[2.4] Crit Flameblast / Vaal RF Assassin (HC) - NO BS 11.6 MILLION One Shot Damage on a 3-Link
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Thought I'd chuck this out here as I don't see anyone talking about Crit FB these days, which is surprising!
Motivation for this build is the two crit flameblasters I made way back in Bloodlines, which were a lot of fun but ultimately limited by a coin flip crit chance and huge susceptibility to reflect. Assassin is now incredible for flameblast, due entirely to the Ambush ascendency node and to a lesser extent Assassinate and Deadly Infusion. With relatively modest investment into crit chance, 5 power charges, and an assassin's mark on blasphemy you are *guaranteed* to crit anything on full (or low) life. The real beauty in this build however is the boss killing utility of 4-link Vaal RF; 100% chance to crit *with* controlled destruction, ~500% crit multiplier, and 13-14k ES w/ Vaal Disc up. North of 1 million hit and a metric shitton of guaranteed burning damage. It does so much damage I can leech my entire ES pool back from a single monster with just a life leech gem.
Damage damage damage damage
Dealing a 870k damage hit to a white monster with 8054 ES I removed my boots to reduce life leech to only the 0.2% from my amulet. 1740 ES leeched / 0.002 = 840k damage hit which indicates a 108.02x multiplier on base damage. With boots back on and vaal disc up (12,921 ES), this would be a 1.4M hit. Factoring in burn on top of this, with +284% fire/ele/area damage on the tree+gear & +30% ignite duration you're looking at somewhere around 5.6M burn (before resists) for a total of 7 MILLION raw fire damage dealt in a single action, again on a 4 link, and without conc effect. If you're manly enough to use conc effect (I'm not because I'm terrified of missing) you'd be looking at a ~1.6M hit with a 10M burn for around about 11.6M in total damage. The assassin allows you to do this and all without completely revolving your build around Vaal RF so you can clear the map with something actually practical and relatively low-risk. Vaal RF highlights T9 Malformation Double Boss T9 Residence Dominus T9 Malformation (more monster life, inc aoe instead of controlled destruction) T10 Volcano letting out a warcry before deleting boss T10 Academy Boss 2 Player T11 Double Crema Maegera Crit FB action Casual Tier 8 Map Beast mode Xandro Typical Tier 10/11 The build etc 109 Point Tree - Level 88 General Notes: * CI because it would not be possible to have a reasonable life pool and the multiple forms of mitigation necessary, and because Vaal RF. * Cast speed is very important because it generally dictates your clear speed; you want to be able to channel up to 3-4 stacks of FB very rapidly. * I am aiming for 10k ES on this build, which I have achieved at level 88 and some very average ES gear. If you have better gear you will be able to spend more points on damage, cast speed, or other mechanisms. * Overcharged? I used this for a while and it is effective if your clear speed (e.g., lower maps) is extremely fast as you can sustain max frenzies for most of the map. The problem however is that if you pause AT ALL for ANY REASON even to pick up loot, you're likely going to drop frenzies and not get them back for quite some time. It becomes even less reliable in higher maps when your clear speed generally slows down. You might be able to make the argument that having a passive way to get the odd endurance charge substantially improves CWDT-IC, but I decided recently to spec these four points into a jewel slot + two damage nodes. Ascendency Points  * Ambush * Assassinate * Deadly Infusion This will fill out your 8 points. I'd suggest hitting Assassinate last because it is the least useful solo, however it is very useful in party play where you crack off an FB on a nearly dead monster someone else already chunked, starting a prolif, and wiping out the rest of the pack. Bandits Kill, Alira (Cast Speed), Alira (Power Charge) IMHO 5% cast speed is as good as you will get from any single node on the tree. See above for general notes on why cast speed matters. Leveling I leveled with fire trap until I could use flameblast + inc crits + aoe + fire pen on a four link, then developed a hybrid life/es build through end game. Transitioned to CI around level 70 with a 6.5k ES pool in Merc Dried Lake. Transitioning from life nodes to CI on a Shadow is very cheap and can be done within the number of respec points one receives from leveling. Gear I used three elreon items until very recently, and relied upon a Cast When Stunned + Magma Orb + Life Leech setup which is surprisingly effective at passive survival. I've switched to a Eye of Chayula after starting to use Vaal RF because it is critical that you are not interrupted while setting up for a boss kill. I chose to use Added Lightning on my 5-link because when you always crit, you always shock. Base lightning damage is also scaled by much of your tree & the Flameblast skill itself. If you had a 6-link for flameblast, you could either go with Controlled Destruction or Faster Casting. For enfeeble maps I'd swap out controlled destruction with increased critical damage support. I'd probably lean towards Faster Casting because it lets you stack faster and implies mobility. Assassin vs Elementalist In versions before 2.4, I played elementalist and while conflux is very powerful, it also goes missing at times due to the Recently condition. With 2.4 I feel conflux is essentially useless and unpredictable for a build like this. Even prior to 2.4, conflux suffered from needing to kill quite a few monsters to proc the effect. The assassin is also dependent upon a timer - power charges - but that timer is substantially longer (14 seconds, even longer if one bothers to pick up the Shadow power charge) thanks to the ascendency nodes. Making this even easier, you can use Jaws of Agony with Cluster Trap, Multi Trap, Reduced Mana on a weapon swap to quickly generate full power charges at will. The damage potential of crit is vastly higher; you can see I'm not even going to great lengths with gear (Doryani's, rare wand, etc) to max out damage because it's just not necessary, this lets me use the underrated but very powerful: This weapon really is a perfect fit for my play style, and that of Flameblast; while channeling you're vulnerable to swarming, and that risk drops exponentially with Eclipse Solaris; all you need is a jade flask. The conditional crit chance also synergizes very nicely with boss kills, the crit multi is gravy. Playstyle Speaking of playstyle, generally speaking you do not go beyond a 4 or 5 stack when clearing a map unless you run into something extremely tanky or you are absolutely sure a rare is not going to suddenly burst onto the scene and end your run. This build will handle a rare's reflect up to a 6-7 stack, but I haven't deliberately tried to 10 stack a reflect rare for obvious reasons. This is a matter of discipline for you HC players out there. When using Eclipse Solaris, I don't mind at all running through packs and flameblasting on myself unless there are particularly hairy monsters in the map. Situations I have found problematic and you need to apply care towards include: * Ghosted/prophecied Xandro as he has RT and you will get your ass chunked hard not being able to evade anything he throws at you; get off first and make sure he dies fast otherwise you'll be kiting for a while. He appears to have a SHITTON of fire res when ghosted/prophecied. Lucky me I got him on my Deadly Rivalry prophecy chain. * Reflect rakangos when they pop their tail. DOUBLE REFLECT. Be careful. * The double rare prophecy, same reason. * Porcupines. Fuck em. Total pain in the dick. * Izaro; you can't go in "hot" with power charges and you can't use vaal skills so it's a bit shitty. Pick a different build if lab farming is your goal. * Atziri; like all ignite/burn builds, this is just not optimal. Pick a different build if this is your goal. (BoE)skill=Flameblast;skill=Vaal+Righteous+Fire;item=Eclipse+Solaris;defense=ES;crit=true;cheap=true;hardcore=true;coc=false;atziri=false(BoE) @BeerPact Last edited by muir on Sep 27, 2016, 11:51:42 AM Last bumped on Nov 26, 2016, 1:55:31 PM
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Very nice build muir.
About critical FB Assassin, I do not know why nobody updated old topics or created a new one. Perhaps the people have the impression that Witch Elementalist is stronger than Shadow, this is true if a version is no crit. Guides made by me:
Unnamed's CoC CI Discharge Trickster, Tankster BV MoM Poison, Saboquisitor MoM Pure Cold damage with Hrimburn, Trickster Critical Flameblast |
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" Yeah man. Added some thoughts to original post on this topic... @BeerPact
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Hi, im gonna try your build, it looks awsome, btw what u can add for a 6link
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Build Looks great
Gonna try it in Hc Any reason as to why you chose rainbowstride as your boots? Are you still wearing them? Cheers |
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Hi, is theres an original guide for this build, like explaining Bandits, the points of the ascendacy and why? its looks very interesting but im not a experience player on this kind of builds, need a lil help thx !
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" Because I'm poor as hell in this league due to extreme lack of play time LOL. A nice resist/30% move speed rare would be killer. I was in fact donated the chest I'm using by a guild mate. The rings are self crafted, the ammy cost 2c. I've probably only put about 30c into this build myself... 20c of which was the shield, the rest has been four linking things. ffs I'm a cheap bastard. I'll add some more "beginner" information later today. @BeerPact Last edited by muir on Jun 30, 2016, 12:36:16 PM
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Thanks man! i love to hear that! i started today this player but im @work sneaky killing 1 lvl or 30 % when the boss is not arround, haha i really would like to kill double pity with 1 flameblast i hate that ****! well im interested to know the Ascendancy class, if is elementalist or asssassin and want to know if 6 link its available or use a shav instead chaos inoculation, things like that it would be very appreciate it!
hope to hear that news today! thx again and sorry for bother ya ! | |
" I added more to the original post, take a look. Also while flameblast is capable of one shotting+burning most bosses, once you start getting the hang of VRF you're going to want to use that whenever practical & risk free which is.. most of the time.. because it's just so much fun BOOOOOOOOOM HEADSHOT @BeerPact
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I've never played CI before.
Would you recommend the build for a CI starter? Im thinking of it that it would be worth the experience if I keep the investment low. What do you think about adding Voidbringers? Could put the VRF setup in there as well. Would drop crit chance somewhere else for them obviously. Flasks would be as you mentioned jade flask, generic resist flasks, and granite/basalt i guess? ALso do you just actively dodge stuff or do you just keep moving without going into melee range to make up for the lack of physical damage reduction? Thanks again |
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