[3.19] Inquisitor Armageddon brand + Firestorm with MoM and EB

I don't understand. How do you activate arcane surge. Am I missing something?

There are multiple ways to activate it,

The way I activate it is by running Zealotry and using a watchers eye that grants "Gain arcane surge when you hit an enemy while affected by Zealotry"
Doing it this way means I get the lvl 1 arcane surge that activates from the watchers eye (AS grants 10% more spell damage at lvl 1) and not the gem's (AS grants 20% more spell damage).

The gem also gives "Supported skills have 19% more spell damage while affected by arcane surge" and this does still work so in total you'd get 29% more spell damage where as triggering arcane surge from the gem would give 39% at lvl 20.
So triggering AS this way means you miss out on 10% more damage but it is still the best option compared to other gems.

If the watchers eye is still to expensive then you could use one of the following 2 options.

- Forbidden flesh + forbidden flame with the "arcane blessing" ascendancy
- Command of the Pit gloves with a hypnotic eye jewel socketed

The flesh+flame combo is a good one early on when you don't have the currency yet but as it provides no other bonuses outside of arcane surge and we need the defense I'd recommend swapping to one of the following asap
"Unwavering Faith"
"Radiant Faith"
"Conviction of Power"
"Harmony of purpose"
ordered from lowest defensive gain to highest, also price coincidentally. HOP is to expensive for me.

The easiest and cheapest way is to go for the Command of the Pit gloves.
While the stats on the gloves are not the best, they are not to bad either and you could socket it with a good jewel.
The reason I don't use this is because I like to add the exarch/eater of worlds implicit's that grant exposure on hit and unnerve on hit which can only be done on yellow gloves. There are other ways to get those exposure and unnerve's as well but I think watchers eye with zealotry is the nicest way to get arcane surge

Hey

I started your build today and it's going pretty well so far, but I wanted to know whether you'd prefer we follow the PoB that you put in the start of the build or the one that you've posted in the comments?

There's a significant damage difference, but just want to make sure. Is it better to go with 2 wands over the staff? Not to mention Lethal Pride instead of Impossible Escape.

As of now I'm following the one at the start of the build, so far it seems fine and I'm able to do T15-T16's, although boss damage is lackluster at this point.
Looking to upgrade my staff, right now I'm just using a 4 link martyr, but have a decent 6 link body for armageddon. I've also obtained a 21/20 arma gem, at which point should I look into going for awakened gems?

I've always absolutely loved armageddon brand as a spell, but have never been able to find a build that makes it work, so really awesome you seem to have made it work. :-)

Hi,

Great to hear you enjoy the build so far,
I'd recommend using the pob I placed in the comments which is what I am playing right now. The original build I placed had a little less defense which was fine last league but for some reason this league felt a bit squishy which is why I started experimenting again a bit.

At first I used a staff for my build, The upside of it is that you can 6 link it so that you can use firestorm as a real utility spell with things like culling strike, curse on hit, and other things you like.

Using curse on hit with firestorm has the advantage of not requiring a curse on hit ring or manual casting so that you can use that slot for a bit of extra damage but a staff's total dps would be a bit lower unless you get one with +5 levels (3 to all fire spells and 2 to all spell skills) combined with good rolls for spell damage and cast speed but there isn't even one being sold with stats like that this league so getting 2 wands is both cheaper and better for dps compared to the staffs that you can actually get.
Also, I much prefer using just a 3 link setup for firestorm with combustion + cull and then use another 3l for Divine blessing with a 50% aura and increased duration support so that I can maintain that extra aura which helps a lot.

As for the damage,
It should be more then fine so I wonder why you'd experience this as lackluster. On fully juiced t16 maps I manage to kill the bosses in just a few seconds so while I don't 1shot them I do still kill them quickly in under 5 seconds.
Are you running with a arcane surge gem and do you have any source that grants arcane surge on hit? Arcane Surge wont trigger from the gem itself as you are not using mana so if you don't have the watchers eye, gloves, or forbidden flesh+flame with the AS ascendancy it won't do anything and you are basically running a 5link setup.

Another tip would be to focus on getting decent gloves that would last you a while and then use eldritch currency to roll exposure on hit and unnerve on hit on those.

The order of buying things that I think I could recommend is something like this.
- Devouring diadem
- Acceptable boots/amulet/rings/gloves/wands for no more then 10c each
- The cheapest not to bad 6l you can find
- Anything that gives Arcane surge. Forbidden flesh+flame with "Arcane blessing" or the gloves + jewel. Or if you have the currency (1 or 2 divine) then go straight for the watchers eye.
- Good gloves and some eldritch currency for the implicit's
- Good wands
- Watchers eye with clarity % of dmg from mana before life and the gain arcane surge when creating consecrated ground while affected by zealotry rolls, if you can get more then those 2 then that's bonus.
- Update all gear to good stuff in general
- Awakened gems
- The best defensive flesh+flame option you can afford.
- Min-max time

If you do have all the stuff in place correctly and still think damage could be better then you could get a chest with +level of socketed gems. As a hybrid strength+int gem it scales with a lot of the mods.
Working + level mods are "Intelligence skill gems", "Strength skill gems", "Fire (spell) skill gems", "All (spell)skill gems", "(Socketed) active (spell)skill gems".

The last pob link gives around 3.5mil to 4mil shaper dps and is built around a 7 to 10 devine orb budget if you don't count the flesh+flame which cost me 20div in total. For me 20div is more then half of what i normally would get in a league and because of this I never really looked in to the potential of mirror tier items and so I don't know what the ceiling of the dps would be but with a Mageblood and some good pots alone you can already boost both defense and dps by 25% easily.

Thanks for all the help so far.

Right now I am running the Forbidden Flesh/Flame setup to get Arcane Surge, I have a 6 link armageddon brand but with cruelty as my last link, as I can't yet afford awakened empower and I am not entirely sure if I should get regular empower 4 yet?

I managed to upgrade my staff, which did help the damage a bit, but I'll look into switching to wands instead, since the damage still isn't amazing compared to what you describe. :-)

Should I start looking for a curse on hit ring? Right now I am just running rings similar to your old setup.

I'm still looking for decent gloves, I have a bit of currency right now, but I really wanna prioritize correctly.

In terms of the order of buying things, I'd say I have the a lot of them checked, if you could take a quick look at my profile I'd really appreciate it, perhaps it'll give you an idea of what I could improve on.

Also you said the flesh+flame cost you 20 div, is this because you changed into something that's not Arcane Blessing? Your current PoB is still running it. :-)

Before I ran empower I used faster casting support and the regular versions of the awakened gems.

At the moment I am using a normal level 4 empower as I got lucky with a uncorrupted level 3 drop that turned level 4 after I vaaled it.
It's not worth getting a level 3 one but starting from level 4 It's slightly better and a lvl 5 awakend would be nice.
I'd say that unless you have currency to spare the upgrade to a level 4 (awakened)empower would not be worth it compared to other items.

As for the ring,
Looking at your character the first things i'd upgrade would indeed be the rings. I'd get a Curse on hit ring and the Polaric devestation. When I bought it it was still 1 divine but it seems it dropped to 35c now so thats quite affordable and brings in a good boost on bosses.

Another thing that would boost damage by quite a bit is getting a amulet with +1 level of gems and put on a (cheap) anoint on it,
For wands you'd be looking at +1 level, %increased spell/fire damage, added fire damage and cast speed. Getting high values of those might be a bit expensive but I think even ones with lower values would already give equal or better damage as the staff you have at the moment.

Last thing I noticed is that you don't use enduring cry yet. The ascendancy that also applies our life regen to apply to energy shield also works enduring cry and enduring cry also benefits from the increases to life regeneration rate so it won't just restore 2k life like the tooltip says but in my case it restores around 2.9k life And es so it's basicly a instant full life/es button :D

forgot to add
I did indeed change to "Radiant faith" forbidden flame+flesh jewels for more defensive power

I have updated my guide's PoB and spent some more time to update the leveling tree and gear.

New pob included.
I switched it from 2hand to wands and cleaned up the pob up a bit.
Also used the branches this time so you can use the dropdowns to select the different leveling steps for gear, skills, and talents instead of having everything in 1 big list with some comments

Thanks for responding and taking your time to check my profile, really appreciate it. :-D

I've listened to your advice and switched to wands and other rings, I found gloves upgrade and got both exposure and unnerve (exposure took ages to roll, sadly).

So now I'm a little short on currency again, but I am already now noticing a massive difference in damage. Now I just need to work on the defensive parts I feel.

Still using cruelty/faster casting in my 6 link, I don't know if there are better options right now but empower isn't looking hot right now. I think for now I just need to farm some currency, I did buy the watcher's eye already (5 mana with clarity active, phew) and also added enduring cry. :-)

Great to hear its a bit better now :D

Yeah, this league especially it really feels like you can't cut corners on defense. Just to many rippy mechanics.

In the updated PoB I also updated the gems.
Not sure which is actually better in actual maps but faster casting is better on paper. In the end it doesn't really matter :D

I'm wondering if the dual wielding points are taken for small amount of block, or (if it's for the dps) if it might be better to take those 3 points and grab Fire Walker and the -5% exposure Fire Mastery? I just know those 3 nodes I was always throwing extra points in as I level if i cant reach something specific.