A few days into Curse of the Allflame, the reality of a rushed league start tends to settle in. Your first character stalls, the gear it needs costs more than expected, and the endgame stops feeling reachable. Rerolling is the fix, and the smartest second pick is one that clears maps for almost nothing up front while still leaving room to grow. The seven builds below are sorted by that exact trade-off, from the cheapest starters to the ones that demand real investment before they perform.
Quick answer: If you want the lowest-cost restart that still clears Voidstones, roll a Shockwave Cyclone Slayer or a Winter Orb Elementalist. Both start on a couple of Divines and only need rings with the crafted mana-cost mod or basic cold gear to function.
Reroll builds ranked by budget
Placement here reflects one thing above all: how much currency you need to spend before the build carries its own weight. S-tier picks start cheap and stay comfortable. Lower tiers still work, but they either need heavy setup or expensive uniques before they feel worth the swap. Mageblood is left out of every calculation, since it inflates any build’s cost. This ranking reflects the 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league.
| Tier | Build | Starting budget |
|---|---|---|
| S | Shockwave Cyclone Slayer, Winter Orb Elementalist/Occultist | A few Divines |
| A | Animate Weapon of Ranged Arms Necromancer, Ethereal Knives Elementalist | Roughly 5 Divines |
| B | CoC Forbidden Rite Occultist, Flicker Strike Slayer | Low base, jewel/charge dependent |
| C | Mercbot Luminary | High, respec plus Mercenary gear |
Note: This is an opinion-based ranking built around ease of restart, not raw damage ceilings.
S tier: cheapest restarts that still clear Voidstones
The Shockwave Cyclone Slayer is the classic spin-to-win reroll. It needs only a few Divines to get moving and can push through two or three Voidstones without fuss. The core is Cyclone paired with Shockwave Support, and Slayer is the pick for the extra damage, life leech, and Culling Strike. The only real requirement to start is a pair of rings carrying the crafted “Channeling Skills have -to Total Mana Cost” mod. It does show diminishing returns, so pouring hundreds of Divines into it is wasted currency.
Winter Orb was the most popular starter of the league, so if you skipped it early, now is a fair time to try it. It also begins cheap but wants meaningful investment later. Ralakesh’s Impatience running Power Charges alone runs a few Divines, and a Willclash with a corrupted +1 Power Charge adds roughly 8 more. The build runs on Frenzy and Charges to raise crit, cast, and attack speed. Tulfall, the Occultist Ascendancy, and Willclash all feed Power Charges, and hitting the maximum grants a Frenzy Charge. From there, everything points toward more cold damage, higher crit multiplier, and a larger maximum charge pool.
A tier: budget clears with a big investment ceiling
The Animate Weapon of Ranged Arms Necromancer, better known as AWRA, is the go-to for a 4-Voidstone run without spending much. A full clear is realistic on about 5 Divines, with Maven standing out as the only genuinely tough boss. It runs a standard minion setup granting Unholy Might, plus a handful of Abyss Jewels that let minions Poison and Taunt on hit. The ceiling is where costs climb: the best-in-slot body armour, Foulborn The Covenant with Blood Magic, can run well past 30 Divines, and a Spell Suppression and Block variant using Svalinn climbs higher still.
Ethereal Knives got a sizable buff in 3.29, which is what earns the Elementalist version its spot. The budget variant uses Lost Unity for Herald stacking, and consistent triggering comes from damage conversion through Masteries and weapons, with Grace of the Goddess as a cheap conversion option. The expensive path swaps in Nimis for the second ring slot, which alone runs over 80 Divines. Nimis raises projectile damage, fires the knives in random directions, and returns them to you for double damage. Deadeye is another viable Ascendancy, though it makes Herald uptime harder to hold.
B tier: cheap on paper, setup-heavy in practice
CoC Forbidden Rite Occultist is inexpensive at its core, but it asks for more configuration than most. Forbidden Rite deals Chaos damage to yourself, so the build is locked into Energy Shield as its only defensive layer with Chaos Inoculation. Keeping damage flowing means stacking crit chance through Power Charges and the Passive Tree to proc Cast on Critical regularly. Cyclone triggers Forbidden Rite thanks to its high actions-per-minute, so despite casting a spell you stay in melee range. For survivability, Zealoth’s Oath applies life regeneration to Energy Shield, backed by ES leech from the Ethereal Leech notable and the Instant Leech Mastery. Jewels are where the cost can spike depending on your choices.
Flicker Strike Slayer is one of the smoothest mappers once it comes together, but it needs a working charge engine first. The skill teleports you onto an enemy and then goes on a short cooldown, which you bypass by spending a Frenzy Charge. That charge economy is the whole build, both for damage uptime and survival. Quality on the gem grants a chance to gain a Frenzy Charge on hit, and the Disciple of Slaughter notable alongside Sword and Mark Mastery help generate more. Once charges are sustained, the goal shifts to raising your maximum Frenzy Charges and stacking damage. The strong but pricey upgrade route uses Anarchic Spiritblade with support mods and The Squire shield.
C tier: highest cost of entry
Mercbot Luminary sits last purely on investment. The support Luminary sounds appealing until the setup adds up. You first need a build that can survive the endgame just to hunt down the Mercenary you want, and finding one with the right skills takes time. Buying a Contract from trade is the shortcut. After securing the Mercenary, you then respec fully from an attack build into a life-stacker, since Flame Link is currently the strongest support. Your own gear leans on life, regen, block, resistances, and Auras, while the Mercenary starts with The Untouched Soul paired with Enmity’s Embrace, both of which can run expensive.
The Luminary Ascendancy was added as a core Scion option, letting you permanently hire up to three Mercenaries, keep two in reserve, and field one active ally in combat. Unlike temporary Mercenaries, you can change the gear on permanently hired ones, which is where the build possibilities open up and where the currency drains.
How this ranking was decided
Each build was judged on the currency needed to make it functional after a failed start, how reliably it clears early maps and Voidstones, and how much room it has to scale later. Builds that clear on a couple of Divines and reach the endgame without mandatory expensive uniques ranked highest. Those needing heavy respecs, charge engines, or costly key items to perform sat lower, even when their damage ceiling is high.
If your only goal is to salvage the league fast, start at the top of this list and stay there until you have banked enough currency to consider a pricier project. A build that clears slightly slower but rarely dies will make more currency per hour than a flashy one that stalls in early maps, and that surplus is what funds whatever you reroll into next.
