[3.5] Fire/Cold Molten strike slayer-inq/raider 4+ million dps per ball | low budget to high budget

Pretty generic molten strike guide. We use Hatred/ Anger instead of Heralds. Getting 2 juicy mods on Watcher's eye is really affordable.
We convert 40% of our physical damage to cold thanks to the Winter spirit Notable making us deal elemental damage only.
The damage output is ridiculous for any investment.

Pros

-Molten strike DPS is busted
-Vaal pact and Slayer leech
-Abusing the scion Might of the Meek / Unnatural instinct combination
-Gearing is really flexible
-Great league starter
-High dps easily achievable (2+ million dps per molten ball achievable on a semi budget and ~700k per molten ball on a very low budget)
-Not an avatar of fire build, perfeclty compatible for being fully boosted by aurabots.
-6 to 7k life with Acrobatics and Phase acrobatics available if wanted.

Cons

- No high defenses like a CI howa build.
- Not the fastest clearing build

Gear breakdown:

Spoiler

Weapons: We use foils in this build, you want the maximum physical dps possible on them. Hits can't be evaded is a must if you have enough currency.
If you're on a low budget, check the last POB option with Lycosidae.
Aim for 300+ pDPS foils with some crit.



Helmet:

I love Lightpoacher. Spirit burst can also be supported by socketed gems which is a nice bonus.



BiS enchant is obviously Molten strike fires 2 additional projectiles.
An other solid option is Hale Negator if you also don't need the +15% to all Elemental resistances.


Bodyarmour:

I love Farrul's Fur for obvious reasons. It allows us to have permanent frenzy and power charges allowing us to go Inquisitor as the secondary Ascendancy. Aspect of the Cat also grants a significant dps increase.



Your second option is obviously Loreweave. A cheaper option that provides you lots of damage and increased resistances.

A third option is a rare Astral plate with lots of life and a "Attacks have +1.5% to Critical Strike Chance" mod.

Using Loreweave or any other chestpiece than Farrul's Fur forces you to go Raider as second Ascendancy.


Jewelry:

You can use whatever rings that cap your elemental resistances and give you the most damage possible. Best bases are Steel rings and Opal rings with mods such as Adds # to # physical damage to attacks, increased elemental damage, increased elemental damage with attack skills.
The Taming is an amazing option since it can give you 40% to all elemental resistances and scales our damage very nicely.

I personnaly use:


For the amulet, a Shaped amulet will most of the time be the best. You can get mods such as "Damage penetrates #% elemental resistances" "Gain #% of Physical Damage as Extra Cold Damage" "Gain #% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning Damage". Get some life/ resists/ crit chance/multiplier flat physical or elemental damage on it too if you can.

I use:


For the belt slot use a stygian vise belt to cap your elemental resistances and have some life and elemental damage with attack skills on it.

I use:


You need to have the Aspect of the Cat skill crafted on one on your gear pieces.


Boots and gloves:



More damage, 4 extra abyssal jewels available. Intimidation and Maim for free on gloves while using a Searching and a Murderous jewel abyss.

Other solid options are obivously good rare gloves (spike/gripped bases) and Kaom's roots for the boots slot.

Jewels:

Watcher's Eye:

We want to use a jewel that combines Hatred and Anger mods.



The mods you want will be "Critical strike chance while affected by Hatred" and "Gain % of Physical damage as extra fire Damage while affected by Anger"

Those 2 mods are really cheap.
The priority is the Hatred mod.

As a 3rd mod you want something like critical strike multiplier while affected by anger or any other damage mods.

We also want to use 2


and a
on a high budget setup.

The combination of these 3 gems with Scion is totally broken.

We obviously want a

that we will place near the duelist starting area close to Golem's blood

As for other jewels, we will use abyss jewels with life, attack speed if you've dealt a critical strike recently and flat elemental or physical damage to attacks and to sword attacks and global critical strike multiplier. Don't forget elemental resistances if you need them.
Prioritize flat cold and fire damage over lightning damage because you will have more elemental penetration for these elements thanks to Wise Oak later.


Some examples:


Flasks:



Those flasks have obvious reasons to be here.
Dying sun adds 2 projectiles and area of effect.
Taste of Hate is a decent mitigation against physical damage and adds some more damage on top of that.
The diamond flask is a must on any crit build.
The wise oak will give us up to 15% penetration to cold and fire damage.
Since we use dying sun and taste of hate, our cold and fire damage will most likely be the highest at all times.

If you're on a low budget the flasks will be:
Atziri's promise
Wise Oak
Eternal life flask
Diamond flask
Any defensive/Quicksilver flask

Your 3 magic flasks will have to have: Staunching, Of Heat and of Warding suffixes.

The resistance balance is easily done on this build if you use items such as Lighpoacher, The Taming and you have the same ammount of each resistance on the skill tree. You'll mostly will have to balance the resistances of cold and fire resistances from the belt and a rare ring only.

The 5th flask is a flexible option.

If you don't have a jewel with the "Corrupting blood cannot be inflicted on you", you will have to run a life flask of staunching. If you still want to use a life flask and have such a jewel i recommend you using





Gem links:

Spoiler
Weapons:


Enlighten doesn't have to be level 4.



Use the movement skill of your choice between Whirling blades, Leap slam and Shield charge.

Helmet:


Combustion supports Spirit burst of Lightpoacher as well as Ancestral Protector. The totem will instantly ignite enemies, making them lose 20% fire resistance. Combustion can also be procced by Lightpoacher while you're mapping and ignite and debuff enemies. The ignite also synergizes well with The Taming ring granting some extra damage.

Gloves:



If you're not bothered by summoning a golem from time to time, use Lightning Golem instead of enhance.

Chestpiece:


Ancestral Call is the 6th link if you manage to be on full life almost permanently.
Damage on full life is the 6th link if you struggle to manage the range you need to be in for Ancestral call to be efficient on a single target.

If you want to keep damage on full life but don't want to be bothered by Ancestral call distance management, use:



as your 6th link.

Boots:


Ascendancy bandits and pantheon:

Spoiler
If using Farrul's fur and aspect of the Cat:

Slayer > Path of the Duelist > Inquisitor


If using any other chestpiece than Farrul's fur + Aspect of the Cat:

Slayer > Path of the Duelist > Raider

We choose Raider to generate frenzy charges on bosses.

Bandits: The min/max option is to kill them all.
The cheapest option that is totally viable is to Help Alira especially if you don't plan on using Lightpoacher or The Taming.

Pantheon:
If you're not really bothered by stuns or if you're wearing Kaom's roots use Soul of Arakaali as your major god with captured Queen of the great Tangle as the minimal upgrade.

Otherwise, use Soul of the Brine King.

Minor: Upgraded soul of Shakari.



Enchants/corruptions:

Spoiler
Boots: Damage penetrates 10% of enemy elemental resistances

Helmet: Molten Strike fires 2 additional projectiles

Gloves: +1 to Maximum frenzy charges is the best corruption on Tombfist (better than elemental weakness on hit)

Quick tip: +1 maximum Frenzy charges on 1 abyssal socket Tombfist is as good as uncorrupted 2 abyssal sockets Tombfist dps-wise if you don't own top tier abyssal jewels.

Other options: "Blood rage grants 12% additional attack speed", "40% increased Molten strike damage" on the helmet.
1-160 Lightning damage if you haven't killed recently for boots, 16% attack/cast speed if you killed recently on boots for mapping.


Videos:

Spoiler
Shaper full run:
https://youtu.be/Ye_EgGJPWtw

Uber Atziri fight:
https://youtu.be/NtuFdRUAXVM

Full life Shaper kill:
https://youtu.be/RIZp7TFJRUE


Uber elder video uploaded soon

POB:

Spoiler
High budget version:

https://pastebin.com/ShLN6RsE

Semi budget version:

https://pastebin.com/g6VZe5wg

Budget version with Lycosidae, everything cheap/affordable
Level 93 skill tree.

https://pastebin.com/PkXxrdNk


Leveling trees:

Spoiler
www.poeurl.com/cgTN 54 skillpoints

www.poeurl.com/cgTO 86 skillpoints

www.poeurl.com/cgTP 104 skillpoints

www.poeurl.com/cgTR 118 skillpoints

If you have any questions or need some explanations feel free to contact me here on in game.

Cheers.
Last edited by OCELOT69350 on Feb 18, 2019, 4:10:00 AM
Last bumped on Mar 21, 2019, 3:27:11 PM
Would you still use slayer ascendancy after the 3.6 nerfs to it? Or would you do something like get some life on hit instead for sustain and then use Inquisitor / Raider?

Thanks for the build.
"
Stickfoot wrote:
Would you still use slayer ascendancy after the 3.6 nerfs to it? Or would you do something like get some life on hit instead for sustain and then use Inquisitor / Raider?

Thanks for the build.


Yes I would give up Slayer and go for Raider/Inquisitor and Path of the Ranger start if you don't use Aspect of the Cat + Farrul's fur. After getting Cat + Fur I would go Pathfinder/Inq for QoL purposes.
An elder life gain on hit mod would indeed be useful.
Last edited by OCELOT69350 on Mar 9, 2019, 1:21:39 PM
Is it still viable to get the ammount of damage in 3.6?
"
Bryfejset wrote:
Is it still viable to get the ammount of damage in 3.6?


I'm still theorycrafting. The damage should be pretty much the same if not higher than in 3.5.
The problem is that we pretty much lost the slayer overleech. Something interesting would be not taking vaal pact and get life gain on hit at least 1 ring, get enough life regen % to sustain blood rage to keep Damage on full life. A life flask would be mandatory against big damage spikes though.
Last edited by OCELOT69350 on Mar 9, 2019, 6:30:52 PM
"
OCELOT69350 wrote:
"
Bryfejset wrote:
Is it still viable to get the ammount of damage in 3.6?


I'm still theorycrafting. The damage should be pretty much the same if not higher than in 3.5.
The problem is that we pretty much lost the slayer overleech. Something interesting would be not taking vaal pact and get life gain on hit at least 1 ring, get enough life regen % to sustain blood rage to keep Damage on full life. A life flask would be mandatory against big damage spikes though.


Used your build as a guide, did some tweaks and Went for Path of the Ranger instead of slayer, and also Went claws, works like a charm so far, although I am abit squishy because i'm still using Tabula rasa. Other than the squishyness the damage is insane for the low ammount of currency put into it, around 30C and melting t14 bosses
"
Bryfejset wrote:
"
OCELOT69350 wrote:
"
Bryfejset wrote:
Is it still viable to get the ammount of damage in 3.6?


I'm still theorycrafting. The damage should be pretty much the same if not higher than in 3.5.
The problem is that we pretty much lost the slayer overleech. Something interesting would be not taking vaal pact and get life gain on hit at least 1 ring, get enough life regen % to sustain blood rage to keep Damage on full life. A life flask would be mandatory against big damage spikes though.


Used your build as a guide, did some tweaks and Went for Path of the Ranger instead of slayer, and also Went claws, works like a charm so far, although I am abit squishy because i'm still using Tabula rasa. Other than the squishyness the damage is insane for the low ammount of currency put into it, around 30C and melting t14 bosses


Didn't have much time to update the guide nor play the game this week but you're on the right path.
You can obviously build around claws but the build guide was mainly around swords as they are most of the time way cheaper than claws once you're in the high end dps brackets.
We'll indeed always start with Raider / Inquisitor with Path of the ranger on this patch.
If you get to Farrul's fur + aspect of the cat you can go for Pathfinder instead of Raider so you can get more flasks uptime if you feel you need it and just lose about 3% of your damage compared to Raider.
"
Didn't have much time to update the guide nor play the game this week but you're on the right path.
You can obviously build around claws but the build guide was mainly around swords as they are most of the time way cheaper than claws once you're in the high end dps brackets.
We'll indeed always start with Raider / Inquisitor with Path of the ranger on this patch.
If you get to Farrul's fur + aspect of the cat you can go for Pathfinder instead of Raider so you can get more flasks uptime if you feel you need it and just lose about 3% of your damage compared to Raider.

Done Shaper without much hassle with a Tabula now whilst farming for the Farrul's Fur + the aspect of the cat, so far i dont really have any issues at all.
I prefer claws because of the easy Life on hit, thinking of trying to remove some of the leech nodes and see how it fares with just Life on hit, so i'm still trying to tweak it to my preference aswell. :)
Thinking about starting this build tonight . Looking to dive right into the expensive portion of the build . Made a good amount of exalts on my vortex build early on so I should be able to get my farruls fur and a few other nice things right away. My question is , what is the best choice of gear prioritization ? I have about 30-35 ex right now and am still trying to sell a few more things so should get to around 40-45 ex . Also, claws or foils ?😅

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