[2.0] Kinetic Blast Wander | Physical and Elemental | HC Viable [BOTW S4E6]

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kaeus wrote:

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jbmcarth wrote:

I've been theorycrafting some options since my last post. Here's what I've considered so far:
1) with proper frost wall use (manual-cast or spell totem), we shouldn't really need frenzy as a single target attack
2) without frenzy it's hard to generate frenzy charges, especially against bosses. The other frenzy gain mechanisms are based on killing stuff, but after you one or two shot packs around an elite or boss, you're not necessarily going to have many other chances to refresh them. Blood rage, ice bite, poacher's mark, and blood dance all work on kill.
3) Blood rage seems risky, since it's practically guaranteed that you'll begin each new encounter with at least a small chunk of life missing. It's almost like using blood magic + aura to reserve some of your hp from use at the very beginning of each new fight.

So the two options I've narrowed it down to are:
1) HoI + Ice Bite. With Hatred + HoI, several mobs should be frozen when your HoI chain pop occurs. I'm going to play around with this and see how well it works.
2) Frenzy + GMP + CoC + AM. You don't really have to aim it, and CoC casts on area like manual cast as opposed to CoH. Frenzy is no longer a single target dps option, but rather an aoe curse attack which generates frenzy charges on hit.

Honestly, blood rage isn't that bad. I just carry two instant flasks to keep me up between packs, and life leech keeps me topped during combat. Frenzy really isn't that bad, even if you just use it as a 1s just to keep charges up for bosses.

I saw someone using CoH + HoI + poacher's, this can give me frenzy charges in mobs, but it doesn't seem to proc enough for me. I do find myself just using frenzy just to get the charges, so is there a batter single target skill? barrage maybe?

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essencevox wrote:

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kaeus wrote:

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jbmcarth wrote:

I've been theorycrafting some options since my last post. Here's what I've considered so far:
1) with proper frost wall use (manual-cast or spell totem), we shouldn't really need frenzy as a single target attack
2) without frenzy it's hard to generate frenzy charges, especially against bosses. The other frenzy gain mechanisms are based on killing stuff, but after you one or two shot packs around an elite or boss, you're not necessarily going to have many other chances to refresh them. Blood rage, ice bite, poacher's mark, and blood dance all work on kill.
3) Blood rage seems risky, since it's practically guaranteed that you'll begin each new encounter with at least a small chunk of life missing. It's almost like using blood magic + aura to reserve some of your hp from use at the very beginning of each new fight.

So the two options I've narrowed it down to are:
1) HoI + Ice Bite. With Hatred + HoI, several mobs should be frozen when your HoI chain pop occurs. I'm going to play around with this and see how well it works.
2) Frenzy + GMP + CoC + AM. You don't really have to aim it, and CoC casts on area like manual cast as opposed to CoH. Frenzy is no longer a single target dps option, but rather an aoe curse attack which generates frenzy charges on hit.

Honestly, blood rage isn't that bad. I just carry two instant flasks to keep me up between packs, and life leech keeps me topped during combat. Frenzy really isn't that bad, even if you just use it as a 1s just to keep charges up for bosses.

I saw someone using CoH + HoI + poacher's, this can give me frenzy charges in mobs, but it doesn't seem to proc enough for me. I do find myself just using frenzy just to get the charges, so is there a batter single target skill? barrage maybe?

You really don't need a single target skill. I use a FA+Inc Crit+Culling+Frenzy link for charges/boss culling, but mostly just Frostwall (self cast for me) + KB works wonders for single target.

What do you think of Atziri's Step & Hyrri's Ire?

I thought they removed shotgunning in 2.0? Or am I wrong?

Been doing good as an element BM KB on warband, following Malth's guide a fair deal. I have around 3.2k life, 18k dps without charges and 28k dps with them (I still have to get an imbued wand with a suffix for my crit) so it is quite important to maintain them as much as possible. The best way I found to do so is to link HoI + CoH + AM (procs where the hits land) and HoT + CoH + PM (procs near me where thunder strikes) on wand/shield. I did some testing and HoI seemed to get me more charges which is why I use AM with it, being harder to maintain otherwise then frenzy charges. This way I get to stay charged most of the time when in combat with a bunch of mobs, when I see they are getting low I just do a hit or two of frenzy (+ GMP + PCoC + BM (use Increased Crit Chance if you play mana).

All in all really cool build that can be made good with pennies and still has plenty of room for improvements.

I didn't realize how much of our dps comes from jewelry! I hit lvl 59, tossed on my starter wand (152 pdps, 9.92% local crit, 14% global crit multi), and began messing around in merc dried lake. Once I had the mana leech nodes in the bottom right of the tree, I was able to keep up with KB in a 5L with ease. I was still using elreon's jewelry, though, and my only completed links were KB, CWDT, and my auras. I was pretty damn bummed when I saw my charge-less tooltip dps at only 1.2k, and just under 2k with charges (haven't picked up +charges from tree yet, although they're coming soon).

I bought replacements for 2 of my pieces of elreon's jewelry:


These two upgrades alone DOUBLED my dps! I'm now at ~2400 with no charges and over 4k with charges up. I've got a 300 accuracy helm waiting for me at lvl 70, and I can get loads more dps from upgrading gloves and my other ring slot. Importantly, although my KB mana cost rose by 15, I'm having no mana problems at all thanks to the doubled dps + leech.

When I went back out into the dried lake solo with this dps, I noticed that my HoI-Ice Bite was doing a pretty good job of building frenzy charges against dense packs. I'm sure this will be further enhanced as my dps continues to grow exponentially and I get my spell totem-frost wall links up for more effortless shotgunning.

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Mjjs wrote:

What would you stay to use Graceful assault in combination with daresso's defiance? Would that be better than the default tree? :p

Too many travel nodes to reach that honestly. Test it out if you want, it;s a great cluster but probably not worth the traveling.

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TinyClown wrote:

I have 20 k dps with all frenzy and power charges up. My damage feels a bit weak though.
What should I change? Thank you in advance for your reply Oos.

Your gear is decent. How are you getting power charges? you have IIR in your setup.
I'd also swap Pierce instead of PPAD. I know in my guide I said use Pierce as 6th but after playing with just a 5L in Tempest, Pierce is a better option. It procs the explosions every pierce so helps with aoe clearing.

As for the rest of your gear:
Belt is ok but can get a higher %WED from master craft.
Gloves can be improved, move the res on to other gear and get a 12% attack speed roll from master.
Rings are ok but can get more phys dmg/accuracy/res.
Get a higher evasion shield with res.
That's about it really, decent gear, some small improvements to be made.

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jbmcarth wrote:

I've been theorycrafting some options since my last post. Here's what I've considered so far:
1) with proper frost wall use (manual-cast or spell totem), we shouldn't really need frenzy as a single target attack
2) without frenzy it's hard to generate frenzy charges, especially against bosses. The other frenzy gain mechanisms are based on killing stuff, but after you one or two shot packs around an elite or boss, you're not necessarily going to have many other chances to refresh them. Blood rage, ice bite, poacher's mark, and blood dance all work on kill.
3) Blood rage seems risky, since it's practically guaranteed that you'll begin each new encounter with at least a small chunk of life missing. It's almost like using blood magic + aura to reserve some of your hp from use at the very beginning of each new fight.

So the two options I've narrowed it down to are:
1) HoI + Ice Bite. With Hatred + HoI, several mobs should be frozen when your HoI chain pop occurs. I'm going to play around with this and see how well it works.
2) Frenzy + GMP + CoC + AM. You don't really have to aim it, and CoC casts on area like manual cast as opposed to CoH. Frenzy is no longer a single target dps option, but rather an aoe curse attack which generates frenzy charges on hit.

Interesting ideas. I quite like Frenzy even though I'm kinda lazy about keeping up the charges, but let me know if you swap to this setup.

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Fell_MTK wrote:

What do you think of Atziri's Step & Hyrri's Ire?

I'd much prefer Daresso's, but I'm in love with that chest and it's so cheap.
Atziri's Step are great boots if you can juggle the resists on other gear.
Hyrri's Ire is a great chest though, so use it if you prefer.

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Xifiy wrote:

I thought they removed shotgunning in 2.0? Or am I wrong?

You're correct, but secondary skill effects are independent from the projectile, so they can still shotgun. The main skills this still applies to are; Kinetic Blast, Lightning Arrow and Tornado Shot.

So if a wall is present we can use it to proc the secondary explosions and have one of the best single target nukes in the game.

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Bulbuzor wrote:

Been doing good as an element BM KB on warband, following Malth's guide a fair deal. I have around 3.2k life, 18k dps without charges and 28k dps with them (I still have to get an imbued wand with a suffix for my crit) so it is quite important to maintain them as much as possible. The best way I found to do so is to link HoI + CoH + AM (procs where the hits land) and HoT + CoH + PM (procs near me where thunder strikes) on wand/shield. I did some testing and HoI seemed to get me more charges which is why I use AM with it, being harder to maintain otherwise then frenzy charges. This way I get to stay charged most of the time when in combat with a bunch of mobs, when I see they are getting low I just do a hit or two of frenzy (+ GMP + PCoC + BM (use Increased Crit Chance if you play mana).

All in all really cool build that can be made good with pennies and still has plenty of room for improvements.

Yeah curse on hit setups are very strong. I don't find them as reliable so I don't use them, but they're gear for freeing up gem lots in your main links.

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jbmcarth wrote:

I didn't realize how much of our dps comes from jewelry! I hit lvl 59, tossed on my starter wand (152 pdps, 9.92% local crit, 14% global crit multi), and began messing around in merc dried lake. Once I had the mana leech nodes in the bottom right of the tree, I was able to keep up with KB in a 5L with ease. I was still using elreon's jewelry, though, and my only completed links were KB, CWDT, and my auras. I was pretty damn bummed when I saw my charge-less tooltip dps at only 1.2k, and just under 2k with charges (haven't picked up +charges from tree yet, although they're coming soon).

I bought replacements for 2 of my pieces of elreon's jewelry:

These two upgrades alone DOUBLED my dps! I'm now at ~2400 with no charges and over 4k with charges up. I've got a 300 accuracy helm waiting for me at lvl 70, and I can get loads more dps from upgrading gloves and my other ring slot. Importantly, although my KB mana cost rose by 15, I'm having no mana problems at all thanks to the doubled dps + leech.

When I went back out into the dried lake solo with this dps, I noticed that my HoI-Ice Bite was doing a pretty good job of building frenzy charges against dense packs. I'm sure this will be further enhanced as my dps continues to grow exponentially and I get my spell totem-frost wall links up for more effortless shotgunning.

Yeah after wands, our amulet, gloves then rings are the most important slots for dps.

Man, with this new meta it's so difficult to justify the use of an Alpha's Howl to squeeze in more auras. I have to give up a slot that can give me 300 accuracy, 100 life, and some resists just to squeeze in another aura.

Sure, squeezing another aura is always cool, but it's not really any use if you can't get more life to take the hits that come your way.

hey oos i am your biggest fan

what you think about



as a starting wand?

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FullCust wrote:

hey oos i am your biggest fan

what you think about

Spoiler

as a starting wand?

This wand is terrible. Get a Twyzel.