[2.4] Pipsqueaks Guide to Baking Pizza Sticks in Hardcore! [Flameblast Totems]

Can you talk about which jewels you use and where you put them?

I assume Energy Within would be perfect for the jewel slot in the middle of the Witch's tree where it reaches two different life node clusters?

If u go for the dagger CI build. How do u regen ES when u take a big hit without soulstrike?

Like if u take a big hit but there are allot of small monsters arround ( can happen in lab ) u cant regen es... Someone care to explain? :)

good idea starting with this in 2.5 as CI? or when to go to CI?

is this good for 2.5? Is there a life version for beginning the league?

I'm looking for help with one of the ingredients for baking pizza sticks.
What would be the ideal stats for a bow? Is +2 fire gems the only things that matters?

"

A +2 bow is the major part, however the second step is crafting it to +3, after that the only stat that matters is resistances, make sure you go ham on cast speed every where else 200+ is pretty needed imo.

Good luck!

Awesome guide, thanks for writing this!

Some observations:

1 - Power Charge on Critical on the bow does not work well, as crit% with bow is very low.

2 - Instead of going +2/+3 fire gem bow, it's probably better (cheaper and slightly more damage) to buy a normal 6link bow and then use an Deafening Essence of Anguish for added fire damage (~80-135). This way you DO NOT need to craft a 1 Red + 5 blue bow. At the same time, you gain as much damage as you would with a +3. Cost of crafting a +3 is 2.5ex + thousands prismatics. Cost of base 6l + Anguish is less than 35c.


3 - Dual curse on bow is awesome, and may be traded for a few passives in cast speed or crit chance/multiplier. The second curse can be assassin's mark, which greatly boosts crit% and damage. Note that assassin's mark does not grant power charges with totem kills.


4 - Explosive Impact may be a better choice over True Strike, especially if you have a reliable way of generating power charges. Orb of Storms + PCOC accomplishes this, plus it gives you 30% spell damage from Instruments of Virtue.

One other note... You can swap frenzy for ice shot for boss fights and gain massive 20-30% DPS. Can run frenzy all the time but the cursing is nowhere near as good for packs, so it ends up being not as crisp for blowing up a pack in its entirety.

Hey if ur not using Bow, what would the gem setup then be??

Ok so I'm having a lot of fun with the build this league. This is the first time i play CI and it feels great.
I just wanted to say that for me, going the dagger route was a lot better. The damage is far superior and its so much easier to get high ES.
Both me and a friend I play with are doing this build and we both started with bow, but then switched to dagger.
Thank you for a great guide!