Smith of Kitava Righteous Fire Beast 0.2.2

Righteous Fire Beast Showcase (Smith, 0.2.2)

Showcase Video:
https://youtu.be/4_Mj3i09lI8?si=mT1eQZhDadQh9qNU

PoB Code:
https://tr.ee/oEcWv9

Introduction
Hello Team! We’ve been working on our “Righteous Fire Beast” themed Smith of Kitava build and have finally gotten to a point where we are ready to share an overview.

We aimed to make a build that was strong but easy to play: suitable for new players learning the game, players with injuries or disabilities, grandpa/grandma gamers, or anyone who prefers a low apm playstyle. Needed to be able to clear endgame, be tanky, simple and cheap to gear, and of course fun.

We only have a showcase video for now, a more expansive guide will be coming soon aimed at starting next league. We are testing fresh start runs currently and making notes and tweaks.

Overview:
We were inspired to create this build after dropping a Carrion Call unique focus, which gives your minions the same resistance as your character. Right away we thought of the new Smith of Kitava ascendancy because of how easy it is to get all elemental resistance to 90%.

The combination of the class and the focus mo stly negates the life loss of the Infernal Legion support gem. Without having to invest in minion resistance. This build is themed around the new Tame Beast skill that allows you to capture Rare beasts as Companions which keep their potentially powerful modifiers.

Content:
This build has been able to clear everything in early/mid endgame and could be pushed further. All trials, Xesht, The Trialmaster, round 15 Simulacrum, The Arbiter of Ash, King of the Mists, etc etc. It’s designed to get a new player through all first tier bosses.

Mapping on tier 15+ alc is no problem. It’s not lightning spear fast but it gets the job done and, again it is very light on the apm requirements making it quite chill to run maps.

Some modifiers can be more dangerous than others like general damage mods, reduced regen, and any resistance lowering can cause your companion to die once in a while but that’s extremely rare.

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Pros & Cons

Pros:
Good for new players, senior citizens, injured/disabled folks who can’t click a ton.
Steadily melts bosses on its own, allowing you to learn mechanics and focus on dodging.
Very easy to get the build going, should be league start viable.
Very cheap to gear. Smith solves resistances basically for free, chest is easy to self craft, required unique is dirt cheap. We completed atlas and clear T15s and initial pinnacle bosses on a 1-2 divine budget.
Very simple stat priorities. Minion life, minion levels, minion damage, attributes, fire resistance and max fire resistance, chaos resistance and that is about all.
Mapping is smooth as the beast clears for you. Zero button build outside of optional buffs/debuffs on bosses or tanky rares.
HC Viable. You are quite tanky (90% res, lots of regen, respectable health pool) as are your minions, more importantly you are free to move in fights while the beast deals damage.
Finding a great beast can take a bit of time, giving a nice pokemon minigame even when playing on your other builds.

Cons:
Finding a great beast can take a bit of time, if you get unlucky you can get stuck on a suboptimal beast for quite awhile. (tips to catch them here https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dsN2dIKGOO8, and another here for chaos trial baddies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ByN3lDBZc)
Unique focus requirement is harder to meet on SSF
Infernal Legion does not interact as expected with most support gems or rare mods or tree nodes, perhaps bugged. Expanding its area or magnitude or exploiting ignite synergies does not seem possible on this patch.
Infernal Legion’s burn also seems to stop while a beast is in attack animations, likely another bug.
Mapping can feel janky and slower at times due to Companion AI.

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Building

Gear Quick Overview:

Rare Affix Priorities
Most of the gear we want are items focused on life, max fire res, fire res, chaos res, and attributes. We want to stack str, but also need dex and int to meet some of our gem requirements.

Minion levels are important stats on every slot we can get them. Other than that we want minion life and damage, and that is it for offense.

Offhand
The most important item is the unique focus Carrion Call which gives our minion the same resistance as us, letting us avoid all minion resistance investment.

Mainhand
A Scepter with Purity of Fire is a good place to start. Minion levels, life, and damage are priority. The more spirit the better. The higher level the better so that you can get more gem sockets, putting spirit support gems in which are free.

If you can get enough fire res without this, you could swap for a Rattling Scepter which would give you another minion for Muster. But may not be worth losing the free spirit supports.

Body Armour
Set your loot filter to show normal bases of desirable types https://poe2db.tw/us/Body_Armours#BodyArmoursItem, ones with useful implicit mods. We targeted Ornate Plates for the life regen. Death Mantle, Conjurer Mantle, Shrouded Mail, Dastard Armour, are all options depending on what you need.

Try to get the best roll in the implicit you can, quality and socket them, then vaal for hopefully another socket or useful implicit. It took us four tries to get a perfect Ornate Plate.
Jewels
Jewels are an import source of damage. You can get Companion life/damage emeralds for extremely cheap since there is no demand.

Rubies can give you minion life and max fire resistance if that is your bottle neck instead.

We have a Prism of Belief boosting our Companion for testing purposes, but the emerald is about as good so we would not recommend it.

Belt
Max fire resistance is an important value for us obviously. Infernoclasp is an efficient source of this stat, Soulcores and rubies should help top you off. Getting enough max resistance elsewhere would let you drop this belt for something better.

Amulet
Minion levels are the priority. We use the anoint Sturdy Ally, giving our Companion our strength. We have over 500 strength, giving both the Companion and ourselves each 1000+ base health.

Beast Considerations:
Type
Should be an up close and personal melee beast.

Beast type selection is a balancing act of health pool and speed. Extremely small and fast will have less single target damage, extremely big and slow will not clear well.

Suggest a middle ground: Prowling Chimeral, Plague Harvester, Stonclad Gorilla, Nameless Hulk, etc. There is Drudge Osseodon buffing tech that Truditoru demonstrates here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwcMklHF2ag that might be a very good option if you can get a Hasted one.

Mods
Check the full mod pool herehttps://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Monster_modifier. We’d target Enraged, Periodically Enrages, Increased Life, Hasted / Haste Aura, Life Regen. Secondary thing’s we’d keep an eye out for are status effects like chills and shocks, stun, and debuffs like Temporal Bubble.

Increased Area of Effect has no effect on Infernal Legion currently. Shroud Walker gives it gap close but also can make it inconsistent.

Gem Basics:

Beast
As high a level as you can get. Quality is important to lower the cost.

Purity of Fire (if using)
Upwelling and which ever defensive spirit supports you prefer, they will have no spirit cost.

Hex
We reduce boss fire resistance with Flammability. Heightened Curse is highly recommended and Blasphemy is discouraged, but you can set this up however you like.

Exposure
We lower boss fire resistance more with exposure, the guaranteed ignite here gives consistent exposure uptime.

Offering
We run Pain Offering to give our beast increased damage, keep in mind the area of effect and place it when the beast is likely to stay in one spot awhile. Again this is only for real bosses.

Minion Zoo
We mostly only have these for Muster and for our offering. Fit in what you can, work in utility like culling, blind and so on. These are the little henchmen, the real villain is the beast so these guys can be motley.

We went with a cheap spectre, if you can think of something more synergistic let us know.

Tree Basics:
Minion life, Minion Damage are what we prioritize. As well as Fire and Max Resistance to ensure our companion has 90% Fire resistance.

We skip all the Minion elemental res nodes to save points, since our offhand covers that.

Blood Magic
We take this to simplify life for new players, it also enables Upwelling since we are never considered ‘on full mana’.

Sockets
As many jewel sockets as we can reach for very efficient boosts.

Leveling Basics:
We recommend swapping to the companion build after level 70 when you can reach some of the most important notables on the tree above Witch/Sorc.

Until then level with whatever you are comfortable with. We used basic warrior leveling with Maces, but Rake stomping or whatever you prefer would work just as well.

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Feedback
Again we’ll have a more detailed guide around next league start, once we’ve tested and optimized, and taken on your suggestions also. Lets us know what in the guide was useful and where we need to expand more.

If you have ideas for support gems, the minion zoo, or anything else go ahead and share!

If you’ve got questions meanwhile, we stream from time to time on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@otterjones and Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/otterjones so feel free to ask live. Or drop into our Discord https://discord.gg/Y5dhJKCXR9 and ask there.

GLHF!
OtterJones
https://otterjones.com/

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