[3.2] Scionic Flametank "16k ES ed." (ES-CI-ZO-GR, SR-CWC-FS, extensive guide)

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SasoriOtoko wrote:

Another question - did you run into any trouble with any bosses when you were leveling up?

Yes and no. I leveled up in 1.3 and have not leveled a new flametank from scratch since then. I don't recall any bosses that were a problem before maps save through my inexperience with the game, my flametank being the second character I leveled after abandoning the first (a witch) at level 42.

Once I hit maps it was a brutal learning experience. Map-Merveils are downright nasty (at least without proper anti-freeze boots). Shock and Horror in the Torture chamber was a nightmare until I learned to do it right, and Megaera in Crematorium continues to this very day being a danger if not a) quickly moving out of her firestorm or b) being in Atziri (unwavering) configuration such that I'm sure I can phase dash out when needed without worrying about the risk of being stun-locked at a critical moment.

Especially with nasty mods, Megaera can be a real nightmare that require a hit-and-run approach rather than the standard facetanking, and her area is so small. I know exactly how you feel. It feels so silly being able to eat Vaal Slams, empowered Atiziri Flame blasts, and other hard hits, and yet having to dance around or at least pay close attention when fighting a firestorming map boss, but it is so.

But generally speaking, deaths with this build come from being overrun by too many mobs at once, wearing down the energy shield while the player decides to tempt fate facetanking at low ES rather than withdrawing.


- A tip on strongboxes; If you run with one or two Vaal Disciplines for utility, activate one of them right before you click the lockbox. That significantly reduces the risk of suffering POE's stuttering strongbox death tax.

Hey Pi2rEpsilon,

thanks for sharing this build! I'm really looking forward to trying out a variation of it as a starter build in Ascendancy's first league and was hoping for some input from you :)

My goal was to transfer your skill tree to the witch in order to be able to pick up the occultist ascendancy class and use bladefall instead of incinerate just because I enjoy that skill quite a bit more :) I'm aiming for Occultist for the amazingness that appears to be the "Wicked Ward", "Vile Bastion" and "Profane bloom" notables. Here's the tree I came up with.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMA34rpAkuuGyXZW20ZEVAi9DW5bAunK5Mnvop_xu-IoS_K0xGWwcX5N7QMDkjsGFha18_qukZxXfK3MI_6LL9SKUmxNAoNfIMJKwroWtDQFddV4DdmV8mxkBEvJohfaoauLKYo-i2o62NWY5DWuJOCx76AtUgc3Pno1ELr7o8aQYdodIRvmuCnCLc-2mJFnZ2uj0aDzJSgGFZTUhpsm6E8LffB99cYasaug1-ESDlSC2EMX8T2XGtYB69sHKcn7cNtaPJTpRkufA7ZYadVVw1boPGs85spLmhlfLgaPl8_9kjEWJf0UlM9Xw==

I skipped arsonist's 1% life reg because the increased fire damage wouldn't really benefit me much. Additionally, I was intending to replace vitality with level 20 clarity and grab some mana reg on gear to be able to sustain on mana and use a "proper" 5-link for damage, as that is usually all I get during a league :D

Do you reckon my adjustments would still result in a tanky enough build?

Thanks for taking the time to help me out :)

@mesred

Given that I don't know how game mechanics or skill tree are changing in Ascendancy, I can certainly say that your proposed build would work excellently now and I'd be deeply surprised if it didn't work well in Ascendancy. If it turns out not to work well in Ascendancy, then I'll certainly have to redo the flametank as well since they are so alike. :)

At 116 points it has when compared to my own current build +14 base ES, +9% max ES, +10% movement speed, trades roughly equivalent damage modifiers from various useful to Incinerate to those useful to Bladefall's physical damage, and has one jewel less and 1% life regeneration less.

I'm not up to date on Bladefall dps and can't say whether you are better or worse off in that respect (given current numbers), but I can certainly say that with roughly the same energy shield and 13.65%/14.65% = 93.2% of the regeneration it is MORE than good enough to tank currently. The build tanked well enough before 2.1 gave it an extra 2% life regen from the Growth and Decay wheel, so giving up 1% ES life regen is certainly not going to cripple you in any way.

Come Ascendancy, with the Occultist's substantial bonuses it is probably safe to drop the Vitality in favour of Clarity if you intend to address your mana issues that way, though it should be noted that this will make tanking single bosses without trash mobs around to boost the regeneration rate harder.

So I can't see any reason why your plan wouldn't work based on available knowledge at this point in time.


One thing I'd worry a bit about is the substantial dexterity requirements of Bladefall. Your proposed build has 44 dexterity and L20 Bladefall requires 155, leaving you 111 points short. Sure, you can pick that up on gear and get 90 points from the 3 nearby +30 DEX nodes, but.. it'll be an effort.

Thanks a bunch for going through the hassle of giving such in-depth feedback! :)

I've never played a "regen tank" before, let alone a CI regen tank, so having confirmation from your end that the life-reg will most likely still be more than enough for most game situations from our current knowledge gives me a lot of security.

You're raising an excellent point in the steep dex requirements. I hadn't thought about that factor much. I'm pretty confident though that, this can be solved by speccing into a 30 dex node temporarily and later purely via gear. Fortunately your tree offers such good amounts of STR and INT that dex is the only attribute really needed on gear. However, I might level with Incinerate just for the convience in the meantime :)

Again, thanks for your feedback and I'm really looking forward to trying out your build!

Ok, I feel a lot better about Maegara now. Although the cool part was that I was able to survive facetanking her longer than any character I've played...including my Lv 94 Scion who is an absolute terror to just about every boss out there. But yeah her damage is nuts...especially as with this character I've been able to survive a tanked up Touch of God from Residence Dominus with a Vulnerability mod...he must have dropped my ES by 8-9000 but even that wasn't enough to do me in. But drop some rapid fireballs on my head and the world comes to an end, lol.

Thank you for the tip on Strongboxes....I do have one Vaal Discipline on hand and seeing my ES jump from 12 to 16,000 is a great life saver...it's like having a super life potion on hand.

Mesred...I'm playing a Witch and at Level 82 she's already tanky as hell...in fact tougher than my other Lv 90+ characters. The lack of Dex is a tough one...I only have 34 on my tree and have to make up the rest with gear which is kind of a PITA...but luckily I was able to buy some rings with very high Dex which fit the bill nicely.

I also decided to go for a full 6L Incinerate because I'm a mana regen junkie. I'm using LMP, Faster Proj, Controlled Dest, Faster Casting and Added Chaos. So I had to forgo AA for a Lv 20 Clarity and grab some reduced mana cost passives on the tree. And a little from jewels too. And even with all this I had to get my mana regen up to 208 to be able to sustain LMP without any mana loss. I didn't even bother with GMP (my Marauder Incinerator can use it but it took some serious work to make it happen). This handy wand was the final piece for both characters:



I wish it had a little more damage, but it's worth it for the extra mana and regen.

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SasoriOtoko wrote:

Ok, I feel a lot better about Maegara now. Although the cool part was that I was able to survive facetanking her longer than any character I've played...including my Lv 94 Scion who is an absolute terror to just about every boss out there. But yeah her damage is nuts...especially as with this character I've been able to survive a tanked up Touch of God from Residence Dominus with a Vulnerability mod...he must have dropped my ES by 8-9000 but even that wasn't enough to do me in. But drop some rapid fireballs on my head and the world comes to an end, lol.

For me it is the "I can laugh at Atziri's empowered flameblasts, but have to worry about a few fireballs?" feeling that is so weird. Not that I recommend standing in Atziri's flameblasts, empowered or otherwise, as you might overlook some storm calls and then things really get hairy, but you get the point. Atziri doesn't keep me as much on my toes as Maegara does. :D

Heck, I even managed to survive dual empowered flameblasts once when I didn't flame dash fast in time (with a sliver of ES remaining, and looking at the stats on poedb both must have been very low rolls for survival; I certainly wouldn't survive two average rolls, but... still.)

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I also decided to go for a full 6L Incinerate because I'm a mana regen junkie. I'm using LMP, Faster Proj, Controlled Dest, Faster Casting and Added Chaos. So I had to forgo AA for a Lv 20 Clarity and grab some reduced mana cost passives on the tree. And a little from jewels too. And even with all this I had to get my mana regen up to 208 to be able to sustain LMP without any mana loss. I didn't even bother with GMP (my Marauder Incinerator can use it but it took some serious work to make it happen). This handy wand was the final piece for both characters:

I wish it had a little more damage, but it's worth it for the extra mana and regen.

Obligatory "booh" for weakening defenses by putting offense over using Arctic Armour. :p

With that out of the way, that's a very nice wand for your purpose, and between 10% projectile speed from skilltree, 38% from wand, 69% from Faster Projectiles, and 40% from Incinerate (assuming you have q20?) you've got insanely long range. :D

In fact, if you do have a high quality Incinerate and wish you did more damage, you'd be much better off using Iron Will than Faster Projectiles. The core build picks up 175 strength, so l20q20 Iron Will would give you at least 85% increased damage rather than the 30% or so from Faster Projectiles, and Iron Will's mana multiplier (100%) is lower than Faster Projectiles (110%) too.

Well the funny part is the only time I ever beat Atziri was by facetanking her with my ST COC Ranger who had all of 4500 HP and a little ES. Using non legacy Saffell's, PoF, PoL and Surgeon's flasks I just stood in one spot and kept the flasks running 100% of the time due to her massive crit rate. This wasn't planned...it came out of being a poor player who didn't know how to dodge her spells, lol. It was stupid and reckless, but hey, it worked. :D

Rightly deserved chastizing for removing AA, lol. I just got a kick out of the huge past the screen sweeping Fan o' Death that my Marauder does with all that projectile speed and wanted to replicate it with my new CI Incinerator. Spot on about Iron Will...he has something like 450 STR and gets a massive boost from Iron Will and the lower mana cost is what allows him to use a 6L GMP with only like 85% Mana regen on his tree. I've thought about putting my 18/20 Iron Will gem on my Witch but then I'd have to give up some range...hmm...

I do have 20/20 on just about all of my gems except one...but the one thing I'm lacking that I noticed you have is a Lv 21 Incinerate. My Witch doesn't have the best DPS right now (only around 8000) since I've been working on her core ES and defense first and am now getting around to getting her more damage and jewel slots on the tree. My Marauder is doing around 11k with LMP but he also uses a high level Flammability curse so he really roasts things fast...but of course has no where near the survivability of my Witch using your build.

Here's my setup if interested:



I will test out Iron Will with my Tabula and post results.

Ok, so Iron Will increased DPS from 8300 to 9000. Not too shabby. But I can't live without my big crazy flames, so I will have to stay with FP for now. :)

Btw...the Chieftain class looks very interesting...0.5% of Life Regenerated per Endurance Charge? If that stacks with the .2% already on the tree....holy crap! This would be awesome for my Marauder Incinerator...but a CI version...hmm...I need to ponder that over a few drinks tonight...


And maybe...just maybe I can do my crazy Sire of Shards Incinerator idea as a Cheiftan...now that would be freakishly fun. :D

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SasoriOtoko wrote:

Btw...the Chieftain class looks very interesting...0.5% of Life Regenerated per Endurance Charge? If that stacks with the .2% already on the tree....holy crap! This would be awesome for my Marauder Incinerator...but a CI version...hmm...I need to ponder that over a few drinks tonight...

Actually, that doesn't sound half stupid for a version of the build that sticks to fire damage rather than going chaos. And I guess most of us assume chaos will be nerfed somehow in Ascendancy.

The three deep flame totem line:

10% chance to Ignite
35% increased Damage against Burning Enemies
1% of Fire Damage Leeched as Life
Damage Penetrates 10% Fire Resistance
Gain 20% of Physical Damage as Extra Fire Damage if you've Killed in the past 4 seconds - irrelevant to flametank
0.5% of maximum Life Regenerated per second per Endurance Charge
Cannot be Ignited
When you or your Totems Kill a Burning Enemy, 10% chance of you and your Totems to each gain an Endurance Charge

So sticking to pure fire damage, while the additional burning damage won't amount to much (with current non-stacking burning mechanics) the increased damage vs. burning enemies will, and it'll also generate endurance charges at random when you kill. Not as often as Warlord's Mark, but affecting everything you kill, not just those cursed.

1% fire damage leeched as life means that Warlord's Mark is not needed for Ghost Reaver at all; It is only half the leech, but it applies to everything, not only enemies that get cursed. And since the build doesn't rely on the mana leech effect of Warlord's Mark, that means that the Warlord's Mark can be replaced by another curse - either Temporal Chains or Flammability depending on taste.

The build can fairly easily pick up one extra endurance charge and the 0.2% life regen/charge for 3 points, and another from bandits at the cost of 1 point, so for a 4 point outlay you get 5 charges of 0.2%+0.5% life regen, or 3.5% life regeneration. That's nearly as good as the Templar Inquisitor's 4% life regeneration from Sanctified Ground.

Marauder itself costs 2 extra "wasted" points compared to Scion, for a total outlay of 6 points more.

So paying that 6 point price compared to Scion, dumping Warlord's Mark, adding Enduring Cry to the build to making it possible to maintain endurance charges on bosses or easier to max them out otherwise, you end up with a flametank that is either a lot more offensive and slightly more defensive than the current (using Flammability) or a bit more offensive and a lot more defensive (using Temporal Chains), making it a quite interesting proposition and not immediately a worse one than either the Shadow/Tricker, Templar/Inquisitor, or Witch/Occultist.

So... four of the six revealed so far have Ascendancy classes that are well suited for the Flametank...

RELEASE THE SCION'S ASCENDANCY CLASS ALREADY, GGG. :D

Great points...I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my Marauder Incinerator...but it's nice to have some options.

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Pi2rEpsilon wrote:

RELEASE THE SCION'S ASCENDANCY CLASS ALREADY, GGG. :D

I think you better hold out for those stunningly photogenic sex-starved blonde Amazons, sir. GGG is gonna torture us for a while longer. ^_^