Path of Exile: Righteous Fire Chieftain build guide

Righteous Fire is the easiest League starter in Path of Exile. It’s strong enough to take direct hits from bosses like nothing, without the need to invest tens of Divines. However, doing so will make the build stronger for the endgame. Another great thing about the build is that you don’t need to focus on capping all elemental resistances.

The Chieftain Ascendancy allows you to share the effect of fire resistance across cold and lightning, making it the ultimate noob-friendly build. Here’s everything you need to know to build a Righteous Fire Chieftain in Path of Exile.

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Pros and Cons of Righteous Fire Chieftain in Path of Exile

If you are playing Path of Exile for the first time, Righteous Fire Chieftain is the best place to start. The build is easy to understand and doesn’t require a deep knowledge of build-crafting to set up. However, it’s not entirely foolproof as you’ll need to sacrifice a few things.

Pros

• Extremely Tanky
• Easy Setup
• Budget mapping
• One-button gameplay

Cons

• Slow bossing
• Uber build (T17+) is expensive
• Map modifiers with no life regen aren’t viable

Make a Witch and use her to get Rolling Magma and Flame Wall from Act 1, and use that to level Maradurer until you unlock Righteous Fire in Act 2.

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How to play Righteous Fire Chieftain in Path of Exile

Activate RF and take a walk (Image via GGG)

Righteous Fire is a one-button build, meaning that after activating the skill, all you need to do is run around enemies until they perish. The skill forms a burning aura around your character that inflicts self-damage while doing the same to enemies in the AoE. It will burn your health until it reaches 1 HP.

To prevent that, you need to stack life regeneration along with fire resistance. Modifiers and passives that contain life, fire resistance, and life regen are priority, followed by fire damage and multiplier.

Stack as much defense as possible, including Chaos resistance (Image via GGG)

Stack enough defense, and you’ll be able to face tank direct hits from many bosses and recover to full health in seconds. For single-target DPS, the build uses Fire Trap, which also scales well with every node and mods you need for Righteous Fire.

Here’s the ideal Skill Gem setup

• Righteous Fire: Elemental Focus - Efficacy - Lifetap - Burning Damage - Swift Affliction
• Fire Trap: Swift Affliction - Lifetap - Trap and Mine Damage
• Determination
• Purity of Fire
• Frostblink (any movement skill)

Note that you need to use Fire Trap on the helmet. Since you’ll be putting the 6-Link with Righteous Fire, modifiers like ‘Socketed Gems are supported by Burning Damage and Concentrated Effect’ allow you to form a pseudo 6-Link.

While it isn’t necessary early on, it’ll be essential for running T16 and T17 maps since Fire Trap recently got nerfed. Another useful gem you can use to increase damage is Summon Skitterbots. It’s a reservation skill that applies Chill and Shock to enemies while increasing Trap and Mine damage.

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Passive Tree and Ascendancy for Righteous Fire Chieftain in Path of Exile

Righteous Fire skill tree setup in Path of Exile (Image via GGG)

While playing Righteous Fire, your job is to increase that damage through DoT multipliers and fire damage, while also outhealing the damage it does to you. Luckily, achieving that is easy with Chieftain Ascendancy in Path of Exile. The image above showcases the passive tree setup.

Go for Notables that grant life regen, fire DoT, and fire resistance. Start with Warrior’s Blood and make your way to Barbarism. From there, you can assign Hearty and unlock Recovery Mastery to get 50 life regen per second.

For damage, pick up Notables like Divine Judgement, Arsonist, and Spiritual Aid. These will help you through the campaign and prepare you for early mapping.

Ascendancy setup for Righteous Fire Chieftain (Image via GGG)

When it comes to Ascendancy, your first pick should be Tasalio, Cleansing Water. It will apply 50% of fire resistance to cold and lightning, meaning at 150%, you’ll max out all three. The second pick will be Ramako, Sun’s Light, which reduces the enemy's fire resistance by 20%.

The final two picks are Hinekora, Death’s Fury, which has 5% chance to explode enemies to deal 500% of their HP as AoE damage, and Valako, Storm’s Embrace, which applies 100% of fire resistance to cold and lightning. Choose the one benefit you first, as the final Ascendancy can take time to unlock.

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Gear Setup for Righteous Fire Chieftain in Path of Exile

Look for Burning Damage and Concentrated Effect on Helmet (Image via GGG)

Just like you scout a few nodes in the passive tree, all you need are a handful of modifiers across each piece of gear. Here are the ideal affixes to look for.

If you are struggling to farm currency for expensive items, use cheap uniques as an alternative for early mapping. While you will need to replace them across red-tier maps, they’ll be good enough until you find a replacement.

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Check out other related guides and features:

• Path of Exile: Cold Smite Slayer build guide (3.27)
• Path of Exile Genesis Tree crafting guide
• Path of Exile: Explosive Arrow Champion build guide (3.27)

Edited by Mayank Singh Rathour