[2.0] Low Life Kinetic Blast Wander (for the upper middle class)

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d3s0 wrote:

Most of people forget the most important thing on new BR gem - the degen will apply to both Life AND ES. That makes BR gem unusable for LL builds unless u got Acuities and invest into liferegen.

This is false, unless they change something fundamental in the game mechanics. Energy shield is always depleted before life, the only expcetion being chaos damage which bypasses energy shield. The new blood rage will work like RF, but with physical damage instead.

From the way the explanation on the gem is worded, you should lose 4% of your maximum life and 4% of your maximum energy shield, both applied to your energy shield

Took a break after the new Blood Rage and Arctic Armour were announced and came back to the new Vaal Pact and leech changes. I made a quick and dirty update of the build, still lacking a few aspects though.

Tree:
The new skill tree has had one branch removed entirely. Since Vaal Pact moved between the Shadow and Ranger area, we would only be traveling to the south part of the tree to get Unwavering Stance. That would be 15 points, just to get to Unwavering Stance (while also having access to 2 jewel slots for a total of 17 points and some needed strength nodes). So that brought up the question: is there any other way than traveling for 15 points for one node?

That looks like a desperate attempt at making the build work, and it is. But it's also super cheap and it somewhat makes sense. 6 points are available to spend on a total of 66% critical strike multiplier, 3 nodes at the start of the Scion area and 3 nodes in the Throatseeker cluster. The Ice Golem, an additional Power Charge and a new ring with accuracy (prevoiously mana regeneration) may help with the loss of accuracy and critical strike chance on the amulet. An empowered Discipline may help boost our ES.

Auras & Heralds:
This is the new aura setup made around the new skill tree. No Enlighten is needed. Taking Charisma, which is right next to Vaal Pact now, and a lvl 21 Blood Magic gem enable us to run one herald on life. Discipline and Wrath are now paired with Empower while Hatred, Anger and Haste are in our Prism Guardian setup. Wrath lvl 24 (corrupted and empowered) with 54% aura effectiveness provides roughly the same damage as Wrath lvl 21 plus Herald of Thunder lvl 21. By dropping Herald of Thunder we gain more free mana as a buffer for mana leech and save us one or two gem slots.

Attack Speed issue:
The old Blood Rage, augmented with a lvl 3 Enhance in a +1 to level of gems item and Infused Shield gave us an attack speed increase of about 90% without Frenzy Charges. I tried to make up for that loss by allocating more attack speed in the tree and running Haste (instead of Clarity): 33% from the tree (potentially 45%) and 26% Haste (17% at lvl 21-23 with 54% increased aura effectiveness) add up to 59%. In addition, increased attack speed on rings and jewels, helping Kraityn in Cruel for 8% increased attack speed and Faster Attacks instead of Additional Accuracy are potential options.

Leech issue:
As for now, I'll be trying to get life leech on rings and jewels to make up for the loss of Blood Rage. But the loss of Blood Rage also means that we will not be constantly whipped around by the degen making for a maybe more relaxed playstyle (here's hoping!). Also a few more passives have gone to increasing our physical damage to help with physical leech. Worst case scenario: We need to use the Life Leech gem in our main setup.
I'm also planning to sustain the attacks with the mana leech provided by the Auxium.
Granted, it's not very well thought out, it might work, but it's hard to tell. I did some testing with mana leech on the beta realm, and it does work on groups even with a relatively low physical damage weapon. For single target mana leech may be not enough to sustain our attack; another worst case scenario: We need to use a mana flask for certain situations.

Survivability issue:
Depending on how we survive on life leech only, we would still have the option of incorporating Arctic Armour or even Grace with a few setup changes. Other than that, I will try and test every possible setup. Rings like Berek's Grip or Gifts from Above with Blood Rage and improved life leech rate may be options too, but that is pure speculation at this point ...

Finally updated for 2.0 Awakening! Any questions, suggestions and improvements are very welcome.

Nice build. I'll be converting my old 1.3 ci phys wander into this.

My only concern is single target damage. With the current state of leech (being horrid for single target) and the fact that GMP kenetic blast is quite terrible for single target, what do you do during boss fights? swap for power siphon + inc phys projectile?

Hey there lDantonl!

Boss fights are very situational as of now. In every case I'm making sure to have all my offensive buffs, i.e. Blood Rage, Vaal Haste, Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise, activated at the start. Depending on the boss I'll use Frost Wall to proc more explosions on top of him or take advantage of positioning.

Two examples: Palace Dominus' first form will get the full blown damage of most of your explosions as he comes down in front of a wall which works like a Frost Wall in this case. His second form is mainly stationary, so placing a Frost Wall right behind or on top of him has the same effect.
The Master of the Blade boss in Gorge is very mobile, so placing a Frost Wall can be a bit tricky if he moves too fast. He will flicker to your character though, so you can try to stand near a wall and attack him as soon as he's next to you.

All that with good play makes the bosses go down in a few seconds. However, for me it required practice and fast, fluid and good gameplay, which I'm not particularly used to. I'm currently looking for a lazy mode for bosses, but since GGG buffed monster damage it got hard to play high-end content "unattentively". I'd suggest trying gem swaps in boss fights you can prepare for. PS and IPPD are a very good single target setup. Frenzy and Barrage are other alternatives, the choice depends on your preferences.

Can you add some Gameplay Videos?

Hey there, I just tried to record some gameplay vids, but the performance was ... not optimal with all the effects and Rampage on top. However I uploaded two short gifs for a general overview:

Mobs + Boss

Map mods:


I'll be trying to record a proper map run on my bf's more potent pc as soon as I have time.

Running ur build atm on warband league but wondering how it performs lvl 80+ maps.. have you tried it?
Also as witch i have some serious stats issues

how to sustain mana? even with lmp setup i can't...

68 mana per cast, 17,2 mana regen...

I use a
without charges or single target @~220 unreserved mana.
With full charges there isn't a problem with high crit chance as long as you have a
, else you need several mana leech affixes on gear/tree.