2.4 Righteous Firestorm Chieftain aka the Phoenix Chieftain

The idea to combine the power of Righteous Fire with spell casting is not new. I made a character of that kind when RaizQT published his RF Incinerator (aka the Budget Atziri Killer) that was hugely popular for a while (when incinerate was still able to shotgun).

Over time (and after the gutting of Incinerate) i lost interest and this kind of build was rarely seen too.

That changed when Prophecy hit the Servers. With it came the awesome feature of fated uniques that led to some really interesting possibilities.

When combined with Ascendancy classes i suddenly realized that you can accumulate a shitton of regen on a character and therefore make a really nice RF build (like many did).

Now, i'm not the BV / RF / just walk around and kill shit type of guy. I prefer doing stuff myself, preferably through casting.

It didn't take long to realize that all those systems i had in mind work perfectly together:

- high life pool / regen
- Righteous Fire for damage / spell bonus
- Iron will because we stack a lot of STR
- Fire damage to be safe from reflect

The problem only was to assemble all items and systems in a way that they work great together.

So to sum it up, enjoy the build and have fun trying it for yourself. It is not super cheap to complete but can be started pretty easily and cheap as a firestorm caster or any leveling caster build you like. with some respeccing even as a melee.

Pros:

- hardcore viable
- extremely high life regen
- decent lifepool later on
- decent armour levels later on
- good % physical damage reduction (does not need immortal call most of the time)
- 10+ sec immortal call if you want it
- decent damage through stacking of STR and the RF multiplier
- easy to level up with firestorm
- mediocre expensive
- defense is easily adaptable depending on content
- hard map mods that require you to disable RF make you pretty much unkillable

Cons:

- fated uniques needed
- some map mods are a pain in the ass to run
- no regen is not playable
- in higher maps the damage feels a bit low compared to other builds
- has to buy a lot of gems from other players
- you need a lot of stats on gear
- hard to achieve a lifepool >6k

With the Phoenix Chieftain build we want to focus on huge regeneration paired with decent life + armour as our form of defense. To be able to deal enough damage we use RF (that needs a lot of regen anyway) and our big STR levels through Iron Will.

As our offensive main skill we choose Firestorm. It is a safe choice vs reflect because we have so much fire resistance already and it deals decent enough amounts of damage for all type of content including bosses.

First of all we need the following items:

- Doon Cuebiyari (to improve our usage of STR)

- Rise of the Phoenix (obviously, because we want to use RF)

- The Blood Dance (because it gives us easy Frenzy Charges that provide more regen + speed)

- Repentance (we need a lot of sockets and this one frees up the Iron Will socket)

- 2x Kaom's Way (the fated Kaom's Sign ring, these provide us with a LOT of regen + charges)

- Brute Force Solution (we need at least one of those to achieve the 306 INT needed for Repentance later on)

- Rare Amulett with lots of INT
e.g.:
- Rare Belt with lots of STR + Life + Resists, preferably with +1 Endurance Charges corruption
e.g.:
- Rare Helm with STR + Life + Resists and a good Enchantment from the Uber Lab (see below under point "Enchantments")
e.g.:
- Rare Body Armor - Hybrid Armour + ES for easier coloring, high armour, life, resists, STR
e.g.:


The only thing necessary to start with are Rise of the Phoenix and the 2 Kaom's Way. You can add the other pieces later ending with the Repentance gloves (those really need some investment + levels first)

You could argue that Doon Cuebiyari could be exchanged for a Doryani's Catalyst, which is fine. But in the end i choose Doon because it has slightly higher cast speed (which we don't get much from the tree) and the additional STR + additional STR conversion is really beneficial to the build as a whole. The crit on Doryani's is wasted because we go Elemental Overload and we don't need the tiny bit of leech it gives because we regen so much anyway and because we are Chieftain.

As you can see many of the above examples have pretty low life rolls. I just used the best i could easily get / already have. If you spend some more currency your life values should be going up quite substantially. With the additional lifenodes above level 90 and some decent gear pieces you should be able to achieve ~6,5k life.

We have 7+ jewel slots in the end. we need one for the Brute Force Solution. that makes 6 slots we can use to stuff holes in our resists or gear. with that many uniques equipped you possibly have to get some resists on jewels. i tried to stack resists + life with as much damage as possible. If you have the choice, prefer cast speed + life + resists over spell damage + life + resists. but that can be quite expensive if you shoot for great damage jewels (life jewels are always expensive as fuck)

Flasks


Enchantments

We only have 1 real possible Ascendancy class choice, because it absolutely buffs everything we do:

The Chieftain

Order of Points:
1. Ngamahu
2. Ramako
3. Hinekora
4. Tawhoa

This gives us lots of regen, fire damage, fire leech, % STR, Fire Pen and Armour. It's like the wet dream of this build. (and the portrait looks fuckin amazing! :D)

Leveling 1-20


Leveling 21-40


Leveling 41-60


Leveling 61-80


Finished Tree at 90

Main 6-link: (in order of importance)
Firestorm + Faster Casting + Blood Magic + Elemental Focus + Fire Penetration + Controlled Destruction

You can use Spell Echo instead of Faster Casting if you like. It locks you in place slightly longer though, so i sticked with Faster Casting. Using Spell Echo starts to shine when you activate Vaal Haste. So use as you feel more fitting to your playstyle.

Cwdt Setup:
Cast when damage taken (pick a level you you feel comfortable with) + Increased Duration + Vortex + Molten Shell / Immortal Call

I swap out Molten Shell for Immortal Call if i anticipate a lot of physical damage incoming, e.g. uber izaro. For most of the time using the Molten Shell provides you with a lot of extra armour and the occasional BOOOM that clears your vicinity ;-) It is actually really rare that i swap it out, but i always have it with me in my weapon swap.

edit: i changed my setup to have Immortal Call permanently in it instead of Molten Shell. While the additional armour of Molten Shell is nice, the ~12sec phys immunity is just more reliable when you really need it. I will level my Cwdt to ~level 16 because i don't want it to get rid of my charges too fast. Will have to further test what would be the optimal level.

Orb of Storms Setup:
Orb of Storms + Increased Area of Effect + Curse on Hit + Warlords Mark

Your bread and butter setup for every occasion. You can use Increased Critical Strikes instead of Increased Area if you want faster and more reliable procs or Faster Casting if you want the setup time to be lower. As a curse you can use whatever you like. I use WM because of another source of leech, faster accumulation of endurance charges if i use Immortal call in my Cwdt setup and the occasional stun which is awesome sometimes. Enfeeble would be super good to increase your defenses of course but you might as well go for Elemental weakness if you want to boost your offense more. If you somehow manage to get an additional curse just drop Increased Area and put it in here. Another person suggested on reddit to use Blind or Knockback instead of Increased Area, which seems possible but in my experience is not really needed. Feel free to experiment a bit ;-)

Aura Setup:
Haste + Purity of Fire + Increased Duration + Vaal Haste

We use Haste + PoF to boost our cast speed and of course to ramp up our fire resistance into obscene levels. If you want more defenses you can definitly use Determination. Anger deals slightly more damage than Haste (see "Math" section but i like the movement speed boost more. Vaal Haste eleminates our biggest weakness, which is cast speed and lasts for quite a while with the Increased Duration Gem + Nodes on the tree.

Movement Setup + Golem:
Flame Dash + Faster Casting + Stone Golem

Put this in your weapon for a lvl 30 Iron will added to your Flame Dash. It doesn't make that much of a difference though :D The Stone Golem does some nice tanking for you and gives a good flat amount of regen, which is always nice.

Righteous Fire + Enduring Cry Setup:
Righteous Fire + Increased Area of Effect + Enduring Cry

Last we have our Righteous Fire Setup. The Increased Area makes more enemies burn which helps our damage a bit through Ngamahu (first Ascendancy point). The Increased Area works well with Enduring Cry too to get as much Endurance Charges as possible which is especially important if you use Immortal Call in your Cwdt setup.

Mods to avoid:
- No Regen

You would have to change a lot to make the build work. And even then it would be horrendously gimped afterwards. absolutely not worth it.

Mods where you have to play without RF:
- Blood Magic (turn off PoF and Anger)

tbh, you should be able to sustain RF without PoF if you are overcapped enough. might be worth exploring further because of the sweet bonus pack size.

don't use RF if more than 1 of the following mods are present at the same time:
- -Max
- Vulnerability
- Shocked Ground
- 60% reduced regen
- 40% reduced regen

some of these mods are doable as a combo even with RF active. i tried -Max + Vulnerability, Shocked ground + anything and vulnerability + 40% reduced regen. as long as you keep up your charges the regen is enough. just remember to bring a flask of dousing to cancel RF when walking around for longer periods of time or enemies being too though. and always remember: you won't have any regen left with those mods! just deactivate RF and deal with the lower damage man ;-)

You can find some math for most interesting things here:

Total Regen / Life Recovery:


Estimated Damage on Firestorm: