Leeching Fire - mahjerion/Craft-to-Exile-Dissonance GitHub Wiki

Updated for 2.16.3

Welcome to the face-tanking, melee-slapping, fire-stick build of your dreams.

Table of Contents

  1. Primer
  2. Stats
  3. Masteries
  4. Talent Tree
  5. Equipment
  6. What To Do After

Primer

Author: Cinder

This build focuses primarily on two things: staying alive through constant attacks, allowing Lifesteal to sustain you, and being bursty through the synergy of Spell Blade and Flame Blitz. If you're looking for a high sustain build with quick hits in melee combat, this is the build for you!

Pros:

  • High burst damage with built-in sustain and receives damage buffs from multiple damage sources.
  • High sustain due to attacks, Vampire node, and medium-high armor.
  • Melee-ing your way to victory.

Cons:

  • Melee cannot hit flying creatures.
  • Early game is mildly rough due to not having Flame Blade.
  • Talent Tree nodes that you need are far away from each other.

Primary Damage Source

  • Flame Blitz + Spell Blade

Defensive Mechanism

  • Lifesteal
  • Health and Armor

Stats

I personally see two ways to go with stats. Since I think torches are much better in comparison to shields due to the Energy Regen, having points into Wisdom will help a lot. You can pick between Strength or Intelligence as your primary stat to dump into, as Strength gives % physical damage which can then be converted into Fire Weapon Damage from Spell Blade, and Intelligence gives % Elemental Spell Damage, which makes your Flame Blitz do more damage while providing more Flame Infusion conversion. Make sure you put points into Vitality as well so that you can wear health/armor equipment.

What's Infusion?

Infusion takes a portion of your Spell Damage % and gives it to you as extra elemental weapon damage. Infusion only takes from the corresponding Spell Element Damage. For example, if you have 50% Fire Spell Damage and 100% Fire Infusion, you gain 100% of that 50% Fire Spell Damage as extra fire weapon damage. Increases to Spell Damage won't affect this, only increases to Fire Spell Damage.

An extra note: damage gained from Fire Infusion can be buffed by Elemental Weapon nodes in the Talent Tree.

Masteries

  • Primary: Fire
  • Secondary: Storm

Pre-Spell Blade:

Start working on your Mastery level in your spell tree (always keep the amounts of points you invested equal to your current level), and start putting points into Flame Blitz. This is a great starter spell since you can quickly weave it in between basic attacks. Following the quest guide can get you to level 15 or so without many troubles early on.

Post-Spell Blade:

Once you have access to Spell Blade, you want to start maxing it ASAP. This is the bread and butter of your burst combo. At max level, this spell turns 50% of your physical damage into 50% fire weapon damage, as well as giving you 50% Fire Infusion. We go Storm as our secondary for three specific skills:

  • Power Surge
  • Energy Dash
  • Static Discharge

Power Surge provides a nice boost to Elemental Spell Damage which affects Fire Infusion and the damage you do with Flame Blitz. Energy Dash is a passive which comes from Lightning Dash, granting Energy per enemy hit and gives you a reposition if you need it. Static Discharge is a passive from Charged Nova that gives the nova a chance to apply Static, a passive debuff that reduces the enemies' Elemental Resists - this stacks with Burn's Elemental Resist debuff!

Level 55 Fire + Storm Trees

55 trees

Level 80 Fire + Storm Trees

80 trees

Talent Tree

Note that depending on your gear, you may need to grab Blood Mage at a later level if you are unable to sustain the blood costs of your abilities. Make sure to grab Health Regeneration and Life/Spellsteal where you can.

Level 55 Talent Tree

55 talent

Level 80 Talent Tree

80 talent

Equipment

Stats to focus on items are the following:

  • Fire Spell Damage %
  • Health/Armor
  • Fire Infusion %
  • % Attack Lifesteal
  • % Increased Attack Lifesteal
  • Energy/Energy Regen
  • % Physical Attack Damage
  • x to x Attack Damage (eg. 50 - 150 Physical Attack Damage as a prefix)
  • % Spell Lifesteal

Focus on swords primarily due to them being able to roll Lifesteal, flat physical attack damage, and Fire Infusion. If you get a perfectly rolled sword, it will almost always beat any other weapon for this build!

What To Do After

Honestly, you can focus on either more damage since your sustain relies on how much damage you do, Energy nodes if you need the extra Energy for basic attacks, or Armor nodes to become slightly beefier. The skies the limit!

Thanks for reading through all this, and have fun slapping fools with your fire stick!