[1.0.1] Dagger Spell Mage 380k pack DPS, 42k solo DPS. (Cast on Crit fun)

Having just played this spec up to L61 (and having 3 other L80+ characters), I feel like I can answer a few of these questions. The OP or others can jump in to add/correct what I say when they want.

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SlowKingPKM wrote:

How do you handle mana early in the game, I see your ring gives mana leech and with a blue flask with surgeons you seem to be fine but those are both late game, so for leveling what would you recommend?

Use Clarity Level 1 aura while leveling up. Chug flasks. You can have surgeon flasks at any level. Don't run Purity until Merciless... you probably won't need it (only run Grace while leveling up.) The ring he uses (Berek's Grip) can be equipped at L20. I don't have Berek's Grip yet... but have never felt much mana pressure. I do need to chug a mana flask a bit more than most builds, but it is not a hardship.

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SlowKingPKM wrote:

Why do you use a granite flask instead of jade, I get that granite gives you an ability to tank hits, whereas jade just lets you dodge so your trying to avoid the possibility of being 1 hit, makes sense, but is that necessary weighed against the much higher dodge given by jade flasks?

Yes, it is likely necessary to use Granite against 1-hit bosses. If a hit bypasses Dodge and Evasion and can kill you, you need more armor to survive.

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SlowKingPKM wrote:

Why do you prefer freezing pulse against some of the more popular cast on crit spells such as Ice Spear, given Ice Spears synergy with Crit, and the Ice damage from your passives and the ice damage of Spectral throw, furthermore is that stronger than say discharge or some of the other spells, sorry I don't know all of them.

Ice Spear is great for "locking down" enemies, i.e., freezing them at distance. You'd use Ice Spear to lock them down plus another spell for main damage. In the 5 link version of this build you only have room for 1 main offensive spell. He's using a spell that does a lot of damage like Freezing Pulse because a great feature of this build is that the incredible main spell spam you achieve at higher levels kills enemies fast--before they can get to you.

It is hard to count the number of times Freezing Pulse is triggered because it is so fast, but I think that I'm getting 6-8 spams of the spell in a burst, over something like two seconds (there is a cooldown on trigger gems now.)

With 6 link he uses Increased Critical Damage. You could try using Ice Spear instead, coupled with a higher damage spell like Freezing Pulse.

He lists other higher damage spells he's tried and used in the original post (such as Fireball, Stormcall, etc.). They all work well and have pros and cons. The key is that ideally you want your triggered spells to have synergy with Greater Multiple Projectiles since that is one of your mandatory supports. This "kind of" rules out non-projectile damage spells like Firestorm.

When I get a 6L chest and Berek's Grip, I'd like to experiment with projectile lightning spells to pair with Freezing Pulse for maximum value of the Berek's Grip passives. I'd pair a lightning projectile spell with freezing pulse in place of Increased Critical Damage. Candidates could be Spark or Lightning Trap. Another thing to try would be Lightning Strike instead of Spectral Throw plus Freezing Pulse, or Lightning Arrow with the bow version of this build. I don't know how GMP and Lighnting Trap interact. Using Lightning Strike would put you in semi-dangerous melee range all the time, but might be interesting.

I will probably try Freezing Pulse + Fireball when I get a 6L chest. I really don't feel the need to lock down enemies with Ice Spear; they die before they get to me. The other small advantage of Ice Spear is piercing shots so the spears pass through mobs and continue off screen; so I might experiment with it as a second spell in a 6L. But I'd never use it as my main damage dealing spell.

Discharge is a poor choice because much of your killing is at range, and we don't have passives and supports to increase our area of effect, so Discharge wouldn't hit as much with this build.

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SlowKingPKM wrote:

What stats are strongest when looking for gear and why do you run +mana?

The original post includes this, but it is a bit buried. See the Master Gear section. +Mana lets you have enough remaining mana after auras to cast a fully supported Spectral Throw. When you have a high enough mana regen (and leech) rate, it can regen almost as fast as you cast, which means you only need enough mana left over after aura reservation for a few casts.

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SlowKingPKM wrote:

Whats with the frenzy passive, I think your going to add Blood Rage but would that be worth lost survivability?

Blood Rage only hurts your survivability when you have a combination of low (negative) chaos resists and low life regen. With reasonable (like around zero) chaos resists and moderate life regen, you can carry Blood Rage aura without any loss of health. When you reach this point, its effects are all positive--increased attack speed on Spectral Throw, and increased leech.

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SlowKingPKM wrote:

Any thing you might update with patches 1.02 and 1.03 I didn't play pre 1.02 so I'm not exactly sure how that patch might have changed the build and 1.03 didn't look to have any realivent changes but I'm still curious on your opinions.

I don't think these patches impacted the build much. The damage-over-time changes in 1.02 might make Fireball a bit more powerful with the right gear. I'll let others comment.

Thank you so much, that is sort of the conclusion's I reached with the build, the idea of running a second spell with a 6-Link is interesting and Ice spear would be a good candidate but we would have to figure out the damage increase since running Increased Critical and Power Charge both Increase damage output above 100% it might not be worth it, but I'm not sure. The rest of the questions you answered perfectly, much more confident on my choice in builds now. Another Idea might be to just use 2 Freezing Pulses. Lastly I think your right on a lightning spell being optimal, since we crit so much with both spells we will have a high chance to crit with a lighning spell increases the damage taken by the mobs.

SlowKingPKM

One thing to note: Power Charge on Critical is pretty much mandatory for this build. Having 4 power charges gives you +200% global crit chance, which noticeably causes the linked spell(s) to spam. I was astounded by how much of a difference Power Charge on Critical made for me. If my charges drop off, I use Critical Weakness on the next pack of mobs to get them back up right away--the charges make a staggering difference.

Earlier in the thread, someone suggested using Power Charge on Critical on a secondary attack skill. You do have room on the "utility" gem where the OP has Freezing Mine to do that. However, I really can't be bothered to switch between skills to keep the 4 Power Charges up. It is just so much easier to have it on your main attack. But if you are looking to eke out every last ounce of DPS, you could try moving Power Charge off you main attack and then adding one additional damaging spell (or two, if you want to replace Increase Critical Damage as well.) You are right that you could use two or even three Freezing Pulses, or lots of other combinations.

Just remember that if you have to switch between your main attack and your secondary to keep charges up that there is an opportunity cost for this--each time slot you don't cast your main attack is time not spent doing massive damage with the Cast on Crit spam.

I think adding an additional spell actually is weaker than increased critical damage, think of it this way, while we do focus on spell damage with this build, lets say you have 150% spell damage, so if you crit and cast 2 spells your doing 300% spell damage, criting 80% of the time with a 70% chance to cast would be lower damage than just 100% increased crit damage. This wouldn't be the case if cast on crit had a 100% chance to cast so I think the author is right on this note, but one could take into consideration a lightning spell that would crit increasing damage through spark.

Simple math is 80 percent crit with 70 percent chance to cast -> .56 chance to cast, with 2 spells this is on average 1 cast per crit.

Against 100% increased crit damage is 80 percent increased damage with a .56 chance to cast, so your looking at .56 spell damage against .80 crit damage.

This build looks quit cool i only have a some concerns.

1. reflect obviously this can almost insta kill a build like this should this just be avoided or how are you dealing with it ?
2. Even thou we are using specc throw with a really low base mana cost supporting the mana cost without clarity seems somewhat impossible :P
3. ofc im going to ask even thou i think i know the answere already how are you feeling about this build in HC?

Thanks Ithz

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Iths wrote:

reflect obviously this can almost insta kill a build like this should this just be avoided or how are you dealing with it ?

I am L62 and not quite to maps yet, but reflect doesn't hurt me so far (neither elemental, nor physical). I've played other builds where even in non-maps I had to watch for reflect like a hawk, but this isn't one of them so far. The OP suggests you use Freeze Mine in tough maps where reflect would kill you.

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Iths wrote:

Even thou we are using specc throw with a really low base mana cost supporting the mana cost without clarity seems somewhat impossible :P

You are the third or fourth person to raise mana as an issue in this thread, but I have to tell you... it really isn't an issue. Have 2 Surgeon's Mana Pots. They will refill multiple times each encounter. Chug them. Use Berek's Grip for mana leech. Use Clarity 1 until you reach your 50s or so. That's it, stop worrying about it.

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Iths wrote:

ofc im going to ask even thou i think i know the answere already how are you feeling about this build in HC?

I think it would be fine to use this build in HC, so long as you don't mind your HC character accidentally dying to Lightning Thorns in Act 3, or elemental reflect in a tough map.

OK, I bit the bullet and spent a day farming in Nemesis to get enough currency to buy a Berek's Grip.

I had high expectations for the synergies between Berek's Grip and this build, and was totally blown away. I can say for certain that with 1 Surgeons Mana Flask and 1 Berek's Grip, you'll never have mana problems. I was motoring through areas in Act 2 Merciless at pretty much run speed and only needed to use the flask once or twice, when I didn't have a big group of mobs around me to AoE attack (and AoE leech).

If you don't have Berek's Grip yet and you are playing this build, get your hands on one right away.

If you are playing Standard and don't know how to get a Berek's Grip, here is the best way: Make a tanky character (Saint Vitus Ranger is my favorite) on Nemesis, farm in Ledge and Fellshrine for about a day, and earn enough currency to buy a Berek's Grip. Then you put the ring into the inventory of a new Nemesis char (like L2), get yourself killed, and voila you've got the ring in Standard. I bought a fabulous Berek's Grip for about 11 chaos on Nemesis; on Standard it is something like 5ex.

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Iths wrote:

This build looks quit cool i only have a some concerns.

1. reflect obviously this can almost insta kill a build like this should this just be avoided or how are you dealing with it ?
2. Even thou we are using specc throw with a really low base mana cost supporting the mana cost without clarity seems somewhat impossible :P
3. ofc im going to ask even thou i think i know the answere already how are you feeling about this build in HC?

Thanks Ithz

Not the author but I use almost this build at lvl 83

1. Yea big issue late game. One way around it is using EK as the spell with high lvl artic armour (15+) aswell as high armour (I use grace iron reflexes).
If you really want to run an ele spell just a high hp pool and capped+ resists and play safe.
2. Not too sure since I use high mana regen for artic armour, maybe get some mana on gear or use bereks grip and shock enemies somehow. (arc/shock nova)
3. Rough but possible

Bereks grip isn't 5ex, plenty still selling for under 1 ex

heya, i'm playing this build since last week or so and i am having a blast. i did play a lightning arrow ranger and aa ST scion bevorhand but the're not coming close in terms of fun.

So i made a short video running docks with this build. using bereks grip & a 5L chest.
here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjiacxMasG0

as you can see i don't have any mana issues whatsoever. also note how the first monster drops an exaltet orb :DD


edit: my gear (looking for a new belt)

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Joeychandler wrote:

Bereks grip isn't 5ex, plenty still selling for under 1 ex

links or screenshot else it didnt happened.