[3.8] Lennorz' RF Mjölner Cyclone/Wave of Conviction Chieftain

My first attempt at a build guide after I fell in love with this character.

This character is a very tanky Chieftain using some unique and ascendancy synergies to create effects that boost both the offenses and defenses a large amount. The main Damage of this build comes from our Wave of Conviction in the Mjölner, with RF giving us a huge spell damage boost and doing solid damage on it's own, while we use Cast while Channeling with Purifying Flame for both better damage and clear and Consecrated Ground. I managed to kill bot Shaper and Uber Elder deathless fighting them the first time ever and taking a lot of unnecessary damage.

3.8 Update:

This build got some very minor changes and some slight buffs. Overall it functions the exact same way.

Cyclone AoE got buffed in our case since we never invested into scaling it and are using Mjölner which has very bad range. With range normalized you should see a bump in Area.

With the new anointing system, we can anoint Charging Offensive instead of using Inexorable on the tree and a "Chance to gain a Frenzy Charge when Hit" mod on our chest. Both are still valid options but once you get the oils, that Notable gives us both permanent Frenzy and Endurance charges. Absolutely great

Updated the PoB link.


Pros:

- Extremely high amount of life sustain.
- High life pool.
- Good ways to mitigate both Elemental and Physical damage by a significant amount.
- 1.1 Million "worst case" Shaper DPS, 3.9 Million "best case" Shaper DPS
- Can run no leech/regen and reduced life recovery maps easily by not using RF in that map.
- Cyclone = Fun

Cons:

- Mapping is only okay. Not bad by any means but lacking compared to other Cyclone builds.
- Gearing can get somewhat specific annoying.
- Not a starter - it does require a bit of currency to get going (but not a ton).

Build Mechanics

This build uses Mjölnir to deal our main damage with Wave of Conviction and also uses Righteous Fire as a gigantic damage boost. 3.7 buffed this build a great amount, with the Cyclone and Chieftain changes.

Wave of Conviction is a hybrid Fire/Lightning Spell, the lightning tag means we can use it in our Mjölner and Chieftain and the passive tree convert almost all of the Damage to Fire, making us use a Fire-Mjölner essentially.

Cyclone now has twice the Attack Speed, but only hits once. This is amazing because a double hit would have done nothing for Mjölner, since the Cooldown on it would have prevented it from triggering 2 Spells each time. The fact that it feels a lot better, moves us around AND is a channeling spell just make it so much better.

To support our Damage, Clearing and Tankyness we use a Cast While Channeling setup with our Cyclone and put Purifying Flame in it. Purifying Flame not only is not only a great offensive option, but it also can clear white packs easily from a Distance with Herald of Ash, and gives us permanent Consecrated ground, boosting our Life Regen tremendously. It also has the added benefit of giving us 100% increased Critical Strike Chance, making Elemental Overload a lot more consistent to proc.

Finally, at the defensive heart of this build, Scold's Bridle combined with "Tasalio, Cleansing Water". The Chieftain Ascendancy node increased our Life Recovery by a gigantic 50% if we have been hit by Fire Damage recently. Scold's Bridle, combined with the 10% of Physical Damage taken as Fire Damage on Chieftain and a Watcher's Eye (20% total) will allow to always trigger this effect whenever we Shield Charge. It will be up a lot even if you don't Shield Charge, but having a reliable method of using it is amazing. This also allows us to take advantage of the new "Chance to gain an Endurance Charge when Hit" Nodes on the passive tree, as well as a "Chance to gain a Frenzy Charge when Hit" mod on our Chest Armor to have them both up permanently. Life Recovery Rate is so amazing because it boosts not only our very high Health Regeneration, but also our Leech we get from Chieftain and the Recovery from our Life Flask. Insane stat all around.

One important note about Mjölner: The cooldown for Wave of Conviction in theory is 150ms. In reality, due to server ticks the real cooldown is 165ms, meaning we could fire a Maximum of 6,06 Spells a Second. Due to this, make sure either your Attack Speed hits as close to 6,06 while using an Onslaught Flask. Either that, or go for a Higher Attack Speed but no Onslaught Flask and use a Wise Oak instead. Going above 6,06 Attack Speed will greatly reduce the damage output because you will be attacking faster than your Mjölner can fire out spells. This is very important to keep in mind.

Gear and Flasks

Uniques


Mjölner | The core of this build. It's used to so send out many Wave of Convictions with the high Cyclone attack speed as our main form of offense. Onslaught or Fortify corruptions are both great but far from necessary.



Scold's Bridle | This may seem strange at first but is actually incredibly important for this build. Primarily it is used for us to trigger the 50% increased Life Recovery from "Tasalio, Cleansing Water" reliably, secondarily it enables us to abuse a few "when hit mechanics" due to us rapidly being hit with this Helmet while using Cyclone, opening up the way for permanent Endurance and Frenzy charges. The Spell damage is nothing to sneeze at either and the reduced cast speed does not matter at all since all our spells are triggered. The only negative is that it has no life roll.



Saffell's Frame | Absolutely amazzing Shield. The lack of life on this Shield is more than made up for the fact that it not only massively reduces the degen we take from Righteous Fire, but also greatly reduce any Elemental damage we take in general.



Astramentis | The somewhat downside of this build. You could technically get all the stats you need for Mjölner and Cyclone on rares (I think), but it's going to be incredibly hard otherwise. It still gives a good amount of life because of the strength it gives (and Chieftain getting a 10% boost from that), but it provides no offenses. Just there for us to hit stat requirements easily.



Malachai's Artifice | While it provides no life it's a gigantic Damage boost for our build. We would be hard pressed to fit in Anger to begin with, so slotting in an Orb of Storms or Storm Brand will give us an easy Elemental Equilibrium effect for a massive 31,5% MORE damage. Go for one with high Lightning Resistance, the other resists don't matter at all.



Watcher's Eye | You will need one with 10% of Physical Damage taken as Fire Damage. The reason for that is, without the extra conversion, Scold's Bridle won't damage us enough reliably with out Shield Charge/Leap Slam to proc the 50% life recovery from Chieftain. The mod is good in general though, it's a very good defensive buff to our Physical Mitigation.



Tempered Mind | 1500 Accuracy on a Jewel. Incredible since our Cyclone has to actually hit to proc Wave of Conviction.

Rares

In general, for your rares you want to slam in as much life as you can. Thanks to Chieftain and Malachai's Artifice we only really need Cold Resistance, and a little bit of Lightning. Try to get high cold resist rolls mainly. You will also want to fit in Aspect of the Spider in one of them. Otherwise you will need a tiny bit of Intelligence still to use Mjölner. I am gonna mention this again so I won't mention it for every slot going forward, but Life is your highest priority roll.


The Frenzy Charge when hit mod is absolutely incredible because we are constantly hitting ourselves with Cyclone and our other skills, making them be up all the time. Prioritize Life first, then the Frenzy mod, and if you can fit in either some Life Regeneration or Resists.

Update: If you can anoint Charging Offensive on the Tree skip the Frenzy mod and just focus on the highest amount of life, life regeneration and resists
instead.



All you really need here is a good Attack Speed roll. Good slot to fix up your reists and missing Intelligence.


Movementspeed. We don't have a lot so 30% is something you ideally wanna reach. Otherwise there is nothing special you want on your boots.
The boot enchant is incredible for this build since we constantly hit ourselves, and if you don't have it you will need to use a low level Clarity instead of a low level Precision to sustain mana.


Attack Speed, Resists and a good Mana Regeneration Roll. Yes, Mana Regeneration. Do NOT get a -Mana Cost to Skills mod. While it would make Mana sustain a non issue alltogether, it also ruins our ability to get our Life Recovery from Chieftain reliably due to Scold's Bridle not damaging us enough with it.


An Elder Belt with Life Recovery is ideal. Life Recovery is such an incredible stat, even if we already have 50% as a Chieftain. Otherwise follow the usual stat priorities.


Attack Speed, Life and Area/Fire/Spell damage is great. I had to use one Jewel to patch up my lacking Cold Resistance.


Flasks

Disclaimer: These are my personal preferences and nowhere near optimized as you may see other people do it. Choose what you want, really.



Catalysed Eternal Life Flask of Staunching:

I have been starting to love this Flask in general, but on a build with so much increased Life Recovery Rate, this Flasks heals us extremely quickly to full health and removes bleeding. This is the one Flask I would highly recommend.



Silver Flask is great all around, making us not only move and hit faster. Quicksilver is for mapping. Granite flask, with the amount of %increased Armour we have on the tree gives us a significant amount of armor. I have found it helped me a lot to sustain hits from the often hard hitting legion mobs. Make sure you get freeze and curse immunity on the Flasks, but otherwise just do what you prefer most.



Atziri's Promise:

Good Offensive Flask and gives us Chaos Resistance which /can/ help occasionally. Otherwise Wise Oak is a (probably better) Alternative.



Gems and Links

Mjölner:

Wave of Conviction - Elemental Focus - Concentrated Effect

Our main damage setup. The conc. effect won't really make our clear worse at all because we refresh the Wave constantly anyway. It does technically make the clear a little worse, but try any other link instead and you won't really be able to tell the difference due to us also using Purifying Flame.


Body Armour:

Cyclone - Cast While Channeling - Purifying Flame - Combustion - Energy Leech - Fortify
Our source to proc Wave of Conviction to begin with and our very supportive Purifying Flame. Helps greatly with clearing and spreading Consecrated Ground everywhere. I used Fortify as my last link to easily have it up all the time, but if you are fine just having it on your Shield Charge/Leap Slam you can slot in Added Fire Damage instead.


Saffell's Frame:

Flammability - Cast when Damage Taken - Increased Duration

A slight DPS boost. I kept my CWDT at Level 1 and my Flammability at Level 5 because of it. You could use Blood Magic instead of CWDT and self cast a max level Flammability instead if you prefer. I went for a lazy approach.


Malachai's Artifice:

Orb of Storms

This is here to proc Elemental Equilibrium, giving us a gigantic damage boost on bosses and some of the tougher Legion enemies. If you want you can use Storm Brand instead, but it will be worse for a tough pack of Legion mobs. Orb of Storms had the added benefit of chaining more because of our Mjölner.

Scold's Bridle, Gloves, Boots:

Those following setups can be linked in any of the three slots, just use what makes coloring your sockets the easiest for you.

Vaal Righteous Fire - Concentrated Effect - Burning Damage - Elemental Focus

A huge damage boost for this build and the reason I opted to use Scold's Bridle to reliably trigger the 50% increased Life Recovery Rate. This build has crazy amount of life sustain and even with Righteous Fire, we still regenerate a very high amount. A 40% more Spell damage boost is amazing. Righteous Fire by itself only deals roughly 100k DPS, Vaal Righteous Fire on the other hand deals 700k+ while also buffing our Spells even more.

Press the Vaal button and nuke bosses.

Shield Charge - Leap Slam - Fortify - Life Gain on Hit

Our mobility setup. Yes, no Faster Attacks. I use Life Gain on Hit instead of Faster Attacks because the Mana Cost without it is too low to make Scold's Bridle damage us enough to proc the 50% Life Recovery Rate from Chieftain.

Weirdly enough, Orb of Storms, Steelskin and Shield Charge with Faster Attacks ARE enough to proc it, but ONLY if we haven't used Cyclone recently. I have no idea why and it seems like a bug, but using a higher Mana Cost support gem is the only way for us to get the Recovery 100% of the time on demand.

Herald of Ash - Precision - Purity of Fire - Steelskin

Herald of Ash is amazing for this build. Wave of Conviction and Purifying Flame both benefit from the Physical as Extra fire Damage as well as the More Spell damage from it. The Overkill burn also kills a lot more enemies than you might think.

Purity of Fire is needed for the Watcher's Eye and helps us sustain Righteous Fire a lot better.

Precision is not required, it just gives a little boost to Accuracy. I kept mine at a low level (6/7), but it really is far from needed. My Watcher's Eye also makes me Blind immune while affected by Precision which is the main reason I have it at all. If you can't sustain your mana costs use a Low Level Clarity instead.

Steelskin is an, in my opinion underrated, defensive button. Press it if you see a big hit incoming or get hit to low life.

Skill Tree, Ascendancy, Bandits, Pantheon

Skill Tree:

www.poeurl.com/cvtl

Path of Building:

https://pastebin.com/bmHeuxBS

The Path of Building includes a very rough leveling progression, but generally, rush to Templar from Marauder start, get Divine Fury and Divine Judgement, then go to Elemental Overload and pick up the Jewel socket at the top to slot in Tempered Mind. From there on out, progress however you prefer.

This build is a Marauder using the Chieftain Ascendancy. Chieftain provides us with good Fire Damage, Physical to Fire Conversion, Spell Damage Leech, and incredible life sustain all around.

I leveled it as a self-cast Purifying Flame character until Act 4 when I got Cast while Channeling, and used it with Cyclone for a nice leveling experience.

You don't wanna use Righteous Fire until you get to your third lab and have Scold's Bridle.

Ascendancy Progression:

- Ngamahu, Flame's Advance
- Hinekora, Death's Fury
- Tasalio, Cleansing Water
- Ramako, Sun's Light

Bandits:

Kill them all. Although you could use Oak and it would be good too. Your choice.

Pantheon:

This is also mostly up to personal Preference, but I went with Arakaali as my major god to take less Righteous Fire damage, and the measures against shock and Chaos DoTs and Gruthkul for 5% reduced Physical Damage taken thanks to Scold's Bridle.

Again, choose what you prefer.


Deathless Uber Elder Kill:

YouTube

This was my first time ever fighting Uber Elder ever, which I think proves the effectiveness of this build quite nicely.


Hope this guide will be helpful to someone and make them try this out this very fun and tanky build!



EDIT: Changed Abberath to Gruthkul for the minor Pantheon.


Last edited by CPUfreak007 on Sep 17, 2019, 5:15:09 AM
Last bumped on Dec 15, 2019, 2:03:06 AM
I Play this (well, something close) and i'm having a blast :). Thanks for the idea.
I just started really doing red Maps yesterday and so far it's really easy going, aside from the occasional Legion but these guys shit on nearly every build anyway if they manage to hit you.

My tree is a bit diffrent because i started as "normal" RF so my hit chance is abysmal (~50% ;))and i don't use Astramentis and Malachais yet because i geared myself "on the go". I will have another look this evening, i guess getting a Tempered Mind would do much more for my DPS than the Fire/Burning-DMG Cluster but i kinda don't like having to get Astramentis… I'll see :).


Your guide is very honest and true about the pros/cons from what i can tell so far.
Some of the rares you use are in fact pretty top notch and thus expensive (your body armor…), you might could add that it also works just fine with cheaper stuff.
Last edited by aDoreMe on Jul 8, 2019, 5:05:16 AM
@aDoreMe

Glad you are enjoying it!

Tempered Mind is something I can't see being optional. The power it gives in a single Jewel socket (for a dirt cheap price at that) is amazing. Just single handedly fixes any accuracy problems you might have. Astramentis is not technically required as long as you can fix your stats otherwise, but that seems hard to do.

As for the rares you are right. This build can do fine with quite a lot worse, I got a bit lucky getting a few of the rares for very cheap.
Yeah, i will lose one fire damage wheel for Tempered Mind and then see what i can get away with Int-wise, it actually shouldn't be a big issue.
I was kinda thinking that Mjollners inner CD wouldn't make it that great, anyway glad that i'm wrong ;).
Last edited by aDoreMe on Jul 8, 2019, 10:41:11 AM
How sustain mana cost of cyclone? I don't see any leech on three/gear.
A single Mana Regen roll on the rare Ring and a low level Clarity is enough if you don't manage to get the boot enchant. For the Clarity drop Precision, but Precision only added a tiny amount of DPS to begin with.
Hello thx for this guid very fun to play. Can you post a lv100 skill tree plz ?
Last edited by Wabizuke on Jul 11, 2019, 8:15:44 AM
"

Scold's Bridle | This may seem strange at first but is actually incredibly important for this build. Primarily it is used for us to trigger the 50% increased Life Recovery from "Tasalio, Cleansing Water" reliably...


Tasalio is only activated when an enemy hits you. The helmet is still useful, but not as effective as u think.

But its a really solid build. I like it!

"The one who dies with the most toys is still dead."
- Geth, keeper of the Vault.


Last edited by meerkatz13 on Jul 11, 2019, 2:46:41 PM
"
Tasalio is only activated when an enemy hits you. The helmet is still useful, but not as effective as u think.

But its a really solid build. I like it!


It should only work when an Enemy Hits you based on the description of the passive, yes, but it does in fact work with Scold's. I tested that thoroughly and found some other people confirming it as well.
Extremely solid build, was able to do Uber Elder while getting hit / standing in pretty much everything. In budgetish gear no less, after that I fell in love with the build and decided to invest in it.

Damage is super good, especially if you get the Orb of Storms drop on something. I dislike using Orb of Storms to proc Elemental Equilibrium and Elemental Overload just because the cast speed is so low, but that's just nitpicky and doesn't really matter. Only need to use it on bosses anyway.

The overall clear of the build is way better than I thought it would be, like you said it's not super insane like some cyclone slayers. Very respectable and feels good.

Most probably wouldn't need the extra defense, but I managed to find a Doryani jewel that I can slot near Mind Over Matter for some +max fire res and %life and life recovery, while also picking up Corrupted Soul and switching to a soul thirst for ES overleech. I lose Quick Recovery, however I do not need more mana regen and the jewel gives more %life and %life regen. Losing the Life Recovery on the belt sucks, but having a combined total of 9.5k ~ 10k HP/ES with ES overleech lets me make *really* dumb decisions while playing very poorly and still come out alive.

I also opted for a chest that converts life to ES, I lack frenzy charge generation but feel like it was a better defensive option given my other tweaks.

As for Scold's Bridle proccing Tasalio, I'm pretty damn sure it does despite what the node says. I turn RF on in my hideout, I start losing life, I leap slam once (no consecrated ground) and my life regen goes through the roof up to full, 4 seconds later degen occurs.

But yeah, awesome build and thanks for sharing it! First build I've used that can survive enough of my poor gameplay to maybe make it to 100.

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