[3.7]Scorching ray CWC Firestorm | 21k ES, 5.4k ES regen, 3.3k strength | Deathless UBER elder+HOGM

Very nicely done.

I haven't updated my Scionic Flametank in ages (a brief 3.6 build tree taking it back to Incinerate from SR-CWC-FS was posted, but the main post was not updated), and this is an independently arrived take on the same topic that is very well constructed.

So of course I'm now looking for ideas to steal for my next update. :)


One of your tricks I'm impressed by, and one that I'd overlooked and might steal for my next update whenever it might come, is the use of a Might of the Meek jewel in that location covering a ridiculous number of strength nodes in the Templar and Marauder area as well as boosting some otherwise suboptimal minor regeneration nodes.



I have a few questions, though. Some are questions of build methodology, some of gear. If there are things I've overlooked, I want to know them, and if there are things you've overlooked, well, you might want to know them. :D

1) I'm a bit surprised that you didn't go for the cheap extra 20% of base ES recovered/s while flaming enemies by spending 3 skillpoints on getting Ghost Reaver and then using an Energy Leech in place of Efficacy in your main link. Yes, it is three points that could have been spent on STR, and it only applies to the Firestorm balls hitting and does nothing for the Scorching Ray, but even so, leeching can provide a substantial bonus on top of the regeneration. Your reason?


2) You are using an X% max mana as extra energy shield while using Clarity Watcher's Eye. I consider that to a great option, but in these days of no more automatic Arakaali +50% recovery invocation through CWDT-IC-BR, I find it inferior to using an X% increased energy shield recovery while using discipline Watcher's Eye. A bit of divining to max it out and you've got got 30% more ES recovery from regeneration at all times.

Have you found the extra ES (which of course ups the base regeneration too, but to nowhere near the same degree) worth the trade-off or is this due to picking up the mana=>ES clarity jewel with immunity to elemental weakness while affected by purity of elements, and having a need for increased resistances anyhow or just how did that calculation work out?

2a) Were you aiming for using purity of elements in the first place, or did it just work out well that way due to resistances, jewel, etc? It comes at the cost of not using Arctic Armour, which is an awesome additional layer of defense for a mostly stationary flametank.

3) Pure Talent yes or no? You aren't using it, but if you did - which would come at the cost of a Brawn jewel, so a high price to pay - you'd be able to connect directly to the Templar start from the STR nodes almost adjacent for an extra 5% damage penetration and 25 base STR/INT/DEX (so long as you remained connected to Scion start). You could cut the 0.3% life regen node near Scion start to recoup the Templar node cost, since everything else would now be connected to the Templar start.

It is a clear benefit to use Pure Talent in my build, but I'm not sure about whether it would be so, or be a detriment in yours. So, have you tried it and how does it stack up against a Brawn jewel?


4) Black Sun with (whatever enchant) vs buying a hubris circlet base with increased firestorm duration enchant put for sale by a labrunner and then crafting it to a decent ES base? (and with a bit of luck get some resistances covered as well.)

For my build I found that Black Sun was always a worse choice for maximizing ES than either getting a helmet with good base ES and resists (and possibly the option of crafting +STR on it) or buying a good ES base helmet with firestorm enchant already acquired by a labrunner and then crafting it until it got good ES, resulting in both higher ES and considerably higher damage (due to increased duration's importance for firestorm).

How does that trade off work for your build?


5) What's the point of the Increased Duration in the CWDT-Stone Golem-Tempest Shield-Increased Duration link? If there's none, might I suggest you replace it with a Purifying Flame? Having PF in a CWDT for a flametank build guarantees ever more consecrated ground all over the place. A bit overkill, admittedly, given the inquisitor ascendancy, but it does mean that anything up to and including normal monsters, hitting you point blank creates consecrated ground where you stand and thus immediately cleanse you of ailments, if present.


6) Your CWDT-IC-ID-VRF... Is VRF included merely for the on demand damage boost of VRF, or does CWDT-RF with a CI build these days count as "stopping taking damage over time" and thus trigger the Arakaali +50% recovery bonus? (and incidentally, which Pantheons are you using? I assume Tukohama is one, but if you don't have a good way to trigger Arakaali Lunaris or Solaris is better as major).

1) You're right. I wanted to maximize my dps on both scorching ray and firestorm. Energy shield leech damage would only apply to hits. Scorching ray isn't a hit so linking it with controlled destruction and elemental focus would increase the damage on both firestorm and scorching ray.

2) Ideally you would want a watcher's eye jewel with both the discipline recovery rate and the extra ES clarity, but those are expensive. I can't speak for the discipline recovery rate as I have never tried it, but I found the extra ES extremely useful so far for not getting one shot to legions. There have been many cases where pretty much all my party dies to legions where I'm the only one standing with my ES dropping all the way down to 3-4k. It synergizes well with the shaper's touch gloves and an extra 4k ES is definitely worth it imo.

2a) Arctic armor is a solid defensive choice, and i definitely intended to use it in the build, but as you read from the post the gear was super hard to find. It is almost impossible to find gear with full blown resists and the increased attributes suffix. If I were to run arctic armor, I would essentially be losing dps and ES by not getting strength since I can't cap my resists without purity. On top of that, I do not possess enough dexterity to run it haha

3) I haven't really thought about it much or tried it so I couldn't tell you now, but it doesn't seem like a bad idea and I will probably test it out.

4) I've been trying to roll the firestorm duration in lab but eventually got too lazy. You're right. A rare helmet would provide you with more ES, but the tradeoff is losing a lot of strength which equates to damage. With a very expensive helmet with 300 ES and 50 strength, according to path of building, you would gain around 1k ES which does seem like quite a significant amount, but helmets like these are very hard to come across. Furthermore, stacking as much brawn jewels as my character the increased intelligence is necessary to run a level 21 firestorm/scorching ray. If i unequipped my helmet I would not have the attributes. I also picked this when making the build because it was a much more budget option and just decided to stick with it.

5) You're right there isn't much of a point in this one lol. I just threw whatever in there that could min/max survivability. That is also a good defensive option. I just thought with white/blue mobs you pretty much would always have your sulphur flask up and would really be only useful on bosses. But like you said, the inquisitor ascendancy already accounts for that.

6) VRF is mainly just a dps boost for your main skill. Funnily enough with this much ES, it actually serves as a pretty decent addition to extra damage with RF itself as well. And yeah I have really no reliable way of triggering arkalli. I just run tukohama and solaris

Thanks for your answers.

ad 2) The increased recovery rate does what it says on the tin. At 30% you get 30% more recovered, ignoring any other caps.

E.g. using numbers from my current flametank,

It has 22.2% ES/s base regeneration (when recently hit for enchant, stationary for Tukohama, and on consecrated ground is added), which means it recovers 28.8% ES/s from regeneration (rounded).

I'll admit that one thing I like most about using the increased recovery rate Watcher's Eye over the mana=>ES is how I can skip many of the smaller regeneration nodes and spend them on getting extra STR, ES, or resistances, and still end up with a higher total regeneration recovery% - which erodes the difference in total ES between using the different Watcher's Eye jewels somewhat.


OTOH, I haven't played the Legion league at all - I don't know how important having those 20k-21k rather than 17k-18k ES at the high end is; I've only played 3.7 enough to check that the basic concept of my tank still worked after the Arakaali trick got discontinued. :)

Moreover, I also leech for an extra 26% ES/s recovered in hard fights with my current build (for a total of around 9.5k ES/s when being hurt enough I don't repeatedly hit the ES max, resetting leech instances), which means that repeated smaller slams doing a mere 5-10k ES each just aren't impressive enough if spread over several seconds to get near putting the tank in the danger zone, so it is only the very largest slams that are a consideration.

When you are limited to some 5-6k ES/s recovery in return for higher total ES, your priorities probably have to be different: You can survive larger individual slams, but are more vulnerable to sustained enemy damageoutput and probably have to move around more to let ES recover after nasty hits.




ad 2a) I hear you. Resists are hard to find. My solution was to run abyss jewels high ES/+str/+res until I got resists fixed, but I also snag the elemental resists in the west of the tree simply for convenience.

(6 nodes connecting to the western STR jewel gives you Faith & Steel, Holy Dominion, and Light of Divinity + connectors, for 20% to all elemental resists, 15% maxES, 20 INT, 10 STR, 37% increased damage (split in spell, elemental, damage), 20% increased crit, 25% increased armour, 4% increased cast speed, 5% chance to burn. It is a high price, but oh how it makes itemization easier!)

Of course, you've got a watcher's eye that synergizes so very well with running purity of the elements, so probably it is better for your build to do it your way and going for the higher total ES without AA to soften the physical damage hit.


ad 4) Never, ever, waste your time in the lab running for a specific head enchant. Life is too short. Buy a hat from somebody who got the one you want instead, and enchant spare high tier hats if you visit the lab and have nothing better to do and sell them on to others when they get other high value enchants you don't need. :D

The way to get a good firestorm enchant on your headgear is to perform this search for whatever league you are in:

http://poe.trade/search/kaheakisikonam

It gets you any firestorm duration enchant on headgear that has ES but no armour or evasion. Buy the best uncorrupted headgear for the purpose - with a bit of luck there'll be hubris circlet or mind cage with the 30% increased duration enchant - and you are ready to start playing the crafting game to get an ideal firestorm headpiece. (Looks like there are a few for sale for a handful of chaos of the moment, which is pretty typical.)

It usually doesn't take much effort to craft it to a reasonable 250-300 ES or so, and then - once one can afford it when perfecting gear - one can slam spare exalts on it as and when available, hoping for some nice extra randoms (ideally resists or stats, of course, because STR stacking on all items seriously limits resist availability). Or buy a new starter hat and keep rerolling the one of them that is worst until one gets a really great one. :p

Here's mine from the 3.2 league when I last built a new flametank. Unlucky with my ex-slams and I don't have the patience to play enough for perfection so I only bothered to make one hat, but every bit helps. :)

Your profile is set to private.

Can you provide a pob or set public?

Also, mapping with cwc firestorm probably feels like dogshit. I’ve seen several bv builds strength stack. Your thoughts?

Nice build. I might transition into this after building come currency with my scion league starter.

This build still viable?

How he cast a firestorm ? i can't find anything about it on his gems/items

cast while channeling gem + scorching ray + firestorm.