[3.11] Divine Ire Hierophant (Self cast)

Welcome everyone to my divine ire guide! This is by far my most successful build I've ever made, and I'm excited to bring it into 3.10.

I won't be streaming or playing too much due to health reasons. I'll be progressing with the build in SC trade league purely so that I have a chance to progress despite many health issues and my work.

Disclaimer: This build is not optimized for cutting edge play. It's optimized for fun and for ease of play.

Changelog
07/03/2019: Changed the gems significantly. Main group, CWDT group, and herald group, are all modified.

08/03/2019: Rerouted the passive tree a bit in the pastebin.

09/03/2019: Updated PoB with proper gems, and updated guide with thoughts after playing this for almost ten hours. Also changed Vigilant strike links.

14/03/2019: Major changes to gem links, equipment goals, and our end game passives.

16/03/2019: Major changes due to the addition of an EB MoM variant. Previous variant is still fine.

17/03/2019: Changed my suggestions after testing EB. I prefer going without.

18/03/2019: Changed the passive trees in the late game for the no-EB variant. Also added quality information in the main link.

20/03/2019: Added Atziri kill video.
20/03/2019: Added some touchups here and there. Of note is an addition to the weapon section, and a section called "Deceptively useless mods" at the end of the gear section.

27/03/2019: Changed the weapon goals. Herald of Ash already covers some of the benefit that the mace would've provided. Sorry for wasting your currency!

27/03/2020: 3.10 preliminary update. Going to expand the guide a lot in the coming days.

12/04/2020: Added more details for 3.10

19/06/2020: Updated PoB to 3.11


Pros and Cons
+ Tanky
+ HC Viable
+ SSF Viable
+ Good league starter
+ Good clear and boss killing all in one package
+ Breezes through uber lab, Argus included
+ Not too many buttons
+ Super satisfying sounds

- Can't do Elemental Reflect maps.
- You need to aim and position yourself well for the clear to work
- May not scale into the very end game


TLDR

Divine Ire
Physical to Lightning
Concentrated Effect
Hypothermia
Infused Channeling Support
Energy Leech

Holy Flame Totem
Physical to Lightning
Elemental Focus
Controlled Destruction

These are all level 20
Cast when Damage Taken
Elemental Weakness
Immortal Call
Increased Duration

Herald of Ash
Vaal Righteous Fire - Only use the vaal version

Flame Dash
Second Wind

Optional: Summon Chaos Golem

Bandits: Kill all
Pantheon: Lunaris/Ralakesh or Shakari
Ascendancy: Illuminated Devotion > Arcane Blessing > Divine Guidance > Sanctuary of Thought
Passives: http://poeurl.com/cOSC
Path of Building (Community version): https://pastebin.com/4mumz2mV

Gear: Call of the Brotherhood dual ring, large lightning cluster jewel with Sadist and Snowstorm, weapon with elemental or non-chaos as extra chaos damage, Crown of the Inward Eye, Atziri's Promise.
None of these are mandatory, just nice to have.




Details

Playstyle
Try and forget that you're playing a channeling spell. The only time you want to reach 20 stages is when you're on a boss with an intro sequence like Izaro. In an actual bossfight, you do not want to stay still for too long. Two hits at 10 stages will do as much damage as one hit at 20. Use this to your advantage. In a fight, I often use Flame Dash after getting 5-10 stages, repositioning before dishing out another smaller beam. The rule of thumb is: 20 stages doesn't hurt, but mobility is more important.

When clearing maps, this is doubly true. Our damage is so high you don't need 20 stages to kill something. I generally run up to a pack to get in range with my zaps, charge for a fraction of a second (0.2-0.3 seconds), and then release. This tends to kill entire packs without issue. By using the fact that the beam deals damage in an area around you, it's also possible to get in the middle of a pack and send the beam off to another pack, killing two of them in one blow.


Gem choices
Divine Ire
Physical to Lightning
Concentrated Effect
Hypothermia
Infused Channeling Support
Energy Leech

By using Physical to Lightning, we avoid any issues getting 100% phys to lightning conversion. Added as extra damage is also very strong for us, so it's a good combo.

Gems we don't use:
Archmage causes the mana cost of DI to skyrocket, making it hard to sustain. Additionally, we don't stack enough mana to make it truly worth it. Lastly, physical conversion spells don't benefit as much from it as pure lightning spells would due to a lower damage range.

Elemental Focus isn't used because we like freezing, and because we need to inflict ailments for one of our cluster jewel notables.




Holy Flame Totem
Physical to Lightning
Elemental Focus
Controlled Destruction

Holy Flame Totem benefits almost as much as Divine Ire from our conversion shenanigans, making it a solid DPS addition that also distracts bosses occasionally. It also provides us with reliable ailment immunity when opening strongboxes, as we need to trigger arcane surge with a hit to activate it.




These are all level 20
Cast when Damage Taken
Elemental Weakness
Immortal Call
Increased Duration

I find that we don't need to trigger Immortal Call too often. The level of these gems allows us to use a high level curse.




Herald of Ash
Vaal Righteous Fire - Only use the vaal version

Herald of Ash adds extra fire damage which is quite potent. Herald of Ice is an option, but it has lower damage than Ash.

Optionally, you can add Herald of Ice and Enlighten here, if your mana allows it.




Flame Dash
Second Wind

Optional: Summon Chaos Golem

I generally dislike having to resummon a golem all the time. It's better to use than not, but it's not mandatory.


Ascendancy choice
Illuminated Devotion > Arcane Blessing > Divine Guidance > Sanctuary of Thought

As we're going non-crit, Hierophant provides nice tankiness. DI doesn't need a ton of damage to excel.

Inquisitor is an option, but ultimately the worse one in my opinion. Crit requires a lot of passive tree investment, which makes it harder to make use of the powerful cluster jewels.


Gear choices
Because of our conversions, the most potent damage boosts are effects that add extra damage. In particular, non-chaos/elemental damage as extra chaos damage. Having one of these two modifiers is almost mandatory for mid to end game weapons. Gem levels is also a very potent way to scale our damage. If you're using a staff, local gem levels can work. If not, ensure they are global (All gem levels, not socketed).

Defensively, we want to get ES bases. The higher the ES the better, but we also want good life, mana, and resistance to cap. Life is more important than ES.

For cluster jewels, we want to get a lightning damage large jewel with Sadist and Snowstorm on it. Anything else is a bonus, though a jewel socket or two is preferable.

Early-mid game Delirium


Conversion
When converting damage, the final result benefits from everything each step would have benefitted from. Example:

100 phys
100% converted to lightning, 10% added as lightning
110 lightning
100% to cold
110 cold
50% to fire
55 cold, 55 fire

Increased fire damage has 50% effect, increased lightning/cold/physical/elemental damage has 100% effect. If we had 10% increased damage for each element and for elements in general, fire would contribute 5% to our total damage while the rest would do 10%, for a total of 35% (lightning/cold/elemental + fire)




FAQ

Is this SC/HC/SSF/Trade league viable?: Yes.

Are staffs viable?: Yes!

Why not crit?: Because it's a lot of investment for not a lot of gain in this build.

Does Concentrated Effect work? The tooltip isn't changing!: Yes. The tooltip is showing you the DPS of the little zaps that help you build stages. They are not Area Damage. The beam is area damage. Zaps: Area of effect (range) yes, area damage no. Beam: Area of effect no, area damage yes. If you face the same problem in PoB, change the dropdown from Channelling to one of the stages. If you still don't believe me, this is a link to a GGG developer confirming it.
Last edited by Lilyliciously on Jun 19, 2020, 1:07:34 AM
Last bumped on Sep 9, 2020, 6:14:15 PM
Reserved just in case
Looking forward to trying this out!
I'm actually really hopeful about this build. It should be quite powerful! The damage numbers I'm theorycrafting are insane, to the point where I'm kinda hoping I'm wrong.
Thanks for the guide, I will try it too.
What do you think about getting Eldritch Battery to better utilize our ES, since Mind over Matter does nothing for us while we have Energy Shield up?
I wasn't actually sure about how it'd interact, so I tested it in game. Eldritch Battery will not benefit us too much.

With the current PoB test gear and passives, we have 4818 life, 1885 unreserved mana, and 3547 ES. Without Eldritch Battery, ES protects our life so we do not take damage

For simplicity, I've normalized this to properly illustrate MoM interactions.

72 life
28 mana
53 ES

This leaves us at a 72/28 ratio of life to mana, where 70/30 is optimal.

Without Eldritch Battery, if we take 10 damage, all of it goes to our ES. Our Life and mana is untouched.

Taking Eldritch Battery essentially makes our ES act as mana. This means that damage is taken on our life, 30% of which goes to mana. The stats would then look sort of like

72 life
28 mana + 53 ES

Which is a 47/53 split.

TLDR: Eldritch Battery adds our ES as mana. Without it, ES acts as a buffer on top of Life/Mana. The ratio between life and mana for MoM purposes works best without Eldritch Battery.

Edit: The one usecase where I can see this being useful is where you reserve close to 100% of your mana and use ES as your MoM buffer through Eldritch Battery. That's somewhat viable. That said, for defensive purposes, ES as a buffer on top of Life/Mana, as in without Eldritch Battery, is superior in my opinion.
Last edited by Lilyliciously on Mar 7, 2019, 10:38:53 AM
wouldn't zealots oath be good for this build, so our conc ground regens energyshield?

or will it not be worth because we use ghost reaver?
Last edited by ildranor on Mar 7, 2019, 11:23:59 AM
A weakness of the build is chaos damage bypassing our energy shield. Consecrated Ground is one of the ways we counteract that, with the life regen. We have plenty of ES leech to keep our ES topped up.
Hey there! This build looks so interesting, think its my options for start)
What do u think about Divine Ire -> Cast while Channelling Sup -> wave of conviction link?
Last edited by ArcaneLover on Mar 7, 2019, 12:42:44 PM

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info