Smith of Kitava - 90 Max All Res MSPaint
TL;DR - I hope I did the math right, but assuming you don't want to spend 4 points on Smith's Masterwork to keep some offensive power, the most efficient strategy appears to be:
- Take Forged in Flame + Coal Stoker + Fire Res minor nodes (+15 or +30 Fire Res if the second minor node is also res)
- Path to Unnatural Resilience (+1 max res)
- 2x Ruby Ring with T1 Fire Res (+150)
- 1x Sacrificial Garb Chest with T1 Fire Res and 2 Fire Res sockets (+1 max res, +69 Fire Res)
- 3x Jewels with 2 Max Fire Res (+2 max res)
- 1x Other Armor with T1 Fire Res and 2 Fire Res sockets (+69 fire res)
SUM = 15 (or 30) + 150 + 69 + 69 = 303 or 318 fire res
This is either 3 or 18 over what you need to cap Cold and Lightning to 90 depending on if the second minor node is also +15 fire res. This appears to be the most efficient method if you want to wear a real body armor.
Comments
Will be easier to hit 90 all res than you are making it. Unnatural resilience alone with average fire resistance rolls in your gear will get you almost all the way to 90, you will be at like 86 or 88 and don’t need to worry about expensive max resist jewels.
Remember also there is +3 Max Fire Resist on the Prism Guard cluster, which is not that far away from Unnatural Resistance. It might even be on the way if you're collecting +Fire damage passives to use with Fire Spell on hit.
What about Physical hits? Is Cloak of Flame enough to deal with it? I've been messing around on PoB, and you can get to some pretty good energy shield numbers with Ghostwrite(7500ES with average rolls on 3 mods items), but im not sure if ES will be gutted by the patch notes.
As a newbie, why would we go to 90% resistances?
If they fix slams i swear i'm going slammer block stacker with the new shield hard as a rock with 90/90/90 and a lot of life/armor. That should be a fun bosser.
temper weapon and heat the forge will need to be very good for me to play this ascendency.
I’m not sure if Unnatural Resilience will work. I hope it does. But a lot of systems in poe2 work simultaneously, like CI + atziri’s disdain, rather than sequentially. So I wonder if it will only apply to explicit +x to maximum fire res.
Don't forget that you get some resists back from quest rewards so you need a little less than what you calculated here
Res is great an all, but what about phys damage. Armour still sucks pretty bad.
I have a feeling these characters will feel bad squishy unless they find another solution.
Keep in mind the passive tree has been confirmed to be changed in 0.2 so this will likely be adjusted. With that said, if the Volcanic Skin node remains unchanged that will be one of the most powerful Smith of Kitava nodes to Anoint or Megalomaniac. With my theoried build that node provides 24k damage to Perfect Strike which is only beaten by 3 nodes on the tree: the two 50% two-handed damage that come with -5% attack speed, and Coming Calamity which is frankly the other most likely to be anointed or Megalomaniac'd node. With enough strength the Brute Strength node gives you more damage on paper as well but the 10% reduced max mana currently needs to be avoided imo.
Other things to consider:
Don't discount the power of All Resist, even just allocating Prism Guard on the current tree means you need 10 less Fire Resist total while also giving you +5 Fire Resist.
Don't forget you can get +resists from side-bosses in the campaign. Even though in PoB you are -60% resists at endgame if you've done the side bosses you're actually just at -40% resist so you really just need total +250 Fire Resist.
Don't forget Infernoclasp exists. Currently Ingenuity beats the shit out of every other belt but it's bound to be nerfed in some capacity or made significantly more difficult to get.
A more optimized setup will not want to use Jewels for additional resistances as they can be so powerful offensively or for things like Grand Spectrum life stacking.