[3.6] The Cursed Hierophant - Flameblast Totems FTW

Pros:

+ INSANE DAMAGE (How much DPS, you ask? I have no clue. It's alot.)
+ BUDGET FRIENDLY (kinda, not really)
+ TAKES YOU FAR INTO END-GAME (can you go all the way?? I can't. Could be a personal problem.)
+ HIGH MOBILITY AND SAFETY (you probably won't die. Who am I kidding? You're gonna die.)
+ CURSE IMMUNE (basically)
+ MAP MODS? WHAT ARE THOSE? (Don't worry about it. You can easily run highly modded maps up to T16 with this.)

Cons:

- LOTS of curse icons run onto the screen
- Kikazaru's take up both ring slots

Templar - Hierophant

Passive Skill Tree @ LVL 93 (UPDATED FOR 3.6)

Ascendancy Points: Pursuit of Faith - Ritual of Awakening - Illuminated Devotion - Arcane Blessing


Bandits: I chose to help Alira to get +15% to all resists. If you can acquire some gear with high resists, you could kill all the bandits (I probably should have done this. Learn from my mistakes.)


SKILL TREE EXPLANATION

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Blood Magic
You'll want to focus on armour/life/life regen and spell/fire/totem damage for the majority. Since you'll be using a Tukohama's Fortress, you'll have Blood Magic anyway, so grab the extra 35% life after the BM keystone. Other than that, make sure to grab both of the Area Damage nodes (Amplify and Blast Radius) to get as much area damage in your blasts as possible and grab the Elemental Overload keystone fo sho. For everything else, the tree is pretty self-explanatory. You'll need some spell, elemental and fire damage, along with a bit of crit chance for the EO (20% will cover it). Also, grab as many armour nodes along the way to make yourself less squishy. OH, and grab a minimum of 2 jewel slots. You're gonna need 'em (more on that in the next section).

Alternative Setup for MoM
I decided to give this a try and it seems to be a lot more stable defensively. If you want to go this route, ditch the Tukohama's Fortress for a Rise Of The Phoenix shield and switch your helm with The Devouring Diadem. On the tree, replace the blood magic passives with the Mind over Matter passives and swap out the passives leading up to Bloodless with Arcane Will.

Self-Flagellation - This is VERY important! It gives you up to 20% more damage per curse on you and allows an additional curse. With Soul Mantle and all those totems, you'll be getting cursed A LOT and this gem of a jewel makes living with curses feel like a walk in the park.

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Clear Mind - Since you'll have Blood Magic, this is an easy way to earn yourself anywhere from 40% to 60% extra spell damage. Isn't that nice?

For any additional Jewel slots, go for life, cast speed, resists or whatever you feel like you need. I'm not your mother and i'm not going to hold your hand through this.

Flasks

Weapon - Doryani's Catalyst

This is the best I could find for this lovely build of mine. It adds a butt-ton of elemental damage, as well as some cast speed, global crit chance, and a tiny bit of elemental leech (every bit helps).

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Off-Hand - Tukohama's Fortress / Rise of the Phoenix

Tukohama's Fortress is just badass... It gives you 40% increased totem damage, an additional totem, and +300 armour for each totem that is active. The life isn't too shabby on it either. This is also what gives you Blood Magic, so make sure you're ready before you equip this magnificent beast of a shield. If you'd rather go Mind over Matter, use...

Rise of the Phoenix. It adds a good amount of life and life regen and also adds +5 to your max fire resists. It's a pretty good option if I do say so myself. With the Purity of Fire from Doryani's Delusion boots you can get your fire resists maxed at 86%. Because fuck the guardian of the phoenix.

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Chest - Soul Mantle

The chest that makes the build. With this, you'll get ANOTHER totem (WOW! You must be out of your damn mind). This is also where your curses are generated from. Everytime a totem dies, you get a curse, so keep casting totems to your hearts content! The spell damage is a nice little boost too. The main thing that makes this awesome is the lvl 20 Spell Totem which basically makes it a 7-link. You'll just have to 6-link it, first... (sorry)

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Helm - The Gull / The Devouring Diadem

I just love this thing. The life is decent and it gives you your cold resistance, but those shrines just add a new level of fun and excitement to the gameplay. Since you're using totems, you'll be depending on secondary skills to create the shrines (which helps when you want to save your shrines for an opportune moment). Plus, it makes your character look rather silly and I like that.

For the MoM version, use The Devouring Diadem. It gives you Eldritch Battery, adds +1 to socketed gems (good place to put Armageddon Brand), Feast of Flesh (gives you life, mana, and ES every 5 seconds from corpses) and a 10% chance to fill your ES whenever you use a skill. It also reduces 20% of any reserved skills socketed in it, but that isn't really necessary with this build (you could take advantage of this if you want to work it out).

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Gloves - Wyrmsign

I like Rampage. These gloves give you Rampage. Honestly, this is just a personal preference for me. If you can find some better gloves with cast speed or life or resists or whatever you want, that's fine by me. This is a guide. You do what you want. I'm not your mother.

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Boots - Gang's Momentum / Doryani's Delusion

This is where your movement speed and fire resistances come from. Additionally, the Chance to Ignite and Increased Damage against Ignited Enemies add a nice bit of boost to your already insane amount of damage. The armour ain't bad either.

Become one with the unstoppable flame.

With a higher budget, you can upgrade to Doryani's Delusion. It doesn't have any fire resists on the gear itself, but it does grant lvl 25 Purity of Fire (which is great for those extra firey boss fights). Make sure you have fire resists elsewhere before switching unless you want to keep the aura on all the time. It also gives you a lot of armour, life, flat fire damage, and more movement speed.

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Amulet - Rare

This is where you find your own amulet. It depends on where your stats are lacking. At the time of this writing, I use a Turquoise Amulet (needed some more Dex) with Cast Speed, Life, and Cold and Lightning resists.

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Rings - Kikazaru (x2)

Yea, you need 2 of them. How else are you going to reduce all of those curse effects (80% to be exact)?? Also, this is where your lightning resists come from and you'll get a nice chunk of life regeneration out of these as you level up higher and higher. If you use MoM, they also give you a lot of mana regen.

Hear no evil.

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Belt - The Flow Untethered

I originally bought this just to keep the trend of ridiculous uniques going and I kind of fell in love with it. It has some interesting (and useful) stats on it also grants a harbinger minion that alters the passage of time in an area around you (so you're actually moving faster to enemies outside of that range). The cast speed, life/ES recovery, and decreased cooldown and debuff time is a nice bonus too. Cyclopean Coil is another solid option for the life and damage bonuses, but the ailment immunity is wasted here. You're better off finding a decent rare belt or stygian vise.

Edit: Making the switch to Doryani's Delusion, I had to replace this with a rare belt to get my fire resistance back up. I didn't want to, but it was worth it.

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Flasks

The Wise Oak will give you a nice boost to DPS if your fire resistance is the highest of the three. If you can, try to get cold and lightning resistances to be equal (I did, you can too) so you can benefit from the reduced damage taken on both. Rumi's will give you some extra armour and block chance, so use it. For movement speed, I like using a Silver Flask, so I suggest using Cinderswallow Urn for the added bonuses to damage and life recovery it gives you. For the other slots, I would recommend using Jade and/or a Stibnite flask to make up for your low amount of evasion and then an instant recovery life flask (preferably with poison immunity).

Spell Totem + Flameblast (Soul Mantle) - Faster Casting - Concentrated Effect - Controlled Destruction - Elemental Focus - Multiple Totems

I've changed this setup (along with other things) since I originally posted this. I think (even though it wasn't needed or even an option at the time) using Multiple Totems support goes along better with the essence of what this build is. The extra totems grant more armour and lose a little base damage, but I think the extra blasts make up for it. At least it seems that way from how quickly I've been killing things. I'm still experimenting with it..

Armageddon Brand - Combustion - Concentrated Effect - Burning Immolate/Burning Damage/Empower

Think of this spell as your bread and butter right here. Using this, you will be generating Elemental Overload and burning the ever-loving crap out of everything in sight. If you're using The Gull, this is how you generate shrines as well.

CWDT Setup

Molten Shell - Stone Golem - Blind/Volatile Dead/Cremation

Immortal Call - Enfeeble - Increased Duration

These are your CWDT gems. Let them cast on their own so you don't have to!

Mobility Setup

Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Fortify

For this, you'll want the faster attacks so you can move EVEN FASTER. Also, Fortify makes you less squishy.

Bodyswap - Faster Casting

I really like this skill. I don't care what other people think. It works well for traversing gaps and it does a nice bit o' damage too. It also comes in handy when you need to dodge or escape from a sticky situation.

Aura Setup

Auras? AURAS?! WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING AURAS!

Golems

Lightning Golem if you want speed, Stone Golem if you want life regen, or Chaos Golem if you need more phys reduction.

Warcry

Enduring Cry - You'll need this if you're using Wyrmsign in order to get the Rampage started. Even if you aren't using Wyrmsign, it's pretty useful for physical damage mitigation and life regeneration.


Pantheon

I use Solaris and Tukohama, but the pantheon choices may change depending on your situation.