Official Blender Post! Lets theory craft for 1.2! 123k Cleave DPS!

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godslayer1234 wrote:

I thought you said in page 194 you "rarely" ran out of mana? MrH4t already told you that you need either a Blood Magic gem or a Soul Taker. Once you begin maping at lvl 69-72, and if you want to build a succesful character that's able to both deal damage and survive, then you must have capped resistances (chaos res at least non-negative), at least 5k+ hp, and you definitely shouldn't have to worry about running out of mana and auto attacking Residence Dom when he's about to die and therefore exposing yourself even further to desync/being one shotted/kamikaze bombers/you name it. Being able to kill quickly is another classic form of good defense.

Simply put, it's about the expected damage: a constant 12k will trump everytime a 13k that you can only guarantee for 80% of the time while the other 20% you do 1k auto-attack damage (12k vs 10.6k; for this particular example. Try with 90% instead of 80% and constant damage remains the better option). The situation is akin to resolute technique, I don't know if you noticed, but when you went for that passive point your tooltip DPS went up, simply because your expected damage went up (for some specific builds with crit gear this could work in reverse, obviously). Furthermore, you can't prioritize mana leech on your gear when what you should really be prioritizing is capped resistances, flat hp and life leech for added survivability.

Take your belt for instance, what you need instead of a wurm's is a 90+ life, 20%+ phys tri res rustic sash (26%+ ea.); think of it in terms of passives, to achieve that with passives you need: 2x 12% MPD nodes, 2x 12% elemental resistances nodes, 2-3x hp% increase nodes; so you're basically looking at an opportunity cost of 6-7 wasted passives just for the 2% mana leech and some other low roll mods, when you could instead get a blood magic gem and a proper belt.

Regarding your skill point optimization conumdrum, IMHO you are right on some things and not so right on others. Know this however, I see X2p's build as merely a guide, but it's far from being optimized, there is a lot of room for damage optimization as well as hp maximization. MrH4t has been giving you good advice, personally I haven't taken any of the 6% elemental nodes because I believe those are better had from your gear, and the skill points should be only used for more beneficial things such as HP and DPS (HP being more important because DPS comes mainly from gear).

As to the IASP% vs MPD% comparison, 1% increase in MPD does a lot more for DPS than a 1% increase in IASP (in my case and for my build anyway); I did this calculation long ago and I already forgot the exact equivalency but it was something like 1% MPD was equal, in terms of DPS gain, to 3% IASP. You can do this test yourself and obtain the equivalent ratio, simply by using Blood rage or gloves with IASP and a rustic sash, or applying and refunding passives, but that's more costly. Personally I don't even have berserking or its 2 preceding passives, that's 3 points I used for hp% nodes instead.

I noticed you like theorycrafting and perfecting your tree, and it most certainly is a pretty fun thing to do, just as much as playing the game itself I daresay. However, theorycrafting can only get you so far, you will start to experience some of the things I said as the game forces you to make changes and see for yourself that some actions simply have to be taken over others (e.g. blood magic over mana leech, stacking HP for high end mapping and bosses, getting your resistances in your gear just so you can squeeze more passives from your gear, etc.).

Also, always keep in mind that there is not one way to play this game, even though optimization leaves out choices due to them being inefficient, there still are other options that simply depend on preference, for instance the Unwavering Stance and no Stun (but no blind) vs 30% no stun yet has blind debate, the damage vs survivability trade-off, etc. It's up to you to see how you enjoy the game more.

Final note: Don't worry so much about making your skill tree "perfect", at the end of the day this game is really about items, they are the ones that can make/brake or enable a build to function properly. I guarantee you can have the same fun with an unoptimized build and you wouldn't even notice the difference between 31k dps and 34k dps.