Pohx RF to Life Stacking Adorned RF "Guide", with a bunch of pobs/budgets and poeninja timemachine links for my first week progress.

I love cosplaying lawnmowers in games, so obviously RF is one of my favourite skills. Played it a couple of times over the years, usually starting off with the GOAT Pohx guide, and for the past 2 leageus pivoted into a life stacking Adorned setup. I see posts daily asking for ways to improve RF builds, so I thought I'd write up a bit of a guide that I can refer people to.

I mainly focus on RF and look at Fire Trap as a secondary skill, but you can swap around the skill gem setups and get +lvls on your weapon, shield and amulet for more single target damage. MB is also an option for higher budgets, but you only really need it if you plan to boss a lot. The build is T17 viable on higher budgets, but bossing is a bit of a pain, you can swap RF/FT for more single target. Abomination map + life on block is your best bet, lots of small hits at the boss to get healed by.

I'm not gonna go too much into detail, but I'll try to point out key upgrades and explain them a bit. Unless it's a specific craft, I just harvest reroll life/fire stuff. Literally 90% of the crafting for the build (if we don't count the few k alts we use for jewels). Just buy a few k lifeforce and spam away. Get fractured bases and spam more. Sometimes essences. Throw some annuls and exalts on halfdecent pieces, maybe some suff/pref cannot be changed harvest reroll shenanigans, bench craft/multimod and you are good to go.

Some PoBs to get started:
Pre-Adorned Life Stacking setup: https://pobb.in/sKpwAtVlZhlR (Scavanger)

Mid budget, Blood Magic, Adorned setup from here: https://pobb.in/rKftYjp4zHtp (Scavanger)

High budget, BM, block based: https://pobb.in/vZX8pImlskbT (Chieftain, 3.25)

High budget, BM, no block: https://pobb.in/VHzpkouI9fpc

High budget, no BM, yes block, big DPS: https://pobb.in/f9ZpWwJAfbjP

High budget, no BM, no block, Big DPS: https://pobb.in/K4-vxv2CO99C

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. The setup is far from min-maxed, I'm not sure about exact prices bc I crafted/corrupted most of the gear, but sold for around 1 mirror and some change in 3.25

Phrecia League / Scavanger poeninja timemachine progression walkthrough

Obviously you don't have to go at this pace, but this seems like a good way to show you my upgrade priority.

I spent most of the first week farming blight ravaged maps (meteor+T3freeze towers, T3 empower them, throw some T3 stuns around, RF+obliteration go brroom)

Day 1

Purity of Elements is the best aura to use for pretty much any build early game, worth a lot more than running grace/determination with no other investment. You won't convince me otherwise.

Immortal Flesh

Rise of Phoenix

5L chest

Elder helm base - > Essence of Horror for second 5L/6L

Life/Res/Life Regen on rest of gear, Purity of Elements.

Day 2

Cluster with Fan the Flames to spread ignite. If more than a div, get a cheap base and harvest reroll fire

Day 3

Kaom's Heart for big flat life

Legacy of Fury for Scorch and some extra clear

Life on Block shield + Glancing Blows

Day 4 and Day 5+

So, I dropped a Hinekora's lock and sold it for 22D, so this is where the structure kinda breaks and the "daily" progress might get unrealistic for most. I'll try to list the upgrades in order of priority:

Cinderswallow Urn with Life regen, Life on kill and 10 inc damage taken. Really underrated flask imo, Zoom zoom, recovery, more dmg, what else do you need for a good mapper? You can get this earlier too tbh.

Polaric Devastation to Cover Enemies in Ash (20% inc fire damage taken)

Hunter Belt, Stygian>Leather>Heavy depending on budget. Flat Life and Phasing for abyss jewel.

1-2-3 Large Clusters, start setting up jewels. Ninja missed that setup, but if you look at the pre-adorned pob https://pobb.in/sKpwAtVlZhlR, I already had some of the fractured jewel bases as rares. I sold some of those, rerolled most.

This is when I dropped the lock, spent it on:

Light of Meaning with inc fire (7d)

Unnatural Instinct (6d)

Adorned 64% (7d)

Sold the Adorned for 2d when I upgraded to a 75% one (11d) a few days later. Next breakpoint would be 88%, currently 44d.

Blood Magic -> Malevolence+Eternal Blessing, optionally Vitality+Arrogance. Swap when you have enough elemental res to drop Purity of Elements. and ignite/shock doesn't bother you too much. You can pretty freely swap between the two, just unspec BM and replace the blessing with Purity, and link everything with Lifetap

7L Elder helm, get a good base and throw a few essences on it whenever you have some extra c. I ex slammed the 20 conc effect lol

Stygian Vise, get the base, harvest reroll life until you hit something (might be cheaper to buy a normal belt + hunter orb, in this case start harvest rerolling the normal belt and slam the orb if you hit some decent other mods with a free prefix. far from guaranteed, but you might hit %life)

Defiance of Destiny is a great defensive option for the build, allows you to drop block/life gain on block for more damage

Annihilation's Approach is a fun option for faster mapping

Bottled Faith - Consecrated Ground, inc damage taken to enemies

Oriath's End - Boom Boom

Rational Doctrine - Consecrated Ground lingers

Minmax jewels to 8% multi, 7% life and some useful double implicits

I had a somewhat different approach in Settlers league, feel free to use the poeninja time machine and Check that out too.

I already rambled more than I was planning to, so I'll just end here, but feel free to ask questions or leave me some ideas. I'm far from a master buildmaker so also let me know if I've overlooked something.