[Theorycrafting] [Fixed ST Link] Surge and Purge: Life based Flame Surge, Burning Discharge, and BM

I set out with a goal to make a life based Flame Surge build. This thread is strictly my theorycrafting of a flame surge build. I have not leveled/tested the build yet. I'm hoping to get some input before I try it out.

Gem Links:



The main hurdles I ran into were:

a. a consistent source of burning. I liked the idea of Fire Trap, however I thought Discharge synergized better with the up close and personal style brought by Flame Surge.

b. How much was enough life and life regen? Right now at ~lvl 70 I'll have + %240 life and %4.5 life regen. Is that enough with Life leech to successfully sustain Flame Surge?

c. Support Gems and supporting cast. I thought that shock stacking with an Arc Totem would be extremely helpful so that went in. CWDT is a typical setup. I also knew I needed another source of Enduring Cry for Discharges. Purity of Fire for reflect, and so on...

The Build at 91 points:



I had a few goals in mind:

a. Life at %200+ and at least %4 life regen.

b. A focus on Fire Damage before elemental damage. I also hit up the early Fire Damage node near the BM keystone to help with early leveling with searing bond and what not.

c. Maximizing Endurance charges. I have a base of 3 + 3 from the passive tree + 1 from helping Oak in Merc = 7. ( I can do math! )

d. I wanted to be able to level with the build without having to make too many changes before getting to the 91 passive point goal. With a few re-spec points you can easily take some early physical damage nodes for using cleave or ground slam... I figured it'd be fairly easy to level with searing bond, and a melee skill until level 50ish. At that point we should be able to start using the flame surge and discharge setup.

Problems I see:

a. No dex... at all... Makes gearing much harder. I could modify the build to take less damage and run Iron Reflexes. I could also pick up a +30 dex node along the way to help with gearing.

b. Because I'm not running the BM keystone I may need some mana/regen for the skill not using a blood magic keystone. The only spell we will be casting off mana will be Discarge.. Will that be a problem if we are running both Haste and Purity of Fire on our mana globe? Probably.

c. Anything else you see???

Thoughts on gearing:

I'm not at all familiar with how to gear a build like this but from other similar builds I'm assuming something like:

Life > Res > Spell/Fire Damage > Cast Speed > ???

I think the best option is to go wand and shield. It gives plenty of spell damage and decent stats, and extra survival. Other than that prioritize the above stats as best you can.

That's it, the basics of the idea and the passive set-up. Please if you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to leave them here. I appreciate the feedback.

- Oresan