PoE 3.25 Firestorm Chieftain Build

The Chieftain ascendancy has not seen the light of day until it has been reworked in Patch 3.22. While there were fantastic notable passives that were removed, the developers from Grinding Gear Games have certainly added some new good ones.

Today, we will teach you how to create a character that is quite tanky and has a very laid-back playstyle that you might want to try out. So, without further ado, this is our ultimate build guide for the Firestorm Chieftain in Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League!

Why Chieftain

The newly reworked Chieftain brings hell to his enemies. This build utilizes three notable ascendancy passives that can destroy foes without a hitch, namely Hinekora, Death's Fury, Tasalio, Cleansing Water, and Valako, Storm's Embrace.

Hinekora, Death's Fury is gaining popularity these days mainly because it makes enemies you kill explode, dealing 500% of their maximum HP as fire damage. Do not be fooled by that measly 5% chance to activate on the passive's tooltip. In reality, your foes actually explode quite often, which makes this build so fun to play!

Tasalio, Cleansing Water is one of the two defensive notable passives. What this does is that any time you increase or decrease your fire resistance, your cold and lightning resistances will also be affected at 50% of their value. For example, if you equip a ring that provides you with 40% fire resistance, you'll get 20% to your cold and lightning resistances as well. This ascendancy passive allows you to focus solely on raising your fire resistance and you'll have all of your other elemental resistances sorted out.

Valako, Storm's Embrace makes your maximum cold and lightning resistance on par with your max fire resistance. This build uses a level 25 Purity of Fire gem, which provides you with plus five to your maximum fire resistance. With Valako, that additional 5% also applies to your other elemental resistances. If you follow this build guide down to the letter, your fire, cold, and lightning resistances will all be at 90%!

For your last two points, you can just allocate them on the small ascendancy passive life regeneration/fire damage nodes that lead to Ramako, Sun's Light and Ngamahu, Flame's Advance. Ramako is not ideal for this build because the bulk of your damage does not come from damage over time.

Basics

So, how does the Firestorm Chieftain work? This build makes use of the gem, Cast When Stunned Support. This gem triggers Firestorm, as well as Blazing Salvo, when you are stunned or block a stunning hit. To understand how this gem works, you have to learn how you get stunned in the game.

In Path of Exile, taking direct hits from the enemy has a chance to stun you. How often you get stunned is based on the damage done to you relative to your HP. Chance to stun is also affected by what is known as the Stun Threshold.

To put it simply, modifiers to stun threshold treat your maximum life based on the value being added or reduced. For instance, the modifier, "25% reduced stun threshold", treats your life as if you have only 75% effective HP. This makes it so that enemies only have to reduce your HP up to a certain point before you get stunned by their attacks.

According to the wiki, stun chance is calculated using the formula:

Stun chance [%] = 200 x damage divided by the defender's effective max life.

Due to the changes GGG has made in Patch 3.24, particularly the removal of the Energy Mastery that we have used for the build prior to this league, there is a slight adjustment that you need to make in order for Cast When Stunned Support to work.

Basically, instead of using Viridi’s Veil and a magic ring, you will replace that with a self-crafted helmet, as well as the Valyrium. More on this later in the build guide.

In terms of offensive capabilities, your Firestorm and Blazing Salvo are going to be doing most of the damage. They are supplemented by Righteous Fire because having this skill activated grants more spell damage. Speaking of damage, here are the modifiers that increase the damage of this build:

• Increased Fire damage
• Increased Spell damage
• Increased Damage
• Increased Elemental Damage
• Increased Area Damage

Now, you might be wondering how you can deal with stuns. Obviously, getting stunned is bad because it slows your pace down quite a bit. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about that at all since you'll be equipping the Immutable Force - a unique crimson jewel that increases your stun and block recovery by up to 1,000%! When you have this jewel equipped, you will not notice getting stunned at all because your character recovers so fast.

Transfigured Gems

GGG has removed labyrinth enchantments and alternate-quality gems in Patch 3.23 Affliction League. Instead, they have been replaced by Transfigured Gems (TG), which are a new breed of gems in Path of Exile that consolidate the effects of enchants and alternate qualities.

Having said that, Firestorm has a couple of Transfigured Gems, with the first being Firestorm of Pelting. Unlike the original, you rain down smaller meteors on your foes. Every 0.15 seconds, a small meteor falls down one after another.

In the 3.24 Necropolis League, the Firestorm of Pelting has been buffed in that it now rains down up to 12 firestorms, with the gem’s quality increased to 20%, of course. If you are going to use this particular gem, make sure to use Gemcutter’s Prisms to bring out the most of what it can offer.

The second TG is called Firestorm of Meteors. Whereas the "Pelting" version rains down a maximum of 10 smaller meteors, this only causes one huge meteor to fall down and destroy enemies upon impact. The base radius of the impact is increased to 0.2 meters at max gem quality.

So, how do you maximize their usage? For the most part, you will still be using the base version of Firestorm because it deals considerable damage and the meteor impacts got slightly bigger as well.

However, if you really like using the Transfigured Gems, both of them are best used with Increased Critical Damage and Increased Critical Strikes Support because you want them to hit hard.

Alternatively, placing them into a Spell Totem setup is a viable option, particularly if you want to replace Blazing Salvo with a large meteor or a bunch of smaller meteors raining down on your enemies.

Playstyle

Now that you know the mechanics of the build, the Firestorm Chieftain has a pretty laid-back and semi-afk playstyle. When you enter a new area, you activate your Righteous Fire and Approaching Flames Skill (from the boots) to boost the damage of Firestorm and Blazing Salvo. After that, just go to packs of monsters and be stationary for a bit until deadly meteors rain down on your foes, reducing them to ashes in no time!

With the Annihilation's Approach unique Dragonscale Boots, you have access to the Flame-touched buff via Approaching Flames, which grants you Adrenaline when activated. Adrenaline provides you with some very useful effects, including 100% increased damage, 25% increased attack/cast/movement speed, and 10% additional physical damage reduction. The downside of this pair of boots, however, is that you take 10,000 fire damage per second while the Flame-touched buff is active. But, this is heavily mitigated by your insanely high fire resistance anyway. More on this later.

You can replace Blazing Salvo with either Firestorm of Meteors or Firestorm of Pelting. You will activate them by putting down totems thanks to the Spell Totem Support. If you are going this route, you have to be more proactive than when using Blazing Salvo.

Gear

The Firestorm Chieftain uses quite a lot of unique items, with some rare ones that you can craft on your own. Let's start with the weapon, which is quite damaging but has a very noteworthy downside that you have to deal with.

Weapon

Your weapon for this build is none other than The Annihilating Light. What makes this unique quarterstaff so good is that it makes your Firestorm, Blazing Salvo, and Righteous Fire deal triple damage! However, there is one huge downside to using this weapon: your elemental resistances are reduced by as much as 70%!

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to circumvent the huge decrease in elemental resistances, such as flasks, flask suffixes, jewels, a rare amulet, and belt, among others. Don't worry, these will be further discussed in this build guide.

Body Armor

Because you'll be taking hits from the enemy to trigger your Firestorm and Blazing Salvo with Cast When Stunned Support, you need to make sure that you have your defenses sorted out. The good thing is that this build has multiple layers of defense to ensure that you won't die during mapping or when doing full simulacrum runs.

One of the items that will guarantee your survivability is the Cloak of Flame. This unique Scholar's Robe converts 40% of the physical damage you take into fire damage, which is further mitigated by your insanely high fire resistance. Speaking of which, the Cloak of Flame provides up to 75% fire resistance as well.

The Cloak of Flame can drop from anywhere, but you also have the option of buying one from the trade website. This thing is inexpensive, so you may want to try your luck and corrupt it with a Vaal Orb to gain some useful implicits. Here are some of the implicit mods worth taking:

• % Increased Maximum Life
• % Increased Damage
• You take #% Reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes
• #% Additional Physical Damage Reduction While Stationary
• +2 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems
• +2 to Level of Socketed Projectile Gems
• +1% to All Maximum Resistances
• #% Reduced Fire Damage Taken

Introduced in Patch 3.23, Utula's Hunger is a great alternative to Cloak of Flame. While you lose out on a lot of fire resistance, Utula's Hunger makes up for it by allowing you to recover up to 3% of your maximum HP on kill. What's more, it gives you 40% increased stun and block recovery which, as you already know how this build works, is pretty helpful.

Now, to maximize its unique effect where you get up to 1,000 HP, you have to make sure that your other equipment, including your amulet and rings, do not have any life modifiers on them.

Helmet

Grinding Gear Games implemented a bunch of changes that have affected the Firestorm Chieftain in Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League.

You see, this build used to wear the Viridi’s Veil for the helmet mainly because of its unique effects. More specifically, the damage of the enemies hitting you is unlucky, and you become immune to hex curses when you have a magic ring equipped.

While it certainly bodes well for your defenses, the fact of the matter is that it is no longer viable in Patch 3.24. That is because of a couple of reasons. First, you are now required to wear the Valyrium because GGG has removed the Energy Shield Mastery that was mandatory for the build to work. As a result of this change, you can no longer equip a magic ring on one of your ring slots.

Second, the company also removed the mod that reduces the mana cost of skills on flasks. This means that you have to improve your mana reservation efficiency in order for you to have more mana to work with.

All of that said, the helmet that you are going to craft yourself is much better than Viridi’s Veil. If you want to craft it yourself, get an ilvl 85+ Royal Burgonet and spam it with Deafening Essence of Loathing for that mana reservation efficiency mod. Do this until you get elemental resistance (whichever you need) and chaos resistance.

Then, lock your suffixes and use a Veiled Orb. Bench-craft “+ to Armour” and then talk to Jun and select the unveil option. You are looking for the mod: “+2 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems, 10% Increased Area of Effect.”

Go to the Crafting Bench again and put “8% of Physical Damage Taken as Fire Damage.” If you still have an open prefix, use an Exalted Orb to fill it up.

Once you have all of your explicit modifiers sorted out, it is now time to put some implicit mods. Spam the helmet with Grand Eldritch Ichors until you get the mana reservation efficiency mod and Grand Eldritch Embers for the increased flammability curse effect.

If you want to take things a step further, you can use a few Orbs of Conflict and hope that you elevate the mana reservation efficiency mod to a higher tier or two.

Boots

Another unique item that is mandatory for the build is Annihilation's Approach. This is an amazing pair of Dragonscale Boots because it not only makes you immune to cold ailments, such as chill and freeze, but it also grants you the Level 20 Approaching Flames skill.

When activated, you'll be flame-touched, which will provide you with the Adrenaline buff mentioned earlier. Its major downside is that you'll take 10,000 fire damage per second so long as you have the buff active. But, fear not! Your fire resistance heavily mitigates the damage you'll receive.

Other good things provided by Annihilation's Approach are 30% increased movement speed and up to 100% increased armor and evasion.

I suggest that you have two pairs of these boots with different socket colors for bossing and mapping. This is so that you don't have to change gems and socket colors manually every time you do different types of content in Path of Exile.

In addition, you have the option of corrupting the boots to get some incredible implicit mods. Here are just some of the best ones:

• +1 to Maximum Endurance Charges (best)
• +2 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems
• +2 to Level of Socketed Duration Gems
• +2 to Level of Socketed Curse Gems
• +1 to Level of Socketed Gems

Gloves

The gloves are one of the two rare pieces of gear you can wear for the Firestorm Chieftain build. That said, this is an interesting piece of equipment because you'll be getting one from the Alva Temple, particularly a pair of gloves with the mod, "# to # added Fire Damage against Burning Enemies". Gloves that have the said mod can only be dropped by the temple boss. On top of that, you have a relatively small chance of getting one, so you may have to run the temple a number of times.

When you have the pair of gloves, you have a couple of options of where you want to elevate them even further. The first is adding a bunch of mods using Exalted Orbs (if there are open affix slots) and the Crafting Bench. You can craft the "+1 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems/10% increased Area of Effect" prefix from the latter.

Now, if you don't mind spending currency, you can craft a better pair of gloves, but you have to fracture the burning damage mod with a Fracturing Orb to begin. Fracturing the mod will allow you to utilize Deafening Essence of Greed for a guaranteed flat life roll. Spam the gloves with the said essence until you get the following mods:

• 21% Increased Life Regeneration Rate
• Regenerate # Life per Second (T1/T2)
• +# to Armor OR #% Increased Armour
• +# to Maximum Life (from essence)
• # to # added Fire Damage against Burning Enemies/#% to Fire Resistance (fractured mod)
• +1 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems/10% Increased Area of Effect

After crafting the gloves, you can use Eldritch currencies for some really amazing implicit mods. Spam the gloves with Grand Eldritch Ichors to get the "Inflict Fire Exposure on Hit, applying -#% to Fire Resistance" mod. Additionally, use Grand Eldritch Embers until you obtain a "20% chance to Unnerve Enemies for 4 seconds on Hit".

Amulet

For the amulet, you’ll need a rare Warlord-influenced amuletwith an item level of 85+. The reason why a Warlord-influenced amulet is mandatory is so that you can roll the mod, “Anger has 40-50% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency.” This mod is even more useful in Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League than ever before. Anyway, you’ll have to craft the amulet yourself unless you have tons of currency to just buy a finished one from the trade website.

Anyway, here are the steps to craft the +2 amulet:

1. Get an ilvl 85+ Jade Amulet (DEX), Turquoise Amulet (DEX/INT), or Onyx Amulet (Attributes) and spam it with Orb of Alteration until you get “+1 to Level of All Skill Gems”
2. Use a Regal Orb and hope that you get a prefix. If the resulting mod is a suffix, use an Orb of Annulment to remove it. If this fails, spam Orbs of Alteration again
3. After the suffix has been cleaned off, put these metamods in the exact order:
• Can Have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers (aka multimod)
• Prefixes Cannot Be Changed
• Cannot Roll Attack Modifiers
4. The previous step is crucial because after using Harvest Augment Fire, you are guaranteed to obtain the mod: “+1 to Level of All Fire Skill Gems”
5. Go to the Crafting Bench and remove all crafted modifiers
6. Put multimod again, followed by “16% Increased Fire Damage” and “16% Increased Area Damage, 12% Increased Area of Effect”
7. The last suffix will be reserved for the Warlord-influenced modifier. As such, use a Warlord’s Exalted Orb and hope that you get the “Anger has 50% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency” mod

After the crafting steps above, you should have something like this:

To finish the amulet, anoint it with Whispers of Doom. (3x Golden Oils). This notable passive enables you to apply an additional curse.

Rings

The Firestorm Chieftain uses a couple of interesting rings. One is the Circle of Anguish - a unique synthesized ruby ring that grants certain bonuses while you have Herald of Ash active. Here are some of the mods that are worth considering:

• #% increased Fire Damage while affected by Herald of Ash
• Herald of Ash has #% increased Buff Effect
• Herald of Ash has #% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency
• #1% to Maximum Fire Resistance while affected by Herald of Ash

Because Circle of Anguish is a synthesized ring, it can have some amazing implicit mods that really complement the build. You can find the best implicit mods below:

• #% Increased Elemental Damage
• #% Increased Fire Damage
• Adds # to # Fire Damage to Spells and Attacks
• #% Increased Damage
• #% Increased Maximum Life
• #% Increased Maximum Mana
• Regenerate # Life Per Second

For the other ring, you will wear the Valyrium. This unique ring has now become mandatory for the Firestorm Chieftain in the 3.24 Necropolis League due to the reasons mentioned earlier in the build guide.

Belt

Just like the weapon, helmet, and boots for this build, you only have one choice for the belt and that is none other than the Mageblood. The reason why this belt is pretty much mandatory for the build to work is that you need the effects of four magic utility flasks activated at all times. Speaking of which...

Flasks

You have two different flask setups depending on what type of content you're doing. You can find the ideal ones to use below:

• Ruby Flask
• Sapphire Flask
• Topaz Flask
• Amethyst Flask/Quicksilver Flask
• Bottled Faith

The elemental flasks have received some adjustments in Patch 3.24. What has changed, you ask? Well, these flasks no longer reduce the elemental damage you take. Instead, they now grant +5% to Maximum Elemental Resistances.

While that is a nerf in a way, it’s still fine since it is now much easier for you to achieve 90% elemental resistances with these flasks active.

For the fourth flask, you should use Quicksilver Flask for mapping and Amethyst Flask when you are fighting bosses in PoE.

Bottled Faith is a great unique flask, especially when it comes to improving your damage output.

Flask Mods

• 14% Increased Movement Speed (of the Cheetah)
• 34% chance to Freeze, Shock, and Ignite during Effect (of Infliction)
• 20% Additional Elemental Resistances (of the Rainbow)
• Regenerate 3% of Life per second during Effect (Bench-craft)

Jewels

The Firestorm Chieftain build uses quite a lot of unique jewels. Chief among them are Immutable Force and Bloodnotch. The former increases your stun and block recovery by up to 1,000%, essentially making the stun animation not noticeable at all. The latter recovers a portion of your life based on the damage you take from stunning hits, thus improving your survivability.

You can also corrupt them using Vaal Orbs to obtain any of these implicits:

• Immutable Force

  • Damage penetrates #% Fire Resistance
  • Damage penetrates # Elemental Resistances
  • #% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills
  • Corrupted Blood Cannot be Inflicted on You

• Bloodnotch

  • Damage penetrates #% Fire Resistance
  • #% Increased Damage
  • #% Increased Reservation Efficiency of Skills
  • Corrupted Blood Cannot be Inflicted on You

It is important to note that the Immutable Force must have at least 961% stun and block recovery, so that the stun animation will barely be noticeable.

Next is a Watcher's Eye prismatic jewel that has any of the following explicit modifiers:

• #% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage while affected by Purity of Fire
• Damage Penetrates #% Fire Resistance while affected by Anger
• #% Increased Fire Damage while affected by Anger
• #% of Cold and Lightning Damage taken as Fire Damage while affected by Purity of Fire
• #% of Damage leeched as Life while affected by Vitality
• Regenerate #% of Life per Second while affected by Vitality
• #% Increased Life Recovery Rate while affected by Vitality

Prioritize getting at least one of the first two mods from the list and the rest can be anything you want.

The next jewel that you should add to the build is the Elegant Hubris. Make sure to get one that is commissioned to commemorate Caspiro to turn the keystone passive within its radius into Supreme Ostentation. When this keystone passive is allocated, all of the attribute requirements from your gear and gems are ignored, so you don't have to worry about intelligence or dexterity. However, the major disadvantage here is that you gain no inherent bonuses from attributes, such as increased maximum life from STR, increased accuracy rating from DEX, and additional mana from INT. 

Endurance Charges are quite useful for the build as they help improve your survivability. For this reason, you want to spend some currency to get the Forbidden Jewel set that allocates the Unrelenting notable ascendancy passive from the Juggernaut tree.

Unrelenting grants the following:

• 8% reduced Elemental Damage taken while at Maximum Endurance Charges
• 1% additional Physical Damage Reduction per Endurance Charge
• +4% to Chaos Resistance per Endurance Charge

The Firestorm Chieftain uses a few rare jewels as well. Get a couple of Large Cluster Jewels that have the "10% increased Elemental Damage" and "12% increased Fire Damage" as bases.

For the elemental damage base, use your Harvest Bench's "Reforge Fire" option to obtain Sadist, Doryani's Lesson, and another notable passive. The last one could be anything; just make sure that it is in the middle of the aforementioned notables so that you can save two passive skill points.

The fire damage large cluster jewel must have Sadist, Smoking Remains, and another notable passive. Just like the other one, you only need Sadist and Smoking Remains from this jewel, so the last notable passive can be anything.

Aside from two large cluster jewels, you must acquire a Medium Cluster Jewel that has "12% increased Burning Damage" as a base. Use the "Reforge Fire" option from your Harvest Bench until you get Wrapped in Flame and Cremator.

Wrapped in Flame is quite useful as it gives you a chance to cover enemies in Ash on Hit while you are burning (which is pretty much all the time due to the Flame-touched buff). When enemies are covered in ash, they take increased fire damage as a result.

Cremator, on the other hand, is a mod that completely destroys the ignited enemies you kill with Firestorm/Blazing Salvo. If you don't like this mod, you can substitute it with Burning Bright for increased damage and area of effect, or Flow of Life for added HP and life regen.

If you can still fit another Medium Cluster Jewel, get one that has area damage as a base. Then, use Harvest Reforge Life until you get the following notable passive skills:

• Towering Threat

  • 8% Increased Maximum Life
  • 10% Increased Area of Effect

• Powerful Assault

  • 20% Increased Area Damage
  • Area Skills Have a 10% Chance to Knock Enemies Back on Hit

Gems

The Firestorm Chieftain uses spell skill gems, which is why most of the support gems require blue sockets. You may have a hard time recoloring The Annihilating Light, so it's recommended to have a ton of Chromatic Orbs ready. That said, we'll start with the gems that you're going to put inside the weapon.

Weapon

• Firestorm
• Empower (Lvl 4)
• Inspiration Support
• Awakened Elemental Focus Support
• Concentrated Effect
• Cast When Stunned Support
• Awakened Spell Echo (replace CWS, only for bossing)

This is your main Firestorm setup. Because it is a spell skill gem, it scales really well the higher its level is. That's the reason why the Empower level 4 gem is included to increase Firestorm's level by three. Furthermore, you'd want to level the Firestorm gem itself to 21 to ensure that you get the most damage out of it as possible. This is done by corrupting it with a Vaal Orb and hoping that it gets leveled up.

Due to the removal of the alt-quality gems in 3.23, you will have to settle with the base version of Inspiration Support. If you are struggling with mana, you can change the anointing on your amulet to Charisma for that 16% increased mana reservation efficiency. This should give you a boost to your mana pool. However, only do this if you do not have enough mana to work with. Otherwise, stick to Whispers of Doom.

Awakened Elemental Focus increases Firestorm's level by one at level 5. It also improves elemental damage by 49% if you raise this support gem's quality to the max.

Concentrated Effect is a support gem that reduces Firestorm's area of effect. However, this is compensated by the increase in area damage (up to 49%). Don't worry, you'd want the enemies to hit you anyway to trigger the Cast When Stunned support gem, so the reduction in AoE is not a problem at all.

Speaking of which, Cast When Stunned Support is what makes this build possible. It provides you with a decent chance to trigger your main skill. Again, don't worry about being stunned because the animation is negligible due to the Immutable Force jewel.

Now, you might notice why there's an Awakened Spell Echo gem in the setup. Well, you should only use this gem when bossing. The mechanics of the build slightly change when you replace Cast When Stunned with Awakened Spell Echo. Since there's nothing that will trigger Firestorm anymore, you'd have to cast the spell manually. Do keep this in mind, especially when you use the build for fighting bosses.

Body Armor (Blazing Salvo)

• Blazing Salvo
• Empower (Lvl 4)
• Inspiration Support
• Awakened Elemental Focus
• Concentrated Effect
• Cast When Stunned Support

The gems that are slotted into your body armor are nearly identical to your Firestorm setup, albeit you replace the spell skill with Blazing Salvo. To maximize its damage potential, make sure to corrupt it with a Vaal Orb to increase its level to 21.

Body Armor (Firestorm of Pelting Setup)

• Firestorm of Pelting
• Increased Critical Damage Support
• Increased Critical Strikes Support
• Combustion Support
• Efficacy Support
• Spell Totem Support

If you want a more proactive playstyle, you can incorporate the new Transfigured Gems by replacing the Blazing Salvo setup. No matter which TG version of Firestorm you are using, you are still going to use Spell Totem Support to turn them into a totem skill. Lay these totems down whenever you are in the middle of a juicy pack of monsters.

Because Firestorm of Pelting rains down smaller meteors frequently, you can make great use of Combustion Support to ignite enemies, causing them to take more fire damage in the process. This is coupled with Efficacy Support to increase the skill effect duration of Firestorm of Pelting.

Body Armor (Firestorm of Meteors Setup)

• Firestorm of Meteors
• Multiple Totems Support
• Fire Penetration Support
• Increased Critical Strikes Support
• Increased Critical Damage Support
• Spell Totem Support

Remember Firestorm of Meteors? Unlike the original skill gem, this only fires one gigantic meteor instead of three. But, you can actually circumvent that by adding a couple of support gems: Spell Totem and Multiple Totems.

With this interaction, since you can summon a total of three totems at a time, you're really dropping a few meteors that can decimate foes upon impact! You increase the damage of the meteors by also including the critical strike/damage gems.

Keep in mind that the Firestorm Chieftain can only accommodate one Transfigured Gem in the build. That is why you have to choose between Firestorm of Pelting or Firestorm of Meteors but not both.

Helmet

• Herald of Ash
• Enlighten (Lvl 4)
• Purity of Fire (Lvl 21)
• Anger(Lvl 21)

Your helmet contains your auras. Herald of Ash basically grants you more damage, as well as the ability to burn nearby enemies when you kill a foe.

Anger provides you with more flat fire damage that will be amplified further with Herald of Ash. Make sure to level it up to 21 by corrupting the said gem for even more damage. Besides that, you could opt for the Anomalous alt-quality version to boost burning damage, but it is not required.

Purity of Fire is an aura that not only grants additional fire resistance but raises your maximum fire resistance by 5% at level 23 as well. Level 23 Purity of Fire is quite achievable since Viridi's Veil already increases the gem's level by two. All that remains is to corrupt the gem in the hopes of increasing its base level to 21 and you should be all set. Purity of Fire got a significant buff in Patch 3.23 in that it now provides an additional 10% to your fire resistance. This makes it easier for you to overcap your fire res, which is incredibly useful when dealing with The Annihilating Light's downside.

The Enlighten support gem just ensures that you'll be able to activate the above-mentioned auras without a hitch. Just make sure that you use a level 4 Enlighten gem to greatly reduce the mana reservation cost of each aura in your helmet.

Gloves

• Righteous Fire
• Arctic Armour
• Vitality
• Arrogance Support

Righteous Fire is included in the build mainly as a means of boosting your spell damage. It can deal fire damage over time to nearby enemies as well. The way Righteous Fire scales damage in the current league allows you to gain more out of it, particularly when you have a large HP pool.

Arctic Armour is a buff that reduces the physical and fire damage you take while stationary. This perfectly suits the build as you wait for the Cast When Stunned support gem to trigger Firestorm and Blazing Salvo.

Vitality gives you a huge boost to your life regen. Because you don't have a lot of mana to work with, this aura gem should be linked to Arrogance Support. What Arrogance does to Vitality is that it reserves your life instead of mana, allowing you to fit the said aura in the build.

It's important to note that Righteous Fire and Arctic Armour should not be linked to Arrogance Support. Otherwise, you'll deplete your maximum HP by a considerable degree. These gems can be unlinked and they'll still work fine.

Boots

• Flammability
• Elemental Weakness
• Cast when Stunned Support
• Inspiration Support

The boots contain your curse setup. Remember the amulet anointment, Whispers of Doom? Well, that enables you to apply an additional curse on your foes. Flammability and Elemental Weakness are both curses, which is why getting the anointment is required.

Both of those curses are triggered by Cast When Stunned Support, so you don't really have to do anything other than get hit by the enemy.

All of the gems in your boots are supported by Inspiration as well. Now, you may have noticed that this particular gem is only set at level 18. Well, there's an explanation for that.

Prior to Patch 3.23, this build only used a level 18 Inspiration Support. This was mainly due to the fact that there was still some boots enchant that reduced the mana cost of skills by 18%. Using a max level Inspiration Support back then, coupled with the said enchantment, prevents you from gaining Inspiration Charges. However, because enchantments, in general, have been removed in the Affliction League, you can use a max level (or even a level 21) Inspiration Support safely now.

Tattoos

While it sucks that GGG has removed the Wildwood Ascendancies in Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League, the good news is that the company gave us a consolation. The Tattoos from a couple of leagues ago are back and you can use some on the Firestorm Chieftain. That said, here are the ones that we recommend:

• Tattoo of the Ngamahu Warrior

  • 5% Increased Fire Damage

• Tattoo of the Tukohama Shaman

  • 0.3% Life Regeneration per Second

• Tattoo of the Rongokurai Warrior

  • 6% Increased Armour

• Tattoo of the Rongokurai Turtle

  • 5% Reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes

• Tattoo of the Arohongui Shaman

  • 5% Increased Effect of Herald Buffs on You

• Tattoo of the Hinekora Deathwarden

  • 6% Reduced Effect of Curses on You

• Tattoo of the Hinekora Storyteller

  • +3% to Chaos Resistance

Passive Tree

POB

Firestorm Chieftain

Conclusion

The Firestorm Chieftain is a pretty tanky build that can take on any content in Path of Exile. This character utilizes Cast When Stunned Support to trigger Firestorm and Blazing Salvo. Its laidback playstyle allows you to AFK while you see enemies being burned to a crisp by things raining down from the sky.

Thanks to the introduction of Transfigured Gems in the previous league, you can have a more proactive playstyle by utilizing Spell Totems. You can drop these totems whenever you are in the middle of a horde of monsters.

While this build is definitely fun to play, it is not cheap to put up. Make sure that you have enough currency before proceeding.

Despite the many changes GGG has made in Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League, the Firestorm Chieftain still works. It still rocks and performs admirably well. In fact, we would argue that it has become so much better now, especially with the resurgence of Tattoos in Patch 3.24.

We hope that you have enjoyed this build guide. Be sure to bookmark this for future reference.

With that said, I hope that you've enjoyed this build guide. Be sure to keep this bookmarked so you can refer to it as many times as you like!

PROS

+Incredibly tanky

+Can take on any content in the game

+Burn enemies by just being stationary for a bit

+Semi-AFK playstyle

+Quite damaging when fully set up

+Still amazing in Patch 3.24

CONS

-Not league start viable

-Expensive

-Stationary playstyle might not be your cup of tea

-Requires some mandatory unique items