[3.1][HC] Scorching RF Inquisitor - cheap starter build - ZiggyD

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tubsi wrote:

last time i played was 2013, thanks for the build 91 so far.

Spoiler

How good is Devoto's working for you compared to a helm with res,life and mana.

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TheAngryAnchor wrote:

Does anyone think Doon Cuebiyari Vaal Sceptre is good for this build?
And when should I take Pyre Ring off?

Although Doon Cuebiyari is popular for pure RF Marauders who end up with 800+ Str, it isn't much good in this build because you'll only end up with 300-400 strength.

Pyre ring is solid in the early game, but once you can get an essence worm or a solid ring with life, mana and mana regen that will be a better choice.

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SolemnKnight wrote:

How good is Devoto's working for you compared to a helm with res,life and mana.

I've gotta say Devoto's is a pretty amazing quality of life improvement for this build, especially in terms of farming relatively easy content. The fact that it has a huge chunk of dex is also a big deal.

i would assume devotos fills the same roll a bright beak would fill

i went the cheap route this time for my gear

Time to discuss weapons!

The default weapon of choice of this build is a Doryani's scepter.
I've already bought a nice one, with max rolls for AS, CS and elemental damage, making it 132% damage, 15% Attack speed and 10% Cast speed. Of those stats, only the CS isnt that important, since all it does is stack and swing your SR a bit faster. Additionally, a Doryani gives 30-40 extra crit chance, with the added bonus of triggering your Elemental overload more reliable. All in all, a decent choice for our main hand.

There is however, a hidden gem in 3.0 that isnt that well known yet, which, while expensive, can net you a really fine upgrade to your Doryani's. Itemlevel 84 scepters got a new prefix in 3.0, doing a whooping max of 79% fire damage. Slap that on a 40% implicit elemental damage void scepter, and thats almost 120% with just one mod! Then, if you multimod it, you can even add attack speed, spell damage, fire damage, Damage over time, leading to something that leaves Doryani looking like a twig.

So lets take a look at how our best case scepter looks like:
Implicit: 40% increased elemental damage
Prefix 1: Xoph's fire (T1) - 79% increased fire damage
Prefix 2: Crafted Damage over time (Leo 3) - 30% increased DoT
Prefix 3: Crafted Spell damage (Caterina 6) - 44% increased spell damage (only for SR, not RF)
Suffix 1: Can have multiple crafted mods (Elreon 8) -
Suffix 2: Attack speed (Vagan 6) - 15% Attack speed
Suffix 3: Fire Damage (catarina 5) - 19% increased fire damage

This gives us a 212% increased damage (168%RF) 15% Attack speed Scepter. Sounds good? Read on!

The catch is that getting that scepter isnt easy nor reliable (and edit: really hard). You need to start with a ilvl 84 opal or void scepter (both with 40% elemental implicit) and roll the Xoph's mod on it. Sounds easy? It's not. According to the wiki, the weight of this prefix is 6. For comparison, most other mods on the scepter have a weight of 800-1000, making the mod extremely rare. The odds, according to my calculations, seem to be 0.00647% for a give prefix to be Xoph's

And if you finally got it? You need to have it on a rare scepter with no garbage mods. So you have to regal it, to make it a rare. After this, there are two way to get rid of those pesky mods.
1. Orb of Annulment: Feeling lucky? Slam!
2. Craft "prefixes cannot be changed" on it with Haku lvl 8, and scour all suffixes away (only works if you dont have garbage prefixes)

So, this little project will cost you approximately 15 thousand Alts, and 4 exalt for master crafting. Besides that, you need to level Elreon and Haku to 8, and Leo (Who?!?) to 3. But in the end, the extra damage is worth it!

Happy rolling!

Edit: calculating the odds places Xoph's to be about 0.00647% for a give prefix. Ouch :)
This upgrade is more expensive than i thought :)

way more expensive, plus global crit is actually quite important for making the elemental overload procs feel comfortable.

Can anyone look at my gear and tell me what I can improve? Atm im sitting at 4k life, and cant even afford to remove the Foible or I start degening mana.

A few more words about this build, currently sitting at about 6.2k life and 2k unreserved mana.

My gear:


This is my speed / profit setup, I also have a Brightpeak if it's 0 % monster life mod, so I can just blaze through everything with 1000 rampage stacks, and get decent loot. Even on red maps, I do not feel that I need to stop to scorch anything in general, which feels fantastic. I've crafted on my main setup a ring with some minor lightning damage, so merely shieldcharging everywhere does the trick of keeping the buffs active, even having a nonexistant uptime of Arcane Surge on higher maps has not felt an issue. I run Bloodrage with Bisco's belt, that combined with Rotgut's flask and you'll reach terminal velocity, very, very fast. You could also use a Formless Inferno if you fear physical damage, I recently swapped it off in favour of some more EHP, and I feel that using Inferno is overkill with my +1 Endurance Charge setup (I run Enduring Cry).

However, for T16 maps and Shaper, I have a different setup which has served me very well.
Here's my gear for that:



I swap my Bisco's for +1 Curse amulet (to be replaced soon), take off Bloodrage and Rotgut's, make my Scorching 6 linked again with Swift Affliction, and swap out my overall gear to give me my highest effective life pool and damage. I take in Witchfire Brew, with +1 Curse ammy I feel it is truly a must for this build, the damage loss without it was noticeable ( I did guardian's and Shaper without it, bleh ) , one frustrating aspect of this build. Otherwise, I have enjoyed it thus far in the league, all the way from speedclearing with Bisco's to clearing endgame content for the first time. This is THE build for me, and I am happy I picked it up.

Estoy probando la build actualmente en HC,lvl 84.

Va muy bien.

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WesleyCau wrote:

After a few more sessions vs high level content, I have to admit I was a bit too negative about Scorching Ray and the build in general. After making a handful of changes I've managed to complete almost also the content and am now farming T16 maps with close to 0% casualty rate heh!

A few things i've discovered that might be worth adding to the guide:

1) You can craft mana on ANY piece of gear via Catarina (not just hybrid ES) and it takes the spot of a less valuable prefix mod (+Armour or +Armour%). This allows you to be a lot more flexible with gear choices (and also AV and AV/EVA gear is directly better for a build that doesn't want energy shield). I squeezed out about 200 extra mana this way which really feels significant.

2) On the topic of mana, Essence worm (to hold your purity of fire) is essential in the endgame. Having 2k unreserved mana improves survivability a huge amount and you should also eventually aim to save for a L21 Purity of fire (for +1 max fire resistance cap).

3) Atziri's splendour (with + Life) is super strong for almost all content. The 100 Life/Mana on kill doesn't sound huge, but I tried running a Belly of the Beast instead and noticed a significant drop in sustain when running through tough packs. It also has low stat requirements which makes it easy to roll the colours you need. Seriously consider trying one as they pretty cheap in HSC (~10c unlinked).

4) Even in the mid to late game mana-regen is an issue especially once you start having to run -Max resist or reduced regen maps. As a result I'd definitely recommend siding with Alira for 5 Mana Regen and 15% all resist. The flat +5 mana regen if very significant even in the endgame (because it gets multiplied by all your +regen on gear/tree) and the + resists is never useless because it allows flexible choices elsewhere. Not having to run a mana flask again gives you a lot more flexibility with your utility/defensive flask options.

5) For endgame content, the +1 curse nodes make a really big difference to your damage/survivability. For trash clearing Flammability + Vulnerability allows you to walk through everything up to T15s with RF on, and being able to keep Enfeeble up on end-game bosses at all times (while still using witchfire mostly for +EV and Smoke) has improved my survival rate immensely.

I've been really reading up all your replies here and appreciate all the deep knowledge/ advice you brought up. I've been thinking of respeccing points to follow your passive tree because it looks really good and I'm just debating if I should just get to the +1 curses node.

I took kind of a weird/inefficient path for passives but looking at the curse set up looks super strong. I also have been upgrading my gear and they are okay but I can eventually do better.

Wesleycay

Can you please post your ideal gear set up for your dual curse tree.