Weirdo build contest [win Exalted] WE GOT A WINNER!

Current tree (Level 51)
91 points

Notable gear:



Quill Rain has Frenzy/Faster Attacks/Additional Accuracy/Reduced Mana. Reduced Mana could be dropped with better gear. Blind would be your 5th link (it has no mana cost multiplier and helps dealing with hard-hitting mobs) and Knockback could be your 6th (again, no multiplier and helps keep keep distance between you and mobs).

Heatshiver is used for the +2 to Discharge, which makes up significantly for the lack of Wand and ES Shield with +spell damage. The same logic is applied with Doedre's Tenure, the +40-50% spell damage on them being a ~1.3x multiplier essentially due to only having the 20% additional spell damage on the tree.

Discharge is linked with Conc. Effect, Cold Penetration and Mana Leech. Mana leech allows you to support frequent Discharges against single targets, and to reduce the downtime between Discharge packs of mobs, since Frenzy with Quill Rain's attack speed eats through mana.

Although Discharge traditionally has issues with reflect, due to Quill Rain having to spend 1 second to generate charges, as well as Conc. Effect resulting in you having a small-ish area of effect on Discharge, you have plenty of time to recognise any incoming reflect auras.

The build in general is quite safe, the fact you're dealing burst cold damage means anything left alive after a Discharge (which is rare - most white mobs die to a 3 charge Discharge, 6 and a Frostbite curse will kill practically anything) will be chilled and significantly less threatening.

Other skills include Frostbite (for cursing, with Elemental Weakness as a viable alternative given Freezing is irrelevant when you 1-shot most things, although if you're solo Frostbite will let you Freeze bosses), Clarity, for mana regeneration, and Grace, for armour with Iron Reflexes.

Other options with this build include going Eldritch Battery(+Discipline) to help deal with mana issues, which would also allow you to run Life Gain on Hit on Frenzy semi-comfortably, making you significantly tankier, using Explosive Arrow as a single-target skill (moreso if you're running Elemental Weakness instead of Frostbite), and running CI if you have the currency to do so (grabbing the EV/ES nodes near Shadow instead of life nodes).

Current Passive Tree (Level 51 Templar)
Ideal Passive Tree (89 points Witch)

Note: 89 Points is more than you need. You really only need to grab CI, the +15% Trap+Mine laying speed nodes, enough ES and Mana to get by then the rest of the points go into grabbing extra crit chance, dual curse, and 54 strength so you can run level 1 Reduced Mana on your auras (Discipline and Clarity)

There is no notable gear for this build.

Your main skill set up is Arc/Remote Mine/Elemental Proliferation/Lightning Penetration. Quality where possible. Added Lighting Damage is a possible 5th link. 6th link is pretty much irrelevant, you can run a level 1 Iron Will if you feel like it. Or maybe Blind or Added Chaos damage or something that you feel you can support the mana cost of.

The point of the build is to quickly lay down 5 mines (the +15% laying speed passives are brilliant for this), then detonate them all at once. As damage in this game calculates each hit sequentially, as well as proliferating shock out at the moment of the hit, that means that any enemies shocked by the earlier mines will take the +40%/80%/120% damage from being shocked when hit by the later mines.

Arc has an implicit 10% chance to shock. Quality can bring this up to 20%. Stacic Blows takes this to 40%. The "Shock" passive in the Shadow area takes this to 45%. Quality Added Lighting can take this to 55%. Conductivity brings this to 69%.

You have a base 4% chance to crit. Getting +300% from the passive tree, fairly easy by later levels, brings this to 16%. Critical Weakness (the second curse you'd run with dual curse) takes this to 26% chance to crit.

Given a crit Arc results in 3 critical hits with the Chaining mechanic, as well as these hits being proliferated out, this means that, with 5 mines, you are more likely have everything in a pack be shock stacked 3 times than not.

The end result of this is incredible burst damage, and as the 3 longest duration shocks on enemies will be the ones that persist on enemies, incredibly long shock durations that benefit your entire party.

Even without Critical Weakness and Conductivity, you still have a 16% chance to crit and 55% chance to shock on hit, more than enough to shock stack everything easily.

The downside to this build is that area attacks destroy placed mines, meaning you need a party, decoy totem or minion to draw attention for you. This is no issue in a party, solo it can result in some running around before detonating your mines and wiping out a significant number of enemies at once. If you are solo, it's also advised you use gear to get around CI's weaknesses (stun and freeze namely), though crossing the tree to Unwavering Stance is not difficult given how little you need on the passive tree to make this build work.

Other options include going life (I only went CI and Templar to test things out, CI seems ideal given you're avoiding the fight and placing mines most of the time, or kiting enemies while placing mines when solo, although you could facetank them if you had sufficient gear), also using totems, using Doedre's Tenure (as the -cast speed doesn't apply to mines), using additional defensive auras (Grace, Purity, Determination), using Power Siphon and running power charges to increase your crit chance, using Frostwall etc. This build requires very little investment to use.

Ideal Passive Tree (97 points)

Note: Most of the shield nodes can be skipped until later on, as can dual curse. This passive tree assume claw/ES shield, although using a 1H sword, using daggers and crit and going duel-wield are also very viable options.

There is no notable gear required for this build.

The plan here is to lay down a Searing Bond totem then proceed to Whirling Blades repeatedly through enemies. As enemies close to you will get damaged by the Searing Bond totem's chain (and it's slight area of effect), this allows you to boost your damage, including against enemies resistant to Physical damage.

Elemental Equilibrium is taken, so that with a small amount of cold or lightning damage on gear (or a level 1 Wrath if absolutely necessary) you can proc Elemental Equilibrium on enemies, significantly raising the damage of your Searing Bond totem. As an additional reminder, as Searing Bond deals Damage over Time, it does not 'hit' enemies and therefore does not realign Elemental Equilibrium to resisting fire.

Your main skill would be Whirling Blades/Faster Attacks/Melee Physical Damage/Melee damage on full life/Mana leech. Depending on your flask usage/reserved mana/total mana/etc. Mana leech may not be needed. However, not many other support gems are worth using with this skill - multistrike is disabled due to the immense desync caused, and elemental damage will mess with your Elemental Equilibrium. Added Chaos damage, Life Gain on Hit and Life leech are also alternatives/options for a 6th link.

Searing Bond would be supported by Increased Burning Damage and Faster Casting. Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance is an option for a 4th link if you can support the mana cost.

Curse-wise you can use Temporal Chains, Vulnerability or Elemental Weakness. As Searing Bond can not ignite enemies, Elemental Weakness is just as efficient as Flammability for dealing fire damage, but is also helpful for other party members/dealing slightly more damage with the miniscule lightning/cold damage you deal. Enfeeble is another option for when you have dual curse later on.

Other options for this build are mentioned earlier, using swords/dual-wielding/daggers and critting instead of using Resolute Technique. Using Dual/Double Strike if you want an additional single target attack. Not speccing into Elemental Equilibrium (which would be best combined with going Crit, as you'd spend less time on the left side of the tree grabbing Resolute Technique too).

CI is ran so that Melee Damage on Full Life can be used, as Whirling Blades has a low damage-effectiveness, so multiple damage supports need to be used.

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Alfabetica wrote:

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tobes111 wrote:

Can someone PLEASE post a viable searing bond build.

Please.

It's too hard to theory craft and too much time is spent.

All the searing bond builds I've made failed soo hard.

It's like a crappy version spork

So I spent 10 minutes theory crafting.

Hybrid AB Searing Bond/LW totem build.

One skill is LW/Spell Totem/Elemental Proliferation/Lightning Pen/(Faster Casting as a 5th)

Then Searing Bond/Inc. Burn/whatever else could work with this idk Faster Casting probably

Stick Searing Bond in a Searing Touch for the +2 to it and the 70% increased burning damage.

Run Elemental Weakness as your main curse, Flammability for dual curse.

LW Shock stacks for 120% increased damage, you get 60% increased burn damage from the tree, at level 20 you have a level 22 Searing Bond dealing 430 DPS, which with the increased burn damage from the tree, support and Searing Touch goes to 191% inc burn damage (increased burn damage gets +2 from the Searing Touch staff too), netting 1250 DPS.

Which goes to 2750 DPS with Shock's +120% then -98% resists from your curses and go Elemental Equilibrium for another -50% from the LW totem hitting enemies so you get to -148% resistances on mobs, which will give you constant 4.8K DPS on an enemy that is 75% fire resistant (which is on the high end, afaik) from one totem and decent DPS from your LW totem too. Additionally you can run a cold spell on Mines (Ice Spear probably) for single target DPS which helps work into Elemental Equilibrium too. Or you could run Mine/GMP/Chain/Arctic Breath to slow enemies and Proc cold EE here too.


Alright so that's a build that needs a like 3L Searing Touch, maybe 4L if you want Totem Resist as a support, 2 more 4Ls for your other skills and Dual Curse/Static Blows/Pyromaniac as your only real passive requirements, which are all in the same area of the tree.

Welp, that's on the list of 'builds to try at some stage' now.

(Note: Vulnerability has 40% inc. damage to enemies from DoT, so it stacks with Shock damage on enemies and doesn't really give a good return compared to Flammability. Also people will like you more in groups if you Dual Curse with Flammability more than if you use Vulnerability. Also Temp Chains would also be an option for Shock stack length and slowing enemies into the beam and being liked in parties)

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Alfabetica wrote:

Darkscorn/CI/EK to allow damage scaling with Crit Multiplier to extreme levels without worrying too much about reflect (you take a net 40% less reflect damage because of Darkscorn's chaos conversion. Two perfectly rolled Mortem Morsus can do the same but you then can't get a Quiver with high Crit Multiplier and Crit Chance on it). I don't have the gear to make this work myself right now.

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Alfabetica wrote:

Vulnerability stunlock: Vulnerability adds a 10-14% chance to stun an enemy on hit, regardless of damage dealt. Stack attack speed, use dual wield and multistrike and Cleave/Dual Strike and attack fast enough to stunlock everything with increased Stun duration stacked. You can get 30% from a Studded belt, 35% from a belt suffix, 35% from each weapon, 20% from the tree, then the reduced block and stun recovery (which is different to increased stun duration) on Vulnerability acts as a 1.3x multiplier, and go dual curse and stick temp chains on there for a 1.34x multiplier (1.44x with 20% quality). You can get your base 375ms stuns to ~1.67 second stuns, not counting Temp Chains quality. If you've seen the 'Blender' build he managed to get to >10 APS with Cleave. Additionally, I could run Maces for the implicit +20%/+40% increased stun duration and up to +30% stun duration on quality Ground Slam if I needed more (could also run 1H Mace + Shield for this and added Survivability, at the cost of some attack speed).