Block incin and stuff *Discontinued due to Incinerate nerfs*

7th October
- Why Grace instead of Anger

3rd October
- Updated minmaxed version of the build
- Added level 100 video
- Changed gem links setup a bit, showing the versality and different options
- Update Auras section

16th July
- Revamped Leveling section
- Added my current gear in Tempest
- Updated some wording regarding the jewels (2 -> 1 block)

12th July
- Updated passive tree link

5th July
- Updated Passive Tree section

3rd July
- Removed the cost of the items in the gearing section. I have no clue at this point how the economy will look once Awakening is released, I don't want to mislead anyone.

1st July
- Added new Uber Vaals and Uber Trio kills in the beta
- Added picture of my gear in the Beta

27th June
- Updated gear & links
- Updated auras
- Added section for an absolute min-maxed HC version of the build
- Added Jewels section, how to craft? Which base to use? Which are the best jewels for me?

VIDEOS


ALLURING ABYSS VIDEOS




CLEARSPEED VIDEOS

These are the layers of defense that we utilize (at my current level 89):
- 75% Spell Block
- 67% Block (By abusing Jewel sockets and 2% shield block jewels)
- Mind Over Matter with 5217 HP and 2915 Energy Shield
- 8674 Armor with Granite Flask active
- Fortify (20% less damage taken)
- Arctic Armor (13% less Physical damage taken, 12% less Fire damage taken)
- Insane mobility via the new desync-free Whirling Blades (WHAT A GODLY ABILITY WITHOUT DESYNC YOU ARE)
- Insane CC'ng capabilities. CWDT - Temporal Chains, Chill from Arctic Armor, and Abyssal Cry. I passively slow enemies movement speed, attack speed and cast speed by 68% with Temp Chains and Chill. When I cast Abyssal Cry, the monsters movement speed is slowed by 68% + 26% + 0.8% per nearby enemy = 94.8%. The monsters barely move, you can clear the Alluring Abyss mobs simply by dancing around while you watch the insanely fast snakes struggling to move, even if they start an attack animation, it takes them about 2 seconds to finish it.

Picture of the stats in-game

Updated tree to official site

Feel free to experiement, jewels are very unexplored territory for the most part :)

This is my current tree, at level 85 in Tempest

First off, the current mana cost of my Incinerate is 289 mana per second, with the nerfs to Clarity and the changes to Eldritch Battery, it is almost impossible to reach that number unless you invest heavily into mana regen. Even with 2 expensive Elreon rings, I'd still require around 150 mana per second, which again, requires Clarity and heavy investment on Mana regen.

This makes Incinerate the perfect candidate to utilize the new Eldritch Battery, and completely ignore Mana from the tree and gear, which also allows us to fully reserve our mana orb.

MIND OVER MATTER + ELDRITCH BATTERY: The Energy Shield will protect your Mana, that means that Mind over Matter redirected damage will go to ES.

DUAL SUSTAIN: We use the Life Leech gem combined with Ghost Reaver to solidify our ES pool, we are able to leech 20% of our maximum ES, which currently is 583 ES per second. We use the Life gained for each enemy hit by your Spells modifier from the Cybil's Paw to solidify our HP pool, combined with a high cast speed Incinerate and a Level 1 CWDT with GMP Ball lightning and Glacial Cascade or Firestorm (Firestorm clutters the screen too much, if you're playing with a party or have FPS trouble, use Glacial Cascade), the Cybil's Paw is passively recovering our HP, together with 5.4% Life regen from tree, we achieve insane HP sustain without any Life Leech.

HIT & RUN TACTICS: Because Cybil's Paw is a claw, I'm able to use a 4link with Whirling Blades - Fortify - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic. This is by far the favourite part of the build, the synergy is insane with the rest of the build, with no desync, we can get out of any sticky situation by using whirling blades with blood magic and fortify, which means we will take 20% less damage, while our Life is being passively recovered by 5.4% life regen and the CWDT setup. Because we are using Blood Magic and not spending ES, the new ES recharge delay kicks in very quickly, replenishing our ES pool while we whirling around.

- Weapon: Cybil's Paw. BiS, for the reasons explained in the previous section.
- Shield: Rathpith Globe. BiS, nice spell block and damage boost, it gives a good amount of life and ES too.
- Amulet: Stone of Lazhwar. BiS, spell block and cast speed.
- Boots: Rainbowstride. Not BiS, when you get enough base block to cap spell block just with Lazhwar/Rathpit, this boots will be obsolete, and you can change them for good rare ones.
- Helm: Rare helm with Life and Resists, preferrably ES base with 150+ ES
- Rings: Rare rings with life/es and resists, any trash ring with some life and resists will do the trick, cast speed is a bonus, the expensive option is to craft max ES% from Elreon with a good 70+ life ring.
- Belt: Rare belt with life/es and resists.
- Gloves: Rare gloves with life and resists, personally I use armor/ev gloves, because is Beta and needed a cheap item for the Whirling blade colors (2R2G)
- Chest: Rare chest with HP and ES, 5L recommended, 6L not necessary.

We use Anger (50% Reservation) and Herald of Ice/Arctic Armour (25% Reservation each). With re-buffs to damage effectiveness, and the changes to Tempest Shield, Anger/HoI/AA combo becomes a no-brainer.

For HC play, I use Grace/Arctic Armor/Purity of Lightning with a Enlighten 3 and 1 4% reduced aura cost node.

If you have a Coil you can use Anger and double heralds for more DPS if you wish.

- 3L: Cast when Damage Taken Level 3 - Temporal Chains Level 7 - Herald of ice
- 3L: Tempest Shield - Blind - Arctic Armor
- 4L: Cast when Damage Taken Level 1 - Ball Lightning Level 1 - Firestorm/Glacial Cascade/Arctic Breath Level 1 - GMP
- 4L: Whirling Blades - Fortify - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic
- 4L: Abyssal Cry - Increased AOE - Vaal Haste - Increased Duration
- 5/6L: Incinerate - Spell Echo - Life Leech - Fire Penetration - LMP/Slower Projectiles - Faster Casting (6L Option)

The only mandatory links, in my opinion, is the 4L whirling blades, 4L CWDT setup and ofc Incinerate 5/6l, as you long as you have the auras socketed, the rest of links are optional.

My current setup of my level 100 Tempest Character:

- 3L: Whirling Blades - Fortify - Faster Attacks
- 3L: Cast when Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Enduring Cry
- 4L: Cast when Damage Taken Level 1 - Ball Lightning Level 1 - Firestorm/Glacial Cascade/Arctic Breath Level 1 - GMP
- 4L: Enlighten - Purity of Lightning - Grace - Arctic Armour
- 4L: Tempest Shield - Curse on Hit - Enfeeble - Chain/Blind
- 5/6L: Incinerate - Spell Echo - Life Leech - Fire Penetration - LMP/Slower Projectiles - Faster Casting (6L Option)

Anger would give me some nice juicy tooltip DPS, but I don't give a fuck, why?

I have 7000 evasion with Grace and 68% block. 7000 evasion gives me roughly 38% chance to evade according to my character sheet in-game, this number is calculated with the average expected accuracy that a white monster has, which means it can be higher or lower. The actual chance to be hit by a monster is given by the following formula:

Chance to hit = Attacker's Accuracy / ( Attacker's Accuracy + ((Defender's Evasion / 4) ^ 0.8) )

Using this, we can find out the average accuracy that a monster has, which is roughly, somewhere between 500 and 600. Because my build uses Tempest shield - 20/20 Curse on Hit - 20/20 Enfeeble, that reduces monster accuracy by 47 * 1.1 = 51,7%, which means a monster with 600 accuracy would have around 310 instead. Having 7000 evasion, this reduces the average monster chance to hit to 44%, instead of 62% without Enfeeble.

Lets remember the order in which the game calculates if a mob hits you or not, this is very important:

1. Dodge chance is rolled
2. Evasion is rolled
3. Block is rolled

Now lets see what happens when we engage in combat, remember we have 7000 evasion and 68% block:

1. When you engage a monster or group of monsters, the game assigns a random entropy number to your character, from 0 to 99. For examples sake, lets say you roll 72 entropy.
2. We are fighting a group of 4 monsters, one of them is an Accurate blue monster. Blue monster has a 75% chance to hit, white monster A has a 59% chance to hit, white monster B has a 64% chance to hit, white monster C has a 61% chance to hit,
3. The blue mob lands an attack, 75 + 72 = 147, because the value exceeds 100, he scores a hit, 100 is substracted from your entropy, and is now sitting at 47. Block is rolled next, and we block it, thus no damage is taken, HOWEVER, our entropy is sitting at 47, instead of 72, in addition to that, every mob in the vicinity is enfeebled, suddenly our chance to avoid damage is dramatically increased.
4. White monster A new chance to hit with enfeeble is 41%, 47 + 41 = 88, because the value doesn't exceed 100, we evade the attack, no damage is taken and block is not rolled
5. White monster B new chance to hit with enfeeble is around 46%, 88 + 46 = 134, scores a hit, new entropy value is 34, the monster had a 15% chance to crit, and he lands a crit, the game rolls again, with a 46% of the crit actually happening, this is independant of entropy. We have a 68% chance to block the critical strike that went through our evasion, at this point its pure RNG, most likely we will block it since 68% is pretty high chance.
6. White monster C chance to hit is 43%, 34 + 43 = 77, attack is evaded, no block is rolled.

If you wanna make this even more absurd, add Blind to the mix, Blind reduces chance to hit by 50%, so the enfeebled white monster B chance to hit would be 1 - ( 0.5 * ( 1 - 0.54 ) ) = 77% chance to evade, which means 23% chance to hit instead of 46%.

So yeah, fuck Anger, subpar aura for this build. If you can stand still casting vs any number and size of mobs, be it 4 beyond bosses on screen + Abaxoth or whatever, my effective DPS will be much higher than your shitty ultra-DPS character.

I'll describe the process I used both pre-wipe and post-wipe to craft my jewels:

You can start finding jewels from random drops at level 20 and above. There is 3 types of jewels: crimson (strength based), viridian (dexterity based), cobalt (intelligence based). There is no ilvl requirement or different tiers of mods for the jewels, a level 20 jewel can potentially be as good as a itemlevel 80 jewel, this is important.

While you level, you should collect every blue and rare Cobalt jewel you find, those are the ones we need, the chance to roll 1% shield block and 7% maximum HP are the same for every type of jewel, however, Cobalt jewels have a way higher chance of rolling Spellcasting related mods such as Spell damage, Fire damage, Cast speed, etc.

Once you are high enough level, and can farm alterations comfortably, you should use your alterations in the cobalt jewels you have been accumulating, trying to roll either 2% chance to block with shield (NOT SPELL BLOCK, we don't need spell block) or 8% increased maximum life, they are both prefixes, meaning that a blue jewel will either have 2% block or 8% life but not both. After you have a jewel with one of this prefixes (the suffix doesnt really matter), we regal them and hope we get either Life or a damage mod.

And thats pretty much it, once you are at that point, is a rinse and repeat process, progressively crafting better jewels.

Don't ever Exalt a jewel, doesnt matter how good you think it is, I don't think its ever justified to use an Exalted orb on a jewel unless you're ultra rich and/or bored.

If you regal a 1% shield block jewel and you get 7% life, you already have 2 prefixes, which is the maximum, exalting for a suffix is a very bad idea, as suffix are generally "trash" stats like +15 intelligence or resists.

You have several leveling options, I will post the ones I personally have experience with (I've leveled tihs character 4 times now, 2 in beta, 2 in Tempest, because I ripped at level 68 the first time to an accidental Alt-Tab :D). Note that this leveling tips are oriented towards Hardcore play, so you will see a lot of life nodes.

LEVELING AS FRESH CHARACTER: DUAL FLAME TOTEM ROUTE

You basically want to rush Ancestral Bond while getting as much HP as possible, the goal is to be ready for Normal Act 4 at Level 38, and kill Malachai safely with your double totems and a ton of HP, and good res from Sentinel and the Templar node

Tree at the end of Act 4 ~ Level 38

Then comes Cruel, and its basically the same thing, you faceroll the content getting ready for Act 4 Cruel, so you want, guess what? more HP! and some efficient damage

Tree at the end of Act 4 Cruel - Level ~59

Moving onwards, now you are sitting in Lioneyes Watch, feeling good after beating the retardedly stressing Malachai fight, you should have an overkill amount of HP for the content at this point, and very good Flame totem damage, so this is what I did afterwards:

Tree while leveling in Merciless

Basically you want to travel through the tree to get ready to make the change, many people ask me when to make the change and is a question that is hard to answer, generally you want at least 600-700 ES before making the change, if you're playing HC, don't sacrifice anything for Life, if you only have a 4L, you can use Incinerate - Spell Echo - Life Leech - Faster proj/Fire pen, and work towards a 5L at least, it helps a lot.

LEVELING AS FRESH CHARACTER: BLOOD MAGIC INCINERATE (NOT PERSONALLY TESTED)

This is something I haven't tried, but some people have pointed it out to me and it sounds okay for leveling, this is my rough guess to how the tree should look like while leveling:

Blood Magic tree

Ton of life, getting the damage that is around, ton of life regen, should do the trick, if anyone has leveled as BM incinerate can share a tree, would be fine and I can update this.

LEVELING WITH ACCESS TO ONE ELREON RING: INCINERATE FROM LEVEL 12

This is how I leveled the 2nd time in Tempest, I borrowed a -7 mana cost to skills two stone ring from a friend, and I used Incinerate + Flame totem from level 12, and its really good, you will have a 0-2 mana cost Incinerate until you have a 4L, and you will pretty much faceroll everything with it, this leveling combo is really broken in my opinion.

When you 4L Incinerate, your Incinerate will cost around ~6 mana, you will need a Hallowed Mana Flask, this flasks are really good, they only take 4 charges per sip, and they can sustain Incinerate with 1 elreon ring, on their own, until level 70+ or until you get a 5L, which at that point you should be making the change to EB/GR/MOM anyway.

Tree at the end of Act 4 Normal
Tree at the end of Act 4 Cruel
Tree while leveling in Merciless

Leveling this way, you will eventually make the change to the normal build in a natural way, as you get the gear, at some point lose the Elreon ring (unless is really good of course) for a strong HP/ES ring.

Normal: Help Oak
Cruel: Kill all
Merciless: Kill all

With the changes to the mapping system in The Awakening (Only bosses dropping +2 Level maps). The days of spamming alts until packsize/magic monsters and then run blue are GONE, praise GGG. The way you build your character actually MATTERS now, if your build cannot reliably kill bosses and is unable to do most of the hard mods in The Awakening, your build is USELESS, you will get stuck in Level 71-72 maps without being able to progress or level. You will have to run 100+ quantity maps, often vaaling them hoping for a +1, if you want to be able to sustain Level 76+ Mapping pool. You will have to face all the bosses, you will have to kill Torture Chamber Boss, you will have to kill Tunneltrap in a level 75 Orchard, you will have to kill Weaver in the Jungle Valley, and so on and so forth, often with dangerous mods in the map.

With that said, this builds only "impossible-to-run" combination of mods is No regen/Blood magic, if they are not together, they are easily doable. No regen has no impact on us, except losing the HP regen which we can live without. For blood magic, we just need to remove our auras, and the life regen will take care of the mana cost easily.

Thanks to high block values and the rest of our layered defense, stacked damage mods like %Increased Monster damage or combinations like - Max Resists with %Extra fire/cold/light damage are no problem for us. We stand strong against any type of retarded shit GGG wants to throw at us.

You can troll your friends by stacking damage mods, watch them die throughout the map while you hold your Incinerate right click and you press the occasional flask button, from time to time, when a mob manages to hit you.

Currently I'm level 89 in the Beta, mostly soloing, and I was able to reach Level 79 maps on my own, running the most suicidal shit i've ever had to run in PoE in order to sustain.

This are the stats that are possible to achieve with high enough levels and GG jewels (1% shield block/7% Life in every socket):

-6700+ HP (9600+ EHP)
-2.5k+ ES
-68% Block
-75% Spell Block
-30% Of Physical Damage taken as Lightning Damage
-33% Less Physical Damage Taken
-32% Less Fire Damage Taken
-7k Evasion
-Tempest Shield/Curse on Hit 20/20 Enfeeble

Just to put it in perspective, the odd time that Uber Atziri spears would be able to hit us, and worst case scenario, she can crit for upwards of 6.500 damage with it, lets see what would happen with this stats:

1. Lightning Coil is applied, which means 4550 Physical Damage, 1950 Lightning Damage
2. Armor is applied, with granite active, it would be:

Damage Reduction Factor = Armour / ( Armour + (12 * Damage) )
DRF = 10000 / (10000 + (12 * 4550)) = 0.15479
4550 * 0,8452 = 3845 physical damage after Armour

3.After Fortify: 3845 * 0.8 = 3076

4.After Arctic Armor: 3076 * 0.87 = 2676 total physical damage taken

5. 1950 Lightning damage * 0.21 = 409

6. After Fortify 409 * 0.8 = 327 total Lightning damage taken

7. 3003 total damage taken, MoM is applied, 3003 * 0.7 = 2102 damage to life, 3003 * 0.3 = 900 damage to ES


Passive tree

GEAR:

Cybils, Well rolled Rathpith Globe, GG EVA/ES or high ES Boots, GG EVA or high ES Helm, 6L Lightning Coil, GG HP/ES rings with ES% Elreon craft, Block corrupted Stone of Lazhwar

USEFUL CYBILS CORRUPTIONS:

Culling Strike (Thats it, rest are useless)