Incinerate Sorcerer Build Preview - Diablo 4 / Season 4 

That is the Incinerate Enchantment. 8s ON, 6s OFF. Though I adjusted the build as I started doing higher Pit levels (cleared up to 73). Have a look at my most recent clip posted, and it has a build link in the description. I changed the enchantments also for more immunity/defense.

@@kestononline Thank you. I was making a custom build myself, the meta ones are not good and I didn't agree with a lot. I like yours!! Well done!

@@DarkKnight-767 Yea the issue with a lot of META setups is they don’t care about the fire mage theme, or gameplay smoothness. Many just stack and exploit as many multipliers as possible. So it often ends up being just a mash of skills and more Ice than Fire in it and on the screen lol. Too many moving parts for my tastes.

@@kestononline Agree 100%, I hate the ice blades, and I don't even like using frost nova. Screw 'em!

Cool... I'm running an incinerate meteor soc I've cleared as high as 82 I don't deal quite as much damage as this because I run a wand. I still need to somehow squeeze more damage outta my build and am having trouble... trying to clear a 101 before season end.

Yea I did a hybrid in the first seasons, but then realized how much it held the build back in the harder content. Because Hydra is most direct damage, and Incinerate is DoT. So splitting the paragon and aspect focus was making either a bit mid. But I love the Hydra play style too. One thing that worked nicely for a bit, was leaning toward DoT, and using the Firebolt Enchantment so that the Hydra stacked a massive amount of burn damage on the enemy.

Yes, devouring Blaze interacts with BI. It’s one of those stats that gets calculated on impact as it pertains to an enemy condition. So you won’t see it reflected in the character stats. I am on the lookout for an amulet with +2 so I can replace glass cannon. And on the topic of glass cannon, and similarly inner calm… so the thing about a few of the multiplicative aspects and passives, is that they scale/multiply your current pool of that stat, as opposed to being added to it. So Glass Cannon’s 36-48% etc, is not the same as just 48% all-damage. It’s scaling your all-damage pool by tons. And that is where it comes from. On a similar cord, devouring blaze does the same thing, but to your crit damage pool. Hope this help 👍🏼

Hey! Yeah that helped clear things up - so basically any independent multiplier that states “increases damage by [x]X amount” will increase the all damage stat on the stat sheet, and similarly things like burning instinct’s contribution will be reflected in your burning damage stat on the sheet. After doing a bit of testing I noticed that the conflagration aspect’s contribution seems to be included under stat sheet burning damage, when you have the incinerate enchantment equiped - which is why it looks 3-4 times higher than base instead of just 2-2.5 times higher (which is what burning instinct would be contributing). I’m also like 95% sure that devouring blaze doesn’t contribute to burning damage - just looking at my damage numbers with and without the skill, there didn’t seem to be any increase at all :(

Yes, you can build for Xfal. Many people in S3 did essentially that. Basically Incinerate wasn’t the damage source, but mainly a catalyst for Xfal procs. You have to build for Lucky Hits. But that also needs Flamescar+Focus. As that’s a big source of LH (flamescar’s pyro LH, wand native, affix on Focus). LH while Barrier, and the Aspect etc. I just have been a bit of an Incinerate purist so I insist that the theme of my damage must be from incinerate directly. I build for a gameplay theme, but not necessarily highest efficiency/damage potential. So it can be built differently. So as hinted in the info above, the power of the rings you’re using is sort of related to which kind of setup you’re using. If you’re going for LHs and Cooldown (like some people will use IceBlades for CDs etc); then you may be doing frequent enough non-fire damage/other-element for the Tal’Rasha procs to be worth it. I personally don’t want my build to rely on any unique; so anyone can build/use it no matter what they have. With a LH setup, no Xfal would mean the build was dead in previous seasons. This season it’s a bit better.

Awesome, thanks for the clarification. I have been building more in the lucky hit, cooldown spam direction, but what I’m taking away from you is that I may be undervaluing the power of stacking enough additive damage. If I swap affixes around and end up with +dmg that increases my additive bucket by 50%, then that’s same as a 50%[x] multiplier (roughly, since spreading multiplicative bonuses across more independent multipliers yields more overall increase, but close enough for back of the napkin math). I can respect the purist approach for sure. My particular fantasy is more about face tanking while everything burns, so I’ve been building for survivability. Will you be posting updates anywhere as you develop? Would love to follow along.

@@kestononline Actually, one more question - where did you get the info that Devouring Blaze IS modifying your Burning Instinct damage? I can imagine it working that way, but it doesn't show on the paragon node even if you keep that window open and moused over the node while you channel incinerate. And I don't seem to see much of an increase when I test with 3 points in Blaze vs 0 points. Just curious how this was tested since I would expect a big difference seeing say a 100%[x] scaler from Burning Instinct, suddenly being scaled to 130%

@@syntaxbad It was from my own testing. Most of my tweaks and choices are from just trial/error and personal observation. Here is a good method to test it. I’m ssuming you have Conflagaration aspect. 1) Remove Firewall/Incinerate Enchant, so nothing else will be doing damage. 2) Stand midway from the test dummy, so only the center beam will hit. 3) Channel for at least 20-30 second. 4) You should see a loop of 6 numbers: (lowest) conflagaration explosion, (big) larger single tick, then 4x (medium) regular ticks. Those small/medium/large numbers are what you use for your comparison. Mainly the medium. After about 15 seconds of channeling those numbers usually flatten out, and only have a tiny variance in the loop, so you can use them to compare changes. Now all that said, I just did another test and am not seeing the difference I thought a saw a while back. The numbers seem to be very close with or without right now. So I may have to do some more testing when I have more time to see if if just doesn’t work, or if there is something else at play. Also, I flipped out 4 ranks of glass cannon for 4 ranks of Inner Flames are the results are close enough that it’s the much better choice given it’s not increasing my damage taken.

@@kestononline Yeah, its tough to test since I believe when you hit with any skill there is a 50% range of variance around the actual weapon damage. Weirdly, it seems like a channeled DOT skill like Incinerate just sticks with the initial damage it randomly rolls when you first start channeling as the basis of the entire channel duration (which is why it "stabilizes" at different numbers every time you channel, within a certain range). Makes it a real dog to test... While I really wish Devouring Blaze worked with Burning Instinct (and you still might be right), a very plausible explanation is that Burning Instinct is only reading the sum of "+Critical Strike Damage" from all sources, rather than the more holistic understanding a human would have ("If my total Crit damage goes up, then the bonus should go up!"). And since Devouring Blaze is its own unique sort of effect (both in terms of having a condition and being a multiplicative scaler rather than all the other additive bonuses, which are probably coded the same). One last thought from a lawyer (sorry, we ruin everything) angle is that IF we assume the tooltips and character sheet are actually worded correctly and intentionally, then we get the following: The character sheet actually lists your +Critical Strike Damage as "Critical Strike Damage Bonus" if you mouse over that stat. This is exact same defined term (capitalized) that is used in the Burning Instinct tooltip, leading me to believe that they are referring to the same internal game variable. Devouring Blaze reads "You deal 7%[x] Critical Strike Damage against Burning enemies." This strikes me as an independent multiplier that gets applied to the actual damage of a critical strike when you land one (which is never with DOT sadly...) rather than something that (under the hood) is increasing the value of the "Critical Strike Damage Bonus" variable. Which is possible why they appear to not work together.

I personally stay away from conditionals that won’t apply to every enemy you fight. For many bosses, especially the medium to larger ones, you’ll be close up so that the 3 Fire streams all hit them. And for most adds or smaller enemies, you’ll be distant to start, but often up close if you see elites… because you generally want to rush elites ASAP. This so that they’ll be in range when flame shield wears off and get stunned, but also that it’s easier to AoE-burn packs after you use Inferno. Just have a look at the most recent gameplay clip (T71 Pit: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tdfut9VFs44.html ) for an idea of how I play it; far to start on lesser as they will walk into and die by the time they reach you, in close for packs with elites. If you get Damage vs Distant and have no more temper rolls or are close to bricking an item, well roll with it and make do. But it’s not the ideal choice.

Yea my defense is trash right now lol. Have to play the game of avoidance. If i see a rough-looking pack of elites, it's teleport in to stun them, then back out and channel/melt them. I gotta figure something out, and have some ideas, On the look out for certain gear atm so I can work on that.

I've changed my build around since then (now cleared T73): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tdfut9VFs44.html . Check out the build link in the video description there. I've traded off some power for survival a bit and brought my HP up to 17k (21k after fortitude elixir; now using Ruby gems), but yea only after I raised my damage from gear upgrades so I could afford to do that (Damage Test: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YH11XYec8Gc.html 54M highest tick). If we kill too slow, we'll get overwhelmed which makes it harder anyways. Got to have enough damage to dash into a pile of elites and burn them down when needed.

So damage % isn't added with the common affix pool (fire damage, vs burning, while x, etc). It's added to all other sources of all-damage, then used multiplicative with the others same as the other buckets (including the common pool). So you're right in that Fire Damage over time has a high value; because due to Burning Instinct scaling it gets multiplied by over 4 times the amount you're adding via the affix. BUT, it's going into a larger pool, hence more diminishing returns. I did some recent testing, and the damage isn't that far apart even though the tooltip and the stats have quiet a gap. With the all-damage setup I have in this clip, which has 1852% Burning Damage, and 960% all damage, 120k AP, 2.8M tooltip etc... the output was very similar when I changed out 3 items (weapon/gloves/ring) that had the Fire DoT tempering rolls on them instead; which gave me around 3300% Burning Damage, and lowered my All-Damage to 630%'ish, and AP to 76k, 3.45M tooltip. I plan to post a clip related to this soon. I recorded one last night, but it got cut-off/stopped at the wrong place.

That's the Incinerate Enchantment. 8 seconds on/spraying, 6 seconds off. It is very handy for murdering enemies while you move, and sometimes will even spawn offscreen and clear/kill enemies you haven't even gotten to yet.

I’ve tried using both temerity and soulbrand. Have to be careful how much offensive I give up in place of defensive. When I tried them both, I was tougher, but took so long to kill things that the problem then became being too easily overwhelmed by enemy as they rushed/stacked up.

@@kestononline just lost my own sorc build in helltide, guess i might do yours now lol.

Incinerate or DoT cannot crit. However, the legendary Paragon node on the Burning Instinct board scales your burning damage based on 10% of that stat, plus an extra 1+ for every 25% INT. So for you'll end up with 120-140% scaling if not more. And however it calculates it, it ends up being something like 3-4x your DoT stat converted to Burning Damage.

I traded a Fractured Winderglass earlier today for a 80% Temery finally. So I will begin trying to integrate. I need more gear first though. I need to convert the glass cannon on necklace to Devouring Blaze (need to find one), among some other things. So Barriers are definitely where I plan to go for my resilience increase. I am just collecting the gear toward that change as I play right now.

@@kestononline I've tried testing Devouring blaze in the past and it did not scale incinerate damage. Not sure if that's changed or not but I never saw a difference with it before.

@@SinnfullDuck Yea after some tests and other feedback I ended up dropping DB. It wasn’t affecting damage. Free’d up 3 points to put somewhere else 👍🏼

@@kestononline where is your recommendation for the 3 points? I'm guessing max out firewall and then... 1 left :)

@@DarkKnight-767 what 3 points?

I'll add it to the video description; I always forget about that. It's Firewall/Incinerate enchants. I just posted this today because I am not sure when I will do the full maxroll build spec link (not until I figure out the defensive and min-max out the setup). So this clip is for those who need that build peek sooner.

@@kestononline Thanks for the fast reply mate, look forward to it.

Thank you for not wasting my time with all the chit chat. And just getting straight to the point. So I was early level 70 struggling to clear a tier 49 nightmare dungeon. After swapping something’s around and reworking the board , I’m no longer stuck In there with them. They’re stuck in here with me!

I'm really fascinated by this build. Looking forward to seeing where this build goes.

@@AhJeez_ LOL. Glad to hear that this helped. Burn bright!

Yea Flamescar was doing half the damage. The issue is that you lose so much INT, DoT/CritDamage, Damage %,, and half the flamethrower aspect amount that it takes way way more of the skill ranks to make it up. And certain stats can’t roll on the Focus. So maybe with 30 ranks in Incinerate you’d do comparable or better damage. But that is a disproportional amount of investment compared to just using a Staff. I’d only go Flamescar+Focus if Lucky Hit and CDR was super important to how a particular setup was using those.

@@kestononline thx a lot for answer, i was close to buy Flamescar, but then I saw this comment!

Everything I’m wearing has Intelligence… every slot. I have over 2k INT. It’s just not better on the paragon board over a +5 to a scaling-contributing stat (damage over time, crit damage, fire damage).

@@kestononline I was looking at the description and you mentioned INT was the least priority stat to get. So i was just wondering about that.

@@StarEclipse775 well, attack power doesn’t tell the whole story. In this one, my attack power was really high, because of a lot of my scaling was in Damage % affixes, which is front loaded as opposed to conditional. But in my later vids, where my damage is triple what it is in this video, my attack power is only around 40k. This is because I shifted my damage into aspects, scalers, and conditional/type-specific stats. So don’t compare your attack power vs other builds.There are builds with 16k AP and do tons more damage than mine.

@@kestononline Im definitely learning from you, i see you went with intelligence gems instead of health in most slots, those are damage multipliers for sorc like willpower is for druid. I dont have damage percentage affixes, i have damage to close enemies, crit hit chance, and crit strike damage and some crowd control. I dont really understand the damage percent affix, is that all damage and better than just the one for close enemies? Or is that mostly just raw attack power and not skill power? And true my friend's druid does more damage then me and he only has 16k AP.

@@StarEclipse775 Your Main stat (mine is INT) sits in a multiplicative bucket by itself. So that translates to 10% of that value scaling to your skill. So you know just like how you can have an aspect with 20%, having 2000 INT translates to 20% scaling to my skills. In addition, on my particular build (Fire DoT) every +25 INT adds 1% scaling to my Burning Damage via the Burning Instinct paragon node. And of course, about 2.5% of my INT translates to All-Resist. So there are good reasons to invest in it. In addition, since Sorc is a glass cannon that relies on shields/immunity and barriers, then a ton of HP would be a wasted stat unless I wasn’t using Barriers or Fire Shield and instead was relying on Damage Reduction. Then more Health would scale well for effective HP. In regular play, I use 1-2 Ruby; just to get my HP to around 20k after food buffs. Conditional affixes generally have a higher max roll in the respective places/slots. So if your build is themed around a state, distance etc, and that condition is true/active most of the time… then that type of affix gives you more value or damage. The less you can maintain that condition, the less relative value that affix type has. If as a Druid all your damage is done in melee range, then the higher affixes of Damage vs Close will give you better value. So it all depends. I started with Damage % early on, but converted to DoT/Fire DoT as I leaned more into the scaling of that stat and related passives which widened the gap between them.

@@kestononline Yep true, im learning from you even though im a different class as my main besides my sorc alts. It may not seem like much at 2000 int being 20 percent but every little bit of damage helps. But my willpower is only 1300, i gave up some willpower for an aspect and more crit damage/chance and close enemies with tempering and another useful affix. I think the ring i gave up was nice but it really wasnt helping me do more damage then the alternative i did. My build is more damage reduction plus Earthen Bulwark druid skill so HP helps though i do get fortified and a barrier. Anyways i am in melee range almost 99 percent of the time, no ranged attacks from a distance or anything. So what your saying is something like Vasily's Prayer helm or Tempest roar being of value if you shapeshift. Makes sense.

The Burning Instinct paragon uses a 10% value of your crit damage, and adds it to its scaling.

@@kestononline right of course, thank you. Looking forward to the maxroll build!

All-damage contributes to raising your attack power. It's reflected more upfront. You may have your rolls on DoT/FireDoT so it's not reflected in your Attack Power, but can still be comparable on the actual skill.

Dont worry about the AP displayed on character screen. Its basically worthless at telling how much damage you do.