CI Incinerate Block Facetank

[Such Violent Storms]

Intro
Let's get things going in this forum. Here's something I've been theorycrafting for a long time now, and I thought, "you know what, I'll share it on incgamers." I'm leveling a witch for this build at the moment, but it's basically fireball until level 31 and the Leech gems.

Build, 103 points. If you want a step-by-step tree for leveling, I can do that, just ask.

Required unique: Eye of Chayula. (Technically, you can stretch from Vaal Pact to Unwavering.... but don't do that, you silly goose.)

Gems
Main skill:
4L - Incinerate, Life Leech, Mana Leech, LMP
5L - Incinerate, Life Leech, Mana Leech, LMP, Added Lightning (aim for this one)
6L - Incinerate, Life Leech, Mana Leech, LMP, Added Lightning, Faster Projectiles

Curses:
- Elemental Weakness¹
- Support Curses²
Link these with things like Reduced Mana, Increased Area of Effect, and Faster Casting.

Auras:
- Discipline, Purity, Determination. (See Details section.)
Link them all with Reduced Mana.

Support Skills:
As with many builds, the player can take along other useful skills if they have the sockets.
- Spell totem linked with Summon Skeletons. Link it with Minion Health and Faster Casting for an awesome meatshield if needed.
- Spell totem with a curse.
- Flame totem. Link it with Added Lightning and Culling Strike.

¹Incinerate deals 20% of its damage per projectile (before being buffed by its stages); this includes the lighting damage from Added Lightning. To shock an enemy, when the game rolls the 20% chance, you must deal 1% or more of the target's health in that hit for a Shock to occur. If you don't, it won't shock. So, in order to ease the chance of shocking, we want to decrease the monsters' Lightning Resist (as well as Fire), so that we deal more lightning damage. Also works great for parties. Conductivity works too, albeit less damage.
²These include Enfeeble, Temporal Chains, and the most fascinating of them all: Projectile Weakness.

Important Details
There are several key mechanics and factors that exist within this build. I'll make a bulleted list of stuff I remember.

• Incinerate attacks 6.25 times per second, base.
• The 5L Incinerate shown above, leveled up, will have a mana cost of 22. That's 22(6.25) = 137.5 mana/sec.
• Natural regen per second is (max mana)(1.05)/(60). 800 max mana is easily obtainable with this build. We have 14 mana/sec base, which is doubled by our passives to 28mana/sec.
• Mana Leech is capped at 1/8th your max mana per second. This build has a minimum 800 Mana base, so that's 100 mana/second with a minimum total Incinerate damage of 1250.
• Using Clarity is a small (~40) mana/second increase. Maintaining Incinerate by matching its mana/second is not needed, and is unreasonable considering the cost of Clarity.
• With a 30% block shield, you have a 53% chance to block attacks, and a 6% chance to block spells (this includes Curses). This can be increased to 27% - 38% with Rathpith's unique shield.
• You cannot be stunned. Due to the way Block Recovery works, you will also never go into the block animation.
• You're immune to chaos damage. Life leech is applied to energy shield, and is applied instantly.
• Inner Force nodes buff all auras and all flasks.
• Capped Resists should be 85% (with leveled Purity). Compared to 75%, that's 60% less damage received.
• You will be able to use as many Granite Flasks as you want. Mana, Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz, and Quicksilver flasks are usable too. All are buffed. After using a resistance flask, your capped resists for that element can reach 98%. Determination buffs Granite (of Iron Skin).
• Each 'stream' from your LMP Incinerate can hit multiple adjacent targets (the degrees of separation are smaller than GMP); point blank, all 3 streams can hit 1+ target.
• There are two +30 Str nodes and two +30 Dex nodes within 1 point of the passive tree to supplement gear if needed.

Thanks for reading!

[magicrectangle]

Thoughts:
1) In addition to Eye of Chayula, you really also want Dream Fragments.

2) I've played around with trying to get shocks off added lightning damage on other spells. The damage just isn't high enough. With a 20% damage effectiveness on incinerate it just is not going to happen, period. I tried it with ice spear, which has 100% damage effectiveness, and even there could only shock stuff that was so easy the shock wouldn't help anyway.

3) Any CI build (except for dual totem) should run blood rage. Maybe you intend to but didn't see it mentioned.

4) Planning on running granite flasks 100% of the time will be problematic in maps, where you may need to run situational flasks based on map mods. Fortunately your skelly totem (or a group!) should keep you from needing to 100% spam them. Given that, I'm not sure determination is the best choice (I assume that's what you meant, since you said "discipline buffs granite"). Discipline + grace will cost you less mana, and give you a more reliable benefit.

5) I think you're really going to want to work faster projectiles in earlier than 6L, as the range increase is dramatic. Unless you get a 20% quality incinerate I think you'll find yourself much too close to the action without faster projectiles. If you drop added lightning damage, I think faster casting is the obvious replacement.

We haven't really seen where incinerate builds will go yet, but given the mechanics it is very similar to freezing pulse, except you can't freeze stuff - and you want to hold still for damage, making it an even more suicidal build. Good luck, I hope you don't die horribly.

[kestegs]

Nice build, I think it could work out. I've been wanting to put incinerate on my tank templar and give it a shot, but have been too lazy to figure it the mechanics on it. In think it could possibly work better than FP since standing in one place isn't really an issue for me 99% of the time.

So if you were to use gmp you wouldn't be able to hit 1 target with all 5, right? Is that the same for freezing pulse?

[DickScotchfist]

So if you were to use gmp you wouldn't be able to hit 1 target with all 5, right? Is that the same for freezing pulse?

No, all five hit with pulse, especially if you are aiming far behind the target with your mouse clicks.

[Such Violent Storms]

Thoughts:
1) In addition to Eye of Chayula, you really also want Dream Fragments.

I use Dispel Chilled/Frozen flasks (and the reaction time of a vipercat) if I notice there are many cold damaging mobs. Dream Fragments still works, of course.

Also, for higher levels (as you go toward level 90+), I go down the right side of the tree for Crystal Skin and its Avoid Frozen/Chilled passives.

2) I've played around with trying to get shocks off added lightning damage on other spells. The damage just isn't high enough. With a 20% damage effectiveness on incinerate it just is not going to happen, period. I tried it with ice spear, which has 100% damage effectiveness, and even there could only shock stuff that was so easy the shock wouldn't help anyway.

Static Blows increases shock duration by 45%. When the game rolls for a shock, and if the shock duration is less than 300ms, the increased shock chance rolls, which could push it over. If (1.45)(duration of shock rolled) > 300ms, it will shock. There's also another passive right in the loop for another 15% increase. With the number of projectiles making contact, shocking should not be a problem. I'm shocking things with Incinerate at level 46.

3) Any CI build (except for dual totem) should run blood rage. Maybe you intend to but didn't see it mentioned.

Blood Rage only leeches physical damage. Yay gameplay mechanics.

4) Planning on running granite flasks 100% of the time will be problematic in maps, where you may need to run situational flasks based on map mods. Fortunately your skelly totem (or a group!) should keep you from needing to 100% spam them. Given that, I'm not sure determination is the best choice (I assume that's what you meant, since you said "discipline buffs granite"). Discipline + grace will cost you less mana, and give you a more reliable benefit.

Using 4-5 "xxx" Granite's of Iron Skin is completely feasible. I and many other people already do it. I meant Determination, I'll fix the typo! You don't have to run it, but I recommend you try to.

5) I think you're really going to want to work faster projectiles in earlier than 6L, as the range increase is dramatic. Unless you get a 20% quality incinerate I think you'll find yourself much too close to the action without faster projectiles. If you drop added lightning damage, I think faster casting is the obvious replacement.

The build is designed to be close to the action. Faster Casting runs into the same problem. Have you tried using a 5L level 16 Ininerate with Faster Casting? Just about impossible lol

We haven't really seen where incinerate builds will go yet, but given the mechanics it is very similar to freezing pulse, except you can't freeze stuff - and you want to hold still for damage, making it an even more suicidal build. Good luck, I hope you don't die horribly.

I have far too much block to die horribly. Don't worry. And I've noticed I can stun mobs with nothing more than the sheer damage from a shock stacked fire projectile. Which is awesome.

We haven't seen a good Incinerate build because they latched onto initial impressions and tossed it aside. They read on forums/watched a livestream and didn't take the time to think for themselves.

[magicrectangle]

Static Blows increases shock duration by 45%. When the game rolls for a shock, and if the shock duration is less than 300ms, the increased shock chance rolls, which could push it over. If (1.45)(duration of shock rolled) > 300ms, it will shock. There's also another passive right in the loop for another 15% increase. With the number of projectiles making contact, shocking should not be a problem. I'm shocking things with Incinerate at level 46.

I used static blows when I tested it. I'm extremely surprised that you're managing to shock with a spell with 20% damage effectiveness.

That said, level 46 is pretty low. I look forward to hearing whether you can reliably shock things in maps.

It would be nice if there were a list of monster HP values somewhere like we had for diablo 2, so we could exactly figure out what it takes to make it work, but I don't know of any such resource. (I understand it can't be as simple as a table of HP values by monster type and difficutly like D2, but presumably there is a simple scaling formula based on monster level)

Blood Rage only leeches physical damage. Yay gameplay mechanics.

Frenzy charges.

[Such Violent Storms]

I used static blows when I tested it. I'm extremely surprised that you're managing to shock with a spell with 20% damage effectiveness.

That said, level 46 is pretty low. I look forward to hearing whether you can reliably shock things in maps.

It would be nice if there were a list of monster HP values somewhere like we had for diablo 2, so we could exactly figure out what it takes to make it work, but I don't know of any such resource. (I understand it can't be as simple as a table of HP values by monster type and difficutly like D2, but presumably there is a simple scaling formula based on monster level)


Frenzy charges.

Well first, Frenzy charges don't play nice. Cast speed eats up your mana too much with incinerate. I'm trying to avoid it.

Second, when it comes to shocking with Static Blows, you're right; As I got to higher leveled mobs, nothing was getting shocked. Even with Conductivity. The damage from added lightning is too small when divided by 5.

You can still do enough fire damage to sustain yourself with life leech, at least that's how it is now for me. I'm trying to get a decent 5L to test Faster Projectiles. I think I might try Tempest Shield over Determination, along with Elemental Proliferation. I think I block enough for it to be effective. And it definitely would be with something like Rathpith.

Off to the trade forums ~~~~~