[3.7] Storm Brand Elementalist. League Starter, Deathless Uber Elder.
  3.7 UPDATE 2
Spoiler
As I mentioned I started the league with cyclone slayer (and apparently half the player base had the same idea). It was strong, but I wanted to try to make storm brand good post nerf, so I started a storm brand assassin. PoB: https://pastebin.com/i63GuE42 Gear:
Spoiler
I chose assassin in large part because I wanted to use the militant faith jewel for a nice 21% more damage modifier. It has to have dominus as the general to give the right keystone, which I put on pain attunement:  A +1 chain quiver and carcass jack help make up for the clear speed we once got from the proliferate + inpulsa combo. They don't really compare, but it does make the clear speed good enough. I made some videos if anybody is interested: 3.7 Storm Brand Assassin 8 Property Lair of the Hydra 3.7 Storm Brand Assassin Deathless Uber Elder The defenses are identical to the elementalist version, MoM and phase acrobatics. My gear is kind of terrible, but that will get better if I stick with it. The single-target damage can pretty easily outpace elementalist even pre-nerf, though with my gear right now it is only fair. It is pretty cheap overall, since casters are not meta, and we don't need a 6-link unique chest. I played it with an essence crafted bow for a while before I multimodded, and it was fine. The militant faith was 10c (heh), the watcher's eye was 30c. Getting a good +1 chain quiver is expensive, which is why you see me using a garbage one. The bow comes from porcupine cards (40c for a set). Slap a spell damage essence on it and you're rocking a 6-link on the cheap. Coloring it is a bit annoying, but not as much as you'd think, since the dex requirement is so low on a short bow. It only took me about 10 tries on the bench (1b) to hit 4 blues. I'm trying to get vorici into research to try to turn the final green socket white so I can swap added cold for a more damage focused gem on big bosses. Added cold is kind of nice while mapping though anyway. Not fully reflect immune, but if you swap controlled destruction for increased crits, and put on the reflect pantheon, you can do reflect maps. Mostly I just roll past them though. No full guide yet, but if there's a lot of interest I may write up a proper guide. 3.7 UPDATE
Spoiler
Storm brand nerf is more of a rebalance, single target should actually go up, clear speed may go down. The bigger hit for us specifically as elementalists is the Beacon of Ruin nerf. Losing the proliferation means inpulsa is far less effective at instant-popping packs. Our clearspeed will suffer significantly. Beacon of ruin has always been the reason to roll elementalist. Even with the nerf it is still the strongest node in elementalist, but it no longer really provides a compelling argument for choosing elementalist over another ascendancy. It is likely that something like a trickster could be an overall better choice for storm brand now. Inpulsa is far less good now, but still a usable chest option. It will take some testing to see how many actual pops you end up getting without the proliferate. Other good chest options include carcass jack for offense, or any of shroud of the lightless, loreweave, or cloak of defiance for more defense. Getting enough mana for MoM will be harder now due to the removal of the big mana nodes behind MoM. This raises the value of items like atziri's foible or cloak of defiance - and makes reserving any of your mana even less desirable. In terms of the passive tree, the spec is virtually unchanged: https://pastebin.com/Sq5HCqBd 3.6 UPDATE
Spoiler
Long story short: Nerfed, but not killed. The build loses in the neighborhood of 20% damage, but since there's no mechanical changes, it will actually still be a top tier build. It will not be quite as smooth as it was at low gear levels, but will still be a solid league starter, and will still scale well into end game. I will not be playing the build in 3.6 (I like to try new things every league), but here's some thoughts on the changes: 1) Damage loss isn't that big of a deal 2) Crit change means it is harder to keep up elemental equilibrium with controlled destruction. I recommend getting the "crit chance if you haven't crit recently" boot enchant from lab, and using something other than lab enchant for your mana solution (several mana solutions are discussed in the gear section). Without the boot enchant or any other source of crit, you'll have 2.2% crit, which may be a bit low (but warrants testing). 3) A wave of conviction for elemental exposure would be a good addition to help boss damage. It could be linked to curse on hit elemental weakness as well, since curses aren't completely useless on bosses now. It does NOT need to be supported by phys to lightning, the added lightning damage on our weapons will make it do more lightning than fire. Here's an updated PoB for 3.6: https://pastebin.com/nUvY5YzY Here's an open prefix budget weapon search for 3.6: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Synthesis/8R65ynhV That will help you find a reasonably priced wand with room to craft a prefix. You're looking for room to craft added lightning damage to spells (no conflicting pure added cold/light/fire to spells roll), or room to craft spell damage (no conflicting increased damage prefix). For more details see the answered questions section. Introduction
Spoiler
Storm Brand Elementalist offers excellent clear speed and capable boss damage. I used it as my league starter for Betrayal league, and it exceeded my expectations. Gameplay is smooth thanks to the instant cast nature of brand recall, as well as the instant damage from Storm Brand (as opposed to Armageddon Brand). Brand elementalist is a popular build, with several streamers running something similar. My take on the build is fairly defensive, with an eye towards being able to do all map mods and all content, including safely farming uber elder. Videos
Spoiler
Deathless Uber Elder With Storm Brand Elementalist - sloppy as heck, but didn't die, so therefor skill. Double Elder Guardian (with clear) Storm Brand Elementalist - derped for way too long on syndicate choice, sorry about that. I would have picked a different clip, but I like the double guardian prophecy bug. (And honestly, when I look over the footage, I derp a LOT anyway) Build Theory
Spoiler
The general concept for this build is that storm brand looks sweet. It is also a great clearing skill, so that's nice too. I didn't think it would be great for single target, and part of the concept for improving on single target damage was to use the newly buffed malachai's artifice ring: -50 to enemy lightning resist sounds pretty good to me. I bought one at level ~40 for 1c, and stuck a flame golem in it. Flame golem is an ideal choice because it doesn't benefit from your +damage to spells modifiers. As a result, you can stack up +lightning damage to spells without screwing up your EE. Because the build was suddenly very dependent on the golem, I decided I wanted it to live. So I took liege of the primordial to make it immune to elemental damage, and righteous army (on the way to spiritual aid) to give it life regeneration. It seldom dies (mostly to syndicate). With this alone, storm brand is adequate at killing bosses (~1.2m shaper DPS with my current gear, not counting temporary buffs). This doesn't break the bank as far as bossing characters are concerned, but it is damage that works the whole time, while you're doing mechanics, so it is very safe and consistent damage. We've got time to kill while our storm brands tic, so how about throwing some traps into the mix for even more damage. We can get a 7-link lightning spire trap from a hat like this (cost me 25c, but prices have gone up a bit): Increased AoE helps the lightning spire strikes overlap, so it is actually a great gem for improving single target damage. Lightning spire gives another ~3 million shaper DPS from 3 traps stacked on a boss. Combined with the brands it completely destroys any boss that's willing to stand still for it. You can also get 6-link lightning spire in gloves, with trap and mine damage + cast speed. Theoretically you could get blind in there as well, which could be good for safety. So we've got a build with great clear speed, with brands hopping all over (and inpulsa popping all over, if you go that route), but also very high (for a budget / league starter) single target. We've also got reasonable defense, with mind over matter and phase acrobatics. Path of Building / Build Link
Spoiler
PoB Paste: https://pastebin.com/Sq5HCqBd Just skill tree Leveling route is basically straight to elemental overload, mind over matter, and runebinder. Then fill in whatever else you feel like after that. Bandits, Pantheon, Ascendancy
Spoiler
Bandits, we're non-crit, so we're killing all the bandits for that sweet +2 skill points. Pantheon, we're not stun immune, so brine king. Whatever you like for minor. Flask refill can be nice, so can poison immune. Ascendency starts with Shaper of Desolation -> Beacon of Ruin. Beacon of ruin is our power node, and the entire reason to be an elementalist. Prolif and 20% min shock (with increased shock effect, ~33%) is simply amazing. After that, most storm brand builds out there are going for Pendulum of Destruction -> Mastermind of Discord to get that sweet 25% lightning penetration while Herald of Thunder is up. This is not what we're doing. There's no doubt that the pen is nice, and pendulum is cool too. But we can get reflect immunity to be able to run literally all map mods, gain damage and cast speed from extra golem, and very importantly, make our golems immune to elemental damage. We're basing a significant part of our single-target damage capability off of getting EE from a flame golem socketed in: As such we'd like to keep that flame golem alive. Immunity to elemental damage is huge for that. Most of the AoE and ranged type abilities that waste golems do elemental damage. Not all, unfortunately, some of the syndicate guys can wreck your golems pretty good. But the golems stay alive very well for the most part. We get 1% life regen for minion in tree, as well, so incidental damage gets healed and we don't have to re-cast. I suggest Paragon of Calamity for merciless lab, so that you can leech and run reflect maps, and then liege of the primordial for uber lab, for the quality of life of rarely needing to re-summon your golems. Gems
Spoiler
Our primary links for Storm Brand are: Storm Brand + Concentrated Effect + Controlled Destruction + Added Lightning + Hypothermia + Lightning penetration We supplement our single target damage with Lightning Spire Trap: Lightning Spire Trap + Controlled Destruction + Added Lightning + Lightning Penetration + [Additional from Shaper hat or gloves: Hypothermia / Trap and Mine Damage / Increased Area / Faster Casting] Utility skills are to your taste, but here are my choices: CWDT setup: CWDT(1) + immortal Call (3) + Enfeeble (5) + increased duration (20) *Lately I've swapped increased duration for cold snap (7). Chill and enfeeble both on anything that decides to slap us is pretty nice, and as a bonus we've got frenzy charges a decent amount of the time. Move setup: Flame Dash (20) + Faster Casting (20) + Arcane Surge (7) If you choose to go daggers or scepter + shield you can change this to whirling blades / shield charge in order to get fortify. If you do that, put arcane surge on your brand recall link. Brand Recall: Brand Recall + Empower + Enhance Buff Setup: Vaal Grace + Vaal Clarity + Vaal Righteous Fire + Increased Duration Vaal grace is amazing temporary defense. The others are optional really. Do not actually turn on the regular version of grace, it will kill your mana pool for mind over matter. We just want the vaal version for the dodge. You can turn on the regular version of clarity for no-leech maps, if you like, but generally we want all our mana open for MoM. Wrath only if you use essence worm. It isn't worth losing half your mana for, since we're mind over matter. Lately I've taken to skipping the lightning golem, to make sure he never buffs the flame golem with lightning damage, messing up EE. It doesn't happen often, so the lightning golem's cast speed is potentially still pretty good for maps, but double flame golem is probably more reliable boss damage. Gear
Spoiler
This is a league starter build, and has absolutely no real gear requirements. I used a Tabula up to level 90. We're MoM and acrobatics so after maxing resists we're looking at maxing life/mana/dodge and not worrying too much about other defensive stats. For offensive stats, as a non-crit build, we're looking for: +lightning damage to spells Cast speed (increases brand placement rate AND tick rate) Increased spell/lightning/elemental damage Elemental (or non-chaos) as extra Chaos Elemental penetration There's an insanely powerful hybrid veiled mod on the crafting bench: It is a prefix, and it conflicts with increased spell damage (pure but not hybrid) / increased lightning damage (if it is a prefix). So you can often get a pretty cheap weapon that is missing increased spell/lightning damage, and fix it up quite nicely. Crafting bench also now offers an actually relevant amount of +lightning damage to spells, if you need to fix that on a weapon: The temple "topotante" hybrid increased lightning / added lightning to spells does not conflict with this pure added lightning to spells craft (it counts as an "increased" prefix for mod blocking). The first unique you buy (and the only one that is really at all "build around" for the build) is: It is very cheap (loreweave price, ~3c) We stick a flame golem in it (which rarely dies thanks to Liege of the Primordial and Righteous Army), and we get free EE. We also want a source of cold damage to spells, to enable our hypothermia support gem. An abyss jewel with any amount of cold to spells does the job. My Current Gear
Spoiler
Uber Elder Swap: If you don't have a wrath mana leech watcher's eye, you need another mana leech or regen solution: The leech if you killed recently boot enchant is the nicest for mapping, but doesn't do much on bosses. If you need an even more budget option you can put warlord's mark in your CWDT instead of enfeeble. Atziri's foible is 1c so probably just do that until you get the boot enchant. If you don't use the wrath mana leech jewel (and thus aren't married to wrath) an additional possible swap on uber elder is: That will put you to 80% cold resist. Cinderswallow is our best damage flask. It helps if you have any amount of added fire damage to spells (abyss jewel) to activate it when our conflux isn't on ignite. It makes us zoom, it heals our life and mana (even on no-leech maps), it is generally great. I run it in place of the mana flask if I feel I won't be needing that. For tough boss fights the mana flask is better, since you can't reliably trigger on kill mana recovery form cinderswallow. Inpulsa is NOT needed. I went to level 90 on a Tabula. Carcass Jack or even a rare are also decent choices. Wands are cheaper than daggers (and can get cast speed), and better damage than scepter + shield. The down side is you can't have fortify. The up side is flame dash is super responsive with a ton of cast speed. I don't think wands are the only correct choice, any of these 3 options is fine. You can use essences to get cast speed onto daggers if you want to try your hand at crafting. The +1 wand is nice for making brand recall cooldown faster. With empower I have level 10 brand recall. With good corruptions (expensive) you could have level 12 brand recall. At level 10 my brand recall is 1.58 second cooldown. For mapping the life/mana leech if you killed recently boot enchant is pretty important, but not mandatory. If you don't have it, get the mana on kill node in shadow, or mana on kill on a piece of gear. The uber elder swaps are for the following reasons: Kaom's roots: To negate the elder's snare attack, so he can't lock you down for the shaper to ball/beam to death. Purity of Ice: Most of the danger is cold damage Atziri's Foible: To make up for not having mana leech Map Mods
Spoiler
All map mods are doable. Of course many damage mods combined is not always wise. We're immune to elemental reflect, so that's no issue. We have life and mana leech, so no regen is fine. We have life and mana regen, so no leech is fine. Chain is mildly irritating because of our golems, but mostly fine. Unlucky dodge is the most dangerous damage mod, but I still run it paired with 2+ other damage mods, because I'm about that softcore life. Most of the time not punished. Gameplay
Spoiler
Cast brands at pack, recall on next pack, repeat. If you get brand recall high enough level often you can just chain recall for a while. That's why I use a +1 wand. There's also a +2 shield available, Invictus Solaris, if you want to really work on maxing out brand recall level. Syndicate encounters are the most dangerous thing you'll encounter while mapping. Lightning spire trap is immensely helpful with the fortification encounters. Throw three traps at the door, and it will melt. Often the syndicate members will run into the lightning trap to get out the door and die too. Drop brands and run around. Pop Vaal Grace and flasks as soon as the door breaks. On many bosses you can pre-throw your lightning spire traps before getting their attention. Beyond that, just put brands on them and run around. I don't usually run in to try to nuke with brand recall, that's more of an armageddon brand thing. We're stacking lots of cast speed to scale our damage, which means each individual brand tick isn't that impressive. Overlapping proximity shields can be a pain. Flame dash in, brand recall, hope they don't kill you, is my general strategy. Immunity aura is dangerous but you can just stand back and ranged-cast your brands at the target instead of running in and recalling. Leveling
Spoiler
Leveling trees are in the Path of Building paste I leveled as frostbolt until I got storm brand (end of act 1). Then I was just storm brand after that. It is honestly pretty smooth leveling. You can supplement your damage with any skill you fancy if things are a little chewy, since you don't really have anything else to do while brands tick away. You shouldn't need supplemental damage on trash though, just keep running towards the next pack while your brands finish off the last one. You get lightning spire trap at 28, at which point your single target should be pretty well sorted. By that time you should have runebinder, which also helps single target out. Keep an eye out for 4 socket bases with 4 blues (or pure ES base so it can easily be turned into 4 blues). These show up on vendors starting in act 3. With 4-link storm brand and 4-link lightning spire you're good through to end game. Answered Questions
Spoiler
Why not Mastermind of discord?
Spoiler
" There's a few reasons for this, in no particular order: 1) I can stack +lightning damage to spells and not have it mess up EE. (Possibly you could put something like kinetic blast with +fire to attacks and no +lightning to attacks to accomplish the same, but you can't put a spell - maybe consecrated path if you were doing scepter + shield) 2) Golem lasts forever without having to do anything. At most have to re-summon it once a map (after syndicate encounter). 3) Mind over matter build, so nice to have entire mana pool unreserved. 4) Reflect immune means I can do all map mods. Very good if you intend to do random maps through zana's shaped/elder mods - or if you just want to save on re-roll costs. Realistically speaking, I simply wouldn't use malachai's artifice if I wasn't sticking a golem in it. So the choice is between -50% enemy resist with malachai's artifice and golems, or 25% lightning pen with mastermind, plus however much damage I could get from a rare ring. How to get good weapons:
Spoiler
" It is definitely decent, but I wouldn't say it is OP. Unfortunately it is also quite expensive. The cheapest result at the moment is 80c, which actually surprised me, I wonder if somebody is price fixing them at the moment? Anyway you can do better with rares pretty affordably. 200% increased spell damage is really nice, but it is missing two other great stats for us: cast speed, and added lightning damage to spells. With my gear, a perfect shade of solaris is about 12k less DPS than either of my rare wands, neither of which cost as much as shade (the shaper one probably should have been expensive, but I snagged it for 30c): Path of Building correctly understands the unique mods on Shade of Solaris, so I recommend playing around with it with your gear and a few decent rares. Here's a weighted sum weapon search I built using path of building and my character. It should be relatively close in weights for anybody who's following the guide, though you should build your own from your gear if you want optimal weighting: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Betrayal/LbG4DZun You can easily copy-paste weapons from the search into your path of building. Use the copy item feature in the item search:  Then paste into the "create custom" option in the items menu in path of building. If you're bargain hunting, you might want to tweak the above search a bit by reducing the sum total, but forcing it to not be crafted and have an open prefix. Our best crafts are either: 1) Increased spell damage / non-chaos as extr chaos hybrid veiled mod 2) Added lightning damage to spells 1. conflicts with other "increased damage" mod prefixes. Increased spell, as well as light/cold/fire. If it has increased lightning as a suffix though, it can still get 1. 2. conflicts with other added lightning/cold/fire damage to spells mods. Hybrid increased/added mod "Topatante's" conflicts 1, but not 2. So you just visually scan the results for one that has room for either of those to be crafted on. For example, in preparing this search just now, I found both of the following for 4 chaos each (uncrafted): I spent another 4 chaos on each to craft them. According to PoB the first wand is 7.5k more dps than perfect shade of solaris for me. The second is 5.7k more dps than perfect shade. The mana regen on the second is kind of neat too, might try it out on boss fights where my mana leech isn't always active. Here's the search modified with open prefix / uncrafted I used to find them: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Betrayal/rwvP4gIQ Updated search for 3.6: SEARCH If you're interested in learning how to make your own weighted sum search, I made a video guide: Using "weighted sum" search. Does Lightning Golem mess up Flame Golem's EE?
Spoiler
" Lightning golem casts a short duration "wrath" aura that adds lightning damage to allies spells. This does apply to flame golem's spells. In testing (thanks fidgey) we saw it happen, but the amount of time the wrong EE was up wasn't very much. I never noticed the damage drop in real gameplay scenarios, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. I've since started running 2x flame golems, and while I don't really notice a difference in damage, it is nice that if one flame golem dies, the other is still there keeping EE up. For map clearing the extra cast speed from lightning golem is probably still slightly better even with the potential for occasional wrong EE, but the difference wasn't large enough for me to really notice, so I dropped the lightning golem. Why Inpulsa / How good is Inpulsa?
Spoiler
Yeah the inpulsa visuals are great. It is also a great item, but a somewhat expensive item still, so not near the top of the list of things you should be picking up. It is more important to get decent items in every slot than it is to get that big ticket inpulsa. (Looks like inpulsa is currently 2.6 ex unlinked, 5.2 ex 6-linked) 3.5 saw inpulsa nerfed slightly (explosion damage is locked at 5%, used to be 5-10% variable roll). The nerf does actually matter, but doesn't ruin the item at all for our purposes. It hurts more for crit builds, because crit builds have a harder time scaling up the explosion damage (it doesn't crit). Damage stats that scale inpulsa: elemental overload increased damage increased minion damage (with spiritual aid) increased elemental damage increased lightning damage increased area damage elemental damage as extra chaos damage non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage damage penetrates elemental/lightning resist increased effect of shock (because our prolif has shocked the nearby enemies) increased effect of non-damaging ailments (shock) frenzy charges (the damage component, not the cast speed component) chance to deal double damage Damage stats that do NOT scale inpulsa: increased spell damage added damage to spells cast speed wrath crit chance / crit multi (unless you use some +base crit shenanigans) Also since I've seen some confusion about this, I should point out that supports socketed in inpulsa do not do anything to the explosions. The explosions aren't an active skill. ---------------------------------------------------- So this build has a lot of damage scaling for inpulsa. We have a good amount of the stats from that first list, and it ends up being not that difficult to get enough inpulsa damage to make a single brand insta-pop a whole pack of monsters. The insta-pops are as much a safety feature as they are a clear speed feature. Without inpulsa you still clear almost as fast, but the packs don't die instantly. They die as you're running past them instead, which offers them a little time to potentially harm you. Without inpulsa it plays like a bit more like a damage over time build. Another often under-appreciated safety feature of inpulsa is the "unaffected by shock" text. Even if you have a shock flask, it is likely not up all of the time. A fair bit of the "wtf just happened" style deaths are actually attributable to shocks that you didn't notice, in my experience. The lightning mirage nemesis mod is noticably less scary with inpulsa. The lightning elder guardian is also a lot less scary with inpulsa - I can just stand in his barrage attack (I think that's also partially due to the golems soaking some of it though). --------------------------------------------------- TL;DR: I do consider inpulsa important, and the best chest for the build. But it isn't at all mandatory. You can go carcass jack, loreweave, shroud of the lightless, a decent rare, or even tabula rasa, and the build works fine. New Character Sanity Checklist
Spoiler
1. Do you have a source of added cold damage to spells to activate hypothermia? Added fire damage to spells to activate cinderswallow (if you use it)? 2. This is a mind over matter build. Don't reserve your mana! (clarity is okay if you need it) 3. Do you have a mana recovery solution? MoM means mana is life! The gear section of the guide describes a few options. 4. Do you have phase acrobatics yet? Not mandatory to start maps, but don't put it off too long, huge survivability. You should have vaal grace to go with it, to bump up to 75% dodge for tough fights, like syndicate! 5. Do you have a 6+ link lightning spire trap setup (shaper hat or gloves)? This is how you kill bosses if you don't have enough damage to do it with storm brand. Last edited by magicrectangle#3352 on Jun 24, 2019, 6:27:27 AM Last bumped on Sep 23, 2019, 4:35:11 PM
|
|
|
I have been playing Storm Brand Elementalist since the league started but only now switched some things like the guide describes and it feels great, a bit more tanky i believe and the damage is ok. I am using Shroud of the Lightless and stacking Abyss jewels, my dmg is around 250k Shaper dps( i just don't know how to properly add ele pen from my chest so i added lightning pen 20 lvl 0 quality). Any thought on skill tree? My cold and lightning ress is equal, i will try to balance fire also for The Wise Oak flask.
And here are the jewels, they are budget options but will change to better as i get more currency. Last edited by tona91#7377 on Dec 19, 2018, 6:30:24 AM
|
|
|
PoB actually does understand shroud of the lightless, so long as the link is set to the chest slot, so there's no need to do anything creative with that. Shroud of the lightless is a decent choice for a chest, and abyss jewels aren't bad at all for the build. They do mean you can't stack cast speed as hard, but I suppose that's why you've put faster casting in your link.
Here's a PoB with the right boxes checked, and a custom shock flask (22% because no inpulsa): https://pastebin.com/Pxr8phBR I see 470k shaper DPS (235k per brand, x2 brands) The tree looks very solid, and most of the gear looks pretty solid on a budget. You might want to buy a level 3 failed corrupted empower, they're only 30c, and can be re-sold pretty easily once yours finishes leveling in your swap. I'd probably try to work a shield charge + faster attacks + fortify link in there. IMHO getting fortify is half the reason to go shield (the other being the +2 gem levels = +4 net levels for brand recall). I'm not really sure the herald of thunder curse on hit setup is worth it. For trash clearing we don't really need any help, and it is somewhat unreliable on bosses (and not that much damage anyway given the 80% less curse effect on bosses). I think one of the advantages of not going mastermind of discord is having your whole mana bar free to function as health. You're losing about 550 "health" by running the herald. Of course if you find the clear noticeably faster with it, then run it. But I'd turn it off for a dangerous encounter like uber. Overall looks really good. |
|
|
How come you not using clear mind?
|
|
" Clear mind is definitely a good damage jewel. With all unique jewelry, and a resist-less hat, I've been using my jewel slots to crutch my resists together. I like to be ele weakness capped for mapping, and also needed to be able to swap in kaom's roots for uber elder. I do actually have one jewel that isn't giving me resists, and have considered running clear mind in that slot for more damage. I'd gain ~3.5% more raw DPS (with a perfect clear mind), but lose 5% life and and the quality of life from the 9% cast speed on that jewel. |
|
|
interesting choice of ascendancy skill. Just wondering why not choose mastermind of discord and use another skill to proc elemental equilibrium.
|
|
" There's a few reasons for this, in no particular order: 1) I can stack +lightning damage to spells and not have it mess up EE. (Possibly you could put something like kinetic blast with +fire to attacks and no +lightning to attacks to accomplish the same, but you can't put a spell - maybe consecrated path if you were doing scepter + shield) 2) Golem lasts forever without having to do anything. At most have to re-summon it once a map (after syndicate encounter). 3) Mind over matter build, so nice to have entire mana pool unreserved. 4) Reflect immune means I can do all map mods. Very good if you intend to do random maps through zana's shaped/elder mods - or if you just want to save on re-roll costs. Realistically speaking, I simply wouldn't use malachai's artifice if I wasn't sticking a golem in it. So the choice is between -50% enemy resist with malachai's artifice and golems, or 25% lightning pen with mastermind, plus however much damage I could get from a rare ring. Last edited by magicrectangle#3352 on Dec 20, 2018, 5:13:31 PM
|
|
|
Hey man, thanks for the build. Just one quick question...
Doesn't Wrath Aura effect your Flame Golem too? Meaning it does lightning damage and screws up your EE ring trick, effectively bringing the lightning resists up on mobs not down? I am sure I am missing something, but I thought I would ask. TIA. |
|
" Flame golem's 3 abilities are all spells, rather than attacks. Wrath adds lightning damage to attacks, but for spells is gives more lightning damage instead of flat, so more of 0 is still 0. |
|
|
Very good! Thanks for that man. I knew I was missing something. Cheers
|
|
