[0.3] [BotW] Chaos Curseflame Mana Lich

My goal this league was to make Blackflame Covenant work, and work well. After a *lot* of experimentation I actually did better than I hoped. Clearing screens with a wave of one hand, while absolutely cooking single targets with the other. This build leverages Chaos damage's various defense shreds, majestic purple flames, and some true shenanigans with some new gems. This build wasn't possible last patch but it very much is now!

=============Build Pros=============

* Uses a lot of new/updated stuff from 0.3 patch
* Mana defense with massive Mana pool/recovery
* One button trash clear
* Large amounts of both wither and resistance shred access
* Hilarious clear with Profan-- er, Rupture the Soul
* Versatile sceptre choices
* Versatile leveling options
* Variant options for freeze, stun/daze, and co-op support

=============Build Cons=============

* Low phys mitigation. Partially addressed with desecrated belt Max mana gained as armour mod
* Mid HP pool. Partially addressed by Kurgal Timeless jewel
* Pinnacle tier (T15+) damage scaling can get awkward with direct Int scaling


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poe.ninja link: https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/ArmaMalum-4722/character/BlackestHearts

Unfinished (I've been experimenting a lot). End-game gear targets explained below.

End-game tree target: https://poeplanner.com/builds/729819

Gameplay

Rare T15 Clear: https://youtu.be/fOKjJBK_TSo

6-mod Boss T15 Gauntlet: https://youtu.be/b_-76JyoQQA

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Clearing Strategy

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Despair + Doedre's Undoing + Decaying Hex + Unleash + Zenith II
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With the new lineage support of Doedre's Undoing your curse turns into a direct damage skill that does both hit and dot damage based on your intelligence. This is because Doedre's Undoing's trigger is when "enemies enter the zone". And I am very happy to report that casting the curse on top of an enemy apparently counts as entering! Triply so with Unleash!

With curse aoe and activation support on Lich and the general tree Despair can have a downright massive radius. I am talking 5+ meter radius. At ~300 Int the only things that don't get killed are rares and uniques. Combined with the occasional Rupture the Soul explosions sometimes rares just disappear as well.

Additionally curses at base cost a LOT of mana. Which in this case is actually a good thing for generating fuel for Incinerate. Personally I use the Zenith II support to keep a very healthy amount of mana recoup going, and I can confirm that this support does seem to benefit both the Doedre explosion and Decaying Hex damage (jury is still out on whether that's intended).

If you want to be fancy you can add Chaotic Freeze as the last support, it does work with itself via Decaying Hex's DoT and Doedre's hits. But without freeze support it'll just be a novelty on bosses and the like.



Bossing Strategy

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Incinerate + Mobility + Momentum + Ignite III + Searing Flame II + Burgeon II

AND

Cast on Ailment + Living Bomb + Fire Mastery + [Any Damage supports]
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In concept this combo should have been steady dps with the occasional explosion to clear out some trash in a boss fight without having to switch much.

In practice this turned out to be an HP bar devouring monster with a machine gun of Living Bombs procs.

This happened due to three major things:

1) You can ignite an already ignited target. Many of you probably already know this but for those who haven't messed with this: The currently 'active' ailment does not prevent you from applying another instance of the same ailment, it's just that only the strongest instance of that ailment ever applies. This is wonderful because once a target is at 100% flammability the target will always be ignited and Incinerate "hits" 4 times a second.....so that's a lot of ignites for Cast on Ailment!

2) Chaos has the best default scaling of any damage type with both wither and Despair pulling some serious defense shredding duty. Even with a unique's 50% less curse effect Despair should be shredding ~20% chaos res off of a target, and this stacks with the flat -chaos res from effects of "enemies you curse" such as from the Void Notable and/or some socketable effects.

3) Living Bomb's explosion is based on damage taken. Not just hits, but any damage taken based on the enemy ailment threshold. And since Cast on Ailment tracks the same thing we have a fun synergy of Living Bomb being consistently popped before the next cast*. It may seem strange at first if you look at the energy ratios between the two skills, but it's important to remember that living bomb's procs are based on final damage done, so the damage increases from resistance and Wither are factoring in to how fast Living Bomb is being procced.

*If you decide to grab any %energy gained sources anywhere, beyond CoA's quality, you may want to keep an eye on how often LB triggers versus pops. If you're getting triggers before pops you can put on an Overabundance II so you can have two LB's on a target. The ratio of ailment threshold and energy gain can be a little tricky sometimes.

(Notably you can even count how many times a LB has popped based on how many remnants fell to the ground during the short time the boss is alive.)



Defence Strategy

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Blasphemy + Enfeeble + Temporal Chains + Ritualistic Curse (AoE) + Magnified Effect II + Dialla's Desire (If you're rich)

AND

Hinder effect
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You don't have a huge amount of access to personal damage mitigation as a Witch, so the next best thing is to take away enemy offence. With a boosted Temp chains also Hindering all enemies on the screen (the AoE is massive), you can very easily kite any non-hexproof enemies.


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90% Damage Taken from Mana before Life, without Mind over Matter
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Many of you may be familiar with this strategy by now, but for those who aren't, you do not need MoM to get 100% Mana redirect. And even moreso you don't even want 100% unless you're going CI (more on that in a second), because your character will always have ~1K life you may as well use it, any life recoup you happen into, and your life flask at some point. Personally I prefer 90+% Mana redirect, but I can see an argument for 95%+. You can adjust as needed with jewels and Greatwolf Rune of Willpower.

You get 3 major advantages with this:

* Int-scaling health pool. We're already stacking Int for the Decay and Doedre's damage so making defensive use of that is very

* Massive recovery. I currently have ~800 Mana regen/sec (post Lich's 6% loss) and that's before all the other sources of recovery like recoup and flask and after the Kurgal Timeless jewel's 50% less mana regen.

* Avoiding multiple recovery attacking mods like less life/ES recovery. With the tradeoff of Mana Siphoner being very scary, but I'd argue the ring is much more avoidable than the other rare mob mods and map mods.

Why not CI? - Do you like being stunned and frozen? Literally every time? I can't say I do. There's only so much that charms can do.


Gear Strategy

Uniques: Cloak of Defiance, Undying Hate [Kurgal]

Suffix Priority: Intelligence > Mana Regen > Crit Chance

Prefix Priority: All Spell Level > Mana > Chaos Damage > Energy Shield

End-game gear targets

--%mana rings via Perfect Mana essences and T1 Mana + Res. Bonus points for %Chaos Damage

--%Mana as Armour Belt with T1 Mana + Res. Bonus points for high Armour prefix and high Stun Threshold/Flat HP Suffix. (Flat HP regen really helps with Spaghettification Notable Health loss, but is just a nice-to-have)

--Omen Sceptre with Mana > Presence AoE > Mana Regen > Int > Spirit. A spirit roll of some kind is needed but not T1. But the more psirit you can get means a possible additional Clarity and Ailment duration buffs so it's still good to have.

NOTE: An Omen Sceptre is not strictly required, it's just one of the few offensive sceptres. A Discipline or Res Sceptre is also fine, you're mainly after the mana, presence AoE, and Intelligence.

--Siphoning wand with +All Spells > Chaos Damage > Mana > Mana regen. Volatile/Wither/Chaos Bolt Wands are also serviceable but can be awkward to use. I prefer the occasional cull for On-Cull supports, but that's up to you.




Why Lich?

Lich brings 3 big things to the table

1) Curse explosions. Hopefully self-explanatory

2) Flat Mana scaling with Unholy Might Node. This will give ~50% additional extra Chaos Damage (and yes this applies to Incinerate's simulated hits). Even more (~75%) if you get the overflow from the Kurgal Timeless Jewel.

3) Additional Curse. Having the extra defensive curse on your Blasphemy goes a very long way. 54 Spirit (Blasphemy quality pre-Dialla's) is much easier to justify than enough STR (and therefore less int) for hybrid armour/es gear and a shield. And there's no better mitigation in the game than just not letting mobs get to you.

Also, Lich gives a completely viable life+ES track if mana stacking is not reasonable. Made for a much less risky league start.

wow, thanks for sharing this, i would love to see some gameplay.
currently lvling my chaos dot lich, and thinking about switching to this, or trying some hybrid between those two if possible.

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x12Monkeysx#1489 wrote:

wow, thanks for sharing this, i would love to see some gameplay.
currently lvling my chaos dot lich, and thinking about switching to this, or trying some hybrid between those two if possible.

Added a clip! Just a bit of a rare T15. Took a few tries with Steam recording but I clipped a decent example of general clear and a boss. (The boss got a freeze in annoyingly but otherwise It's an ok example. >_<)

Edit: Also added a boss gauntlet

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ArmaMalum#4722 wrote:

Undying Hate

Where did you put that jewel ? I used your tree, but I have to allocate MOM and the socket above to put it there. It will not interfere with other nodes in this case.

"

Where did you put that jewel ? I used your tree, but I have to allocate MOM and the socket above to put it there. It will not interfere with other nodes in this case.

I put it in the top-right socket near CI and used the CI keystone to allocate the timeless's version (Conduit also works). You lose one 11% chaos damage minor node but that's it.