Igni & Yrden griffinThe Witcher 3 RemasteredBudget friendly Igni and Yrden build for pre-B&WbuildThis is a guide with 11 notesPublished
Primarily focuses on igni and yrden, as mentioned in the title. This build is designed to stack as much intensity as humanly possible onto igni, with yrden being used for crowd control and an additional source of damage. Generally pretty easy to operate, as your routine boils down to grouping enemies up in yrden and then lighting them all on fire at once with igni.
Igni itself is actually pretty point efficient, since the base effect is so good.
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More: Beginner builds, Budget builds, Sign builds
This build assumes the player has collected all of the places of power in White Orchard, Velen, and Novigrad. It does not account for any places of power in Skellige.
Igni's burn chance is, approximately, 0.5% per 1% sign intensity. This means that catalyst is, in practice, a 45% boost to your burn chance when fully upgraded. This is also why we ignore melt armor, as the additional burn chance offered by the perk is inferior to the benefits of catalyst.
Because catalyst is such a significant increase to your burn chance, it should be a priority early on.
Both wolf school techniques and griffin school techniques boost your sign intensity by 6% per piece of medium armor. This comes out to be a significant amount of "Free" sign intensity.
Supercharged glyphs is here primary to provide us with some means of damaging wraiths and other burn immune enemies, but it's still very useful against humans and flammable monsters. If an enemy is on fire while inside of Yrden, they will take damage from both, rapidly depleting their health bar.
Increases Sign duration by 15 seconds and area of effect by 30%. Increases the number of alternate mode charges by 6 and number of standard mode traps by 3.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Releases a magic discharge that damages and slows enemies within a 14-yard radius.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Enemies under the influence of Yrden lose 30 Vitality or Essence per second. Damage scales with enemy level and Sign intensity.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Increases damage dealt by Aard by 1% of current Vitality.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Increases Aard and Igni intensity by 90% against enemies inside Yrden.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Casting a Sign increases the intensity of the next different Sign by 15%. Stacks up to 5 times.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Whenever Quen shield breaks, it pushes enemies back. Push-back strength increases with skill level.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Increases the duration of Yrden, Quen and Axii by 40%.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1/s
After a successful dodge or roll, reduces the Stamina cost for the next Sign cast by 60%.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Increases Aard range by 1 yard(s).
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Each piece of Medium Armor increases Sign intensity by 6% and Stamina regeneration by 0.6/s.
Vitality gain: +3%
Increases maximum Toxicity by 10.
Vitality gain: +1%
Increases bonuses for mutagens placed in mutagen slots by 30%.
Vitality gain: +3%
Each piece of Medium Armor increases weapon damage by 6% and Sign intensity by 6%.
Vitality gain: +3%
If an enemy is on fire, hitting them with any attack will put out the fire. Generally, you want to avoid this, since most of your damage actually comes from igni's burning effect.
Instead, spend the time to regenerate your stamina. Most enemies (human and monster) go into a panicking animation when on fire, so burning doubles as both damage and crowd control for you.
Chain reaction can be hard to remember. If you can, try to avoid casting the same sign twice in a row to maximize the bonus. You can alternate if necessary, you just can't do the same spell back to back.
Igni ---> Igni will lose the chain reaction bonus
Igni ---> Yrden ---> Igni will keep the full bonus.
Loadout
Increases Sign duration by 15 seconds and area of effect by 30%. Increases the number of alternate mode charges by 6 and number of standard mode traps by 3.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Whenever Quen shield breaks, it pushes enemies back. Push-back strength increases with skill level.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Enemies under the influence of Yrden lose 30 Vitality or Essence per second. Damage scales with enemy level and Sign intensity.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Increases the duration of Yrden, Quen and Axii by 40%.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1/s
Casting a Sign increases the intensity of the next different Sign by 15%. Stacks up to 5 times.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
After a successful dodge or roll, reduces the Stamina cost for the next Sign cast by 60%.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Increases Aard range by 1 yard(s).
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Releases a magic discharge that damages and slows enemies within a 14-yard radius.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +0.5/s
Increases Aard and Igni intensity by 90% against enemies inside Yrden.
Stamina regeneration in combat: +1.5/s
Each piece of Medium Armor increases weapon damage by 6% and Sign intensity by 6%.
Vitality gain: +3%
Each piece of Medium Armor increases Sign intensity by 6% and Stamina regeneration by 0.6/s.
Vitality gain: +3%
Increases bonuses for mutagens placed in mutagen slots by 30%.
Vitality gain: +3%
Mutations
Safe to assume you don't have these yet, at this level. If you do, I would suggest magic sensibilities or conductors of magic. I still need to test to see which one performs better.
Gear
For your swords, it's worth considering plugging in Veles runestones. Usually, runestones are pretty bad, but the extra sign intensity is nice here.
If you have access to it at this point, the entanglement runestone is worth putting on your armor to make it a little easier to maintain yrden traps on the field. If you don't have the runewright, then glyphs of igni work perfectly fine.
Alchemy
These two are pretty generic, but they'll probably be your most used potions outside of the two main healing potions. Tawny owl in particular is worth using in difficult fights.
Ancient Leshen Decoction can be considered if you can spare the toxicity for it. Chain reaction already rewards you for casting different kinds of signs in quick succession, so ancient leshen could help you max that out pretty quickly.
Keep in mind you'd need to cast 4 signs to match the stamina regeneration provided by enhanced tawny owl. It's up to you whether or not that's worth it or not.
Also stacks w/ Tawny owl.