The NEW INFERNAL BLOW is great for MELEE IGNITE in Affliction League! | Path of Exile 3.23

Two things not mentioned in the video: Ruthless support works on Infernal Blow, but for the 6-charge explosion to be a ruthless blow(and gain 98% more damage) it must fall on the attack that would apply the 6th charge to you (attacking normally, ruthless blows will fall on every 3rd attack so it will naturally land on the 6th charge as long charges have not previously expired on 1, 2, 4 or 5 charges) The line on the new Infernal Blow that reads 'applying a charged debuff to you the first time you hit an enemy with this skill' isn't functionally different to the normal Infernal Blow as it already had this property but it wasn't written into the gem. This means multistrike would only apply a charged debuff on the first of three hits etc.

so many skills sound so interesting to build around that it's almost impossible to decide on what to play at launch. Your Herald of Ash Buff Stacker Chieftain was a lot of fun to play, but sadly I only got around to play it towards the end of 3.22. I really want to give it another go right away, but I'm thinking of ditching the Buff Stacking and go for Life Stacking instead. Without tattoos I think I need Purity of Fire in the build anyways for better max res. Herald of Ash + Purity of Fire + Petrified Blood gets me to around 50% life reservation with Sanguimancy and the "Champion of the Cause" cluster (+ Something with Eternal Blessing). Mapping was never a problem with this build and Bossing could be really nice now that there's Adds on demand with "Choir of the Damned" making the 5% explode on Chief actually usefull while Bossing. I'm also thinking about throwing in a 4link (or Shako) with "Blade Blast of Unloading" for the Giga-Burst on Bosses. (Not to mention that the other Keystones next to Sanguimancy are also extremely useful, I'll probably be running around in Full ES gear with as much Life+ES as possible while also trying get the Life cost of my skills up as much as possible 😅)

Yeah holy crap that new tincture is so good now that I think about it. It means you get a free Shaper of Flames

i want to try a wierd idea for the new long earthquake, i think it'll be really good with the new warlock penance mark, you could place the earthquake and then generate a ton of enemies around the target with that mark (using something like ball lightning with brutality), then after some time the earthquake aftershock inflicts a huge poison on every one of them and with the pathfinder node all the huge posions are proliferated to the main target, you could gemswap increased duration for less duration and use vaal eq for clearing

My favourite might be holy flame totem of ire. Turn off the pierce with snakepit and let chain, for bosses reverse knockback flame wood. Yeah it is out there to be sure. But it could be fun.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this after the announcement tomorrow (assuming there are Melee changes). I love the idea of Ignite melee, but I just feel like it is so hard to build around.

New molten strike thou

Biggest problem with Melee Ignite and the reason it always feels so much worse than spell ignite is the damage consistency. You're telling me I have to hit 6 times (without multistrike) just to get my damage? Who want's to play a build like that? The only time I can remember Melee ignite feeling any good was back when we had old Seismic Cry. Anyway, since the new support added last league I've been trying to figure out how to make a decent melee ignite build and would you believe I've landed on Cyclone Shockwave... Basically you lean hard into Volatility support and use the 5 quick bursts from Shockwave to fish for big ignites and cyclone, along with the 50% chance to refresh ignite on crit, can sustain it. I have a scuffed PoB I put together with 0 defenses just to see if it was able to get some damage and it's actually not looking too bad.

This may be a dumb idea, but what if you shortened the duration of the debuff (or speeded up the debuff expiration rate) so that the charge exploded every hit? 90% damage for 1 charge is almost as one more full hit. Multistrike or slow attack speed build can help, area of effect allows to use that for clear as well.

I really tried to make a melee ignite chieftain last league in SSF. I got two voidstones but struggled to farm red maps and progress my build further. My best achievable PoB gets about 1.4m damage but requires a very well-rolled weapon. Anyways, I would still prefer earthquake over the new infernal blow because of 2 reasons: 1) Quality of life. With EQ, you just hit once and wait. No need to stand still with a slow weapon trying to get 6 charges for maximum damage. You can overlook attack speed for the most part. 2) If I'm not mistaken, you can overlap fist of war with a ruthless hit. This is a little bit annoying in practice but not hard to pull off, and hits like a truck. Still, the new infernal blow is an interesting skill. Thanks for your video!

look at lighting strike of arcing, instead of 3 projectile you shoot 1 but instead of 0 chain now you have 9chain, but it still have projectile tag so you can use GMP and have 5projectile with 9chain, so with minimal effort you can have 5attack per secound 5 projectiles and 9 chain, if you have enough hit dmg you can kill all map mobs with only 3 secounds if you assume chain range is infinite, but you can stack chain range from tree and you can use Achain. So if you invest much more you can reach tousents of chaining hits. This skill is right now just better version of wild strike (only lightning) or arc, vaal arc still be better... but this skill is out of control i think :P

As bright as always, i'd like to see your ideas for other gems as well.

I'm hoping consecrated path get a version that's good for ignite

You're gonna bait me into chieftain melee ignite again lol. I tried so hard to make this work last league

It's good to see infernal blow getting some love. I'm personally really hyped for building a transfigured consecrated path totem juggernaut. With a theoretical max of 11 or 12 endurance charges, it's going to be pretty insane, defensively and offensively. Stacking more damage and more AOE with endurance charges is nuts.

Ive been brainstorming some builds as well. Sire of shards molten strike of the zenith deadeye with the new mark. Stack non vaal skills target additional enemies and projectiles (and mark effect if it can spawn more minions?). Abuse returning projectiles/nimis to shotgun. This should just shit out up to 11-18 projectiles PER TARGET and every 5 hits will cause projectiles to deal 1000% more damage. Sounds dumb enough to work. And it will cause all projectiles to shotgun bosses whilst being able to clear.

Champion or trickster lightning strike arc chain mechanic sounds promising with mutli targets from strikes, + proj and hydrosphere abuse on bosses.

The new FrostBlink made me wonder something. As it scales with Chill on enemies, what happends if you acquire the "Chilling Presence" Notable Cluster Passive which makes enemies around you chilled (10%). Specifically, can one scale this predefined 10% and if so would it be worth it to have a permanent chilling aura. Since the new FB should apply the extra Dmg on Chill both at the start and end of Blink.

id love to see a proper volcanic fissure build with the new T-Gem

What about Story of the Vaal? It has Hits with this Weapon always ignite and more ignite damage on top.