[2.1] 100% Fire Wild Strike
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Update: I made a video!
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Guide I’ve played several ARPGs (mostly D2) and I started playing PoE at the end of Warbands. I am a softcore player so this build is written from a softcore perspective. If you are a hardcore player keep that in mind if you choose to follow this build by picking up more defensive items and passives. The Marauder is probably the best start for a hardcore character or those who want to be tankier. I find the melee abilities that do multiple elemental types of damage interesting. In D2, I have tried several times to make a Vengeance Paladin or a Phoenix Strike Assassin without much success. Mechanically, these types of skills had some problems that made them pretty terrible. With Vengeance, the mana cost of the skill and the lack of mana leech made the build unsustainable. Phoenix Strike was lacking damage. Wild Strike has some problems with scaling and links. By converting the damage to pure fire, I traded some of the benefits of Wild Strike (the ability to shock and freeze) for more damage. What is Wild Strike? To paraphrase the wiki, Wild Strike is a melee attack that converts 60% of the physical damage of the ability into a random element. The initial melee strike has the keywords: melee, attack, and the random element. If the fire element is chosen, a circle explosion of fire is triggered at the location of the melee target. The fire explosion of the attack has the keywords: attack, AoE, and fire. If the lightning element is chosen, an arc of lightning originating at the melee target chains to other enemies. The arc of the attack has the keywords: attack, lightning, and chain. If the cold element is chosen, three waves of ice spread out from the melee target and propagate towards the edges of the screen. The cold portion of the attack has the keywords: attack, cold, and projectile. All portions of that attack will do the same amount of damage not accounting for individual keywords. Why play Wild Strike now? When I first started playing, Wild Strike wasn’t great (at least that is what I heard.) Wild Strike received a ton of buffs that made me curious enough to actually make a build with it. Also, it was getting later in the league and I had some currency and to experiment with. In 2.1, Wild Strike was buffed to do more damage. The radius of the fire proc was buffed. The number of projectiles of the cold proc was buffed from 1 to 3. The lightning proc chains to more targets. The mana cost of the skill was changed so that it doesn’t increase with gem level to help with sustainability. The introduction of the attack leech nodes in the duelist tree gives leech to all forms of damage of Wild Strike. Advantages of Wild Strike Since Wild Strike is capable of dealing lightning and cold damage, it can shock and freeze. This is not relevant for this build since it only deals fire damage. The ability has great AoE without the use of a less multiplier like melee splash. Disadvantages of Wild Strike The biggest issue with Wild Strike is that there are very few supporting gems that work well with the skill. This seems counterintuitive since there are a ton of keywords on the skill gem, but finding a good fifth or sixth link is hard. On a four link while leveling, I used: Wild Strike, Multistrike, Weapon Elemental Damage, and Added Fire Damage. Now pick a fifth. Faster Attacks is fine. What about Melee Physical Damage? It only works on the initial melee hit. It does not work with the explosion, arc, or projectiles. Increased AoE or Concentrated Effect only works on the fire explosion. Physical Projectile Attack Damage only works with the cold projectiles A single elemental penetration gem works at roughly one-third effectiveness. There are so few gems that work well with Wild Strike. By converting all damage to a single type, we can get maximum benefit from an elemental penetration gem, and another multiplier from the “added as” portion of a conversion gem. Also, Weapon Elemental Damage becomes more effective. How is Wild Strike Damage converted?
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First off, don’t bother with the conversion with a four link. Wild Strike's damage is great for a four link. Only do the conversion if you have a five or six link.
We pick up the Avatar of Fire keystone from skill tree. We use a Call of the Brotherhood ring. On a five link, we will also use the Pyre ring (the ring everyone vendors.) On a sixth link, we swap out the Pyre ring for a Cold to Fire support gem. Now to go through step by step to the conversion: You use Wild Strike on a melee target. 60% is converted to a random element via Wild Strike. Avatar of Fire converts the remaining 40% of physical damage to fire. Your lightning damage (mostly from Wild Strike, but also from flat rolls on gear) is fully converted. AoF converts 50% to fire. Call of the Brotherhood converts 50% to cold. Your cold damage (from hatred, the cold Wild Strike Proc, Taste of Hate, cold rolls on gear, and the lighting damage converted from Call of the Brotherhood) is fully converted. AoF converts 50% to fire. On a five link, Pyre will convert the rest. On a six link, Cold to Fire converts 50% of your cold damage as well as adding a percentage of your cold damage as extra fire. We are incapable of doing chaos damage since we have picked up Avatar of Fire. Wild Strike Gems On a four link do not do any elemental conversions. There is no point. 4-link: Wild Strike + Multistrike + Weapon Elemental Damage + Added as Fire 5-Link: Wild Strike + Multistrike + Weapon Elemental Damage + Added as Fire + Fire Penetration 6-Link: Wild Strike + Multistrike + Weapon Elemental Damage + Added as Fire + Fire Penetration + Cold to Fire Auras Hatred, Blasphemy + Flammability Hatred is a damage multiplier and will considerably boost your damage. Flammability will strip fire resistances away from the enemies we are fighting. This makes sure that resistant enemies die quickly. It will also push other mobs further into negative fire resistances. Herald of Ash Keep a Herald of Ash around for when you hit a curse immune map Optional Utility Gems
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Blood Rage
The leech given by the blood rage gem is not useful for us since it physical leech. However, we do benefit from frenzy charges and the increased attack speed. Enduring Cry Use it when near enemies to keep up your endurance charges. Movement Ability If you are using one-handed swords, you can use whirling blades. Otherwise you will use Leap Slam. Link it with Faster Attacks and Fortify. Cast When Damage Taken This is optional, but can be helpful for surviving spiky damage. I recommend you fully level the CWDT gem so that in only activates when you take a large hit of damage. Otherwise it will proc too frequently and we will not get much mitigation from having many endurance charges. Link it with Immortal Call, Increased Duration, and Molten Shell. When you take damage, Immortal call will use all your endurance charges and will make you immune to physical damage for some time. Molten Shell will give some armor. This will give you a bit more time to react with Flasks or to retreat with your movement ability before you get rekt. Golem You can throw a fire or chaos golem in any slots you want. You could even put it in the Cast When Damage Taken if you are lazy. You could support it with Life Leech, Minion Life and Minion Resistance gems if you don’t want to summon it too often. It is a little buff and is optional if you have don’t have the sockets to spare. Vengeance or Riposte If want to passively generate endurance charges, this a setup if you are like me and are bad at using enduring cry. I saw it first on Sovyn’s Lazy Pally guide. Link Vengeance, Stun, Endurance Charge on Melee Stun, and Physical to Lighting. When you take damage, Vengeance might trigger and deal melee damage around you. Stun makes the enemies around you more likely to be stunned. Endurance Charge on Melee Stun will… you know. Physical to Lighting converts the physical damage leftover from the Avatar of Fire conversion. If you are dual wielding, you can use Riposte instead of vengeance. Riposte will trigger when you block. Top Secret Atziri’s Disfavour Shenanigans If you put a level 3 or 4 enlighten skill gem in a five linked Atziri’s Disfavour, you can have: Hatred, one Blasphemy curse, and Herald of Ash. (You will reserve ~90% of your mana and still be able to use the remaining 10%.) Skill Trees Duelist Two-Hand Axe Marauder Two-Hand Axe This is my current build using the two Rigwald weapons: Tankier Dual Wield Marauder or Duelist Bandits
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Normal – Oak
The life is too good to pass up. It will end up giving more life than the average life passive, and possibly more than a notable. Cruel – Kraityn or Skill Point I prefer the attack speed that Kraityn gives over the physical damage that Oak gives. Attack speeds makes multistrike flow better and less dangerous to use. If you really want the skill point, you can take it. The attack speed from the bandit seems more efficient than the nodes on the passive tree though. Merciless – Kraityn, Oak, or Skill Point If you want damage and are using frenzy charges, go Kraityn. I chose oak and I am starting to regret my decision (Luckily they have orbs for that.) With the way the tree is built, we have easy access to all three endurance charges on the passive tree. I am not sure if the marginal benefit of the seventh endurance charge wins out over the frenzy charge or the extra skill point. It is still a strong option if you are going hardcore. "Required" Gear
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The Pyre ring is considered bad by most people because it is bad most of the time. It gives some okay resistances, but lacks life, weapon elemental, and flat physical. The conversion to fire is usually a downside (no freezes or chills) on a ring that doesn't have many positives. Since we already do no cold damage, this ring is a damage boost until we get the sixth link. Then replace it with a better rare. Call of the Brotherhood is used to convert lightning damage to cold. It has some resistances, and a little bit of intelligence to help with Gem leveling. The increased lightning damage is not significant since it will only scale the lightning proc of Wild Strike (and any flat lightning you may have from gear.) The 50% lightning to cold damage gives Wild Strike a ~7-8% damage boost (possibly less depending on flasks and auras.) This is significant but not nearly as large as I thought. A well rolled rare ring could potentially out perform CotB in average dps and offer some life. The advantage of Call of the Brotherhood is that it makes your damage more consistent. If you choose not to use CotB, then whenever Wild Strike rolls the lightning element it will lose half of the 60% physical damage to lightning conversion. Basically, if you choose to use a rare ring over Call of the Brotherhood, then your Wild Strike's arc will do ~20% less damage than the other two elements. However, a rare ring could make up some, all, or even possibly exceed CotB's damage and offer important defensive stats. What stats to scale? Scaling Wild Strike's damage can be confusing even without the damage conversions. I have made a list (not exhaustive) of stats that will scale Wild Strike's damage and have given them an efficacy rating. (A rating of 100% means the damage modifier will work the way you expect.) I also tried to explain why they are good or bad for Wild Strike.
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Good Stats
Weapon Elemental Damage – 100% This build only does elemental damage with our weapons. There are no other sources of damage. Fire Damage (from Weapons or Attacks) – 100% All the damage that comes out at the end of the calculation is fire damage done with weapons. Melee Attack Speed / Attack Speed – 100% Even though we have projectile, arcs, and explosions, they only trigger after a melee strike. The attack rate scales all portions of our damage. Physical Attack Damage - ~100% All of the conversions start off with the physical damage of our weapon. Hatred and Taste of Hate also scale off our physical damage. The only portion of damage that would not scale with this stat is flat elemental damage rolls. Negative Fire Resistance – at least .5% “more” damage multiplier If you are running the Fire Penetration support gem and Flammability, your targets will have about 80 less fire resistance. In the worse case scenario of attacking a target with no fire resistance, you will get more than a .5% damage multiplier (not “increased”, but “more”) per point of fire penetration. If the target is very resistant to fire, a point of fire penetration could be worth a 1% damage multiplier. Bad Stats Cold Damage (from Weapons or Attacks) - ~50% This stat will scale the damage from Hatred, Taste of Hate, and the lightning (partial) and cold procs of Wild Strike. However, it will not scale the damage converted by the fire proc, or the physical and lightning portions of Wild Strike that are converted by Avatar of Fire. Melee Physical – Between 0% to 100% It will only scale the initial melee strike of Wild Strike. If you hit one target, if is very effective; if you are hitting more than one target, it is not effective. Physical Projectile Damage - ~30% This will scale the cold proc's damage only. Area Damage - ~30% This will scale the fire proc's damage only. Lightning Damage (from Weapons or Attacks) - ~20% This stat only affects a small portion of Wild Strike's damage – the lightning portion of the lightning proc. Recommended Gear
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Weapons
You want high physical damage per second. Even though we only do elemental, all of our damage is scaled by our physical damage by conversions. I recommend using Resolute Technique since there are few critical strike nodes on the tree that we have easy access to. Therefore, very few stats on weapons will scale our damage well. Physical damage per second is king. The build can be played with a two-handed weapon or dual wield. I started off playing with a two-handed axe. I decided I could afford to drop some damage for more survivability, so I switched to dual wield. One-handed weapons with shields is not recommended since the damage nodes on the tree mostly increase melee physical. Dual wielding makes multistrike feel better by making the attack animation faster. You will be able to block which adds an extra layer of physical defense. I was having mana issues while dual wielding so I invested in an extra mana leech node on the tree. Two-handed weapons will give the most damage. I recommend using axes since the damage nodes scale our damage better. Recommended two-handed weapons: Good Rare or Atziri's Disfavour Recommended one-handed weapons: Good Rares or the Rigwald weapons (avoid the axe and sword nodes with the Rigwald's weapons since only one is an axe and only one is a sword.) I don't have any suggestions for unique items for the other slots. Since we can use so many rares, our resistances should not be a problem. If you have a favorite unique that may work with the build, you can throw it on. Chest and Helm Look for rares with life, resistances, and armor. Boots Look for rares with movement speed, life, resistances, and armor. Gloves Look for rares with flat physical damage, attack speed, life, resistances and armor. Belt Look for rares with weapon elemental damage, physical damage, life, armor, reduced flask charges used, increased flask charges gained, and increased duration of flasks. I prefer getting flask affixes over resistances on belts. You will have plenty of other slots to get resistances, and the flask affixes on belts are unique to this slot. Avoid Doryani's Invitation. The fire leech granted by the belt is not as useful with the introduction of the duelist leech nodes in 2.1. It is not hard to hit the leech cap with tree nodes alone, and the belt does nothing to increase the cap. The strength is a waste of an implicit for us, we are already swimming in resistances, and the flask effect is lackluster. The fire damage is not great considering a rustic sash with a terrible weapon elemental will out perform it. The armor roll is good for us, and the rest is mediocre. This belt is much better for casters. Amulet Here is where I made up any stats I was missing. You will need some dexterity and intelligence to run Wild Strike, auras, and curses. Otherwise, look for weapon elemental damage, flat physical damage, life, percent armor, fire damage, and maybe some resistances. Rings These slots will be occupied by uniques for some time. One slot will open up when you get a six link. You may choose to drop Call of the Brotherhood for a rare. Look for weapon elemental damage, flat physical, attack speed, fire damage, life, and resistances. Flasks
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Seething Hallowed (or Divine) Life Flask of Staunching
This is a typical life flask. It will give instant healing for when your leech cannot keep up with the damage. It will also remove bleed effects (like puncture or corrupting blood) that can do massive amounts of damage very quickly. The differences between the Divine and Hallowed Life Flasks are that a Divine Life Flask will heal for more on use but consume more charges and the Hallowed will give more life per flask charge. In other words, a divine will heal for more before being empty, but it will fill up slower. Perpetual (or Ample) Quicksilver Flask of Heat (or Adrenaline) I prefer the “of Heat” suffix to remove deadly freezes and to speed up over chilled ground. Perpetual (or Ample) Ruby Flask of Warding This is our protection against elemental reflect. This will reduce our fire damage taken by ~42% (assuming we are at the cap of 76%.) This will also remove any dangerous curses such as Flammability, Elemental Weakness, and Vulnerability. Perpetual (or Ample) Granite of Iron Skin or Rumi's Concoction These flasks will improve your physical damage mitigation by increasing your armor. Rumi's Concoction will increase your block and spell block by a flat amount and is a very strong flask (especially for dual wielding.) Taste of Hate This is a damage and defense boost. The extra damage as cold will boost our damage a decent amount for the duration. (20% - 30%. It is not 30% more damage since we are using Hatred and Added Fire, both are “added as” damage modifiers that will not be scaled by Taste of Hate.) Converting our physical damage taken to cold means that our cold resistance will mitigate a portion of our physical damage taken while the flask is in use. I can't give an exact number, but is of the order of 10s of percents of extra physical damage mitigation. (The percent of damage mitigated by armor is a function of the damage taken. Taste of Hate not only converts damage to cold, but makes us take less physical damage. This makes armor more effective when the flask is up.) The maximum cold resistance is just extra on an already fantastic (but pricey) flask. Vessel of Vinktar We do no lightning damage so we will not get any of the leech. You will probably want to avoid using this flask in this build. Atziri's Promise We can't do chaos damage and we can't convert chaos damage. Avoid this flask. It is worse than an Amethyst Flask. Last edited by Slygar on Feb 22, 2016, 4:17:54 AM
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My Current Gear
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Last edited by Slygar on Feb 2, 2016, 5:34:08 PM
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sounds nice, keep us posted.
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You have some excellent ideas! Please keep us posted on your progress with this build.
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" Yeah, the conversion rules are a bit weird. If you use CotB with Voltaxic, the total lightning conversion is over 100%. If this happens the two damages will be normalized based on their weight. The end product should be 66% lightning to chaos conversion and 33% lightning to cold. You can notice that the total conversion of Wild Strike's Physical Damage is 50% phys to fire and 60% phys to a random element. In this case gems take priority over gear and passives. So the conversion is 60% random element and 40% fire. | |
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Too bad you can't through in a consuming dark and infernal mantle into the mix and see how the chaos conversion really starts to weird up the conversion rules already getting torqued on. However, it would be an interesting way to get poison on hit into the mix and bypass the need to get through elemental resistances and open up some other avenues for curses and skill points. I'd imagine dual wielding the Dark the way to go.
Last edited by mac2monster on Feb 8, 2016, 5:44:11 PM
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Last edited by Slygar on Feb 22, 2016, 4:25:08 AM
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