ELE LIGHTNING STRIKE - ALL T16s, Shaper, Uber Atziri, HOGM, Chayula, Elder

"

I have an idea that can push your cursing concept even further with a recently buffed unique.

Links would be ball lightning, gmp, curse on hit, then two curses and enhance. With a 20/20 curse on hit and a lvl 3 enhance, you will have 45 curse effectiveness (18% from nearby not included because the weapon must out for it to apply afaik).

Thanks - this is pretty interesting. I'll try and test it out for a bit.

FLASKS

Wanted to post my findings so far on flasks below.

Life Flasks

Recommended Prefixes:

1. Cautious: 100% Increased Recovery on Low Life. On Eternal Flask


a) On "low life" of <35% HP - you will recover 100% more life = 2496 x 2 / 4 seconds = 1248 HP/sec.

With Herbalism node (adds 20% increased life recovery and 20% increased life recovery speed from flask), this becomes 2496 x 1.2 x 2 / (4 / (1 + 0.2)) = 5990 / 3.33 = 1800 HP/sec

b) When NOT on "low life" (>35% HP) - this will function as regular Eternal Flask with 2496 HP / 4 seconds = 624 HP/sec, and with Herbalism this becomes 2496 x 1.2 / (4 / (1 + 0.2)) = 2995 / 3.33 = 899 HP/sec

I think the Cautious flask is great for this build because you typically are at full life for most of the fights. When you get take damage you can regen with this flask, but in case you take a lot of damage and go to low-life, this will get you back to full life in ~2 seconds. It works great for degen as well and it only requires 1 sip to get the full benefits. This is in contrast to Seething flasks:


2. Seething: Instant Recovery, -66% Life Amount to be Recovered. On Divine Flask


This gives up to 979 life instantly per use, with 3 uses available. With 4K HP that means you can recover 979 / 4000 = ~25% of your life instantly.

This flask works well to give you instant life when you need it and works extremely well with the Double Strike + LGOH on hit combo, or to supplement your life leech. However important to remember that you only have 3 uses of this flask and it does not help against degen effects. If you need to get to full life quickly you will need to hit this flask 3 times and so you will use it all up to get to full life. Whereas with a regular flask like Cautious flask you just need 1 sip to take you back to full life and it is very fast if you are on low-life.


3. Surgeon's: Recharge on Critical Strike. On Eternal Flask


With this prefix you cannot roll any of the other speed / amount mods like Cautious or Seething on the flask. But since this is a high crit build it helps to recharge the flask quickly based on your critical strikes, so you can use this flask more often in fights.


Recommended Suffixes:

These are up to your preference and depends on what you are doing with the build. For end-game I found the following suffixes to be most helpful, in order:

1. of Staunching: removes bleed (monsters with corrupting blood, Atziri, Dominus 2nd form, Atziri Cyclone Boss, annoying snakes with puncture)

2. of Warding: removes curse (Atziri, necromancers that curse you with enfeeble / elemental weakness curses etc., Academy boss, Hexfont nemesis mod bosses)

3. of Heat: removes freeze (not a big deal with this build but helpful to have in case you are getting frozen a lot. You can still evade, dodge, and block while frozen).

Other suffixes you can get include % increased evasion, movement speed, and additional resistances.

********


Utility Flasks

1. Jade:: this is one of the best utility flasks to use with this build because it can give a double boost to your evasion if you roll the Reflexes suffix:


You only get 1 use out of a Jade flask at a time, so HIGHLY recommended you roll Surgeon's prefix on this to recharge quickly with your crits.


Other utility flasks such as Topaz, Sapphire, Ruby, and Quicksilver are less important with this build but feel free to use them if you are having trouble with certain elemental damage.

********


Unique Flasks

1. Atziri's Promise:: superb damage and surivivability flask for this build. It buffs both your physical and your elemental, because our elemental damage is all derived from physical damage, the chaos from elemental damage is double-buffed because the increase to your phys damage will increase your elemental damage, and then there is a separate elemental damage increase. Use this flask if you need quick damage boost. You also get great survivability because you gain leech, and since it is extra chaos damage - the chaos damage cannot be reflected.



2. Rumi's Concoction:: please note this is ONLY for those people having trouble capping out their block (i.e. do not have Bringer of Rain, or do not have all the block nodes yet), because you cannot exceed 75% cap on block. But this flask helps give some block if you need to fill the gap.


********


Mana

I recommend you get a hybrid flask if you have trouble with mana so that you can get some life along with your mana. Surgeon's prefix recommended for quick recharge.

reserved

Updated tree in the guide, and will be posting my current stats. Wanted to also put a few notes on the damage multipliers in this build:

Damage Multipliers

- Crit Multiplier: I reach about 700% crit multiplier = 8x damage increase

- Assassin's Mark: 39% more extra damage to your crits = 1.4x damage multiplier. This does not factor in Curse on Hit buff to curses, or reduced curse effectiveness by bosses.

- Elemental Resistance Reduction: ~1.5x-2.9x multiplier on lightning, fire (Herald of Ash), and cold damage (Hatred) due to the -47% res from 20/20 Elemental Weakness, the range depends on if a mob has 0% (1.5x increase) or 75% (2.9x increase) lightning resistance. This does not factor in Enhance, Curse on Hit buff to curses, or reduced curse effectiveness by bosses

- Shock: Just need 1 stack now, and you have 1.5x more damage.

So in total there is about: 8 x 1.4 x 2.25 (average ele weakness multiplier) x 1.5 = 38x damage multiplier. The big increase is coming from Crit Multiplier, Elemental Weakness, and Shock. I think this is right, but someone let me know if they think my math is off.

Even without the 2.25x average elemental weakness multiplier I am at 17x damage increase. This is why if you are in a double reflect map you can die if you crit and fail to evade/dodge/block your own damage. If I have to run double reflect map (i.e. from Zana), I either take out WED gem, or just simply swap to a white dagger to lower your DPS for the map and reflect is no longer an issue.



This build does on the high-end range per hit: ~3,000 light, ~2,000 cold, 900 fire, about 1,700 phys. So the total elemental damage is about three times more than the physical damage. This is before we factor in the damage multipliers above.

Again, someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe the above math is right.

******


STATS

Base DPS in town: 94K -> add Hatred and Herald of Ash = 155K -> add Atziri Flask and 3 Power Charges = 225K for LS + Multi + Inc. Crit Damage + WED. For Uber Atziri I took out WED and put in Life Leech gem so I was at about 160K damage MAX.
Defense: evasion without Jade 29% -> with Jade flask = 55%

Is there a shadow version of the build ?

"

Sygion wrote:

Is there a shadow version of the build ?

its the same build but shadow would hav more dps and less life... thats it

"

BIGLITRO wrote:

"

Sygion wrote:

Is there a shadow version of the build ?

its the same build but shadow would hav more dps and less life... thats it

Yes - what BIG said.

I am compiling FAQ because these questions keep coming up, and it will be helpful to have them all in one place:

1. Why Lightning Strike? Can I use Reave / Molten Strike / Double Strike?
Lightning Strike is an amazing skill - it is one of the best single target skills in the game with its 130% base damage multiplier, it also has free projectiles that give you free AOE, and each projectile deals 91% base damage.

You also have high lightning damage, and as a result you can Shock easily. Shock is a key part of this build because you gain a 50% MORE damage increase to all your damage when you shock, and you will find it easier to freeze with cold from Hatred if you can shock.

Lightning Strike also has high range, so you can play very defensively if you need to by holding Shift + Lighting Strike attack button to aim your projectiles.

Because you can play range, you can use Ondar's Guile to help against reflect. Additionally this build has high dodge and ~max block - which applies to your own reflect. As a result, you can stack crit damage very high and still do reflect maps relatively safely compared to a melee build. If you use Atziri gloves then reflect becomes even easier with this build.

Lightning Strike synergizes extremely well with the % physical converted to elemental buffs like Hatred and Herald of Ash - because Weapon Elemental Damage increases your lightning (50% converted from your phys), cold, and fire. If you play a pure physical skill like Double Strike it is NOT optimal to use WED.

Reave is a good skill, but you lose the ability to play at range unless you keep your stacks up. It is also a melee skill so you will have more problems with reflect. It is very hard to shock bosses with Reave

Double Strike is a good skill, it works very well with LGOH and I used it on my original axe build, however you lose ability to play at range, you have to add AOE gem like melee splash which takes up a slot, and it is also melee so again you will have problems with reflect. It is very hard to shock bosses with Double Strike

Molten Strike is also a good skill and you can get very high damage with Point Blank - however you still are limited to having to play in melee range, unlike Lightning Strike. It is also very hard to shock bosses with Molten Strike.

2. I don't have Bringer of Rain, can I use 6-L instead? How can I get Blind?
Bringer of Rain is highly recommended. You lose 15% block (which is a lot of block and spell block), and blind without Bringer of Rain.

Bringer of Rain is also cheaper than an end-game 6L evasion chest, and it is easier to color the sockets.

You can use a 6L of course but it is not optimal for this build as you will have much lower block, and will need to apply Blind separately through:
- Smoke mine
- Flame totem linked with Blind
- Some type of CWDT set-up
- Weapon swap - ball lightning / split arrow linked to Blind

3. Does this build work with Shadow or Scion?
Ranger has the best start for this build. You can do Shadow but you will have more damage and less life that we get from Ranger start - life is already hard to get from the tree so going Shadow is a big tradeoff to get more damage that is not recommended.

Ranger also has quick access to Heart of Oak, block nodes and Ondar's Guile for survivability that you can get early on while leveling.

You can do Scion with this build of course, but you will lose several points trying to link up to the main tree

4. I can't get a high damage dagger, how does this build perform with average weapon?
Build performs very well, please see video on front page of Courtyard map with 200 DPS dagger where I could shock and freeze bosses with my curses.

Hope this is helpful, I will try and add any other frequent questions I see come up.

Congratz Cery! I was pretty sure you could do it, and you haven't disappointed me ; )

Probably one of the cheapest builds able to do Uber out there, if not the most.

Would be great to see your setup for the fight in the OP.

datmasktho

small tip for atziri and uber atziri trios:

puncture + inc crit + multistrike + added fire/melee dmg on full life(i prefer this) ; curses to use 20/20 temp chains + ass mark/vuln with lvl 3 enhance.. temp chain is for long bleed duration.

since its easy to chrome BoR, i used to carry some stacks of chrome for uber atziri or keep another bor in my stash(it was so cheap in ambush anyway).

also you could try puncture vs atziri/uber atziri on your 4link in if you have slot for that it has mega free dmg on process.. id keep lightstrike in bor for this part.

as a reminder, with this method alai still will be hard for uber.. you should keep yourself a bit moving to make her move.. other 2 cyclone and dual strike guy is just LOL.. puncture them and watch them die so funny.

ps: whoever use ec + ic setup on trio is lamer player in my eyes.. ofc its a choice but nothing more than cheesing/abusing crap game mechanic. i have no idea why ic max duration isnt fixed to max 4-5sec yet.

"

Ceryneian wrote:

Will be uploading video of Uber Atziri in a bit. Managed to do it with no deaths xD. I will post another video of the Vaal and trio. Surprisingly the Vaal is not that hard on this build but the trio is very difficult and I MUST kill A'alai first and the Cyclone guy 2nd otherwise it becomes impossible. I can do trio deathless but I have to play flawlessly and be constantly moving until A'alai is dead. The DPS is too high on this build and with multistrike autotarget I sometimes kill the fire guy first by mistake xD and then I have problems =(. I am tempted to "cheat" and just use Enduring Cry + Spell Echo + Immortal call, but I want to do the trio with only evasion/dodge/block.

I reduced the damage a lot by taking out WED and putting in Life Leech gem so I went from ~220K down to about 170K damage. This helped me concentrate during the fight instead of having to micromanage Blood Rage (for leech) with flasks.

Special thanks to tinchop and mGravitus for pushing me to do Uber!

Hope you guys enjoy the vid! http://youtu.be/tq6ez2pd1g0

Can you explain how and where would you use Enduring+Spell echo+immortal call? I'm interesting on that (slots, lvl gems, function, etc

Regards, actually starting this char (as second char) on Rampage.