[3.3] THIRSTY INFERNO - SOUL-EATER Clearspeed Fireball Hierophant



INTRODUCTION
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Do you want to go fast? I mean stupid, game-breaking, headhunters fast? Are you Ricky Bobby on a budget? Then go acquire a cougar and a blindfold, and read on.

Basic Idea:
Get soul eater -> clear maps with fireball -> move fast -> kill bosses / more stubborn enemies with flame surge.

How to soul eater? read mechanics!

Videos
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60-second T11 Shaped Ashen Woods w/ Sextants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w9QOpov2ok&feature=youtu.be

Basic T10 Shaped Toxic Sewers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOzvHy4HuZ4&feature=youtu.be

T14 Shaped Estuary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anu-k7zWkRM&feature=youtu.be


PoB LINK
https://pastebin.com/eV5Bcisd
Note - there is a custom jewel in the build that properly adds-in all of the stats for Hierophant that PoB does not calculate correctly

PROS
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-Tier 1 Clearspeed
-No Headhunters required
-Can do all map mods besides ele reflect
-You get big
-You get fast

CONS
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-Can not run in a party with players who use warlord's mark or assassin's mark
-Build requires Shavronne's revelation ring before it comes online
-Guardians / Elder / Shaper requires a gear swap

MECHANICS
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REQUIRED UNIQUES
Spoiler

We utilize 3 uniques to give ourselves a long duration soul-eater effect:

First and foremost, the Soulthirst belt gives us our soul eater for the duration of a flask. The longest duration flask available is the Sanctified mana flask with a "Saturated" prefix roll. With a well rolled Soulthirst (20% reduced duration of flasks) and the flask nodes in the witch starting area, our mana flask can last a whole 18.8 seconds.

But sir! how do we ensure a full duration run on a mana flask? Won't it go away if we ever reach full mana?

Enter our next two uniques: Shavronne's Revelation and the new boots Omeyocan
We use Shav's ring in our right ring slot to disable mana regeneration, and the new boots Omeyocan drain 7% of our mana per second. With around 1900-2200 maximum mana, this 7% degen is almost exactly equal to the regeneration granted by our mana flask.


But but but, with our mana at a net stand-still, how can we afford to also vomit out fireballs?
Well my boy, Hierophant's Sanctuary of Thought ascendancy node solves that for us. with 100% reduced mana cost of spells the majority of the time, and 50% the rest, this build all ties together. In practice, this is enough to make our mana pool last out the 19 seconds.


RECOMMENDED UNIQUES
Spoiler

2x Energy From Within
We are an ES build, so more ES is always a priority.


Rime Gaze is a cheap way to get a secondary 5-link for flame surge. A shaper rare with conc effect has the potential to be better. However, because Rime Gaze is so cheap, we can afford to buy a boat-load of them and hope for a nice +2 gem corruption.

Eye of Chayula
Stun immunity is nice, but no longer required for softcore with pantheon, in my opinion. HC is definitely a different story.


Shavronne's Wrapping: for people with a bit higher budget. The build can easily transition to Low-Life and gain the benefits of running Anger as well as Pain Attunement. A massive DPS boost.


Presence of Chayula: for people with the highest budget. should go without saying. Energy shield = good.


Other Things to Note
Spoiler

Soul eater actually has a few weird interactions with other things in the game. Apparently, every mob in POE only has one soul, and that can be consumed by soul eater OR by your vaal gem, not both. This means that whenever we have soul eater up, we don't gain vaal souls. However, soul eater also apparently has an effective range. If you kill something at-the-edge-of or off-screen, you will gain a vaal soul, but not a soul eater stack. In practice, this means we'll get our vaal gems up eventually, just much less frequently than normal builds.

Also a fun interaction: while you have soul eater up Eleron's "feed the totem" quest or Catarina's "feed the minion" quest will not receive souls! You ate them. You took food out of that poor Bone Rhoa's mouth. You Monster!

This build was made for clearspeed. In extended boss-fights without many adds, soulthirst and omeyocan fall pretty flat. For guardians / shaper / elder, you should swap out Omeyocan for a rare pair of boots that don't drain your mana.


FOR THE STAT ENTHUSIASTS
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10.1k Energy Shield

with 0 soul-eater stacks:
Fireball PoB DPS: 268k
Flame Surge PoB DPS: 806k
10.1k Energy Shield

with 40 soul-eater stacks:
Fireball PoB DPS: 501k
Flame Surge PoB DPS: 1.5M

GEM SETUP
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Fireball - Controlled Destruction - Combustion - Spell Echo - Greater Multiple Projectiles
Last Link: Immolate

Flame Surge - Fire Pen - Spell Echo - Elemental Focus - (Conc effect from helm)

Vaal Discipline - Vaal Clarity - Herald of Ash
(vaal clarity is useful for the rare occasion where you actually run out of mana, but are still mid-flask duration)
(vaal skills have a interesting interaction with soul eater. I talk about it a bit under mechanics)

Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Fortify - Flame Dash
(Pretty standard. I'm a fan of the essence of insanity gloves.)

Cast When Damage Taken (lvl1) - Immortal Call - Cold Snap - Enfeeble
(the new gold-standard in CWDT links. Defensive, and grants frenzy charges from cold snap)

Blood Magic - Anger
(for the low-life upgrade)

FLASKS
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Spoiler
This is a weird build when it comes to flasks, since using any flask will start over our soul-eater. However, we can still use 3-4 mana flasks with the same duration, simultaneously. Hit 'em all once and then don't touch anything for the next 19 seconds.

We'll need to actually refill our mana periodically, since the long duration mana flasks only break even while their effect is up. Bring along a Seething mana flask as well, to top your mana off before activating the rest.


GEAR
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Spoiler


LEVELING
Spoiler


What skill to use leveling: I don't recommend leveling with fireball. Without GMP and gimmicks for damage early, it makes for a bad leveling experience.

start out with freezing pulse until you get high enough level for firestorm, incinerate, or another elemental damage Area of Effect spell.

You run into a lot of generic elemental damage and AOE nodes early, so you're not just limited to fire AOE. I actually leveled with the new cold snap gem and vortex, and found it to be a lot of fun.

Level 23 skill tree - Kill all bandits
http://poeurl.com/bYFt

Level 36 skill tree - Ascendancy point goes to Illuminated Devotion, unless you're in hardcore or having trouble surviving. In that case, it goes to Divine Guidance.
http://poeurl.com/bYFu

Level 45 skill tree
http://poeurl.com/bYFB

Level 55 skill tree - Ascendancy point goes to Divine Guidance. However, if you're feeling comfortably tanky without it, then you can go Arcane Blessing instead here just for the quality of life of ele immunity and not requiring a secondary skill to proc arcane surge.
http://poeurl.com/bYFz

Level 68 skill tree - Ascendancy goes to Arcane Blessing. If you go Sanctuary of Thought before Arcane Blessing, you won't ever be able to get arcane surge the traditional way, because your spells won't cost mana anymore.
http://poeurl.com/bYVU

You really don't want to make the transition to energy shield until level 75+, and with uber lab done. Uber lab to get Sanctuary of Thought adds a ton of base ES.

Also to note: you cannot do the core unique interaction of this build (shavronne's revelation & omeyocan) until you go Energy shield. Attempting to manipulate your mana while still on Mind over Matter would not be recommended.


INSPIRATION
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When I saw the new unique Omeyocan my first thought was "that is such an unbelievably horrid unique." Naturally, there must be some way I can break the game with it.
Last edited by woonderbread#5737 on Jun 21, 2018, 12:26:44 AM
Last bumped on Sep 7, 2018, 6:38:42 PM
This looks like a sweet build, nice find!

You mention a gear swap for bosses - what is it? Or is it the rime gaze flame surge
For guardians / shaper / elder I'll usually swap out the Omeyocan boots for just some rare boots with movespeed / light res / ES. There aren't very many adds in these fights, so soul eater isn't worth managing the mana degen for the fight.

It's better quality of life for those extended type fights.
Any tips on leveling?
"
Rosslol wrote:
Any tips on leveling?


I definitely recommend going for mind over matter as soon as possible. It, and the nodes behind it, are totally worth taking early on, and have great synergy with the Hierophant's Divine Guidance. If you are having trouble surviving, then definitely get that ascendancy node first. Otherwise, go for Illuminated Devotion.

For a leveling skill: you run into a lot of AoE nodes and elemental nodes early, so your standard firestorm is always good. However, I leveled this league with the new cold snap for clear and vortex for bosses, and it was a lot of fun. Cold Snap does high damage early on, gives you free frenzy charges, and you can chain it easily with the new bypass mechanics. Once I got Spell Cascade, it had tremendous coverage as well.

I don't recommend leveling with fireball.

I did my swap from life / MoM over to CI at level 80, and then from CI to Low-Life at 90 (but that is just when I had enough currency for the LL gear).

If more people show an interest, I'll probably add a more in-depth leveling section of the guide.
Possible you could add a leveling progression skill tree?

Really interested in trying this
"
Rosslol wrote:
Any tips on leveling?


Added a short leveling section to the guide with recommended intermediate skill trees
Hey ive been doing this build and im loving it, i have a question however, why do sometimes in combat my mana just starts dropping even when im using my saturated flasks, is it soulthirst ? what is it O_o
"
Zenxpowert123 wrote:
Hey ive been doing this build and im loving it, i have a question however, why do sometimes in combat my mana just starts dropping even when im using my saturated flasks, is it soulthirst ? what is it O_o


Without more information it could be a few things:

Your mana recovery from flask might be out-pacing the degen, causing you to go full mana which removes your flasks. This can be solved by getting a bit more mana, since your degen is percentage based. (you're around plenty of % mana nodes on the tree which you can take temporarily until you gain more levels or gear). You should always have a slight mana degen with your saturated flask up to prevent this.


My best guess, however, is you're just not on full energy shield, so you're only getting 50% reduced mana cost of spells instead of 100%, and you're just spending that mana. This is bound to happen time to time, especially on %reduced recovery rate of ES maps.

One of the quirks of the build is learning to manage your mana. Once you use your flasks, you basically can't gain mana, and can only lose it for the next 19 seconds of duration until you can use your seething flask again.
Here are some tips I've learned that help manage your mana on this build:
-You can manage it with vaal clarity, which will let you keep casting even while oom.
-You can manage it with vaal discipline, which will help keep your ES topped off when you keep taking damage. Full ES = no spell mana cost.
-You can manage it with the pantheon power to ignore burning ground, which can be annoying.

95% of the time though, this isn't much of an issue for me because I wipe packs before they have an opportunity to damage me.

I hope this is helpful!
so dont understand i have all what you have maybe a bit better but no much but dont know if i hit some thing i gain so much mana and this is a problem

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