Some build questions (flameblast / CI / tri-curse)

I'm playing a triple-cursing flameblast occultist in SC essence, with energy shield and Chaos Inoculation for defense. I think I'm faring pretty well, currently at level 87 and doing tier 7-10 maps (map drops have not been very kind to me). I can obliterate most normal packs with a single blast, magic packs may take two or three. Most bosses don't last long either; I use incinerate for those I can facetank, after setting them ablaze with a flameblast.

And then there's über Izaro. That f***er hits like a truck and has a life pool to match. I did the über labyrinth this morning to get my final ascendancy points, and it took about four tries to finally beat the last phase. I had to kite him around the room for a couple of minutes, flameblasting him whenever I could. A bad hit could take 75% of my ES, but fortunately they were rare enough that I could always recharge in between. The traps were hardly an issue either. My armoured dual totem marauder in Prophecy had a much easier time with Izaro, so maybe the difficulty is an ES build thing? My total ES is about 9500.

I've taken Ghost Reaver in order to replenish my energy shield with leech, but it seems rather ineffective. Originally I had a life leech support on flameblast, but while doing the über labyrinth I figured I could stack leech instances faster if I put it in incinerate instead. I tested it against Izaro by recharging my shield to full, going up to him and channeling incinerate while letting him hit me once or twice (probably not the safest place to test, LOL). I also had warlord's mark on Izaro. My incinerate does over 30k DPS in the final stage, so with 4% leech I should be leeching 1200 ES/s. The actual leech rate looked more like 120 ES/s.

Is there a way to get decent ES leech from elemental spells without specific high-end uniques, or will I just have to survive Izaro by kiting? Is Ghost Reaver even worth it if the leeched amount is so small? Vile Bastion seems to be much more effective for replenishing ES in many cases. On the other hand I use warlord's mark to help with mana upkeep anyway, so might as well have the life leech portion do something useful too. Zealot's Oath is nearby, but to make use of it I'd have to get life regeneration from somewhere.

Should I care about life with a CI build? It does affect the stun threshold and elemental status ailment duration after all. Those don't seem to be a big problem and I haven't died from stun or freeze lock in quite a while.



What options do I have to further increase my DPS? There's this fire damage cluster (Explosive Impact) to the left which I could grab when I'm level 91. It seems to be the best option from the skill tree. With flameblast supports I've been dithering over direct damage (concentrated effect is awesome against bosses but makes clearing packs more difficult), ignite (can be significant when I need to kite a boss) and cast speed (generally useful but significantly increases mana drain). Fire penetration's potential is diminished by hefty resistance reduction from curses. I might just end up swapping supports for different situations. I was originally planning to take Elemental Overload, but then I'd have to drop controlled destruction and probably add increased crits, which would reduce damage by about as much as EO would increase it.

I play self-found, so suggestions to use unique items I don't have will be politely turned down.

In my opinion, if you're going for three-curse character, you should run at least an Enfeeble. It has great synergy with CI Occultist in particular, cause once you get your recharge going, you're basically unkillable for 4 seconds. Currently your two offensive curses probably make you overkill by a lot, seeing as Flameblast is a high damage spell already.

Infernal Mantle makes your ignites slightly less potent and precludes you from using blasphemy with some of your three curses, I would say high ES chest would be better.

Flask-wise, I would never run three quicksilvers, you really like going fast, don't you :). Stibnite and Basalt would make that Izaro fight a complete joke, since when he's blinded you can easily get your ES recharge online.

Considering your tree, I think, you're grabbing too many starting nodes in the witch area, you can use those points to travel to templar area (through Explosive Impact branch) for AoE, damage and cast speed. Also, I don't feel that ignite cluster in the north part of the tree is worth it with FB, if you use chance to ignite gem anyway.

Ghost Reaver is not worth it with Occultist from my experience. Like you noticed, Vile Bastion is pretty nice by itself, it won't help you against single target much, but single target leech won't be much good with FB or Incinerate either, without additional investment at least. In most cases, Wicked Ward should cover you nicely against single bosses.

"

PaperRat wrote:

In my opinion, if you're going for three-curse character, you should run at least an Enfeeble. It has great synergy with CI Occultist in particular, cause once you get your recharge going, you're basically unkillable for 4 seconds.

True, enfeeble is a great defensive curse. I'll have to try warlord's mark + enfeeble + temporal chains the next time I face Izaro or another difficult boss.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Currently your two offensive curses probably make you overkill by a lot, seeing as Flameblast is a high damage spell already.

I usually don't even bother to tri-curse normal packs. In low-tier maps I one-shot them without any curses at all, though I still use warlord's mark to keep my mana up. Channeled skills with multiple supports are very hungry! Applying three curses would just take extra time for no benefit.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Infernal Mantle makes your ignites slightly less potent and precludes you from using blasphemy with some of your three curses, I would say high ES chest would be better.

Good point, I forgot about the ignite part. I think that would make Infernal Mantle about even with a rare regalia DPS-wise. A bit of a shame to have spent all those fusings if I'm not going to use it, but then again that won't affect the chances of 5-linking a different chest. I'll put further linking efforts on hold while I think about it and try to essence up a nice vaal regalia.

Blasphemy would reduce the load of applying curses and works well with temporal chains or enfeeble, but I'd have to drop something to make room for it in my sockets. Or possibly move some auras into unset rings. If I manage to roll the right resistance I might be able to pull that off while keeping my resistances capped.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Flask-wise, I would never run three quicksilvers, you really like going fast, don't you :). Stibnite and Basalt would make that Izaro fight a complete joke, since when he's blinded you can easily get your ES recharge online.

On my previous characters I've usually only had a single quicksilver, and it always runs out when I'm doing a Haku mission or otherwise want to cover a large distance fast. Since life flasks are useless for CI I decided to take some more quicksilvers. They were also very useful for running away from Izaro. I like mobility-based playstyle a lot, so hitting a quicksilver is a natural panic button for me.

I'll have to consider the other types; stibnite in particular has low charge expenditure so I might be able to keep it up most of the time. Sadly neither stibnite nor basalt will help against the Goddess's green fireballs.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Considering your tree, I think, you're grabbing too many starting nodes in the witch area, you can use those points to travel to templar area (through Explosive Impact branch) for AoE, damage and cast speed.

The templar area does have some nice nodes and in some of my other builds I've gone that way. In this one I decided to go to the right instead due to Chaos Inoculation's location. I can't sacrifice too many of the witch starting nodes without requiring even more extra pathing, so I'll need a few more levels before the templar area becomes worth it.

I did some tweaking and came up with this tree I might consider by level 91: http://poeplanner.com/...

That's about as far as I'm willing to plan, given the difficulty of leveling past 90. In Prophecy I made it to 92, which is the highest level I've ever been.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Also, I don't feel that ignite cluster in the north part of the tree is worth it with FB, if you use chance to ignite gem anyway.

That depends on how long the ignite is allowed to burn. Compared to the Explosive Impact cluster the break-even point seems to be around three seconds. Longer than that, and the increased burning damage makes Breath of Flames the better choice. More direct damage might come useful in higher maps though.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Ghost Reaver is not worth it with Occultist from my experience. Like you noticed, Vile Bastion is pretty nice by itself, it won't help you against single target much, but single target leech won't be much good with FB or Incinerate either, without additional investment at least. In most cases, Wicked Ward should cover you nicely against single bosses.

I can understand why it's not worth it with flameblast, given that a single leech stack is not worth much at all and flameblast hits so slowly. But can you explain why it isn't good with incinerate? I get about 9 ticks per second from incinerate, so shouldn't it build up the stacks pretty fast? With the increased leech per second from the life leech support I should be hitting the leech rate cap in less than a second. Yet my experiment with Izaro shows that this isn't the case. Is there an interaction with channeled skills that I'm not aware of? Or is ES leech with CI bugged and calculates the leech cap from pre-CI max life?

"

That depends on how long the ignite is allowed to burn. Compared to the Explosive Impact cluster the break-even point seems to be around three seconds. Longer than that, and the increased burning damage makes Breath of Flames the better choice. More direct damage might come useful in higher maps though.

Hm, my mental math may be wrong a bit, but I compare it like that:
Explosive Impact: 55% increased fire (double-dips on ignites) and 5% AoE (very nice for FB).
Breath of Flames: 20% inc. fire (double-dips), 15% inc. burning (doesn't double-dip);
10% duration, chance to ignite - irrelevant, since with gem you'll apply new ignite before 4 seconds will pass, in majority of cases.
From my point of view, it's not even a competition :). I use Breath of Flames on my prolif Fire Trapper, cause ignite duration is very good with prolif and cause traps have limited charges, so ignites need to be very reliable, but I don't see a reason to use it with FB. (Not that it's a terrible cluster or anything, if it works, it works)

"

I can understand why it's not worth it with flameblast, given that a single leech stack is not worth much at all and flameblast hits so slowly. But can you explain why it isn't good with incinerate? I get about 9 ticks per second from incinerate, so shouldn't it build up the stacks pretty fast? With the increased leech per second from the life leech support I should be hitting the leech rate cap in less than a second. Yet my experiment with Izaro shows that this isn't the case. Is there an interaction with channeled skills that I'm not aware of? Or is ES leech with CI bugged and calculates the leech cap from pre-CI max life?

As I see it, bosses have 60% less curse effectiveness now so you don't get 2% from warlord's, you get about 1%, or 3% with gem. Izaro also has 45% all res unbuffed. So if you 9 ticks/sec and end up at about 120 ES/sec, than each tick is around 12 ES, that's 1200 - 1500 damage per tick with Incinerate after all buffs/debuffs or around 400 - 500 with 3%. To get 1200 ES/sec you need to do around 4000 - 5000 per tick with 3% leech. Seems a bit too high for me, is all, but I haven't played with Incinerate for a long time. Also, I believe, some time ago Snorkle said something about Ghost Reaver being a bit wonky, don't quote me on that, though.

New tree seems better to me, I also would strongly consider dropping some 6% ES nodes and grabbing Skittering Runes cluster. You run three curses, that's a tasty 20% effectiveness, even if it is not so completely broken against bosses anymore.

As far as free slots go, maybe it's time to drop Flame Totem for Decoy? You probably don't need the damage anyway, and more defense from Decoy will go a long way. Witch doesn't get it from vendors of course, but it's quite easy to mule.

Mana costs on FB are pretty brutal, that's true :). My Inquisitor can only sustain it on Cons Ground, which gives extra 4% max mana regen. I use Vaal Clarity for some bosses as well. You can't plan for that being self-found of course.

"

PaperRat wrote:

Hm, my mental math may be wrong a bit, but I compare it like that:
Explosive Impact: 55% increased fire (double-dips on ignites) and 5% AoE (very nice for FB).
Breath of Flames: 20% inc. fire (double-dips), 15% inc. burning (doesn't double-dip);
10% duration, chance to ignite - irrelevant, since with gem you'll apply new ignite before 4 seconds will pass, in majority of cases.
From my point of view, it's not even a competition :).

Oh, ignite double-dips from fire damage? That makes Explosive Impact an obviously better choice then. I really should learn to consider that mechanic better in my builds. Why would anyone bother taking the burning damage nodes, except out of ignorance (as I did)? I guess righteous fire or searing bond builds might have a case for them, given how those skills inflict burning damage without an initial hit.

"

PaperRat wrote:

As I see it, bosses have 60% less curse effectiveness now so you don't get 2% from warlord's, you get about 1%, or 3% with gem. Izaro also has 45% all res unbuffed. So if you 9 ticks/sec and end up at about 120 ES/sec, than each tick is around 12 ES, that's 1200 - 1500 damage per tick with Incinerate after all buffs/debuffs or around 400 - 500 with 3%. To get 1200 ES/sec you need to do around 4000 - 5000 per tick with 3% leech. Seems a bit too high for me, is all, but I haven't played with Incinerate for a long time. Also, I believe, some time ago Snorkle said something about Ghost Reaver being a bit wonky, don't quote me on that, though.

The curse effectiveness reduction would certainly drop it a bit. From memory my incinerate does about 14k tooltip DPS, which would mean 1.5k per tick - and that's the base stage. Getting it up to stage 3 gives it a 150% more damage modifier, for nearly 4k per tick.

"

PaperRat wrote:

New tree seems better to me, I also would strongly consider dropping some 6% ES nodes and grabbing Skittering Runes cluster. You run three curses, that's a tasty 20% effectiveness, even if it is not so completely broken against bosses anymore.

It's a bit far though :/ Dropping the Written in Blood cluster and a few loose ES nodes and gaining one additional level would get me there while losing about 1k ES. I might consider it but I'll have to see how I'll do in red maps first. I've had some bad experiences with ES build survivability in the past so I went all out on this one.

There's also the Hex Master cluster next to CI. It only gives 10% effectiveness, but doesn't require extra pathing. It also gives 95% increased curse duration, which combined with the 39% from Doedre's Scorn would mean I could pretty much forget about curse maintenance against most bosses. I have a faint memory of Hex Master giving "curses don't expire" in the times of open beta, too bad they changed that.

"

PaperRat wrote:

As far as free slots go, maybe it's time to drop Flame Totem for Decoy? You probably don't need the damage anyway, and more defense from Decoy will go a long way. Witch doesn't get it from vendors of course, but it's quite easy to mule.

Flame totem does pretty nice DPS actually, though not as much as my self-cast skills. I can drop one to clean up any stragglers from a group while I collect the loot. Enemies seem fairly interested in totems anyway, taunt or not, and decoy totem does not have that much more health than other totems.

Current skill tree: http://poeplanner.com/...

Two shrieking essences of woe gave me this:

Adding quality will bring it up to 729 ES, which I guess isn't too bad. I have one more such essence, but I think it's rather unlikely that I'd get a better one. The %ES, life and intelligence rolls are all at the best possible tiers for an ilvl 78 item. Resistance rolls are a bit meh, but at least it didn't roll life regen or reduced requirements.

I also made this flask to replace the middle quicksilver:

I've yet to go against Izaro again to test it. Will probably try to socket and link that regalia first. 57 fusings in stock now, and I'll get 20 more after tomorrow's dailies plus however many I get from playing maps.

Well, that chest is better than anything I have :).

One thing that might help as well: try to fit in some way to apply chill to Izaro. CWDT+Arctic Breath/Vortex, Arctic Armor, the flask etc. End game Izaro is quite a bit faster than Merc one, which makes the chill percentage slow a godsend, especially considering he still takes the full effect (as opposed to curses).

6-socketed with ~100 jewelers, no 5-link yet despite blowing another 52 fuses (that's 220 total spent in this league I believe):


I might well take Arctic Armour back now that I don't have the low mana restriction anymore. I've been thinking about the blasphemy curse option as well and I might be able to fit it in without having to give up flame totem. Not in the helmet though, unless I take off the increased area of effect. I started leveling a blasphemy gem on my secondary weapon set for that purpose.

I'll need to go through my other gems as well and make sure I have backup versions of the important ones, as many of them are getting close to level 20 and subsequent reset to 20%/1.

Finally got the 5-link, after a total of 261 fusings spent (170 on the Infernal Mantle without success and 91 on this one)!

With the new chest, stibnite flask, tree adjustments, arctic armour and enfeeble Izaro is a complete joke now. I was able to facetank him in today's endgame labyrinth after taking care of the mechanics.

Now the only problem is that my flameblast eats about 200 mana per second and only have enough passive regen for half of that. Reduced regen maps are very annoying (but doable). Hexproof maps are pretty much out of the question. Individual hexproof rares are not too bad.