[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice EleRaider - Viable for Everything

Seeing as how all three Whispering Ice builds in the Scion forums suggest going Scion, Witch Occultist must be strictly inferior. Mind explaining why Occultist Witch is worse than Berserker+Elementalist? I know that you sacrifice the global 1.5% damage leech, but would Vile Bastion sort of make up for it? Sorry if this has already been asked.

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phirefor wrote:

Seeing as how all three Whispering Ice builds in the Scion forums suggest going Scion, Witch Occultist must be strictly inferior. Mind explaining why Occultist Witch is worse than Berserker+Elementalist? I know that you sacrifice the global 1.5% damage leech, but would Vile Bastion sort of make up for it? Sorry if this has already been asked.

1.5% leech is a huge bonus. You gotta leech ES to survive. Without leech you are a sitting duck and have to range kill everything including bosses and constantly stop to regen ES.

Before 2.2 we used Life Leech, and now we replaced it with Ele Focus for 50% MORE damage. We still use it for reflect maps too. Berserker also gives 10% MORE of it's own. The MORE's apply multiplicatively, so that one class actually gave us 1.50 * 1.10 = 1.65 = 65% MORE damage.

Elementalist gives extra 5% resist penetration (see the Offense - Details section for the explanation of how good penetration is) and 30% increased damage for the golem.

We get both of these nice classes as Scion Ascendant. Now let's look at Witch Occultist...

'Recently' means 'in the last 4 seconds'. Vile Bastion works only as long as you keep killing something, i.e. it won't help you against bosses. And 0.5% ES/sec regen (or 1-2% if you keep killing multiple mobs) is not going to save you against anything serious. Wicked Ward/Vile Bastion is meant to work in combination with other, much more powerful, ES regen abilities. But this is not a regen build.

'Immune to stun while on Full ES' must be a dev joke. You won't have full ES very often in a serious encounter. If it was 'while not on Low ES' then it would have been great.

The other nice thing Occultist has is +1 curse (Malediction). But that's also not a good fit for this build, you waste its Chaos damage-oriented part. You save 5 tree nodes, but you just spend those 5 nodes to get something similar to what Elementalist gives, likely not even as good.

Another reason why Scion is because you can't connect the parts of the tree as any other class. Without the lower branch of our tree, a Witch would require Skyforth and expensive resist+damage jewels. But this is a low budget build that almost anybody should be able to afford in a new league.

Do you think going Occultist as second ascendancy is better suited for HC?

I'm having a hard time deciding between Ele/Occultist but I can't help thinking I'll miss out on around 400 ES by not taking occultist.

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D_nasty wrote:

Do you think going Occultist as second ascendancy is better suited for HC?

I'm having a hard time deciding between Ele/Occultist but I can't help thinking I'll miss out on around 400 ES by not taking occultist.

elementalist is definitely better even on hc. why?

well, lets start by having a look at the 4% reduced elemental damage from the elementalist sublcass: this reduction interacts multiplicatively with resistances, which means that it flat out reduced the elemental damage taken by 4%, as stated. no tricks or quirks involved. in the endgame, this build has somewhere between 8k and 11k ES, depending the gear level. with 8k ES, those 4% are equivalent to 320 ES... so against elemental damage, there is virtually no difference between the classes, with occultist being marginally stronger below 10k ES and marginally weaker above 10k ES.

moreover, against elemental reflect, the decisive quantity is not our ES pool but the difference between damage taken and leech. occultist does nothing for "reflect sustainability" while the elementalist damage reduction does.


additionally, even when you are taking physical damage, the penetration and the damage bonus from elementalist will increase your damage by so much more compared to the damage buffs of occultist that the increased leech will easily make up for the lost 400ES whenever we are not getting one-shot. and with 8k++ ES, pretty much nothing except for highly telegraphed boss attacks (malachai/dom slam) or DD on map bosses will oneshot us. also keep in mind that, for example, a 90+% increased armor granite flask will provide something like 40-50% physical damage reduction - which in turn is multiplied with a much larger ehp pool than on life-based chars. armour scaling aside, a physical hit would have to deal upwards of roughly 16k nominal damage to oneshot our 8k ES with a granite up. when we reach 10k ES, something like 20k+ of physical damage in one hit would be required... whoever is stupid enough to catch a hit like that shouldnt be playing hc in the first place.

The ocultist passive ES regen - is it affected by "Increased energy shield recharge rate" as in Bated Breath?


I'm still more swayed towards ocultist since my golem is never alive in prolonged conflict and I have to recast him so many times it makes me want to puke... Maybe I'll just have to link CWDT to settle this.

But just to make sure - the 4% elemental damage reduction from elementalist does apply over the normal resistance limit right? So in essence it would make our base max resists equal 79%?

Does 5% e-damage reduction isn't neglated by 5% max resist penetration? You do 5% more damage and reduce it by reflect. More damage from Berserk isn't contered at all.

Still Elementalist gives more damage and this leads to more leech. It looks like only by swapping fire penetration vs life leech we can just ignore every possible reflect.

I'm enjoiing this build - espetially after getting pair of perendus :)

Cheers!

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werchiel wrote:

The ocultist passive ES regen - is it affected by "Increased energy shield recharge rate" as in Bated Breath?

I'm still more swayed towards ocultist since my golem is never alive in prolonged conflict and I have to recast him so many times it makes me want to puke... Maybe I'll just have to link CWDT to settle this.

But just to make sure - the 4% elemental damage reduction from elementalist does apply over the normal resistance limit right? So in essence it would make our base max resists equal 79%?

ES recharge is a separate mechanic from ES regeneration. Bated Breath will not improve the regeneration from Vile Ward, Occultist Ascendant, or from Zealot's Oath. If it did, you'd see RF ES builds abusing it!

CWDT is definitely the way for golem, means you'll never forget to re-summon him, and even a L20 CWDT triggers very often since our ES pool exceeds 10K.

The 4% reduced elemental damage taken is multiplicative with resistances, not additive. This means that from an elemental hit you will take 25% (from resistances) * 96% (from elementalist) = 24% of elemental damage. Thus this perk is functionally equivalent to +1% to all maximum resistances. Not great, but not bad.

Question:

How do you people handle elemental reflect?
Over the past 2 days I managed to kill myself 3 times on elemental reflect rares, the leech simply was not enough, even with life leech gem inside the staff instead of fire penetration.

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lapilesos wrote:

Does 5% e-damage reduction isn't neglated by 5% max resist penetration? You do 5% more damage and reduce it by reflect. More damage from Berserk isn't contered at all.

Resist penetration does not apply to reflected damage. Otherwise we'd insta-rip on every reflect rare we met. :)

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Baalorlord wrote:

CWDT is definitely the way for golem, means you'll never forget to re-summon him, and even a L20 CWDT triggers very often since our ES pool exceeds 10K.

Instead of FC? But then you won't have FC for Flame Dash?

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Palaryel wrote:

Question:

How do you people handle elemental reflect?
Over the past 2 days I managed to kill myself 3 times on elemental reflect rares, the leech simply was not enough, even with life leech gem inside the staff instead of fire penetration.

Are you trying to range kill stuff? Or self-casting WM (and missing some)? The trick is to be close enough to the mobs you are killing so that the WM aura covers them.

Don't combine reflect with Curse Immune, -max res, Ele Weakness. Or rather, you have to be extra careful if you do that. If you meet an ele reflect rare in a map with those things, kill it in the middle of a pack - that way you will leech from many mobs at once while taking reflect damage from it. Ruby flask too.

Boot enchantment for extra leech is also nice and not hard to get:


I'll add a video of a reflect map.

Video update:

Reflect + No Regen = No Problem (+bonus ending)

Just make sure everything you hit stays within the WM aura. Watch out for rares with their own extra reflect and curse immune types. If you meet any of those, mix them with normal mobs and pop a Ruby flask.