This is a showcase of my pure Flame Reave Spellblade. What started as just messing around with trying to use Ekkdrasil + Erased Mage relic on a Spellblade ended up with pushing the limits of pure Flame Reave (no Firebrand) since its actually viable with the buffs to mana regen over the years. With the well known, OP Shatter strike taking the build of the month with a very strong build layering ward, armor and dodge, I thought I would showcase a different style of Spellblade using some different mechanics.
Current build planner: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/o3xvEgnA
I am currently around 1000 corruption with this build. Note: Nihilis only has +1 to all skills hence planner shows additional points.
Build Pros:
- Solid clearspeed
- Amazing range especially for a melee skill (to the point it doesn’t even feel like a melee skill)
- Reliant on a single skill for damage (other skills for utility) which IMO makes it easier to dodge attacks and boss mechanics (than with a skill rotation setup)
- Decent defenses
Build Cons:
- Kinda mediocre single target
- Requires some Mana management (mainly knowing when to use Focus)
- Very Legendary heavy/ Expensive
Offenses:
The build’s damage is mainly centered on Flame reave, 30 skill points are required to unlock the most damage out of the skill. Flame reave has a 160% damage effectiveness and the main weapon Jasper’s staff helps a lot with the additional skill points and its solid flat damage along with upto 80 flat damage from the stacking buff Searing blade (Flat damage and crit multi are pretty close in terms of damage as legendary modifiers on the staff). Aside from all the multipliers in the skill tree as well as the base from Enchant weapon, it also gets a few multipliers from the passive skill tree such as the Arcane Flames, Frozen Steel (chill chance from Enchant weapon) and Volka’s Razor (as Flame Reave cost is 11). Doom(+shattered chains) is pretty much another mandatory multiplier for melee as well as Throne of Ambition.
Crit gets capped thanks to the new Prodigy and Defender of Welryn nodes (great additions to Spellblade in 1.1). Calculating crit chance is a bit weird but with 5% base crit + 5% (Prodigy 75+ INT) and all the % increased my character sheet shows 39% crit chance, with an additional 4% base crit from Flame reave’s skill tree, this should be ~56% crit chance which then gets a 1.8 multiplier from the Chaos Flare node against ignited enemies which lets me reach the 100% crit cap.
Armor shred and Fire resist shred are two of the main missing offensive components for this build. Armor shred can be additionally added on the amulet and/or as an exalted modifier on the gloves but it is still very difficult to go above 50-70 stacks. Fire resist shred can be added from the blessing although I definitely don’t wanna give up armor for it and from the Fire Aura of Flame Walker node which I don’t like as Fire aura is horrible for visual clarity and requires you to be in close range.
Defenses:
So for defenses, this build primarily stacks a bunch of DR from Frailty(upto 15% less dmg), Sphere of Protection(8%), Arcane Shield (12%), Titan Heart (15%), Lightning Aegis(25%) and 3.3K armor which can go up significantly with Throne of Ambition stacks. The incoming damage then goes through a 2.5K ward pool which is something I haven’t invested too much in and then 34% of the damage is mitigated by my mana pool which allows me to get away with a 2.2K life pool at 1000 corruption. Life sustain is through leech(and potions), Ward sustain through ward on hit and Mana sustain is mainly through Focus.
The build also has a good amount of movement speed from the boots, rings, amulet and haste on hit. I am considering this as a defense as the movement speed from haste is quite invaluable to move out of oneshot attacks(like Rahyeh’s void circles, Orobyss meteor, etc.). Sadly, this means an LP ring feels somewhat mandatory to push this build higher as there is not many other ways for haste on a spellblade. Crab ring is also an option but harder to get with LP in my experience and has less movespeed (but more consistent).
DoT is a weakness of this setup (additionally since it doesn’t have a consistent ailment cleanse), an Orian’s Eye is very good to mitigate this and is a competitive alternative to Nihilis as it gives a high DoT mitigation(depending on roll), flat mana, resolves void res and provides a significant DR to Fire and Void damage as well as the Stun immunity stuff(which is the next biggest danger at high corruption). However, a well rolled Nihilis is overall better as it can give mana regen, armor, health and movespeed (and is kinda easier to farm IMO). Enemy DoT is kinda busted at higher corruptions and I feel even Orian’s is not enough to properly mitigate it (Hopefully, next patch tones it down properly).
Mana and Mana regen:
Currently, I have a mana pool of around 450 and ~20 mana regen, this is sufficient to sustain spamming a 11 mana cost Flame reave, 34% incoming damage dealt to mana and my utility skills. Missing mana also gets added as Endurance threshold thanks to the Erased mage relic. You can actually get away with less mana/mana regen which is what I did before I got my legendary staff but will be more reliant on Focus then.
Focus is really good to reset mana and feels like it is in a really good spot right now(Although I wish the base initial burst was a bit stronger). The Armor and DR nodes feel really good and it can be used to tank certain attacks although you still need to be careful not to use it when DoT/Oneshot attacks are coming. This build can have potentially more mana regen through amulet, ring affixes and a T7 on the weapon but I think its unrealistic and unnecessary as no matter how much mana regen you stack a well specialized Focus will be necessary to mitigate big hits to your mana. Mana strike is another alternative but I wanted to avoid it and didn’t test it as the build is not very focused on attack speed and would feel bad swapping to it with Flame reave’s range.
Movement and Utility:
Now Enchant Weapon is pretty much a mandatory choice for Melee spellblades so I think not much to explain on that.
But my other choices are a bit more debatable, I went with a Flame Rush+Static orb setup for my movement skill, a combo I have been using a lot lately. This setup has a few neat synergies with this build as it gives a bit of ward, Frenzy (which helps maintain Frenzied flame) and a bunch of hits from the Rune embers+Static orb which is great for helping this build apply ailments like Doom, Frailty, Armor shred and Shock(for the stun chance). But the main feature of this setup is of course Lightning Aegis a strong 25% DR which does go off if you lose 25% of your HP but applies to all damage. Nowadays, I feel like not having lightning aegis is like not taking Aspect of the Boar on Primalist or skipping the glancing blow passives in Rogue. Now the alternatives to this would be just Flame ward and either Teleport or Surge and I’ll just go over my thoughts on those below.
Flame ward: I kinda dislike this skill as it requires a proactive usage and has a very low duration making it very easy to make you feel like you wasted it or didn’t use it properly. When a big hit is coming, I am focused on dodging it and splitting focus on whether I should tank it with Flame ward or I can move out of it feels bad for me. Another common usage is specializing in the cast when stunned nodes which I also don’t really like as it is needed for the big hit that stunned you and its easy for the subsequent attacks to kill you through it. I do still have a non-specialized Flame ward on my skill bar but as seen in the videos, I barely use it.
Teleport: This movement skill offers some really good utility through its inherent iframes and the stun immunity and armor nodes which can complement this build fairly well. However, the stun immunity is an anti-synergy with Flame ward’s cast on stun and this build doesn’t have much cooldown reduction which makes teleport feel a lot better.
Surge: I disqualified Surge almost immediately due to its absolute lack of utility compared to the other movement skills. Now relooking at it, Surge does have some good synergy since its a melee skill and has really good damage modifiers through Dormant energy and Lightning rush which should all scale well with this build. On top of that it can also generate Fire auras that can reliably reach 10 stacks of Fire res shred with the Flame walker node. But I still prefer a movement skill with defensive utility than to be used as a second damage dealer. Maybe if Surge get’s buffed with some defensive utility (for example Lightning aegis on use would fit it really well) then I wouldn’t mind using it.
Now for the main question, Why pure Flame Reave? well because I kinda hate the Flame Reave + Firebrand combo. I had played it back in the day and felt it had one big flaw compared to other builds. You had to attack 6 times to build up Firebrand stacks which always left you open to enemy attacks since Firebrand does no damage (and as a consequence has no stun) meaning you always had to tank a few hits even from trash mobs unlike for example Shatter strike which would attack first and generate mana with mana strike from stunned enemies after. I also feel like Firebrand has a slower attack animation than flame reave which is fine for high attack rate setups(like 1h swords) but not so good for a staff like Jasper’s which can’t roll attack speed. Pure Flame reave reminds me more of Freezing Pulse from PoE than any melee skills lol.
Overall Thoughts:
- Spam Flame reave is pretty good, Now I still feel it could use some buffs in the damage department (and not just as a comparison to Shatter Strike). While my build’s damage is pretty good, it required multiple legendary affixes and particularly a lot of + Skill levels which are annoying to get due to the RNG for item rolls and LP (particularly for the staff). Just buffing the base damage effectiveness to 180-200%(current 160) would feel better(even the Firebrand version) as the other skills (Shatter strike and Surge) already have that baseline.
- On that note, RNG for LP uniques is really annoying as getting a low roll with high LP feels like a waste. Not just limited to uniques for this build.
- Mana, Mana regen and Damage delt to mana feels to be in a pretty good spot atleast for Mages. Ekkidrasil is a huge part in this but also the new mana/mana regen affixes on weapons and passives.
- Spellblade buffs in 1.1 really good and honestly pretty underrated. Solving crit through stats is pretty solid and I have a few other setups also theorycrafted.
- Surge could use some buffs to its Utility side, primarily on the defensive side as the other moveskills do.
- Get rekt Firebrand lmao (Actually I think there is potential for it with the buffs in 1.1 but still seems pretty weak).
T4 Julra Kill:
Aberroth Kill:
1K+ Corruption Echo Clear and Boss+Harbinger kills:
1K+ Corruption Orobyss kills:
