Awesomely ridiculous and probably OP build

A simple idea with a brilliant result
permanent righteous fire by having large fire resist and health regen.



Firstly I will start with the items needed, which is pretty much every unique that stacks hp regen at low life is needed



this gives you a start of 9% of maximum health healed per second when below 35% heath.

next is to use This build
(build would be around level 55-60 depending on your choices in act 2)
This build raises your max resists to 81%, gives one extra totem and increases health regeneration by 7.5%

next step is to get vitality aura as well as rejuvenation totem (unsure if 2 rejuvenation totems stack but added in any way)
the vitality aura will increase your health regeneration by 1.5%, a purity aura will increase max resistance by 3% and 2 rejuvenation totems will give 200 hp a second (all at around level 60)


So with all this you now have 18% +200 hp regen per second with 84% fire resist


Result
All enemies within the radius of righteous fire burn for 50% of your max health per second (which is modified by any burn damage and spell damage passives you possess)
The self damage caused by righteous fire is then reduces to 16% of your maximum health per second which is mostly cancelled out by the 18% health regeneration leaving a v health regeneration of 2% + rejuvenation totems and health potions leaving you to bounce around 35% of your health.
And this is only using the stuff I found in 20 minutes of research.

Simply put every thing dies just by standing near you




Many thanks to the Unique Items Compendium thread which let me find the items to create this build and giving me the idea.

On the other hand, you won't have great armour or mitigation and only using 35% of your hp means you are still vulnerable to being bursted.

Fun yes, OP probably not

I'd take Kaom's Heart over Ambu. Okay, 2% less HP regen, but you get a nice 1000 base HP which will probably go up to 2000-2500 with the right nodes. That's much much more damage and a nice buffer to resist more.

I'd use blood magic + auras to stay at a constant low HP too.

Last, I'd use Redbeak because I think its bonus applies to burning damage (as seen in the featured video) and therefore to RF.

not great but you can still have some armor and considering the damage you will be doing just by being near an enemy is ridiculous. Most enemies will die in less than a second if you have high health.

In fact you don't even need to attack just run and dodge projectiles it would absolutely destroy melee enemies with the only problem being archers or other instant attacks like cold snap and flicker strike.

as for koams heart it is a legacy item and not available to non-legacy players and I only included the essentials for this build so didn't include weapons.

Also why try to constantly be at low hp? not going to effect damage at all unless you get pain attunement.

Redbeak means 100% damage on low life

"

TinyAngryCrab wrote:

Redbeak means 100% damage on low life

shh... I forgot that it only works at low hp.

With proper potion usage, most of this is unnecessary. Good, but unnecessary. After the respec, my friend managed to get his Templar RF build to be continuous. He does need to kill things to fill up his potions, but not at a horrible rate, and likewise, it doesn't matter if he's at full health or 35% health. Moreover, for a shield, he uses the Unique that grants +5% max resists, meaning he is only being drained of 14% of his health (when not using a Ruby Flask, of which he keeps 2 equipped). During the 2.X seconds of Ruby Flask time he gets, he's actually gaining health... without health potions, Rejuv totem, or Vitality. But he has those as part of his build anyway.

Having tried a Righteous fire build I'll add my thoughts:

1. Adding burn damage to Righteous fire will add to the burn damage you take as well, IE bad idea.

2. Having your life "bouncing around 30%" means you are bound to get killed in a hurry at high levels. Sure you have massive health regen but that just covers your own burn damage, all other damage taken have to be dealt with as well.

3. Even with very high HP you won't kill things fast enough, and the aura is tiny so you will have to be in their face.

3. Rejuv totems does not stack, but still a valid idea to have two just to be able to have them cover a larger area

4. You will have to focus so much on this that you will more or less be a one trick pony with little options.

Levelled purity aura gives 1/2/3% max resists. Just saying.

I is/was/am/sometimes use my lovely marauder tank build that I created (worked better before the passive change) which follows a similar concept. It didn't use any of those items, but rather was based on the same concept.

Using decent items (As I progress through merciless, Im level 50) I hold 81% resist all, and ~60% damage reduction and a ~45% chance to block, ~12% chance to evade. This offers a lot of damage reduction. My HP is around 1600. I cannot keep righteous fire up forever sadly; but with my ~100 life regeneration without ward, and 2 health potions, I can usually last for about 30 seconds. This is ample time to kill anything that may be bothering me.

My normal strat: Round up a whole lot of bad guys; usually 30 or so. Throw on a molten shell and charge in; casting Fire. I continue recasting molten shell; while I try to keep my HP about 50% to avoid burst damage from any ranged jerks. I also have cleave with a life on hit gem. As long as I am cleaving; my HP will stay at 100%. With 30 guys on me; normally 25 or so will die before I start to worry about death. Then I flee to wait out the fire CD.

While I do not consider the idea OP (As 1 stray bullet can wreck the EXP gain) I do consider it by far the best way for a tank to deal damage in merciless.