[2.3] "Vulcan's Exemplar" Crit Dual Strike Slayer with Bino/Catalyst by fiqst

nice gear you have there Exiled_Wanderer. it seems you have a lot of trouble levelling but i dont quite understand what is killing you ..is it reflect ? elemental reflect ? physical reflect ? plain old desync ?

i looked at your previous posts and still dont understand how you die so often.

My highest level toon is 92 so i dont have a lot of experience at that level but i will try to help

- you can try to get a rats nest - less dps but the movement speed and good crit chance (+IIR!) make it very good

- how much do you like your rings ? have you tried dual perandus ? who knows..maybe that extra experience gain will offset the dps loss

- how much do you like that assassins mark with herald of thunder ? why not go enfeeble or my favorite curse temporal chains. with lower dps you have lower reflected damage

- a stupid friend also suggested to run lower level maps(70-75) with less dangerous mods (blue only ?). his ideea was.. sure you it will take a looooong way to get to 100.. but you will get there if you play a lot and dont die :)

- go full ranged mode with spectral throw/ligtning strike ?

- go full CI .. go max es(+10k ?) with dual claw/claw+shield + all the leech you can get ?

it seems you are not interested in a specific build but just want to get to 100:D

all in all i say good luck and keep on trying

Ele reflect kills me. Phys reflect kills me. Volatile Ice/Storm/Flame Blood kills me. Charging mobs kill me. Taking a big physical hit and then Blood Rage kills me. Desynch kills me.

I tried out Rat's Nest. Life went from 5200 to 5480. Dps went from 460k to 310k. That's 150k loss off damage. Like wtf.

You don't get enough resists from other pieces to be able to use unique rings. Also, it would barely make a difference.

I like the Assassin's Mark for the Power Charges and for putting the curse on the mob I'm about to hit for more overkill damage = better aoe.

I run lower level maps once in a while. It would take a looooooong time to level up. Like, it would take me 10 75 maps for just 1%. And I did a series of 74 maps a few days ago. Didn't die, but it was super close multiple times so it's barely safer than high lvl maps. Maybe if I could somehow only do Gorge or Plateau maps but that's quite unlikely to happen.

Going ranged would be safer, but I don't like it for this build.

I have, however, thought about going CI. The amount of ES you can get is much higher than life so you'd be safer. It does mean you'd need to use a different helmet as well as a shield instead of Doryani's. Maybe you could keep 1 and still reach reasonable ES, not quite sure. The reason I haven't tried this is because I just spent all my currency on life gear and I'm too tired to have to sell everything so I can buy ES gear.

Keep in mind, that 95% of my problems are only from parties. In solo play, reflect and most other things do nothing to me, but since you can't really level past 95 alone, I get these issues.

Current Rat's Nest tree

I don't use the Acuity version of the build, but it just occurred to me: The Physical to Lightning gem might be eating half of your leeching capabilities by converting the physical damage (and leeching) to elemental. Have that checked out Fisqt - it might be something worth replacing back to multiplier gem for people looking for survivability.

I have no problems with the P2L gem personally.

The life regen is the main source of survivability and that is unchanged.

I still management fine with 1% mana leech.

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fiqst wrote:

I have no problems with the P2L gem personally.

The life regen is the main source of survivability and that is unchanged.

I still management fine with 1% mana leech.

I was talking about the advanced version: Acuity glove instead of Snakebite. I believe that version doesn't have Bino's regen?

There's a difference between 1.2 and 1.3.

I personally feel the life sustenance of Bino's regen slightly edges out acuity in 1.3

Acuity is still BiS with a rare dagger.

A brief update.... I just hit level 85 so I figured it was a safe time to test the waters with a few things. First, I tried a few maps with mods that I would consider scary to the build. First I tried a level 74 map with Vulnerability (I take more damage) and the mod monsters deal 30% more damage. This along with my Abyssus and the otherwise squishy nature of the build made this something to fear in my mind. However, I found not much issue in running the map despite the usual spikiness of my life globe. No deaths.

Next I ran a double reflect map (along with some other mods) - also level 74. Right out of the gate I died and almost abandoned the map altogether. But at this point I had zero exp towards next level so I figured I might as well press on with nothing to lose. After that first death I found no issue in completing the map deathless so long as I took it slow, tried to only hit a pack once or twice and then back off and let the burning napalm do the majority of the work. I did skip the boss (Oak clone) IIRC. By this point I had acquired about 5% exp and figured it wasn't worth the risk.

I still am working on my int and lightning resist issue so freeing up 2 passive points and maxing lightning should help overall.

Oh, almost forgot... I've also been playing around with Flicker Strike instead of Dual Strike. It's a lot of fun but it seems quirky at time. Quirky in a way that makes me vulnerable. I'll flicker into a pack, go ape-crazy on mob after mob and then sometimes I just stop. I presume this is because I am on cooldown and do not have a Frenzy charge to burn but there I am right next to some tough mob and not able to attack back effectively.

So thinking it through, as long as what mob I flicker to first, it better die or I get hosed. Of course if I one shot the first few mobs and then proliferate my overkill burn damage then I gain frenzy charges galore which keeps me going but that doesn't always happen. I'll keep playing around with it to see if I can work out any kinks.

On an unrelated note, I popped my 6L Belly of the Beast on just to see its effect on my life pool and I gain 500 life with it over Daresso's. I may test the waters with Rats/Belly which is what I used before the 1.3 patch.

Ok, I've decided that Flicker Strike as the primary attack in this build is out. That's O - U - T Exclamation Point! First, desynch is ridiculous. Second, the unexpected stopping of attacks when you happen to run out of frenzy charges - and it happens often. Plus, and it should come as no surprise, because you are constantly expending frenzy charges to fuel your next flicker you are obviously not at max frenzy charges, this means your snakebites are not poisoning and that means you are not regenerating life with your Binos. You are only healing via your paltry (and slow) life leech.

I ran a 73 Cells map using Flicker and died 3 times. Bye bye 20% exp towards next level.

I see the light. Grinded 8-10 rotations and gained 36% xp today, no deaths. Was close once or twice, but otherwise I'm liking the Rat's Nest approach. The added attack speed has a bigger impact than expected. Reflect is also a lot easier because I don't have that ridiculous multiplier from Abyssus. The difference in DPS is noticable on full party bosses though, but other than that you don't really feel it.
Unfortunately I sold my Acuity gloves, so I went back to Bino/Snakebite. The loss of int also meant I had to respec 2 life nodes for double +30 int nodes and go back to using Abyssus. Turns out that gives pretty much the same dps as the rare dagger with Rat's Nest.
Part of the reason why I'm not convinced by Daresso's I think is because I don't ututilize it and Flicker-CoC-IC enough. I'm trying to get better at using it more and it definitely adds a lot to the build compared to only using it rarely and relying more on Whirling Blades (side note, with Rat's Nest and Horror Skewer, even with WB not linked to Faster Attacks, you go reallyfast - was very surprised at the speed).

As for using Flicker as the main attack. I do it often when I'm feeling like clearing a map fast, and it's easily doable for any map. Some times I also use it in parties and I can still kill stuff relatively easy. Here I do run into the occasional stopping of attacks, but then I just use the dual strike that took Flicker's spot with CoC and IC, which still deals a significant amount of single target damage, and keep flickering on.