[3.12] You burn = You lose! Burn the world with Firestorm Elementalist



So here we go - reworked Firestorm. And now instead of a few measily fire arrows we get to pepper the world with meteors. That's my kinda jam.
Haven't seen many builds and even then most of 'em use staves. I decided to go with 1h/shield instead and focus on flat fire and dmg to burning scaling.

It deals lots of fiery devastation as well as having good single target especially if used with conc effect. Infernal Cry is used to help clear and turn the entire world into a scorched wasteland. So without further ado - let's dive in.

POB
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https://pastebin.com/yKqDu8gm

Not taking Holy Fire since it's the lowest value fire damage in range (less than 10% per skillpoint). I didn't play around with clusters yet so there's potential for a decent upgrade there.
Unwavering stance is a late pickup - you can just use the anti-stun pantheon and that's fine but change out of it once you do pickup US.
As for order - just grab everything north of starting position with the exception of shield nodes - you can get those after you get a shield later on since you can just level with two scepters/wands or a staff - then start filling out the left side. Try to grab Constitution before maps as at lower levels life might be a problem.



Gem Links
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Chest
Firestorm - Combustion - Immolate - Fire Pen - Controlled Destruction - Inc Aoe/Conc Effect

Gloves
Storm Brand - Hextouch - Flammability - Inc Crit

Boots
Anger - Herald of Ash - Steelskin - Summon Chaos Golem

Helmet
Infernal Cry - Second Wind - Vaal Righteous Fire - Second Golem (can be fire or stone or whichever you preffer)

Weapon
Spell Totem - Scorching Ray - Flame Dash (make sure flame dash is note linked to spell totem - you can also swap places with a golem if it fits your sockets better)

Shield
CWDT - Tempest Shield - Wave of Conviction
Just use whatever level CWDT you feel most comfortable with - I'm running with CWDT lvl 5, Wave lvl 10 and Tempest lvl 10


Gear
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Just started this lueague so there won't be any op items shown - treat this as a starter point.

Chest

Cloak of Flame is a decent starter item - they are also ridiculously cheap for a 6L - you can get one for half as much as a tabula! They are priced 8c at the time of writing this post. Does not provide life and the ignite bonuses are not very good since we don't scale ignite but the damage taken as fire is very strong - it provides more than 15% additional physical damage reduction (thanks to Paragon of Calamity) and a semi-permanent 40% increased fire spell damage (also thanks to PoC) which makes it a very strong starter item. Later on you might want to switch it to a rare Crusader chest with Enemies you Kill Explode to make your explosions even more ridiculous

Gloves

Rare gloves with life and resists as is common but make sure you grab a pair with additional fire damage against burning enemies

Helmet

Hrimnor's gives armor, life, cold res but also increased fire damage and free/chill immunity as long we've used a fire spell - and we constantly use fire spells so that eliminates the need for a freeze immunity flask - just make sure to cast once before opening a strongbox

Boots

Rare - life, resist, movespeed - nothing fancy

Weapon

Scepter or wand - spell damage in our case is pretty much the same as elemental damage since we don't really care about ignite damage, look for high Fire Spell Damage, added fire to spells and Gain #% of fire as extra chaos

Shield

Rare - Fire Spell Damage, life, resists and anything else you might want - cast speed for example

Amulet

You can start with a standard rare, I would switch to a Xoph's later on for fire penetration and cover in ash (Infernal Cry also does the ash thing so it's not a super high priority)
Ngamahu Tiki is also a decent choice with it's high fire damage

Belt

You can use a rare belt with life and resists or if you feel like you don't need more life you can grab a Doryani's Invitation - just make sure you get the version with increased fire damage - it gives a small ammount of armor as well as more fire leech - all in all a solid belt but you will lose around 300-400 life so choose whatever suits you better.

Rings

You can grab Rare rings with life, resists and fire damage or a Berek's Pass - more damage at the cost of life (it does give some ES which is not entirely useless but still), you could grab a Respite if you preffer but I do not think that the ignite prolif is worth it.
Some honorable mentions:
Ngamahu's Sign - fire damage and life recovery on ignite
Redblade Band - fire damage and life,
Rigwald's Crest - fire damage
What I'm saying is - there's lots of possibilities here.

Jewels
Fire, Life, resists if you need them (you really shouldn't need them here but it's slot you can use if you need), maybe dexterity (you don't really get dexterity from the tree and you need a little bit of it for second wind - not a lot tho', a single low source of dex is enough)

Flasks

1 Instant life flask
Rumi's Concoction (MAKE SURE NOT TO BUY THE REPLICA VERSION!) - lots of armor and block/spell block which is one of our main defenses - Rumi's is a must as it will boost your defenses by a huge ammount
<Free Slot> - choose whatever you like for this one, you do get negative mana regen when standing in place and spamming Firestorm so I added a Zerphi since you don't need a lot of mana regen and I might as well get some more regen while I'm at it - you don't have to use Zerphi, in fact you don't really have to use a mana flask at all but in some cases it may come in handy. If you want a mana flask but not zerphi try to grab an Enduring flask with Cast speed. Grab a basalt flask if you want more defenses - try to get one with a roll for additional armor. If you end up lacking mana regen grabbing arcane will should solve that.
Atziri's Promise - get max elemental as chaos - physical doesn't matter
Quicksilver Flask
Make sure to have bleed immunity on of the flasks since it's probably the hardest hitting ailment in the game, having poison/curse is also handy. We don't need freeze because of Hrimnor's Resolve


Bandits and Ascendancy
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Kill All

Ascendancy Order - Pendulum of Destruction -> Mastermind of Discord -> Paragon of Calamity -> Liege of the Primordial

Pendulum gives us either area of effect or damage - both are something we want.
Mastermind of Discord grants 25% Fire Pen - really nice. It also allows us to use a higher % of our mana for some sustained casting
Paragon of Calamity - Damage and Survivability, Reflect immunity is nice tho' situational, Damage leeched as life is very big and allows to even facetank some things (altho' do it at your own risk, some enemies hit very hard) it also synergizes incredibly well with Cloak of Flames granting us more damage and even more physical damage reduction because we almost always are taking fire damage
Liege of the Primordial - well why not? Shaper is really not that useful but if you want to take it - you can. It will slow monster sometimes and increase damage you deal to them via Shocking Conflux, personally I think it's really weak without Beacon of Ruin and since we are not scaling ignite taking BoR is pointless.
Last edited by werchiel on Sep 27, 2020, 6:39:29 PM
Last bumped on Jan 13, 2021, 11:29:44 AM
Passive Tree
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Pantheon
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Soul of the Brine King - take that before unwavering stance
Soul of Lunaris/Solaris - take either after getting unwavering stance
for the minor I like to grab Tukohama since I'm lazy and like ignore mechanics and facetank and this allows me to die to my laziness a little less. This is vastly prefference tho'.


Levelling
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Grab your Tabula, wanderlust, goldrim and lifesprigs if you have any and proceed to burn everything with with fireball while adding more suports gems as you level - lmp, combustion, added lightning and such - you can easily level this way till you grab your firestorm at level 28. Or if you have some other prefference - go ahead, you can play with the new Blazing Salvo if you want for instance, just make sure you're using a fire skill and you're good to go.


Videos
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Leveling
Coves T3
Atziri - holy balls I'm rusty, I really need to get used to new atziri
Overgrown Shrine T9
I will add more videos as I progress.


Summary
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Lots of fire. Lots of fire everywhere. You can oneshot packs with a single meteor, sometimes add a second one for tougher ones, Infernal Cry to clear entire screens - I sometimes even detonate IC with just stormbrand since it is marginally faster in some cases but you can use it however you want.
Fire Penetration total is insance with this setup @ over 170% - you can burn fire elemental made of fire that's how hot your fire is.
Hope you enjoy - cheers.
Last edited by werchiel on Sep 27, 2020, 5:23:32 AM
I will add this build to my follow list. Hopefully you get it working in end game as well, gj & gl!
Added a t9 map to videos - I don't anticipate any issues, you do need to be careful about certain mechanics but defenses coupled with elemental leech are good enough to facetank some enemies. Bosses melt pretty quick and I don't even bother switching to conc effect (probably will for guardians shaper/elder and the like) so it has the potential of dealing even more damage.
Last edited by werchiel on Sep 27, 2020, 5:25:36 AM
Why Storm Brand over something like Armageddon Brand?
It's a utility setup - it's not there to do damage, storm brand hits reliably and with a good rate and a nice crit chance to proc EO. That being said - if you personally preffer to use armageddon brand it will also work altho' in my opinion it will be weaker - especially since armageddon brand has a short delay before landing a hit. Since you only need to use it to debuff single targets you don't really need additional radius (it still will most likely debuff entire packs because stormbrand's range isn't too bad). But again - if you preffer to use armageddon brand or orb of storms - you can do that. I personally switched from Oos to SB and liked it ever since mainly because it sticks to the targets better than orb of storms (duh' - Oos is a stationary spell after all).
How's the build been, overall? Curious enough to consider it, though the leveling process will be a bitch up until we get the main attraction...
Personally I've had a lot of fun, I did end up switching to a basalt flask for higher map tiers and the tankiness is pretty good.
As for leveling - it's really not that big of a deal if you level with fireball/ignite unless you really dislike it but it does carry well until level 28. And when you hit 28 it gets really dammn good. And when you add infernal cry the clear is top tier. Maybe not autobomber or vaal ice nova level but still really good - easily 1,5-2 screens assuming monsters are positioned properly.

I'm not sure about other builds but in my version probably around 80 to 90% ot damage comes from the first meteor (for clear I mean) and the other smaller fireballs from the sky someitmes clear out the remnants but that's it - it does add up with a conc effect when spamming firestorm on bosses. Leech is good enough to facetank most map bosses that don't have a oneshot mechanic.
Last edited by werchiel on Sep 29, 2020, 9:46:30 AM
update on build? How's it going? Damage is holding up? How's the squish?
Changing to a basalt makes it decently tankty tho' it is not a tank build so like I mentioned facetank at your own risk. I didn't really play all that much recently at all but judging from me previous experiences and how it performed up to tier 10 I don't anticipate any problems in higher tiers whatsoever especially since my entire gear is less than 1 ex worth. The most expensive item was a wand for 30c I think so you could make it way way more powerful by investing more currency. I may make some updates over the weekend if I don't pass out and wake up monday.

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