[1.1.X] Arctic Breath + Fireball "Cast on Crit" Frenzy Wander (with Video)

I updated the original post with more details and new info.

I received a pm with the following question :

"

I just read your build and have a question about your weapon:

What would be better with your build, a high physical damage or a high ele damage wand?
Since you're running weapon ele damage and have lots of +ele damage nodes, I guess an ele damage wand is much preferred over physical? If so, why do you use a wand with just lightning damage? Wouldn't it be better to use a high tri-ele dmg wand?
On the other hand, are Frenzy and Power siphon not only taking physical damage into account? So for those two skills you would actually prefer a high physical damage wand?

Thank you for any help.

Its good question.

With a level 20 Frenzy, 7 Power charges and 4 frenzy charges, here are the different bonuses I get from passives, gems and gear (other than the wand) for the different types of wand damage :

Lightning damage : +240%
Fire damage : +210%
Cold damage : +225%
Physical damage : +99%

With a level 20 Power Siphon (20% quality), 7 Power charges and 4 frenzy charges (and 20/20 weapon elemental dmg support), here are the different bonuses I get from passives, gems and gear (other than the wand) for the different types of wand damage :

Lightning damage : +527%
Fire damage : +467%
Cold damage : +497%
Physical damage : +166%


Conclusion : Clearly, even if both Frenzy and Power Siphon gives benefit to physical damage, Elemental damage will yield much better results than physical damage with those skills. For the same flat damage, you'll get more than twice the dps with elemental dmg with frenzy and 3 times with Power Siphon.


So why not get a wand with triple elemental damage ? I decided to get a wand with both +flat elemental damage and +spell damage to split the benefits between my attacks (Frenzy and Power Siphon) and Arctic Breath. Flat Elemental damage helps my attacks while Spell damage helps Arctic Breath. Also, wands with hydrid spell dmg/+flat elemental dmg aren't as expensive as pure +flat elemental damage, so that's also one of the reasons why I pick the one I'm using.

Based on the same idea actually.
Gave Chain a try.

It's just 100 times better with Chain than without, with no comparison possible actually, since you're now casting way more spells per Frenzy usage.
What's troublesome though lies in the fact that you're lagging yourself insanely hard when it procs like crazy.
Tried Projectile Weakness aswell. Without Increased AoE, it's really subpar. Doubt it gets that better with this support though.

Mana cost can be handled through Berek's Grip or temporally the Soul Siphon cluster nodes.
Reflect is totally ignored through the use of Fireball + Cast on Crit' + Arctic Armor.

Definitely a fun build though :)

"

Iyacthu wrote:

Based on the same idea actually.
Gave Chain a try.

It's just 100 times better with Chain than without, with no comparison possible actually, since you're now casting way more spells per Frenzy usage.
What's troublesome though lies in the fact that you're lagging yourself insanely hard when it procs like crazy.
Tried Projectile Weakness aswell. Without Increased AoE, it's really subpar. Doubt it gets that better with this support though.

Mana cost can be handled through Berek's Grip or temporally the Soul Siphon cluster nodes.
Reflect is totally ignored through the use of Fireball + Cast on Crit' + Arctic Armor.

Definitely a fun build though :)

My current CoC setup is Frenzy + Cast on Crit + LMP + Crit Damage + Arctic Breath.

The mana cost is 18 x 1.4 x 1.5 x 1.3 = 49.1 mana

I guess if you are using Chain, you're not using Crit damage. Lets see the result in term of mana cost :

18 x 1.4 x 1.5 x 2 = 75.6 mana

So, for 54% extra mana cost, what do you get ?

Severily reduced damage per projectile. In my case, according to my calculations, with Chain, each frenzy projectile will deal about 5.6k dps instead of 17k dps with Crit dmg. So you'd need to hit more than 3 times the number of targets to compensate to loss dmg per projectile. In the best of scenarios, you'll hit 3 times the number of targets per attack, not more. You'll also proc Arctic Breath more often, in almost every case.

However, Arctic Breath would deal much lower damage per projectile, around 675 damage with chain vs 1743 with crit damage.

So yeah, if I could support the mana cost, I guess Arctic Breath itself would probably deal more damage with chain than without... against very big packs. Frenzy would deal less damage though. And for small and average packs, I think my current setup with projectile weakness and crit damage is optimal.

Also, with projectile weakness, the proc rate of Arctic Breath is already very high. The map clear speed is very good. I don't feel the need for higher dps. Sustaining the mana cost of Chain would require sacrifice in other areas that I'm not willing to make.

After trying out Arc instead of Critical Dmg, I decided to use that combo instead.

So my current set up is : Frenzy + LMP + CoC + Arctic Breath + Arc

I updated the original post to reflect that.

What do you think of the viability of using a barrage with chain (I feel that chain would result in more damage and procs than GMP or LMP) as a main attack, and using a 3/4L frenzy/PCOC to build charges, with maybe Victario's Acuity to maintain charges?

"

kellenlawson wrote:

What do you think of the viability of using a barrage with chain (I feel that chain would result in more damage and procs than GMP or LMP) as a main attack, and using a 3/4L frenzy/PCOC to build charges, with maybe Victario's Acuity to maintain charges?

To proc Spells, Its most likely a better set up than Frenzy + lmp.

The only possible downside of this is the low damage output of barrage itself compare to frenzy. However, with all the chaining potential, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. I really have to try it.

I also like frenzy as a charge building skill. When I first tried this build, I was using Power Siphon to proc spells (with CoC) and frenzy to generate charges. However, I quickly realized that Power Siphon's attack speed wasn't high enough. Frenzy was simply much more effective for CoC procs. That was before Barrage was added to the game.

I very much like the idea of Barrage + Chain + CoC to proc spells like AB and Arc

and

Frenzy + Power Charges on Crit + Weapon Elemental dmg + Faster attacks to generate both Frenzy and Power charges.

But sometimes a good idea on paper isn't so good in practice. I'll try it and tell you my findings.


The other thing you can do to help with the Power charges is this : Cast on damage taken (level 1) + Ice Spear (level 8) + Ice Spear (level 8) + Power charges on Crit.

I'll probably do it myself (it will replace my current Codt+Arc+Arc+life leech setup).

Great, thanks! I look forward to hearing how it goes. I think that perhaps the biggest advantage will be in mana costs per cast on crit proc. Also, I feel like shifting more damage toward cast on crit spells will remove a bit of the gear demand too.

Don't know if you're still updating this, or working on this build at all- but I've had a lot more time to think about playing than to actually play lately, and wanted to get your opinion.

What do you think about running this build with cloak of defiance and eldritch battery? Combined with Berek's grip, and considering mobs should be frozen and shocked for the vast majority of the time, we'll be leeching 5% of our damage as mana and life- maintaining both of our effective life pools at the same time (whereas with ES and life, we can only maintain one). I think it would encourage shifting a few more points towards either life, armor, or evasion nodes, and using a few pieces of evasion or armor gear (as >3000 mana seems a little extreme), but besides that the build could stay largely the same. Pushing around some points, and using an ES/AR shield instead of rapith, I was able to get a hypothetical build to around 8500 armor. Combined with a little evasion, good block, and 40% of our damage going to a second health pool that will regenerate much more quickly than a regular health pool, it should be a pretty significantly survivable build.

Thoughts?

"

kellenlawson wrote:

Don't know if you're still updating this, or working on this build at all- but I've had a lot more time to think about playing than to actually play lately, and wanted to get your opinion.

What do you think about running this build with cloak of defiance and eldritch battery? Combined with Berek's grip, and considering mobs should be frozen and shocked for the vast majority of the time, we'll be leeching 5% of our damage as mana and life- maintaining both of our effective life pools at the same time (whereas with ES and life, we can only maintain one). I think it would encourage shifting a few more points towards either life, armor, or evasion nodes, and using a few pieces of evasion or armor gear (as >3000 mana seems a little extreme), but besides that the build could stay largely the same. Pushing around some points, and using an ES/AR shield instead of rapith, I was able to get a hypothetical build to around 8500 armor. Combined with a little evasion, good block, and 40% of our damage going to a second health pool that will regenerate much more quickly than a regular health pool, it should be a pretty significantly survivable build.

Thoughts?

Thanks for interest and ideas.

I'm currently playing one of my other character, however I plan on playing with Knuser again soon and I'll then update this thread accordingly.

However, I tried your barrage idea : Barrage + cast on crit + chain + Arctic Breath + Arc.

It works very well... when CoC procs.

But when it doesn't, the damage is sub-par. The other problem is that using Projectile weakness (PW) with this setup is counterproductive. First, quality Projectile Weakness makes your projectile pierces 74% of the time. However, if your projectiles pierces, it can't chains. The other thing is that Arc isn't a projectile so it doesn't benefit from PW, including the 34% "more" damage from PW.

For these reasons, the best curse to use with barrage+chain+AB+Arc is Elemental Weakness. But that also means losing what I like so much about projectile weakness : targets have 68% less evasion. That effectively increases the chance to hit from 80-85% to around 95%. So with the barrage setup, you miss about 15% of the time and the other 5% or 10%, you don't miss but don't procs. So, all in all, you procs 70% to 75% of the time with Barrage. Less often than with Frenzy. When you do, the damage is possibly higher than with frenzy, but when you don't, not only the barrage damage itself is disappointing, but you lose the whole barrage "casting time".

It's certainly a viable build. It's not better or worst than frenzy. Just different. Also, it would require quite a passive points rework, including giving up the additional frenzy charge passive and getting some additional accuracy passives. At this moment, its not something I'm not willing to do.

So, I decided to keep my current setup but with a tweak. Like I said earlier, Arc doesn't benefit from my main curse, projectile weakness. It doesn't benefit from Lesser Multiple projectile either. Also, the shock stacks provided by Arc procs is already partially provided by frenzy + wrath. For this reason, I decided to try something else than Arc as my 2nd CoC spell : Fireball. And, so far, this is my favorite setup. I'll probably post a gameplay video with Frenzy+LMP+COC+AB + Fireball.

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About your other idea of Cloak of Defiance and EB. Its not a bad idea.

However, currently, with the mana leech from Berek's grip, I almost have too much mana, so the additional mana from EB wouldn't help much. Sure, 40% of it could be used as a form of shield, but currently 100% of my ES is used, which is much better than 40%. Also, with so much more mana, the auras cost more mana too. So, in the end, I'd have much higher mana regen, but not as much additional available mana as you may think. And like you said, it would possibly require new gear and possibly a passive reword. Again, not something I'm willing to do.

Finally, I find that the Berek's grip's 5% mana leech on shocked monsters is very reliable. However, the 5% life leech on frozen mobs does not happen enough to rely on it. When AB procs, it crits only about 35% of the time and when it does, it usually one-shot kill the targets. In other words, the frozen mobs I could leech from dies as they get frozen, most of the time.