Prediction/Revelation on new unique items on Next patchs

Doing some math on a life-based build using the new unique, I manage to reach about 27k dps with 6-linked armor and otherwise decent gear. The life and res are decent enough to do lv72+ maps.

Haven't done the math for ES-based build.

The major drawback though is that to make it work, both flammability and elemental weakness need to be casted to get the very strong "negative resist"-multiplier affecting the initial hit once and then the burning damage again to get a very powerful combined multiplier.

This means that without correct parties in which only the flammability and elemental weakness is cast, it won't really work well dps wise.
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If the physical damage was to be increased, from the current average 66.5 phys dmg to around between 113 and 150 phys damage, but at the same time nerfing the attack speed, it would certainly become an extremely unique and competitive endgame build.

Basically: curse 2 a group 2 times from distance, run close to 1 mob and hit it 1 or 2 times to trigger an ignite, then run away/sidestep as you see the group burning to death.

It would be similar to fire trap, but with the very exciting twist that you have to run at melee mode to trigger the powerful ignite.

Ideally, I would have loved the damage potential given by this technique to be superior to the fire trap one, given that you are taking a far greater risk by running to melee range. (Would have to consider though making it not work with lightning strike projectiles)

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

...I'm a bit concerned. Are they going to have to nerf this sword? If so, perhaps it should be done BEFORE it goes in! I really came down hard on Soul Taker, after all.

There's no need for that because your overall damage is still badly bottlenecked by the base physical damage of the sword. The earlier calculations took advantage of most of the potential sources of damage increase without dropping survivability to unsustainable levels. If you take Geofri's Baptism and stick it into a glass cannon build you'll arrive at the same rough numbers, but there's a good reason nobody uses it past 60.

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moozooh wrote:

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

...I'm a bit concerned. Are they going to have to nerf this sword? If so, perhaps it should be done BEFORE it goes in! I really came down hard on Soul Taker, after all.

There's no need for that because your overall damage is still badly bottlenecked by the base physical damage of the sword. The earlier calculations took advantage of most of the potential sources of damage increase without dropping survivability to unsustainable levels. If you take Geofri's Baptism and stick it into a glass cannon build you'll arrive at the same rough numbers, but there's a good reason nobody uses it past 60.

Geofri's does not have high enough attack speed to efficiently utilize damage from items/auras, does not have pure elemental damage to fully utilize elemental nodes and WED, does not have high crit, and it certainly doesn't have the potential of doubling your burn damage.

This sword I feel is just at the right place, and can be a very solid end-game weapon without sacrificing survivability (as you can see with the build I posted).

Well, I've run some numbers as well, and I stand corrected. This sword is very powerful, although still not nerf-worthy yet.

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mazul wrote:

Doing some math on a life-based build using the new unique, I manage to reach about 27k dps with 6-linked armor and otherwise decent gear. The life and res are decent enough to do lv72+ maps.

Haven't done the math for ES-based build.

Try 30k+ with a safer build:

— this tree;
— Voll's Protector + Maligaro's Virtuosity + Windscream + Auxium + Eye of Chayula;
— Heavy Strike + Life Leech + quality WED + quality Increased Burning Damage + quality Increased Critical Damage + quality Elemental Proliferation;
— Purity + Grace + Hatred + Anger/Reduced Mana;
— quality Shock Nova + Spell Totem + quality Added Lightning Damage + Faster Casting;
— quality Temporal Chains + quality Flammability + Immortal Call + Faster Casting;
— Enduring Cry + Enduring Cry + Blood Rage.

How to play: pull a Shock Nova totem to reliably shock everything in range and proc -50% to fire resist, cast Temp Chains + Flammability to ensure that burns are sustained at all times and deal a crapton of damage, hit anything a couple times (crit chance should be around 43% with Power Charges up), enjoy your burn damage. Even double reflect is harmless, because at most ~1000 damage is reflected per hit. The only major concern is mana regen, because casting a totem with two curses and doing a couple very mana-hungry hits is demanding enough. Mana potions can alleviate that somewhat.

The fun part of this sword is that inflicted burns do twice as much damage per second, so anything that prolongs burn duration (Flammability quality + EleProlif quality + Temp Chains = up to 3.58 seconds ignite duration) is really good for dps. So if you're doing 10k damage on a crit (more is possible), you're inflicting a 16k dps area burn over 3.58 seconds for a total of 57.28k not counting the initial hit, possible shock stacks, and potential negative resistances. You can also go for triple curse with Doedre's Damning for an even more insane increase in dps with Elemental Weakness.

Keep in mind that such a build is very much tailored to the sword, although I guess it could work with Fire Trap with a bit of tuning. (Also, this is just another example of anything that takes advantage of Elemental Proliferation being OP as fuck.)

You forgot the whole "can only deal damage with this weapon" part which has been confirmed to apply to everything except minions. So totem stuff is out of the question.


Also I seriously doubt you'll live long in melee range if you use Voll's protector with this weapon.

Going ES in general seems kinda silly here, since all of your AoE damage is unaffected by reflect and Blood Rage's physical life leech doesn't work.

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Novalisk wrote:

You forgot the whole "can only deal damage with this weapon" part which has been confirmed to apply to everything except minions.

Oh, it has? Even traps won't work?

Not everything is lost though. I would suggest a degen bear and using Vulnerability instead of Temp Chains. A bit less potential dps, but a lot easier to play and less mana concerns.

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Novalisk wrote:

Also I seriously doubt you'll live long in melee range if you use Voll's protector with this weapon.

Depends on the base ES from other items. I agree that Windscream is out of place if Voll's is to be used, but with Rainbowstride and a decent helmet you should be able get 3500–4000 ES (would require this or this change to the tree though). This is enough for a hit-and-run build. My current Onslaught character is barely better in terms of survivability (3.3k life @ level 78; 2-handed Leap Slam + shit gear + hasn't transitioned into CI yet), but I'm still alive somehow.

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Novalisk wrote:

Going ES in general seems kinda silly here, since all of your AoE damage is unaffected by reflect and Blood Rage's physical life leech doesn't work.

I see where you're coming from, but ES is easier to stack with defense (combined armor/evasion+ES nodes) and offense (crit and accuracy nodes are all on the way to main ES clusters, especially if you start in Shadow area). With life you actually have to choose between offense and defense if you're not using Facebreaker, and if you choose the same offense like the ES build, your burst survivability will be even worse, and you'll have a bonus headache to deal with: chaos resistance.

Alternatively you could just forget the whole crit idea and wait for the third sword.

according to rumors there is going to be a Recipe only unique

my estimated guess its going to involve very rare currency
like 5 exalt + 5 feathers

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Sammael wrote:

according to rumors there is going to be a Recipe only unique

my estimated guess its going to involve very rare currency
like 5 exalt + 5 feathers

GCP instead... their worth is going down

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moozooh wrote:

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Novalisk wrote:

Going ES in general seems kinda silly here, since all of your AoE damage is unaffected by reflect and Blood Rage's physical life leech doesn't work.

I see where you're coming from, but ES is easier to stack with defense (combined armor/evasion+ES nodes) and offense (crit and accuracy nodes are all on the way to main ES clusters, especially if you start in Shadow area). With life you actually have to choose between offense and defense if you're not using Facebreaker, and if you choose the same offense like the ES build, your burst survivability will be even worse, and you'll have a bonus headache to deal with: chaos resistance.

Alternatively you could just forget the whole crit idea and wait for the third sword.

It's not just that. ES items are generally so expensive, that I'd rather only use them on builds that need ES for reasons other than "I went shadow".

You can definitely go crit with this type of life build (since AoE damage is fully Burn damage).

Combined armour/evasion+ES nodes don't mean much when you don't get any gear with armour/evasion. Sure it makes it easier to stack with defense, but you barely have any defense to stack it with apart from Grace (and you didn't get IR).

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Certain themes persist through both weapons so far: increased physical damage, fire damage, movement speed, and critical strike chance, at the expense of the off-hand slot.

You can expect the third sword to build on all of these. It WILL be an upgrade, not just a new direction, but it'll be as different from Scorned as Scorned is from Bound.

Good to hear, though I hope Unleashed gets some sort of bonus to Burn damage. Not as big as on Scorned, but just something to re-assure the player he doesn't have to spec out of his burn nodes and replace his burn damage gems.