[2.6] KABOOM Infernal blow BERSERKER - All guardians down ! easy T16. UPDATED !

Hello !

I'm here to share with you my build for this league. so far it's been amazing, it's the most fun build i ever player, and it's viable for all content in the game.

Objectives of the build :

MELEE MAYHEM ! I wanted a true melee build that rocks against bosses and still be able to clear maps very fast. Earthquake kind of do that, so i wanted something different, something more aggressive and violent and if possible, with a skill underused.

Video comming soon !!!



Pro :

- True melee
- Fast and aggressive gameplay
- Boss melter, less than 4sec fights for most T15 bosses
- Very good for farming currency, want to do twinned T15 double beyond with 8 sextant mods with breaches, onslaught and 40% pack size ? NO PROBLEM (carreful with elemental weakness though ^^)!
- All guardians down, viable for all content
- very strong in breaches and against beyond bosses
- very good up to T13 with 5 links and no atziri acuity

Cons :

- Expensive (count 10 exalts for atziri acuity and 6 exalts for a 6-link hegemony's era)
- Not too tanky, you can take big hits but you have to hit something right after to get your health back
- You need to stack as mutch accuracy as possible
- you won't like elemental reflect, no leech and temporal chains mods on a map. enfeeble and elemental weakness are dangerous if combined on T13+ maps
- Leap slam is a pretty bad movement skill (auto-targetting issues and need some attack speed to be decent)

How does it work ?

Infernal blow has a quite high damage base (160.4% of base damage at lvl 20), with a built-in AOE dealing 10% of mob max-life as fire damage to surrounding ennemies. it also turn 50% of your physical damage into fire damage.

- Avatar of fire gives you 100% fire damage, so you can scale both physical and elemental/fire damages to increase your DPS
- Double dips fire/elemental damage as mutch as possible to scale the initial hit, the burning damage and the explosion damage
- Melee splash applies the explosion status to all ennemy within range, resulting in huge ovelapping explosion with 137% overkill burning damage from herald of hash : Oneshot every packs at all lvl = CLEARSPEED !
- 100% damage leeched as life and mana INSTANTLY on crit with the berserker ascendency paired with Atziri acuity gloves
- Free power charges generation on knockback with hegemony's era paired with lion's roar flask
- Frenzy charge generation thanks to bloodrage on cast when damage taken
- Free endurance charges generation on crit from smashing strike passive skill
- 67% crit chance unbuffed, 88% with power charges
- Defenses are comming from enfeeble (30% damage reduction), fortify (20% damage reduction), artic armour (13% physical damage, 12% fire damage taken), 32% block chance, 17% physical damage reduction from armor. Insta-leech on critical strikes does the rest of the work
- use of flammability and fire penetration to melt most bosses almost instantly. bosses can't be hard if they are dead before they attacked !
- warchief totem buff your damages, lure ennemy away from you and help to kill reflect mobs
- ice golem buff your accuracy and crit chances
- Dyadian Sawn belt make ignited enemies burning 35% faster, resulting in a huge boost of your DPS since burning damage is your biggest damage source.

My current Atlas progress



A few achievements :

- Deathless twinned enfeeble Core map
- Abaxoth killed on an enfeeble/elemental weakness/onslaught T13 map
- All guardians down on rare map corrupted, deathless hydra, chimera and minotaur.

still not completed :

- Uber atziri (not tried yet, should be ok).

- Shaper : Damages are more than enought, but getting close enought to hit him in the last phase is hard when there are vortexes everywhere. leap slam is also a pretty bad skill for endgame fights, auto-targetting the shaper (sometimes 3-4 times in a row) when the slam is coming and you want to escape is my N°1 death on this fight. it's still very doable and i'm sure any experienced player can achieve a shaper kill on this build.

Links :

staff 6L : Infernal blow - Weapon elemental damage - Melee physical damage - Added fire damage - Increased critical strike chance - Melee splash

6L for "hard" bosses : Infernal blow - Weapon elemental damage - Melee physical damage - Added fire damage - Increase critical strike damage - Fire penetration

Chest 5 link + 1 : Warchief totem - Melee physical damage - Weapon elemental damage - Added fire damage - Fire penetration (for easy swap to your 6-link for bosses) + Flammability (unliked)

Defence 4 link : Cast when damage taken - Immortal call - Blood rage - Summon ice golem

movement skill : Leap slam - Faster attack - Fortify - Artic armour

aura :
Enlighten (not needed, just because i want to try mind over matter later) - Blasphemy - Enfeeble - Herald of hash

gear :



passive tree :


http://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAECAQN1BLMGDgn2E3EUIBZvFukYXRhqGjgdFB8YIZAkNycvJ-0qjTH7Mok0MTWSNtg5UjpYOtg64TwtPfw-8UFyRtdJG03jUEdR-1XGV-JYB1hjWK5Z816lXwRfP1_QY_1mVGaeZ5txhXIPcql2f3asd-V65nuMffV-4IKbg1-DzIPbhMSPRpBVkSuSfZMHlG-YV5hvm1GbWJuhna6eV6IAplenCKelrJisqq2NrfGuPq-Ntz65Q7yavwjAZsT2xq7G2MlnzRbPftR82L3a3dwj4XPjauRR5c_qEOoY7FXtIO8O8B_xbPJF9zL31_hf-tL7i_4K_o8=

Bandits :

Oak for +40 life in normal
Eramir for +1 skill point in cruel
Eramir for +1 skill point in merciless

Few tips for a better survivability

- Attack speed is not really important for your damages, but it's absolutely mandatory for a reliable leech against high damage bosses (guardians and vaal temple bosses mainly). aim for at least 2 APS unbuffed for endgame bosses survivability. jewels are the best source of APS for this build, aim for APS with staves and global APS on a jewel.
- Crit chances need to be quite high to get insta-leech from gloves. 60% is a minimum for endgame and should not be difficult to achieve.
- Accuracy should be at 90% at the very least, aim for 92% for a good reliability.
- Mobility is the key for endgame bosses, don't face them unless you have 30% mouvement speed boots and a maxed leap slam set-up

Gems flexibility to adaptat to every situations

I tried a lot of gem setups for infernal blow and it can adapt to many situations.

so far i had a good experience with 3 different setups.

Lighting fast boss killing :

Spoiler
Infernal blow - Weapon elemental damage - Melee physical damage - increased critical strike damage - Added fire damage - fire penetration

this setup is suitable for bosses that you want to take out before they have the chance to deal too mutch damage. It works wondefully on most T15 bosses, especially :

- Gravicus on T15 shaped colonnade (he won't have the time to cast his firestorms)
- Piety on T14 shrine (she won't have the time to change form)
- Rigwald in T15 dark forest (you won't have to deal with his multiple forms)
- Maligaro/Shavronne/Doedre on T15 Core (they won't have time to attack)
- Dominus in T14 palace ("the touch of"... no thanks dominus, you're already dead)

this setup trivialise some fight that could be challenging otherwise. it's fun and satisfying tho melt thoses guys within 2 seconds.


Long bossfights setup

Spoiler
Some endgame bosses have different phases that you have to deal with, they can't be killed in 2 seconds so you have to take a different approach to sustain your character throught thoses fights.

Infernal blow - Weapon elemental damage - Melee physical damage - increased critical strike chance - Added fire damage - fire penetration

this is the setup i use against Guardians (except phoenix), Breachlords, Malachai on Core and the Shaper

your increased critical strike chance gem boost your chances to get instant full damage leech, letting you facetank all non-oneshot attacks from guys mentionned above. Add-phases can be tedious with this setup, so i switch added fire with melee splash for the late Phoenix/chimera guardian fight and the shaper adds.


everything else

Spoiler
for levelling and farming currency at the same time, i use the folowing setup

Infernal blow - Weapon elemental damage - Melee physical damage - increased critical strike chance - Multistrike - Melee spash

I recommand to switch your Dyadian dawn belt with a rustic sash with a nice weapon elemental damage roll like this one :

since your main source of damage is now your direct hit, not the burning damage.

this setup allow you to clear pack pretty fast, your insta-leech is proc more often with multistrike, making your character tankier even in the most unfortunate situations. Rare/breach uniques/beyond uniques still go down very fast. if you are lazy and don't like to change gems, you can still do 99.9% of the game content with this setup (i do almost everything under T15 with this setup).

after extensive experimentations, i find this setup less suitable for Guardians since the fight duration is increased and you are tricked to facetank everything until you get hit, misses 2 strikes then get hit again and die.

this setup reduce your overall damage per hit, so you won't kill yourself on reflect mobs, things that can happen with the two other gems sets in bad visibility situations (like breaches/strongboxes on shaped maps with abuse of sextants and big pack size)


Guardians fight strategies

Hydra :
Spoiler

Enter the arena, place your warchied totem on the left or the right of the hydra (well anywhere you want but not in from of you), curse the hydra with flammability, leapslam on it to proc your fortify, drink your lion's roar and taste of hate potions, hit the hydra until it aims his barrage at you. When he do so, leapslam behind it, attack again. keep on doing that and stay aware of the frostbolt and do your possible to not take them in the face. place your totem when you can (never just in front of you) re-cast flammability when you need to. then comes the add phase, kill them with your totem to avoid the vortexes they create on death. This is not a difficult fight but don't be too greedy on attacks. 4-6 attacks then a leapslam to relocate repeted a few times is more than enought to kill the hydra wihtout taking risks.


Chimera :
Spoiler

Enter the arena, place your warchied totem on the left or the right of the Chimera, cast your flammability, leapslam on it to proc your fortify, drink your lion's roar and taste of hate potions then hit him. you can facetank him easily in this state, so don't panic and don't re-proc your fortify if you are not almost full life (you might get killed during the slam if you are below mid-health).

then comes the add phase. if you choose to not use melee splash, use your totem and move a lot, target yourself red mobs.

then comes the smoke phase. This one can be quite random. easy if your bloodrage is on because your leapslam will be fast, painfull and dangerous if it's not and you don't find him fast enought.

repeat until th fight is over, its not a hard fight but the smoke phase is scketchy sometimes.


Minotaur :
Spoiler

Pretty straight fight, enter the arena, place your warchied totem near the minotaur, cast your flammability, avoid his burrow attack, drink your potions and smash his face. try to lure him as mutch as possible outside of the falling rocks area to avoid "get hit then take a rock death".

Again, not a hard fight, but don't try to facetank him too mutch inside the flling rocks area.

special tip : never ever engage him in front of the entrance, if you die, you have a high chance to die again next time you enter the area because you will take rocks before you proc your fortity !


Phoenix :
Spoiler

this one is a little bit different. first, since the phoenix is immune to ignites, i recommand to swap your belt for a nice WED rolled rustic sash. then you can use multistrike instead of added fire damage.

the beginning of the fight is like the others. totem, curse and smash his face. you can facetank his cyclone like attack but i strongly advise to escape it so you wont get killed by a little phoenix projectile right after. jump out as soon as you can when he stat his big burst animation, sometimes leapslam auto-target is messed up and you want to have enought time to jump out if it happens.

When he gets around 50% of his life, he will start to summon a lot more phoenix and they will be the N°1 threat. get hit by the guardian, then take a phoenix projectile and your next attack better be a crit or you'll be dead. i very strongly recommand to use melee splash from this phase untill the end of the fight and focus on the Guardian only after all phoenix are dead. it should go like this : little phoenix spawns, kill them, totem/curse/potions focus on the guardian. he resummon phoenix, jump on them, kill them, then focus on the guardian etc...


Shaper :
Spoiler

i recommand to swap arctic armour for purity of ice since most of the Shaper attacks are cold based. using increased crit damage instread of crit chance is a good idea since most of the shaper attacks are either oneshot or pretty slow (you'll be able to crit fast enought to heal) and more damage mean less fight duration = less chances to take a slam or a crit frostbolt (it will oneshot you) and less vortexes on the ground.

I have the pretty bad habit of wanting to leapslam over his frostbolts : it does not work AT ALL ! it a 100% sure death sentence so don't do it.

switch your fire penetration or added fire damage for melee splash during the add phase, you have time to do so even without being fast. try to always be aware of the vortexes bubble following you so they don't burst just in front of the portal.

don't get to close to the shapers lazer beam it seems to have a underestimated AoE around the shaper so if you are very close to him you'll take damages. it's a really common dangerous situation so be patient and don't rush on him too mutch.

the key imo for the last phase is to lure the bubbles away of the center of the area as mutch as possible and it's the thing i lack the most so far. i usually get overwelmed buy thoses vortexes and can't find spots where i can get close enought to the shaper to actually give him the lasts hits.



Possible improvements

- Kaom's heart can give you some juicy fire damage and a little buff in the HP department. to use Kaom you'll need to cripple your warchief set and use unset rings for your aura/curses
- very nicely rolled Opal ring can give you a lot more damage, still you need specific life/accuracy rolls so it can be hard to find and very expensive.
- doryani's catalyst paired with a "hit's can't be evaded" shield can be interesting because you'll be able to trash out all the accuracy requirement and take fire/elemental damage/crit chances instead, still i think it won't top hegemony's era because of the high base crit chance of the staff and the power charges generation.
Last edited by Zboublemeteor on Apr 5, 2017, 7:44:58 AM
Last bumped on Aug 3, 2017, 10:59:46 PM
Can't wait to try this.
Infernal Blow is my favorite skill and I haven't been able to use it properly for the past 2 leagues :D
Also could you please make your char public?
Double also, avatar of fire is not selected in the tree you've posted.
dis mah sig.
Last edited by InSaNeOo on Apr 1, 2017, 3:31:00 AM
Infernal blow is indeed a wonderfull skill !

thank you for the feedback, i corrected my mistake on the passive tree (avatar of fire is so obvious that i forgot to select it !)

my character should be public now.

feel free to ask any questions about the build, i'll gladly respond.
Last edited by Zboublemeteor on Apr 1, 2017, 7:47:03 PM
Is this build vaiable without Atziri's Acuity?
"
Munanori841 wrote:
Is this build vaiable without Atziri's Acuity?

Prob not
"
Munanori841 wrote:
Is this build vaiable without Atziri's Acuity?


It depends what you call "viable". For endgame bosses Acuity is absolutely mandatory since you take hard hits that need to be healed fast or the next one is fatal, but you can run map up to T13 without it, expect some death from time to time though.

Getting Atziri's acuity is not that hard since you clear maps rapidly with high density mobs and drop a lot of currency if you know how to manage your sextants and breaches (go for breaches, onslaugh, nemesis/bloodline/beyond) invest in double beyond on map with good pack size, manage your strongboxes etc... i had around 10+ exalts drop this league, made good profits from essence crafted jewellery, sold many hundred of chaos worth of gear for HoWA builds (everything with high int rolls pretty mutch). i played a lot on double beyond/corrupted strongboxes so many corrupted 6-link too... it's only my 3rd serious league and i was able to buy Atziri's acuity after roughtly a week. So the price of those gloves is not that big of a deal honestly.
Last edited by Zboublemeteor on Apr 1, 2017, 8:14:40 PM
why don't you take +1 power charge as bandit reward?
dis mah sig.
"
InSaNeOo wrote:
why don't you take +1 power charge as bandit reward?


I tried, but i changed for +1 passive later because i don't really needed more crit chance. getting +5% max life is mutch more important imo since your first concern is to survive big hits that can oneshot you.

currently i have rouglty 69% crit chance unbuffed, i'm close to 90% with power charges, one more power charge wouldn't make a big difference. Futhermore, i can't sustain reliably my charges against the only boss that give me a hard time (AKA the shaper).

i tried a lot of changes recently, the biggest one was getting multistrike instread of added fire damage. it's a interesting change, your ability to facetank bosses is highly improved (i facetanked the minotaur) but it takes longer to kill them. for tactic fights i still prefer added fire damage over multistrike.

last thing i want to try is a nice rustic sash with high WED rolls to see if it can be better than my current belt with the 35% increased burning speed.
Thanks for this guide, was looking for something a bit different and old-school to close out the league, now I have to decide between this and Freezing Pulse Redux.
I played Inquisitor freezing pulse in essence league (i still have my build laying somewhere in the templar forum), it's pretty good, very safe and the clear speed is good, i liked it a lot. with the new thresold jewel it should be even better.

the only thing i quite disliked about it is that it sucks against Guardians and Shaper because of the freeze immunity. but with more damage and a free LMP it might be good enought now.

if i have to compare the two, i would say that IB is way better against bosses (overall DPS is mutch higher, 300K DPS with fire penetration without too mutch effort and burning damage is over 1 million), clear speed is better (most packs take one hit to burst), it's stronger against beyond/breaches but it's a more tense/less safe gameplay than FP.

it depends what you prefer : insta kill bosses then pick your nose or pick your nose while killing frozen bosses ;)
Last edited by Zboublemeteor on Apr 5, 2017, 9:23:07 AM

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