[3.4] TheFrostmourne's Balefire Inquisitor

[3.9] I'll probably update the guide some time soon, I am currently doing something very similar as a Trickster as my league starter. If you're interested you can PoB my account (character Patrick_Jane). Tree progression from here is just nearby life/jewel sockets and the "trigger socketed spells when you use a skill" craft on my 2nd weapon is missing, but that's about it.

Gem setups are different from the ones in the guide (infused channeling is our 3rd support now, Storm Brand instead of OOS, and no impresence/blasphemy), so just copy the ones from my character for smoother experience.


Hello guys, and welcome to my guide!

I am TheFrostmourne, and I have been playing Path of Exile for around 3 years now. Since I started playing the game, I always liked playing builds I make myself, so I experimented a lot with all kind of builds I found interesting.

This build guide is for a build I theorycrafted before the start of one month flashback race, which was intended to be a cheap league starter that can farm quickly on a very tight budget. After I played it for a while, I decided to make a build guide on it.

The build is 100% HC viable.

The build is NOT intended to be a farmer for uber lab, but it can comfortably farm it with some decent gear. Definitely not the fastest or safest uber farmer out there, but it totally gets the job done.

I also tested it on Atziri and it did a pretty good job.

It's designed as a league starter that can also progress further with gear upgrades. Solid DPS, tanky and cheap. The build revolves around the unique scepter Balefire.

You will find two version of skill tree bellow, one focusing on mitigating physical damage (the first one), and the other one that sacrifices a bit of damage for even more survivability.

There is also a Trickster version with MoM, since some of you requested it.

Pros & Cons


Required gear:


Budget gear:


Upgrades / my Incursion gear:


Gems and links:


Patheon:


Skill tree:


Ascendancy order:


~~~GEARING~~~

Our gearing is pretty cheap; we just go for life / resists on gear at first so we can comfortably do maps. You can see examples of my old gear in the spoiler. All of them were self found rares.

We also want as much dexterity on our gear as we can get, so we can level up Faster Attacks. I don't consider it a luxury because it's fairly easy to get. It's up to you if you want to start the build there and just use it to farm up some currency, but if you want to upgrade it even further it's more than possible.

Depending on do you want more damage or survivability , you can either go for Kaom's Heart first or Chaos version of Impresence so you can dual curse. At that point you also want to get either Windscream or Doedre's Damning for +1 to curses.

If you have currency to blow, +1 Impresence can also work. The Formless Inferno is also a great option that further helps mitigate our physical damage taken. 2 socket Tombfist is something I got just because I had currency to blow. Watcher's Eye with physical damage taken as fire while affected by Purity of Fire is also great, however I didn't really feel like blowing 10 ex on a jewel so I just got a random one that prevents ignite and burning ground.

You can also use another item as an offhand: instead of RotP, you can use Magna Eclipsis which is pretty okay, or Lioneye's Remorse which makes our clear a bit slower but gives as a lot more defenses. Another good option is Doryani's Catalist for more damage, in which case you replace Shield Charge with Leap Slam.

~~~DPS~~~

We use Scorching Ray as our main skill. It scales pretty decently just from the Balefire levels so it gets the job done pretty well for me. To further boost the DPS, we use Despair on Blasphemy, but only after getting the Impresence, which is by no means necessary. For single target (aka bosses) we use our Orb of Storms to proc Elemental Equilibrium and Elemental Overload, plus to curse with Flammability. To quickly move around I use Shield Charge linked with Faster Attacks, and I also have one Abyss Jewel with 4% chance to get Onslaught on kill to boost that speed even further. Even if you're going on a tight budget, a jewel like that with life on it will set you back no more than a chaos orb, and it's not even mandatory to have, it just helps a bit. On top of that, our Ascendancy helps by giving us even more attack speed and elemental damage. Before Kaom's Heart, you can use Searing Bond on top of that since you have free sockets.

~~~DEFENSES~~~

We have 75% all res except for fire (do to Purity of Fire), which we have 85% or 92% with Alchemist's Ruby Flask up. That also helps boost our physical damage mitigation do to Cloak of Flame / The Formless Inferno. On top of that, we also use a Granite Flask and Arctic Armour as we're stationary while channeling our SR, and it helps mitigate both of those (fire and physical). We also have a big health pool, with my current being well over 9000. If you choose to get tankier, you can sacrifice the nodes at the witch start for more life at the marauder part, and/or get Mind over Matter. Even without Kaom's Heart, you can push well into 6k+ life. We also have decent chaos resistance do to Impresence which helps with mobs in incursions. On top of all that, Consecrated Ground gives us a lot of regen, and our Balefire gives us life / mana on kill which is neat. And there is our CWDT IC setup which helps in certain situations.

Triple curse version:

Here I drop PoF for Enfeeble, dropping my fire res to 76% and I get a rare helmet with physical damage taken as fire. I also replace my CWDT setup for Enduring Cry and Decoy Totem. Everything else is pretty much the same as above. Much tankier, but a bit less damage.

3.4 changes

Dang yo,it looks great!

"

Loreley06 wrote:

Dang yo,it looks great!

Thanks a lot!

looks good, but what about lvling????? do u use smth like firestorm or????????

"

SofiaMenethil wrote:

looks good, but what about lvling????? do u use smth like firestorm or????????

If you want to level with firestorm - go for it. I didn't include leveling section as everyone can do it in their own way. Personally, I leveled with SR as soon as I got it and the damage was perfectly fine, but firestorm / flame totem / anything else will probably work just as good.

ok so this is first time i use build guide........ i play this in standard and so far it seem tanky and strong (72 lvl now) :D i uzualy messing around and cant push very far into maps (my max t7) you think this can go more???????

"

SofiaMenethil wrote:

ok so this is first time i use build guide........ i play this in standard and so far it seem tanky and strong (72 lvl now) :D i uzualy messing around and cant push very far into maps (my max t7) you think this can go more???????

Awesome, hope you're having fun! I myself have cleared yellow maps up to tier 12 with it. Haven't tried any further as I sadly didn't get any higher tier map to drop, but I am pretty sure it can go higher as I've been clearing these with an ease.

Skill tree has been changed a bit and I added more offhand options for more survivability / more damage.

im trying this build and currently leveling with Molten Strike+Shell and Herald of Ash @ level 24

also Reckoning with Onslaught Support is fun

Quite fine, but I would like tips on how to improve my clearspeed.

can You can check my char TangDeFeijao please?

ty

"

wackygoose wrote:

im trying this build and currently leveling with Molten Strike+Shell and Herald of Ash @ level 24

also Reckoning with Onslaught Support is fun

Quite fine, but I would like tips on how to improve my clearspeed.

can You can check my char TangDeFeijao please?

ty

Hi, I checked your character out and I would suggest removing Elemental Equilibrium until you start using SR + Orb of Storms, that will improve your clear speed (besides getting leveling gear). Currently you just buff their fire resistance when you Molten Strike them so that's the reason it goes slowly, since you're pretty much crippling your damage with it at the moment. Let me know if you need help with anything else!