build pob: https://pobb.in/vudf5jtKxn-3

build footage with mapping/against ubers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEH8Okbsqzk

Hi, I posted about this build on the sub a bit ago but I wanted to put out there what I think is the final version of this build. I like exploring more off-meta options because the game is interesting to me in spaces that aren't necessarily solved. In recent leagues this has included builds like multiple variants of Voltaxic Burst, Impale Reap, CoC Firestorm/Purifying Flame, Rupture Deadeye etc. My usual goal for a build is for it to have at least decent mapping and to be able to kill ubers. Some of the builds I've played are better at one or the other of these goals.

The most recent build I've been tinkering with is, imo, the Nicest™ of these I've played yet because it's pretty good at both: that is a Low Tolerance stacking Poison Flameblast Pathfinder. I just hit 100 with it and it has cleared everything I have thrown at it including: wave 30 sim clears, 7/7 ubers, 80-100% deli maps and general brainless alch and go Growing Hordes mapping, which is my preferred mapping playstyle.

It features things I think other people would want in a strong build, including --

Some pros:

• decent clear by combining Pathfinder prolif with Occultist explodes
  • 3 large Clusters means I can stack 30% explode chance from Unspeakable Gifts, the equivalent of a perfect-rolled Oriath's End
  • A caveat: stragglers exist and will be a little annoying with the cooldown Flameblast gets from the crucible mod. The offset is that the denser the map, the better prolif-explode will work including off-screen explode chaining. This build will never reach the level of good proj spam builds or those explode builds that can also stack aoe at the same time
• a nuke one-tap playstyle for single-target using a quad-curse setup, including sometimes one shots against ubers, depending on the rng of if they teleport out of Alchemist's Mark's caustic ground and/or Master Toxicist procs
• decent movement speed because of an always-on quicksilver with PF flask effect (130% MS for me, 150% MS if you care to optimize the boot slot)
• good survivability in most situations because of Cheatnotch (seriously, it's broken). An ideal situation: I can tank uber exarch balls or uber shaper balls.

Some cons:

• A non-ideal situation per above defense setup: I can't stand in degen for an extended period, which is the classical PF problem since I don't spec into the new Master Surgeon
• It's not immortal because while I can tank uber shaper balls I can't tank the big uber one shots like uber shaper slam. One shot mitigation against ubers can probably be worked in by dropping a bit of damage for sources of phys taken as ele conversion
• It can be expensive to optimize this at the high end but I have a PoB for a more entry-level spec that foregoes most of the expensive stuff

My current setup is pretty optimized and relatively expensive. A good Ashes, Forbidden Jewels and Progenesis/Bloodnotch/Immutable Force are in the ballpark range of 100+ div to begin with. I did not, however, start the build with everything it's wearing but made progressive upgrades per slot. To that end I think there are cheaper and viable options for virtually every slot which I'll go into. On the opposite end, there is a version of this build that would cost much more, up to multiple mirrors, if someone were crazy enough to use 2 or 3x 1 passive Voices.

Offense

Low Tolerance is a cluster jewel notable found on DoT medium clusters. It reads:

Poisons you inflict on non-Poisoned Enemies deal 300% increased Damage

This is one of the build's core engine pieces and I stack 6 of these on medium clusters, also taking the poison mastery with the same mod, to get 2100% increased damage against non-poisoned enemies.

Alchemist's Mark is the obscure cousin of the more popular Assassin and Sniper's Mark but in this type of nuke setup it's deadly effective and makes up 2/3 of the damage. This is because of the caustic ground it creates when you poison an enemy, which reads "Caustic Ground deals (60-79)% of the Chaos Damage per Second of strongest Poison on Enemy". This gets scaled by itemized sources of mark effect including: helmet enchant, glove implicit, crucible mod and Deadye's Focal Point from forbidden jewels amounting to 156% increased mark effect. I have a level 26 Alchemist's Mark which makes a caustic ground at 85% of the strongest poison; with all the mark effect this scales up to a degen that is 2.18x of an applied poison, effectively tripling the total DoT dps.

Alongside this I use Anathema and tag a single power charge to get a quad-curse setup of Alchemist Mark, Despair, Punishment, Temp chains.

The above is the core engine of the offense and, along with some other stuff like Aspect of the Spider and 12 stacks of wither from Withering Step amount to ~15m DoT dps against ubers and well over DoT cap against normal content. If I'm lucky enough to proc the 20% chance for 100% more damage on Master Toxicist it's 30m against ubers and, again, well over DoT cap for normal content but like 90-95m to give a number.

Defense

At the higher end of investment I use the combo of Bloodnotch/Immutable Force/Progenesis. This is a meta setup this league because it makes you virtually hit-immune to damage that doesn't one-shot you. My max phys hit taken is not crazy high because I'm not stacking damage taken as conversion like other Pathfinders but I've been able to do all content deathless and tank things like uber Shaper balls and uber Exarch balls. An example of something I couldn't tank was uber Eater and general uber slams. Honestly, the build wouldn't even lose that much damage by swapping Skin for Lightning Coil (15/30m uber to 11/22m uber dps) -- I just like damage.

Besides that, I'm using Purity of Elements which makes me ailment immune (and offers a source of phys taken as ele conversion from Watcher's Eyes).

Anomalous Arctic Armour + Aspect of the Spider make for a comfier mapping setup: aspect automates hindering things around me (which also procs Touch of Cruelty on my large clusters) while Anomalous Arctic Armour leverages quality from Ashes to the effect that things actually hitting me have a 50% chance to be frozen for 350ms. This combo is effective for giving me some breathing room during mapping for a skill that has a .4s cooldown after casting. An example is a soul eater rare that attacks 10 times a second now gets subjected to enough freezes that I can reasses that situation if I need to.

I'm "capped" spell suppress in that I'm at 100% at full life and 96% under that, which tbh for my purposes has been fine and I don't feel the difference. Resistances are rounded out by the typical Pathfinder permaflasks which eases pressure on other gear slots, where I rather focus suffixes on getting str/int.

My Gear

Helmet

My current Helmet is a crafted rare but I used Devouring Diadem from level 60-99. I didn't craft the helmet until I hit Eldritch Battery on a +5 Staff. Until a person gets to really minmaxing the build, Devouring Diadem is absolutely fine. At worst you're losing life and 2 affixes for phys taken as ele, 1 of which I'm not even using. The difficulty will be finding Alchemist's Mark Effect enchant on a Diadem, which I was lucky to do.

Boots/Gloves

These are simple crafts if you get fractured bases and there's nothing really special about them. I needed some combination of chaos res, str and life on them. I made both these slots by just throwing some essences at fractured bases until I was satisfied. My boots don't have an enchant because I was lazy but cast speed on kill/movement speed/regen on hit can work. Notably the glove slot has the crucial Mark Effect eldritch implicit. This goes up to 15-25% mark effect but I settled with 11%.

Body Armour

Skin of the Lords is not mandatory. Dialla's Malefaction can be used to buff Anomalous Flameblast to 50%, while still satisfying the 15% increased life mastery. This also eases amulet pressure away from Ashes for people that don't want to spend dozens of divs. Ashes + Lightning Coil is also an option, but I liked damage and had acceptable survivability for my purposes so I went with a Skin. Call to Arms is a possible keystone to get here, or EB/Magebane for 10s of divs.

Amulet

Ashes does a lot for the build and 30% quality to gems is important for Flameblast to reach 100% chaos conversion. A well rolled reservation Ashes is very expensive but it lets me anoint Dirty Techniques. A worse rolled reservation one can be used while anointing Sovereignty. If Dialla's Malefaction is used, a rare +1-2 to fire skills amulet with Sovereignty anoint can be used here instead.

Rings

One of them is Anathema, which is an insanely powerful ring. By using this and picking up a 1-pointer power charge I have access to quad curses. Moreover, it gives access to corruptions like Unaffected by Bleed (note: this doesn't work for CB but normal bleeds), all res and what I settled with in Malevolence aura effect.

The other ring can be an Amethyst or Vermillion ring. I picked up a fractured base and threw Delirium essences at it until I got something. If you're using the Progenesis setup this slot is important to get life recoup on. The %fire damage on my ring is so marginal as to be meaningless because I already have at least 2100% increased damage. Ideally the ring would have been crafted with a cast speed reforge for cast speed suffix and finished with a life unveil, but I hit t1 life on a Delirium slam which I stuck with.

Belt

Either this or the staff are the most problematic slot to craft, so I didn't craft this and just bought it instead. Some combination of flask charges gained/reduced flask charges used with flask effect duration helps enable permaflasks. PoB is your friend here to calculate flask uptime. I whiffed the prefix hunter slam and got chaos damage instead of %life but either works. Before I used a Stygian I was using a heavy belt up to like level 95-96. Stygian Vises mostly enable getting a phasing abyss jewel which helps in mapping contexts, while a heavy belt eases pressure to get str elsewhere.

Staff

The staff was the most involved crafting process so I'll go into it more. Barring 1 crucible passive it's basically perfect for me. My crucible tree includes: EB, 32% chaos DoT, 40% mark effect and the Flameblast crucible mod. The 40% mark effect and Flameblast mod are the only things I would call mandatory here. EB is not necessary while using Diadem and 32% chaos DoT is fluff.

I've crafted 2 of these +5 staves now. The first one cost ~15divs and was relatively painless -- the second one which I'm using and started only to try to get a perfect crucible tree cost ~50-60+ div. Half of the new stave's pain was trying to get a 5-mod crucible tree (I settled for 4) and the other half was whiffing annuls afterwards 5 times in a row while having gotten the +2 to all spell skill gems besides the +3 fracture.

You cannot imprint fractured items which meant I was using the 2-3div primordial remnant with "more likely to keep crucible passives" per attempt after I got EB onto the staff, because EB is an expensive mod on staves which I lost during the forging process at least once. The perfect tree would have had 20% wither effect as its first node but I'm not going to bother risking it.

I used fossils to craft the staff after the crucible tree:

1. Beginning with a fractured +3 base, shuddering + metallic + aetheric + corroded fossil combo has a 1 in 9 chance to hit +1-2 to all spell skill gems.
2. After that is hit, you will likely have a spell damage prefix alongside the +1-2, which you can annul off (or not) if you want to multimod benchcrafted 16-18% Fire Damage as extra Chaos Damage. This isn't necessary because a more vanilla +5 is fine, but I was minmaxing.
3. After I finally isolated 2 prefixes of +3 and +2 to fire skills with annuls, I multimodded prefix cannot be changed and a filler prefix.
4. Then I used a veiled chaos orb hoping to hit 1 suffix but T4 Aisling can be used here to be safer.
5. I got one veiled suffix so I blocked damage per frenzy charge and hoped to unveil either cast speed or chaos DoT. If I got either, I multimodded and called the staff done.
6. If neither appears, an option is to unveil something not-caster tagged, and then benchcraft Cannot Roll Caster mods and try to annul it off. This is a gamble that at most saves you 1 div and at worst costs more than a simple Prefixes Cannot Be Changed -> scour to try to get the unveil again. After whatever method to get +3 and +2 as isolated affixes, return to step 3.

I would suggest craftofexile with the above to corroborate the craft.

Jewels

The bad part here is that my setup uses 18 jewel sockets. This is a lot of jewels to amass but there are some good things to temper it. The first is that this many jewels makes accessing CB immunity on at least one of them much easier; the second is that the medium clusters can have any irrelevant 2nd notable on them as long as you can also access the jewel socket from Low Tolerance if it's a 5 passive medium; thirdly, because of all the jewels, it helps to get str/int or res needed here.

I did not tech into Unspeakable Gifts on large clusters for much of the character's life nor is it absolutely necessary. But the visceral pops from the Occultist-like explodes is satisfying enough to pay a premium on imo. PF prolif alone with a flameblast this powerful will still chain clear offscreen in dense mapping situations. Before my current large clusters, I was using three large clusters with Unwaveringly Evil - Unholy Grace - Wicked Pall on them.

My Brutal Restraint is good but I didn't super crosscheck to see if it's absolutely perfect; any BR with some combination of flask charges gained, faster poison and Alchemist's Genius would be good. PoB is your friend here in calculating flask uptime and for its Timeless Jewel finder. I would prioritize getting Alchemist's Genius and enough Flask Charges gained (here and elsewhere like on belt) so that you can permaflask, with faster poison as fluff. There is an option here to drop Serpentine Spellslinger cluster near CI for Swift Venoms to get another Brutal Restraint notable if one finds a good combination for it.

There's no way around saying this but Focal Point forbidden jewels are expensive as fuck because Vengeant Cascade/Sniper's Mark is the current hotness. In my setup they account for 25-30% of the build's damage but that means going from 15m-30m uber dot dps to 12-24m. I do not deem it mandatory over upgrades that can be made elsewhere and you only really need this much damage if you want to do the hardest content in the game with more damage.

A Watcher's Eye with any combo of mods at a person's discretion can be used here. Purity of Elements phys taken as ele is a good mod which I forgoed because I got the determ/malevolence one before I even used Purity of Elements. Intuitive Leap at Shadow area helps access more recoup for Progenesis, a life/suppress notable and +1 curse.

Playstyle

I run around and one-tap most packs. The flameblast crucible mod sets my default channel stage to 5 which helps a lot with mapping dps. Every so often I press divine blessing. Against really beefy mobs I will channel to full and maybe withering step, which, as an instant skill, does not interrupt channeling flameblast. Against anything that is really tanky, or when I have setup time like with essences or ubers, I will:

1. press divine blessing
2. drop arcanist brand to setup curses
3. walk around for an opening
4. channel flameblast
5. withering step while channeling
6. release channel

This is enough to one shot most things in the game that aren't ubers (but sometimes it one shots ubers) or damage cycling reduction rares. When I had a Devouring Diadem with focus duration mod, I pressed that too but life's a lot easier without another cooldown.

Something to consider is that Arcanist Brand does not cast all of its curses instantly. There is some in-between time for placing it down, the brand attaching and then it proccing curses in a sequence. This is fine for the most part because flameblast is a skill you have to channel anyway. It is important to have Alchemist's Mark as the firstmost curse in the links (closer to top-left), which you can ensure by benchcrafting "At least one green socket" when coloring the staff. By the same logic, Punishment is best kept as the last link (closer to bottom-right).

I keep Enduring Cry around in situations where I inexplicably take damage, mostly from DoT but using the flask mastery of "Recover 4% life when you use a flask" + charges gained when hit flask prefix is also an option for life recovery. I have Steelskin on left click but you can instead use it reactively to dispel bleeds, if you don't have bleed immunity from CB/Anathema implicit.

Gearing Options, Budget and otherwise

I didn't start out the build with the level of gear I have now, and a lot of it was a learning process. Because of that I used scuffed gear and setups into red maps, but now that I know more about the build I think there are options that can be used that don't involve the dozens of div items like Ashes, Progenesis/Bloodnotch/Immutable, awakened gems, exceptional gems and forbidden jewels.

At an entry-level, I would primarily recommend:

• Dialla's Malefaction over Skin + Ashes. This still satisfies full chaos conversion for Flameblast/15% life mastery while giving access to an amulet alternative.
• Grace/Determ/Defiance Banner over Progenesis/Bloodnotch/Immutable. This is what I used before swapping into Cheatnotch. You will be, frankly, a fraction of tanky but it feels how the typical Grace/Determ/Defiance/Suppress feels, with some comfiness from PF flask effect for ele damage.
• Any Devouring Diadem with a usable enchant. <aura> reservation efficiency can open some options up to swap anoints or another aura in. Alchemist's Mark effect is absolutely ideal but there is so little demand for the enchant that it on Diadem is a seller's market.
• A +5 staff is not necessary. A +2 or +3, as long as it has 40% mark effect and Flameblast crucible mod can carry.

When swapping to the above gear recommendations, regular gems over awakened gems, lvl 4 exceptional gems to lvl 3, less fluff alt quality gems, a 1-mod Watcher's Eye, removing Forbidden Jewels and a level 94 tree, I came up with this PoB:

https://pobb.in/qJLvalfHko_1

It has 8-10m DoT dps at full channel against guardians, which you can double on Master Toxicist procs. In mapping contexts where you do one-taps (5 stage channel) it's about 1-1.4m DoT before wither stacks. My estimate for the above gear would probably be around 10-15divs.

At the other end of the spectrum of higher-end:

The build can be tankier against uber one shots if you want to sacrifice some damage. The most obvious way to do that would be swap Skin for Lightning Coil and stack more phys taken as ele mods via Watcher's Eyes and 2 affixes on helm, with the requisite of getting EB on the staff. You would also get a perfect Bloodnotch. At that point you would just have to solve recovery against DoT, which I'm not sure how to do without speccing into Master Surgeon. So far, either of the flask mastery to recover life on use+charges when hit flask prefix and/or enduring cry have been enough for me.

At the highest end is using 2 or 3 1-passive Voices. This would potentially give up to 3000% increased damage to non-poisoned enemies, or, if using 2 Voices, free up a lot of travel points that can be put elsewhere. Besides that is the option of using Megalomaniacs with Hound's Mark and Low Tolerance but I don't think optimized ones with 3 good notables really exist.

Closing Thoughts

I don't really play much meta builds outside my league starter sometimes so I don't have the best frame of reference for build efficacy. I'm sure explode totems right now can clear the game more autopilot and cheaper.

I do think this setup for Flameblast, however, at least for this league, plays pretty good, moreso for a skill most people don't really consider in serious use. A setup that baseline leverages 540% more ailment damage with 2100% increased damage and doubling/tripling that with a mark had to have worked, right? At least for me, it was pretty Nice™.

The Flameblast crucible mod adds a massive amount of QoL in terms of mapping dps and lends me a love-hate relationship with the league. I love the mechanical interactions the Crucible tree opens up because this build demonstrates the least of what's out there right now, but I disliked actually interacting with the league mechanic. Forging is fine, if characteristically opaque, because I accept the rng, but the channel mechanic and Forge as a map is very rudimentary (the latter probably intentionally to be unobtrusive) after coming from Sanctum.

I digress -- I don't expect every league to be up to Sanctum's standards with the PoE 2 stuff coming, but I will miss this build if/when cheatnotch is nerfed and without the Crucible tree stuff where you have to actually fully channel Flameblast.