JakeAlmightys LL Tank Wander - prepping for Hall of GRANDMASTERS! updated WIP

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Chundadragon wrote:

Wand probs needs Lightning MTX to balance out the tempest shield, my 2 cents xD

You probs need the build tested vs. a crit Arc build and a 10 stack Flameblast to see if there is a chance to one-shot you or go really hard vs. the lack of spell defence as atm, build is the melee guy's worst nightmare.

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Wiesl_1404 wrote:

@ Jake

Thank you for making such an interessting post about your take on creating a build for the "Hall of Grandmasters" I really enjoyed reading and thinkign about it.

I've you don't mind i'd like to share some thoughts with you guys here:


Your build seems quiet strong, but has a very obvious weakness - it can easily be chilled and frozen. Auxium will not be sufficient to solve this problem against high cold damage builds. Block won't help much because they can use block penetration like you do.
The strategie for this builds would be:
- temporal chains
- a cold spell (most likely cold snap / crit ice spear for off screening) + cold pen
- low life spectral throw with focus on cold damage

A cold spell will at least chill you for a long time with temp chains on you and will eventually "freeze lock" you to death.

To counterfit that issue there are two options. The easy one would be to change one of your rings for dream fragments to get the "can not be frozen" stat. The more glorious option would be get rid of crown of eyes and use alpha howl instead and pick up the crystal skin cluster to be completly immune to chilling and freezing effects. You lose a lot of dps giving uo crown of eyes but the kill on your Grandmaster can't be cheesed so easly any more.


Another thing is that your attacks can be completely mitigated by using the skill "frost wall". Your attacks deal huge damage, but they are not able to pierce - so your projectiles will be hold of from a wall of ice. Every spell user with a decent cast speed can fit it in his build easily to stop your attacks from hitting them. I don't think the AI will be smart or quick enough to bypass all the frost walls.
Counterfiting that is only possible by getting a pierce gem and/or some pierce passivs
The strategie builds will use in this case will be:
- temporal chains (slows your lighting warp down by a huge amount)
- using frostwall or frostwall totem or maybe both (they also can trap themselves in to be safe)
- using a skill which bypasses frostwall (for example crit firetrap)


The next thing that comes to my mind is that you are using blood rage. Blood rage is percentage degen of chaos damage. Since you are not CI it would be quit easily to cast vulnerability on you and maybe use a GMP-LMP-vaal lightning trap or simple arc to shock you while standing behind a frost wall. Your ES will degenerate rapidly while the attacker can go off screen, ran around and evade or stand behind a frostwall and simple watch your character die from the degen of bloodrage (the AI won't likely be smart enough to turn it off)
Since your Grandmaster can never be immune to curses and since you are low life you allways are susceptible to shock your build will eventually kill itself with blood rage on.
The strategie builds will use in this case will be:
- Arc - curse on hit - vulnerability
- running around, doging, using frost wall
To counterfit that you can corrupt items to get "chance to avoid beeing shocked" and picking up crystal skin cluster, but keep in mind it despite doing all this you can never be completly immune to shock in this game (except you are wearing tricorne unique). So i simply would get rid of blood rage after all.


Your build seems to be doing great against:
- all kinds of attack based characters ranged and melee without RT etc.
- other low life characters and CI characters

Your build seems to be weak against:
- high effective life characters with lots of regen
- Melee + block penetration + RT or "your hits can't be evaded" mod
- spellcasters
- trapers


After this long post we see, that there exists a perfect counter for your build - surprisingly it is a current meta build too - Arc. I also can be done with Ball Lightning. HoI can be used for constantly chilling the Grandmaster too.






After all this writing i come to a conclusion. Low life characters will not the "optimum"/"hardest to beat" encounter in the "Hall of Grandmasters" after all - even if they are level 100 and were all mirrored gear. They have many weaknesses, which arn't all obvious at the first glance, but if you think a little, you will eventually see that Life based or hybrid based builds will have the egdge in most situations over an low life or CI character, when it comes to being able to beat a number of different builds.

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battled wrote:

I can't wait for someone to make a legacy Arora max block cast on damage taken build for this. And make him have a Cast on Death link just for fun.
Does AI character use mana? Using a skill link that can only be sustained with blood magic/eldrich battery can be interesting.

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Ceratoidei wrote:

Jake did you check the tree w/o power charges?

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Im curious why you chose barrage? Typically in PvP I see people who use projectile based attacks support them with GMP or LMP as it can be rather difficult to hit a fast moving target with a single projectile. I know barrage has a bit of a spread to it but its still no where near the coverage of other projectile based attacks with multiple projectile supports. Add that to the fact that you has to stand still to channel barrage and I think thats going to be your characters main weakness.