[3.19] Making Infernal Blow work (Strength Stacking)

If you like screen wide explosions and you aren’t afraid of playing something completely off meta, this built might be something for you.
There are not too many options for explosions. While everybody knows about Profane Bloom and Herald of Ice, almost nobody cares about Infernal Blow. I stumbled upon it during Delirium Only SSF Challenge League while just play-testing all kind of stuff. Surprisingly it turned out to be pretty effective in delirium’s dense pack size and much more important, it was great fun.

In the end unfortunately, my first attempt fell a bit short in bossing situations. Partly because of SSF, partly because of my wrong approach as a Staff Slayer). But I generally liked the skill and always intended to give it another shot.

Now in Kalandra, I found s neat 100 STR, 65 Life, 80 RES, 130 Mana-Reg ring with no flipside and I ask myself: how about a Strength-Stacker?

So, I picked up a common Strength-Stacking skill tree from poeninja and made some adjustments to fit Infernal Blow – and it looked pretty damn good on paper. Then I went to work.

Now I’m done with the season and looking back, I’m quite happy with the final result and it is was so much fun to play. This built combines satisfying clear, good single target damage and decent defence. You can take on all non-uber content with relatively ease. In my late setup, I was farming 80% delirious maps and all-at-once Invitations and had a blast.

I was positively surprised by the singe target damage, which always felt more than enough.
On the other hand, the expected more thickness, considering all given defensive stats. In this regard, I was a bit disappointed.

Overall, I would rate the built a 7/10.

Enough introduction. Let’s get into it.


Pastebin
https://pastebin.com/b6qe02rU


Infernal Blow:
If you read just the basic description from the gem itself, you might be confused. This is one of those skills, where you are better off reading the wiki.

This is a strike skill, which applies 2 debuffs on hit:

- the first debuff can stack up to six times and creates an explosion that deals damage based on your weapon damage when it reaches full charges or when it expires. This explosion is considered a new hit, so this is extra damage on thick targets. Note that the stacking debuff is applied per attack, not per hit, so it is not advisable to use Multistrike.
- The second debuff causes the enemy to create an explosion that deals damage scaling with its maximum life when it dies. Infernal Blows does not need to be the killing blow!

The real explosive fun starts, when you strike multiple additional Targets. Doing so, you quickly stack and spread the debuffs to large packs, leading to a fiery chain reaction. Add Herald of Ash to the mix to additionally spread the overkill damage, and any pack will blow up in a very satisfying inferno.


The fundamentals:
- Default strength stacking with Brutus Lead Sprinkler + Iron Fortress + Iron Will + Crown of Eyes. A well-established, highly effective combination.
- Undeniable (gain ACC twice your Strength + Attack speed per 150 ACC). Fixes your hit chance und attack speed
- Unbreakable (8% of Armour applies to ele fmg taken from hits). Fixes your elemental defence, but you really need to stack your armour up to feel its impact.
- Unflinching + Unyielding (Optional) for endurance charges and more AE for our explosions.
- Hinekora, Deaths Fury (Forbidden Flesh/Flame) for 10% Strength und Cover in Ash on Hit. Those are usually cheap!


Key Items
- Brutus Lead Sprinkler, with either crit, speed or fire damage corruption
- The Iron Fortress body armour
- Crown of Eyes helmet with Reservation Efficacy
- Split Personality jewels with STR/INT and STR/Dex. This will fix your DEX and INT requirements
- Searing Exarch gloves with strike additional targets
- Shaper-Shield with mana reservation efficacy


Skills
- Primary: Infernal Blow + ELE Attacks + Fire Pen + Crit Strikes + Crit Dmg + Ele Focus
- Secondary: Ancestral Warchief + Ancestral Protector + Multi Totem + Culling Strike
- Mark on Hit + Assassin’s Mark


Auras
- Determination
- Purity of Elements
- Herald of Ash
- Precision
- Defiance Banner


Utility
- Leap Slam
- Vaal Molten Shell
- Blood Rage


Damage:
- With 2000 Strength you sit on ~ 7-8 Million Shaper DPS (Melee Hit + Explosions)
- You can achieve 100% Crit Chance and 500% Crit Multi


Defence:
- 6.500+ Life
- 90% Phys reduction
- 66% Attack Block
- Fortify
- Immune to elemental ailments
- Very reliable stun with good duration, comparable to freeze. Was a surprise for me
- Good flask sustain through capped crit rate
- Unbreakable key notable


Pros:
- super fun screen wide chain explosions
- good balance between offence and defence
- very straight forward passive tree with many jewel sockets for flexible gearing
- affordable mandatory uniques


Cons
- as melee as it gets. No range whatsoever, with all consequences
- Strength stacking gear is pricy
- Expensive Cluster Jewels (Overlord for Fortify)
- Mediocre sustain. It’s hard to squeeze life reg to your gear while stacking strength
- No spell block, nor spell suppression. Elemental reduction is not enough for uebers.


Things that greatly improve gameplay (in order of importance)
- strike additional targets.
- Attack speed, on any possible slot
- Plant your totems. They massively increase your damage
- Chaos resistance, seems to be mandatory since 3.19
- Armour. Lots of it. Otherwise, you won’t profit much from Unbreakable
- Some AOE to juice up your explosions.
- If I would play to LV100, I’d go for more MAX Res

I was also looking for a STR stack with explosions, thank you for the idea. I'll think about if I can, somehow, fit CI and armour stack into this. I don't need to get to ubers or anything above T16, so maybe I should be fine?

While you can certainly play infernal blow as armour stacker, I see no way to combine both str + AR stacking, which is based on Replica Dreamfeathers.
If you are interested in AR stacking, there is an older but very detailed (multi-purpose) template on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VBUP8juI44