[1.3] pabrt's Frost Wall Kinetic Blaster - Budget Friendly!
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I got a 5L Voll's on CB. Build is alive and well in the current iteration, so have hope everyone!
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Hey there pabrt. I wanted to try this real quick on a respecced character since I havent played in a few months. Can you run this with a 4link as soon as you get one? (and it is effective?)
And with the power charge requirements, its impossible to run this without a 6link or a volls, huh? (unless its possible to drop the GMP?) |
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IMO you need at the very least a 5L for: KB + GMP + Pierce + coc + Frost Wall. Some might argue that GMP or Pierce are optional, but I don't think there's any reason to run this build without them.
And then you will additionally need some other way to manage your power charge uptime. Ideally you would use a 6L with pcoc or 5l/6l Voll's. In CB you need Voll's. Last edited by pabrt#4594 on Jun 1, 2015, 1:40:56 PM
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Can I just say that I LOVE this build!
Currently level 68 and I've been demolishing everything in my sight since around level 50 and it's by far the fastest clear speed I've ever had with a build. I have a few questions: 1) How can you get by without having any life flasks? Surely there's times when you need this? 2) How do you craft such perfect flasks? I want your flasks! 3) There's a lot of talk on Phys vs Ele. Can someone explain how one actually changes from Phys to Ele and what the differences are? I'm not ever sure if I'm phys or ele? How do I know? I assumed all Kinetic Blast attacks were physical damage??? Last edited by brunowa#6253 on Jun 3, 2015, 1:06:25 AM
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Glad you are enjoying the build.
1. Life Flasks would be nice, but I feel the other flasks are overall much more useful. If you use Thief's Torment you don't need life flasks generally. The only time it's annoying is on maps with desecrated ground everywhere & having to backtrack/loot. 2. Get them all as white flasks, bauble them all to 20%, transmute then if you get one affix you want (Surgeon's/Warding/Heat etc.) augment, otherwise alteration. 3. Phys version uses a phys wand (% + flat local weapon phys) plus the phys conversion cluster by CI. It can also use Herald of Ash. Ele uses an ele wand (local flat elemental damage), skips the conversion cluster, and only uses flat elemental auras/heralds. My assessment is that ele is better on a lower budget and Phys is better on a higher budget. In the expansion KB will scale elemental damage too as well as phys, so the ele version gets more of a buff than the phys version. Last edited by pabrt#4594 on Jun 3, 2015, 10:31:44 AM
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How is damage after herald nerfs?
I came across 5l Volls and have been thinking on rolling something like your build. Have you tried ditching the pierce gem? Tree + one of the jewels gets you to 55% chance to pierce. Is pierce mandatory? Also have you tried going as full CoC-er? The new Firestorm looks incredibly sexy. The frost walls hold the mobs in place while fire rains on them. Arc could work too, or maybe cold snap. Frost Wall itself has high damage atm. Ball lightning will fly over walls and benefit from proj damage nodes. Last edited by azmodael#0736 on Jun 5, 2015, 5:49:29 PM
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Damage is of course reduced with nerfed heralds, but I wasn't able to notice a difference at level 77 in 70-72 maps. I don't think damage is really worth worrying over at the moment.
Short answer: pierce gem is not worth dropping. Explanation:
Spoiler
By definition this build relies on the pierce mechanic to deal damage. To understand it, think through how the build works. For each wall you pierce, you create another set of explosions -- ie. pierce can be thought of as directly scaling our damage. So, 45% less pierce means ~45% less damage. But don't think this means a 45% more modifier (ex. WED) makes up for the loss. You would need a gem to give you 81% more damage for it to be equal to pierce as a damage modifier (and only in an unrealistic vacuum). Math:
Spoiler
Let's say we deal 100 damage. Dropping pierce makes us go to 100 * (1 - .45) = 55 damage.
In order to get to 100 damage from 55 we need a multiplier of 1.81818181818, or 81%. Finally, none of this really matters because of the following: consider that if you attack an enemy who is not directly next to terrain you will push them away, at which point failing to pierce any wall in between leads to you doing zero damage, because they have been pushed out of range of the initial walls. To counteract this you would always need to have a quartz flask (improbable) and chase them through the walls, which is a dps loss. Also it doesn't fully solve the problem unless you stand in near melee range (close enough that any wall you hit will cause explosions on the enemy) which puts you at far more risk than attacking from offscreen. It's possible to run another spell in a 6L Voll's. You could also drop pierce and run two spells + frost wall, but that would be quite a different build focused on spell damage rather than wand damage. At that point you could drop pierce because you wouldn't be interested in maximum damage dealt from your wand, but rather you'd be interested only in hitting the proc cap, which is achievable without the pierce gem (probably). I feel that such a setup would be unbearably laggy, as running just frost wall already lags quite a bit. Last edited by pabrt#4594 on Jun 5, 2015, 8:27:48 PM
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Well I got 5L volls. 6l will be of course perfect but... can't afford it.
I too am worried that the projectiles won't reach closer to the target if its gated behind 4-5 frost walls. On the plus side less projectiles piercing also means less KB explosion -> less lag. Arc and Cold Snap don't cause that much of an FPS drop. Firestorm may crash the instance :) Could you share your beta tree? Try as I might to make a tree I always end up with 150% life or under and severe Str issues AND no jewel sockets. Also can you go 100% mana reserved and sustain mana on EB + ES gained on hit? Last edited by azmodael#0736 on Jun 6, 2015, 5:34:06 AM
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" Try to save up for one! If the build remains the same at launch it will be the optimal chest. " Not sure how to share a beta tree. Also, my current one on beta is messed up from experimenting with reverse knockback gloves and fending. Generally speaking the tree is the hardest part of this build, as you need a toooon of nodes and it's extremely painful when you're missing them. I'll attempt to make an optimized one when we know the final skill tree, until then I'd suggest just logically taking nodes which you need (life, crit, wand etc.) Also to be honest min-maxing that kind of stuff isn't my forte, which is obvious by the fact that I'm scion in 1.3 (she's decent in CB though). " Yes, this is currently what I am running on CB. I think it's a very efficient use of EB for this build. Last edited by pabrt#4594 on Jun 6, 2015, 4:34:11 PM
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You can get one from here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/38lthu/cb_spoiler_passive_skill_tree_changes_201565/ The thing is that you need so many nodes and there is no easy life available. Best I could get was 160%-ish increased life on lvl 90 which isnt all that much. The frost wall blocking help i guess? What do you do against flicker/leapers? Last edited by azmodael#0736 on Jun 6, 2015, 5:38:49 PM
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