[2.2] Loate's Bullet Hell Heaven build AKA Malachai's Revenge AKA The Funpocalypse



"Do you have a moment to talk about the benefits of fire?"



BULLET HELL HEAVEN

Hello everyone, and welcome to my second build guide! Much like my first guide (which can be found here https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1638056), this build also focuses on totems. Only this time, instead of arrows, we're going to play with fire. Lots of fire. All the fire. Beavis would be proud. And the end result, well, it's nothing short of amazing.

But hey, don't just take my word for it! Here are some testimonials from satisfied customers.

Spoiler
"What the actual f*** is wrong with you?" -Hathar

"Your build is like if cancer and aids had a baby, and then that baby grew up and married Hitler." -Mors (probably)

"I can't stop laughing." -Xedralya

"This build is yuuuuuuuuuuuge!" -DonaldTrumpsSmallCoC



1. WHAT DOES THE BUILD LOOK LIKE?

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If you suffer from epilepsy or seizures, I would highly recommend you NOT watch these videos.
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Seriously, I mean it.
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Highlight video https://youtu.be/-v38VMnO1Do

Full Colonnade clear at level 81 https://youtu.be/OwJhuMYJO_c

Dry Peninsula at level 85 https://youtu.be/O07DLfyLgvo



2. WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WATCH?

Spoiler
The funpocalypse! More specifically, you watched a build based around three things - the unique staff Sire of Shards; the Hierophant ascendancy class; and the Int threshold jewel Rolling Flames. Sire of Shards allows our totems to shoot 5 projectiles at once in a nova (7 with Rain of Splinters); Hierophant allows us to have 3 totems out while still doing damage with our own abilities; and Rolling Flames increases the AoE of Fireball by up to 50% depending on how far the projectile travels (and you'll be socketing three of them). Add in copious amounts of cast speed, some AoE nodes, and a pinch of elemental damage, and you've got a recipe for partytime*!

*Your friends may or may not agree on your definition of "partytime"

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3. CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO DPS WITH THAT?

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Well, yes, actually. The fun thing about stacking so much AoE, is that the explosions overlap, and when you light off the totems in an enclosed space, in the immortal words of the Shadowrun 5th edition handbook, you get the "chunky salsa effect." When you combine that with Elemental Equilibrium procced by Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms, Elemental Overload, and various "more" modifier support gems, you get rolling pretty quick. Obviously having a level 21 Fireball and a level 4 Empower linked is super helpful, but I was running T6 maps with a level 17 Fireball without too many problems, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Besides, DPS is only a secondary benefit. This build focuses mainly on FUN!



4. I'LL TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT. WHAT DOES THE SKILL TREE LOOK LIKE?

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Not nearly as bad as the 1k Arrows Totem build, that's for sure! You want to focus on building out the branches of the tree during the leveling process, which you can use just about any spell for with a +1 gem item of some sort. Once you get access to Sire of Shards at level 49, I would hold off on going full totems until you unlock the Ritual of Awakening ascendancy node with your 4th point, which is what allows you to have 3 out at once. After that, prioritize life/mana if you're worried about survivability, DPS nodes if you want to go full YOLO.

Here's the tree of my current character at level 80.

Here's the ideal mid level 90 build.



5. WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR IN GEAR?

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Resists, life, mana, and then cast speed and spell damage if you can afford it on everything that will hold it. Grabbing dexterity on a couple pieces is recommended if you want to use Carcass Jack for even more AoE, otherwise you can use a Kaom's or rare chest. The only required unique is Sire of Shards, but Winds of Change is a pretty nice DPS boost if you want to throw it in.
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6. BANDITS?

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Oak or Alira normal (since you're using Mind over Matter either one works), Alira in Cruel, skillpoint in Merciless (unless you can figure out some sweet way to get charges without gimping everything else).



7. HOW GOOD ARE MY DEFENSES?

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Pretty good. Kaom's will obviously make you tankier, Carcass Jack will give you more DPS, but even with Carcass Jack I'm currently around 3500 hp and close to 1800 mana unreserved, with a 40% MoM conversion, which means, yeah, I'm not gonna sit around and facetank stuff, but that's what the totems are for anyway. Fun note - Zerphi's Last Breath is a fantastic flask for this build, since your totems cost close to 200 mana to cast. As long as Zerphi's is up, every time you drop a totem it's like a free Seething pot restoring 1600 life. Like any totem build though, your main defense is going to be not getting hit - let your totems do that.
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8. WILL MY EYES EVER GET USED TO WATCHING THIS... THIS LUNACY?

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No. Enjoy the build!



9. OK, SERIOUSLY, HOW DOES IT WORK?

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So your main skill is obviously Fireball combined with Spell Totem. Your 4l should be Fireball / Spell Totem / Faster Casting / Fire Penetration. If you have a 5l add Elemental Focus, and for a 6l add the Empower. Your secondary skill is Orb of Storms, linked with Increased Crit, Curse on Hit, and Flammability. Whenever you drop totems, drop the Orb of Storms right next to them - you'll immediately proc Elemental Overload due to the massive crit increase from the Shaman's Dominion cluster (+100% global crit for 4 seconds after you drop a totem) combined with the base crit of the Increased Crit gem. In addition, the Orb will constantly be triggering Elemental Equilibrium by chaining lightning damage to everything that gets close to the totems. All of that together is a huge DPS multiplier, by adding another "more" multiplier into your damage calculations, as well as dropping the enemy resists by 50% for essentially both damage sources.

FURTHERMORE, most enemies are going to be getting hit by multiple explosions at once, because the AoE is so big with the Rolling Flames jewels (generally 3 fireballs per totem will overlap on a pack approaching from the front on an open map), so your tooltip dps is really based on the terrain of the map you're playing on, and how closely you can get your explosions to go off next to each other.

What this means, is that indoor tilesets, like Catacombs, Necropolis, Spider Lair, etc., are INCREDIBLY good for this build, because you're getting damage from almost every fireball each totem shoots out. If you can get a boss into a hallway or small room (or use Vaal Glacial Hammer to create your own room), they will die. Rapidly.

Also, if you decide to go the Carcass Jack/rare chest route, you can now slot in a Ball Lightning combo to add even more damage - remember, this isn't Ancestral Bond. You still get to damage stuff (which means you can trigger Corrupted Blood blue mobs, thorns, reflect, etc., as well as the occasional on kill effect), but in practice, you'll likely only want to spam Ball Lightning on bosses and high health yellows - everything else will die too quickly.

Defensively, you don't want to take too many big hits in quick succession, because MoM can only do so much, but it's an incredibly potent barrier when combined with Zerphi's while your mana holds up (and once you start getting high level Clarity and finishing out the tree, your mana regen is going to easily hit 200+ per second). Every time you drop a totem while Zerphi's is refilling your mana, you heal for roughly 1200 hp. Instantly. And Zerphi's lasts for 10 seconds. Essentially, if you feel like you're in danger, back away (your life and mana will likely be dropping at that point anyway), pop Zerphi's, and then reposition your totems to instantly get back to full life.

Beware, though, Zerphi's is not meant for facetanking - every hit you take is taking away 40% of damage in mana, and once your mana goes out, you can't drop totems, and thus can't use the massive heal potential the flask gives you. It's almost more important to keep an eye on your mana over your life - if mana starts getting super low, run away for a bit and let it regen so your totems can keep you alive. You can also panic flask if you're taking degen damage, but you'll need to start casting totems FIRST, then trigger Zerphi's, then keep casting totems, otherwise your mana regen will hit you back to max too soon and the effect will end.

For gem quality, you want quality on everything but the Fireball - you're using Elemental Focus so you don't care about igniting things, and the little bonuses add up on all the other ones (particularly increased placement speed on Spell Totem to keep you mobile).

Any other questions feel free to ask!



10. CURSE UPDATE

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After testing, I've come to the conclusion that Elemental Weakness is superior to Flammability for the build. We don't care about ignites, so the quality on Flammability doesn't do anything for us, and Elemental Weakness allows our Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms to hit harder. Use Elemental Weakness in you CoH setup!
Last edited by Loate on Apr 13, 2016, 4:07:46 PM
Last bumped on Oct 13, 2016, 9:26:10 AM
Updated with Colonnade full clear video.
Upvoted for best EDM festival in Wraeclast.
Ruby light of Songbird dreaming,
Daring King of Swords deceiving,
Queen of Sirens left in grieving,
Star of Wraeclast evermore.
I cannot wait to ruin the FPS of my guildmates :D
Regarding Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms; why not only use Ball Lightning for the curses, Elemental Equilibrium, and dps and use the extra sockets for a Cast on Damage Taken setup?

Ball Lightning and the Orb of Storms both have the same crit chance for proccing Elemental Overload
"Let those with infinite free time pave the road with their corpses." - reboticon
Last edited by crystalwitch on Apr 10, 2016, 5:16:53 AM
The build itself may or may not be as fun™ as advertised, but that's a great written guide for sure.
IGN: Zurgle. Steam ID: zuthuzu. I'm rarely online ingame, most of the time online in steam.
Feel free to add in either, if you wanted something checked out.
Is this the Viking Punter Loate? Great guide btw.
"
crystalwitch wrote:
Regarding Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms; why not only use Ball Lightning for the curses, Elemental Equilibrium, and dps and use the extra sockets for a Cast on Damage Taken setup?

Ball Lightning and the Orb of Storms both have the same crit chance for proccing Elemental Overload


Couple reasons for that. First one is mobility - Ball Lightning you have to stand in place to cast, Orb of Storms you can just drop and it'll do its thing for the next 10 seconds. Mobility is big for totem builds as part of your defensive toolkit; you want to be constantly repositioning so mobs are aggroing on your totems and not you, and Orb of Storms allows me to take full advantage of that. In addition, every time the Orb fires a bolt, it's a chance to proc Elemental Overload, and it fires bolts pretty quick, so I can be moving around/dodging and not have to worry about keeping Overload up.

The second one is a matter of links. For any CoH setup, you're automatically locked into 3 links to start - your attack gem, Curse on Hit, and the curse itself (flammability in this case). In order to proc Elemental Overload reliably, we want to up the base crit, so that means Increased Critical Strike chance has to be a fourth gem. If I were to use Ball Lightning to proc the curses, I would need to throw in GMP or LMP to ensure full pack coverage, which means now I'm into a 5l, which means no Kaom's. Now, that's not to say you can't do it - you don't have to use a Kaom's, and there's no reason why you can't use a 5l/6l for your CoH setup, but I found that Orb of Storms worked better for me than Ball Lightning (and I was originally using Ball Lightning for my CoH setup on a 4l).

Elemental Equilibrium I don't worry too much about, because on anything that needs it (bosses/tough rares), you're going to be spamming Ball Lightning at them anyway while they're distracted with the totems.

I think it ultimately comes down to personal preference - I'm playing on softcore, so I can afford to eke out as much DPS as possible (having a 5l Ball Lightning focused on damage is a decent bump on bosses and the like, if I can get my Carcass Jack to a 6l it'll be even more), whereas if I was playing on hardcore, I'd probably consider a CoDT setup with IC and Molten Shell and then selfcast Enduring Cry for the charges to prevent big physical spikes (from porcupines and the like). I don't think there's any real "right" answer, it's more just a matter of context and individual playstyle.

"
Is this the Viking Punter Loate? Great guide btw.


It is, and thanks for reading it!
Last edited by Loate on Apr 10, 2016, 1:35:53 PM
Loving it. Might give this a shot sometime just for the heck of it and to annoy people in party.
Taking EE doesn't make sense to me - most packs and bosses die just fine by having one res reduction curse on them.

Curse has around -45% res, another 30% from Fire Pen. Don't see why EE would be required.

Having EE means any enemy that is not oneshot gets +res, so EE actively harms clearspeed because you need to constantly cast Orbs in addition to totems, while without EE most of the time you only just use totems.
Increasing Field of View in PoE: /1236921
Last edited by Shajirr on Apr 12, 2016, 10:28:41 AM

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