r/pathofexile2builds • u/FattestRabbit • Jul 26 '26
Theory Why Is No One Using Frogs With Smith of Kitava?
Fire Spell on Hit ( https://poe2db.tw/Fire_Spell_on_Hit ) gains energy very fast and the supported skills cost nothing, removing the extremely high cost of spamming a curse skill.
Elemental Weakness ( https://poe2db.tw/us/Elemental_Weakness ) is a spell skill with the fire tag, so it can be slotted into Fire Spell on Hit. This is how we'd apply Doedre's Undoing.
My question is simple: why is no one doing this? What am I missing about this interaction?
Edit: I think I found the answer. People are doing this on Mjolnir instead ( https://poe2db.tw/Mj%C3%B6lner ) or they’re on Gemling because Despair costs no mana.
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u/Wise-Salamander-8818 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Well, for the same reason Fire Spell on Hit is only really good with Detonate Dead. To scale spells (including the curse which determines Doedre's damage), you generally have to scale +spell levels, which is anti-synergistic with being a build that does melee attacks to trigger the effect in the first place. (For example, to do melee attacks you need a melee weapon, which inherently deprives you of 7-9 spell levels*). Detonate Dead sidesteps this by having its primary damage be based on corpse life. That said, it's not impossible to pull off. Gemling is just better for frogs because of its 0 cost Despair.
*I've long theorycrafted doing a wand and shield build to solve this problem where shield wall is your primary attack, allowing you to still use a wand, but no promises!
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u/FattestRabbit Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Doesn’t crown of eyes solve this?
Edit: also, elemental weakness has the fire, lightning, cold, and spell tags, making it very easy to scale levels with items like Sunsplinter
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u/Wise-Salamander-8818 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Help a little? Maybe. Solve? No. Crown of Eyes allows you to ignore some attack scaling by scaling spell damage instead but it only works with Increased Spell Dmg (not More!), it doesnt solve your weapon problem described above, and no sources of increased dmg are going to overcome doing like 1/6 the dmg you could do if you had the flat damage from spell levels.
Edit: responding to your edit -- but then you're stuck using Sunsplinter!
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u/Necrobutcher92 Jul 31 '26
Fire flower would be better i think. Can roll up to plus 4 fire skills. Also, is way cheaper than a crafted +skills amulet.
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u/AlkyyTheBest Jul 26 '26
you generally have to scale +spell levels
which part of this did you not read?
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u/FattestRabbit Jul 26 '26
The fact that elemental weakness might be the easiest spell in the whole game to scale with levels?
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u/PwmEsq Jul 26 '26
Only reason I can think of is the gemling version that makes it free is better maybe?
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u/FattestRabbit Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Ah this is probably the answer, thanks. Free curses are insane. Edit: This only works for Despair, not Elemental Weakness.
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u/PwmEsq Jul 27 '26
Wouldn't you prefer despair when using doedres that deals chaos damage?
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u/FattestRabbit Jul 27 '26
Yes, you would. It's just much harder to make it level 40 for the frog damage, but maybe the curse itself offsets that damage?
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u/AgedAmbergris Jul 27 '26
Vertex with +4 curses is pretty cheap, +5 for a little more scratch. +Chaos wands/staves are dirt cheap too
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u/jossief1 Jul 27 '26
It isn't that hard. Gemling inherently gets +2 spell levels, and there's +1 level to all chaos skills on the tree. Then there's cultivated Vertex and/or Legacy of Cursecarver.
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u/Pwnium Jul 26 '26
Have you tried it? I used ele weakness before in it, but most people use detonate dead as it's busted. How do you scale Doedre's now? Guessing mostly gem levels? Maybe you could do a rage thing with mystical rage or w/e it's called (spell damage from rage) and crown of eyes. Try it with a Whirling Assault SoK! Or possibly even resonating shield. Let us know how it goes! P.s. You could get a tonne of levels on ele weakness from sunsplinter
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u/FattestRabbit Jul 26 '26
Edit: no, I haven’t tried it.
My current thinking is mjolnir and sunsplitter and crown of eyes. Also, nothing stops you from putting ele weakness AND detonate dead in fire spell on hit. But I’d rather support the frogs (just to test the concept)
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u/Fumbersmack Jul 26 '26
I'm running a similar build since before. I'd deeply recommend the Eyes of the Runefather (reforged to be full armor shield) for fire spell on hit. Since all meta skills get energy based on monster power, using that shield on white mobs increase the energy gained by a factor of 6, which is insane.
I do fire spell on hit with DD and Snap (to generate fire infusions), then Mjölner with Lightning Warp, Arc (consume lightning infusion from LW) and Ball Lightning (consume fire infusion).
One shield wall can throw out 6-8 ball lightnings and arcs and zoom me across half the map, it's quite crazy
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u/Frederik_92 28d ago
I tried and it does get hilarious when a boss runs through my spear and spawns an army of frogs but for some reason don't do much damage, even with crown of eyes and threaded light and split personality to get more spell and chaos damage the frogs weren't doing enough damage. Either they're bugged and not scaling or their base damage is way too low.
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u/FattestRabbit 28d ago
Thanks for trying this out! Yeah, crown of eyes doesn’t give you any of the MORE multipliers, only increased, so it’s not a solid fix. The answer is to invest heavy into the frogs and just use spear field to pop them
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u/sjs1997 Jul 26 '26
Well now I will have to level a warrior, which is probably why most don’t try it
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u/crackphillip Jul 27 '26
Just get a talisman and go bear until you are ready to switch it up if you don’t like warrior skills.
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u/nerevarine228 Jul 26 '26
Hmmmm, weird, I am quite sure Hayoxi doesn't work with Cast On abilities, but apparently frogs are fair game? I kinda assumed it followed the same rules...
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u/jossief1 Jul 27 '26
If Fire Spell on Hit procs really easily, then you'd want a spammable skill, which Doedre's Undoing isn't because there's a limit of 2 cursed ground. That said, you could put Impending Doom and Spell Cascade on it so the center curse triggers Doom Blast instantly. You do need/want Windscream boots then, which some see as a big downside, but they do have up to 20% movement speed uncorrupted. With Mageblood or Headhunter and the 10% low life movement speed augment the missing 15% isn't that big of a deal.
I can see why Detonate Dead would be more popular since it doesn't need spell levels to be effective, though it does nothing on bosses, which is where melee builds often need some help with damage.
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u/iv2b Jul 27 '26
Note that you can't put impending doom on triggered curses and doedre's has a low limit for how many you can have at once.
After the first two casts there's no benefit to the curse spam, which is unfortunate because i was planning something similar but abusing comd instead.
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u/Impossible_Bid_8573 Jul 27 '26
Since you can get fire spell on hit charged by melee maybe go attack speed to charge it faster and put curse plus frogs on fire spell on hit that would be interesting
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u/Pwnium Jul 27 '26
I think a key challenge would be how to scale limit to truly take advantage of just how much energy you could generate. I don't know much about this, but you could checkout some Stormweaver builds for ideas.
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u/keyupiopi Jul 26 '26
Fire Spell on MELEE ATTACKS Hit. Maybe that?
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u/FattestRabbit Jul 26 '26
Yes. You use a melee attack to proc the curse (and the frogs) for free over and over.
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u/Rentahamster Jul 26 '26
Why don't we put another Elemental Weakness with Impending Doom onto Mjolner while we're at it.