The Perfect Build

Now I'm sure if you checked over the gear the first thing to stand out is the alpha howl + empower + the 2 purities. It works like this +3 to a purity gem gives +5 max res. The 67% increase to auras allows that to be 8.3% (rounded to 8), combined with saffells and elemental adapt ends up being a total of 90% all res.

Now you ask, why does this mean fuck all? Well, when combined with CoC using these flasks



Because you crit so often with cyclone (I have 88% acc and 92% crit chance w/o crit weakness) along with the high crit from the other 2 skills you're using (EK and arc have roughly 50% crit chance IIRC) you can have 100% res, with almost 100% uptime if you use them properly and don't get screwed (i.e. using them all in a tough fight only to run into another tough fight and run out of charges).

The key is +3 to gems, that's the only way to get 5% out of the purities. With vaal orbs it might be possible to not need the empower but colors on alpha won't be easy. If you want to have all 3 res at 90% at all times then get a weapon with +1 to gems or +2 to X element gems and plug in the 3rd purity there with lvl 1-2 empower.

With this pure elemental bosses are a joke, while the video cut off here's one of me I made this morning taking on double shrine peity (It got cut off because I was recording on my roommate's computer and he only had 1gb of free space). If you notice, peity's feared lightning storm does literally no damage to me.

Now when stuff like darkscorn, cloak of flame and lightning coil the first thing thought of is how do I max out that res so I take a flat physical damage reduction, well, here it is, 100% lightning res on command, equaling a flat 40% physical damage reduction whenever you need it.

Because of that 40% my little bit of armor is way more effective. With the granite up I have about 7k armor, after facing residence dom I'm fairly sure his AOE does 4k physical and 4k lightning, that 4k physical (it's physical and lightning for sure if you didn't know btw) gets chopped to 2400 so that 7k armor gives a 19.5% DR so we end up taking only 1932 from Dom's AOE instead of the 8k raw damage. With 5k life and LL on CoC 2k damage is a drop in the bucket. Especially when you consider the rest of his attacks are pretty much 0 damage.

While I haven't had the chance to test it, I suspect palace Dom does 6-10k of both physical and lightning damage so if it is in the nosebleed range of 10k both we'd take roughly 5.5k damage, sadly with the recent changes to the tree I've lost quite a bit of life from the scion life tree nerf and I had 6 levels of life nodes to get now I have 1 all while having less life than I did prepatch. So if Dom doesn't have insane damage we survive, if he does well, without absolutely perfect gear I don't see being able to survive his blast.

Lastly on the defensive front if you check my boots and shield you'll notice the familiar combo of end cry and IC linked to CwDT. After the CwDT changes I was scared of how often IC would proc if I fully leveled CwDT. Honestly the only time I need it is when I'm doing reflect. As the only fear I have is one shotting myself, it's hard because EK isn't doing large bursts, you'll notice I don't have much crit multi so my damage comes from frequent hits. It's easy for me to out leech the 3k damage required to proc CwDT, when I take a burst of 3k physical it procs off now I'm taking no physical damage or lightning along with very little from other elemental sources so I can quickly recover without issue.

Things to be careful of, as while you're almost invincible, you aren't completely. It's going to sound fucked but when doing a reflect map with shocked ground and vuln time your end cry out correctly. Basically anytime you're taking an extreme amount of damage from reflect. If you mistime end cry, as IC is proccing so often on a reflect map you might run into a bad spot where the cooldown for CwDT hasn't completed so it won't proc IC. Each pack on a reflect, vuln and shocked ground map could lead to you killing yourself, so don't blindly charge forward, clear packs quickly while IC is up then let it reset before engaging the next one.

When CoC first came out the most popular version was quill rain and personally I hated it. It died easily, the mana was not fun, my FPS was fucking shit and I hated giving up my rings to use thief's torment. Giving up the rings meant you lost too much accuracy, potential crit, life and res. The build was centered around IAS and luck, I really disliked it. I tried out cyclone and that's what I loved. I did a discharge version but I couldn't keep it alive so I ended up using a staff version using kaoms. It did great but against stuff like resident Dom I just got smoked so the defensive section above came to me and I went dagger/shield. I like being different so I hated using this version but the defense was 100% original and just incredible.



With the links

Cyclone > EK > CoC > PCoC > LL > Arc

The only optional one is arc. If you don't have at least a 5l (doesn't need to be lightning coil, that just makes physical damage easier) this will not work.

Cyclone gets an extreme amount of hits which leads to a ton of procs, moar EKs means moar DPS. EK is the highest damage spell, it also penetrates packs and is an AOE, it's by far king here. CoC is a no brainer, combo doesn't work without it. PCoC, you cannot make up for the crit chance power charges give. Volls is nice but the lack of res and life makes it very difficult to stay alive against tougher bosses. LL is also required, not much regen with this build and pots are a premium as you need the res pots for everything to work. Also with how little damage is incoming LL works great because it recovers from the big hits that do make it through.

The last spell has been much messing around for me. The choice is really arc or ice spear, possibly FP but I didn't do enough testing with it. Let me explain the choices.

Arc: Penetrates packs, hits far away targets, decent damage and shock stacks many packs for quicker clearing.

Ice Spear: Penetrates packs, freezes almost everything in it's path as it synergies so well with the high crit chance, best option if you have low EHP as freezing everything will do wonders to stay alive.

FP: While probably as good as ice spear it has lower DPS, lower crit chance and the 2nd form of ice spear is almost a guaranteed freeze while FP isn't.

Ice spear is better if your EHP is garbage and you NEED the CC. FP is better if you need CC for EHP help and can afford higher DPS (i.e. you don't get smashed by reflect). Arc is king of the DPS as it's damage is comparable to the other 2 while shock stacking for EK.

For curses again, it depends on what you can handle. Crit weakness is king for DPS, giant bursts and when it's up I have 100% crit (it's additive to your crit chance although I'm not sure if 95% is a hard cap even with crit weakness up, so 95% at worse which means you won't notice non-crits). If you're having trouble with physical reflect use ele weakness. If you're dying often use temp chains or enfeeble. Temp chains will keep everything grouped up, the tighter the group the more often CoC procs, the higher your DPS. Enfeeble is a flat out damage reduction and is the more extreme EHP curse. Personally I prefer enfeeble if I can't use crit weakness.

You'll probably notice I have 2 crit weaknesses. 1. I didn't really have another gem to run with end cry CwDT nor IC CwDT. 2. As the lvl 20 CwDT only procs at high damage I was only really using it against uniques so I put a lower lvl one in for lower damage packs. It helps me clear a little quicker. Honestly I could drop the lower lvl crit weakness and barely notice the difference, but it does come in handy building up charges against a new pack when starting the map or not running into a pack for a while. It's a luxury I can afford as I haven't found anything better to put in that socket.

I haven't really played in over a month now (on and off here and there, help my roommate every now and then) and my roommate bugged me to finally release the build. I'd been holding off for so long because I wanted absolutely perfect gear so I could see this build reach it's full potential before it got nerfed. Which it kind of did with the saffell nerf. Anywho, in this section I'm going to explain exactly what I was looking for in perfect gear. All of this will be in the context of pre 1.1.0 as I haven't really played any of it so I don't know how the changes influence the gear I'm using.


I got this just from throwing a few chaos at it, fits in great.

Basically want spell damage, spell damage/mana, +1 all gems or +2 X element, IAS, crit chance and accuracy.

CoC works Acc*Crit chance*CoC chance*IAS. As cyclone has high APS base, CoC chance is a matter of leveling, I focus on keeping my acc above 80% as I get into the 80s working getting crit chance as high as possible then working towards acc. Both become important end game, trying to max both without losing the other.

The reason for +gems is for purity, if you get the 3rd purity in the weapon you can have 100% to all res on demand. Also there isn't really another good prefix, I thought mana to get enough mana to take clarity off BM. It's tough



Jewelry is all the same: Life, crit, acc. After that it's what you need it to have. I need lightning res to make up for lightning coil so I'm trying to max it out on rings so I can get crit multi on my ammy, which is probably my weakest piece tbh. Ammy I'd want crit multi, I don't think I need the INT so I'd rather have dex (for acc) or str (for life). The rings were crafting projects but as is they are damn near BIS for me.



Belt, I crafted this for another build. It had armor and res, I hit max life and WED in 7 ex + 6 ex, was very happy with it. Honestly WED isn't required so don't stress paying for it. I've been trying to find a comparable rustic I could craft or afford, I can't afford it. Although I'm not sure I can really afford to give up the extra life... Higher armor and res would be great.



Boots, found these with no MS or life. I yolo ex-ed max MS then 1 eternal 1 ex to get the life roll. Extremely happy here. Basically I'd want these boots with higher cold res and much higher armor. Getting closer to 10k armor will help handle palace dom, especially how armor is so much more effective with this build.

Other stuff is just a matter of finding perfect uniques. I'm not obsessed with perfect malis, saffell or alpha howl. Alpha howl the important stats are static (+aura, 8% reduced reserve), malis the difference between 40-50% is very small, even the new ones it's not a big deal. Saffells, same as alpha, important stat is static (+5% max res), spell damage is nice and without block the spell block is barely noticable. When you take 0 damage it's hard to tell if you blocked it or just didn't take the damage, I.E. meaningless.



Seething Hallowed for those "oh shit" moments, of staunching because bleed can be annoying. Also with corrupting blood making it's way into normal play it could be a life saver, you are getting MANY hits off quickly. Granite is not surprising. Topaz is permanently in that spot. Figured shock removal was good with it. Perma quicksilver. Last flask I switch out depending on the map boss. I have a sapphire flask in my stash for when I do peity (even though in the video above I don't have it in and didn't struggle against her second form at all). I think before I took my break I was doing 76 maps so I had ruby in for crem boss, who is a joke for this build.

Just quick gameplay, it's fairly easy. Head into pack, cyclone, if higher damage pack, pop all 3 flasks, cyclone until they are dead, flasks refill, continue to next pack. When doing a tough boss like Dom, I'll stare at my buff/debuff list in the top left corner making sure the flasks are up the whole time and I'm not using them too soon. As long as I'm hitting him I know the flasks will recharge quickly and as long as the flasks are up I know I won't die, so I fixate on making sure they are up.

Over time as 76/77s started to feel like 66s (including the bosses) I stopped using the flasks against anything but uniques.

With map mods, I generally avoid 50%/no regen maps. Mana is a very delicate line, try to make sure you have over 120 mana/sec (for 6l) even if it means getting %regen on jewelry. Obviously the defense breaks down when you do minus max res maps, but if the boss doesn't do heavy elemental damage I'll do them anyways. I'll even do like Cells with minus max, I mostly watch out for dom, peity and crem with minus max, rest are usually good. Ele weakness can be scary if you aren't overcapped on lightning res. As it means you're taking much more damage and have a higher chance to get shock stacked. Just be careful, ele weakness means flasks always up.

Reflect maps are tricky. Vanilla reflect shouldn't be a problem, if it is get more life. Reflect + damage, make sure to watch end cry/IC timing, shouldn't be too much of a problem unless you aren't killing fast enough. Reflect + damage + damage, be fucking careful and possibly reroll, one mistake is death. If you run into an invul pack on a reflect map attack the source of the aura while IC is up, once IC drops GET OUT! One cyclone too long into an invul pack might kill them but you're going down with them too.

I converted my lvl 99 SWT totem scion to this build. It's a build I knew fairly well from my previous experiences with it so I figured out where and how to adjust it to the new changes since I last did it. I have no clue how this build levels anymore nor do I know what is required at what points. I can only speak on what was needed for atziri as I got to 99 then started doing her. I'm just starting mapping again tonight (10/25) which is days before this guide was released but a week after my transition.

My roommate is putting together the build at a lower level, I feel he'll probably be able to do normal atziri (even though he's a spaz so he might die often) but uber you'll probably have to be 95+ as getting enough life is hard. Her spears will hit for 3-4k and the trio will burst me for 4k regularly when I don't have my flasks up. It's hard to keep them up permanently against them so hard to avoid never taking that type of damage. I'd suggest at least 3.5k life for normal and 4.5k life for uber min, really 4k and 5k is much better.

With the inclusion of masters shit just got real. The two biggies that stand out are vagan's vendor mod of "hits cannot be evaded" along with elreon's meta mod "can have multiple crafted mods"

Which leads to this beauty:


Right on now on rampage if you search xyz all you'll get is a bunch of listings of vagan daggers I'm selling and a few other's that aren't too great (mine aren't good either but better than nothing in a pinch)

But they are well worth it. People drastically undervalue accuracy in CoC builds.

Chance to proc = APS(Acc*Crit chance*CoC Gem proc %)

While APS and crit chance are important people usually just get "enough" acc. My previous build had 300+ acc in both rings and ammy, which isn't cheap or easy to find btw, as I need other stats too.

A vagan dagger removes that and while they aren't easy to get atm, it makes gearing the rest of the build so much easier. Especially when you take into consideration the ammy which I'll get into later going over the defenses.

Moving onto the links

Spectral Throw - CoC - PCoC - GMP - Ice Spear - Arc

ST just go 20%/1, higher lvls only increases mana cost. If you can find 23% probably worth it.
CoC get lvl 21 for the 2% higher proc chance, I wouldn't pay out the nose for it, but worth the upgrade
PCoC 20/20 is fine, you won't have problems getting power charges up
GMP I'd go 23% for the IAS, but lvl 21 is good too for pure damage



The only other damage thing to go over is RF, which isn't much about it's damage improvement as it is about how to run the damn thing. Which means covering the res which I'll go over in detail next.