[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

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hankinsohl wrote:
Yet another build I'm going to try:
Spoiler

I've spent a bunch of currency on these babies:



I now have 12 of them and I'm going to try some sort of Grand Spectrum build.

The interesting concept behind GS is that they scale O(n^2) - that is, on the order of n squared where n is the number of GS jewels you have. And since n squared increases very, very fast, once you get a lot of GS jewels you do a huge amount of damage.

From a game design standpoint, GS offers an alternative to crit. To take advantage of GS you'll want as many of the jewels as you can get while still maintaining some semblance of defense. The reason that it's an alternative to crit is that you won't have enough points after grabbing all those jewel nodes to invest in crit.

But with 12 Grand Spectrum jewels you'll be doing 5 * 12 * 12 = 720% increased damage (that's a bit over seven times whatever base damage you'd do without the jewels) - so crit isn't needed.

It seems to me that the best way to leverage these jewels is to equip your main skill in a +3 staff with empower and to use Vagan's blood magic crafted mod so that you don't have to worry about mana.

For defense, I'll go dual curse, grabbing all of the curse support nodes with lots of life. I'll either wear Kaom's Heart or Lightning Coil - not sure which yet but I'm leaning towards Kaom's provided I don't need to use a 2nd skill for single target.

For my main skill I'm still not sure what to use. I've been thinking about Lightning Warp - supposed bugs in that skill may nix that idea - or Ice Nova.

I think with this:


and the Elementalist's prolif, I'll be freezing the screen on a regular basis (though that may not even be necessary since I think I"ll be one-shotting trash mobs).

For bosses, I'm not sure if Ice Nova will cut it. I may need to use a second skill for single target.
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Although Grand Spectrum jewels offer an alternative to crit, maybe they best shine when augmenting builds that don't use crit in the first place. For example, Explosive Arrow really shines with GS.

I think I want a pure caster build though - no totems, traps or mines (except maybe for single target) - and no bows.

Along these lines, Incinerate might be really fun.
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What I think I'll do is build my character around this tree which is pretty generic and then try out some skills to see what I like best.

The GS build should keep me well-occupied until the league ends.
Spoiler
Freezing pulse would scale *really* nicely with that setup for single target. Hell, it's got wide enough projectiles, it's damn near AOE if you use an LMP.
Current league IGN: Teldra_Anc_LAD
Feel free to message me in game if I'm on.
Im using 4L ED as extra dmg during boss fights. Any better ideas?
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doqjis wrote:
Im using 4L ED as extra dmg during boss fights. Any better ideas?


Wither totem, 3 or 4 link: Wither - Spell Totem - Faster Casting - (Inc AoE)

Vaal Lightning Trap (usually linked with Inc Duration)

Those are the two 'go to' set ups for additional single target damage, and are recommended in the final gem set up for the character.
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Serleth wrote:
I deliberately took a break from Overwatch to crank out the Prophecy challenges.

Then I went back for my fix. With some intermittent breaks.

Although the past few days I've been back into Grim Dawn, had to restart from nothing (last build I played didn't have cloud storage and I lost the hard drive it was installed on).

Some very nice improvements since I last played.


Hi

which char & build, you play in the grim dawn?
I'm trying to build my own.

Currently doing a Demo/Arcanist (Sorceress), centered around Aether Ray with some CC skills like Flashbang and Flash Freeze. The Devotion tree is the hardest thing to wrap my head around, I had to respec a bunch yesterday to get more survivable
Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
Grats on 40 ChronoExile!
Last edited by hankinsohl#1231 on Jul 31, 2016, 12:48:52 AM
@grimjack
Spoiler

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grimjack68 wrote:
Freezing pulse would scale *really* nicely with that setup for single target. Hell, it's got wide enough projectiles, it's damn near AOE if you use an LMP.

Yep, agreed.

If my single target requires me to be pretty close to my target while casting a lot, I might need to go CI so that I can take hits. And if I go that route, I'd need to pick up some way to replenish mana since my planned blood magic solution wouldn't work.

We'll see.

This is all up in the air atm.

For what it's worth, the successful Grand Spectrum builds I've seen (EA and Bobslop's LW/MO) seem to be prolif builds - not what I originally had in mind, but if that's what works, I'll figure out something.

Too bad "The Taming" is so expensive - I might have tried prolif Incinerate otherwise.




Finally i make it, and now that build its nice, can farm t12 maps, not try t13-t15 because still dont drop it) But sometimes i can get oneshot. Thanks for that very nice build)
can you run uber lab with this build please ?
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zharef wrote:
can you run uber lab with this build please ?

Yes. It is recommended to switch out the rings, and boots for more defensive options (life, resists and evasion/armour, life, resists, move speed). If you want to re-chrome, replacing IR with pierce, this is another option to help with damage output.

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