[1.2] KuteKitteh’s Tanky Arcer, 20k+ Effective DPS, Atziri/HC-viable. Poor-man’s BM Arc included

I just RIPed in Beyond League with this build at level 85. I love the build and it's very safe in most situations and versatile with map mods.

I died to a lvl 74 Dungeon Brutus (Zana Mission) with no relevant map mods. The weakness of this build is of course heavy physical damage, and that's where I died. I think if I did this again I would avoid the Brutus dungeon fight altogether because of the spike traps + falling crap + brutus' normal stuff. Collonade Brutus can be managed with a flame totem.

I'm thinking of trying again but dropping Tempest Shield and getting some extra block nodes in the tree. Any thoughts on what map mods would be most affected by dropping TS+LL+ML? I'll be running with lightning life leech Lazhwar fyi.

I actually was experimenting with this (rampage) in a shipyard (ran 4 maps,none of them had any monster or my own damage altering mods) for the same reason - wanted to save some mana by dropping tempest shield,the moment i dropped it i straight away noticed 3 things.

1.My leech was nowhere near as good (considering that it's gona leech for most of the time from TS damage,i don't think it's worth sacrificing potentially huge dps boost over comparably small gain that you'd get by direct leech instead of TS one)

2.When taking consistent,or spiked damage,half the time pure mana regen was not enough to be able to take the punishment and cast arc,sometimes if it got really rough even if i was not casting arc,dmg from mobs still started to dip too much in to my life because mana could not regen quick enough (right before your post you can see my gear and mention of stats)

3.The build is built around the idea of having an active buff that provides mana/life leech at averedge of 75% uptime,without it the build flat out won't work as effectively or just won't do enough damage even for a HC league player,assuming you got a 5l,i imagine you will be dropping either empower or lightning pen because cast speed is sort of the bread and butter of arc builds - So one day you will find your self being unable to kill a pack of mobs because there's a rare mob with regen+extra health+light resist,and there are a whole lot of those around.
After all this,as far as i am aware is one of very,very few caster builds that can actually tank and not just take few hits and roll over playing ded.


I think you just dropped your caution a little bit too much,even i,with my gear and the fact that i am playing on softcore,kite quite few of bosses depending on who it is,and what mods it got,brutus esp is now more dangerous than ever,but because of the way how arc works,the spawns in his room are actually a huge advantage to us,and most likely the only reason why this build,as i found out,can do double brutus fights.

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Daiena wrote:

I actually was experimenting with this (rampage) in a shipyard (ran 4 maps,none of them had any monster or my own damage altering mods) for the same reason - wanted to save some mana by dropping tempest shield,the moment i dropped it i straight away noticed 3 things...

Thanks for your reply and tests. I'll stick with TS.

@Mufer
Get quality on Faster Casting
Run Haste if you have the mana for it
Run Empower (It's significantly better than ALD)

Also grab more DPS nodes if you want.

@eajcook
5th link should be Empower lvl3. If you don't have it, run ALD.

@wcbigworm
Rainbowstrides is useless in the build.

@Daiena
Arc has almost no use for a 6th link. If I had that 6th extra link I would run ele prolif as long as Arc has quality on it.

@Gyrator
Yea, TS is too strong for the build to drop. I was surprised at how effective the ML + LL setup was.

Any chance you know how Empower Level 2 compares damage wise to Added Lightning Damage? Is it only worth it to use Empower over Added Lightning Damage if it's level 3?

And I switched to your CWDT setup on my Doryani's, but I was wondering if there was a specific order for the gems?

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Suds1029 wrote:

Any chance you know how Empower Level 2 compares damage wise to Added Lightning Damage? Is it only worth it to use Empower over Added Lightning Damage if it's level 3?

And I switched to your CWDT setup on my Doryani's, but I was wondering if there was a specific order for the gems?

I think they're virtually the same, or ALD is marginally better. Empower is only worthwhile at level 3.

For the CWDT I usually run EC first and IC second. That way, EC triggers before IC and I get an extended IC the very first time CWDT triggers.

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KuteKitteh wrote:

@Daiena
Arc has almost no use for a 6th link. If I had that 6th extra link I would run ele prolif as long as Arc has quality on it.

There is one thing to mention tho.
quality arcs,either lvl20 or 21 are very expensive,so if you got the 6th link,a quality added lightning dmg will be actually good,not only will it add some damage,it will also increase shock chance/longevity of shock debuff.

But i am now curious,since 6th link is more of an utility than anything else.
What about Added Cold Damage? at q20 that's 10% chance to freeze,considering the cast speed that we get even with average gear (l90 tree version) it could also be useful.

Hi Ive been following this build for quite a while now, and im kinda shocked I only have less than 5k dps..... I have 3.5k life and 2k mana. what am i doing wrong?

Why is rainbowstride pointless when it further increases spell block chance?

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wcbigworm wrote:

Why is rainbowstride pointless when it further increases spell block chance?

Both spell, and physical block has got a cap of 75%.
If you red and followed the guide properly,you'd know why rainbowstride is pointless.
It's because with the passives you will have exactly 74% chance to block physical damage which is 1% away from the limit,of which Stone of Lazhwar and Rathpith Globe will convert your physical block to spell block.
This is the reason why you need at least 51% spell block rolled rathpith,it's because you have only 74% physical block,so you need to have 101%+ conversion into spell block to hit the spell block cap.
This is also why rainbowstride is pointless,because you can't go past 75%,which means that rainbostride's conversion would be absolutely wasted,and would provide you no benefit.
Now considering this,there are 1000s of different boots that are far superior than rainbowstride,in fact the only sole reason why those boots are worth as much as they are is exactly for the one stat you would gain no benefit from whatsoever - the block conversion.