[0.5] BALROG - (0* button) Fire Bear Smith of Kitava

Some changes in 0.5, Ancestral Cry and Walking Calamity no longer trigger Fire Spell on Hit and Cast on Elemental Ailment, but fissures from Molten Crash still do! Check changelog, added Titan variant

Combine bear shapeshift with Smith of Kitava's Fire Spell on Hit (Living Bomb) and Cast on Elemental Ailment (fire-infused Comet). Trigger these two and fissures with permanent* Ancestral Cry steps with the help of 100% increased glory gain. Sustain Walking Calamity and health via Primal Hunger rage/Endurance charge loop ( Rageforged I + Jagged Ground I), recovering 9% HP each time you take a step. Add in Fury of the King (Balrog talisman Unique) to truly fulfill the fantasy

* Requires that 2 buffs are maintained for 0 button gameplay. Explanation in How It Works

Early Leveling (1 to 52)

- Please check out the Act 1-4 variants in the guide

- Venom (Quest reward): Stun threshold, Tattoo: 5% resistances, Tribal medicine: 30% Armour/EV/ES Pillar: 5% resistance (early)

Please read the guide and FAQ

If you have questions, @Skadoosh_C on twitch or Discord. Current character

T15 map gameplay

Frequently Asked Questions

- I can't use my weapon set passive points, why?

You first need normal passive points before you can split them with the weapon set points. So to apply the max 24 weapon points for each set, you first need 24 normal passive points available to use

- How do I keep track of Ancestral Cry (Ferocious Roar) glory?

Make sure to put Ancestral Cry on your keybind skill bar, that way you can see how much glory it has accumulated. You can also rebind your Ferocious Roar to the second skill bar, and use Ancestral Cry as the icon in it's place. (IN PATCH 0.5 YOU HAVE TO SOCKET ANOTHER SEPERATE Ancestral Cry AND PUT THAT ON THE BAR. STILL ONLY PRESS Ferocious Roar)

- Why is my Ancestral Cry deactivated when I swap to human form (set 2)?

You need to have it selected for BOTH sets, not just set 1

- Why did i crash in hideout?

Being in the animation of Maul and trying to interact with something seems to crash your game

- How come Ancestral Cry is not getting any glory/filling up (in abyssal depths)?

There is a bug when you enter abyssal depths where Ancestral Cry stops getting any glory. Just quickly unsocket it from Ferocious Roar and socket it again to fix it

- Why am I dying to ignite all the time?

Before taking Self Immolation, you need One With Flame or you will DIE! to your own ignite

- Why do i keep crashing when Ancestral Cry deactivates?!

FIX FOR CRASH! From the effect MTX from Forgemaster, don't use it for the time being!

- Why can't i socket X into X?

You must first socket the skill gem into the meta skill before you can put realted supports into it. I.E. Ancestral Cry msut be socketed in Ferocious Roar before you can socket Prolonged Duration II

This build focuses on maximising the potential of Ancestral Cry. It is a glory skill and requires 100 glory before it can be used. Glory is a resource that is independant for each glory skill, and usually generated through different means. Ancestral Cry requires that you ignite monsters to generate glory, and the higher rarity of the monster, the more glory that is generated due to its power. Walking Calamity on the other hand doesn't require monsters at all, and gains glory whenever you gain rage over your maximum. It is mandatory to socket Ancestral Cry inside Ferocious Roar for it to work while in bear form, replacing Ferocious Roar's innate warcry effect, but buffing Ancestral Cry with increased AoE and damage.

Fury of the King has a unique modifier that passively generates glory even outside of combat, and with the help of 100% increased glory gain from Smith's Masterwork (Kitavan Imprint) and Invigorating Grandeur will generate 10 glory every 2 seconds (for each skill). Unfortunately, glory skills cannot gain glory while active, so there will always be a set amount of downtime.

To minimise this downtime, Ancestral Cry and Walking Calamity have a duration that can be increased with nodes such as Tides of Change, or modifiers on Ruby jewel's. Ancestral Cry has another way to significantly increase it's duration via Endurance charges, 70% increase per infact. This means with 7 Endurance charges Ancestral Cry can last over 2 minutes in duration, heavily minimising that downtime.

Thats were bear form comes in, as it has a passive effect of generating 1 Endurance charge for every 15 rage you spend. To avoid pressing any extra buttons we socket Rageforged I in Walking Calamity, meaning that every meteor it summons will try to consume 10 rage. Walking Calamity also generates 5 rage per second, meaning it will passively generate Endurance charges on its own. To get more use out of the consumption of this rage we get the Primal Hunger keystone. Everytime we consume rage, this keystone will grant it back to us over 4 seconds, causing a feedback loop with Walking Calamity.

To take advantage of the absurd amount of Endurance charges we now generate passively every second we socket Jagged Ground I into Ancestral Cry. Every step we take while Ancestral Cry is active will cause a small slam around us consuming a Endurance charge to create jagged ground. Jagged ground isn't very impactful, but the consumption of a Endurance charge is. With passives on the tree such as Guts and Flare, we get a total of 9% life recovered every time we consume an Endurance charge, and tons of extra fire damage.

The step slam from Ancestral Cry isn't enough to kill most enemies, so to scale our damage even more without having to press too many extra buttons we use Smith of Kitava's Fire Spell on Hit and Cast on Elemental Ailment. Walking close to an enemy is more than enough to proc Walking on top of fissures from Molten Crash procs Fire Spell on Hit socketed with Living Bomb for damage and fire infusions. We can then consume those infusions with Comet in Cast on Elemental Ailment to convert a large portion of it's cold damage to fire ( Avatar of Fire to convert the rest). We scale ignite with Fulmination solely to allow for more consistent Cast on Elemental Ailment.

For bosses, we can utilize the fact that Ancestral Cry steps are considered a slam, and as such trigger fissures. Fury of the King has an innate skill Molten Crash that creates fissures. We can also have a weapon swap 2-handed mace in set 2 to use Forge Hammer for even more fissures. When these fissures explode from walking over them with Ancestral Cry active, they will also activate Fire Spell on Hit AND Cast on Elemental Ailment. Add in extra damage buffs from Savage Fury, broken armour via Ancestral Warrior Totem (The Molten One's Gift) and Infernal Cry to truly destroy any strong foe.

- First created guide (05.12.2025)

- Endgame variant up to date, and first day 1 overview video added (14.12.2025)

- New Uber Endgame variant with infinite rage/Endurance via Primal Hunger (16.12.2025)

- Added Undying Hate (tecrod) next to Vaal Pact in Uber Endgame, also moved nodes from Adrenaline Rush and Devastation to Blood of the Wolf and Relentless (18.12.2025)

- Added Barkskin to Set 1 (18.12.2025)

- Replaced Undying Hate (tecrod) with Undying Hate (amanamu) (19.12.2025)

- Added Citaqualotl's Thesis to socket in boots, massive potential defense boost (20.12.2025)

- Removed Barkskin (it can't give more armour than what your armour items give) and replaced with Blasphemy (Enfeeble), you need a total of 60 spirit on gear. Also added in Soul Core of Azcapa in Fury of the King for an extra 15 spirit, and spirit corrupt for The Hollow Mask (22.12.2025)

- Added a possible Heart of the Well jewel option. Can have other stats such a movement speed, max lighting resistance, skill speed etc. (23.12.2025)

- Replaced Furious Slam with Fury of the Mountain in Endgame variant (29.12.2025)

- No longer need a perfect Conjurer Mantle with 30 spirit, total min spirit needed is 160 (30.12.2025)

- Swapped Execute II for Spell Cascade in Cast on Elemental Ailment (Comet) BEWARE LOSS OF VISUAL CLARITY ON BOSSES! (04.01.2026)

- New defensive setup with Goregirdle and rare Armour/ES helmet instead of The Hollow Mask, swapping Blasphemy for Barkskin and Charge Regulation (04.01.2026)

- Removed glory nodes near Craving Slaughter and moved them to get Invigorating Grandeur, meaning Walking Calamity and is now a full heal when used. Relentless is now a global point, and set 1 takes Momentum (06.01.2026)

- Can replace Living Bomb (Overabundance II & Fire Mastery) with Detonate Dead (Magnified Area II & Spell Cascade) if you want much better clear potential in maps, will of course lose you a decent chunk of single-target damage (15.01.2026)

- Added How It Works section (17.05.2026)

- Updates in patch 0.5: (22.05.2026)

• Comet had its damage reduced by about 30%. We have many sources of damage, so not that impactful for us.
• BIG NERF: "Fixed a bug where certain triggered skills could generate energy." This means Ancestral Cry steps can no longer trigger Fire Spell on Hit and Cast on Elemental Ailment. Which doesn't kill the build, but hampers it a lot. Would just go pure melee damage instead.

- Swapped +3 spell levels to +3 melee levels on Stellar Amulet (23.05.2026)

- Added Rune of Renown to gloves (30.05.2026)

- Walking Calamity uses Magnified Area II instead of Eternal Flame II (30.05.2026)

- Make sure to put Ancestral Cry on your keybind skill bar, that way you can see how much glory it has accumulated. You can also rebind your Ferocious Roar to the second skill bar, and use Ancestral Cry as the icon in it's place. (IN PATCH 0.5 YOU HAVE TO SOCKET ANOTHER SEPERATE Ancestral Cry AND PUT THAT ON THE BAR. STILL ONLY PRESS Ferocious Roar)

- Added a 6 link to Molten Crash, you can now use a Perfect jewellers (/flux?) onFury of the King (01.06.2026)

- FIX FOR CRASH! From the effect MTX from Forgemaster, don't use it for the time being! (02.06.2026)

- Added a WIP Titan Uber Endgame Variant to the guide. No Fire Spell on Hit or Cast on Elemental Ailment (08.06.2026)

- Swapped Concentrated Area for Eternal Flame II in Molten Crash. More Comet procs (09.06.2026)

- Changed tree on Titan variant with less ignite magnitude on set 2 (09.06.2026)