I'll keep this short - the current US admin's attitude towards the rest of the world was the final push I needed to cut my dependence on tech and to de-google my life. So I'm deleting the youtube channel with the showcase videos.

As for the guides - I'm not gonna be playing the game again so they're not gonna be updated. For any future questions I kindly suggest you take them to the game's official discord - I'm sure the guys over there have plenty of options and updated versions of every possible build by now.

Thanks for the support and kind words over the years! <3

Burning Hells is one of the most uniquely designed sets not only for Warlock, but also in the entire game. It offers quite a few different ways in building around it as well as the potential for endlessly scaling damage output. I was originally planning for this to be another triple progression guide, highlighting the possibilities for both speed farming and endless pushing. However what ultimately put me off of that idea was the fact that I couldn't keep any sort of gear progression in check between the different builds, because every iteration used completely different mechanics and items but also had one ultimate crutch - spamming Soul Warp scrolls since they have no cooldown. That is what you have to do on Warlock to solve most of its issues when it comes down to it so then it doesn't make much sense to present two other different build variations that ultimately achieve the exact same thing. More importantly though we're talking about a life-based build, making the mastery requirement for entry a measly 480 mastery levels so it makes even more sense to build into it early assuming you have the necessary gear. So with that in mind let me begin by answering the most burning question:

First up it makes Flaming Hells stack infinitely. While that passive states it can only be triggered by a Warlock fire skill, in reality it also works off of Quadruplets' fire skull because they're inherently allowed to trigger player on-hit effects. The set's 3-piece bonus further enhances that synergy since the skulls count as companions but not as a companion skill which enables Flaming Hells stacking five times for each triggering hit. The set also introduces a Demonic Fury mechanic that this build completely ignores.

The aforementioned synergy with Quadruplets ultimately allows us to scale different sources of companion damage as the base of our Flaming Hells, then through the use of Instant Combustion rune forcefully Detonate it which also opens up scaling through attack speed stacking. The highlight of this build however is using Crown of Innate Probability which doubles all of our passive skills' trigger chances. The notable mentions include: 100% Combustion, 100% Hell Caller, 75% Sudden Death, 50% Soul Feast, 50% Spirit of Torment and finally the coup de grace - 100% Corpse Shatter. Every chilled mob we kill explodes and deals 30% of his maximum HP as damage in an area around it. This damage is also transferred to a massive Combustion trigger which is scaled close to ~10x times the value. This simply means that all you need to do is to kill one affected mob and it sets off a chain reaction blowing up everything on your screen, making it insane when it comes to clearing random anomalies.

Defensively the build features capped 90% DR, 39% evasion and 54% damage stagger. With the Enrage enchant getting us to 7.5 attacks per second we average ~35% of max HP recovered per second thanks solely to Soul Feast. Worth mentioning that we could further add to that a buffed Codex of Healing Touch for another 19% of max HP per second which coupled with our natural Life on hit being applied on each of the four skulls equals near immortality.

If you're a new player you should know that this is an endgame build guide, so I will not be covering basic game mechanics (runepowers, gems, etc.). Furthermore it is a min/maxed version of an already mechanically complicated build so it's best that you don't try to modify it and just copy it down to a tee. If you would like to learn more about the basics of the game please check out the guides below and thank you!

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592626785
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=835123683
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1416936599

For a handy cheat sheet for the build click here[imgur.com]

Gear legend
TL - True Legendary - Acquired through random drop or tarot cards
GR - Greater Rune - Extracted runepower from a True Legendary item
Set item/Legendary - Acquired through random drop or gamble
Crafted lesser rune (C*LR) - Extracted runepower from a Legendary/Rare item
Anomalous lesser rune (A*LR) - Drops from boss of a Dungeon Anomaly (non-elite)



Quadruplets TL - Gives us four skull companions, one for each of our main damage elements. All four of them count as direct damage sources so they individually trigger our "life on hit" as well as all of our various passives. The fire skull will be the base source of damage for Flaming Hells while the frost skull will apply our Bone Chill. They also don't count as a "companion skill" for the purposes of our set bonus.

Instant Combustion LR (Anomalous) - Turns Detonation into our main trigger for Combustion, essentially allowing us to scale it with stacking extra attack speed.



Burning Hell Scepter (Legendary) - Core set piece

The Boomstick LR (Crafted) - Another amazing buff for our main damage dealer, basically allowing us to scale it through "effect duration" stacking.



Burning Hell Opus (Legendary) - Core set piece

Bloodscent LR (Anomalous) - One of the best runes for scaling our companions' damage, enabled by the socketed Hematite gem.



Burning Hell Robes (Legendary) - Core set piece

Elementium GR - The easiest fix for capping resistances on any build. The resistance of choice here is Fire just for thematic purposes.



Battle Boots TL - Extra DR after using our Soul Warp.

Advancing Army LR (Crafted) - Amazing damage boost for our companions based on our movement speed and it works with the Kill Haste enchant.



Unbreakable Bond TL - Master's Command is an essential set for any companion based build.

Jeopardy GR - Saves us from rolling crit chance on gear and it gives us a lot of extra crit damage.



Unwavering Loyalty TL - Master's Command is an essential set for any companion based build.

Firelord's Amulet LR (Crafted) - Hell Caller now triggers every time we cast Detonation and since Quadruplets doesn't count as a "companion skill" it also buffs Demonic Appetite.



Crown of Innate Probability TL - An insane boost to all of our passive procs and triggers, pretty much the centerpiece item of this entire build.

Lucilla's Vision GR - The source of our base damage. The biggest con of this helm/archetype is the build-up and maintenance of the damage stacks which is done entirely by our four skull buddies, so if you're going back to town don't forget to quickly sick them at the target dummies.

IMPORTANT NOTE - The mana leech enchant is only needed up to a certain point since once you get closer to 3k mastery you will have enough of a mana pool to sustain it entirely by triggering Soul Feast. It can be re-rolled to either extra critical damage or increased healing received and healing is the better option imo. It will bump your natural sustain up to ~49% and Healing Touch to 26%, adding up to 75% of max HP healed per second on top of your Life on hit!

UPDATE 1.31 - We got hit with a small nerf from the Crown fix. Now we have to spend a few more mastery points on the 2nd collumn skills and Sudden Death can no longer hit 100%.

For a handy cheat sheet for the build click here[imgur.com]



A lonely but extremely important passive point for some attack speed. To spare you the details - we need 268% attack speed (with Enrage enchant) to get over the 8-frame breakpoint and this build gets 269% all thanks to this seemingly insignificant skill point.

• Even though we use Soul Warp in the form of a Codex, the passives for it still fully apply.
  
• Lich Power is one of Warlock's best ultimates and the main source of our Life on hit.
  
• Bone Chill and Spirit of Torment are both initially triggered by our frost skull, then the spirits spread chill themselves and act as great crowd control thanks to our mastery passives.
  
• Corpse Shatter is the highlight of this build - every time a chilled mob dies it explodes for 30% of his max HP and thanks to Corpse Combustion it also triggers Combustion (from the Fire tree) with that damage as base which gets multiplied ~10 times, essentially blowing up the entire screen after a single affected mob dies!

• This is the main skill tree for this set so most of the passives are self-explanatory.
  
• We only need a single point in Detonation since it doesn't deal damage itself, however we also can't benefit from its Torment passive because it doesn't technically count as a hit.
  
• Hell Caller is our main source of souls thanks to the rune on our amulet.
  
• Death and Destruction allows our fire skull to also trigger Sudden Death from the next tree.

• Ritual of Banes is the source for most of our DR. Note that it only requires Bane tagged skills to be equipped on the skill bar and not for them to be used, so just remove their shortcuts.
  
• Life Reap helps out with HP recovery from time to time, but is also our weakness applicator.
  
• Sudden Death can be triggered by both our shadow and fire skulls.
  
• Soul Feast is the source of our sustain thanks to the endless supply of souls from Hell Caller.

Corruptor Mastery - Just some extra attack speed and evasion here.

Lich Mastery - Chilling Haunts + Ghastly Grasp give our spirits some amazing crowd control. We also get huge damage scaling from both Ice Gibs and Combustion Synergy.

Class Mastery - The most unusual thing here (and on our gear) would be the lack of Crown Slaying which sadly just doesn't work for companions. You can swap Picker-Upper for Crafty to get some extra mats during leveling.

Demonologist Mastery - This build wouldn't work without Widespread Inferno because it enables our Combustion to proliferate through entire mob packs. Sadly we can't benefit from Demonologist Focus since the base source of our damage is our fire skull which doesn't count as a skill from that tree.

Reaper Mastery - Some semi-useful passives here with Death Come Near Me as a finisher.

A total of 480 mastery as minimum requirement after which you dump everything into Health.



Esc -> Settings -> Controls -> Set your preferred single key for all your skills.
Ritual of Banes, Fire Nova, Fire Storm do not need to be cast so just use the X from the options to remove their buttons.
Use Codex of Soul Warp for movement and enabling the DR bonus from our boots. Alternatively you can stock up on Scrolls of Soul Warp through gambling, effectively solving all of Warlock's clunky issues. Scrolls don't have a cooldown which also frees you up to use Codex of Healing Touch on auto-cast, making you near immortal.

WARNING! This will be a long and boring section where I discuss how we can squeeze in another 5-10% more damage at the cost of convenience. If you're not interested in the math behind it all (or in general) you should absolutely skip this and just play the build as posted above!



This is the chart for attack speed breakpoints in the game and the red rectangle is where we're at - with Enrage+269% we get an 8-frame long attack animation. This is all based on the 60-frames limitation of the game engine which means we attack 60/8=7.5 times a second. Now let's assume we could get to the next breakpoint of 307% which would put us at 60/7=8.57 APS. Doing a standard division gets a 8.57/7.5=1.1428 or ~14% more DPS.

Now because all of our gear already has an attack speed roll where possible, then the only conceivable way to potentially get to 307% is through gems so we would have to drop the 2x30% crit damage ones in the weapons for 2x16% attack speed ones. Let's also assume we're talking about the endgame variant of the build where we swap the mana leech roll on the helm for an extra 35% critical damage putting us at a total of 629%. The gems provide a total of 60% of that so we do the division again for 629/569=1.105 or ~10% more DPS which means that swapping to attack speed gems is in fact better, not only because of the extra damage but also because of the extra sustain from Soul Feast (even more so because of that really).

So what's the problem then? Well 269+2x16=301 which means we need to get 6% more attack speed from somewhere.

We need to pull 3 skill points from somewhere and dump them in the first passive from the Corruptor tree. We can pull 2 points from Undeath (Reaper tree), dropping it to 6% HP down from 12% so not a big loss. The last point however can only realistically be pulled from Death and Destruction (Demonologist tree), which means we lose the cull on our Fire skull. We still keep it on the Shadow skull and on our Life Reap so it's not really that big of a loss, but there are certain situations where it was nice having it. Ultimately this is an acceptable solution to the problem so if you're actively pushing high tiers then you should absolutely make the switch.

We can use Skull Bomb!



The first of its passives gives us 15% extra attack speed (you don't even need to cap it since we only need 6%) which already gets us to where we need to be, but the even bigger deal is the second passive for 10% more CDR which is absolutely HUGE for Quadruplets and companion builds in general. Skull Bomb is also thankfully Bane tagged so it's an easy swap with one of our unused ones. The biggest issue however is that the skill has no cooldown so it would mess up your inputs if you add it to them (LMB in my case). You have to dedicate a separate button for casting it every 10 seconds if you want the supporting buffs, ain't no other way around it.

Well concerning the first solution - I legitimately did not want to deal with explaining why we have to skip out on Death and Destruction for 5% extra DPS, especially considering that it would need a whole paragraph of its own (much like this very one). As for solution 2 - I just didn't want to advertise an even clunkier build because Warlocks already have inherit issues with that. Furthermore min/max and math is pure boredom to most people - they just want to play a fun and powerful character. People like me that would actually read and enjoy this segment should consider themselves rewarded - you went through the fine print and found some extra DPS.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592355707

Thank YOU for reading the guide and enjoying the game!
Thanks to Squarebit for making this truly wonderful gem of a game!
Thanks to my friends who will probably never read this but you kept me sane during lockdown!
Stay safe, wash your hands, love and protect each other and as always
HAVE FUN PLAYING