Comprehensive CoC Analysis - 1.2 Theorycrafting

Hehe. Haven't looked at my own thread for a long time, so sorry for the late response.

I know I generally hate a lot on doing CoC with a bow because of the awful base crit chance on basically anything but a Windripper, but, to each their own. I've personally never had a bow CoC character that I liked.

"How you make your CoC character" really depends on what level of play you're going for. Sure, I can blow away all the mobs instantly in a 6-man 78 map if I run discharge, but that's happening at the cost of the survivability granted by a long immortal call. That survivability goes a long way.

CoC characters generally don't need too much work in doing more damage, but rather, need to work on surviving through more difficult situations. The consistency provided by a high crit chance is crucial to this.

I also haven't updated this for 1.1.4, so I'll probably update later this week for 1.1.5. I'm going to assume right away that Ball Lightning will not be a good CoC spell, but I'll play with it a bit before recording my assumptions. On another note from 1.1.4, Flame Surge is awesome! Especially with the EK nerf coming in 1.1.5.

y flame surge is awesome, not sure it is the most practical spell of all though

And indeed wands are much better if not for windripper.

The per-cast damage of a lvl20 Flame surge is 977.25 on an ignited target (651.5 unignited) as compared to 543.5 for pre-nerf EK and 281 per power charge for discharge. It's not quite as strong as discharge, but doesn't come with the defensive downsides. It's stronger than EK, even powered with hatred. Also, it has a 6% base crit chance, as opposed to EK's 5%. (Everything loses to discharge's 8% though.)

Nice analysis. What about ball lightning though? Any good?

Ball lightning runs into the same problem firestorm does: many small hits = bad against things like lightning thorns. It's also only about half as effective at melee range. Another downside is that GMP/LMP does not support it very well. It also doesn't shock as hard as Arc. However, for a CoC build running a ranged attack, it can be quite powerful and does not suffer from the lack of auto-piercing on Fireball/Arctic. I would refrain from running it on maps with mobs that cast lightning thorns, unless used with a spell-block build.

I've only briefly tested this, and it's mostly theory. If anyone has anything else to add or correct, please do.

Ball Lightning is counter productive because it does best with Slower Projectiles and nothing else on a CoC build does.

Flame Surge + Glacial Cascade is all kinds of point blank face melting.

One bow build that outshines all others for clear speed if you can keep up with the Power Charges and mana cost is Lightning Arrow + GMP + Chain + CoC + Cold Snap. Since it instantaneously shock stacks the whole screen in one click, and Cold Snap casts at the target yet isn't affected by the GMP/Chain penalties.

Once again, lightning arrow doesn't work anymore with COC, since it is instant 4 hit on different target, and is stoped by the 10 ms cooldown on COC (i guess this nerf was mainly aiming at this skill). You are loosing one socket for nothing, and it cost more mana than split arrow, not even counting that split arrow easily fire 6 arrow instead of the 5 of gmp, which in addition double the mana cost.

Unless you are shock stacking with the dmg from your bow with lightning arrow (hybrid build, not only coc doing dmg), then i don't see how you shock stack here.

I prefer the split/chain/COC/cold snap/arc combination, shock stack also (maybe less well depending of the build) and you also get the dmg of arc, it cost like 3 time less mana per attack, you have one additional arrow (which potentially will divide into two other with chain and might thus create 3 more coc proc).

Also we need to remind that you need to use voll's to use cold snap, and btw dmg is not so great because of both spell having 4% crit chance, to be compared with 8% for discharge / 6% fireball etc...

But it for sure is safe! I guess ele prolif would be nice for the 6th link => 3 shock stack and perma freeze easy (or maybe it is overkill, and it is already enough to get that all the time).

What i don't like with flame surge is the area of effect. But dmg on single target is really good that's for sure.

Btw, i am using barrage/gmp/coc/fireball/arctic/arc classical combo, but dmg is absolutly awesome, and area of effect also, because i double curse ennemies before with 4 link barrage/COC/proj weakness/crit. weakness (or ele weakness) and proj weakness is AMAZING!!!!!!
It resolves accuracy problems alone, which are SUPER important for critical based build, because of the double accuracy check to get a critical, then it protect you like crazy through the knockback (take my 100 projectile from COC and go back to the end of the world). Then it give you a ton of MORE damage modifier on your 2 projectiles (well actually it is "increased damage taken" so it is additive with shock, but it is multiplicative with all the other stuff, so it is almost like a MORE modifier). Then (as it is not already broken enough), it gives a lot of pierce to deal with what the other guy was saying about fireball and artic breath being weak because of not piercing (100% pierce would not be optimal anyway, because of thoses projectiles not imploding when they pierce).

Right now i have a less than 10 ex char. that often OS pack of mobs in 77 maps (single player life though), and i am not even using the 6 link, but just a really weak 5 link version with fireball out.

And more important, the real reasons why chain versions are not good imo, are that 1) they can be really laggy one from what i have tested 2) they absolutly suck against mono target

What is awesome about the combination above is that it absolutly destroy group as well as mono target => barrage for double curse => face tank for shotgun => 1 barrage = 8 arc (shock)+ 45 fireball + 45 arctic breath (tesing with EE currently) => boss down.

(I got 100% barrage crit chance when ennemy is curse)

And btw arctic breath is doing really good at freezing ennemies, plus it leaves a trail of ice behind for chill.

Wand will always do better than bow for coc, you can get 10%+ crit chance and 1.5+ aps for 1 chaos, with insane mods coming on it, plus you can wield two of them, for double insane mods and 10% more dmg / 15% free block (impossible on bow).

By insane mods on wands i mean that they can have tons of spell damage (with two wands you can get more than 200% spell dmg) / crit chance for spells (once again more than 200% possible) / mana regen / elemental damage that the bow cannot have.

Only reason to go COC with bow now that lightning arrow does not work anymore would be the OP IQ/IR on Windripper imo.

"

A1b2y3s4s wrote:

Unless you are shock stacking with the dmg from your bow with lightning arrow (hybrid build, not only coc doing dmg), then i don't see how you shock stack here.

And "once again" you are completely missing the entire point of a bow build, which is hybrid damage. The same discussion you had all by yourself with regard to Quill Rain and arrived at the exact same conclusion you were originally arguing against: a bow build needs good base damage in order to be worthwhile over wand Barrage. CoC is more just the icing on the cake.

Lightning Arrow is a popular skill for good reason: it's like a homing missile; with GMP and Chain, it has the potential to hit 5 things, bounces an additional 2 times off each of those and hits 3 things near every single one of those hits. (While the extra hits at the very end don't proc CoC, all that bouncing around has the potential to hit multiple targets several times, stacking your damage up to 90% more.) Cold Snap is an AoE that is unaffected by GMP/Chain's penalties. You can literally clear the whole screen of a 76+ map in one click, and you can do it with PCoC instead of a Voll's.

I'm not CoC specced any more, but here is a friend playing that setup at lower level and in much cheaper gear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH3VCuZgwwk (His crit chance and attack speed is much lower than a Windripper user's, so he's proccing about half as much as one could, but it's enough to give a good general idea.)

I'm not saying SA is bad. SA and Barrage are definitely more sustainable without a very specific setup. But I think someone somewhere read that "Lightning Arrow is no good after the cooldown patch" and so everybody stopped using it because they're sheep who can't think outside of the box.

"

And more important, the real reasons why chain versions are not good imo, are that 1) they can be really laggy one from what i have tested 2) they absolutly suck against mono target

That's because you're not supposed to use your group clearing attack vs. the single targets... :P