And now for something completely different: part 28 of my controller friendly build series: Aether FoI Mage Hunter
And now for something completely different, an FoI build! This is one of the strongest, even if it doesn’t have the most damage; it’s quite tough. I cleared SR85 with it, and then when making the guide discovered that I had forgotten to rebind Widow/Arcane Bomb to FoI, and was missing its 35% resist reduction. With that, I was able to clear SR90, admittedly with some difficulty.
Since it uses four MIs, it has a lot more potential. It also means that (if you’re not going to cheat,) you have to mix and match to fill out your defenses, at the cost of offense.
Notes on choosing Arcanist
At first blush, it may look like an Apostate would be a better choice: it has aether resist reduction and a big OA reducer, as well as more health. But it lacks the 24% damage reduction of Maiven’s, the CC reduction of Conversion, the OA of Inner Focus, and the cast speed and skill cost reduction of Mental Alacrity. Without an Apostate, you would have to dedicate your devotions to mitigating these losses, and you still would end up less tanky, all for a slight increase in damage. It’s a similar story for Purifier.
grimtools link. The MI prefixes and affixes are just the best I had, not what is theoretically optimal. In fact, they’re very far from optimal.
Playstyle: stand in Inquisitor Seal and cast FoI.
obviously the DPS would be higher with spirit dump. It’s far from the highest damage FoI build, but it’s tough.
Video proof of clear
Note that, in this video, I took forever on Shatteredshaper Hinass because he’s new and I have no idea what he does.
Fight tips
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Offense: Revenant/Raise the Dead/Skeletons have terrible targeting. You may want to target them manually against the enemy you’re focusing on. Other than that, make sure that Word of Pain is applied, and stuff will die.
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Defense: leaving Inquisitor Seal is dangerous. Not only do you lose the absorption, but (with my MIs at least,) you lose the overcaps in elemental resists. And when you’re on the move, you won’t lifesteal, and your health regen is poor. You do have both healing potion and Word of Renewal, so use those intelligently. Mirror of Ereoctes has a very long cooldown, but it can save you in a pinch.
Gear
As usual, the resists are overcapped to deal with resist reduction on high SR.
I spent all 3 crafting bonuses on +armor%, since this build has low armor by default.
Essential Gear:
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Conduit of Runic Whispers: this is what makes this build exist. The conversion, and the 18% + 154 damage.
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Ugdenbog Flamestrife: damage damage damage. You’ll want one with cast speed, then aether damage. My prefix is Oathkeeper’s, I’m not sure why it doesn’t show up.
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Incendiary Casque: damage, but also skill cost reduction, which is necessary. With good roles, it’ll contribute significantly to defense too.
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Consumption of Agrivix: this is most of your healing. The damage is good too. But mostly your healing.
Stuff I’m pretty sure is best in slot:
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Loghorrean’s Corruption: I don’t have a good one, and the FoI bonus isn’t necessary, but it has 5% OA and DA, which you need.
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Gauntlets of Ignaffar: cast speed, energy cost, converted damage, and, most importantly, +4 to Intensify.
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Arcanoweave Cord: +1 to all skills.
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Galakros Dread Plating: with good affixes, you can get a bunch of OA and stun res. Mine has good elemental res and bleeding res. There isn’t a high synergy item here, so this seemed best.
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Band of the Eternal Haunt: you need the aether resist reduction, and the vit res is huge.
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Gildam Arcanum Commendation: bonuses to Death Sentence, Intensify, cast speed, OA/DA, and aether damage. Perhaps a perfect Bloodsworn Sigil would be stronger, but I’ll never know.
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Arcane Harmony Leggings: “I know I’m probably the biggest fan of these, but I believe a build is only as strong as its weakest link, and without disruption protection you will really struggle against certain enemies. +84/126 spirit is great, and +84/126 DA is awesome as well. The resistances are good too. I don’t know why other people don’t use this as much as I do.” – me, on like 80% of my builds.
Other stuff:
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Boots of Primordial Rage: initially I had Krieg’s Boots, which give more real damage (BoPR give a lot of elemental DoT bonuses, for which you don’t have the resist reduction for it to matter.) But the OA from BoPR combined with the stun resist made them superior, since the stun res allowed me to take points out of conversion and into Vigor, thus substantially increasing max health.
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Allagast’s Stormgem: Good OA, and a bit of vit res. There may be other options here.
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Serenity: There are higher damage options, with +1 to all skills in Arcanist OR Inquisitor, but I felt that the -1 to all skills in one class was too great a sacrifice in either case.
Devotions
It’s kind of a weird devotion set, but it works, mostly, for getting the OA and DA required. Inquisitor Seal appears to be bugged, and unable to activate devotions. If it weren’t – and could active Eye of Korvaak – I’d drop Spider for Raven, add a Dread Skull to the medal, and activate Eye of Korvaak.
Core:
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Widow: you need it for resist reduction.
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Revenant: doesn’t apply as well as Manticore, but it provides much more useful stats. It does its job against bosses mostly.
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Phoenix: the damage absorption stacks with Inquisitor Seal, so it’s really good here
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Korvaak, the Eldritch Sun: somehow, this was the best path I found for getting OA. There could be a better one, but I didn’t see it.
Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory.
Skill Choices
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Flames of Ignaffar: the point
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Horn of Gandaar: not my favorite skill, but it’s hard to do without 28% damage reduction. The confusion actually is useful, since your skeletons won’t apply resist reduction to trash, and Horn buys you time to deal with it more slowly.
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Inquisitor Seal: this build doesn’t kite very well, so maxing Inquisitor Seal made a lot of sense here. It also allowed me to skip overcapping elemental resist in favor of %health, since you shouldn’t have your resists reduced when you’re on the move.
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Word of Pain: It seems tempting to max Word of Pain and Word of Agony for their debuffs, but enemies have so much slow res the former isn’t useful, and there really aren’t points for the latter.
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Word of Renewal: just a great skill
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Maiven’s Sphere of Protection: a good part of what makes this build work.
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Mirror of Ereoctes: without significant CDR, even with max points it’s not going to be a regular part of a defensive rotation. I put 2 extra points into it, and found it was available for most emergencies, provided that I used it in time.
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Fabric of Reality: I really wanted the DPS it offered, but I’m not sure if it’s actually superior to the crit bonus from more points in Infernal Purge.
Leveling
This levelled excellently, although you need to avoid maxing FoI before you have the energy regen to sustain it. From levels 1-58 I did fire FoI, while still putting points into aether devotions. Then I was able to use Cord of Violent Decay, Dreadfire, and Reaper of the Accursed to convert to Aether. This proved strong enough that I was able to use Lokarr’s Set through level 94, only running into difficulties (ie dying) against a few enemies.