[1.3.0]PewPewPews official Starter-Friendly Incinerate Build | Stronger than ever!

Ok, so chance to ignite and proliferation didnt really hit the spot :p Read somewhere that the burn does a third of the damage of the attack that caused the burn, and well incinerate doesnt really do a whole lot of damage per attack heh.

Changed up my links a bit, now running clarity, discipline and less mana in my shield. Moved AA to my wand, ditched the faster casting and got me a 15q lightning warp to sort of compensate for that (1,5% faster cast per q).

So now I got the cwdt-molten shell-chance to flee and cold snap. Still not impressed by the link, in maps I dont see anything beeing affected by flee or cold snap.

That said, I ran a couple of Dominus runs to see if the original link with manaleech etc would help keep my mana up. I didnt really notice a difference, it may be there, but I had to use pots regardless. May just do a couple more to be sure.

Another option would prolly be to just flat out boost the damage done by moltenshell. Something like cwdt-moltenshell-concentrated effect-iron will or elem prolif would do nicely.

Thanks for sharing a great build! Fun as hell. I already had a Scion and wanted a Witch so I adjusted it slightly to start from there (lost a little spell power).

Have had zero trouble on maps up until today. Finally tried Dom in Residence and got my ass handed to me. Managed to kill him with one portal left. Need some more practice on him. Perhaps my HP is a little low (3572), I am still filling in the life nodes because of the points I had to waste starting from the Witch area. I am really hoping the skill tree revamp makes it a little easier.

Current gear

Really love this build.

The first build that is fun, wassnt too expensive in the beginning
and made me able to kill things i could never kill before.

Here is my current gear. Still looking for better Rings, better Amulet, Wand and
perhaps gloves. If someone is selling some, contact me.



If someone wants to buy, I have my old 5l left.

"

TheBanishedOn3 wrote:

Currently I'm trying on blind and its been working well

FYI, Blind does nothing for us, since we cannot Evade attacks. From the wiki page on blind:

An attacker's chance to hit is the direct opposite of the defender's chance to evade. Since characters with Unwavering Stance cannot evade, attacks made against them always hit. As a result, even blinded enemies will always have 100% chance to hit a character with Unwavering Stance, since the Unwavering Stance character always has 0% chance to evade.

Mana Leech on Molten Shell is quite pointless. First it takes a while to proc in a max lvl CWDT and then MS usually runs out before it explodes because the pack that triggered it is already dead, so you get almost no mileage out of it. Better stick a max lvl Devouring Totem (+faster casting depending on colors) in that link, you get some hp and mana regen and it gets rid of corpses as a bonus (very helpful vs. the dreaded gulls).

Hmm, forgot about devouring totem, eyeballed it but never tried it.

Settled on cwdt-molten-concentrated effect-mana leech. The molten shell does 12k damage with that, figured the mana leech is somewhat decent then, since other utilities like chance to flee/cold snap didnt seem to do anything on maps.

Gonna have to give the totem a try I guess, does seem to be handy vs some mobs and even certain bosses (like the 70+ garden-map plume thingy boss that feeds on devourer corpses) or actually any boss that has a lot of adds/respawns.

So I did Bazaar last night and wandering around just killing all the mobs I could, being careful as the map is an amber. I didn't actually notice killing the boss on this map, I then spent a good ten minutes looking for it :(

Not sure it deserves the amber status you have given it dude? :D

Allow me to preface this post by saying that I’ve had great fun playing with this build. I’ve taken it to level 87 and enjoyed the experience. That being said, I’m posting to offer criticism because I am unsatisfied with its performance in high-level content. Here are my observations:

This build has no dependable defense against heavy physical damage. It includes Immortal Call, which helps in a pinch, but ultimately cannot be relied upon. By nature of defense gems linked to CwDT, the first strike will always bypass defenses. Moreover, the player must choose between having a defense that consistently activates (i.e., using low-level CwDT gem links) or lasts for a longer duration once activated (with high level CwDT gem links). In either case, a single cast of Enduring Cry will at best net three Endurance Charges. This forces Immortal Call’s duration to be low. Only with a high-level CwDT gem link including quality gems and Increased Duration can achieve respectable duration of physical damage immunity – but to do so must sacrifice greatly in frequency of activation and one gem socket. In the case where one chooses to use a low-level CwDT gem link, Enduring Cry’s four second cooldown period causes problems; spells’ CwDT damage counters do not increase while on cooldown. This is significantly longer than the duration of a low-level Immortal Call, even with three Endurance Charges. Some of these shortcomings can be mitigated by rearranging skill gems, swapping skill gems, and varying the level of the gems in the CwDT links, but doing so does not resolve the underlying issues.

Another aspect of this build that creates problems in high-level content is relying on Life Leech too heavily. While I do agree that this build fares surprisingly well if you focus only on casting Incinerate and allowing Life Leech to keep you alive, there is a definite limit to that tactic’s sustainability. The crux of this issue comes from the fact that heavy physical hits are not nicely distributed damage over time effects, but instantaneous effects with high magnitudes. Worse, notable heavy-hitters have slow attack speeds, which do a good job of bypassing Immortal Call.


The third major trait I take issue with is the CwDT + Lightning Warp link. In good conditions, it’s fun and convenient and was implemented brilliantly. In small groups of melee or ranged enemies, it serves as an excellent stand-in for a more traditional physical damage defense. Nonetheless, it’s a double-edged sword; even if you want to leave a fight, many enemies can prevent you from doing so. Any ranged enemy that deals enough damage to quickly trigger the CwDT + LW link will continue to warp the player onto them. Ranged enemies by themselves are rarely problematic. However, when paired with the aforementioned heavy physical hitters, Lightning Warp’s ability to safely remove a player from melee danger or to nullify the spatial advantage that ranged enemies have at a distance is negated. The player remains the reach of the dangerous melee enemies. In certain situations (mostly in high-level maps with difficult mods), this can be a death sentence; the player is unable to sustain close-range combat, but also cannot escape. Attempting to warp away results in being yanked back by ranged monsters and a loss of Incinerate stacks. This can be combated to some extent by using higher-level CwDT + LW links or removing LW from that link entirely for a period. Both responses are inadequate or undesirable solutions – particularly the second, as it disables the primary method by which the player trivializes melee or ranged threats.

Occasionally, the Infernal Mantle adds insult to injury in a bad situation. The increased spell damage taken when on low mana is less of an issue for this build than it would be for others thanks to Saffell’s Frame, but it is still an issue. This is particularly clear when it comes to monsters like Undying Evangelists or uniques like the Labyrinth boss because they cast spells that deal physical or chaos damage.

As a side note, using Frost Wall with this build is suboptimal. The defense is good in theory, but in practice often places walls in useless locations because of Lightning Warp.

I realize that, as Appels_Zijn_Gezond has demonstrated in his videos, it is possible to handle end-game content with crafty play. Overall, this is still a fairly tough build. Personally, I am looking for something tougher, as I would like to handle 74+ maps with difficult mods more safely.

If anyone curious, this is the gear that I have been using since I was high enough level to use it.


Oh, and that ‘1 Exalted’ bit in the title is totally untrue. :P

So I'm using this build and yet when I'm faced with a group of decent mobs, I get killed almost all the time. I use the granite flask(and others when the situation calls for it) and the auras just like the OP says. I feel like the life leech gem just isn't... leeching enough. Can anyone tell me why I'm so squishy? Any suggestions? I'm still kind of a noob when it comes to this stuff. Thanks in advance! Here's my gear:



Here is my offense with incinerate highlighted:


Here is my defense:

@SilkTopHat: First of all, thanks a lot for the feedback! You are right, there are a few weak points, and heavy hitters are one of those. The CwDTs will lower the damage you receive from them

But there is one thing I wondered. What kinds of maps did you exactly run? Like I said, my gear is far from max - it's not bad either, but they can all get turned up a few notches. I'd say yours are similar, or even better than mine. But I was surprised when you said that you couldn't consistently run 74+ maps. I'll be honest with you, I died my share of times, mostly because of silly stuff, like face tanking double piety, both in their archer form(one, okay. But two? Fuck that shit), or doing a ele weakness map(my lig is capped at 80, so in an ele weakness map it goes down to... 30% or so)+Blood magic with lightning thorns(used all portals, still managed to finish the map). And yes, Heavy hitters scare me, every time I have to fight them. But, honestly, I never died to them.

I have to say, I barely ever run vulnerability maps, or -Max + monsters deal extra cold damage(Well, I try to, usually I forget about it, and run the map anyways). And even in those maps, it's only dangerous with heavy hitters or anything. And I've run a lot of high maps lately :>

So can you describe the situations you've been in? As in what monsters killed you, with what mods etc. As far as I've seen the maps, most maps are quite easy :>

And the 1 exalt in the topic is mostly aimed at the core gear. A full set is, of course, much more expensive. But if you get the saffels, and a IM, you can do the rest with stuff you find.

Except for maybe coloring the IM.

Meh.

@ChillQuill: You lack life. I recommend swapping asenath's touch for a glove with high life and resists, and get some rings with life as well. 2K is just not enough, no matter which build you follow :>


Right - sorry bout not responding a lot anymore. I'm not really playing a lot anymore, more waiting for the next league - and the moments I am playing, is when I test some stuff for one of my other builds.. so... :<

Don't worry, I will keep this topic updated, even through the 1.1 release :D