[1.2] 'Say hello to my little friend' 40K Puncture/28K LMP Lightning Arrow

AngryCustard!



NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My Son and I have been following this build to a T man. YOU CHANGED IT ON US!

We don't have the orbs or the refund points to reroll the whole build!


Can you post the old build again for those of us who are POOR and can't reroll!


Was there a huge reason you changed the build? The crit making a huge difference?


QQ I reference this build like 10 times a night. I cri!

-Peace

"

feyith wrote:

Welcome aboard the crit train. :P

Also, all I got was a stupid white socket too.

I actually bought the boots, they were selling on poe.xyz for 2.5 exalted. Which I thought was pretty cheap given the insane jump in DPS from another 11% Phys and 17% attack speed. If you have any orbs in Ambush you should get yourself a pair as the leagues are merging soon.

"

zamprius wrote:

AngryCustard!



NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My Son and I have been following this build to a T man. YOU CHANGED IT ON US!

We don't have the orbs or the refund points to reroll the whole build!


Can you post the old build again for those of us who are POOR and can't reroll!


Was there a huge reason you changed the build? The crit making a huge difference?


QQ I reference this build like 10 times a night. I cri!

-Peace

First up, sorry dude... :(

When I started this build I was totally against the idea of crit. 5% base on most bows, I thought made it too steep a mountain to climb to get any real benefit from it. However, as it turns out, getting 500% crit chance is actually pretty darn easy. That gives you a 30% chance to crit, and this build gives you 3-5 attacks per second giving you on average a crit a second. Crit damage multipliers are the single largest damage modifiers in the game. Nothing else increases damage like crit multipliers.

Basically by adding crit, even just a little bit of crit you end up hitting insane damage numbers. I went from 22K (pretty reasonable) to 32K... thats a 10K increase on my frenzy.

Here is a link to the old tree.

Not to mention how much faster you can build shock stacks.

"

AngryCustard wrote:

"

Bed wrote:

Unless you want frenzy to be some kind of pseudo-AOE attack with 100% pierce chance, using pierce as an additional support link really isn't worth it in my experience, 55% increased projectile damage isn't that significant a bonus for a whole gem slot...

If you can get the colours I would strongly recommend trying out either increased crit multiplier (even with your relatively low existing crit chance and multiplier I'm fairly sure this would be significantly better than pierce), or alternatively power charge on critical, which would give you a GLOBAL 150% increased crit chance (200% if you invest 2 extra points in skill tree) after a few shots, thereby increasing your dps for both frenzy and LA

But I am using Drillneck... 100% Chance to Pierce is 100% More projectile damage.

Ok I got curious, it's been a while since i tested it and my gear's changed a lot, but my conclusions, at least as far as my build goes (granted it may be slightly different to yours, but we're both based around phys crit with drillneck) remain broadly the same.

Tested a bunch of combinations, and for my build/gear the most effective gems (for damage) after the 4th link for frenzy are (in descending order):
weapon elemental damage > increased critical strikes > pierce > faster attacks
(first 4 links are frenzy, added fire, phys proj att dmg, increased crit multiplier)

Interestingly this makes faster attacks worthwhile only as a hypothetical 8th link on frenzy (and even more interestingly, only as a 7th for split arrow as well which surprised me), though this may be specific to my build since I run with 10 frenzy charges which give a massive additive IAS bonus already.

So the highest damage 6L combination for frenzy I found was
Frenzy
Added fire damage
Physical Projectile attack damage
increased critical multiplier
Weapon elemental damage
Increased critical strikes

with my setup, max charges, and haste/hatred auras, this gave me just under 100k dps


Swapping out increased critical strikes for pierce in a 6L is actually only very slightly lower, so I guess it's worth considering for the extra pseudo-AOE properties and marginally lower mana cost (though as Feyith pointed out, this may make sniping reflect mobs more dangerous as well)



This does have a pretty high mana cost though, so running pierce in favour of, say, WED may well be viable to bring the cost down significantly; maybe I was quick to dismiss it as a support here completely. Though personally I use power charge on crit and reduced mana on frenzy anyway so the pushes pierce's priority back 2 slots for me all the same.

As a 5L though, pierce is pretty heavily outshone by WED if you can afford it

with WED:


with pierce:


The base 4 gems of frenzy, added fire, inc crit multi and PPAD always result in the highest damage combos for me (except in some cases with WED instead of crit but CBA)

TL;DR

For pure dps, pierce is not optimal. As a mana cost reducer, it may be viable if you have problems otherwise. If you run extra non dps supports (life leech, mana leech, PCOC, reduced mana) on frenzy, it's even less likely to be optimal.

Also, FA is overrated. That ought to start a nice argument.

Good stuff there. And I am not sure Faster Attacks is overrated, it just depends on the build. I also have tested a ton with a Tabby, and for me, Faster Attacks always comes in very close to first, right with Physical Projectile damage. But, I only run with 6 Frenzy charges, and my bow does not have an IAS roll. So for my build, Faster Attacks gives me much more incremental speed as a percdentage of its existing speed than your does.

Crap...I need to get more Frenzy charges. I have a better bow, and my 5L Frenzy is 56k compared to your nearly 100k.

Yeah I'm sure FA is perfectly good for some builds, I just like to be provocative sometimes ;P

Worth noting I don't actually use this gem setup, the mana cost wouldnt be viable for my build - that was just to demonstrate maximum DPS potential... I actually run an effective 3-link since I also have reduced mana and PCOC linked which don't directly increase dps (could get higher tooltip frenzy with PCOC on SA instead)

I do 55k tooltip with my normal 5L setup (frenzy, inc crit multi, PPAD, reduced mana, PCOC), working on a 6L :) (added fire)

Aww...that kinda sucks. What's the point of all those Frenzy charges if you have to sub optimize anyway because they make you attack so fast mana impossible to deal with :(

Have you tried upping your mana pool? I have about 700 and it works - you'd probably need to get up to about 800.

In a way it's a bit of a compromise... With reduced mana on frenzy I don't have to sacifice any passives getting extra mana on tree, don't have to use a mana flask, and don't have to fill up any affix slots getting flat mana/mana regen; this lets me focus more on dps nodes, offensive flasks and dps affixes...

While they may not make up the DPS loss of a support gem for frenzy, the extra damage I can get on tree/gear means split arrow dps is significantly higher... AOE is the main factor in clear speed so I try to maximise this at the expense of frenzy.

With the exception of bosses and maybe rares in larger parties, almost any mob will still die in under a second with 55k frenzy, the potential ~60-70k that i'd get if I specced heavily into mana is overkill and wouldn't actually affect clear speed that significantly.

Also with 10 charges I'm attacking significantly faster than you (5 per sec), which means i'd need even more mana to keep up (i'm only 560 atm)... more gear/passives needed :(

At least that's how I try to justify it to myself :P

I can actually manage as it is with added fire instead of reduced mana on frenzy if I disable haste and chug mana pots on boss, but that reduces my clear speed and actually, I find it reduces effective single target damage as well since with reduced mana, I'm able to use a diamond flask instead of a mana pot which gives a lot larger damage boost (for 4 seconds anyway, which is all i need) than added fire does.

Thanks man,


I'll modify as I go to try and get current with the changes you're making.