[3.0] Legasi's Masterpiece - Trivialize Bossfights! Shaper Deathless! Boss Guides inside! HC

Thank you once again Legasi for this great guide.
I have a question now that I finally was able to invest in a 6L. My char is Plasmodia in my profile, currently looking like this (https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAAPuDXwOSBEtES8RUBGWFX4V1xbzGF0YahpsGyUc3B2-H8ci9CY8Jogo-isKK3gsnCymLL8tiy-dM4c1uTeDPAU87z1fQnpJsUuuTm1SU1KvVkhWY1fJWAdcQFxrXfJfamf8aPJsC20ZdZ54L3pwfIN85Xzwf8aCm4LHhEiGrofLjxqPRo_6kNaRB5Mnl_SaO5uhnDKdrp_foS-lxKbrpwinK6ebrfG1SLcwuJO7Tbv8vorAZsHFw23PFdDQ1abXz9gk2VvdX9-K5CLoWukC62Pr7uwY7TzvfO-I98H31_k3-eg=)in the tree and her gear you can see in char slot -- nothing great, but I feel totally comfortable with around 11k ES.

As you can see, I recolored my Mantle to all blue. I had started with Void Manip as my sixth link, and it was just fine, but I wanted to test Concentrated Effect, because I was worried with VM about the "less" elemental damage, since I still like doing a bit of fire damage because I use Doryani's Invitation on my waist which is for me nice QoL against hexproof. My tooltip DPS does really go up with CE, and I don't feel like I really lack area, since CwC just spams without that horible Spell-Echo lock.
My question is: How much better do you think VM is over CE? I know that VM does not make my tooltip go up as much, but I see that it synergizes with Wither much more. I'm just not sure how much more, since things are melting so fast now with CE. Am I getting tricked into thinking more elemental damage is better?
Thank you!

@onomastikon:

Don't trust the tooltip since it doesn't account for poison (84% of sustained damage on my setup).
However, since poison only matters for sustained damage (bosses), you can somewhat trust the tooltip with regards to clear-speed.
Myself, I have 2k tooltip in town with a tree variant and gear focused on boss-killing. Clear-speed is still ok-ish.

About gems, remember that some gems double-dip and some don't. Two of those are better than anything else:
Concentrated Effect: 60% more on FS and double-dips for 156% more on ignite and poison. It is a must-have, the only support you should consider if you are poor and use a 4L.
Void Manip: the 25% reduced elem dmg accounts for about 4% less FS dmg, but the 40% more chaos dmg double-dips for 96% more poison dmg; it totally outweights what Elemental Focus can give you, except for clear-speed (slightly).

Then, if you have a 6L, you are left with a choice between stuff that doesn't double-dip:
- Added Chaos Damage: about 72% more FS chaos dmg
- Increased Duration: ~52% more FS duration
- Elemental Focus: 50% more FS dmg
- Controlled Destruction: 45% more FS dmg
all others are terrible.
(assuming the default tree with +45% skill effect duration, no helm enchant and using a shield)

All those give pretty similar results, except for added chaos which is simply superior, because:
- elemental focus: ignite can't stack unless you use Emberwake, it's near zero damage
- controlled destruction: we have no crit mult
- increased duration: doesn't improve clear-speed but it helps sustained dps twice since it also helps for wither-stacking (only really makes a difference on hexproof though). Also can be swapped for Life-leech, which is convenient (though mostly for hexproof, which leads to a dilemma).



@Legasi:

Thank you for your guide!
This build is really fun to play and works well.

"

Niicinila wrote:

@onomastikon:

Don't trust the tooltip since it doesn't account for poison (84% of sustained damage on my setup).
However, since poison only matters for sustained damage (bosses), you can somewhat trust the tooltip with regards to clear-speed.
Myself, I have 2k tooltip in town with a tree variant and gear focused on boss-killing. Clear-speed is still ok-ish.

About gems, remember that some gems double-dip and some don't. Two of those are better than anything else:
Concentrated Effect: 60% more on FS and double-dips for 156% more on ignite and poison. It is a must-have, the only support you should consider if you are poor and use a 4L.
Void Manip: the 25% reduced elem dmg accounts for about 4% less FS dmg, but the 40% more chaos dmg double-dips for 96% more poison dmg; it totally outweights what Elemental Focus can give you, except for clear-speed (slightly).

Then, if you have a 6L, you are left with a choice between stuff that doesn't double-dip:
- Added Chaos Damage: about 72% more FS chaos dmg
- Increased Duration: ~52% more FS duration
- Elemental Focus: 50% more FS dmg
- Controlled Destruction: 45% more FS dmg
all others are terrible.
(assuming the default tree with +45% skill effect duration, no helm enchant and using a shield)

All those give pretty similar results, except for added chaos which is simply superior, because:
- elemental focus: ignite can't stack unless you use Emberwake, it's near zero damage
- controlled destruction: we have no crit mult
- increased duration: doesn't improve clear-speed but it helps sustained dps twice since it also helps for wither-stacking (only really makes a difference on hexproof though). Also can be swapped for Life-leech, which is convenient (though mostly for hexproof, which leads to a dilemma).

Thank you very much for that reply, very helpful. I'm afraid I don't understand everything, however. I apologize in advance for not being good enough at the maths, but perhaps my questions will be helpful to other people too:
Basically, I still do not entirely understand the superiority of VM over CD. Here are some subquestions to that:
1. why does Void Manip account for 4% less FS damage and not 25% less FS damage?
2. Since our chaos damage is based off our FS damage, a *more* to FS would also result in a *more* to chaos, no? Albeit 45% of that, anyway, since we convert 45% of fire to chaos. (Yes, I do not own a legacy dagger.)
Then, you say that added chaos damage is superior to EF and CD, which I do not entirely understand:
3. Why do you say that elemental focus is inferior because ignite does not stack? I mean, EF makes status ailments (ignite) impossible, so using EF makes ignite's unstackability moot anyway? and 50% *more* is great?
4. Similarly with CD: why should using CD play a role in our not having crit multi? We get *more* damage for a *decrease* in crit chance?

My current all-blue setup is:
Wither - CwC - FS - CD - EF - CE --> tooltip shows 3147 damage per use FS, 1.2k-1.8k fire and 1.3k-2k chaos
removing EF or CE show fairly similar tooltip reductions, removing CD the least (so even the tooltip says that CD is least effective). I don't have a leveled Added Chaos to test.
I chromed out of all blue to add 1 green, and get:
Wither - CwC - FS - VM - EF - CE --> tooltip shows 2480 damage per use FS, 780-1.2k fire and 1.2k-1.8k chaos --
that seems like LESS to me. Can the tooltip be trusted here? If so, Void Manip is inferior to CD.
I will try to test clearing and boss-killing, but in the meantime, any reply is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Ok, so, in order:

Void Manip has a 25% reduced elemental damage. Please note that all increased and reduced bonuses are additive together. The other kind of bonuses, more and less, are multiplicative together; and that's why most endgame builds will stack as many 'more' bonuses' as possible instead of 'increased' ones.
Since we got about 400% increased damage total on FS for the chaos part (from gear, the tree, gem quality...), 25% reduced elemental reduces it to 375% increased. Then, 475/500 = 95%.

You are right when you say that a % more bonus on FS will also boost the chaos part. Of course, it will also boost the poison indirectly since the hit will be bigger. So, everything scales linearly with bonuses that affects FS (and only FS).
However, and that's the whole point of the build, some bonuses apply twice (that's double-dipping)! Once for the hit (FS), and once more for scaling the poison itself. Those are, in our case: area damage, chaos damage, damage taken (Wither), chaos resistance (Void Beacon).
Void manipulation only boosts the chaos part of FS, but it double-dips. At lvl 21 it's 40% more, equivalent to a factor of 1.4. Then, for poison damage, it applies twice: 1.4 * 1.4 = 1.96 ----> 96% more.

About Elemental Focus vs Added Chaos
What I meant by "similar results" is that all three gems give about 50% more dmg with a twist, but a twist that is mostly inconsequential. EF is slightly better than CD, BUT can't ignite, BUT ignite is super small dps anyway since it doesn't stack. On the other end, CD's twist doesn't directly affect dps, it's just a bigger risk of an unlucky streak leading to not having EO for a while. It's a lot of "yes, but..." in sequence, and we end up nitpicking for 1-2%. On the contrary, added chaos has no twist: it's pure dmg, and more of this dmg than with other gems. So, don't hesitate, take it.
TL;DR: best gem setup is Wither > CwC > FS > CE > VM > Added Chaos.
Again it's only true for the base build. Some variants might benefit more from other gems

"

Niicinila wrote:

Ok, so, in order:

Void Manip has a 25% reduced elemental damage. Please note that all increased and reduced bonuses are additive together. The other kind of bonuses, more and less, are multiplicative together; and that's why most endgame builds will stack as many 'more' bonuses' as possible instead of 'increased' ones.
Since we got about 400% increased damage total on FS for the chaos part (from gear, the tree, gem quality...), 25% reduced elemental reduces it to 375% increased. Then, 475/500 = 95%.

You are right when you say that a % more bonus on FS will also boost the chaos part. Of course, it will also boost the poison indirectly since the hit will be bigger. So, everything scales linearly with bonuses that affects FS (and only FS).
However, and that's the whole point of the build, some bonuses apply twice (that's double-dipping)! Once for the hit (FS), and once more for scaling the poison itself. Those are, in our case: area damage, chaos damage, damage taken (Wither), chaos resistance (Void Beacon).
Void manipulation only boosts the chaos part of FS, but it double-dips. At lvl 21 it's 40% more, equivalent to a factor of 1.4. Then, for poison damage, it applies twice: 1.4 * 1.4 = 1.96 ----> 96% more.

About Elemental Focus vs Added Chaos
What I meant by "similar results" is that all three gems give about 50% more dmg with a twist, but a twist that is mostly inconsequential. EF is slightly better than CD, BUT can't ignite, BUT ignite is super small dps anyway since it doesn't stack. On the other end, CD's twist doesn't directly affect dps, it's just a bigger risk of an unlucky streak leading to not having EO for a while. It's a lot of "yes, but..." in sequence, and we end up nitpicking for 1-2%. On the contrary, added chaos has no twist: it's pure dmg, and more of this dmg than with other gems. So, don't hesitate, take it.
TL;DR: best gem setup is Wither > CwC > FS > CE > VM > Added Chaos.
Again it's only true for the base build. Some variants might benefit more from other gems

Thank you for that very helpful elucidation.
Sorry, I mistook "reduced" for "less".
It is interesting that you come to a different conclusion than Legasi does when he lists his gem preference priority.
My Added Chaos is only lowish level (never leveled one) but I'm going to level it and try swapping with EF.
I do find it difficult to test, because even if I want to run the same maps, I only have a few types of lowerish level maps, and even those always come with at least slightly different mods. And I can't really test on Dried Lake, since everything just melts immediately. It's hard to tell empirically what's best since there is so much situationalism and I can't trust the tooltip.
PS would you be kind enough, if you have a moment, to check out my character (Plasmodia) and see if you think the variant I am using is ok for the gem setup? Of course some suboptimalities exist (my gear), and I am using Doryani's Invitation for QoL leech.

A good target for dps is minotaur. But tests are slightly expensive, yes...

It's no wonder that I come to a different conclusion for gems since Legasi wrote parts of the guide with legacy items in mind (consuming dark, VoV...). With legacy Consuming Dark, added chaos is only slightly better than EF (54% vs 50%), for example. Also, the guide considers swapping Conc Effect for something else while clearing, but I didn't.

Note: if you use a Added Chaos gem, make sure to have it as high lvl as possible. VM, CE, etc give 1% per lvl, but added chaos goes up much faster and scales independently from the base skill dmg. Basically, if your added chaos is 2 lvl below FS or more, it's a big waste.

For your gear, I think the most obvious things to do are:
- put some uber enchant on boots ("life leech if you killed recently" is very nice backup for hexproof, "life regen if hit recently" is nice too, or some stun avoidance)
- grab a firestorm enchanted helm. The math for which is best is not as biased as for gems... In short: inc duration is ok, inc explosion aoe is stronger only if you have low aoe radius (< 90%) though will always give better clear speed, and the inc damage is meh.
- in your chest, replace all gems < lvl 19 with q20 gems. There is almost no point bothering to lvl 18->20 a 0% gem at this time in the league, except if gcp is like candy for you. The cumulative increased damage % from quality is +60% (double-dip) on this setup, it's nice. When those are 20/20, vaal for 21/20 (except Wither where you aim for 3/23).
The only three gems really important to vaal are FS, added chaos and discipline. The others only give small gains in comparison. The market reflects this fact: 21/20 FS is sold for 3-4ex while the supports are <2ex. A good financial strategy is to lvl and vaal 7 FS and buy the supports.

If you do some bosses you might notice a few shortcomings in your build:
- no freeze protection (don't try Tul)
- weak stun protection (you probably won't be interrupted, but you can be stun-locked in place. Don't try Esh!)
for those, I simply recommend two uniques : Auxium and Eye of Chayula. Yes, those items are terrible, but it's very good. Tul is now doable, Esh a pushover. Also the Eye lets you free some stun nodes in the tree, which allows some fun stuff.

Hey, Niicinila.

What do you think are the minimum requirements to start farming shaper?
Can it be dun on a 5L, to save a lot of currency?
And do you think investing in The Taming ring is worth it?

I want to get some experience farming Shaper and this build looks interesting for it.

Yo, nice to see some quality discussion going on here :3

@ono Yeah nii explained everything correctly. You have to be really careful with wordings "more vs increased" and some need some feeling for numbers to evaluate the effect of different tweaks.

Keep in mind that the tooltip damage is *not* 45% chaos and 55% fire, the increased chaos damage only applies to the chaos damage part, increasing the chaos portion a lot.


Theoretically, the optimal setup for total damage is W - CWC - FS - Conc - Inc Dur - VM.

However this build's "bottleneck" is not single target damage, it's clearspeed/quality of life. All of the three supports listed above actually don't benefit or even reduce the clearspeed.
For general clearing a satisfying feeling is way more important than some (hidden) tt numbers. Thus I decided to actually prioritise increasing the hit damage for comfortable gameplay and fastest possible clearspeed.
Keeping this in mind, feel free to find your own combination of support gems! Also you should really try swapping in Conc for CD only for hard bossfights.

______

@nii Thanks for explaining!

Keep in mind the 40% FS damage helmet enchant also double dips!

Added Chaos is that good? Last time I tested it was when the build still had 100% conversion and it was meh at best, however it totally makes sense it's better now. But 72% more? Holy crap.

You should really grab the Method of Madness Chaos damage wheel in your skilltree.

Why don't you enhance your curses?

Emberwake Taming Masterpiece is a very interesting variation of the build. Mind sharing your impressions? I'm especially curious if it's a) significantly better b) worth the investment (currency and ring slots) and most importantly c) necessary (did you play a regular version before?). That sounds a bit rude but isn't meant that way, i'm just curious :)

Also, would you mind testing something for me? I just got that idea while looking at your flask setup.
Swap your Mana and Ruby Flask for Jade and Stibnite. The total of Flat eva, inc eva, blind from smoke cloud and massive accuracy loss from enhanced Enfeeble should make a pretty good layer of defense against attacks.

"

DutchWarbandit wrote:

Hey, Niicinila.

What do you think are the minimum requirements to start farming shaper?
Can it be dun on a 5L, to save a lot of currency?
And do you think investing in The Taming ring is worth it?

I want to get some experience farming Shaper and this build looks interesting for it.

I don't really know. Unfortunately I didn't try Shaper yet on this league.
I'm not very good in dangerous bossfights like those where one mistake = dead. I panick and press all buttons v_v
When I beat a boss like this, it's usually with overwhelming power, which makes my opinion on the difficulty and requirements not really interesting...

Anyway, from what I remember and from the dmg I dealt on atzi, I think it's doable with a 5L and no taming. But it'll be long! Taming and 6L for x16 dmg, or so say my excel sheet. Or Taming + 5L for "only" x8 dmg (removing void manip).

I'll tell you: yes, taming is worth it. With the content update, price for the ring recently dropped by 50-60%, it's even cheaper than a mantle 6L!
The dmg it gives is insane: on large trash it can go to 400M, on Shaper 15M. It requires stacking, which is bad, but wither require stacking too. If we are to stack anyway, why not stack two things simultaneously?

"

Niicinila wrote:

"

DutchWarbandit wrote:

Hey, Niicinila.

What do you think are the minimum requirements to start farming shaper?
Can it be dun on a 5L, to save a lot of currency?
And do you think investing in The Taming ring is worth it?

I want to get some experience farming Shaper and this build looks interesting for it.

I don't really know. Unfortunately I didn't try Shaper yet on this league.
I'm not very good in dangerous bossfights like those where one mistake = dead. I panick and press all buttons v_v
When I beat a boss like this, it's usually with overwhelming power, which makes my opinion on the difficulty and requirements not really interesting...

Anyway, from what I remember and from the dmg I dealt on atzi, I think it's doable with a 5L and no taming. But it'll be long! Taming and 6L for x16 dmg, or so say my excel sheet. Or Taming + 5L for "only" x8 dmg (removing void manip).

I'll tell you: yes, taming is worth it. With the content update, price for the ring recently dropped by 50-60%, it's even cheaper than a mantle 6L!
The dmg it gives is insane: on large trash it can go to 400M, on Shaper 15M. It requires stacking, which is bad, but wither require stacking too. If we are to stack anyway, why not stack two things simultaneously?

Thanks for answering, I will probably invest in the ring and a 6L.
Is there a way to see that excel sheet of yours? I'm interested in the math behind it.