[3.25]🔥Fire Slamming Chieftain🔥 (Tectonic Slam / Volcanic Fissure / Consecrated Path / ANY SLAM)

Versatile Combatant + Elegant Hubris: https://pobb.in/sOT-M-skdlyW (Thanks to ActuallyAnOreoIRL for experimenting with this)
This variation ignores Attribute requirements and the passive tree should be completely Tattooed. 65% Attack/Spell Block makes for a really tanky character. It also needs some Energy Shield to maximize tankiness since we have ES recovery on Spell Block.

Take these Pros and Cons with a grain of salt. I currently have around 1000 hours in this game and while I'm not a beginner, I don't play a lot of builds either. So when I say this build is tanky I'm basing it on my own feeling as I don't have a lot of experience with other stuff.

Some things about me: I'm the type of player that likes playing a single build over an entire league since I don't enjoy running through the acts. I also take long breaks from the game, I usually play one league per year but I play it pretty intensely.

Exerted Attacks + Overexertion support + Echoes of Creation helmet (optional)
Physical to fire conversion + Gain physical as extra fire
Fire Penetration
Rage (perma-Rage capped for a free 40% more damage)
Warcry Buff effect (Infernal Cry and Battlemage's Cry)
Frenzy Charges
Endurance charges (when using Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm, Consecrated Path of Endurance or Endurance Charge on Melee Stun support)
Critical Strikes (when going crit route)

90% max elemental resistances (thanks to Valako's Storm Embrace)
6+ Endurance Charges (buffed in 3.25 to be extremely strong)
Fortify
Armour + Take phys as elemental
High Life Regen
Capped Chaos resistance
Warcry Buff effect (Enduring Cry and Seismic Cry)
All elemental ailments immunity, stun immunity (can also just do chill, freeze and shock only on low investment and we're unaffected by ignite thanks to Tasalio, Cleansing Water)
Debilitation (enemies deal 10% less dmg, optional as Warcry Mastery)
Chill on Hit (optional if using Maces)
Block/Life on Block (if using Staves)
Consecrated Ground (only some variants)
Honourable mention: Huge AoE

Permanent Onslaught
Frenzy Charges
Movement Speed (Intimidating Cry Buff)
Endurance Charges (More AoE/Branching Chance when using Tectonic Slam, Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm or Consecrated Path of Endurance)

Warcries have infinite power. This means that we can benefit from Warcry buffs even without an enemy in range. This has several interactions:
Enduring Cry will always give us 10% life regenerated per second and maximum endurance charges, no matter what our max endurance charge cap is!
Infernal Cry will always give 25% phys as extra fire
Battlemage's Cry will always give +2.5% to Critical Strike Chance (this allows as to get crit chance capped with minimal investment)
With the Rage mastery allocated, each warcry gives 5 Rage, making us Rage-capped
Vengeful Cry (optional) gives 25 temporary max Rage
Intimidating Cry and Seismic Cry will give 18% increased movement speed and 25% more armour (and 75% increased stun threshold), respectively. But we're usually autoexerting at least one of these.
Rallying Cry has no useful buffs, so it can be autoexerted. However when manually cast it gives 5% more dmg per ally affected.

These are just the baseline buffs, when we get "Increased Warcry Buff Effect" stats we will scale these effects. The endgame build has around 100% increased warcry buff effect, so you can double the values I've written above (excepting the Rage and Rallying Cry interactions).

EDIT: Infernal Cry seems to not be scaled by Warcry Buff Effect either. I'm pretty sure it is a bug but I'll guess we have to wait for the next League to see GGG's response. It's a bummer since it was our main damage buff.

When using Medium Cluster Jewels (exerted damage variant) some notables become really strong as well:
Warning Call will always give us 100% increased Armour
Mob Mentality will always give one RANDOM charge (power, frenzy, endurance) every time we Warcry. This allows us to easily be power and frenzy charge capped without any other investment.

Sione, Sun's Roar: a welcomed newcomer, this provides huge QoL to our Warcries. Check the section above to see all the Infinite Power Warcry interactions. In my opinion I think it's slightly underpowered but I need to play other ascendancies to see how useful this is. It replaced Tawhoa, Forest Strength, if you want to test the old node to see how it felt check the "Tawhoa's Felling" Weapon.

Tukohama, War's Herald: free Fist of War support, essentially making our main skill a 7-link. Fist of War is one of the more unique support gems in the game and I love it since it looks so cool. It becomes stronger if we attack slower and hard, and since we're not going for (too much) attack speed we can get it every 2nd or 3rd attack, giving us between 30-50% more damage. All in all a solid node if a bit boring since it just gives a support gem instead of a unique effect.

Tasalio, Cleansing Water: makes capping elemental resistances really easy by stacking fire resist only. Gearing during levelling becomes very comfortable. In the endgame it gets a bit outscaled since capping resists is not that hard, but it still frees us some spots to get other defensive or offensive stats in place of the elemental resistances. Unaffected by Ignite is also one less headache to solve when playing.

Valako's, Storm's Embrace: the strongest Chieftain node, so strong that probably all Chieftain builds take it no matter what they do. Maximum elemental resistance is one of the strongest defensive mechanics in the game, and with this node we can get to 90% max elemental resist (you can't go over 90%) by just investing in maximum fire resistance. Since the normal cap is 75%, the problem to solve is finding how to get 15% maximum fire resistance. (Check the PoB or "Problems + Solutions" section below for ways to achieve it.)

The other nodes are not that good for our build, we're not doing ignite or strength stacking and we don't need explode nodes since we're exploding enemies with our raw strength hehe.

I still have some problems with the Chieftain Ascendancy rework, if you enjoy reading rants you can find it in the "Problems + Solutions" section below

Playing Chieftain makes basic gearing a breeze, focus on high Life + high Fire Resist rolls. This opens up many slots for Chaos resistance and Attributes. Your bread and butter benchcrafts should be:
Prefixes: Life, Armour
Suffixes: Fire + Chaos Res, Attributes, Fire + Cold/Lightning Res
Items like these with high-tier affixes can carry you all the way to Atlas Bosses.

IMPORTANT TRICK TO KEEP IN MIND, ESPECIALLY FOR CHIEFTAIN
You can use Harvest Crafting to swap resistances from items. This means you can convert Cold/Lightning to Fire Resistance to get both Cold and Lightning Resistance through Tasalio, Cleansing Water.

For example: swapping 48% Cold Resistance will give you 48% (may not be the exact number but close) Fire Resistance, 24% Cold and 24% Lightning Resistance. This is really good, just keep in mind that your swapped resistance will basically get halved when switching from Cold/Lightning to Fire so you don't get accidentally undercapped (sometimes it's ok to keep a high non-Fire Resistance roll).

Note: you cannot convert multi-resistance suffixes.

Use the highest physical DPS (pDPS) two-handed weapon you have. An important tip is to focus on having better prefixes and a mediocre attack speed rather than mediocre prefixes a good Attack Speed suffix.

You can just craft Attack Speed so it doesn't feel bad, but no need to look for T1/T2 Attack Speed (Pro Tip: if you need some attributes you can even craft the Attack Speed + Dex and Int).

For a large part of our journey we won't be using any weapon specific nodes, so you can just equip the highest pDPS weapon you have available.


The weapon type becomes important when deciding if you want to go Crit and which defensive and utility aspects you wish to spec into. For the Resolute Technique path I chose Maces and for the Crit path I went with Warstaves.

With these weapons we can get Fortify easily through the "Overlord" Cluster Jewel notable, freeing up passive points and a support gem for more overall damage.


Note: do not socket your slam into the weapon if you're playing Chieftain. You need your slam socketed in the Body Armour for the free Fist of War Support.

Helmets, Gloves and Boots have an interesting design: each of them has a main "affinity" to an attribute/element and related affixes:
Helmets: Intelligence, Power Charges, Lightning
Gloves: Dexterity, Frenzy Charges, Cold
Boots: Strength, Endurance Charges, Fire

This means a few things:
An armour item cannot roll an attribute it doesn't have affinity to unless it has that attribute as a requirement. For example Boots can only naturally roll Strength but a pair of Boots that give Evasion (and also require Dex) will also be able to roll Dexterity. You can also force an attribute using an Essence.

The Charge related affixes are usually harder to obtain, mostly comprising of Influenced modifiers or special implicits (corruption, eldritch). For example, a Warlord modifier gives "+1 to maximum Endurance Charges" on Boots, but on a pair of Gloves the equivalent affix will give "+1 to maximum Frenzy Charges".

This is usually not that important to know, however my build is using an unique Helmet and Amulet, so getting the required Dex and Int on a budget may be tricky. You can also notice that the Boots slot contains most of the affixes this build is interested in, so we also have some interesting things we can do there.

If you need extra Intelligence, helmets are a good place to get it cheap (if you read the previous section you know why!). Don't buy an expensive helmet or waste lots of ichors/embers on implicits as we will be switching to Echoes of Creation pretty fast.

Echoes of Creation is one of the strongest power-ups for this build. It works exactly as Overexertion Support but it's not the same effect, so they multiply each other. Make sure you socket all warcries that give exerts to your attacks, since at maximum exerts (5: Infernal + Intimidating + Seismic + Rallying + Battlemage) this helmet give 75% MORE DAMAGE.

It also gives +1 Cooldown Use to socketed Warcries (has no synergy with Autoexertion). Aside from giving a lot of comfort to the manual warcry rotation, this also allows a higher uptime on Intimidating Cry (because it has a really low amount of exerts) which leads to higher DPS.

A big drawback is that you take a chunk of your life for EACH Warcry exerting your attack. With 5 warcries it means you take 75-100% (depending on the roll) of your life as physical damage every time you slam. Thankfully, this happens before resistance calculation, so we can use our high defenses to almost nullify this effect. Check the "Echoes of Creation checklist so you don't Oneshot yourself" in the FAQ section below.

Gloves do not have many special affixes we're looking for, serving mostly as a life/resists/armour/flex slot. Some Gloves-exclusive stuff you're looking for:
- #% Increased Damage while Leeching: strong benchcraft
- Accuracy: make sure to get a T1 suffix when you switch to Crit, we don't have many places we can get Accuracy from
- Attack Speed: not mandatory, only if you're really struggling with low attack speed
- Life regeneration rate: not Gloves-exclusive, luxury stat, really strong but usually makes the price jump a lot
- Dexterity is easier to roll (and cheaper if buying)

Boots are an important slot for us as it has many potentially strong modifiers for our build. We need Movement Speed on prefixes which complicates the whole process when moving to endgame items.

Important benchcrafts for boots:
- #% increased Movement Speed, 100% chance to Avoid being Chilled: MUST HAVE unless you have other ways to get Chill Immunity (Check the FAQ section for ways of solving Elemental Ailments)
- #% increased Movement Speed, #% chance to gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Kill: once you have Chill Immunity and no other ways to get Onslaught

The boots slot is also one of the easiest way to get Elemental Ailment Immunity. Check the FAQ section for more information about how it works and the Crafting section if you want to craft them yourself.

There are also some viable Uniques, however they usually give less defense and/or utility in exchange for damage or unique effects.


A really strong affix for this build is the Warlord prefix "+1 to Maximum Endurance Charges". This is extremely hard to craft for budget versions. If you want to buy it I recommend just searching for the +1 mod, movement speed/life (maybe open prefix to craft the other) and some resists. This will already cost a bit. Don't get picky, get some decent boots at a good price and make up the lack of stats on your other items, but make sure it's not worse than just getting the "Death's Door" Unique, which is similar.

I got lucky and found the boots shown above (without the Life Regeneration Rate suffix) for 2 Divines, then hit a lucky Exalt for the T1 life regen rate.

At really high investment levels we can even use the elevated modifier for the bonus "10% chance to gain up to maximum endurance charges", but outside Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm it's probably not worth it.

Body Armour is where you get a big chunk of your Armour from (especially thanks to the changes in 3.25 which added new Base Types). You ideally want a Royal Plate with lots of Armour prefixes so you get at least 3000 (the more the better) Armour and the "#% additional Physical Damage Reduction" (PDR) suffix. Use Sacred Orbs if the base Armour roll is low (hold Alt to see the Armour Values Range)

Tip: Search/craft triple Armour prefixes with no Life Modifiers and get the Life Mastery ("15% increased maximum Life if there are no Life Modifiers on Equipped Body Armour"). Make sure you don't have Life Regen or other modifiers that still count as Life.

Belts have additional flask modifiers, but we're not too interested about that. Switch to a Stygian Vise as soon as you're able to since the Abyss Jewel adds a lot of flexibility and power.

Aside from the standard affixes, some good prefixes on Belts are Armour and increased Elemental Damage with Attacks. You can also craft "Warcries cannot exert Travel skills" to save one passive point.

If you're trying to max Shock Avoidance, you can use Essences of Torment on Belts instead of Boots (for example, if you're switching to "+1 to Max Endurance" Boots which are almost impossible to craft with Essences). The crafting steps are similar to the one for boots, except Fractured Stygian Vises are very expensive since they don't naturally occur, so it will be harder to guarantee multiple affixes on a budget. I got tired of crafting so I just bought a decent one with high Life and Armour.

A high investment Stygian Vise will have the Elder/Hunter prefix "#% increased maximum Life" alongside T2/T1 Life. With Fertile Catalysts you get a ton of Life from a belt like this.

Abyss Jewel
For the Abyss Jewel, get Life and Shock Avoid Chance (if you're trying to get 100% avoidance using essence on boots/belt, make sure it adds up to 100%). If you're going Crit get at least 150+ Accuracy too.

Extra things to look for on an Abyss Jewel:
Affixes: attributes, resistances, armour, #% chance to gain Phasing on kill, other affixes that give benefits to the build (too many to list)
Also check for corrupted implicits, the most important is Corrupted Blood immunity but there are other good corruptions as well.

Level using any Amulet with good stats, preferably Turqoise since we're pretty Dex and Int starved. Buy Xoph's Blood as soon as you can (it's pretty expensive at the start since it is a build-enabling unique for other builds) because it carries us throughout the whole game. It's one of the only ways (that doesn't suck) in the game to still get "Covered in Ash" which is a strong debuff. On top of that it gives Fire Penetration and Life. It gives around 30% More Damage to the build.

The only problem is that Amulets are usually the easy way to solve Attribute requirements, so we have to get Intelligence and Dexterity from the rest of our gear instead. If you struggle with this (or have another source of applying "Covered in Ash") get a Turquoise Amulet with High Life and other stats you need.

Use Rings to get a lot of Attributes and Resistances for cheap (unless you want perfect rolls). Don't forget to use Catalysts. An important thing is to get the crafted prefix "Non-Channelling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost". Don't skip this since it solves a lot of the Mana cost problems. You can get it by doing Jun missions (Betrayal mechanic) and unveiling Rings from Elreon.

Consider using an Unset Ring (maybe even two) to squeeze in another Gem since there's lots of good skills that this build can use.

Ultra expensive Ring setup: A synthesised Ring with "+1 to Maximum Endurance Charges" implicit. This currently costs over 100 Divines. The good thing is that after you get a ring like this and craft it to be really good, you can basically double it through "Kalandra's Touch" (much cheaper).
Consider this as aspirational content (aka stuff that you probably won't get to but it can be fun grinding towards if you start getting rich).

Low Budget: Focus on getting 2% Max Fire Resistance and any useful affixes (at least 1-2) to you.
Medium Budget: Get 2% Max Fire Res + 7% increased max Life. Can drop max life lower if they're too expensive. You can usually get at least 1 additional useful affix for about the same price.
High Budget: Same as Medium Budget, but add 2 useful affixes (for example double Crit Multi). If you're looking for expensive combos, like Mana Reservation Efficiency, Block, or Corrupted Blood Immunity, the price can skyrocket.

Jewels can be tricky to buy if you're not used to searching for them using "Count". Here is a search query already completed, by default it searches for jewels described Low Budget. You can also check/uncheck different affixes and groups you may need for other budgets. There is also a separate group for Crit.

If you already have max Fire Resistance and still have slots left even after using Unique Jewels, fill the rest of the slots with Life + 2-3 useful affixes.

Unique Jewels:

Lethal Pride: Can give lots of extra bonuses if rolled well. Use the PoB "Find Timeless Jewel" functionality and look for combinations of "Gain 5% of Phys as Extra Fire", "20% increased Melee Damage", "15% to Melee Critical Strike Multiplier" (if going crit), 8% increased Warcry Buff Effect" and other offensive/defensive mods (you can check the wiki).
If you use Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm also check for "5% chance to gain an Endurance Charge on Kill", as it's one of the only places to get this stat.
Stormshroud: Optional, but powerful way of becoming Elemental Ailment Immune, check the "Problems + Solutions" section for more details
The Light of Meaning: Adds a lot of damage when socketed near the "Stamina" notable (11% More damage on my PoB). Both Physical and Fire variants are equivalent, so choose the one that is cheaper. Competes with Lethal Pride for the same Jewel slot, so choose between them.
Forbidden Flesh/Forbidden Flame - Unflinching: Really expensive but must have (in my opinion) if you want to use Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm. If you're playing other Slams I wouldn't get this as it's not worth 2 Jewel slots otherwise.

The most important upgrade is getting a Large Cluster Jewel for Mace and Staff Damage with Overlord, Fuel the Fight and another notable (make sure the first 2 notables are in the front towards the jewel sockets and not in the back, you can import in PoB and check).

This can be expensive at the start, so you can try to search for a 2 notable variant that has Overlord and Fuel the Fight. You will spend 2 more passive points in this case but for early game it's ok.

Next, get two Medium Cluster Jewels for Exerted Attacks with either 4 or 5 Passive Skills with the notables: Warning Call, Mob Mentality, Lead By Example, Haunting Shout (the last one is not that important and you can even leave it unallocated). The most expensive combination in the same Cluster is Mob Mentality and Warning Call so try to get them paired with the other Notables.

I recommend going for a second Large Cluster Jewel only when you have the funds to afford Jewels with both life and 2% Max Fire Res. There are multiple Cluster Jewel variants you can go for. Small passives add the same damage, the only difference is in notables. Here's a list of them in the order of strongest to weakest (make sure the 2 you want are in the path towards the jewel sockets):

Two Handed Melee Weapons:
Brutal Infamy,
Martial Prowess (if going Crit),
Graceful Execution (if going Crit and you need the Dex + Int),
Battlefield Dominator,
Calamitous,
Feed the Fury,
Devastator (this might be further up but I don't know how good the explode is)

Fire Damage:
Cremator (must have for this cluster, EDIT: needs more testing, it may not work as well as it sounds for this build since we oneshot mobs and ignite will not be applied),
Smoking Remains,
Master of Fire,
Sadist

NOTE: These are not needed for clearing Ubers or other hard content, I completed almost all the content in the game before crafting these items. Steps for crafting them are included in the "Crafting" section.

Getting a perfect prefixes weapon is the biggest DPS upgrade for melee builds. I crafted them using Recombinators for probably less than 20 Div, they usually sell for 100+ Div (especially since they are Heist Bases) so buying them will require some money-making knowledge. Crafting high-tier Phys weapons without Recombinators is a pain, so I don't recommend doing it if you don't have access to Recombinators or other good crafting methods.

The Body Armour was also crafted Recombinators. Since we like stacking Endurance Charges anyway the essence modifier solves this build's Crit dmg Reduction.

The Boots are my favourite since they are tailor-made for Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm. These ensure that when you consume the Endurance Charges you will get them back to max almost instantly.

Quicksilver,
Granite,
Basalt,
Flex:
Ruby Flask until you have capped max resists,
Silver until you get Onslaught from boots or cluster Jewel.
Mana Flask with Enduring prefix if you have Mana issues or doing "Cannot leech" Maps.
After solving these problems, choose between Quartz for Phasing, Sulphur, Gold or Diamond (if you need extra Crit Chance to cap).
You can also try using a Tincture here, but I don't find it that useful when mapping

Prefixes are not so important here, for suffixes get any combinations of the following across your Flasks:
Increased Armour during Effect (best on either Granite or Basalt),
Reduced Effect of Curses on you during Effect,
Increased Movement Speed during Effect (best on Quicksilver),
#% chance to Freeze, Shock and Ignite during Effect (only if you don't need other defensive effects, gives better Ignite uptime),
#% increased Critical Strike Chance during Effect (when going Crit).

You can try using an extra Life Flask, the suffix Recover an additional #% of Flask's Life Recovery Amount over 10 seconds if used while not on Full Life is pretty good here
For Utility Flasks, when Bossing it's better to not use Instilling Orbs and use either Enkindling Orbs or enchant them using Harvest. Your options should be:
Granite
Basalt
Quicksilver: may not be needed unless you need to dodge lots of stuff (Exarch Boulder Phase, Maven Memory Game, Sirus Craters)
Ruby: When fighting Searing Exarch (stepping on runes gives -5% Max Fire Res)
Prismatic Tincture is really powerful here, as Melee we have limited damage windows, so maximizing the Slam damage makes the fight a lot easier.
Note: if you checked some bossing guides you will see people recommending Sapphire and Topaz flasks for some bosses. We already have 90% Max Resists due to being Chieftain, so this does not actually benefit our build.

If you use your Utility Flasks too much you won't have any charges left pretty fast. A powerful prefix that solves this is Gain # Charges when you are Hit by an Enemy. Try to get this on all your flasks, as suffixes are less important here. An alternative for the Crit build is #% chance to gain a Flask Charge when you deal a Critical Strike. You can also just rely on the enchants and use the Flasks sparingly.

Rumi's Concoction: when switching to Staves for extra block
Lion's Roar: for a bit extra damage
The Wise Oak: gives extra Penetration and defenses (becomes stronger if you can keep your cold and lightning resistance equal)
Cinderswallow Urn: Extra damage and life/mana recovery
Bottled Faith: Luxury item granting Crit and more damage
Progenesis: Extremely expensive but grants strong damage mitigation

Fortify if you have don't get it from the passive tree (Cluster Jewel or Fortify node wheel)
Fire Penetration (the Awakened version is especially good)
Endurance Charge on Melee Stun (once you get 7+ Endurance Charges)
Cold to Fire if using Ice Crash (if you also need Fortify swap it with Elemental Damage with Attacks or another gem).
Fist of War if you're not playing Chieftain

Extra options if you also want to replace Pulverise and or Melee Phys due to attack speed issues: Added Fire Damage (good damage early but gets outscaled), Ruthless, Concentrated Effect, Elemental Focus, Combustion, Shockwave.

Blood and Sand adds good damage for just a 10% mana reservation. We're usually setting it to Blood stance and keep it there. If you are autoexerting less than 2 Warcries or do some mana reservation tricks you can fit both Heralds. If you have to choose between one of them, both give similar amounts of damage but Herald of Purity has some special synergy with Rallying Cry. I may underestimate Herald of Ash's overkill effect so I need to test it more.

For the Crit setup, you will get socket starved, an easy solution is to just drop the Heralds or some of the skills from the Mobility or Rage-Buff setups.

Fun thing to note: aside from Precision, none of these are actually considered Auras in game so they won't be affected by increases/reductions or other modifiers to Aura effect

Note: * means that the warcry can be either manually cast or autoexerted (when a warcry is linked to autoexert it does not give any buffs, only exerts for your attacks).


No Crit version
Auto warcries: Autoexertion - Battlemage's Cry - Flammability - Seismic Cry* - Rallying Cry*
Manual warcries: Enduring Cry - Infernal Cry - Urgent Orders - Intimidating Cry*/More Duration (comfort version)

The "Manual warcries" setup should socketed in the Helmet.


Crit version
Auto warcries: Autoexertion - Intimidating Cry* - Seismic Cry* - Rallying Cry*
Manual warcries: Enduring Cry - Infernal Cry - Urgent Orders - Battlemage's Cry - Flammability (- More Duration)

Since Battlemage's Cry gives around 5% base critical strike chance which is huge, we have to manually cast it and also move Flammability so it's still applied on our attacks. More Duration is optional but highly recommended, it's hard to keep track of both the Warcry buff duration and it's cooldown, so having extra room for being buffed is really important, especially since we lose almost half of our Crit rate when the Buff runs out.

The standard el33t melee chad racer setup. Leap slam has no cooldown and scales with both attack speed and movement speed, while Frostblink is an instant-cast blink that can be used in tricky situation (if you're a League of Legends player it's like Flash so you understand how strong it can be).

The Frostblink trick: Since Frostblink has an instant cast, it does not interrupt our character's action, which means we can Frostblink mid-slam to reposition ourselves while we're locked in our long animation and/or redirect our slam if the opponent teleports or uses annoying and dangerous stuff like a proximity shield or mana bubble (again, if you're a LoL player it's like a Flash-skill combo which can be game-changing).

You can also use Flame Dash instead of Frostblink. It has 3 charges for more frequent dodges but you won't be able to do the reposition mid-slam.

Standard CWDT setup. Molten Shell gives good tankiness when it's active. Make sure your gem levels are correct (Molten Shell needs to have a less or equal "requires Level" value than CWDT). Can decrease or increase it based on preference (you probably need a lower level while progressing).

Other options: can also try Vaal Molten Shell and use the Vaal version as a manual defensive button, or drop the CWDT gem entirely and manually cast Molten Shell when you know you're gonna get hit by big damage. But we're already using many buttons.

Think we already had too many buttons? THING AGAIN. With the changes to Rage in 3.25 our Rage generation is really good so we can keep Berserk up for a really long time. For my current setup it gives 16% More Damage.

But the cherry on top goes to the new skill: Vengeful Cry. It is a retaliation warcry skill, which means it can only be used for 2 seconds after taking a savage hit (15% damage dealt to maximum life in one hit) which gives 25 temporary max Rage and prevents Rage decay. Since we stack Warcry Buff effect this gives closer to 50 max Rage (51 for my build). This gives my build a whopping 35% more damage during the buff effect.

But how do you reliably take savage hits?


Though they are individually strong, Berserk and Vengeful Cry also multiply each other, giving my build 71% more damage.

Note: Both skills are unchecked by default in my PoB link so they're not included in DPS, the actual damage numbers are even higher when we use both, but it also shows that this build can scale good without them.

If you're using more Auras and/or Enlighten you won't have enough slots for both of these unless you're using some Unset Rings. You can drop one or both of these skills. While Vengeful Cry has a really interesting and powerful interaction with our build, it may feel clunky. Berserk gives a pretty good semi-frequent buff but another Aura will just give permanent strength which can overall feel better. But do give them a try first and see how they feel. For bossing especially they're extremely satisfying to combo together.

Many gems are not mandatory and can be swapped around, here's a few other options that work well:

Determination: Good defensive aura, gives lots of armour but has a 50% mana reservation. If you want to use it you probably want to pair it with an Enlighten Support, drop some other skill/autoexerts or get some mana reservation efficiency on the tree. Combine with a Watcher's Eye and/or Sublime Vision for maximum effect.

Arctic Armour: Not an aura per se, but gives strong defensive buffs when stationary (very good for mitigating Echoes of Creation self-damage), freeze immunity and chills the enemies which is an underrated defensive aspect.

Vitality/Purity of Fire: Other good defensive auras, they become better when comboed with good Watcher Eye modifiers and Sublime Vision. Purity of Fire also allows some leeway when trying to cap max fire resist.

More Duration Support: can be linked to your manual warcries to make the buffs last longer so you don't have to warcry so often.

Flame Dash: Can drop the Mobility setup which takes 3 gems in favor of this, or just use instead of Frostblink if you like it more

Immortal Call: Can replace Molten Shell.

Assassin's Mark/Elemental Weakness: if you find yourself getting a "You can apply an additional curse" mod you should try adding one of these. Can be linked to Battlemage's Cry too (each attack will alternate between the curses).

Item Rarity Support: Helps give more gold or better loot when farming specific strategies, especially endgame ones. Pretty good this league. Should replace one support gem on your slam skill, however it can also work on Infernal Cry (but it's unlikely to get last hits with the Combust triggered from the warcry unless you also combo with Culling Strike Support)

Culling Strike Support: Especially good for Pinnacle Bosses to skip the last part where they are usually the strongest. Can be linked to either Leap Slam or Infernal Cry. You can also just keep it on your alternate weapon and switch to it at the end so you don't "waste" a gem slot.

Combustion Support: Can be linked to Infernal Cry for better Ignite uptime on enemies (we have a few damage multipliers that rely on Ignite) and fire resistance reduction. Once we scale to the endgame the damage increase is not that big though.

Tectonic Slam or Volcanic Fissure: use either the Fire Mastery ("40% of physical damage converted to fire damage") or Avatar of Fire
Consecrated Path: use Avatar of Fire or Fire Mastery + Gloves implicit/benchcraft
Physical Slams: use Avatar of Fire + Fire Mastery + Gloves implicit/benchcraft
Ice Crash: use Avatar of Fire + Cold to Fire Support

NOTE: We use Xoph's Blood in our build so no need to path to Avatar of Fire.

Don't expect to reach the 90% cap until the endgame. Use a Ruby Flask until you get capped.

Initially, we get most of our points from the passive tree, we get 6% from the two maximum elemental resistances node wheels (Prismatic Skin and Nomadic Teachings), 1% from the Barbarism node, another 1% from Soul of Steel and an extra 1% from the Armour mastery which gives it if all your equipment gives armour.

We also run Purity of Fire for up to 4% max fire res (at gem lvl 20). There are also 1% max fire res eldritch implicits on both the Body Armour and Boots (can go up to 3%/2%). You can also temporarily use Ancestral Cry (gives max elemental resistances but can't be exerted cause it's for Strikes only).

When we begin opimizing the build we will start to drop stuff (starting with Purity of Fire) and use 2% max fire resist jewels. Switching to Cluster Jewels will unlock more Jewel slots. Expect to need 3-5 jewels with 2% max fire res by the end of the build.

Early solutions:
Before unlocking oils and anoints use a Mana Flask (with "Enduring" Prefix).
After you have access to some oils anoint Attack Damage Mana Leech nodes (Spirit Void, Essence Sap or Clever Thief, I recommend the last one since it also gives Life Leech).
Take the Cannibalistic Rite node.
If you still have problems take the Life Mastery "Skills Cost Life instead of 15% of Mana Cost". We're also pathing to the Tireless node wheel.

Later solutions:
Cluster Jewel with "Fuel the Fight" notable so you can anoint something more useful
-7 mana cost benchcraft on rings.
Damage recouped as Mana from affix or Mana Mastery

Mana quickly becomes a problem once you start reserving mana and putting links on your main gem + the constant Warcrying. A quick solution would be Mana leech, but all the easily accesible passive nodes or stats on items give only "Physical Damage Leeched as Mana" which does not work for this build (while physical damage nodes work for our build, physical leech does not as it happens after all our damage is converted to fire). Funnily enough the most common Cluster Jewel notable ("Fuel the Fight") is also insanely useful for us as it's our only way to get attack damage mana leech with minimal investment.

Early solutions:
Use Blood Rage
Get a Silver Flask for Onslaught.
You can also temporarily swap Pulverise and/or Melee Physical Damage for other support gems (check the Gems section for alternatives). I think these support gems are really good so it's better to find other solutions.

Later solutions:
Get better Onslaught sources (boots craft or "Lead by Example" Cluster notable)
Frenzy charges through "Mob Mentality" Cluster notable.
Get attack speed on base Jewels.
Craft Attack Speed on your weapon or buy one with a good attack speed.

Since we're using a slam, pulverise and melee physical damage we have a lot of "less Attack Speed" modifiers. While we're a slower attack speed build, too slow will make the game unplayable and the build will feel trash. Overinvesting in attack speed is not that bad since we will have a faster animation but we can just attack less frequently to proc more Fists of War while we dodge or use a Warcry.

This is a warcry buff-centric build so the more you can manually cast the stronger you'll be, but you don't have to use all of them. My sweet spot is 3 manual warcries (enduring and infernal which are mandatory + intimidating for the movement speed buff) with the rest on Autoexertion.

Yes you can. In fact this is the way I started planning this build, by modifying Zizaran's League Starter. Here is a checklist of the steps to converting any physical build to a fire one:
- Swap Brutality with Elemental Damage with Attacks
- Swap Vulnerability with Flammability
- If not using Infernal Cry, add it (not linked to Autoexertion)
- Drop Pride, add any combination of Herald of Ash/Purity, Blood and Sand that works for your mana reservation
- Get a Fire Exposure source (easiest is an Eldritch Implicit on Gloves)
- Drop passive points from physical damage node wheels (they're actually not that bad since they still give increased damage, but we need points in other places), pathing to Lava Lash/Divine Judgement/Divine Fury gives good damage and access to better masteries.
- Drop passive points and affixes that give physical damage leeched as life/mana, they do not work.
- Swap Impale or Bleeding stats to stuff like elemental/fire damage, penetration and phys as extra fire
- Make sure to have 100% conversion from physical to fire (check the FAQ for different ways to achieve it)

Freeze Immunity:
Get Soul of the Brine King with Captain Tanner Lightfoot captured
Chill Immunity (2 methods):
1. Get the veiled Boots prefix that gives movement speed and 100% chance to Avoid being Chilled.
2. Capture Glace for Soul of the Brine King then get 50% reduced Effect of Chill on you through either Flasks, Jewels (up to 35%) or crafted mods (benchcrafts for up to 40% for both Shock and Chill on Gloves/Boots and up to 60% on Rings)
Shock Immunity (2 methods):
1. Get Soul of Garukhan and get the remaining 40% reduced Effect of Shock on you through either Flasks, Jewels (up to 35%) or crafted mods (benchcrafts for up to 40% for both Shock and Chill on Gloves/Boots and up to 60% on Rings)
2. Get 100% chance to Avoid being Shocked through a combination of suffixes on Boots, Belt (up to 60% each, can be obtained through Essences of Torment), Abyss Jewel (up to 50%) and Searing Exarch Eldritch Implicit on Boots (33% up to 50%).

Important: do not mix Chance to Avoid, Reduced Effect and Reduced Duration! Each of these modifiers does something different. I remember mixing Soul of Garukhan with a 40%+ chance to avoid Shock on Abyss Jewel and wondering why I still got Shocked :D. While not completely useless, it's much better to get one of these modifiers to 100%, effectively making you immune to that ailment.

There are many additional ways to solve elemental ailments, but these are usually the easiest and will work on many other builds.

These methods won't protect you from the alternate Elemental Ailments. You can either try the Stormshroud method described below or take the following measures:
Scorch: overcap your resists by up to 30% (due to the Chieftain Fire Resist conversion need to overcap Lightning and Cold to 45% to be safe).
Brittle: get crit reduction (You take reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes)

In my case, my number one reason is for roleplaying reasons lol. The fantasy of being a Karui exile that ascends to shooting volcanoes with the blessings of the Karui gods feels really fulfiling. All that without becoming a corrupted fiery boi like Kaom.

But also, I was planning this build for a long time, before the Chieftain rework. At that point, it was the go-to ascendancy for fire slams. After the rework, most nodes we cared about became way more generic but the 90% max ele res is really good. The new warcry node is also really good for what we're planning to achieve.

Soul of Yugul + Elemental Mastery ("take 50% reduced reflected elemental damage").

High investment: Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks Support. Note that you need to remove Infernal Cry or (janky solution) if you still want to keep the buff link it to Brutality support.

Banners feel pretty clunky and Berserk serves a similar purpose and has better synergy. Also Valour generation is pretty slow without taking the mastery that gives it on Warcry, but the passive points are not that strong.

Don't just test in the Hideout, your autoexerted Warcries will not apply. In combat you will also be Fortified and there may be some modifiers you forget about. Always attack with Endurance Charges up. Aim for at least 15k Armour without Flasks and Molten Shell up:

- "Warning Call" Medium Cluster Jewel Notable. I recommend also getting the Large Cluster Jewel, socketing just the Medium one is pretty inefficient in terms of passive points
- Body Armour with 3000+ Armour and (optional if on a tight budget) "#% additional Physical Damage Reduction" Suffix
- "Physical damage taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning" (prefer Fire) Eldritch Implicit on Body Armour
- Some Armour on all Armour pieces (Make sure you quality to 20%)

If you still struggle (from least desperate to most desperate measures):
- Allocate the "Inexorable" node wheel. You are always stationary when slamming, so you will get the 50% increased Armour.
- Use Seismic Cry as a manual Warcry (gives 25-51% MORE Armour depending on your Warcry Buff effect)
- Get pure Armour Gloves and Boots with well rolled defences.
- Drop some Auras and/or add mana reservation efficiency to use Arctic Armour or Determination.
- Last resort solution: Drop Rallying Cry.

Use Forbidden Flesh/Flame with Unflinching. This does not completely solve the problem, use Enduring Cry when you want to make sure the slam is at max power.
A second unorthodox way without Unflinching is to stack Warcry recovery rate and Enduring Cry before every Slam.

Can also try to: swap a support gem with Endurance Charge on Melee Stun Support, get Endurance Charge on Kill and Elevated Warlord Endurance Charge Prefix on Boots.

Critical Strikes are a complicated mechanic in PoE (like most others lol). If you're not sure how it works this post explains the needed concepts really well. You don't have to read it, as I will summarize the requirements for this build specifically.

We need enough Crit chance to reliably crit every attack and Crit multiplier to scale damage when critical striking. On top of that, we need Accuracy to actually hit the enemies, and Accuracy ALSO impacts your Crit chance (for some reason), so a bad Accuracy will severely affect our DPS.


For Crit Chance, thanks to our buffed Battlemage's Cry, high base Crit on Warstaves, Precision Aura and permanent uptime of Power Charges, we get to almost maximum Crit Chance by just taking the good Crit nodes on the tree.
If you lack the last % for 100% crit chance, use either a Diamond Flask or any flask with the increased crit chance suffix (or both).
With a Crit Chance suffix on the weapon you will easily overcap the crit chance.

With Accuracy and Crit Chance out of the way, the focus on maximizing DPS now is getting as much Critical Multiplier as we can. This can be found in multiple places: weapon, rings, amulets, jewels.

Yes this build can be played with Juggernaut, Berserker and probably even Champion, Inquisitor and Slayer (I'd say this is the order of viability but I haven't tested any yet). In fact Juggernaut seems to have better synergies with most of the things we're trying to achieve if we're going for Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm (as Chieftains we end up getting Forbidden Flesh and Flame for the Unflinching node). But overall I'd say Chieftain achieves what this build wants to do in the most tightly knit way.

Make sure to take the "Warcries have a minimum of 10 Power" mastery if you're switching to any of these ascendancies, otherwise you're gonna have a really bad time.

Juggernaut has really good tankiness and endurance charge support, Berserker has insane damage but gives a lot of attack speed which we don't like as much, Champion has fortify, adrenaline, taunt and banner support, Inquisitor has lots of damage scaling, Consecrated Ground and crit support and Slayer has good damage, accuracy and AoE, leech support, 20% culling strike and crit support.

Note: If you want to play with Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm I recommend going Marauder to have access to Unflinching since it is the only solution I've found that makes Endurance Charge Generation feel good.

Personally, I don't enjoy that playstyle, doing a huge slam but letting the damage over time work for you, but it's possible to do it. I would try to make a PoB but I'm not experienced in these type of builds, but if someone wants to try it: you need to focus more on scaling fire damage over time and damage over time multiplier.

If you're not familiar with the old Chieftain you can read its skills here (this is the old wiki which I don't recommend normally using but for historic purposes it's ok). While the current Chieftain may be stronger overall, I've felt like it's lost its identity. Even though our nodes for the attack archetype are pretty good, old Chieftain covered multiple areas:
(Note: * means that it affects our build)

Strength Stacking: While still covered by a node (Ngamahu, Flame's Advance), it feels very weird now and I think it gives much less strength than the 10% increase from the old node

Cover enemies in Ash*: This is huge for our build. Cover in Ash is a multiplier exclusive to fire builds, you'd expect the most fire-centric ascendancy in the game to give pretty easy access to it. There are not many good alternative ways to get this modifier and it kind of forces us to use Xoph's Blood and locks our Amulet slot.

Fire damage leeched as Life: In the past, this was the only way to gain life leech for some builds due to their unique skill and weapon combination, but now it's easily accesible as an Eldritch Implicit on Gloves. Thankfully we are an attack based build and attack damage life leech is also pretty common.

Endurance Charge Support*: We used to have +1 Maximum Endurance Charges! Also endurance charge generation when we warcry and some damage increase. This would be really nice for sustaining Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm. One argument is that Juggernaut is already the "Endurance Charge Ascendancy" but I think more classes should have access to the same mechanics but through different ways. Chieftain doing it through Warcries would add a lot of flavor.

Interesting fact: Tectonic Slam has a pretty weird mechanic, every 3 slams it consumes an Endurance Charge. It was probably designed to synergise with the old ascendancy (which made it really flavorful), since there are not many ways to lose endurance charges without consuming all of them.

Fire conversion + Gain Physical as Extra Fire Damage*: This has been somewhat offloaded into the passive tree through the fire mastery and the "Magmatic Strikes" notable, although they are weaker. But I think not having any fire attack damage ascendancy nodes feels pretty weird.

Totem Support: Chieftain is (was) the Totem Ascendancy (alongside Hierophant) but has pretty much no unique interactions for it anymore.

Funnily enough, the Scion Ascendancy node for Chieftain still gives the Covered in Ash debuff and the old 10% Strength increase.

Conclusion: I think Chieftain needs some flavor added back, especially around the Totem playstyle, Covered in Ash debuff, Endurance Charges and unique fire damage interactions. Something as simple as: "Gain 1 Endurance Charge every second if you've used a Warcry Recently" or "Enemies taunted by your Warcries are Covered in Ash for 4 seconds" (ok this one may be kinda strong) for Sione, Sun's Roar or "Gain up to maximum Endurance Charges when you hit a Rare or Unique enemy with an Ancestrally Boosted Slam or Strike" to Tukohama, War's Herald would add a lot of flavor and not overly buff the Ascendancy.

One "problem" is that the 90% max resist node is so strong it basically demands half of the ascendancy dedicated to it.