[3.11] Mantra of Flames Incinerate Inquisitor || Build Breakdown

This is a build that prioritizes survivability over damage and clear speed. It uses life+ES regen, armour, block, and a healthy amount of effective HP to stay alive. Most notably this build makes use of the Aegis Aurora shield, which recovers an amount of ES (based on your armour) when you block. It's pretty tight.

I've also invested a little bit more into ES leech. I noticed that the DPS decrease from swapping Controlled Destruction for Energy Leech was negligible; combined with Essence Rush from a large cluster jewel the damage stays competitive while providing some extra sustain.

While trying to decide what kind of build I wanted to run, I found a Mantra of Flames in Delve. This is a unique jewel that adds a flat amount of fire damage to spells (and attacks, but that doesn't matter for this build) based on the number of buffs active on your character. I saw this and thought, "If I have a lot of buffs active, I will have a lot of added fire damage." I thought this because I am a genius.

While this may not be the greatest rendition of this build, I've had a lot of fun making it work and I think it performs quite well on a reasonable budget.

I'll just be honest: this is not a high DPS build. The damage is high enough but this will never match VD spellslinger or whatever the meta is these days. The DPS is also a little weird to calculate and isn't super consistent.

First off, since not all buffs are always active, the added damage from Mantra of Flames can vary quite a bit. Even just activating Vaal Molten Shell can make a noticeable difference in how fast the HP bars are moving.

Second, a good chunk of the DPS comes from the flasks, namely The Wise Oak and Atziri's Promise. When the flasks are down so is the damage.

Finally, Incinerate is a channeling skill. This means the damage ramps up as it gains stages. While there is a little extra damage when releasing at max stages, the ramp up back to max stages causes the DPS to be less consistent.

All of this is to say that tooltip damage and PoB DPS aren't reliable indicators of the actual damage. If I had to put a number on where my damage is right now, I'd call it a millionish Shaper DPS. As I explain in a later section, there are still a few things I can do to improve my damage by a good amount but the bottom line is that this is not and never will be a top tier meta build.

Here's a path of Building link for my character, including my passive tree, gear, and gem links at level 94. Note that PoB doesn't have full support for all notables from cluster jewels (in particular, it doesn't grant Arcane Surge from the Arcane Adept notable), and I'm not sure how accurate it is when it calculates buffs for Mantra of Flames. As a result, I haven't really bothered to configure the build completely and the DPS is lower in PoB than in reality.
PoB Link

Here you can see the gear I'm currently running at level 94 and the gem links that I have set up. I don't have too much to say about any of it; if you want a detailed breakdown of what's going on with the gems and links check out Claeysken's original guide here. My gear is on a much friendlier budget and based around scaling damage with Mantra of Flames (hence the double Essence Worm shenanigans).

There are a few things I still need to get done on this character, and most of them will add nice improvements to the DPS. These are:

- Helmet Enchant: I still need +2 Max Stages, which is the single biggest source of damage that I'm still missing.

- +1 Warlord Amulet: I've been working on crafting this, but I'm still missing the "+1 to All Fire Skill Gems" mod.

- Final Jewel Slot: I need to take one more jewel socket on the passive tree, which requires two more skill points. Once I do this I can get a Blue Nightmare on the left side of the tree. The jewel I currently have in there is much more important so I haven't made the swap yet.