[2.0] MoM Incinerate - no Zealot's Oath, no Eldritch Battery - Defensive build, cheap and fun
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Greetings! Welcome to the Clear Mind MoM Incinerate build guide. This is my second guide. My first one was a Dual Wild Axe Shocker Scion which can be found here. Although I’m mostly a casual player, I do enjoy making my own builds. I have new ideas for builds all the time, but of course not all of them work. When I’m able to at least reach map content with a build, I make a guide for it. Hope you enjoy!
 This is a defensive incinerate build. I play on Warbands but the build should be viable for HC as well. The idea for it came from the Clear Mind unique jewel. The huge amount of spell damage provided by this jewel when no mana is reserved is enough to plan a build around it. The most popular way that came up to do so once people saw this jewel for the first time in The Awakening Beta was to go with the Blood Magic keystone, which removes all mana from your character and makes you spend life for all skills instead. Blood Magic builds have the disadvantage of not being able to reserve any mana for auras and other buffs, since their mana pool is removed. Clear Mind compensates this disadvantage by providing an amount of DPS that corresponds to a high level Wrath of Anger aura (tested this on beta and I was still doing more damage with Clear Mind than with level 16 Anger with my incinerate). Although a very effective choice, this approach bothers me a little because it ignores the other very attractive mod that Clear Mind has, which is up to 30% mana regeneration (becomes useless if you take BM). Thinking of a way to make use of both mods (spell damage AND mana regen), I came up with this build by using the Mind over Matter keystone instead of Blood Magic, and investing heavily into mana and mana regeneration. Mind over Matter makes you mitigate 30% of all incoming damage from hits by directing that damage into your mana pool instead. If you reach 0 mana, this stops applying and you take full damage on your life pool. 30% damage mitigation is a huge amount, which makes MoM a very good defensive choice, but the drawback is that it’s hard to maintain. Since you’re taking 70% of all damage on your life pool and 30% on your mana pool, both pools must be relatively strong and balanced, and able to recover fast enough. This is particularly true for the mana pool, since we need it to cast our spells, and won’t be able to do so if incoming damage drains all our mana. Therefore, we invest a lot in life, life regen, mana and mana regen. This defensive mechanic works well with incinerate. The strength of incinerate is that it can channel and become stronger the longer you remain still and casting it. However, it has a low range, so you must stay close to enemies to hit them, which makes you take a lot more damage than if you were sniping at them from afar with a ranged skill. That’s why most incinerate builds come with some sort of strong defensive mechanic. MoM will be our main one. 
Pros
- Relatively easy to build and can be leveled up using the main build instead of changing later on; - Very tanky while still dishing out a decent amount of damage. Able to remain deathless if played carefully; - Requires no unique gear, except the Clear Mind jewel. This jewel was really expensive in the beginning of the Warbands league, but the price is beginning to drop slowly and should be affordable if you focus on saving some chaos orbs.;
Cons
- May be hard to find a Clear Mind with decent rolls; - Incinerate is naturally more dangerous than skills that shoot from afar. High range projectile spells and attacks allow the player to use a playstyle of shoot, move to dodge incoming attacks, then shoot again, which by itself is a great defensive mechanic which cannot be used with incinerate. 
Offensive
Incinerate is our main skill and can be used both for multiple targets and single targets, without even removing the GMP gem, since the damage on the spell is so great.
To help in situations where more DPS is desirable, we use Flame Totem. It also helps distract mobs in certain encounters where it is difficult to remain still for a long time in order to chain incinerate. Just drop the totem and let it deal some damage while you move to a better position. We don’t specialize in totem passives, though, so the totem is not very tanky and will die fast, but can always be dropped again as many times as needed. We use Lightning Warp for mobility. We can use it to teleport across rivers, cliffs and other obstacles. We can also use it to move even when trapped by Bear Trap and other mechanics. Additionally, it is possible to place the Lightning Warp destination and immediately start channeling incinerate. When the teleport happens, you won’t lose the channeling you had already started, so you arrive at the destination with a charged incinerate.
Defensive
Mind over Matter keystone: MoM is our primary defensive mechanism and dictates where we travel through the passive tree the entire time. To maintain it, we need a big mana pool and a lot of mana regeneration. Before The Awakening, it was very easy to reach a huge level of mana and mana regeneration by converting Energy Shield into mana with the Eldritch Battery keystone. However, that keystone has been changed, and works differently now, applying Energy Shield to the mana orb instead of the life orb, which effectively makes you spend ES before mana for skills. A popular combo is using EB, MoM and Zealot’s Oath to reach high ES regeneration. However, this combo requires 3 keystones and a lot of investment that in my view is better used elsewhere. Instead, in this build we maintain MoM with hard investment on mana and mana regeneration, keeping in mind we have a little of that in the Clear Mind jewel to help us (although we need a lot more from the passive tree, too). For this purpose, using the Clarity aura is a must, even though it was heavily nerfed in The Awakening. However, we cannot reserve it using our mana pool, because that would negate the Clear Mind spell damage bonus. Therefore, we link Clarity to Blood Magic and reserve it using our life pool instead. It ends up reserving between 400 and 500 life, which is a considerable amount and makes the build that much less tanky, but we have MoM and the other defenses to compensate, so it’s not a problem. The build’s huge amount of mana regen allows it to cast incinerate from the mana pool as well, without any need for additional mana management mechanics. High Health: Our second main defense is a big health pool. Just go for as many life nodes in the passive tree as possible, and have base life in every piece of gear. The pathing I chose for this build is optimal for that purpose. Armor: Armor was buffed with The Awakening and is now more effective, which is why we spend some of our skill points beefing up this defensive stat and also make sure to only use pure Armor gear. The passive tree for this build is optimized for that. Chaos Golem: with the introduction of Golems in The Awakening we can now rely on one more interesting support mechanic. For this build, we choose the Chaos Golem for its added physical damage reduction. In early levels, the golem adds 3% reduction, scaling up to 4%. If you manage to get your golem to level 22, it will give 5% reduction, which is obtainable by using a helmet with +2 to Minion gems (my plan for the endgame in this build). This 5% is added on top of the physical damage reduction calculation from your Armor, which has diminushing returns. So a "flat" 5% is really useful here. Soul of Steel notable passive: This passive skill can be found south of the Marauder tree, close to the Unwavering Stance keystone. Similarly to the Chaos Golem, also adds a "flat" 4% physical damage reduction which is applied after Armor calculations. Really helps beefing up physical damage mitigation when paired with the Golem. Life Leech: We link our incinerate with Life Leech to help regain some of the life we lose. The more damage we do with incinerate, the more life we’re able to regain. Capped resistances: Almost unnecessary to mention. Any build in PoE must cap all resistances at 75%, or even increase the cap if possible. In this build, we don’t have any mechanics to increase the cap, but it’s possible to use flasks or some unique items such as rise of the phoenix or sapphell’s frame if we know we will encounter an enemy with heavy elemental damage. Cast When Damage Taken setup: the CWDT setup was changed after The Awakening since we’re now unable to use Enduring Cry with it. So for this build we use Enfeeble and Molten Shell supported by Increased Duration on a level 12 CWDT to weaken mobs and buff up our armor when we take damage.  Incinerate 6-link setup: Incinerate – Greater Multiple Projectiles – Spell Echo – Life Leech – Fire Penetration – Empower. Acquiring a Clear Mind jewel should be the first priority when playing this build. After you have one, start saving for an Empower gem and then start leveling it up after you buy it. Flame Totem 4-link setup: Flame Totem – Faster Casting – Fire Penetration – Life Leech We have no investment in Totem Life in the passive tree, so our Flame Totem is very squishy. I find that in this scenario the most I can do to help it stay alive a little longer is to give it Life Leech and also make sure to bring the quality of the gem to 20% for some extra life. Chaos Golem 4-link setup (socketed in a +2 minions helmet): Summon Chaos Golem – Minion Life – Minion and Totem Elemental Resistances – Fortify We use the Golem for 2 reasons: to serve as an extra target to distract mobs attention and to receive its reduced physical damage taken buff. To be able to do these two things, the Golem must be alive. We can always resummon it whenever it dies, but that consumes time and we'll be without the physical damage mitigation for that much time, so it's easier to make it really tanky so that we rarely have to resummon and can rely on it being there. Cast When Damage Taken 4-link setup: CWDT – Enfeeble – Molten Shell - Increased Duration Lightning Warp 3-link setup: Lightning Warp – Faster Casting – Less Duration Clarity 3-link setup: Clarity – Blood Magic – Enlighten (for the late game to free up some life if you want to). 
My gear at level 88
The gearing for this build is pretty simple, since we can use only yellow (rare) items if we choose to. Below are the best choices and which stats to look for in each piece of gear: Weapon Your main weapon will be a spellcasting piece, which can be a wand, a scepter, or a dagger. Wands are the best choice because they have an implicit modifier for Spell Damage and can also roll Projectile Speed to increase the reach of your incinerate. I also find it's easier to roll spellcasting mods in wands, but that could be just my RNG experience. Scepters come after wands. They also have good implicit mods (elemental damage), but they cannot roll Projectile Speed. However, they have attribute requirements balanced between Intelligence and Strength, so they may be easier to use if you lack intelligence (wands have really high INT requirements). In the endgame, however, you should have enough intelligence for wands too. Daggers are not the best choices because their implicit modifier is critical strike chance, which we do not use in this build. But if you find a good spellcasting dagger that increases your DPS while leveling, use it, of course, provided you have enough dexterity to equip it. Dexterity, by the way, is our most difficult attribute to obtain. We get little to nothing of it in the skill tree, but we need 111 of it for the Greater Multiple Projectiles gem at level 20. It's totally possible to get that number from gear, but can be a little annoying. Jewellery For your rings and amulet you just want the basics: life and elemental resistances. You will also probably need to have a little bit of dexterity on each of them to reach the requirement explained above. Once you have enough of that, you can look for other stats such as mana and mana regen to help with MoM, or cast speed and spell damage. The Paua Amulet is a nice base for mana regen, but you may need to use a Jade Amulet to meet dexterity requirements. Belt The best base belt for the build is a Leather Belt for the life implicit modifier. Look for life, elemental resistances and armor as explicit modifiers. Life and armor are prefixes and elemental resistances are sufixes. You end up with only 2 useful prefixes that you can potentially have in belts. The other ones are not really needed for the build, so you may use Tora's special movement speed on belts to get a little extra movespeed. Chestpiece, Shield, Gloves and Boots For these pieces, you want everything with pure armor bases, and also look for life, resistances and armor modifiers. Specifically for the boots, the 30% increased movement speed is always nice. You sacrifice potential armor on the boots for it, but the game just plays SO much better with high movespeed. Helmet Specifically for the helmet, you want to sacrifice a little bit of potential armor by having a minion modifier instead (+2 to socketed minion gems). The reason is you will be socketing your Chaos Golem gem in your helmet. Once it reaches level 20, the helmet will push it to level 22, when it starts giving you 5% physical damage reduction instead of 4%. This compensates for the lack of armor you would get on the helmet with an armor mod, and is even better because that extra 1%, although seemingly a small boost, is hard to obtain once you have already stacked a lot of armor in higher levels. Also, you will link your golem with minion life and minion and totem elemental resistances, and both those supports will also get +2 to their level, making your golem really tanky. The final gem supporting your 4-link setup for the golem is fortify. You will notice this is a setup that uses 3 blue sockets and 1 red socket (BBBR), which is hard to obtain in a pure armor piece of gear. I recommend doing Vorici's craft for "at least two blue sockets" for best mathematical chances of getting BBBR. There is an online Vorici Calculator for finding out what's the best way to get the colors you need. Useful Uniques Although the build does not require any uniques, as stated, there are some of them which can be very helpful if you choose to use them. Atziri's Foible (Wiki link) Gives you a LOT of mana and mana regen. If you equip this after level 70-ish you will see your mana pool jumping a few hundreds and your mana regen get boosted a lot too (i got from 1200 to 1400 mana and from 120 to 170 mana regen at level 77 when I dropped one). The final mod is also great: Items and Gems have 25% reduced Attribute Requirements. Remember dexterity is a little hard to get in our build? This mod will help decrease that requirement. It's basically the same as having around 30 dexterity in this amulet. All of this is in a Paua Amulet base for even more regen. It's possible to use a rare amulet with mana and mana regen rolls a little better then these (with high rolls), but not with a % increase to maximum mana. The tradeoff is that this unique has no life and no elemental resistances. Lioneye's Remorse (Wiki Link) A unique shield that is really close to highest possible amount of armor and life mods from any shield in the game, and also provides 5% extra block chance. If you tried to obtain the same stats on a yellow shield, you would need high Tier 1 rolls, and then it would be a bit better than Lioneye's, although the unique still has a special mod: −25 Physical Damage taken from Projectile Attacks. Nothing extraordinary but it does help. The tradeoff is that you get -5% movespeed and the shield has no resistances. If you are able to get all necessary resistances elsewhere (you should), then this shield is the second best possible shield for the build. The first one would be a REALLY well rolled yellow shield which would probably cost a lot. If I find out there are more useful uniques for this build I will post them here. But again, these are not really necessary and you can do the build without them.  *I am still testing strategies to deal with elemental reflection and will post my progress in this section as I test it. To deal with reflection on maps, my plan is to swap my tower shield to a unique Rise of the Phoenix shield, which grants +8% to maximum fire resistance, bringing it to 83%. The tradeoff is that RotP is not a high armor shield, so we lose a lot of physical damage reduction. To make up for that, I'll run arctic armor, which grants both physical and fire damage reduction, at the same time compensating the lack of armor and granting even more fire resistance to deal with the reflection. Using arctic armor requires me to reserve mana, and so we will lose the spell damage bonus of the clear mind jewel. So I will try to find a replacement jewel specially for running reflect maps with some mana regen in it, to swap with clear mind when running those maps. This will also decrease our damage a bit, which indirectly helps with reflection. Because I'll be reserving mana for artic armour anyway, I'll run Clarity without blood magic to get a little more life. I considered using purity of fire too for even more fire resistance, but I'm afraid that will reserve too much of my mana pool, harming the MoM mechanic. By the way, MoM helps a lot in dealing with reflection, too. I have posted a video in the video section of this guide testing RotP against a 13% elemental reflection map. In that video I'm not using artic armour yet because I lacked a green socket in my gear, but I'll test that in the future too.  *If you prefer following a video than looking at this written guide, there is one available in the video section below. Step 1: Templar tree - http://poeurl.com/zsBrHmV Skill points spent: 26
Explanation
Start Templar and get life, life regen, mana, mana regen, damage and cast speed. This step concludes the Templar part of the tree for this build.
Step 2: Witch tree and Mind over Matter keystone – http://poeurl.com/zsBrXEQ Skill points spent: 57
Explanation
Proceed into the Witch tree, allocating the Mental Rapidity cluster on the way. When you reach Cruel Preparation and Deep Thoughts, go down towards Mind over Matter, but allocate the Quick Recovery cluster before you allocate MoM to back sure you have enough mana resources to maintain it. Right after that, allocate the jewel socket right under MoM and socket your Clear Mind jewel there. At this point, you need to be running a Clarity aura linked with Blood Magic, to help sustain your MoM and your incinerate and receive the bonus from Clear Mind at the same time. You should also start changing your life and mana flasks to hybrid flasks. When all of this is done, allocate more damage nodes in the Witch tree – Heart of Flame cluster to the north and Elemental Dominion to the south.
Step 3: Pass by Scion tree, go into Duelist and Marauder - http://poeurl.com/zsBsbuU Skill points spent: 79
Explanation
Go down towards the Shaper notable passive, which is a big buff for this build. After Shaper, go into the Scion mana and mana regen nodes and get a Jewel socket on the way. You should look for +% increased life and damage mods on jewels, and possibly mana regen. When this is done, go through the life Wheel, allocating Constitution on the way, then continue south, allocating another jewel socket on the way until you reach the Battle Rouse cluster and allocate all its nodes. Battle Rouse has a synergy with Mind over Matter and also gives you a decent amount of mana.
Step 4: Armor, more life and mana, Unwavering Stance - http://poeurl.com/zsBsmSN Skill points spent: 99
Explanation
After the previous step (Battle Rouse), go into the Duelist tree and allocate Bravery and Mana Flows, which are great buffs for your survivability with life, mana, mana regen and armour. Then go into the Marauder tree and get the Unwavering Stance keystone, becoming immune to stuns. When this is done, allocate the Soul of Steel cluster for great physical damage mitigation and the Bloodless cluster for efficient life nodes.
Step 5: The endgame - http://poeurl.com/zsBswC5 Skill points spent: 114
Explanation
Recommended option for endgame: in the Duelist tree, get Art of the Gladiator for some extra Dexterity and movespeed, then go down and get Fury Bolts and the projectile speed node right under it to improve your Incinerate. Close to the Scion start, get Sentinel for some more armour, then go up a bit for some more projectile damage and a 4th jewel socket. Then finish allocating the life nodes in the life wheel.
 For the bandits quest on each difficulty level, do the following: Normal: Help Oak (+40 life) Cruel: Kill all (+1 skill point) Merciless: Kill all (+1 skill point) The build relies primarily on a big life pool, so the choice for Normal is pretty obvious. On Cruel it is possible to get Cast Speed from Alira, although I think it’s not necessary and an extra skill point is more worth it to be spent elsewhere. We don’t use any charges so we also kill all on Merciless. 
Level 79 Stats
Level 85 Stats
  Step-by-Step guide for buiding the passive tree from leveling to endgame Link: https://youtu.be/ABrd3DKMAmY First encounters against bosses in Merciless progression from Brutus to Kaom Link: https://youtu.be/5ctpx5H1XWo Some tricky map bosses (Arena, Museum, Villa) Link: https://youtu.be/SV_WYRN9yqI Collonade run (level 73 map with Brutus-like boss) Link: http://youtu.be/5IrXKI-j1FQ Testing strategy (Rise of the Phoenix) against 13% elemental reflection (Museum map) Link: https://youtu.be/VkPyEkiB4tg Temple map boss fight with very nasty mods Link: https://youtu.be/EmCen22lAws Waste Pool run (level 74 map) with 40% slower life and mana regen Link: https://youtu.be/aKbI-e5tW4I Gorge run (level 76 map) with 40% slower regen and double boss Link: https://youtu.be/EJnp54QTi1I Academy boss fight (level 78 map) taking considerable extra damage Link: http://youtu.be/VfTKyXE3LoU Volcano run (level 77 map, new in The Awakening) Link: https://youtu.be/3YCM0s66f0I Gear Rundown at level 88 Link: https://youtu.be/yEcgiG4BeCo -------------- All feedback is appreciated! I’ve been having a lot of fun with this build 3 days into Warbands, but there’s always room for improvement. Also, if you tested out and enjoyed the build, I'd very much appreciate your comments on how it worked out for you :) -------------- Last edited by Rhoa_Power on Aug 1, 2015, 9:59:47 PM
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2.0 ? No 2.0 trees bro.
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" If you mean the links I provided for the trees in the leveling section where old versions, I just fixed that. They should all open now. Thanks for replying! By the way, the leveling guide was one of the things I just finished for this guide. The other update was the inclusion of 3 gameplay videos and a passive tree planner video. Last edited by Rhoa_Power on Jul 14, 2015, 2:52:01 PM
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no gear recommendations?
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" Just updated the guide with a new Gear section. Thanks for the Feedback! |
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Thanks for everyone viewing this guide. If you liked the build or have some feedback, make sure to reply and let me know what you think!
Just updated the guide with: - A section for elemental reflection with strategies on how to deal with it; - 2 more videos: testing the elemental reflect strategy against 13% reflect and fighting temple map boss with terrible mods to test how tanky the build is. Last edited by Rhoa_Power on Jul 15, 2015, 9:49:42 AM
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How well will this build be able to run atziri?
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Why GMP over LMP?
I don't see why you would ever want to use GMP with Incinerate after the shotgun nerf. LMP with Echo is plenty for AoE clearing and better single target. Edit: And starting Templar and not getting Celestial Judgememt seems like a travesty ;p Last edited by Mephistal on Jul 15, 2015, 2:26:15 PM
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" I actually never killed Atziri with any of my builds. I'm relatively new to the endgame in Path of Exile, even though I've been playing since early 2014. I intend to try Atziri with this build, since I've been able to do some decent progress early in the league this time. Will post info about that once I try it out. " A simple answer to both your comments would be "because the damage is enough". GMP over LMP is just personal preference, really. I like the coverage of GMP, as it allows me to direct incinerate somewhere in the middle of a mob pack and hit everything without need to redirect. With Projectile Speed that's a lot of coverage and I'm happy playing this way. If I ever need more damage for specific boss encounters, for example, I'll just swap GMP with Slower Projectiles. As you can see, GMP, LMP and Slower Projectiles are all green sockets and can be used interchangeably, so this doesn't really have any effect on the overall build and you can use whatever you're happy with. I understand Celestial Judgement is a great passive and I understand the power of Fire Penetration, but again, the damage is enough, and there are plenty of other ways to scale it. After playing the The Awakening Beta and listening to some comments by streamers on Twitch, I believe the new changes to the game favor building your character with a mind on your defensive capabilities, and not excessive investment on damage, as it will probably be enough anyway. I already liked building defensive rather than offensive builds before the patch, so that's a nice playstyle for me. |
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I'll just agree to disagree on GMP over LMP in any situation but...
" Maybe in HC but the reverse, generally, is true in standard, but if that is your preferred play style then really it just becomes subjective and pointless in debating. Last edited by Mephistal on Jul 15, 2015, 4:38:43 PM
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