[2.1] iao's Poison Blink/Mirror Arrow -- 3/4 Curses, 2s Full ES Recharge, 8k+ HP -- Videos
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This is my take on a Blink/Mirror Arrow minion build, abusing most of the best ways to scale Poison damage. I'll keep it short and sweet as it's meant for intermediate/advanced players. You can find more in-depth information on Blink/Mirror Arrow in Dariidar's thread.
2.2 Update: I'm working on my character in Perandus and will update the guide as I go. Occultist is a huge buff.
Blink/Mirror Arrow?
If you haven't seen or played with these skills as damage sources, they're pretty much Siege Ballista * no limit * with a lower duration, with higher summoning range, with a skill use cooldown, and are only affected by the bow and quiver you use and minion modifiers. Check the above link for more details.
Poison?
Blink/Mirror Arrow can scale damage incredibly high, exponentially so when DoTs are involved. If you understand damage modifier double-dipping, the skill gems speak for themselves: Yep, that says 75% more minion damage. Yep, that much increased minion damage too. Beyond that, some optimal support gems also double dip and heavily affect Poison. Plus, the unique items used are also very powerful for Poison: Lioneye's Glare is not only fast, but has good physical damage and hits cannot be evaded (which helps both the minions and Curse on Hit). Vis Mortis provides both increased minion damage but also Unholy Might, which adds 30% of physical damage as chaos. Soul Strike has good attack speed and added chaos damage, but also nice defensive aspects. It is also cheap and unpopular so it can be bought in mass and corrupted for an additional arrow.
Curses?
Minions have high synergy with curses because of the passive skill tree's placement of their nodes. You can get all the minion damage and curse effect nodes and still stack many jewels and have formidable defenses. Moreover, curses are some of the best ways to scale Poison damage but also increase your defenses and provide AoE capabilities. The following are the main curses used, and their effects with maximum increased effect of curses (72%). Projectile Weakness (20/20%)
Vulnerability (20/20%)
Temporal Chains (14/0% - Due to Socket Limitations)
Shock is also applied using Vaal Lightning Trap, which also helps with double-dipping damage. You can also shock without it if you opt for a fourth curse and use Conductivity, as this build also has Wrath and Elemental Equilibrium. This also allows you to switch it out for Enfeeble. An Animate Guardian is also used with the classic Leer Cast + Dying Breath setup to provide both 33% increased damage for allies/minions and 18% increased curse effect.
2s Energy Shield Recharge? (Edit: Talisman Access Only)
Blightwell and Soul Strike are pretty powerful for Energy Shield builds alone, but together they counter the other's drawback and are formidable defensively. The former gives huge increased recharge rate with slower start of recharge, and the latter gives much faster start of recharge and slower recharge rate. With just these two items you're given 120% faster start of recharge and 360% increased recharge rate, which probably isn't doable otherwise. In this build we acquire slightly more increased recharge rate and the result is:
Math
Start of Energy Shield Recharge 200 / (100 + 120) = 0.909090 ~0.9 seconds to start recharge. Energy Shield Recharge Rate 20 * 4.85 = 97 97% energy shield recharged per second. Total Time to Start Recharge and Reach 100% from 0 100 / 97 = 1.030927 1.030927 + 0.909090 = 1.940017 A total of 1.94 seconds to start and recharge ES from 0 to 100%. So, roughly 1 second to start the recharge and 1 second to recharge all ES. In the case of using Wicked Ward, the recharge itself is uninterruptible so all you need is to wait the 1 second cooldown time for it to start. Now that we have the concept explained, lets get to the actual build.
Tree and Ascendancy
Hybrid Life + Energy Shield Occultist You will initially struggle with Dexterity so you have options to pick some notables on the tree for it. Eventually you'll be able to replace those Dexterity notables with gear and jewels. The reason we go with Hybrid Life + Energy Shield is because it allows for a high HP pool (I'm currently sitting at ~8k) and we don't need Eldritch Battery to cram auras in. Plus the Soul Strike + Blightwell combination works best for it.
Gear
Gems
For Blink/Mirror Arrow, level a Slower Projectiles gem for each. You can swap them into your LMP/GMP socket for tougher enemies or quick kills. You can also optionally use it as your 6th gem instead of Increased Duration. For tough enemies you could switch Rain of Arrows out for Ice Shot and LMP/GMP out for Hypothermia. This is likely optimal for Atziri. Use Greater Multiple Projectiles initially until you can get an additional arrow from either your corrupted bow or quiver. Then you can switch to Lesser Multiple Projectiles comfortably. This is important because the the double-dipping "less projectile damage" is much less harsh on Poison with LMP. A 4th curse with Blasphemy will stretch the limits of your gearing but is a solid choice to make if you can pull it off. Enfeeble is absurd with maximum curse effectiveness so it's likely the best choice. same name in-game Last edited by iao#2860 on May 22, 2016, 12:05:30 AM Last bumped on May 26, 2016, 5:11:40 AM
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Nice build, but I want to ask you what do you think about Rigwald's Quills Two-Point Arrow Quiver? Looks like it is free 7th link to both arrows without a drawback and should provide really good AoE, but I am not sure how well it works with high pierce chance.
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I'd say it's a good choice overall, one that I didn't really consider much until now. With this curse oriented build I'd say it's not the best option but with one that doesn't focus on piercing it probably is.
However in curse immune maps it's definitely the best choice to swap in instead of replacing a link with the Pierce support gem. When I go in-depth with the gearing I'll make sure to add it in. Thanks Semarogin. same name in-game
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Updated. Included a video demonstration.
same name in-game
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Updated again.
same name in-game
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What is the reason of wrath aura? It wont increase poison dmg at all. Isnt it better to run like maybe 2 blasphemy curses + dicipline if u have the mana so u dont have to curse on hit everything?
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" Wrath is a high hit damage boost which helps a lot with curse immune maps/enemies. It gets scaled a lot with Generosity, Elemental Equilibrium, Projectile Weakness, and minion damage increases. It's quite noticeable not having it. Even though the poison damage is high, more hit damage helps a lot with clearspeed because it lets the clones target other enemies quickly. Blasphemy has a small range which really isn't great for the build playstyle because of its range, which would be detrimental for either of the three curses. That said, if you don't want to run Wrath and would rather go more defensive, Arctic Armour is also great. You could also go quad curse if you have super good gear (Astramentis with additional curse would be godly if you're willing to ditch Blightwell) and run Enfeeble + Blasphemy. It's just a matter of preference. I don't feel it's necessary, but I can see the appeal. I've been running every map mod comfortably up to tier 12 maps (including bosses unless they're super buffed, haven't dropped 13+ though), even Blood Magic, and haven't had problems when playing carefully. same name in-game Last edited by iao#2860 on Feb 6, 2016, 2:02:08 PM
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Thinking over it, I should probably expand upon the post for the different variants possible. Once I get a 6L or two I'll take a crack at a more defensive version of the build, as it would give me a huge offensive boost that'd make up for the loss of Wrath. I'm gonna edit the post with some possible variations one can use like quad curse, full defensive, full damage, Chaos Inoculation, etc.
I also recently learned that the Trap support gem allows me to bypass the innate cooldown of the skills, which is intriguing. That is to say using the Trap version doesn't put the non-Trap versions in cooldown. With it in mind I might try to work in a link setup in my alternate weapon set for Atziri. That said, it really isn't necessary or fun for normal gameplay, especially for clear speed. It's really only good for the burst damage. same name in-game
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Hey man, I want to do this build for Ascendancy assuming poison doesnt get nerfed into the ground, but if it does then I will just use the EE variant. What is your current DPS? I cant see how you can scale the clones any further so I was wondering how viable it is in harder maps.
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It's really tedious to find out what my current DPS is considering all the multipliers and the fact that the tooltip doesn't help, but when I do that I'll share my findings. But I can say that the damage feels really good so far in tier 12 maps. I'll record another video soon so you get a good idea of what it's like.
Currently I am only using 5Ls, but 6Ls would boost damage tremendously. You can see on my character in my profile a lot of my gems are still level 19 and not max quality so I guess that's considerable. If I go with Slower Projectiles I'd have 66.41% more poison damage with a level 20 gem which is pretty substantial. I've been trying to 6L a Vis Mortis but I'm running out of currency to do so unfortunately. And yeah... I really hope Poison isn't super nerfed like every other meta GGG deconstructs. I'm banking on us still getting 100% chance to poison but without the increased damage on the gem, which if so means we should still have roughly the same or more damage because of Ascendancy classes. same name in-game
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