[2.0] The True Battlemage (Cyclone/Incinerate Tank)
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A lot of people come into this game wanting to play a battlemage. You know, a real battlemage. Spells, swords, heavy armour, the whole business, just like they play in other RPGs. Then they find out how the skill tree and gem system work, and their dream is crushed. Either that, or they get the impossibility of it drummed into their heads by well-meaning folks in their help and advice threads. Specialisation is key, they say! Pick one thing and stick to it! You can't use attacks and spells unless you're Cast on Crit!
Yeah, screw that noise. This build is designed around the following objectives, in order to resemble a 'traditional' battlemage to the greatest extent possible:
In practice, this means using Cyclone for AoE clear and Incinerate for single target, while having over 7k life and keeping 5 frenzy charges up at all times. While perfectly viable for almost all content, this build is strictly suboptimal. It squanders a substantial budget on entirely average performance in all regards. It exists strictly to prove a point and fulfill a fantasy. Got that? Cool. Let's get into it.
Passive Skill Tree and Bandits
(N.B. For levelling, see separate section below.)
Current tree (107 points) The tree is focused on life (253%), armour (176%), and fire spell damage (314%). Minor diversion are made into nodes that only benefit one of our primary skills, because I consider the ones chosen to be strong enough to pick up regardless. Notably, Resolute Technique is allocated to aid Cyclone immensely, and Incinerate can't crit anyway so doesn't really notice. We also allocate Blood Magic for ease of use. Hypothetically you could get away with Elreon jewelry (or Blood Magic gems) instead, and use your mana to run Anger and Determination. The single jewel slot is for an essentially free 60%ish increased damage. You can also start Marauder, as should be fairly obvious. If you want a version with a bit more DPS at the expense of tankiness, you can also try a Witch version like so. Bandits Normal: Oak (+40 life) Cruel: Kill all (skill point) Merciless: Kraityn (+1 max frenzy charge)
Gear
Our mighty sword, and 100% required for the build as nothing else delivers comparable amounts of pure fire damage. Wait what? Does the Templar have four arms all of a sudden? Nope, this build actually uses weapon swap as it was originally intended, packing a staff to hold and cast our Incinerate. There's no particular reason to use Pledge - any high fire damage staff (especially one with + fire gem levels) will do just fine. I just happened to have a 6L Pledge lying around. If you were wondering what the heck was up with the tree, wonder no longer. Behold the lord of double dipping. Because getting damage on the build is not that easy, CoE lets us cheat a bit and buff up both our skills at once with spell damage. A pretty obvious choice since it gives solid chunks of life, armour and fire damage and we don't need the sockets. I'll admit, this is overkill. But both our skills can stack burns pretty effectively, so why not? For a less ridiculously expensive option, see the nested spoiler below. The rest of the items are focused on life, rests, armour and covering the character's awkward stat requirements. Ideally you want WED on both belt and amulet (flat fire on the amulet is also acceptable). My boots are worth noting because the extra frenzy charge corruption does give you a noticeable DPS increase, but this is a luxury. Hopefully the flasks are fairly self-explanatory. Feel free to swap them around according to your own taste.
Budget Option
For those who don't particularly want to shell out for a Taming, might I recommend the following?
The loss of life doesn't hurt all that much (you'll still have more than most characters, and Cloak's phys > fire conversion actually gives you a lot of physical DR), and you'll do pretty comparable damage to the Emberwake/Taming version too.
Gems and Links
Cyclone
Quality on Cyclone is really great (each point give 05% increased AoE), try to get it if you can. Quality on other gems doesn't matter all that much, they're mostly just small damage boosts. Incinerate Again, quality on Incinerate (increased projectile speed) is very nice if you can get it. That said, this is a dedicated single-target setup. Swap out Slower Projectiles for Lesser Multiple Projectiles if you would like to use it for AoE, and swap out Faster Casting for Spell Echo if you're not using Pledge of Hands. Iron Will is very comparable in damage boosting to Empower, so feel free to use that if you don't have a level 3+ Empower handy. 4Ls There's plenty of flexibility here, feel free to do more or less whatever you like. I can thoroughly recommend the extra leech from Warlord's Mark, but go ahead and use Flammability or whatever if you so desire.
Stats
Cyclone
 Incinerate  Defenses 
Videos
Levelling
Levelling this build as Incinerate or dual Flame Totem is very straightforward. Just don't try to attack things until you have Oro's.
The sample levelling trees below assume you are going dual FT. If you want to level with Incinerate, just don't allocate Ancestral Bond. 33 points 65 points 87 points (Oro's time) As a side note, the build is in theory fairly flexible when it comes to skill choice. You can use just about whatever attack that works with a 2H sword and just about any fire spell. That said, I do believe I've picked the best ones. Have you done something awesome with [url=http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Sire_of_Shards]Sire of Shards[/url]? PM me and tell me all about it! Last edited by viperesque on Oct 22, 2015, 6:02:55 PM
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" I think you achieve your objectives, and it's cool to see CoE + Kaom's in one build. I wish there were a way to actually make this build a valid alternative for someone who cares about efficiency. I mean there is potential in cyclone's kill on the move mechanics vs. incinerate's ramp up mechanics. The question is how do you get your cyclone damage to around 40-50k TT while not losing much from your incinerate damage. Have you thought about using iron will on incinerate, and maybe pillar of the caged god for cyclone? All my builds /view-thread/1430399
T14 'real' clearspeed challenge /1642265 |
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Nice! Not entirely necessary, but have you considered putting Fortify into the leap slam setup, plus blind? I don't really see how vengeance is doing that much for you.
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"I know! :( I've been thinking about this on and off for years (and the possibility of a bow/melee build too), and this is the the first time I've gotten somewhere I feel is actually reasonable. "I do actually mention Iron Will in the gem section. It's pretty comparable to Empower on the tooltip (only 700 less damage with my current setup and a 20/20 IW), but that turns into a lot less when you start taking The Taming into account. I'll try Pillar (and replace CoE with Abyssus, I guess) a bit later. Might be promising? " How could I forget Fortify? That was silly of me, in it goes. Thanks. Someone on reddit also pointed out that I'm missing Molten Shell, which seems obvious as well. Have you done something awesome with [url=http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Sire_of_Shards]Sire of Shards[/url]? PM me and tell me all about it! Last edited by viperesque on Oct 22, 2015, 1:26:52 AM
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I must admit, this is very well thought.
It's original and daring, even if suboptimal, this is really an achievement in my opinion. Just a thought that crossed my mind while reading this and thinking about how to get decent DPS on Cyclone : I know this looks a bit less cool but a good way to get nice melee damage without much investment is to use Facebreakers. Not sure if it's possible on the tree but you could have an unarmed weapon set and use the crit multi from the Facebreakers by going for a crit spellcaster build with the other weapon set. Although, this will probably end up quite costly in terms of points so I'm not sure if that could work out well. Just an idea ;) | |
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Well, I tested Pillar with:
Not ideal items, but enough to at least get a reasonable idea of how it would go.  Alas. With a lot more effort I think you could get it up to about the same damage as my current setup, but that's at the cost of a lot of life and resists. " Thank you! Crit of any sort is pretty much impossible because I absolutely have to be RT if I want my Cyclone to do anything. That's not to say I can't possibly go Facebreaker. I'll give it a try, one second. Edit:  Better than Pillar, but still not that impressive. I suppose there's some potential to do a very different sort of build that specs into phys damage and uses EK or something, but EK would be a LOT worse than Incinerate, and this is also pushing the gear pretty damn hard. I did try both with Conc. Effect instead of WED, for the record. Comparable damage to my current setup on Facebreaker (and could eclipse it with a solid legacy Facebreaker), but the AoE is pretty laughable. Have you done something awesome with [url=http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Sire_of_Shards]Sire of Shards[/url]? PM me and tell me all about it! Last edited by viperesque on Oct 22, 2015, 5:23:20 PM
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Hi, have some question on your build :
- I'm not very familiar with math use in Poe, but with 350+ strength don't you think Infernal Blow/Molten Strike + Avatar of Fire or Ice Crash/Glacial Hammer + Avatar of Fire + Pyre with an high phys 2h weapon is more efficient than incinerate for single target? - If using melee weapon for single target, what's your recommandation on fire spell for map clearing speed ? Magma Orb ? Flameblast? - Have you ever tried Herald of Ice + Pyre ? - If thinking of end content, Cloak of Flame + Purity of Fire seems to be the most effective to manage reflection. Have you an other solution? Sorry if my english is poor, it's not my birth tongue. Standard Shop: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979645 Last edited by Hiryuu_the_first on Nov 1, 2015, 9:13:35 AM
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