I have a really fun tanking Ignaffar build cruising through Elite atm and I really am not very familiar with the devotion tree and was hoping some of you guys would help me out.
The character is a tank that uses a channel spell to attack. Basically, I have no ADCTH because it’s pretty useless for this build, and I also have no healing spells, other than Word of Renewal. I’m relying on Twin Fangs and Tip the Scales as my sources of healing, and proc on my gun, with a little help from Word of Renewal. Due to the Inquisitor Seal, and 44% physical resistance, she takes very little damage, and what she does take is covered with those 2 devotions. I really don’t want to lose those 2, or at least, if I do, they need to be replaced with more healing.
Twin Fangs sits on Flames of Ignaffar, one of 2 offensive slots I have to work with. My Seal has Elemental storm for elemental debuffing.
I’m currently at a loss of where to go from here. I started to go for resistances, currently working towards 3% more physical resistance, but that’s really not that important with 44% already, but it might be once I hit Ultimate.
FoI consumes lots of mana though maybe this is not a problem for an arcanist.
It also doesn’t do all that much damage on its own in endgame. My test purifier with 2500% fire damage http://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zbkE42 kills Fabius in 40 seconds and I think this has to be improved, by adding damage procs to abuse 6 hits per second as much as possible. I suggest fissure from Magi. I need to respec and test it myself with fissure and maybe something else but haven’t yet found motivation to do so.
You will also need heals and extra DA if possible, I am using chariot and behemoth for that. FoI absolutely destroys content in elite, but then when you come to act 5 ultimate you will be upset with your low hp and DA. If you’re not heading to Ulzuin’s torch you may pick solemn watcher with some more investment, or harvestman’s scythe.
FoI can steal some good hp for you with bloodthirster - granted skill from haunted steel. Thats short duration with cooldown but can be used on bosses with all res reduction like bwc to get out of trouble.
With the way ADCTH is nerfed by reduced weapon %, it’s pretty bad.
At the moment though, it’s doing 33%, so it might help a little. I will have to test. But remember that 33% weapon damage means that ADCTH is convereted to 33% of the original percent, and is still taking that small percent from the reduced damage.
So if I had 24% ADCTH, it is changed to 8% on top of that fact I’m doing only 33% weapon damage. So it’s as if it’s 3% ADCTH in terms of healing.
Maybe the fast attack rate of Flames of Ignaffar will make up for that, but it doesn’t sound very promising and it certainly wasn’t early on at lower percentages.
Going in, I realized that his DPS wouldn’t be great, and since you have to be nearly in melee range to attack, I’d need to be able to tank some. That’s why I’m building as a tank with damage. I should be ok with being slow at doing damage as long as I can stay in and fight.
By end game, I expect to have 55-60% physical resist with 20% damage absorption with the Seal, which should allow for my healing procs to keep me alive. I’m already doing 48K DPS with quite a few procs, which is more than I expected going in and more than my first Apostate had when finishing Ultimate, though he was also a tank.
Energy isn’t a problem atm, as I do have -60% energy cost.
Damage, resists, and ways to maintain health are my biggest concerns. Though even if damage isn’t great, as long as I can tank anything, I’m ok with that.
EDIT:
Thanks for the suggestions. One question I have with the Torch, I was eyeing that, but I don’t know what to do with the devotion skill, as I only have 2 skills that can use it, and both are taken up with critical skills.
That test purifier has 170-180K DPS but the number means very little, if you look in the tooltip, that is 3/4 DOT 1/4 direct damage.
If you want to be tank then perhaps usual tree of life will do instead of all the behemoth chariot buisness. With or without points in obelisk of Menhir, and there is also Ishtak there now. I suggest to still get magi or maybe fiend. I didn’t take U-torch meteors though perhaps I should, to put them on canister.
Adcth was a lot more pronounced when I had 15% base with revenant, but later respecced that to get mana restore from harp. FoI is an aoe so when you are standing in a crowd you leech from everyone.
The 5 hits per second do make up for the low % in my experience. Just adding a restless remains to my gloves gives a helpful amount of health, much more than I expected to be honest.
On the energy cost, it’s barely half of AAR, since I’m used to that FoI barely moves my energy bar.
I’m running my version of this with beronath reforged, it’s pretty hilarious so far. Did struggle a bit in act 5-6 elite because everything has tons of hp, those titans take forever to kill. Act 1 ultimate so far has been a complete breeze in comparison, just facetanked Salazar without a potion.
With 170-180K DPS, that might be why ADCTH did well. And when looking at the break down on my tooltip on page 2. It is not counting but 1 tick of the DoT. It shows 1/3 the damage the DoT does over time, so that may be more accurate than you think.
I made a few adjustments. I’m still struggling on HP and resists, but she’s still rolling through AoM now. I am worried I won’t find enough defense down the road, however.
How do you guys manage to work in high HP, DA, and OA into your gear? It always seems my gear with good HP, doesn’t have the right resists, or OA and DA. It just never seems to fit.
I’m sorry for pointing this out but I believe a Flames of Ignaffar Mage Hunter will ultimately be inferior to a Purifier, Deceiver and even an Infiltrator. The reason I am saying this is because you have absolutely no way to decrease elemental resistances unless you go Aura of Censure.
Veteran + Elite will go fast because monsters aren’t resistant to CC (i.e. Olexra’s Flash Freeze). Once you get to Ultimate or AoM Elite, however, you’ll notice that the added crit multiplier provided by the Elemental Balance skill can’t compensate the pronounced lack of “-% resistance” reduction within the masteries. Furthremore, even the lvl. 94 Mageslayer set favours the Inflitrator more than the Mage Hunter.
The high end Mage Hunter gear is focused on aether + lightning, which is bad for Flames of Ignaffar, because even if you convert all elemental to aether, 60% of FoI’s damage comes in the forms of DoTs and aether does not have a DoT.
The way things stand right now, it seems that the Mage Hunter is best played as a CDR caster with inquisitor runes and lightning tether. This fact, of course, is counter-intuitive, as most people think about elemental damage when it comes to the Arcanist. Still, Deceiver and Purifier are better for FoI…and…the buffs received by Wind Devil in the last patch make even Vindicator viable as an elemental caster (if you compensate the massive lack of OA and cast speed, of course)
None of the other options gave me the ability to tank. Ultimately that is why I chose Mage Hunter. Aura of Conviction, Maiven’s Sphere of Protection, along with a shield, which I can use because Mental Alacrity, gives me massive defense. I’m sitting at 44% physical resists now, with 14% damage absorption, and that only goes up.
I’m using Elemental Storm for a debuff, and a few of my items also add elemental debuffs. Of course that is part of my difficulties with gearing out. That and almost every damn item I have give elemental and chaos resists, and barely any poison and aether.
I really want to play a tank with FoI. Otherwise, it’s a very tough character to play with the short range, and lowish damage (as everyone has complained about with them). If you can tank, you make up some of the damage as you aren’t running. You also have staying power, so bad damage doesn’t prevent you from progressing. And ultimately, I was intrigued with the idea of making a caster work as a tank. So far it has.
Torch (phoenix in cruci), chariot(vanilla), viper, 3pt giant(full in cruci), Lantern, Fiend, Ghoul (haunted steel in main hand, lifesteal from ignaffar and flame torrent is how you stay alive), Crown, solael.
Have done crucible with it and idk when i will have time to post it. It melts. Literally so trust the mage hunter
@AVatar of Dreeg. Ofc you use aura of censure, and it rocks(with this particular build). I would hate pruifier with this build, constantly interrupting my igfnaffar with FB and mines(which i can’t say how much i hate using and how unreliable they are). Mage hunter also has massive crit DMG. Got to 145% in cruci without counting ignaffar modifier.
It’s night’s embrace amulet and i recommend against using it on your build. The freeze resist reduction no longer affects bosses as it used to and as for stats it offers nothing to your build
Meteors win hands down in dps, cutting Fabius kill timer by half. Flame torrent with ghoul did not change the timer at all, perhaps because I lost OA, but feels alot safer having notable leech.
Why is the timer reduced to 20 sec from 40 is not because meteors do as much as FoI and BWC combined, but because Fabius uses blade barrier and pneumatic burst. Adding just enough dps to remove just one barrier and 1-2 heals does it
Purifier has lots of problems indeed, starting from poor survivability and ending with mana issues for which you need to spend 6 devo points on Harp. Harp has a bunch of other useful stats though
Ive tried flames on purifiers and ended with full burning setup with ignafarr onepointer, grenade onepointer and maxed shattered blast/infernal purge/ BWC/Mines with shield +censure. Mana PITA is unbearable with maxed flames and the dmg is meh >_>
