Sunwreath Flame Reave Spellblade Build Guide

High burst damage with medium AOE.

High sustain and big soak pool through Ward.

Pleasing to see big yellow numbers on screen.

Only one unique required. Sunwreath.

Viable in 200+ corruption Monoliths without too much work.

Two skills are automatic. Only three buttons are required so it's fantastic for controller play

Fun, viable, non-minion melee

Skill loop doesn't come online until level 40+

Will not scale to 1000 corruption (because it's melee and non-minion)

No CC

Doesn't feel super comfortable until you get Melee Attack Speed and Ability Cooldown

Summary:

The core gameplay loop for this build is simple: Count to six.

Six Firebrand. One Flame Reave. Everything near you dies. Repeat.

Never less than four Firebrands. Never more than six.

Gain ward from hitting things while you're at it.

Key Passives:

• The Prismatic Blade 8/8, Volka's Razor 10/10, Blade Weaver 6/10 chain key activators for this build. The Blade Weaver multiplier is essential.
• Anything with attack speed: Mage Flurry 5/5, Essence Duel 5/5 are immediate takes.
• Speaking of attack speed, Gemini 1/1 is a take because you need melee attack speed and fire penetration and more damage on your offhand that an Off-hand or Shield cannot provide.
• Base Damage before multipliers: Infused Weapon 8/8, Fire Blood 8/8, Burden of Knowledge 5/5 all give us base damage that all of our multipliers go through and are very valuable.
• Unsealed Mana 5/6 is required because we cannot sustain mana while using Firebrand without it. The five point effect is what we care about. It also provides decent sustain, so it's not a complete passive sink. Take these five points as soon as you need to transition from Mana Strike to Firebrand when levelling.

Key Skill Points:

• Every damage multiplier selected in Flame Reave has a mod that is "multiplicative with other modifiers" and this adds up fast: Heat Wave 5/5, Arcane Severance 4/4, Ember Infusion 4/4, Rhythm of Fire 1/1 are all independent multipliers. And the second hit we get from Flame Caller 1/1 is a kind of multiplier as well.
• Incineration 1/1 is another independent multiplier from Firebrand that can be applied to Flame Reave--it's one of two reasons we attack with it six times. The other one being Blade Weaver 6/10.
• Every single node in Enchant Weapon, while not an independent multiplier, is a huge huge huge chunk of multiplicative fire damage. Like over 200%. And with Kindling Blade 1/1 and the requisite 60% cooldown you never have to even press a button to get it. It's just there.
• Teleport provides us a small burst of ward, 50% more elemental damage in Elemental Affinity 5/5, and a marginal amount of cooldown reduction in Wormhole 1/1. I have decided that it's slightly more optimal than Surge for the time being.

Traps to avoid:

• Ignite is a newbie trap (for this build) because it does not scale on anything. Do not use it. If you want to build DoT you must do so as a DoT build. Ignore it. Ignore ignite. It does not exist.
• Fire Aura is a similar story. It is its own build. Ignore it.

Survivability:

This build survives through Ward Gain and Ward Retention.

• Many of our passives and skill trees give us ward by triggers and hits. These add up fast.
• Because of point one, our sustain comes from hitting things. Don't panic and run around unless you're dodging something specific. Hit things to stay alive.
• Intelligence stacking is great because it gives us both core damage and ward retention.
• Flame Ward is a huge quality of life skill for us. Astonish 1/1 is a huge spike of ward that is automatically triggered exactly when we need it most. Especially since this build can't fit stun avoidance.
• Potions. Their use is simple. If you run out of ward and you lose ANY health, potion it immediately.

Basic strategies about survivability apply:

• You must cap resists.
• You must mitigate critical strikes, either through crit avoidance, crit damage reduction, or both.

The Need For Cooldown Reduction:

This build requires cooldown reduction for several reasons in order to work. We treat our softcap for Cooldown Reduction as 60%.

1. Enchant Weapon is extremely powerful, and our goal is to automate it with Kindling Blade 1/1 and reduce the cooldown to as close to 100% uptime as possible. It has a 9s duration, and you reach 9s cooldown at ~60% cooldown reduction. This is very possible to achieve.
2. If you end up with a +3 Flame Reave stat for some reason, you can take Firewalker 1/1 and Kindling 2/2 to get pretty close to free haste. The goal is to have the cooldown of Flame Reave be exactly the same amount of time as it takes you to attack with your next six Firebrand. Easy peasy.
3. Shorter cooldown for Flame Ward is a nice survivability quality of life improvement.

Damage scaling stats for equipment:

Attack speed > Fire Penetration > Cooldown Reduction (to soft cap of 60%) > Melee/Fire/Spell Melee Damage > Intelligence > Fire Damage % (Pyromancer's) > Armor Shred Chance

Survivability Scaling for equipment:

Ward Per Second > Intelligence (if the tree is finished) > Ward Retention > Ward Threshold # > Armor

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Melee Attack Speed is disproportionately beneficial to this build because of the need for stacks.
• This build scales hard on Melee Damage, Fire Melee Damage, and Spell Damage. Flame Reave converts Melee Damage at 160% and the Arcane Severance 4/4 node converts Spell Damage into base damage as well.
• Note that Intelligence serves as important damage and survivability scaling because of the base damage increase and ward retention.
• One of the build's damage weaknesses is lack of innate fire penetration. Fire penetration in our equipment becomes very valuable as well as Grand Breath of Cinders.
• Any stats gained from having a legendary Sunwreath are a free lunch. Get it. I recommend Intelligence.

This build doesn't come online until around level 40. I won't pretend getting it going isn't a little annoying.

You can start using Flame Reave in the ring at 25 when Sunwreath becomes applicable, which helps at least play with your core loop by doing: 3xMana Strike to Flame Reave.

Gearing according to the existing stat priorities should work though.

Mana Strike does have a small multiplier in its skill tree so that's very usable.

Mana Strike is pretty much it until Firebrand. Do what you must.

I'm still exploring this, because I am as new as many of you reading this.

There seems to be obvious gain from an Exsanguinous. It does appear to need to be paired with a Chains of Uleros, but you'll need at least 2LP there to bring over Intelligence and Cooldown Reduction.

I'm toying with this progression:

1. Get a usable Exsanguinous first.
2. After you have a usable Exsanguinous you need a Chains of Uleros or else high convert potion to ward.
3. Your next big boost comes from the Experimental Gloves affix for PrefixExperimental Ward per Missing Health

Don't use the Chains of Uleros or the Experimental Affix until after you have the Exsanguinous in place.

Boneclamor Barbute also appears to be a big gain, although I haven't allocated any space to stack Necrotic Resistance yet. Possibly replace all the armor shred with it.

Why the Sceptre?

A node in the Flame Reave tree, Arcane Severance 4/4, grants base spell damage as additional fire damage for the skill's use. This means that our scepter effectively has well over a hundred weapon damage, comparable to most two-handers, in just the main hand, leaving our offhand sword free to be a stat stick (and add a few more bits of damage besides).

Why Gemini instead of Off-hand or Shield?

I cannot emphasize enough how good and required Melee Attack Speed is.