[1.1.0] Facebreaker Cyclone in Endgame

i really wanted to make kaoms work with facebreaker because i'm too used to having all charcs having a min of 5k hp... but came to the realization no 6l = horrible dps n range with cyclone. was actually fine with 4l infernal splash as my main skill instead of cyclone (which was my original plan), but sadly using infernal blow with melee splash resulted in worse desync than cyclone so i have up.

passive skill wise we're pretty similar, except that i ignored endurance charges since i hate recasting them, and dont really see a need for them.

and i'm using life leech gem instead of melee phy dmg gem because i feel safer with more leech.
i tried getting rrrrgb but gave up after a few thousand chroms. max i could get was 3r.

as for single target skill.. i totally ignored it. cyclone works for both aoe n single target, so i used my entire mana pool for auras and left myself enough mana for 1 curse.

I gave in to temptation and got Haste again. Feels like I'm back to where I started. My defense is better now though so it's ok. Ever since I got a new leech amulet, reflect hasn't been bothering me as much as before. I liked the shield block nodes and Tempest Shield, but I have dropped them for now in favor of my current addiction .. movement speed.

I now run normally at 39% movespeed and 130% capped movement speed using flasks. Getting used to the play style so it's not as bad as when I first tried cycloning at top speed. You just have to remember to ease off the pedal in some situations.

To all those telling me cyclone works best at slow speeds because you hit more.. nyah nyah nyah I can't hear you I don't care. Cycloners are the only ones who don't need to stop to attack, so why shouldn't we take advantage? It's fun being able to run around perma-quicksilvered.

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I was recently reminded of how it's extremely difficult to fit IIR/IIQ into our gear.

I was in a small party farming Lunaris where the other guys were all boasting about how much IIR/IIQ they had on their gear. Halfway through the run I got booted out of the group because I was accused of killing too fast without magic find, thus making all the loot turn out to be crap. I was pretty sad.

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On a different note, I finally gave up Infernal Blow. Yes it works great with our build, but cycloners can use cyclone for nearly everything and I don't need my single-target attack to have high dps.

I've switched to Frenzy now. I can use it for my single target attack when I need to resync, and the charges will give me a temporary damage boost to cyclone afterwards.

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Next item on the experiment list ==> Blood Rage cyclone while having negative chaos resists =x

(I wonder how many regret orbs, chromatics, and fusings have I wasted. Oh well at least it's fun.)

I have considered dropping IB since I almost never use it, I'm just not sure what skills I'd grab in its place; will have to think about it. As far as blood rage, I tried using it a while ago and I wasn't impressed by it, if I recall correctly I gained hardly any damage.

I've also been tantalized by the marginal benefits of haste, but I've copied Texazon in that I will run it when I don't need overcapped res on maps, and when I do I'll turn purity on instead. So far it seems to work the best for me. I haven't given up on block yet, but things could always change I suppose. I feel like my life pool is pretty low (4400 + ~500 ES after grace), so it's nice to having something to increase my effective HP.

I've respecced out of my mana points and put them into aura res nodes to run Haste with the usual auras, with Blood Magic on Warlord's, dropping IB from my skillset. Found that it cuts down a little on points since all I was using mana for was IB and my curses, and having over 100 spare mana was bothering me. Enjoying it so far, now to acquire a 6L to put Added Fire onto Cyclone.

Edit: The + shield defense nodes don't calculate properly with IR, so an extra 800 evasion only gave me 1.2k armor.

On Blood Rage:

Tried Blood Rage, and it sorta works with a Rejuvenation totem. (Well, that was the original idea anyways, but in the end I did not like how it played.)

Assume you have 4500 HP and -40% chaos resists.

Blood Rage has 4% basic degeneration
= 4%x1.3 = 5.2% with Inner Force
= 5.2%x1.4 = 7.28% with -40% chaos resists (-327.6 HP/s)

I currently have 5.4% life regen, so overall I will lose 7.28%-5.4%=1.88%, which is -84.6HP/s. One charge of Frenzy lasts 12s (?), so that means a loss of 84.6x12=1015HP max if I stand still and do nothing. This is playable. I move around maps so fast that usually I can hit the next pack quickly and pop a health flask if I need to while running. The benefits of Blood Rage are that (with 3 Frenzy charges) I get an extra 1k dps and an additional 4-6% life leech.

However, cycloning itself has an effective life degeneration cost which I was just barely comfortable with. Having Blood Rage's additional degeneration upsets the cost balance and I feel it lowers my defenses too much. I can make it work by putting down a rejuvenation totem, but my playstyle involves me running around like a madman so I don't like being tethered to one spot.

I've given up on Blood Rage for now. I think this could work if I had better chaos resists gear. I can break even standing still if I reached 0% chaos resists, and probably break even cycloning in air (in a mob this is irrelevant due to high leech) if I got 50% chaos resists or something. I don't think the loss of regen is worth the gain of 1k dps though. (I can get the same effect using Frenzy, albeit very temporarily ^^)

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For a very brief time i thought about pairing Multistrike + Frenzy in two of my free slots to speed up the Frenzy charges. One click = 3 hits = 3 charges right? I can live with that in return for a boost of 10s.

I was disappointed to find out Multistrike only gives one charge despite hitting 3 times. Guess that idea can go in the garbage bin.

I'd like to see how the new The Bringer of Rain compares to Abyssus/Carcass Jack. I'd love to hear if anyone has tried it out.

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DeathTouch wrote:

I'd like to see how the new The Bringer of Rain compares to Abyssus/Carcass Jack. I'd love to hear if anyone has tried it out.

I'm pretty negative on the new helm for reasons I discussed in the other thread.

I think (purely personal opinion) that the Bringer of Rain is vastly inferior to Carcass/Abyss for facebreaker builds. Keep in mind I have a 6L and I tend to use a lot of auras/support skills. ymmv

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It's interesting to see how much fanaticism this helm has inspired in such a short period of time.

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Myrthr wrote:

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DeathTouch wrote:

I'd like to see how the new The Bringer of Rain compares to Abyssus/Carcass Jack. I'd love to hear if anyone has tried it out.

I'm pretty negative on the new helm for reasons I discussed in the other thread.

I think (purely personal opinion) that the Bringer of Rain is vastly inferior to Carcass/Abyss for facebreaker builds. Keep in mind I have a 6L and I tend to use a lot of auras/support skills. ymmv

Cool, thanks for the link.

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DeathTouch wrote:

I'd like to see how the new The Bringer of Rain compares to Abyssus/Carcass Jack. I'd love to hear if anyone has tried it out.

I was pretty excited about trying out the new helm and ended up getting a chance to do so last night. I must say I was sadly disappointed. I was able to slightly increase my damage over my normal Abyssus + 5L carcass setup; however, this would be trumped by any 6L + Abyssus as expected. If at some point it's cheaper to buy than an Abyssus + 5L carcass then I would definitely do so. The biggest let down for me though was how ineffective the endurance charge on block was. With capped block and running 75+ maps I was rarely able to keep anything above 3 (at best) charges up at a time. I was expecting it to be fairly easy to keep them at maximum, but monsters just die too quickly to have a chance to be blocked. Maybe someone will find a more effective way to use it, but for now I'm going to regress all previous comments about the helm and agree with Myrthr.

Out of curiosity, how much armor and hp did you have using Bringer of Rain?