Fire with Qin – F2p or spender build to compete with the whales!

Fire Qin in Season 2 – Build Guide

Fire is a super powerful team — it’s highly competitive for free-to-plays and low spenders, and it also scales very well for mid spenders. As a fire spender myself, I’m able to beat players spending much more money on their marches than I do on my fire team.

How?
By building regen control through Hippolyta and some top tier nuke through Empress Wu, we can deal massive amounts of damage and control the fight without needing maxed-out Himikos, Theodoras, or other high-spender picks.

This guide is for the free-to-play and low to mid spenders that want to compete against high-level spenders.

The Build

Immortals:
Trajan + Hippolyta + Empress Wu + Qin Emperor

Trajan (obtained through Golden Path or summoning in Halls of Immortals). You may need to spend some GP coins to get fragments quickly, but you can build this entire team without spending a single dollar. Personally, I prioritize getting Trajan through GP — the value for money is very efficient.
Hippolyta (obtained in Halls of Immortals and available for soul crystals or gems in the Marketplace after unlock).
Empress Wu (obtained in the Contention of Relics event and available after unlock in Marketplace for soul crystals and gems). Note that Empress Wu is the hardest one to get enough fragments for because she’s not available in any bundles or Golden Path — so spend gems on her fragments whenever possible. In Season 2, you need her talents maxed quickly, so you’ll want every fragment you can get (see the “maxing talents” article for more details).
Qin Emperor (obtained in Halls of Immortals and available for soul crystals or gems in Marketplace after unlock).

The build is based around high energy regeneration, regen control through Hippo, and quick, high nuke damage through Empress Wu and Qin’s immortal talents.

You want to get Wu critting as much as possible, so her artifact is a priority. Make sure all four immortals have at least one unique artifact, but max Wu’s first — and hope you get one with Crit % and Annihilation.

The goal is simple:
Stack critical chance and damage to supercharge both Wu’s ultimate (which can one-shot an immortal if you stack enough Crit Damage through Trajan and artifact buffs) and Chase, which synergizes perfectly with frequent damage instances from Toxin Nova or Death Breath.

Meanwhile, Qin’s Wounds debuff ensures that the damage you deal stays dealt by negating healing.

Each Immortal’s Role

Hippolyta

Hippo provides solid damage (she actually hits quite hard for a semi-utility pick) but more importantly, she brings energy regeneration control through her ultimate.

Her ultimate hits 7 times with her unique artifact (5 without) and removes 100 energy per hit, for a total of 700 energy drained per cast. Each hit also applies a stacking 10% attack speed reduction for 6 seconds.

The key part here is the regen control — removing 700 energy from your enemies every ultimate is incredibly powerful and puts you far ahead in the energy game.

For talents, run Destroyer Stance (crit and damage). It pairs well because she deals solid damage and benefits from crits for Energy Burst procs.

Trajan

Trajan gives your fire team the buffs that enable the massive damage output.

His ultimate Rain of Fire increases the critical damage of all fire immortals by 30% and grants a stacking 10% crit chance whenever a fire immortal lands a critical ultimate hit (up to 5 stacks for 6 seconds).

This is huge for both Hippo and Wu — while Wu won’t get multiple ultimates off during the buff window, her multi-hit ult has a chance to proc several times, building crit stacks quickly. Hippo, on the other hand, will have near-max uptime due to her rapid-fire ultimates and our regen build with Energy Burst and Blessing of Rage.

His artifact adds another 10% crit rate on top for 6 seconds, which stacks beautifully with the rest.

Empress Wu

Empress Wu is the core damage dealer here. She deals 600% damage rate to one enemy with a 60% (70% with artifact) chance of causing that same damage to hit another nearby target — and this can activate up to 3 times which just absolutely deletes the enemy if you get lucky.

Note, I have not yet got one with crit % and annihilation despite crafting over 70 artifacts for Wu at the time of writing. The below if the best I have, but if you have one with Crit % top + crit % as secondary roll + Annihilation bonus, that will be the best possible craft.

Empress Wu has insane single-target and spread damage potential. With stacked crit buffs and a good artifact, her nukes can delete immortals instantly.

Qin Emperor

Qin’s role is mainly utility and control. His dragon power ultimate increases normal attack speed (which helps trigger a few extra Energy Burst procs on Hippo) and activates the Fire Dragon, which grants bonus damage and buffs all your fire immortals. But the main point of Qin is that he applies Wounds through his ultimate, cutting enemy healing — which is massive when facing Theodora, Zenobia, or other heal-heavy comps.

Note: Against enemies that do not rely on sustain, the benefits of Qin drop significantly since Wounds becomes irrelevant. If you find yourself in that kind of meta, I’d refer you to my guide on Matilda, who offers stronger results versus no-healing enemies (though she does require some GP spending to max and unlock her talents quickly enough to be viable). See the Season 2 – Build Theme section for the Matilda variant. Or on Theodora + YSS fire builds, though that is getting into the more expensive builds.

Finally, the most important thing about Qin is that he is incredibly easy, quick and cheap to max his talents on. He has a high appearance chance in the Marketplace and since you get him spending just Soul Crystals you can get the fragments needed to unlock level 8 immortal talents very quickly. Doing so gives us a major damage boost to our Wu since we are running the Battle Excitation talents giving Wu 200 energy and 40% more damage at the beginning of the fight (damage buff lasts throughout). This means quick ultimate cast and massive damage amp.

If you are considering doing another Support instead of Qin, make sure you are able to complete the immortal talents before making the switch, Battle Excitation is extreemly important to get to level 8 as quickly as possible (Wu and Qin talents have first and second prio over all others).

Example Battle

Example: I fought an enemy whale with a 530 STP fire team into a 610 STP holy whale. Note that while this is a rally, I am wave one, so it was a 1:1 in reality.

My Wu dealt massive damage, Hippo landed 56 ultimate hits (which equals 5600 total energy drained — that’s 5.6 full ultimate casts worth of energy removed).

And thanks to Qin’s Wounds, the enemy Theodora’s healing was almost nothing. Her Wisdom Well skills healed a little, but her Divine Gift Ultimate was 100% discarded by Wounds. The enemy basically lost their entire sustain advantage — incredible value.