Velvet's elemental buzzsaw {crit} ~ Atziri deathless/map clearing 1.3 Updated!

I don't think I've had any progress since my last post. My 6th link still is faster attacks (instead of crit chance) and my tree still has both celestial notables you just talked about. I did want to drop one/both and try vaal pact but I haven't yet. I've put most of my time trying new builds in torment and as of now, I'm playing my crit split arrow ranger again. Turns out that build feels actually stronger now (yay for 1.3 balance!) with more life and more evasion, and still enough dps to completely melt the screen, and with the range of split arrow, actually the off-screen too. I'll probably come back to this build once I get bored of facerolling, spectral throw is funnier to play and I've probably put way more effort into it aswell. Scion's hair is also way better than ranger's.

Aaaanyway, enough of subtle balance ranting. This build is still great anyway. Merry christmas to you and your scions, and may you have good RNG with the presents.

@Ark

Nice to hear from you old friend! :D It doesn't matter what build/char you are playing. And if you ask me bows didn't get enough of a kick in the ... sack.

As far as my build goes... weirdly it feels even better than before with close to no change in gear. It shouldn't really be like this considering the heavy nerfs to crits, but it all works out in the end.

In any case, I wish everyone reading this thread Merry Christmas and happy holidays with your close ones!

Hi, I'd like to start of saying that this guide is so detailed and helped me through my entire trek of making this Elemental Buzzsaw. Just wanted to ask, do you prefer LMP or GMP?

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AnassAfadass wrote:

Hi, I'd like to start of saying that this guide is so detailed and helped me through my entire trek of making this Elemental Buzzsaw. Just wanted to ask, do you prefer LMP or GMP?

It's very nice to hear. Personally I use GMP when mapping for the following reasons:
#1. 20K dps seems enough to 1-crit everything.
#2. the AoE is great and covers the screen more or less, applying stun and freeze to everything.
#3. the leech with Vaal Pact seems much stronger to me with GMP versus packs (since it is not capped per attack it works a bit more like a 'life on hit', therefore more targets means more life)

I sometimes use LMP versus bosses that spawns minions (say the Vaal in maze maps), although against bosses I generally replace GMP/LMP with faster attacks.

So overall I would say I use GMP 90% of the time, faster attacks 9% and LMP 1% or so.

Hope this helped! Good luck with your char and happy holidays!

What do you think of using Rat's Nest? This would allow us to drop Increased Critical Strikes gem for e.g. Faster Proj. (proj. speed improves clearspeed by a lot) and you should still be able to stay crit capped. We would have to drop HoI, but the DPS boost from it is actually really underwhelming and the explosion AoE is kinda bad aswell. We would also gain some nice IAS and IMS, which always comes in handy.

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candoerfer wrote:

What do you think of using Rat's Nest? This would allow us to drop Increased Critical Strikes gem for e.g. Faster Proj. (proj. speed improves clearspeed by a lot) and you should still be able to stay crit capped. We would have to drop HoI, but the DPS boost from it is actually really underwhelming and the explosion AoE is kinda bad aswell. We would also gain some nice IAS and IMS, which always comes in handy.

Gonna drop my two cents before going to sleep.

Dropping Alpha's isn't an option imo. Auras are your main source of damage, and there's quite a difference between having them at level 20 and at level 22 (or 21 vs 23 with corrupted gems). Dropping HoI wouldn't be nice either. All in all, It would be like getting a significantly weaker weapon in a physical build.

About the crit chance, the gem gives way more than the Rat's, roughly twice. That being said I'm not even crit capped myself with a slightly different tree, no crit chance gem and no diamond rings, so this sounds to me like "first world problems". Those rings are so expensive, dayum.

I have to agree about the proj speed, but I don't know how is it with the OP's current tree. I have Ballistic Mastery and range is fine. In fact I find myself killing things outside HoT's range which might mean losing my power charges. If I could I'd go back to PCOC, I'm not a huge fan of the trendy HoT-CoH for "long range" builds.

Hey man, I've followed the evasion variant of this build (scion) so far, but I'm struggling a lot now (lvl 82) with physical damage. I find myself forced to drop HoI in order to run grace in my alphas. However, this still only gives me 10.5k evasion rating, which doesnt seem to be enough in 70+ maps.

Without grace I melt to almost anything at 14% phys reduction and 26% evasion.
My tree:



My dagger is not 100% ideal, I'll link my gear:


I am relatively new to the new build meta, I hadnt played for 2 years before the new bloodlines league.
Any advice would be appreciated.

I am getting some very close calls (bloodlines). Even on 66 maps, brutus can give me a lot of trouble. He just got me under 25% in one hit with my armour flask up.

@Candoerfer
What Ark said :D In short, rat's nest is better for a less aura heavy build, but not this one. Alpha's is just better in almost every way. On top of that, I keep HoI not only for some extra DPS, but for the very nice defensive mechanisms. Also, if range would be something I wanted I would go for the 'Sniper' and 'Ballistic Mastery' nodes. With those, you can reach the edge of the screen, but you're HoT attacks do not. It's just the new meta in my mind.

@Ark
Well said sir. Although with regard to rings: I think a good option is to get some diamons ring just with T1 WED rolled and then craft everything else. I am not an expert in crafting, but you would have everything you need with it. Still, it's not dirt cheap but it could work.

@Bradaman
I am not the expert on the evasion variants, maybe someone else in this thread can give you some more insightful advice. Nevertheless, I have to say that if you want to go for high evasion, you should make the appropriate gear choices too. The highest EV on your gear is alpha's, which is not good. Imagine if you had an 1-1.5 K evasion chest (I'm not saying the 2K+ godly ones, but a decent one) and 1K EV shield. You maybe shouldn't bother too much about armor because of the way it scales. And honestly if everything else in the build works well, you might not even have to worry about phys dmg. I run 74-76 maps solo and most of the time I don't need to pop EC+IC.
Also, grab Vaal Pact as soon as you can, it will help you a lot!

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SFXisMag1c wrote:

@Candoerfer
What Ark said :D In short, rat's nest is better for a less aura heavy build, but not this one. Alpha's is just better in almost every way. On top of that, I keep HoI not only for some extra DPS, but for the very nice defensive mechanisms. Also, if range would be something I wanted I would go for the 'Sniper' and 'Ballistic Mastery' nodes. With those, you can reach the edge of the screen, but you're HoT attacks do not. It's just the new meta in my mind.

I am using Sniper + Ballastic Mastery + Proj. Speed gem and I don't really want to miss either of those (playing as a Shadow, so tree is a bit different). Main culprit of the bad performance of Aplha's Howl in my build is that I use Hatred instead of Anger, so the +2 is not really that effective. I run already 2 Auras + 2 Heralds, which is why the ~60 flat cold dmg from HoI is not that much of a dmg increase. I agree that in a pure ele spec with Anger + Wrath Alpha will win over Rat's, because the +2 alone will provide significant DPS increase and you are missing the AoE burn from HoA.
While Rat's gives me about double the tooltip DPS increase than Alpha's, I am currently considering to get the 75% crit chance somewhere else (PC + Ring) and open the helmet slot (AS not that important), however it will become really heavy from the passive points then.

Edit:

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Ark20 wrote:

About the crit chance, the gem gives way more than the Rat's, roughly twice. That being said I'm not even crit capped myself with a slightly different tree, no crit chance gem and no diamond rings, so this sounds to me like "first world problems". Those rings are so expensive, dayum.

I have to agree about the proj speed, but I don't know how is it with the OP's current tree. I have Ballistic Mastery and range is fine. In fact I find myself killing things outside HoT's range which might mean losing my power charges. If I could I'd go back to PCOC, I'm not a huge fan of the trendy HoT-CoH for "long range" builds.

I am missing ~70-80% crit chance, so Rat's Nest would fit nicely. The CoH-AM stuff is far to unreliable for me, with PCOC I can generate PC from hitting mobs off-screen and even then I sometimes run out of time.

@Candoerfer
You use Hatred? Hmm, that would mean your build is some hybrid phys-ele? Then I would understand why rat's nest works better for you. But my build is pure elemental (or minimal investment in physical rather), so that's why the general opinion is so one sided. Nevertheless, it's quite interesting to see a different view from time to time. Could you possibly link your gear and DPS/defense numbers? For science I mean :D

Also, from my experience having a faster projectiles lvl 20 OR the two nodes for proj speed is enough. All three is a waste in my mind (I think someone already made a vid in a previous patch where the projectiles didn't even return since they traveled too far xD).

And this one is @Ark as well:
I have 95% crit chance with 5 power charges up. I will actually drop one PC for an endurance charge when my gems will be high enough in level with some quality (I think I can still reach 95% with 4 PC using my current gear).

Key components: max crit chance on ambusher, diamond rings and crit on the necklace. Also, don't neglect the accuracy + crit chance nodes in the three. I think at least some of you don't take them, but 40% crit chance for 3 skill points is not half bad, given you get a lot of accuracy also.