You gotta sort the comments by the newest ones . I always used to think party ups were stupid , seeing people comment from days ago and then I found out about sorting by the new comments . This post is gonna get deleted for sure though <| sep |> Then do it yourself . You can ' t mod yourself ? Ok , at least write the whole quest and how it should be developed , I ' m sure a modder will be happy to put that into holotapes and terminals . <| sep |> Never Not Funny is the best podcast of all time . Jimmy Pardo is the best in the business . Up top , my brother ! <| sep |> So , if I only cast Vortex once , Vortex Burning would be best as Burning is 20 % damage . But if I cast Vortex more than once , Poison would run better as you can stack Poisons . Did I understand that correctly ? Pretty much . Keep in mind that as an assassin I one shot all nonbosses up to Tier 11 don ' t know about higher since that ' s when I scrapped the character , and most bosses up to Tier 8 or so . I know that with fully pimped out gear you can 1 shot T 15 Kaom for example with the ignite . See here . As for gear , I said I didn ' t look at Essence Delirium because of the high cost , but getting a couple of Consuming Dark and Infernal Mantle maybe Atziri ' s Promise as well for a total of 7590 % conversion wouldn ' t be too horrible . I think getting 20 Chaos by lvl 5360 might be achievable with good luck and some help . I think 75 % conversion is the max . Consuming dark is 30 % x 2 , and Infernal Mantle is 15 %. It ' s possible to make that much if you ' re good at trading . I was going between Elementalist and Occultist for Ascendancies if going selfcast , not Assassin . I ' ll keep the gloves in mind for Beacon . Is it strong enough that I should go for that first , or go for double golems or reflect protection first ? I was thinking golemsconflux from Normal Labs , reflect from Cruel Labs and then confluxgolems from Merc Labs originally . An alternative to PyreSouthbound would be to use Cold to Fire and the Avatar of Fire passive , however that means you can ' t use Elemental Equilibrium to your advantage and it uses a link , though it does give you up to 29 % more damage . I ' ve only run the build as an Assassin so I can ' t advise too much on ascendancies . I never ran elemental reflect maps and I doubt you could with Paragon of Calamity unless you ran Purity of Fire and kept a ruby flask up at all times and maybe even used a Saffell ' s Frame or Rise of the Phoenix . Shaper and Beacon would probably be the Normal and Cruel picks since it would help you power through Cruel and Merciless faster . If you plan to use Orb of Storms for power charge on crit , elemental equilibrium , or curse on hit nonsense , then Mastermind of Discord could potentially be very powerful to set up a 12 punch on bosses . EE gives them 50 fire res , Flammability gives them 44 % fire res , then Mastermind gives you 25 % fire pen , assuming you ' re going burning instead of poison . Though I don ' t see Mastermind used pretty often , so it might not be that good and using it would be pretty hipster . When I was assassin I didn ' t have many issues with random reflect rares , but I also had 8 k ES so getting chunked like that didn ' t bother me that much as opposed to being life based . For Merc labs it might be worth holding off on grabbing for a little bit to see where you ' re having issues . If reflect is continuing to give you issues , then grab Paragon . If not , then go for more damage .