Lightning Buzzsaw CoC

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Morael wrote:

I forgot one other major point about fireball in my post. We use Arctic Armour, so reflect is much less of a problem with fire than it is with any other element, maybe aside lightning, but it depends on the damage dealt and the level of AA that you have.

Read your posts. Lots of interesting points. Would it be better to switch to a fire doryani belt instead of lightning?

How is the dps affected if one runs two projectile spells to benefit from gmp, instead of arc and a projectile skill? My other question is this, is Herald of flame better than Herald of ice because of possible burning damage if one is already running fp, which freezes? Finally if one has a high enough crit chance and resists is out worth running stone of lazwhar and rathpit globe for defenses? Or is that wasted slots?

Just got a 5 link chest last night and am loving the build. I'm far from optimized but I have 86 percent crit chance with 6 power charges and it's coming in like a wrecking ball on the two maps I tried last night.

Thanks math and all other theory crafters for this enjoyable build

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Schizo87 wrote:

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Morael wrote:

I forgot one other major point about fireball in my post. We use Arctic Armour, so reflect is much less of a problem with fire than it is with any other element, maybe aside lightning, but it depends on the damage dealt and the level of AA that you have.

Read your posts. Lots of interesting points. Would it be better to switch to a fire doryani belt instead of lightning?

I'm still using a lightning doryani's because that's what I acquired first. If you were to stick with fireball for 100% of the time, then yeah a fire doryani might be better. I'm still switching around spells now and then to have fun, so I have 2% lightning leech set up because I know I'll always have arc for shock.

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Dominatethefear wrote:

How is the dps affected if one runs two projectile spells to benefit from gmp, instead of arc and a projectile skill? My other question is this, is Herald of flame better than Herald of ice because of possible burning damage if one is already running fp, which freezes? Finally if one has a high enough crit chance and resists is out worth running stone of lazwhar and rathpit globe for defenses? Or is that wasted slots?

Just got a 5 link chest last night and am loving the build. I'm far from optimized but I have 86 percent crit chance with 6 power charges and it's coming in like a wrecking ball on the two maps I tried last night.

Thanks math and all other theory crafters for this enjoyable build

When you run two spells that benefit from GMP...
You lose the ability to shock (Ball Lightning doesn't shotgun, it simply applies once per 200 ms that any ball in a given cast is in contact with the mob, GMP is actually a dps loss single target vs LMP or no MP at all.), because you won't be using a lightning spell.
That being said, any combo of arctic breath, fireball and freezing pulse would have absurd single target shotgun. Unfortunately, I think it would lead to a swift death by reflect.

Herald of flame is garbage because it scales physical damage, which we do almost none of. Herald of Ice is half decent because it deals damage on the spectral throw hit, and and applies to the spells, and if you're using an ice spell and can shatter enemies... you get the effect of it there, too.

That being said... Once you get a CoD for a chest, you drop your herald. It honestly doesn't add that much dps, and you need a larger free mana pool to act as a life buffer for your Mind Over Matter.

Apart from that... it's not a great use of two gem sockets. Your main aura piece is going to BRGX for clarity, reduced mana, grace and then purity of ____ element (for whatever you want, I still run purity of lightning). If you were to try to turn this build into a fireball nuke, you could consider running purity of fire, but I don't think it's necessary with Arctic Armour. To run a Herald, you have to run another reduced mana gem separately for it, that nothing else is going to benefit from.
Basically, you'll lose your ability to run Empower on your arctic armour (which you should be doing at high level, with CoD, it's not hard to get the mana regen to do it). This build could theoretically use a +2 cold shield or dagger, corrupted 21AA and corrupted 4 empower to yield level 26 AA. (AA scaling past level 20 is ridiculous, see the wiki.)

I emphasize the importance of scaling up the arctic armour because physical damage is one of the only real issues I ever have with this build, and that's going to be the easiest way to try and fix it. Eventually (with enough levels to replace the offensive qualities of Starkonja's in the passive tree), I'll probably opt for a rare helmet and try to get some chaos resist on the rest of my pieces.

I just realized that I never did link my flasks for my build, so I'll do it here, and I'll edit the other post and put them there, as well.


I'm thinking about giving Atziri a try soon, but I'm a tid bit scared about it because I didn't play last league, so it'll be my first crack at it. Haha.

Well, I started a new witch for this build. Too bad for my shadow, but hey at the moment it seems to be pretty unclear which is the perfect version of the build.
As I progress with the which more and more nodes (especially lightning dmg ones) are questionable

Hope for more opinions for the tree/gems

Why would you need to start a witch? The shadow is just as good.

I didnt had to, but I was at a point where I wanted to 'min/max' my shadow and at some points I came to the conclusion, that witch is slighty better. I honestly dont know if my effort in leveling a witch will be worth it with the coming changes to this build, but I hope so :D

My Shadow was (or is) doing very well, but if you read my posts here about mana regen there is a advantage for the witch.
Also, if we dont go for "Heart of thunder" its way easier to fetch the spell dmg nodes in the witch starting area.
I have the feeling with two different kind of element spells (for example arc/freezing pulse) its better to grab as much elemental/spell dmg nodes instead of lightning dmg nodes.

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Schizo87 wrote:

Why would you need to start a witch? The shadow is just as good.

Because the really good Shadow starting nodes are very accessible, starting as a Ranger or Witch, you can still easily access them without wasting any points. But if you start as a Shadow, then you won't be reaching the 8% Attack Speed that the Ranger gets, and reaching all the Spell Damage in the Witch start will be quite the challenge as well.

But yes, all of those nodes in the Shadow area are pretty mandatory, and regardless of what class you pick, you're almost certain to be picking all of them up.

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Morael wrote:

That being said... Once you get a CoD for a chest, you drop your herald. It honestly doesn't add that much dps, and you need a larger free mana pool to act as a life buffer for your Mind Over Matter.

Are you sure about that? I get a pretty significant damage boost with Herald of Ice up, without power charges it works out to something like 14% more damage for my Ice Spear and a bit more than 15% more damage with power charges up.

It's a bit less effective for Arc due to its low damage effectiveness, and I only get something like 9% to 10% more damage, but it's still effectively a More Damage modifier, so it's worth considering.

Thinking about it, I think Arc is really the only spell where Herald of Ice would be bad. Since it's a relatively slow and hard hitting spell, that usually only hits a target once, but it also has a low damage effectiveness. Pretty much every other spell you'd use for CoC would get a significant boost due to a high damage effectiveness(Like Ice Spear, Freeze Pulse, or Arctic Breath), or would get a significant boost due to how rapidly it hits(Like Ball Lightning or Firestorm)

All of this is ignoring the Shatter Explosion, which hits about half as hard as firing off another spell, but since everything's usually dead by the time those go off, it's probably fair to ignore that portion, or to at least not care about it all that much.

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Poerger wrote:

I didnt had to, but I was at a point where I wanted to 'min/max' my shadow and at some points I came to the conclusion, that witch is slighty better.

The only difference is the leveling process. The build touches the starting area of both classes so in the end there is zero difference.

You certainly will take the dmg nodes of the shadow. The starting area of the witch is a bit more difficult:
Either you take the mana/regen part or the spell dmg part. Both are nice, but you won't have enough points as shadow for all of them. I tried the 'all dmg' way but then you need very much mana & regen from your equipment. I had enough regen but not enough mana. So if you take the mana /regen part from the witch as a shadow you won't be able to access the spell dmg nodes.
If you star as a witch you can spend the 5 point you would use on 'heart of thunder' easily on those early spell dmg ones in the witch area

I'm starting to get very curious... of you guys that are thirsting for more and more damage nodes, and/or wanting to use herald of ice, how many of you are doing 77-78 maps? Also, how many of you have level 20 spells?

I'm reaching a point of damage already that I can absolutely destroy packs in 78 maps, more dps would actually make my reflect problems even worse. The reflect problems in this build aren't severe, but they're certainly there. I was doing some math on a spreadsheet today and concluded that going acrobatics/phase acrobatics is absolutely feasible with this build, and might make higher end maps less scary.

Again, I also point out the mana issue. My reduced manas are only level 19 and I haven't done the math to figure out how much more mana I'd have if they were 20, but adding in herald of ice brings me down to a pool of 180 free mana, as opposed to 558 without it.
That's the difference being able to shrug off 558 damage from a ~1400 damage hit and only take ~850 to life and the same 1400 damage hit taking 1220 of your life.

Basically: if you're going to run herald of ice in your mix, don't use cloak of defiance. It's a waste of a slot because you're not maximizing the effect of the Mind over Matter.
You would be better off trying to incorporate Lightning Coil into the build, at that point.

Edit:
Another important factor to consider: with herald of ice you have to add in two gems to your setup (HoI and reduced mana for it), but without it the two gem slots you gain are actually very powerful. You gain an empower for your curse and arctic armour, and the other slot (which I have in my dagger, green slot, I use for utility.
I have a smoke mine that I carry with me for opening strong boxes and eventually I'll have a Vaal Haste in there.
I'll make the argument that the pack-clearing dps you'd get from herald of ice would just be wasted. We already do way more than enough dps to wipe packs out without it. For single target dps, I think we would benefit more from a cooldown like Vaal Haste, or defensively Vaal Grace than we would to more damage from herald of ice.

That's just my 0.02 :)