could consider swapping in a Vaal Haste / Vaal Discipline (self cast, of course) for Vortex and/or Convocation at your preference. Gear: Spoiler Rathpith Globe: the is the top priority unique, and the only one essential for this build. Focus on getting one with a decent spell block (55%+), and don't worry about the spell damage roll if you are going for cheap gear. Cybil's Paw: get one with +8 life per hit, they're cheap. At max block, it gives us 120% spell damage. You can beat this with a nice spell damage wand with high fire damage added to spells, but you'll lose some face-tanking ability w/o the life on spell hit from Cybil's. helm: get a +2 minion helm with decent life and ES, and resistances for a bonus. Your zombies and Bone Offering will thank you for the +2. Instead of +2 minions, you can also prioritize +9% extra block chance from Bone Offering enchantment. For defensive stats, you want (in this order): resistances to cap elementals (ideally 109% end-game to handle Elemental Weakness, etc, don't forget to count w/ Clarity on) life positive chaos res (ideally 30-60% in Merc, we get 41% from the tree) energy shield Offensive stats: inc spell/fire damage cast speed fire damage added TO SPELLS Jewels: Spoiler every jewel should have max life %, then look for 2 of the following: damage (including spell/fire/while wearing a shield), cast speed (including with fire spells/while wearing a shield), or energy shield. These are some examples that cost 5c or less in Breach SC (except for Red Nightmare :). Note that the “while wearing a shield” mods are generally cheaper. Flasks: Spoiler Don't underestimate the utility of these! While leveling in HC, at least make sure to have a Bubbling Life Flask and a Life Flask of Staunching. * Bubbling Divine Flask of Heat. This will be our emergency pot for low life as well as freezes. * Surgeon's Divine/Eternal Flask of Staunching. This will save us from Bleed, and the Surgeon's prefix allows this to refill during boss fights. * Overflowing Chalice. This is a tri-purpose flask w/ defensive and offensive aspects so I put it in the middle :) If you are taking a lot of damage pop it for the Consecrated Ground (4% extra life regen while on it), or take it for the 40% Increased Damage. Finally, if you don't need either but your other flasks are out, pop it for the "100% increased charges gained by other flasks during flask effect." So basically, use it all the time for the damage and flask refills, except when you anticipate danger and might need the 4% life regen at any time. * Atziri's Promise. Cheap and awesome damage boost. Look for a 20% quality and ideally 15% Elemental. This should be used as frequently as possible during boss fights for the DPS and leech (effectively 0.3% fire damage leeched as life), and during mapping if you like (extra DPS and life leech won't hurt). * Silver Flask of Adrenaline. For clearing maps or breaches! Good prefixes to consider are Ample/Perpetual/Chemist's/Surgeon's. Use a mana flask until you get to lvl 38 for Cast While Channelling; you'll have an empty slot for Atziri's until 68. Don't forget to buy or bauble them to 20% when you can, and don't forget that you can vendor flasks totaling >=40% quality for a Glassblower's Bauble. Bonus Uniques: (completely optional and unnecessary) Spoiler Red Nightmare. Put this right under Mind over Matter and you’ll get an extra 5% block, 5% fire as extra chaos damage, AND 15% chance to gain an endurance charge on kill. Yes PLEASE! Buy it early because these skyrocket later in the league. get a Cybil’s Paw corrupted w/ 0.2% Fire Damage leeched as life. While these pop up for a few chaos on a lucky day, expect to spend a bunch of Vaal Orbs getting the sockets and colors right. This should leech roughly 8-10 life per firestorm hit, nicely augmenting the base life on hit from Cybil’s. (MATH: Assuming roughly 2.5K Firestorm damage per hit w/ Conc Effect + Bone Offering but ignoring Atziri’s which adds Chaos, times effective resistance from Fire Pen + Flammability means we can expect enemies and bosses to have between -50 to -100% fire res, so 3.75-5K damage per hit, times 0.2% leech = 7.5-10 life per hit :) Culling Strike is also a great corruption and applies globally to your Firestorm. Heretic’s Veil: You could use one of these with your two curses and have enough to mana to squeeze Herald of Ash or Arctic Armour. Though you miss ~100 life, resists, and +2 Minion Gems for your Zombies and Bone Offering, so I wouldn’t personally prefer this option. Playstyle: Spoiler Cast Scorching Ray across packs to until you get a second cast of Firestorm (about 0.7 seconds w/ good cast speed, you'll get a feel for it), then Flame Dash to the next pack and repeat. It will feel slow unless you are moving on BEFORE the packs die; Firestorm lasts 5+ seconds so let the duration do its work and use a Loot Filter :P Keep Bone Offering up! Remember, this is our main defense, and gives us a huge DPS boost and some cast speed (due to Cybil's and Ascendancy nodes). It lasts about 14 seconds with our duration nodes, so cast it every few packs as you get the chance. If you are going for max clear speed and aren't waiting for packs to die, that's fine, just cast Desecrate into packs (to move zombies there as a defense) and then Bone Offering, every 10 or so seconds. It might sound like a lot but it will start to feel very natural and 14 seconds is a lot longer uptime than it might seem. Your Zombies go where you last casted a spell. Generally this works in your favor, just realize that if you cast Desecrate or a Totem away from the monsters, your zombies will follow for a second. If you love flasks, you can keep your Atziri's and Silver flask up almost all the time, but the DPS from them isn't needed for general mapping. They are most helpful for breaches and bosses IMHO. BOSSES: For single-target DPS, swap in a Concentrated Effect for Increased AoE. You can keep it in your inventory or in the 6th socket of a 6S 5L armor. Make sure to keep self-casting Desecrate + Bone Offering frequently enough, keep a Skeleton Totem up if you like for extra safety, and make sure you are using your Atziri's/Overflowing Chalice/Silver flask for extra leech and DPS. If the fight is particularly dangerous, save at least one of Overflowing Chalice’s 3 uses for when you get below 100% life and want an extra 4% life regen. Hitting Max Block/Spell Block: (in order of price) Spoiler We aren't really worried about getting spell block directly; we want to get block % which Rathpith converts to spell block. Just aim for 75% Block and your Spell Block will follow. The Anvil. Super cheap and can actually get you to 78% block. The bonus life and mana on block is nice too. This was buffed in 2.6 with the removal of the reduced movement speed modifier :) You can often find Corrupted ones with extra block or spell block implicit for a couple chaos as well. Tempest Shield. Add this gem to your CWDT or self-cast (rarely needs recasting) for an extra 3% block a helm with "Bone Offering Grants +X% Additional Block Chance." If you are patient on poe.trade, you should be able to get an otherwise-trash 9% Additional Block for ~5-10 chaos, and craft the desired attributes yourself. I recommend +2 minion gems and life or ES, you can get enough resistances elsewhere if you can't get them here. Alt or Scour+Alc, up to you :) a Red Nightmare in the jewel slot right under Mind over Matter will give us an extra 5% block from the 15% Fire Res node above it. You don't strictly have to hit max, but would you run around with 60-70% elemental resistances? Defense/Offence tabs: Spoiler Defense: Note that for end-game ideally you have 115% to all elemental resistances in Merciless to protect against curses such as Flammability and Elemental Weakness. You should also have a positive chaos resistance or Poison/Chaos enemies are going to hurt. Here I have a little over 7.2K EHP, with about 30 chaos invested. You should be able to hit 6K EHP with about 10 chaos at this point. For HC I recommend staying in Dried Lake until 76-80 and then moving to T1-5 maps until you are 83 and have at least 60% block and 70% spell block. Around lvl 80 I'm able to run Beaches @ ~125M exp/hr which works for me! Offence: This is a 5L with AoE, buffed with Overflowing Chalice and Spirit Eater, but not Atziri's because I don't have one yet :) The DPS seems low, but remember that with Flammability and Scorching Ray we can hit up to 125% fire penetration, and we generally always have Elemental Overload up for 40% MORE damage. And of course for single target we use Conc Effect and also get the dmg from Scorching Ray on top of Firestorm. And finally remember this is NOT DPS, just damage per hit of which there will be many, many per second with all our Firestorm stacks and especially with Concentrated Effect for single target. Specifics for 2.6: Spoiler Having access to Talismans is pretty awesome. Consider one that add +1 zombies or life regen. I found the first one and bought the second for 1 chaos. [dbLinkedItem id="11310807823"][dbLinkedItem id="11310807824"] for whatever reason, the AoE of Firestorm along with our tree passives seems fine for general mapping without an AoE gem. Consider swapping it out for Elemental Focus if you prefer damage over AoE. Current gear in Legacy HC (not great yet): 2c 1c 7c 3c white armor + 2c Screaming Essence of Greed 1c 1c found found found 1c FAQ: Is block recovery a problem? Not that I've ever noticed. Because our offense is stacking long-duration Firestorms, short interruptions don't pause your damage or life from hit. I don't like CWC / Scorching Ray! Can I self-cast Firestorm? Sure, this is how PewPewPew's build works. Just swap out Scorching Ray + Cast While Channelling for Spell Echo + Faster Casting/Elemental Focus. However note that this is much harder to sustain mana-wise, and you'll lose the free DPS and 24% lowered enemy Fire Resistances from Scorching Ray. You'll also have to rely on more intermittent ignites from Firestorm to trigger the Immolate damage, so I really wouldn't recommend this playstyle. What map mods should I avoid? If you are playing HC, I recommend avoiding maps with Reduced Block Chance (fine for SC), as well as Elemental Reflect (obviously). You can run elemental reflect with care and a ruby flask if you really need to. If doing this, don't stack much Firestorm, use flasks, and have patience. For more details on the safety of specific maps, PewPewPew has done a great job detailing maps here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1460817/page/1#p11939079 Last edited by midtown on Sep 5, 2017, 5:00:23 PM Last bumped on Nov 30, 2017, 5:24:05 PM	Posted by midtown on Mar 2, 2017, 4:36:03 PM Quote this Post
I haven't played a summoner for a very long time but liking the sound of the buffs to the zombie gem so thinking you've just created my starter build - tyvm. I do love builds with lots of block in them. ign: Kza_Taza	Posted by kareNZa on Mar 2, 2017, 4:53:05 PM Quote this Post
" kareNZa wrote: I haven't played a summoner for a very long time but liking the sound of the buffs to the zombie gem so thinking you've just created my starter build - tyvm. I do love builds with lots of block in them. Thanks, I hope it treats you well! The Zombies are so tanky. You might also play around with using Vaal Summon Skeletons + Decoy Totem instead of Summon Skeletons + Spell Totem, it's very fun too :) This build fared well in 2.6 with a slightly more efficient tree saving two skill points, so I'm quite looking forward to playing it again, especially with the buffed zombies and anvil amulet.	Posted by midtown on Mar 2, 2017, 5:11:14 PM Quote this Post
Added example jewels and a screenshot :)	Posted by midtown on Mar 3, 2017, 2:45:01 AM Quote this Post
Yes thank you ^_^ Looks great.	Posted by ProjectLim on Mar 3, 2017, 3:06:43 AM Quote this Post
Thx for this great build, this is surely going to be my build for 2.6 :) I really like the synergy between all the buffs from the Necromancer and having these minions around while still doing most of the damage yourself. Last edited by Lowizi on Mar 3, 2017, 6:59:30 PM	Posted by Lowizi on Mar 3, 2017, 6:58:08 PM Quote this Post
Updated with some better leveling gem/gear tips :)	Posted by midtown on Mar 5, 2017, 3:36:04 AM Quote this Post
Even better leveling gems and skills after RIPing once :P	Posted by midtown on Mar 6, 2017, 1:51:55 AM Quote this Post
I'm loving this build! I'm currently 68 in HC Legacy and have breezed through everything! Just equipped Rathpith and the build feels even more solid. My only con for this build is really a con for the Firestorm skill itself with how much it can clutter the screen. On some fights I feel like I'll die because of visibility issues. But we'll see! :) Thanks for posting this build guide!	Posted by sinfonia11 on Mar 8, 2017, 8:55:30 AM Quote this Post
" sinfonia11 wrote: I'm loving this build! I'm currently 68 in HC Legacy and have breezed through everything! Just equipped Rathpith and the build feels even more solid. My only con for this build is really a con for the Firestorm skill itself with how much it can clutter the screen. On some fights I feel like I'll die because of visibility issues. But we'll see! :) ! Thanks, that's so great to hear! Just to make sure, you aren't using the Siege Firestorm MTX are you? I tried this for a bit but you can't really see anything with it, haha. If you are feeling like the normal Firestorm effect is too much, just use the Siege MTX for a bit and go back, and it will feel fantastic in comparison :P	Posted by midtown on Mar 8, 2017, 6:33:10 PM Quote this Post