[1.1.0] Facebreaker Cyclone in Endgame

I notice that you only have a single piece of chaos resistance in your gear, just wondering how you fare against chaos damage with -33%, because I am currently prioritising chaos resistance on my shield, and would love to use Lioneye Remorse instead if chaos res isn't too important.

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Acrosis wrote:

just wondering how you fare against chaos damage with -33%

I would like to get more chaos resist, but only if I don't sacrifice much of my other stats on rares.

To be honest it doesn't bother me much because I am a proponent of fast movespeed cyclone. Most chaos damage dealers (vipers, bowmen, alchemists, alien pods, etc.) are ranged and I find my constant movement makes it extremely difficult for them to target lock me. The melee ones (only spiders come to mind) will usually get stunned or die before they can hit me if they enter my blender zone.

You do come across the occasional multiple projectile venom spitting viper which hits like a truck, but those usually have low hp. Close the gap immediately and whirl around them to keep them shifting their aim, while keeping the mob in your cyclone all the time. If that mob is aiming at someone else in your group, that's even better since you can just hover on the other side. You will still get hit by the odd shot, but you should do ok with supplemental healing from flasks. If things don't turn out well, just dash away and regroup.

I do find it irritating when sometimes Cyclone will stop because you are running into a rock and you get a face full of chaos damage, that can really ruin your day. This is why I do want to at least have some more chaos resistance, but I think armor would be a much more important stat to counterbalance using an Abyssus.

omg I just found the most amusing thing to do ever.


116% movespeed whirlwind of death baby!~ =D
(technically only 86% cyclone movespeed)

The bad part is I can't see any loot. =(

Not recommended on higher maps. Lightning thorns is going to be the death of me sooner or later. And of course don't do this in HC. This nonsense is SC only.

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crud. died to puncture.

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ok nvm. I got past the novelty. It's super fun to dash around and kill everything before your teammate's rain of arrows even lands, but this is an extremely reckless style of play. You die to the dumbest things because you can't see anything at all. I need to calm down and walk like a normal person.

Still great for clearing Lunaris (or other places with no threat) at top speed. You basically run all the time.

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Acrosis wrote:

I notice that you only have a single piece of chaos resistance in your gear, just wondering how you fare against chaos damage with -33%, because I am currently prioritising chaos resistance on my shield, and would love to use Lioneye Remorse instead if chaos res isn't too important.

I honestly haven't noticed a difference between having -31(I think is where I started) and being slightly in the positive. I'm sure if I were to get more it may be slightly more noticeable, but I know that I ended up paying a premium for quite a few pieces simply because they had chaos res (on top of the other stats I needed). Having experienced the small gain vs the cost, I would have much rather saved the currency for something else :p.


I swapped in enduring cry for a while earlier today and I can't stand having to cast it continuously. I've since reallocated points (again) into shield passives and been playing around with tempest shield as my 5th "aura". So far it seems good and I'm able to use warlords mark on packs I need the extra leech on. Plus I don't have to look at my ugly wooden plank as my shield graphic :D

@Mouchi Yeah, I moved around some stuff too to get shield block but I'm not entirely happy yet. Gave up my Body and Soul nodes (armor/es) and some armor in exchange for the two major shield block ones. Block at around 38 now, but still tweaking.

Also gave up an endurance node so I'm left with 5. As fun as Immortal Call is, I'm not sure that it is entirely necessary. There is only marginal utility gained in having 100% physical immunity as opposed to being 90% resistant. Some buff duration nodes will also be needed to maximize benefits. I think I will give up that skill for now but keep 5 endurance charges. The extra boost should be enough to get me through the tougher situations.

I have no idea how I'm going to work in Tempest Shield. Too many nodes I want and not enough skill points.

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IF I were to adopt Immortal Call as a main skill, this build would be possible.

6 endurance charges and 45% more buff duration should give me around a 12s Immortal Call. The other duration cluster is too far.

Passive blocking suits me more right now so I will not do this, but maybe I'll change my mind later.

I have started running at -30% Chaos resist, and as stated above, the difference is barely noticeable. A little more caution against those packs wouldn't hurt due to the plethora of problems related to Cyclone, but that kind of comes with the Abyssus playstyle (Warlord's Mark first, questions later). Honestly not sure about giving up the Armor/ES nodes for shield block, but I may use points to get that 30% extra defence from shield node.
Since my Shield currently gives me almost 11k armor, getting the extra defence from shield passives will likely be far more effective than armor nodes.
Just having a quick look at the tree, there are a few shield def nodes that do not deviate far from the usual path we take, and it would not be difficult to almost double the amount of evasion/armour the shield gives us for only about 5 points.



Then again, there is diminishing returns on armor, so how much benefit will an extra 10k armor really be? Discuss.

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Acrosis wrote:

Then again, there is diminishing returns on armor, so how much benefit will an extra 10k armor really be?

To test the effectiveness of armor, I conducted a simple test by using various armor pieces, Granite Flasks, auras, and Molten Shell to obtain a range of armor ratings and their corresponding damage reductions.

1200 armor => 7% reduction
2500 => 14%
5000 => 24%
10k => 40%
15k => 49%
20k => 56%
23k => 60%
28k => 65%
33k => 68%
37k => 71%
40k => 72%
45k => 74%
59k => 79%
63k => 80%
65k => 81%

(As noted in a previous post, for 6 endurance charges I only need 23k armor to help me reach the reduction cap of 90%.)

@Acrosis Not sure how much armour you have now so your question is a bit difficult to answer. I hope the above numbers help.

Hmm, so it seems that you could get close to 70% reduction, but it probably isn't necessarily worth the point investment. I may just keep one point on the +30 extra defence, because that seems worthwhile for a single point (which I will do next level to test out). May actually try to go for Haste aura again because Infernal Blow just isn't worth using.

On Kaoms:

I was recently involved in a heated discussion of elemental 2h cyclone vs. physical facebreaker cyclone. It helped me understand elemental builds better, and there were actually more similarities between our builds than I expected (e.g., in performance against reflect). In the end though, I don't think either of us were particularly convinced the other build was better.

The strongest points raised against our build were two of the most game-breaking things around, neither of which are available to our build. I am talking about Shock-Stacking and Kaoms.

Now Shock-Stacking doesn't bother me particularly. As Texazon has demonstrated already, our build is able to reach higher top dps than any weapon cyclone build straight up. Our potential top dps may be somewhere near 13k whereas it tops off at near 10k for weapon cyclone. In solo games things die so fast that you rarely have time to build up stacks, and in group games it is trivial to get a caster or ranger teammate to shock for you. You just have to stick to you what you do best... dps and live.

Kaoms however... just plain sucks. You know an item is OP when someone tells you their build is better simply because they can use it. (Grumbling.. feel free to ignore ==> And like wtf, Kaoms users lose slots and get gamebreaking levels of HP. We lose slots and get a long list of restrictions on what we cannot do or cannot use.)

I don't buy the assertion that all builds without Kaoms will die in 75+ maps though. In all honesty I'm not sure how I'd fare in those simply because I haven't tried before. (Damn your drop rates GGG. Give me a 75 map so I can try.)