[3.17] Ultimate Self-cast Flameblast Occulist. Pure Damage and Tankiness for End Game.

My philosophy of single-target damage is: pure damage, no ailment, no burning, no fuss.

For that, I first leveraged the ashes of star to reach 50% quality on anomalous flameblast, converting 100% of fire damage to chaos. Then I can use Occultist's Ascendancy to scale the chaos damage.

Next, we invest in crit strikes and crit multi to scale the damage further. I realized this is what many people do, but the damage is very underwhelming. The common mistake they made is: they rely too much on choosing shield as weapon, missing many weapon-specific crit nodes in the tree as a result. Therefore, I gave up using shield and used two-handed staff instead so that I can benefit from the crit-related nodes on the skill tree. I observed a substantial improvement on critical chance and criti multi after this.

Now that we have good chaos damage with crit, to bring the chaos damage to next level, we can leverage wither that can increase enemy's chaos damage taken up to 90%. To achieve this, our ascendancy node withering presence can help us reach maximum stack and maintain the debuff easily.

At last, our damage per blast reached about 20 million damage. But the damage wouldn't be useful if it takes too long to cast. To improve the damage throughput, I invest heavily in cast speed so that the entire 10 stages can be done within 0.6-0.7 seconds when buffed. This cast time is similar to a Melee slam skill's attack time, and it gives us lots of room for defense too.

Here's a sneak peak of the damage on T16 120% quantity conqueror without end-game gears:

To solve the clearing problem and to farm currency efficiently, I used a secondary skill: fireball, to clear packs of mobs.

The fireball is chosen because of many reasons. First its base damage is high and its damage type can allow us to scale its damage together with flameblast. Second, it offers shot-gun effect when pairing with GMP and Chain support, which makes it extremely effective at clearing mobs. To top of all off, we have 40% corpse explosion that deals chaos damage.

Here's how shot-gun effect works with chain support:



when there's a dense pack of mobs, a fireball will bounce between close-by targets 3 times, dealing explosion damage each time. As a result, each target will take 3 times of the damage. When GMP support is linked, the shot-gun effect will be even more significant.

The fireball completely overcomes the clearing speed limitations of other flameblast builds, and allow us the clear packs of mobs in ultra high speed. Juiced T16 maps can be cleared easily with only a 4L fireball. With 6L fireball in end-game, we can clear the first 20 waves of simulacrum with fireball only.

The major source of our defense comes from maxing out block chance for both attack and spells. A 75% block chance means 3 out of 4 hits will not do damage to us.

Surprisingly, maxing out both attack and spell block chance in our build isn't hard at all.

Here's a breakdown of 75% attack block chance:


We get most of attack block chances from tree by using a two-handed staff. The only 2 items needed is rumi's concoction and Martyr of Innocence, both can drop everywhere and cost less than 5c.

Here's a breakdown of 75% spell block chance:


Max spell block chance is easy to reach too. Other than the flask, we need one abyss jewel with 2% spell block chance, and a veiled spell block prefix (10%) on chest armour.

If the veiled prefix is hard to acquire early in game, you can achieve the same effect by crafting spell block chance on chest armour (8%) and invest one more skill point to get spell block (3%).

To increase armour, our build runs determination, molten shell (vaal molten shell too), and scales armour on flasks. This will give us 20+k armour.

In addition, we also leverage 4 endurance charges (gain endurance charge when hit), and Gruthkul Pantheon to cap our physical damage reduction at 90% in combat.

Combining the phys reduction with maxed block, we are very tanky against physical damages.

Elemental ailments are de-buffs like Ignite, chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap. The details of what these ailments do can be found in https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Ailment.

These ailments often weaken the build significantly. For example, chill makes us move and attack slower, shock increases our damage taken, ignite makes us take damage over time.

The good news is: we don't have to worry about those mechanics with the build by using purity of elements. And we get some additional elemental resistance too as extra bonus.

Petrified blood is a powerful defense mechanic that converts part of incoming damage into damage over time. A good metaphor for this is: instead of paying for damage at a full cost, you pay with a loan that has negative interest rate. Ziz made a detailed guide on how petrified blood makes you tanky https://youtu.be/fqFmywbeSyo.

The most powerful thing about petrified blood is over-leech. Once you have a leeching source and unreserved life is more than reserved life, you are always leeching when you kill enemies. In our case, we have 885 life leeched every second from fireball. This can be viewed as 885/s life regen in combat.

On top of overleech, we have 490/s life regen because of vitality and bottled faith, so that our effective life regen is now 1300+/second. Combining this further with various life gained on block nodes and recover %life on kill mod, the petrified's blood damage over time is entirely mitigated. So that in my previous "loan" metaphor, you can get away with paying "down payment" only.

Other damage over time poses little to no threats either. We have corrupted blood immunity on abyss jewel, bleeding immunity on life flask. Even if we did not use the flask in time, the high life regen and high phys reduction (not counting the armour) can counter lots of bleeding damage too. For poison, we have maxed chaos resistance and high life regen. For cold DoT, our high life regen will counter majority of the effects, plus they are usually ground effects so we can simply dash away.

75% chaos resistance: Because our choice of ascendancy and trees, we are given 68% chaos resistance for free. It makes capping chaos resistance much easier - we just need to get extra 67% chaos resistance to reach 75%.

Animate Guardian and Fortify (10 stacks): In end-game we have animate guardian that is unkillable even in simulacrum wave 30. It can taunt enemies and take lots of damage for us. It will also provide 10 stacks of fortify, which is 10% less damage taken ON TOP OF everything I've described before.

90% reduced extra crit damage taken: a major source of one-shot mechanic in end-game is crit damage. Whenever you see a map that says: "monster has 300% increased critical strike chance and +50% crit multiplier", you are easily one-shotted. Because a 3k damage can become 6k under crit condition. A 90% reduced crit damage taken means instead of taking 6k damage, we take 3.3k, which is only sightly more than the normal hit. The higher the critical damage, more significant the effect of reduction will be.

Nearby enemies have 100% reduced life regen: This is in fact both offensive and defensive mechanics. In many POE contents such as metamorph and expedition, we need to face monsters with high life regeneration. This is why many experienced players need to use frost bomb to suppress enemy's regen effect for both offense and defense. This mechanic is given to our build for free as ascendancy skill, so that we can clear high regen mobs easily and they have less chance to deal damage to us as a result.

There are other minor defensive mechanics I won't mention in detail, such as life/ES gain on block, %life gain on kill, energy shield leech, elusive during mapping, hinder nearby enemies. They provide additional boost on our existing survivability.

Showcasing build tanking hits from both simulacrum bosses at wave 30:

Martyr of Innocence is a weapon that fits perfectly with this build. It is a two-handed staff, which allows us to leverage the crit-related skill trees. Its base fire damage and %increased fire damage mods can boost the damage for both flameblast and fireball. It also provides up to 34% attack block chance, which helps us cap attack block chance easily.

The best of all, it can drop everywhere and it's very cheap to acquire.

We use a vaal regalia to get lots of ES from body armour. We can use awakener orb to craft the endurance charge on hit and spell crit suffixes.

As for prefixes, we need a double curse mod and a veiled/crafted spell block mod to cap our spell block chance. I got lucky when using the awakener orb and landed a recover % life on kill mod. The mod isn't necessary for us.

Crafting Instruction:

Eber's unification is another cheap & under-utilized item in POE that fits perfectly with our build.

First it gives pretty considerable amount of ES to help with defense. Also, it gives stun & block recovery which synergizes well with Brine King Pantheon to deal with stun. Moreover, it gives extra elemental damage as chaos too.

The most valuable mod that the item provides is: void gaze. It is triggered every time we use a skill and can reduce enemy's chaos res by 20% for 10 seconds. Considering its 2 seconds cool down and 10 seconds duration, this item provides a guaranteed 20% chaos resistance penetration all the time. Our flameblast is able to deal insane amount of damage because of this.

The end-game glove is considerably the most expensive item to craft. The required suffixes are: essence mod, T1/elevated crit multi, a T1/T2/elevated faster casting mod. For prefix, we need a veiled +2 AOE gem mod.

We will put the flameblast on glove to get 7-link benefits. (4L from gems, 3 links from suffixes).

Crafting Instruction

Boots is a standard tailwind-onslaught + elusive boots. It gives lots of clearing speed and casting speed for the build.

Ashes of stars is the center of our mechanics. We are able to convert 100% of fire damage to chaos because of this. On top of this, it also makes many of our skill gems much stronger, such as animate guardian being more tanky, auras more effective.

On the curse ring,we need despair curse so we can trigger explosion on enemies. I used awakener orb to craft crit multi and despair together. Then unveil the life mod, and bench crafted the channeling mana cost prefix.

On the other ring, I use it to meet dex and str requirements. The chaos damage leeched as life mod is currently my source of life leech, but you can easily get a better leech source from watcher's eye with vitality mod. For prefixes, they are the same as other ring.

for belt, I went with stygian vise with double T1 life and chaos damage as prefixes. cast speed during flask as suffixes. For the rest of the mods, you can fill it with any resistance you need.

Watcher's eye


Cluster Jewel


Normal Jewel

For life flask, I went with eternal flask with increased recovery and bleed immunity.

For utility flasks, we need quicksilver and silver flasks each having gain charges on hit mod. Then get % armour and %cast speed on them.

For unique flasks, we need rumi's concoction to cap block chances and bottled faith to increase damage and provide additional life regen.

Animate Guardian is an allied minion that can wear gears (helmet, body armour, weapon, gloves, and boots). Because of this, it can provide buff to you by wearing specific gears and distract enemy for you.

To achieve that, we need to improve the animate guardian's survivability as much as possible.

For life, animate guardian already had a good life pool. In addition, using the divergent gem plus the ashes of star can significantly boost the life further.

For resistance, animate guardian has 40% base elemental resistance, and 20% base chaos resistance. To cap its resistances, our job is to provide 35% elemental resistance and 50% chaos resistance through gears.

Now let's get to gears:

Helmet: Mask of the Stitched Demon. This helmet will interact with body armour's energy shield mod to provide around 8% life regen every second, this is the main item that keeps the guardian alive.

Body Armour: For body armour, we need a rare armour with mod: You have Consecrated Ground around you while stationary, then craft the prefix: gain 10% of maximum life as extra energy shield. At last, we also need body armour to provide at least 35% elemental resistance of one type.

Boots: For boots, find a base with enchant: regenerate 2% of life if being hit recently. For mods, we need 35% chaos resistance and at least 20% movement speed and 20% elemental resistance. Then we can craft another 15% chaos + elemental resistance so that resistances are capped for two elements and chaos with body and boots together.

Gloves:: Get a southbound glove with 16% increased life. we also get to cap cold resistance as bonus, so that all resistances should now capped.

Weapon:: Kingmaker. This weapon is the main source of buff for us, it provides culling strike, crit multi, and fortify.

Important Note:: The gears recommended above is only recommended for end game, and our animate guardian should survive wave 30 simulacrum without issue. However, there are other contents in POE that will destroy animate guardian no matter how tanky it is, for example, the feared invitation or some new uber boss fights. That's why you need to anticipate those contents and disable animate guardian when necessary.

If you want, you can also use weapon swap to quickly disable animate guardian in combat when its health drops below half. To do that, you need to socket animate guardian related gems on weapon.

In the Mid-game build, we only check Power charges, crit recently, and wither.

All of them are explained in detail in the End-game POB config explanation.

Power charges: Our builds have many ways to gain power charges with increased duration. As a result, our power charges are full ALL TIME in combat (as can be seen in video). Therefore, we checked the box to indicate power charges are full.

Endurance charges: We can always be at full endurance charges thanks to our "gain 1 endurance charge every second on hit" mod.

Fortified (10 stacks): this is provided by our animate guardian's kingmaker weapon

Leeching energy shield: If energy shield isn't full and we are dealing spell damage, then we are leeching energy shield. This is because of the energy shield leech node we have on the tree.

on consecrated ground: This is related to our bottled faith, the consecrated ground has screen-wide radius so that both boss and us almost always stand on it.

Crit recently: We have 100% crit chance, so definitely crit recently

# times we've been hit recently is 1: since we are not investing on evasion , it's almost a given that we will be hit by enemy (regardless of block or not)

fusion active: this is related to infused channeling support, we gain fusion buff after 0.6 seconds of channeling. This is a guranteed buff because our flameblast takes 0.6-0.7 seconds to cast.

wither stacks: I put as 15 to show the damage for long boss fights. The wither comes from Withering Presence. It has a screen-wide AOE (60 radius) and lasts 15 seconds. Therefore, as long as the boss is within our screen, we are stacking wither consistently on bosses. I know many other chaos builds rely on wither totem to apply 2 second wither and cannot sustain wither properly. But this isn't the case for our build.

Custom Modifier: Culling Strike and +50% to crit multi. Both stats are provided by animate guardian's kingmaker