5186

If I was doing it over again, I’d have leveled him with straight-up Ground Slam/Heavy Strike until around act 8-ish. Path over to Resolute Technique early and respec it out later. You certainly can do Incinerate, as I did, but it will be slow going, particularly on bosses.

5187

I was thinking Molten Strike would be ok since you’re boosting fire damage. Resolute Technique is definitely a good idea though.

5188

Yeah, if you’re actually boosting fire damage. In the build I’m following your first node that isn’t strength or life is something like level 40. The damage nodes are mostly way across the tree. But molten strike is probably fine, it doesn’t really matter what skills you use for the first 50-ish levels as long as you have both aoe and single target damage ability.

5189

Ah, I assumed there would be some sort of fire boosting node along the way but I haven’t looked carefully. So you may be right (and in that case, I guess it sort of doesn’t matter what you use except that if it’s physical you just need to keep upgrading your weapon). I do have a Vaal Earthquake in my stash!

5190

I have logged in in game, how do you claim your mystery box please

5191

Go to your microtransaction list (N key by default, or click on the menu arrow by your life globe). The box should show up under consumables.

5192

Thanks, got it, is it level rated and best to save or fine to open it now?

5193

Far as I know, everything you buy in PoE is independent of level. They’re all cosmetic items anyway, any character can use them! Open it any time.

5194

cheers :)

5195

You can swap them around too, but you have to be on the character using the item and take it off of them before you can put in on another character. That is, you can’t transfer directly from one character to another, you have to log on, unequip, log off, log on with the other character, equip the item. But at least the stuff isn’t one-use or bound to one character.

5196

Everything can just be swapped to an online character these days. If you open the cosmetics UI on the one you’re playing and click on a slot and it says some of the cosmetics are in-use by another character, you can just click what you want to get the prompt to switch it over right there.

5197

Huh, I didn’t see that. Thanks for the clarification.

5198

I got a doggo from my free box. My first micro transaction pet!

I had previously purchased one box and that had the scientist glowy waist effect, which is actually something I am using, unlike most cosmetic microtransactions.

5199

I’m into red maps now with burning man, and it’s getting rough. Not surprising but a little disappointing after how tanky he felt up until now. I’m at 6k HP, 78/76/76/14 resists, tons of physical resist with 7 end charges and armor. He handles normal clearing fine, but I still get nearly instakilled on a regular basis whenever something dangerous pops up. Latest debacle was in a map occupied by the Redeemer conqueror when I died nearly every time one of his mob spawns popped up and shot a volley of whatever those projectile attacks do. Short of avoiding every map mod that causes extra damage, he’s not going any further without retooling, once I figure out what exactly to do.

5200

What’s actually killing you (yeah, I know it can be really hard to figure that out)? Is the damage sufficient or is it taking so long to kill mobs that they are downing you first?

5201

Damage, far as I can tell. I’ll walk forward, some things will pop up on the screen, and then I die. After I’ll see that there was some big ranged group just offscreen, or a big rare. Occasionally I get stuck in a situation where there are several rares which I can’t kill quickly, but those don’t kill me. I can see that coming and kite a bit to kill them one at a time.

5202

I suppose one of the limitations of a RF build is that you can only get the radius so big, and I guess in a sense it’s a melee build because you gotta walk over to the mob to kill them - unlike many other builds which can clear 1+ screens with chaining or shotgunning or whatever.

5203

@ineffablebob I loaded your RF build into Path of Building to have a look. These are my notes.

Similar flask buffs don’t stack. Replace one Granite with a Basalt, Quartz, or Jade, especially if you have downtime on the Endurance Charges.

Dousing suffix removes RF. I know it can be a safety measure, but I prefer to be able to mash my flasks. A bigger effective life pool is safer than adding more regen.

I would replace the dousing Granite with Basalt + grounding, and the curing hybrid flask with a Blood of the Karui. Maybe get the poison-immune Pantheon upgrade if you need it, or just bring chaos res + curing when fighting The Hunter.

Molten Shell is more useful & reliable if you don’t CWDT it. I’d use Immortal Call + CWDT + duration and cast MS manually. MS -> Shield Charge (+Fortify support) -> Enduring Cry is a nice combo to initiate with. I didn’t see much charge generation, and Enduring Cry will help if you use IC. I’d keep Flame Dash for mobility/escapes, or replace both mobility skills with Leap Slam. Endurance Charge on Melee Stun is also good with Shield Charge because of the stun threshold bonus.

IC gets more effective the bigger your life/ES pool gets, and the better your endurance charge count and generation is. It’s common to see it on builds with 12k ES and no charges, or doubled up with other guard skills, because of the scaling.

Since RF doesn’t hit, you could drop Wave of Conviction and take Elemental Equilibrium instead. Then remove your hitting fire skills, and get Added Lightning/Cold to trigger EE with Shield Charge for example. I think MS/VMS may interfere with EE, even though it’s reflected damage. Another option for EE is Malachai’s Artifice, so only the socketed gem applies EE.

Flesh and Stone (sand stance) is huge for any (non-blinding, non-evasion capped) melee range character. Add it ASAP.

Vaal Impurity of Fire is splitting souls with your Vaal Molten Shell. I’d drop Impurity and Vitality for Flesh & Stone and Arctic Armour or a Blasphemy curse.

Adding a slow like Arctic Armour, CWDT + Cold Snap, or Blasphemy + Temp Chains can be great. AA is underrated, IMHO.

Always remember that the POB and in-game “physical damage reduction” number is an estimate. DR caps at 90%, but only flat DR sources are reliable. You might not be reaching 90 in bad situations when huge boss hits or crits out-scale your armour. Granite + Basalt + charges will help cover the gaps or downtime in your defenses, even though it looks like having over 90% is wasteful.

Ideally get a Kaom’s Heart, put the RF in a 4L, and drop Efficacy since the More Spell Damage doesn’t help RF. This trades some DOT for +1k life and extra armour. Then your gem setups are something like 3L IC CWDT +duration, another 3L CWDT, 4L RF, 4L Shield Charge, and leftover Flame Dash, VMS, F&S, AA. Maybe use Leap Slam if you want to save a socket for Enduring Cry or Frost Bomb or something else.

My priority would be: swap auras for Flesh & Stone + Arctic Armour, manual MS, new flasks, move skill + Fortify, CWDT IC and charge gen.

5204

Thanks for going over the build and making suggestions @Bobtree! I appreciate you taking the time.

On the flasks, the Granite with Dousing was intentional, as an emergency escape option. Hit it and run like crazy, with a bunch of extra life regen since RF isn’t eating it. It’s actually saved me a few times…but of course, I have to have time to hit it. The deaths that concern me are the near-instant variety that no flask will prevent.

I’ve had a hard time dropping Vitality in the past as my other regen wasn’t high enough, but it’s been a while since I tried. It’s easy enough to swap in Flesh and Stone, same color socket and all. There’s no way to drop Purity of Fire, it’s providing max fire resist which helps mitigate the RF self-burn. But I could switch it to a non-Vaal version.

One of the guiding principles of the build is to avoid too many active skills. That’s why no Enduring Cry, or casting Molten Shell manually.

Immortal Call is a no-go for this build, since a ton of the life regen comes from the endurance charges. They need to be up all the time. There’s no need for Enduring Cry because ascendancy and passive nodes auto-generate charges when using fire skills or getting hit. I suppose it would be possible to run both, but I’d have to be quick enough to hit EC right after IC goes off, and hope there’s enough enemies to get me back up to 7 charges. Definitely not ideal.

Thanks again, really appreciate the ideas! For the moment I’m retooling the summoner to drop animated weapon and do zombies instead, but if I go back to the RF guy I’ll definitely be looking at these suggestions.

5205

Behold, the promised Delirium visual improvements!

I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve had time to play with it a bit, but just from reading the notes, I’m encouraged.