[3.14] Frostblink Ignite -- A8 Sirus/Maven -- Fast and Fun

Hello guys, I'm interested in making minor and interesting builds and finally, I made one that can kill A8 Sirus/Maven without "too much" trouble. Now I think it is solid enough to be shared with the community. I believe you can push it further and create more variants. A skilled player should be able to use it to clear 95% content (excluding some end-games) with ease. It is probably one of the least popular builds so far and it is hard to find any good reference to start with. Fortunately, many ignite builds helped me a lot.

Build summary

It is a Frostblink as the main skill build. Frostblink is a blink/instant movement skill with 3 seconds cooldown. We reduce it to 1.23s and even further during fights. It deals cold damage but with Elementalist's Shaper of Flame, more than 95% of total damage comes from ignites which makes boss fights much easier. Quick movement and huge AOE guarantee fast and persistent clearing. Multiple defensive layers (mobility, evasion, chilling, etc.) make a not-tanky build relatively safe even during crazy Trialmaster waves and high-tier Blighted maps.

Pro:

1. Cheap to start and not really expensive for the end game. It is a minor build (0.00% player use it as the main skill according to POE Ninja) and mods on many gears looks self-contradicting so prices are low. My current build costs me around 20ex for all though this may be higher in the future. If you only play occasionally, it is still solid enough to do most contents without expensive gears.

2. Fast clear. I tend to play slowly but if you want and get experienced, it can match many fast-clearing builds based on big AOE and quick movement and blinking speed.

3. Can be a solid league starter. I use it as the main skill around level 40 as soon as I get the "always ignite" node (Shaper of Flames). It feels great to combine with many other skills while levelling. Even without ignite, the cold damage can easily shatter packs.

4. High and reliable DPS. The maximum ignite DPS for boss fights can reach 6M with two ignites (easy to apply). With 9.44 seconds ignite duration (assuming I have escaped far away), the total effective ignite damage (excluding Elemental Overload and Convergence which are hard to trigger or persist) can reach 30M. The maximum can be 57M if you manage to keep blinking through the bosses so you trigger and keep all buffs and debuffs. These sound not as big as some builds but I find it is quite effective.

5. Safe with care. I hate dying a lot! We are always moving and running, this is the best defensive layer in POE if you have played it a lot. By using movement skills as the main skill, we actually have more time on applying debuffs and dodging. However, this requires good cooldown management to avoid death.

6. Supper fun! This is the key of the build. Maybe it depends but it should be great to try something new and interesting?

7. Persistant burning grounds. Big burning grounds are created after mobs are killed. It makes our life much easier to clear, say, Blight/influenced maps because the burning grounds will keep killing newly spawn mobs for a few seconds.

Con:

1. Not cheap for end game. We do need to push it as high as possible if you want to deal with big bosses. To be honest, after trying many "budget" builds, I find it is really difficult (if possible) to do end-game content with a real "budget". So just keep upgrading everything as you want. At least we don't need any mirror-level gears.

2. Fragile to one-shot if you rush into a pack, the cooldown is not over, and you forget your flasks and steelskin. Trialmaster is also challenging if the map mods are dangerous. I tried to build up a couple of defensive layers.

3. You have to worry about managing the cooldown.

4. Damage over time. We have low life regeneration so difficult to tank many types of dangerous DoT.

Offensive mechanisms:

1. Double ignites. With the UNIQUE Emberwake Ruby Ring, we can apply additional ignites with a slower ignite speed. Because it is easy to apply more than one ignites, we can easily increase the ignite DPS by 33% and double the overall ignite damage. We can use two such rings but may want to consider the balance.

2. Multiple fire resistance penetration/damage taken stacks. For this one, I learnt a lot from other ignite builds and I think my setup has pretty much exhausted most and best possibilities. We have more than 8 mechanisms affecting this besides Auras. (Elemental Equilibrium 50% + Mastermind of Discord 25% + Wave of Conviction 15% + Combustion 20% + Flammability 15% + Cluster jewels up to 40% - Boss fire resistance 50%) * Eye of Malice Helmet 1.5 * Infernal Cry 1.12. Replacing the amulet anoint to an additional curse or using Awakened Hextouch, we can add Elemental Weakness. I use the "trigger spell when use skill" craft to trigger Wave of Conviction, which seems quite efficient for me because I'm not good at managing too many buttons.

3. Other buffs: shock by storm brand with multiple increased ailments effects (overall 22.5% increase damage taken if PoB is correct about this confusing mechanism), 1-2 auras (Malevolence, Hatred, etc.), flasks (Cinderswallow urn, Witchfire Brew, etc., major skill tree nodes such as Elemental Overload and Convergence.

4. Duration for effective damage. I believe this is pretty important to make our life easier. We care about the duration for ignites, curses, debuffs, buffs, warcry, ailments, storm brands etc. The ignite duration is around 11 seconds depending on our gem and tree setup so I personally want to make sure most other effects can last as long as this. So ailment duration, skill effect duration, etc are all useful here. I use three increased duration gems.

5. AOE. We have a really big AOE for all relevant skills, which makes clearing fast and damaging effective.

6. Shaper of Flame 25% more. The storm brand will keep applying lightning damage so Cold-to-Fire is perfect for boss fights. You need to use a body armour with 2 reds 2 greens and 2 blue, then swap Cold-to-FIre and Unbound Ailments to Inspiration and Ignite Pro when clearing maps. Or any other swaps you prefer.

Defensive mechanisms:

0. Generally, it is not a tanky character but we seldom get hurt. When we get hit, it is dangerous so we aim to avoid being hit and avoid one-shot as much as possible.

1. Mobility. As above, by using movement as the main skill, we have super-high mobility and much more time to apply buffs and debuffs, which is the strongest defensive layer. The boots are also amazing that it makes us immune to most movement debuff except for action speed debuffs like chill or temporal chain.

2. Evasion. The gears tend to be mostly evasion-oriented, so we have a base evasion rate of 24%. With flesh and stone's stand stance, this increases to 65% for enemies close to us. Our AOE is very high so the blind area is big as well. With flasks and dread banner, this can be further pushed to over 75%. However, I don't think this is very helpful for boss fights, maybe we should replace it with Hatred for more DPS in boss fights.

3. Chill. Two big chilling grounds are left when we move, which slows enemies.

4. Timeless jewel Glorious Vanity. We are actually using three skill points to get about 850 ES instantly. One for the Corrupted Soul keynode, one for the jewel, and one 5% or 80 loss of life (it is difficult to avoid this loss).

5. Guard skills. The only suitable one may be Steelskin, it can be activated for 2.91 seconds absorbing 2200/0.7 = 3142 hit damage, which makes our temporary health pool around 8500. The cooldown can be lowered to 1.88 secs or even further if you remove the timeless jew and add some cooldown nodes. I think it is very strong but I often forget to activate it = =.

6. 14-sec fority via Vigilant. I learnt this from a nice lead player with long hair = = (apologize), but I don't really have time to apply it very often, haha.

Other issues:

Bandit: Kill all for sure

Pantheon: Major: Sould of the Brine King (less stun, less chil), Minor: I use Sould of Ryslatha for big bosses (more life from flasks) and Soul of Garukhan for clear (more evasion)

Flasks: This could be quite flexible. Cinderswallow is necessary for clearing. I use one life flask, two offensive flask (one with 100% increased evasion mod) and two defensive flasks.

PoB and Vidoes

PoB at Level 96, 6M DPS,9.4s duration: https://pastebin.com/q2XCqqZ2
PoB with which I kill A8 Sirus at Level 93, 3.7M DPS: https://pastebin.com/wayLtNYB

You can find all gears and gems via PoB, and none of them are mandatory except for the boots and there are always alternatives if you would like to have more defense, less budget or you prefer other gears and setups, etc. The only thing that we need to be careful is there should have no fire spell damage with gears and jews. Otherwise, even strom brand will deal fire damag, and mobs will get +25% fire resistence instead of -50% due to Elemental Equilibrium and your DPS will decrease by about a half.

You can find some initial videos I did today. My PC is often very laggy and I'm not good at mechanisms so my play will be funny and messy. Sry about that.

A8 Maven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3slszHUnXk
A8 Sirus last phase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6caQc4-0e6M
A8 Baran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F051EvLgILY
T16 and Trialmaster clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdOTlGWPYks

Acknowledgement:
@youretheworstever (perma freezing)
@Fish-o-Fire (cold% damage matters)

I'll keep updating this post when I have time. Comments and suggestions highly welcome.

ty for guide