[1.2.3] Hurricane Katrina *UPDATED*

Q&A__________________________________________________________________________________

Probably some would have guessed even before clicking what in the world could 'hurricane Katrina' be, and it's pretty simple - it's the biggest Cyclone the server has ever seen. A wind of death and destruction, pushing the boundaries of reason as you watch enemies telekinetically drop dead far beyond the reach of any, even borderline realistic hand weapon known to man.

- Wow, really?

No, not quite, especially that 'wind of death and destruction' part as squeezing the last possible unit of radius has you using some pretty underwhelming weapons and requires serious sacrifices on your passive tree.

- So why would I be interested in this?

Well, there are a couple of reasons:
First, it's pretty cool to watch for a while, especially if your hardware can handle over-the-top effects of blood, bone and ectoplasm flying everywhere propelled by 'extra gore' on carcass jack.
Second, this is one of the rare builds around that absolutely requires a corrupted item.
Third, it's pretty safe to play and not too expensive to build.
Four, it won't ever be able to overcome its hard limits so you don't have to bother yourself with minmaxing it.
And finally, it's pretty cool having something that's best&largest out there.

- But what is it actually capable of?

Nothing spectacular, clearing low seventy maps and that's about it, damage gets too low later and survivability isn't exactly top notch either.

- But I'm still not really interested in doing it.

That's perfectly fine, and that's why this isn't really a detailed guide, more of a showcase of a quirky build.


GEAR_________________________________________________________________________________


So, items that you need for this are expected to be reasonably cheap, but they might end up more expensive than you think. That's because you absolutely need two of these:

They're cheap, fortunately, a chaos or two a piece. The catch is you'll most likely need to corrupt them yourself and that might prove annoying because you need to prepare every sword before using a vaal orb, you need to jewel it, fuse it, roll three green slots, push quality to 20% and then use the orb. It took around 20 swords for me to get a white socket a piece, I planned for two whites per sword but lowered my expectations pretty soon.

Those two swords are needed because they raise base radius of cyclone with 1H sword from 6 to 10, master of the arena and daresso's salute raise it to final base radius of 14. Getting 129% increased AoE from gems, tree and gear raises it to final number of 32, which is pretty damn impressive for a skill that starts at 6.

[UPDATE] However, there is a stronger alternative which sacrifices a bit of range as successfully corrupting Wings of Entropy with +2 range gives you a base of 13, which is still pretty damn good. It has a vastly increased damage potential over two prismatics at the expense of some block and attack speed. It's probably among the few weapon for this build that are cheap and available enough to purchase in bulk for corrupting. Unfortunately, the pair I succeeded to corrupt has the lowest possible damage roll, just my luck.



Anyway, Daresso's salute is also a hard requirement. Sadly, it can't drop anymore but can be bought in standard for an exalt or so, yeah, this is not possible to do in temp leagues.


Carcass Jack is required if you want to max it, with 5 linked slots if possible.


Fortunately, you don't need too many quality gems, Cyclone and Increased Area of Effect in suits of 20 are all you need.


TREE________________________________________________________________________________


As for passive tree, you have one goal, and that's to grab all area nodes at any cost, yes, yes, along with anything defensive you happen to pass by.

This is how it should look like at level 80, or whatever you prefer as long as you tick all AoE nodes... well, not that you got too much wiggling room, given the travelling expenses and obligatory life tax.

[UPDATE] That's the current tree, there's a lot more life left to grab, some block and damage.

You can do whatever you want with bandits, nothing you do will make or break it, oak in normal will help a lot, the other rewards not so much.


SKILLS_______________________________________________________________________________


There aren't really any complicated skill setups either, this is what does the trick:

Cyclone - melee physical damage - life on hit - increased area of effect - faster attacks
Dual strike - melee physical damage - multistrike - faster attacks
Whirling blades (or leap slam) - faster attacks
Enduring cry - Enfeeble - CwDT
Grace - Hatred - reduced mana


OVERVIEW_____________________________________________________________________________

So, pretty straightforward, eh?

Anyway, build's strengths are:
- always on the move
- survivabilty is very high while cycloning
- destroys traps in a wide area
- can safely kill strong bosses by zigzagging away or circling around
- some block
- reflect can't really hurt you with your low damage per hit and life on hit to cover the loss, even with map reflect and monster reflect piled on one another
- paper DPS isn't high but clear speed is decent due to large area covered

Build's weaknesses:
- desync, you have to be very, very careful where are you cycloning to avoid debris
- corrupted blood if you got no staunching flasks, it can't kill you while going through crowds but you accumulate 20 stacks in a heartbeat, if you don't cure yourself when you clear the screen you're as good as dead
- weapon progression locked on lackluster items (unless you got crazy lucky and roll weapon range on a pair of awesome rare rapiers)


VIDEOS_______________________________________________________________________________

And here's a video demonstration, a quick segment of a ghetto run with modest mods, it's absolutely teeming with danger and excitement. Hell, at 00:50 you can see first-hand what happens when you misclick a cyclone :)

http://youtu.be/KS8G6-xd82o

[UPDATE] Here's a new video with the updated build of a quick boss kill in fracturing Villa map.
http://youtu.be/usFZmZzuuOw


FINAL_WORD_________________________________________________________________________


This build is dedicated to Charan's epic crusade for return of true heroism against AoE dominance.

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That's incredible range for cyclone, I just wish someone would make a build with the Disfavour axe and 4 Enhance :D

You should have posted that build earlier as Halloween special.
I highly recommend using the Decapitation microtransaction.

BTW is white considered an off colour in terms of probability to roll it? Or to put it in other words: how likely is it to get more than 1 white socket when corrupting (is that even possible)?

"

Bada_Bing wrote:

You should have posted that build earlier as Halloween special.
I highly recommend using the Decapitation microtransaction.

BTW is white considered an off colour in terms of probability to roll it? Or to put it in other words: how likely is it to get more than 1 white socket when corrupting (is that even possible)?

It's ridiculously rare to get 3 white sockets but 2 white sockets is doable with a reasonable amount.

"

Chundadragon wrote:

I just wish someone would make a build with the Disfavour axe and 4 Enhance :D

Yeah, that would be pretty cool, cyclone would have 13 base range as 2H axes have 1 more over swords, so it would have a bit less area, I think 30 instead of 32, but damage would be much, much better.

I wish I managed to roll one more white per weapon but it just wouldn't happen. I don't think it rolls the chance the way it rolls slot colors, it probably rolls corruption effects and when it gets white socket it rolls how many and turns random socket(s) white. Most of the time I got a crappy rare sword, once I got a 'supported with melee splash' implicit, and a few times nothing happened (hated that one).

MKB increased AoE with INT...someone got 140%+ AoE with detonate. Yes, no, why?

You could do some really good damage with boosted anger and wrath.

"

patlefort3 wrote:

You could do some really good damage with boosted anger and wrath.

Yeah, anger would help a bunch, if I had some gear with decent defenses I could probably swap grace for anger no problem. Catalyze cluster could be readily taken too.

There's a +2 range dyadus on poe.xyz for 1 ex, it shouldn't be much of a problem to get 2 of them, run anger and wrath, and get some decent dps.

take static blows