[3.14] Just do not die 4head | Tanky Divine Ire ignite Inquisitor | league starter

The concept is not easy for a newcomer, but I will do my best to explain.

Iginites are traditionally an ailment that does Damage over Time (DoT), and it is related to fire damage. You scale it with fire/ailment/burning/elemental damage and with DoT multiplier. So typically, you hit with a fire skill, and it may ignite enemies for a certain duration. As you can tell from Divine Ire (DI) description, it is a physical spell and 50% of the damage is converted to lightning. Thus, normally it will not ignite. The only case it can do it, is either you take Shaper of Flames from the elementalist or the old, forgotten Stormfire unique ring.


You may ask yourself why bother while there are skills like incinerate, fireball, flameblast, etc. There are three main factors: great base damage once fully-charged, Elemental Equilibrium (EE) and physical damage scaling. The charging part is the easiest: DI gains stages when you hit bosses or mobs and scales with cast speed. With Inquisitor's Fanaticism you charge up to full 20 stages in no time. Now about the EE, which is one of the main reasons to choose DI over fire skills. EE applies +25% resist to the element, with which the enemy was hit, and -50% resists to the remaining elements. So when you hit with DI (lightning damage), you immediately apply -50% resist to fire damage, which heavily boosts the ignite DPS. With fire skills this is achieved by throwing storm brand/orb of storms, but this may backfire, if you forget to throw them. With DI it automatic and unconditional. Last but not least, DI is physical spell in first place, and it is one of the most effective way of scaling the damage in current PoE. On top of the fire damage scaling, you immensely profit from mods like "gain % physical damage as lightning damage" (acts as "more" multiplier) and increased physical/lightning damage, which greatly synergizes with Inquisitor's Battlemage. Basically, no damage mod is lost as long as you convert everything to lightning.

Regarding the conversion, you get 50% from skill itself, 25% from the tree, and another 25% can be crafted/found on gloves giving us a full 100% conversion. There is also a weapon mod with conversion, but I do not think that it is realistic to hit it without full harvest crafting.

The reworked inquisitor shines at defense, and what I present here can be used by actually any Inquisitor build.

The reason to take Inquisitor is almost always the Pious Path. You get consecrated ground that regenerates 6% of your HP, makes you elemental ailment immune, and now also grants the same regen as for life to the Energy Shield (ES). So we are making a hybrid life+ES build, scaling the life regen and total life amount. The main source of energy shield is gain % of life as extra energy shield that is found on Corrupted Soul keystone and on the chest (if you opt for a rare one). The Corrupted Soul does one extra great thing - 50% of non-chaos damage bypasses ES. While you may think this is crazy to have damage bypassing your ES, you effectively spread it to life and ES, so you can benefit both from life and ES regens. If you grab some life regen nodes and vitality, you can easily get to 9-10k eHP with 2k eHP/s regen.

Huge life pool is not enough though. We need extra layers of defenses, and here comes blocking. Inquisitor is in particularly good spot to take block nodes, and Glancing Blows (GB) in particular. While technically GB increase the damage taken, they actually smoothen damage spikes, so the chances you will die due to a random shotgunning/one-shot decrease. The excess damage from GB will be regenerated afterwards anyway, while you are running to the next pack. Moreover, you can(should) pair GB with life recovery on block, and you can start running through packs of monsters without any harm as they are basically healing you.

Another way of sustaining eHP pool is the life/ES recovery on kill. With the cluster jewel and Cinderswallow flask you get 4% of life and 4% of ES recovered on every kill. This means that you recover about 5k eHP for an average monster pack - instantly... The more the monsters, the better. Cinderswallow also boosts the ignite damage, so it has a great synergy with the build.

Once you have more currency, you can also buy vitality's leech Watcher's Eye jewel (drops from Elder). This brings 20% of maximum life leeched per second while you are channeling, i.e., when you are the most vulnerable to damage as you are standing still.

That brings me to the last layer of the defense, which is mobility. In PoE, you stop - you die, somehow promoting the zoom-zoom meta. I specifically wanted to design the character around DoT, which is a cast and forget skill. You need to cast only every ~4s in order to get 100% damage uptime. Use this time to dodge hits, cast curses, totems, whatever... - the best way to not get any damage is to not get hit in the first place! This is also why I am not using swift affliction, and I generally pair debuffs with increased duration. It basically buys you time for running around - do not underestimate it!

Main story: Grab a blue sceptre or wand with right colours and vendor it together with rare ruby ring (slam whatever essence on a ruby ring) and alteration orb. Enjoy your leveling weapon.

Main story/mapping: buy ashcaller for cheap, and it will carry you till red maps.

Endgame: Buy a well-rolled Doryani's catalyst (or farm Atziri). This one was 15c one week in the league:

It is really hard to upgrade beyond well-rolled Doryani's catalyst, but you can try. Search for high physical/lightning damage alternating sceptre, with open prefix to craft fire damage over time multiplier. As they are off-meta, they sell for relatively cheap considering their rolls. The advantage of alternating sceptre is that you can save 3 skill points from the tree, and add some life nodes. If you have too much currency, or you are a good friend with RNGesus, you may try crafting something like this:

Main story: whatever that has good links. Vaal side areas and heist can help here, if you are struggling (but heist is a struggle itself). Otherwise, buy something on the market.

Endgame: Skin of the Loyal with BBBBRG sockets. There are specialized groups that farm Chayula early, so the market will be flooded with these. You can even buy double corrupted for cheap. The one was around 1ex one week into the league:

Later you may want to find Skin of the Lords with EE, but these are rare (still cheap). Otherwise, go with high life redeemer armour with frenzy charges on hit and open prefix. DPS-wise it is the same as uncorrupted Skin of the Loyal, but you gain some eHP and quality of life through faster casting. Some additional resists are also always welcome.

As you are scaling damage through physical, among the others, the explody chest is always a viable option when you have excess currency. However, it works well without one through ignite proliferation.

Until you get Glorious Vanity timeless jewel just run with Aegis Aurora. You have well-over 10k ARm so each time you block (and you block constantly) you recover 200 ES. This is very strong. Well-rolled one was 18c on the first week into the league:

After you get Glorious Vanity, start looking for The Surrender. It has very strong defenses and recovers 250 life on block, which is more than enough for endgame.

If you really (but seriously - why?) have to change the shield to rare, consider heat-attuned shields like this:

A double influenced shield with life recovery on block and increased damage per block chance would be even better, but this will probably consume tens of exalts to craft a good one and I am not sure whether you can sell bad ones due to odd bsae.

Stormfire of course! Here is 5c one bought in the first week of the league:

As you get your resistances right, the second ring should be Circle of Guilt with increased buff effect. Look for the ones with increased maximum life or ignites deal damage x% faster. They sold from 20 to 50c in Ritual:

With this build general rule is that gain % of physical damage as extra lightning damage is better than fire damage over time or faster ignite mods. So prioritize this early on. The good thing is that this is off-meta mod, and people sell very good amulets for peanuts. 50c amulet is more than enough and carried me through all the endgame bosses:

As you get more currency you may also try double influenced amulets, but this will sink some currency. You need shaper/hunter jade amulet with the following mods: phys as extra lightning and +1 intelligence skills.

Hrimnor's resolve FTW. This is a great piece of gear that will carry you from story to A9 Sirus. I bought one on day 2 of the league for 1c, and it had almost perfect rolls.
The endgame helmet is Crown of the Inward Eye, which is dirt-cheap already after the 1st week of the league. It simply gives better defenses than Hrimnor's resolve and you get ailment immunity from ascendancy anyway. The nice thing is that people (including myself) often enchant it in the lab, so there are big chances to find DI damage enchant. This was bought for 40c and divined later:

As with the amulet, no one looks for phys as extra lightning mod, so these boots are very affordable. Look for high life, and move speed. Do not forget about the enchant. Run a few labs and get +lightning damage, if you have not killed recently. This is really visible improvement to your DPS (~10% more DPS early on).

Next tier would be hunter/crusader boots with additional faster ignite. I still do not know how to roll a good pair without Harvest, so maybe set up a search for someone selling these (off-meta = should be cheap(er)).

Shaper or hunter gloves with fire damage over time multiplier, life and open prefix. Should be cheap to buy. If you want slightly better version, just spam deafening essence of greed and you will get one in no time, and assuming you will sell the unwanted ones, you should also make profit.

Nothing new here - stygian vise. If you want, find ilvl86 elder base, add fertile catalysts, and spam pristine fossils until you hit something good. If it fits your build - fine, otherwise, sell it for profit and repeat. Easy exalts early in the league.

Pretty standard setup here:

Anti-bleed life flask, Cinderswallow Urn, granite flask to boost AR for molten shell, sulphur flask of warding, and quicksilver because got to run fast. I wholeheartedly recommend hitting these exact affixes, and do not forget about flask quality. Flasks are OP in PoE. Cinderswallow Urn might be quite expensive early in the league, so I was running first few weeks with quartz flask of adrenaline for increased movespeed.

Later on, as you get richer, you can replace sulphur flask with bottled faith for bosses (I always forget about it), and if you manage to have high chaos res, you can replace life flask with Forbidden Taste.

Get blue nightmare and Glorious Vanity whenever you feel you lack defense and can afford them. I did my first Siruses without them, but they are pretty much a game-changer for this build. Together with the surrender, they make you extremely tanky.

For rare jewels, the mods you are looking into are increased life, fire DoT multi, burning damage, ignite chance+duration, fire/lightning/physical damage. 3-mod jewels with life and DoT multi were selling from 5-25c, so it should not be a problem. 4-mod jewels were usually around 2ex. For abyss jewel look for anything with high life, and potentially physical damage to spells. The best would be to also have 8% phasing on kill and cast speed if you crit recently, but these can be very expensive. If you can afford one, go for it though.

Cluster jewels are a nice add-on, so we can fix various deficits easier. I opted for mix of damage and survivability:

Later, if you can afford them, buy one of the Watcher's Eye with DoT multi while affected by malevolence. Damage leech/life recovery with vitality would be a nice bonus, but it is not mandatory. Watcher's eye is not mandatory to this build, and I did all Maven invitations without it.

Make sure that one of your jewels have "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" corruption. This is particularly important for Sirus fights.

So here is my gear finally, but take it with a grain of salt (more like a few kgs). I crafted it with over 200 ex during Ritual when harvest was enabled. By no means, you should be aiming at this level of gear. Stay sane, exile!

Links and gems:
(optional) Make a mule witch character, kill Hillock and deposit the fireball and arcane surge (do not level it!) in the chest together with the rest of the gear (do not forget to check for MS boots).

(no mule witch) Kill Hillock, take frostbolt and buy fireball (you can also ask other witches in town). Put all of them to level. Run for the medicine chest for the quicksilver flask reward and arcane surge reward. Buy spell cascade, onslaught support and infused channeling.

Break some eggs and take frostblink. Buy onslaught and link it with onslaught. Buy flame wall and pair it with spell cascade and fireball with arcane surge and elemental proliferation (look for B-B-B wand/sceptre). Buy holy flame totem to help with Marveil later. From this point on just drop orb of storms and flame wall and run, run, run. Use firaball only to proc arcane surge and for tougher enemies. Buy steelskin and put it on move button for defenses.

Take flame dash as the Caged Brute reward and pair it with arcane surge taken from fireball. Buy combustion and put it with fireball instead of arcane surge. Buy unbound ailments. The ignite chance is still a little too low at the moment with fireball, so the damage might feel inconsistent. Buy efficacy and put with the flame wall. If you have a spare link, put holy flame totem with added fire damage. This will carry you until you get enough ignite chance. Do not forget to buy shield charge. Regarding the enduring cry, it is totally up to you. I kept it as an emergency life flask, but I barely used it before getting anomalous version. So it is up to you.

Take incinerate before Marveil and level it in the off-hand.

Tree:
Head to Retribution through ele damage nodes. Take Light of Divinity through Discipline and Training and head straight to Elemental Overload.

Links and gems:
Look for 3L BBG.

Kill intruders in black and get heralds of thunder, ice and purity. Level herald of purity in the off-hand and the activate the other two. This will give you a temporary damage buff, while you are working towards higher ignite chance. Also buy wave of conviction for the fire exposure, and replace holy flame totem with it.

Kill the weaver and grab deadly ailments. Once you get Holy Fire, your chance to ignite will be sufficient to consistently ignite. You should have fireball-combusion-deadly ailments. If you have a spare link, you can start using shield charge with faster attacks now, but you can also do it later.

Tree:
Take Holy Dominion. From Elemental Overload go to Holy Fire through the chance to ignite node. Then go right from Elemental Overload to Cruel Preparation and start heading to the Breath of Flames.

Links and gems:
Start looking for 4L BBBG and 4L BBBR and 3L RRG (shield preferably). Link fireball-combustion-unbound ailments-deadly ailments.

After "freeing" Tolman get malevolence and replace active heralds. Still level herald of purity though. Do not forget to also take flammability, vitality, and infernal cry. Regarding the latter, it is the same story as with enduring cry - the regular version feels horribly slow. But on the other hand it helps with bosses, so why not?

After killing Gravicious take divine ire, and level it in off-hand.

Do not skip Siosa in the library as he has burning damage for us. Add it to flame wall so you have flame wall-spell cascade-burning damage-efficacy. Buy second one for later and level it off-hand.

Tree:
Grab Breath of Flames and go to Divine Judgement through Devotion. Take Precision whenever you are fine with damage/life or lack dexterity.

Links and gems:
Take ignite proliferation from the eternal nightmare and swap it with unbound ailments in fireball link for mapping. For bossing still use unbound ailments. You are basically set for the run to A10.

Tree:
Mana cost will start to hurt, so head to Tireless and then to Arsonist for more damage.

Tree:
Most of the damage nodes is already taken, so time to improve the defense. Take Sanctuary, Arcane Guarding, and Unwavering Stance. Take Glancing Blows and check whether your regen is enough to sustain it. Depends on you.

Links and gems:
Start looking for 5L BBBGR for fireball setup, so you can add second burning damage to the setup.

Clear the beach, and fill the missing links according to the guide. You will need divine ire, incinerate, herald of purity and infused-channeling in the offhand. You can also put there spell totem and scorching ray or vaal molten shell if you happen to have it.

Tree:
You are cursed with -30% ele resist, so take Faith and Steel and later close the circle with Purity of Flesh. Refund small dexterity and intelligence nodes near Retribution. From this point on work on defenses in the Witch area and start completing the circles. Do not be afraid to take mana regen nodes and dexterity, if you need it. You do not have to do a lot of respecs with this build, so you should be fine.

Links and gems:
While during the main story, you just want to run further as fast as possible, but in the end-game, you also want to clear as many mobs as possible. Thus, change to incinerate once you have 3rd lab and hit maps. Fanaticism is cumbersome for bosses, but it shines at mapping when you spam shield charge anyway. So incinerate wins just by the shear power of clearing multiple packs at once. You can also try to support fireball with greater multiple projectile, but you effectively loose one link, and you can struggle with damage.

Incinerate should bring you to red maps with ease. However, at T14-T15 your damage against bosses will start to feel too fall-off. This is when you should transition into divine ire at latest. Sooner will be probably better, but I usually only change something when I hit the wall while saving currency. With DI, the damage is still not absurdly high, but the quality of life and clear gets better as you always benefit from EE. Moreover, DI feels more defensive as you can off-screen certain dangerous mobs. You can also finally equip herald of purity and scorching ray totem, which are noticeable improvements.

Tree:
While defense should be fine, you will start struggling with damage in higher tier maps. You may consider taking fire damage nodes in witch area or even insert a cluster jewel when you find one (a few scorched fossils will do the trick). Later go to fill the life cluster near the scion area. Do not rush with taking elemental equilibrium. I took it quite late, around T11-T12 maps, when I felt that my damage against bosses is lacking. This allowed me to shift the ceiling to T14-T15 maps, which is more than enough to transition into divine ire (should have done it earlier probably). A small upgrade will be getting EE on either sceptre or chest. This will save us 3 points, so I would not prioritize it.