[3.8] Burny Sanders Hybrid Righteous Fire Inquisitor [SSF][HC?]

Righteous Fire has long suffered from requiring very specific gear in order to function. Lots of uniques, lots of requirements. SSF RF builds were basically nonexistent, and the ones that did exist abused the ES regen in Occultist which was gutted recently.

However, in 3.8, RF got some crucial changes. For one, it has base damage that scales with gem level. Along with this, the damage gained from life/ES was halved. Quality now gives burning damage rather than spell damage, actually scaling the skill.

What's the effect from this? In short, it buffs the hell out of RF builds that do not stack life/ES quite as high, and nerfs the pure life/ES stacking builds.

When combined with the changes to the modifier that grants levels to fire spell skills, making it global, along with the abundance of the stat fire damage over time multiplier, getting good damage out of RF is easier than ever, without forcing super high life pools.

When I originally thought of this build, I called it the Stupid Hybrid RF Inquisitor. It broke some rules of build design that I didn't think would work out. I nearly gave up on the build at level 48, leaving the character there for a while. After second lab, I got encouraged. By maps, I no longer call it stupid.

This is an RF build that uses Life, Energy Shield, Armour, Mind over Matter, and is played as an Inquisitor. It sounds janky and stupid, but it really, really works.

The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but it is punishing.

Once this build gets going, I'd call it HC viable. That said, it involves a balancing act with gear, and is riskier than I'd like. Making a mistake can be costly. If played well enough, definitely HC viable. It's too risky for me though.

28/09/2019: Version 1 posted
25/10/2019: PoB and skill trees fixed. You'd think I'd have realized that a month of no comments means I fucked something up, but nope.

Yes! Sort of. I'm not a professional streamer. I'm not even a hobbyist streamer. The main reason that I even set up streaming software was so that I could easily share with one or two friends what I was doing, I didn't intend to build a community.

I don't generally talk on stream. I don't have a camera. It's basically just a window into my current gameplay session, with the added benefit of me interacting in chat about what I'm doing. In this case, it'll let you see how my build is performing, because I'll be playing it nonstop for a while.

Link to my shitty stream

+ Easy to play once it gets going
+ Built for SSF, no specific items needed.
+ Decent clear and boss killing all in one package
+ Not a lot of buttons to press.

- Can't do no regen maps
- Not the fastest build out there.
- Requires leveling with something else.

Double check that your auras are up and that your golem is alive, activate RF, run by enemies and watch them die. Use Ball Lightning at least once every 10 seconds to maintain your damage from Inspiration, and use it to trigger EO and EE on monsters you hit with it.

https://pastebin.com/KJbDkzQV (Totally did not forget to post this for a month)

This is something that's rather unique to RF. Increasing one stat increases other stats. Getting more life or energy shield increases your damage, but also the damage you take from RF. Life does more damage to you than energy shield, but they do the same damage to enemies.

What this means is that gearing is not as simple as having some primary stats that you maximize. We rely on several sources of flat regen that do not scale with our life or ES pools. This means that getting too much life or ES will cause your degen to outpace your regen, making the build far more dangerous to play. This is the primary reason we use Armour.

An energy shield base item will give you more damage. A base item that is a hybrid between armour and ES will give you less damage but also less degen, as well as granting armour to help you mitigate physical damage. A pure armour base item gives you no damage or degen, but gives you even more physical mitigation.

By wearing ES gear, you maximize your damage. By mixing in armour, you're lowering your damage while making yourself tankier.

Righteous Fire: Burns you, burns enemies around you. It is not affected by spell damage. It is not affected by aura modifiers. Fire resistance reduces the degeneration damage you take.

Life/Energy Shield: Each point of life gives you 0.2 points of base damage and 0.9 points of base degen. Each point of ES gives you 0.2 base damage and 0.7 base degen. Stacking higher values here does improve your tankiness as well as your damage, but the higher you go the lower your regeneration gets. At some point, you are more tanky by having less life/ES simply due to the fact that you regenerate lost life faster.

Elemental Overload: Every time you crit, you gain 40% more elemental damage for 8 seconds. We use Ball Lightning to proc these crits.

Elemental Equilibrium: Every time you hit an enemy with elemental damage, they gain resistance to that element and lose resistance to the other two. Ball Lightning therefor gives enemies -50% fire resistance. It's important to not have any added fire damage to spells, since this will not affect RF but it will cause ball lightning to give 25% fire resistance to enemies.

Flammability: We self cast flammability to further reduce the fire resistance of our enemies.

Inspiration: This gem is new to 3.8, and it has a very interesting interaction with RF. Every spell supported by an Inspiration gem are affected by your inspiration charges, regardless of what spell generated the charges. We therefor get charges from a level 1 ball lightning, which then affects RF. Cast Ball Lightning at least once every 10 seconds and you'll maintain your charges, which is easy to do. This provides lots of more elemental damage to RF.

Inquisitor: Inquisitor is probably the class that lends itself best to this hybridized style of RF. As long as we have stopped, even for a moment, every 4 seconds, we have Consecrated Ground. This gives us a flat 200 ES regen per second, 6% life regen per second, and 15 mana regen per second. This alone helps us counter much of the degeneration until the late game. In addition, enemies take 16% increased elemental damage.

Life/ES: Because of the degeneration effect that scales off these stats, they're not as purely defensive as in other builds. You need to find a balance where your flat regeneration outpaces the degeneration enough that you feel tanky, while stacking as high as you can for both damage and survivability.

Armour: The more you have, the more you mitigate physical damage. Using armour bases allows you to reduce the amount of ES you have, which helps reduce the degeneration you take. It's a balancing act. Once you hit about 10k armour, Molten Shell is better than Steelskin in terms of mitigation.

Mind over Matter: When taking MoM, RF's degen is split between life and mana. Mana does not increase the degeneration or damage of RF. This means that we're effectively allowing mana regeneration to help counter our degeneration, while also allowing us to be even tankier. Because we barely use mana, we can reserve a lot of it and still make use of it. I reserve just over 50% with a high level Clarity and Purity of Fire. You can add Flesh and Stone for more survivability, bringing us to about 72% reserved.

Regeneration/Degeneration: Acquiring life, mana, and ES regen is important for this build. While we easily outpace the RF degen with just passives, the more regen we have to counter the degen the tankier we feel. If we have net 0 regen, then after every hit we'd need to use a life flask. That feels awful.

---

Righteous Fire

These are all one link, but are listed in order of importance.

4L: Righteous Fire - Burning Damage - Elemental Focus - Inspiration

5L: Empower or Efficacy

6L: Increased AoE/Concentrated Effect

Inspiration is explained in the main mechanics section, but the short version is that we trigger the charges from another spell and it benefits RF too.

Empower beats Efficacy, but is drop only and can be expensive.

The last slot is purely quality of life or for end game content. I wouldn't bother six linking except if you push the build to its limits.

---

Ball Lightning to proc everything

Ball Lightning(Level 1) - Inspiration - Increased Critical Strikes - Unleash

I prefer Ball Lightning, but you can really use any cold or lightning spell that hits for this. You want to keep it at level 1 to keep the mana cost as low as possible. This will proc Inspiration Charges, Elemental Overload when you crit, and Elemental Equilibrium when you hit.

---

Auras and misc

Purity of Fire
Clarity
Steelskin or Molten Shell
Flammability

Purity of Fire gets us extra max fire resistance which is crucial for countering the degeneration. Clarity gets us mana regen.

Molten shell beats Steelskin around 10k armour.

Flammability gets us more damage.

---

Movement, Sand Stance, and more regen

Leap Slam - Fortify
Summon Stone Golem
Flesh and Stone(Sand Stance, only if mana allows)

---

Optional Scorching ray Totem

Scorching Ray - Spell Totem - Multiple Totems - Faster Casting

I find that for lower tier content, you will never use this. That said, for longer bossfights, the additional reduced fire resistance will come in handy.

It is very important to note that these passive trees are very much guidelines. If you don't want to use certain passives, that's fine. You do you. This is the build that I personally use. These may change as I experiment with the build.

Sanctuary - Pious Path - Augury of Penitence - Righteous Providence

Lab1 - Normal Lab - Sanctuary gives us some half decent bonuses, but is primarily picked to get us to Pious Path.

Lab2 - Cruel Lab - Pious Path enables us to start using RF. 200 flat regen is huge, and the lingering effect allows it to be consistently active.

Lab3 - Merciless Lab - Augury of Penitence gives us less elemental damage taken and enemies take increased damage. Quite strong, but not build enabling like Pious Path.

Lab4 - Endless Lab - Righteous Providence only serves to give us increased crit strike chance, that's it.

Large amounts of flat regen and good damage.

Major: Soul of the Brine King or Lunaris. Brine King gives us stun lock resistance, Lunaris gives us general survivability.

Minor: Soul of Abberath or Ralakesh. Abberath gives us reduced fire damage taken while moving. Not bad while constantly burning. Ralakesh reduces physical damage taken over time, which armour does not help with. This is wonderful for the labyrinth, as it makes most traps do less damage.

As this build is made with a pure SSF playstyle in mind, none of the gear in this section is mandatory.

NOTE: The gear that is linked in each section is not strictly optimal. Treat them as a guideline, with the text acting as the optimal goal. The gear is going to improve as I get better gear.

Assume that every slot wants Life. Armour is a lower priority.





















While leveling, the base type of items is less important. Use what gives you the best modifiers and sockets.

Base type: Armour/Energy Shield or Energy Shield.

Stat priorities:
- Life/ES balanced against Regen
- Fire Damage over Time Multiplier
- Resists to Cap
- Fire spell skill gem level
- Other generic damage

Bad modifiers:
Don't pick these.
- Added fire damage to spells(Makes Elemental Equilibrium worse)
- Spell damage(Does not affect damage over time from RF)

You cannot level using RF, except maybe if you have VERY specific uniques (Kikazaru x2, Springleaf, etc). I recommend using Arc/Storm Brand until at least Cruel Lab is complete. After that you can switch to RF, or use both in combination.

Make sure to level Purity of Fire so that it gives you max fire resistance before switching over, and ensure you've allocated Barbarism on the passive tree.