Cast on Weapon Swap Infernalist - Full Build Guide

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javelinwounds13

Wow, absolutely insane writeup and mechanics. I don't think I've seen this amount of work put into a guide like ever.

Keep cooking bro

Undead_Legion8

Weapon Swapping is one of the most powerful mechanics in the Path of Exile 2.

This is a build guide for my Cast on Weapon Swap Infernalist. This is a quintessential Path of Exile build - an intricate build with many moving parts that takes advantage of mechanics in clever and unexpected ways to make something really cool. This build revolves around the new weapon swapping mechanic and utilizes it in some really creative ways. This build is to showcase the insane potential of weapon swapping.


Weapon Swap Mechanics:

  • All characters have two weapon slots, which can be swapped using X by default.
  • You can bind active skills and spirit reservations to each weapon slot. For example, you can have a skill linked to weapon slot 1, 2, or both. This can be set in the gem menu for each skill under the "Used with weapon set".
  • Using a skill that is bound only to one weapon slot will automatically swap you to that weapon slot before you use the skill. For example, if Fireball is allocated only to weapon set 2, you will automatically swap to weapon set 2 before casting Fireball.
  • Likewise, spirit reservations such as minions and persistent buffs can also be allocated to each weapon set.
  • In addition to the weapon sets, you can also allocate up to 24 points on your skill tree across the two weapon sets. These points can be allocated in the passive tree menu.
  • When you weapon swap, the passive tree also automatically switches to the respective weapon set's passive tree.

Trigger Mechanics:

  • All trigger skills require energy, which can be generated by meeting their respective trigger condition. Filling the energy required triggers the linked skill(s).
  • The energy needed to trigger a skill is based on the base cast time of the linked skill. For example, Comet has a base 2 second cast time, and requires 200 energy to be triggered by Cast on Minion Death.
  • You can have multiple copies of the same trigger gem, and they can independently gain energy.
  • For Cast on Minion Death, the energy generated by minions dying is a function of their "strength". This is not affected by their gem level or maximum HP.
  • The minions with the highest energy on death to spirit reservation ratio are the Skeletal Warrior minions, who give a base 29 energy on death (from my testing). This will be important later.

Build Mechanics:

  • The Corpsewade boots give a skill called Decompose, which consumes nearby corpses to produce a poison cloud.
  • The Sacrifice buff lets you use reviving minions as corpses, thus allowing your minions to be consumed and killed by the boots.
  • We have two Cast on Minion Death (CoMD) setups - one with Profane Ritual, and our main damage setup with Comet. Both these setups can independently gain energy.
  • When a minion gets consumed by the boots, it triggers Profane Ritual, which can in turn consume other minions due to the Sacrifice support, which retriggers Profane Ritual causing a chain reaction.
  • Each minion death also independently generates energy for the Comet CoMD, triggering it multiple times.
  • The minions, Sacrifice, and both Cast on Minion Death setups are only allocated on one weapon set.
  • Therefore, when we weapon swap to this set, we summon our skeletons, which get consumed by Decompose from the boots, which triggers Profane Ritual and starts a chain reaction consuming other minions, which in turn triggers Comet multiple times.
  • This entire interaction is resolved in the same server tick, resulting in everything being simultaneously triggered.

Energy Generation Breakpoints:

  • Comet requires 200 energy to be triggered by Cast on Minion Death.
  • Each Skeletal Warrior gives a base 29 energy per death.
  • This energy gained can be scaled using "meta skills gain % increased energy".
  • At base 29 energy, we need to consume 7 minions to trigger Comet once (29 * 7 = 203, the first breakpoint over 200).
  • Scaling this base 29 energy to 50 energy means we get one Comet trigger per 4 minions, and scaling it to 67 energy means we get one Comet trigger per 3 minions.
  • However, scaling this base 29 energy to 100 energy is a special breakpoint as we only need to consume 2 minions to trigger one Comet.
  • This breakpoint is critical because it lets us take full advantage of "chance to refund half the energy spent".
  • With 25% from the tree and 35% from the Energy Retention support, we get 60% chance to refund half the energy spent.
  • Therefore, every time we trigger Comet, we have a 60% chance to get back 100 energy, which means that the subsequent Comet trigger only requires one additional minion death.
  • I wrote a simple Python script to simulate this to calculate the average number of triggers. Here, you can see the frequency distribution of trigger counts for 15 minions, and that the average number of triggers scales linearly with the number of minions. With my current setup at 15 minions, I get on average around 10.2 Comet triggers.
  • To scale this base 29 energy to 100 energy, we need at least 244% increased energy gained.
  • We get 55% from the tree, and 71% from a lvl 18 Cast on Minion Death with 20 quality for a total of 126%.
  • The remaining 118% is obtained from 9 jewels with "meta skills gain % increased energy", which can roll up to 15%.

Mana Management:

  • Triggering an average 10 Comets and 15 Profane Rituals is extremely costly in terms of mana.
  • Infernalist's Pyromantic Pact offers a solution for mana sustain, providing infinite mana in exchange for having to deal with hefty self damage. Essentially converting the mana generation problem into a damage mitigation problem.
  • Pyromantic Pact does self fire damage equal to the sum of life + ES, and can be mitigated with fire resistance.
  • We can use weapon swapping in a really clever way to deal with this, due to two key facts.
  • Firstly, the incoming damage is not fixed, so having a lower ES pool means a smaller self damage hit.
  • Secondly, weapon swapping keeps you at your current percentage of maximum ES, regardless of what your actual ES is. For example, if you are at 500/1000 (50%) maximum ES on weapon set 1, you will be at 2500/5000 (50%) ES on weapon set 2 as well.
  • This also effectively means that any sources of flat ES recovery gets effectively multiplied by the ratio of your maximum ES in both weapon setups. Using the same example, picking up a 100 ES Grim Feast while on the lower ES setup takes us to 600/1000 ES, which would put us at 3000/5000 ES on weapon swap. That 100 flat ES has now effectively given us 500 ES.
  • Since we are triggering our skills only on weapon swap, we can split our weapon passives into two with one being the "defensive" stance and the other being the "offensive" stance.
  • In the "offensive" stance, we intentionally skip as many "increased ES" nodes as possible and instead put them into offensive nodes instead. This pushes down our maximum ES on this setup.
  • Having a low max ES in offensive stance means the effective incoming self damage is much lower, while also raising the ratio of max ES between both stances. In my setup, I have around 12.5k ES in defensive and 1.4k ES in offensive.
  • On the contrary, we skip all the offensive nodes and pick up all the defensive nodes on our "defensive" stance, which is where we'll be spending most of our time.
  • We don't need the offensive nodes for our "defensive" stance, as we are just focusing on casting Frost Wall and freezing the screen before weapon swapping.
  • We don't need the defensive nodes on our "offensive" stance, as we only briefly weapon swap to it, blow up the whole screen, and swap back to our defensive stance.
  • Our minions which die on weapon swap drop Grim Remnants, which give us flat ES recovery. We pick these up after weapon swapping, by briefly walking over where our minions spawn while still in the "offensive stance" for more effective recovery.
  • The more minions we have, the more Grim Remnants drop on average. In fact, with my setup, I actually have a net recovery on weapon swap as I heal more from Grim Remnants from my dying minions than I take from the self damage.
  • Additionally, we also have Eternal Youth with a juiced up life flask which gives us a lot of flat ES recovery in a pinch. This is also flat recovery, and is amplified while in the offensive stance. These flasks can also queue, and are not removed on reaching full ES so you can spam life flask before swapping.
  • We also pick up a little bit of recoup along the way, which gives us a decent chunk of life recovery considering how much self damage we are taking.
  • This lets us put our life to use as well for mana cost, by running our Profane Ritual setup with Lifetap. This is manageable as we run a low level Profane Ritual so its life costs aren't too high.
  • Even with all this, we still take way too much self damage. However, by meeting certain mana breakpoints we can significantly reduce the incoming self damage.
DanteKorvinus6

hands down the coolest build i've ever seen in poe1 and poe2

that being said, i'd rather not have to buy a new PC so i don't think i'll ever play it

chimericWilder4

I nominate this post to be narrated by Jousis.

Some_dumb_grunt2

Is it possible to not have the profane ritual to have more consistent comets? Maybe even some quicker minion revive? It seems kind of clunky to only have your attack every 5-10 seconds.

Rex_Grossman_the_3rd1

And people say there's no build variety or creative builds in this game. Great job, dude.

MellowSol1

I hope you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism, but honestly man if you get a better Microphone I think you could actually do pretty well in content creation. Very thought out guide, explained well, and with a pretty unique concept that will all help set you apart. But it's a bit hamstrung due to the mic quality, investing $100 or so into a solid one will make a huge difference. Either way, keep it up!

Donuts1980s1

Wow, phd granted

guanzo911

Comet requires 300 energy, no? The fixed +1s cast time is double counted for energy generation.

Nolfator1

Hi, in the patchnotes there is this :

"Skills socketed in a Meta Gem's sockets can no longer gain energy." https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3695606

Will that change this build?

XyxyrgeXygor1

Very cool. I've got a Titan with a similar setup going on with Bone blast and Burning inscription. You still your mana with health at about a 30% conversion rate and utilize the decreased skill duration nodes to get the uptime of Time of need to like 2 seconds flat between heals. This also lets you machinefun spit Flame Fussilade at a .2 second delay (usable via infernalist as well on Elemental invocation to regain mana insanely fast.) The reduced skill duration also makes Bone blast and Living Bomb explode instantly.

Basically, Bone blast with burning inscription and Elemental discharge endlessly ignites anything standing on the burning ground, so Bone blast also strips and reapplies for a CoI loop.

You then use the unique that allows you to double up support gems, or just double up if you're a Gemling.

CoI with Essence drain and Elemental discharge

CoI Flammability with Burning inscription (you use avatar of fire so everything is boosted by Flammability. If you need less mana cost use Enfeeble instead.)

CoI Comet and Energy buildup

You'll infinitely drop comet just like the Srs loop they patched out in the first week. With a Titan lol.