[3.5] Fireball Ignite Trickster - League starter - Shaper Down

T16 Forge of the Phoenix


This Fireball Trickster uses a personal variation of other Fireball Trickster builds. I used this build as my league starter in Betrayal, which easily took me into red maps, and even Shaper with a little bit of investment. While it might not be arc mines in terms of strength, it’s definitely a capable build for those who are looking for something off-meta.

The build focuses on big AoE with multiple Fireballs and ignite that spreads while using Scorching ray to boost single target DPS. The build has decent survivability and can easily take you into red maps with a Tabula. The Trickster ascendancy gives a lot of ignite DPS, as well some sustain and movement.

Pros and cons
Pros:
League starter
No required uniques
Fast clear
Only leap slam for movement
200% life from tree, MoM, Phase acrobatics

Cons:
Doesn’t scale very well with heavy investment
Mediocre single target


Skill tree, Ascendancy, Bandits and Pantheon
Path of Building (level 40, 70 and 93): https://pastebin.com/31cMKWR5
PoE Planner (level 93): www.poeurl.com/cd3J
Ascendancy: Patient reaper > Prolonged pain > Weave the arcane > Swift killer
Bandits: Kill all (+2 skill points)
Pantheon: Brine King, Ryslatha


Recommended uniques
Doryani’s Catalyst is a fairly cheap stat stick for our build. We want to put this in our main-hand for faster leap slams. If you opt for a rare sceptre instead, keep in mind that spell damage does not scale ignite, and that you cannot use a dagger with leap slam.

Balefire gives us a hefty level 25 4-link Scorching Ray. Don’t ignore the life/mana on kill stat, as this build lacks sustain.

Tabula rasa is the most obvious choice. You can easily pick up a corrupted +2 projectile/AoE tabula, which will give a huge damage boost.

Rolling Flames x2 are cheap and help with clear. You can probably find ones with corrupted implicits for a reasonable penny, or do it yourself. For tough bosses (Shaper etc) you could switch these out for % life, % burning damage rare jewels.


Optional uniques
Skin of The Loyal is an alternative to the Tabula Rasa. If you run an Empowered support you can pick up a +2 Projectile/AoE SoTL with about the same effect as a +4 Tabula, but less than half the price (I paid 1 ex for mine when +4 Tabula was 5+ ex). Just make sure the sockets are correct. I suggest 2B 2R 2G. I wouldn't suggest using a rare, or any other unique body armour unless you can at least get +1 socketed gems on it.

Atziri’s Step is a good, cheap choice if your resists are very overcapped. It gives a lot of evasion and spell dodge, which we can’t say no to. As for enchant, most enchants are good, but make sure you don't have added fire damage if you have killed recently, as it will ruin Elemental Equilibrium.

Ngamahu Tiki gives a lot of fire damage, but lacks in HP and resistances compared to rare amulets.

Singularity could be a decent, much cheaper option to Doryani’s Catalyst. However, it does require you to engage in close combat to get the DPS boost. It’s probably better to just get a cheap rare in that case.


Rares
In general: HP, mana, resistances (including chaos), fire damage, elemental damage, strength, dexterity, cast speed. You want around 130 strength/dexterity to use level 20 support gems. I'd recommend you have around 40% of your life as mana in order to sustain MoM properly.

Helmet
Since Fireball is rather off-meta you can find % Fireball damage and Fireball cast speed enchants pretty cheap. Fireball damage gives more pure DPS, but cast speed is good QoL for mapping. If you have money you can buy/craft one with -9% fire res of nearby enemies, since this build often fights tougher enemies in close combat.

Amulet
If Syndicate goes core you can find talismans with projectiles pierce 2 additional targets, which is good QoL in general, or just one with % fire damage.

Rings
You can buy opal rings and/or look for % fire damage if you want a DPS boost.

Gloves
Shaped or elder gloves can give you global projectile damage, cast speed, and so forth.

Boots
You can get a pair of elder boots with a chance to get an endurance charge on kill.

Belt
You can pick up expensive fossil belts with a lot of fire/elemental damage, or belts to boost your flask usage. Our options for Abyss Jewels are mediocre, so don't stress getting a Stygian Vise too much.


Flasks
In general: Make sure you have immunity to bleed, freeze and curse. Increased duration or reduced charges used is preferred.

A Diamond Flask helps us keeping up Elemental Overload.
A Sulphur Flask gives us DPS and consecrated ground to stand on for extra healing when channeling Scorching ray.
A Quicksilver Flask with movement speed is an obvious choice.
As for our fourth flask, either a Dying Sun, Witchfire Brew (this might not be a good idea, since it'll conflict with Flammability unless you have +1 curse), Silver Flask or something for survivability (Basalt, Granite, Jade, Quartz).
As for the life flask I suggest a Sapping Eternal Life Flask (40%+ healing, 10% of healing taken from mana) to get the most health out of it. The mana drain doesn’t affect us very much.


Gems and links

Chest: Fireball, Ignite proliferation, Burning damage, Deadly ailments, Combustion, Swift affliction/Greater multiple projectiles.

Note: If you have +1 socketed gems on chest you can pick up a level 3 (or 4) Empower and swap out Combustion. Buying level 21 Fireball is highly recommended. Shouldn’t cost more than 15-20c. If you get a Dying Sun or when fighting tough bosses you switch GMP for Swift affliction.

Helmet: Orb of storms, Curse on hit, Flammability, Arcane surge.

Note: Make sure you don’t overlevel your Arcane surge. I stopped at level 5. It’s very important you do not have any added fire damage on your gear, or else OoS will proc fire Elemental Equilibrium.

Boots/gloves: Leap slam, Faster attacks, 20% quality Culling strike, Fortify.

Note: Culling strike with quality gives additional attack speed to our Leap slam. Fortify only procs if you hit something with the Leap slam, so consider the risk/reward.

Balefire (Scorching Ray): Burning damage, Elemental focus, Efficacy.

Note: If you don't have a Balefire I suggest you socket Scorching Ray into a 4-link and drop Culling Strike for Leap Slam and put it in the weapon slot.

Boots/gloves: Minion life, Minion and Totem resistance, Stone golem, Decoy Totem.

Note: The golem will still die a lot, so make sure you resummon often.

Main-hand (two options):
1. Portal, Vaal righteous fire, Increased duration

Note: Vaal RF gives extra spell damage when activated, which scales our Scorching ray. Be careful as it sacrifices a portion of your life at the start.

2. Immortal call, Cast on Damage Taken, Increased duration/Portal.

Note: Make sure you don't level up Immortal call and CwDT too much/little, or else they wont function properly.


Play style and mapping
Shoot fireballs and run/leap slam around. A single fireball/ignite is usually enough to kill most monsters, even rares. For tougher enemies you want to ignite them, put down Orb of storms, Decoy totem, and channel Scorching ray. Depending on where you place your mouse the additional fireballs (from GMP/Dying Sun) will spread differently.

Difficult mods:
- Reflect elemental damage is basically a no-go. Ignite does not reflect afaik, but it’s easy for the hit itself to crit and destroy you instantly.
- 90% less chance to inflict elemental ailments can be tough on certain bosses, but is okay for general mapping. The fireball hit and scorching ray is often enough for non-boss enemies.
- Temporal chains is just annoying, but can be mostly mitigated if you have curse immunity on flask. Red map bosses can destroy you, since you won't have 100% flask uptime during the fight.
- Any big collection of damage mods and curses can make it difficult to channel Scorching ray without dying, so know your limits.


Leveling
Pick up Fireball and Scorching ray as soon as possible. I’d recommend leveling with a shield and Shield charge + Flame dash, which you can swap when you have two sceptres for Leap slam. I wouldn’t recommend taking MoM early on, unless you struggle with survivability and can handle your mana. Same goes for Phase Acrobatics as long as you’re using a shield.

Questions and suggestions on how to improve the builds are welcome!
Last edited by Leostereo on Dec 28, 2018, 6:02:17 PM
Last bumped on Mar 30, 2019, 12:52:33 AM
Hey man, been looking into doing a ignite trickster, I saw that armagedon brand has a bigger number on ignite damage, but lower base damage. What you think works best on ignite dps?
Also, what you think about searing touch extra burning damage or martyr of innocence huge flat damage? I think martyr of innocence with fireball might be great, since Fireball has a 160% damage effectviness, and the block + fire damage penetration.
"
Nergaltro wrote:
Hey man, been looking into doing a ignite trickster, I saw that armagedon brand has a bigger number on ignite damage, but lower base damage. What you think works best on ignite dps?
Also, what you think about searing touch extra burning damage or martyr of innocence huge flat damage? I think martyr of innocence with fireball might be great, since Fireball has a 160% damage effectviness, and the block + fire damage penetration.
I haven't tried Armageddon Brand personally, but it's possible you might be able to scale the ignite a bit higher. However, I do believe Fireball has better/smoother clear, and I have found the ignite DPS to be sufficient for most enemies. Perhaps if you're going for the bossing route it would be a good switch to make. You also have to consider if you're sacrificing defensive stats in order to scale your Brands more.

As for Martyr of Innocence, I looked it up in PoB. With Elemental Equilibrium from Orb of Storms, my current dual-wield setup has 364k ignite DPS (AFAIK Fireball does not hit, and does thus not proc EE by itself). Changing to the staff and removing EE since OoS now procs the +fire res, we land at 292k ignite DPS. At the same time we're sacrificing both our main movement skill and our Scorching Ray, so I can't see the benefits of doing this at all. Our Acrobatics also lower the effective block chance by a lot. It does however open up a lot of sockets in the rest of our gear, so maybe there's a way to make it viable, I don't know.

Searing touch opens up the use of a Kaom's Heart, but sacrifices a fair bit of DPS, along with what I mentioned previously about using a staff.


Last edited by Leostereo on Jan 5, 2019, 10:46:33 AM
Build looks really interesting. Could you record a full high-tier map playthrough with it?
So can u please explain how the EE Works on this build ? id love to try it out.
On trash mobs it won't work, but for bosses just use orb of storms to proc EE for lighting. You can't have any fire damage on your items or jewels or it won't work.
Do you think that I can change phase acrobatics and acrobatics, for other points that give me more damage?
Have you used Rolling Flames jewel for this? Or would the +radius not be needed?

edit: read the guide more thoroughly :) appologies!
Last edited by helt84 on Feb 23, 2019, 2:56:00 PM
"
Leostereo wrote:
"
Nergaltro wrote:
Hey man


3.6 Update? Ignite buffed!
Trickster OP.
I'd love to see an update to this, I was really wanting to try Fireball out now that Fork is a damage buff, Tarke mentioned it and I looked a little into it, seems really good.

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