[2.1] Dual Apep's Chaos Crit - Stapling Chaos to a Level 1 Spell (Draft Spark Totem tree up)

Holy Crap. ANOTHER insane jewel for this build. We just freed up a link! No more Life Leech gem.

@SirDragos
Hungry Abyss = the life leech we needed? This build is looking better every time something gets spoiled! We're going to get have to get some lucky corrupts on our items to utilize it however.

I'm really glad you are testing lvl 1 chaos spells Hrishi! They look crazy with the jewels.

I have to admit that I have not screwed around with pre-Apep's leveling very much with this build. I was just leveling up using Freezing Pulse straight up before. I think that this build shines best once you get your crit going at higher levels too, so it is harder to make it going early. That said, the Added Chaos gem is really strong in general. Adding damage through auras/heralds seems better now too, although the more non-chaos damage added, the less effective scaling chaos gets and the more reflect increases in importance.

The Fevered Mind jewel was not really on my radar yet, so that's pretty exciting. Seems like a perfect fit for this style. I'm not sure how many would be useful to tack on with the changes to EB, but I was running a full 6L with AA, MoM, Dual Apep's, and Voidbringer at one point in my testing, so anything is really possible. In a scenario where you are using an ES-based defense like low life Shav's or an Acrobatics defense where you ditch AA/MoM and just use the wands, I think you could stack on more than one of these jewels.

The numbers I ran suggested that the second wand was better than a shield, but we are in a whole new world now. It would be really nice if an ES shield was comparable, as it would help the Shav's version considerably. However, I am tentatively thinking that the second wand is even better now than it was, as we can get much, much more increased damage from jewel sources. The tree has a very limited amount of spell/chaos damage nodes otherwise. Being able to scale the base chaos damage better only makes the base damage more important, it would seem on the surface. (I will look into this more once I have access to my spreadsheet.)

Something I should note about your spell choice: Tendrils may not be the best way to scale chaos right now. The shotgun removal hits FP hard, and other projectile spells have a little trouble keeping up now for AoE purposes now that LMP/GMP hurts the damage more. Try Glacial Cascade instead. Reasons are it has a higher crit and it has a better damage effectiveness per second. LT has 4 hits x .25 effectiveness over .8 seconds = 1.25 multiplier for effectiveness/second. Glacial Cascade is probably better. If you only hit them twice in a cast, it is 2 hits x .8 effectiveness over .85 seconds = 1.88. Larger bosses will likely be hit more per cast.

I have a ton of testing to do with new spells, but suspect that GC will get the nod, possible being passed up by Ice Spear. Projectiles are in a weird spot: LMP/GMP is undesirable, but it is easier to scale in the tree. I have a vague notion to try a projectile spell with totems for the free LMP jewel and the ability to scale the damage with totem and projectile nodes. This feels even better if we are trying to incorporate non-chaos damage from auras and heralds, as we'd be scaling multiple damage types with the same nodes. The totems would be VERY cheap too. A 250% multiplier is no sweat when your base mana cost is <10.

Can't wait for Hungering Abyss. Very interested to know if it does what we think it does.

I've considered trying this with Glacial Cascade primarily, as it seems like the next best from purely the spell's properties. Hitting more than once is huge. However, I've run numbers on some other spells back when I was crafting this build originally. Much of this will depend on the rebalanced numbers, as many spells are in flux right now.

Ice Spear is interesting if you have a very high amount of increased damage and crit damage, as the crit chance is pretty easy to cap in the second form. AoE is the biggest problem there; it did not used to stack up very well with FP due to shotgunning and the damage loss on Ice spear from LMP, when you used to gain damage on FP from GMP. LMP/GMP hurt you damage less than they used to, so maybe this is worth looking into.

Flame Surge is interesting in that it gets a 1.5 multiplier if you can set it up and the crit is awesome. I imagine that some build that can set up burns would be stellar with this if it can be wrangled. The ultimate form of this build would seem to be an RF build with a huge AoE to leverage the RF burn for the multiplier on FS at the same time as getting the RF spell bonus. The impediments to this build are twofold: First, it is going to be hard to craft a character than can handle all the drawbacks of RF and exist in the parts of the tree that benefit spell crit. Second, even with good AoE, FS area and playstyle are pretty weak. Maybe this can be overcome and this build seems ridiculous if it can be worked out. I intend to try to figure out how to get this to work, but I think that it would likely require at least giving up one Apep's wand for Rise of the Phoenix.

Depending on how the spell properties work out, Fireball, Spark, or Arctic Breath could be interesting, but maybe better with totems due to the free LMP gem. Storm Call, Arc, and Shock Nova look like they will be bad (SC is getting crit quality changed to AoE, so even worse than before). Maybe FP will get some sort of boost somehow like free extra projectiles (like Flame Totem), but I don't hold much hope for it as is.

I think chasing the RF idea and the totem idea is worthwhile. Those characters would look VERY different, but I think the lvl 1 chaos spell idea has even more legs than before. Hungering Abyss looks like a great reason to do it, but I was doing some very potent things before that was even an option, so I wouldn't shy away from totems.

I'm gonna try with GMP chain ice spear in my 6L and 4L glacial cascade for single target with conc effect, echo and maybe added chaos/crit multi/hypothermia if i can level the skill up and sustain mana.

@Lanfear88

Interesting. Let me know how it goes. Splitting your focus between AoE and projectiles might make both annoying to scale though, so be careful of that. The builds that I've made have had to be very tightfisted with the damage nodes, so I worry that one or the other will be underwhelming. Maybe try to scale without using either AoE nodes or projectile nodes?

One thing that you might consider: you could cheat a 5L in for the single target by using Rime Gaze for Concentrated Effect. Maybe it is not worth the whole helm slot to get it, but it's worth running the numbers.
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Rime_Gaze

You could also try out LMP rather than GMP, as you might get better results in practice. Also, pierce from gem/tree might be worth checking out in lieu of chain. I assume that a chained projectile can hit a target that has already been hit by a different projectile in the same cast, so maybe chain is better overall, but pierce won't lose damage beyond the used link. The projectile nodes in that cluster are great for this build anyway.

@SirDragos

My plan is to scale it with spell damage, auras and crit like i am doing currently. I'm still working on my hybrid low life project which gives me about 600 life and 6750 ES now with 4% life regen, so i can't use rime gaze because i need the stun avoidance from the helm as you can see from my gear. The goal was to make it end game viable with max 1 ex per gear slot investment (minus the links). Another benefit is the blood rage with 75% chaos res which cost me 1% regen for 15% cast speed, and seems to be getting More multiplier in beta :)





I did have to ditch the apep's for now though for leveling so i could get higher mana regen and higher AA due to being "melee" with freezing pulse, but i will return to Apep's at higher lvl and gem levels.

The reason i wanna try GMP chain ice spear is basically due to chain being reduced from 50% less damage to 25% less damage, same for GMP. Also, if my sources are correct, the projectiles will stay in its second form when chaining granting me 95% crit at all times. This won't work for bosses obviously and glacial cascade just seemed like the better choice with hitting multiple times per cast and the "free" multipliers, but it is all just theory for now, will test when it goes live.

In the end it might be better for me just ditching the Apep's but the new jewel giving "free" life leech giving a 5L and a 7L is certainly a nice carrot.