[2.1] Life based EB CoE Wander | 70k GMP+Chain Kinetic Blast 4.5k life with Coil

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Character Overview
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Minimum cost of the build is ~10ex, may be possible for less, but it definitely gets dramatically more powerful for each exalt invested.

4.4k Life with Lightning Coil
70K DPS Kinetic Blast + GMP + Chain
50K DPS(200K if all shots hit) Barrage or 175K DPS Power Siphon/Frenzy
~85% Crit Chance, can crit cap with Diamond Rings(If you can afford them)

6 Power Charges + 5 Frenzy Charges
Sustains an insane mana cost by using Eldritch Battery with 4xES on Hit Jewels

Massive damage scaling from Wrath + Anger + Herald of Ice

High effective life vs. physical damage due to Lightning Coil + Taste of Hate(~16k EHP with flasks up based on calculations from https://jsfiddle.net/p7pe80jx/39/embedded/result/)

Offensive Screenshots
Kinetic Blast + GMP + Chain + WED + Life Leech + Added Lightning
Auras + Charges
Full Buffed DPS with Flasks/Vaal Haste

Frenzy + WED + Crit Damage + Added Lightning
Auras + Charges
Full Buffed DPS with Flasks/Vaal Haste

Barrage + WED + Crit Damage + Added Lightning
Auras + Charges
Full Buffed DPS with Flasks/Vaal Haste

Positives
- Insane clear speed
- Can 1 shot packs even in level 80 maps with 6 player life
- Very fun and fast play-style
- Solid enough build to level well into the 90s without trouble

Negatives
- Not beginner friendly
- The build probably isn't HC viable
- The build has no movement skill(Lightning Warp and Flame Dash don't count, they're way too slow without cast speed), so you need to stack movement speed
- Not some sort of Aegis super tank, so you need to play smart and not facetank

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Passive Tree
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Bandits
Normal: Oak
Cruel: Kill/Kraityn
Merciless: Alira


NOTE: Skill trees will still load if you import the links into poedb, I'll get to updating the links for the main website shortly. if I had to pick an Ascendancy Class I would probably prefer a Scion Berserker/Assassin, although your results may vary, I have yet to spend enough time testing.

Shadow

Scion

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Gems
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AoE Kinetic Blast
The links in order of importance are:
Kinetic Blast + GMP + WED + Life Leech + Chain + <other support>

The last support on your AoE attack is pretty flexible.

For the best DPS use Added Lightning Damage
For Lightning Resist maps use Increased Crit Damage/Lightning Penetration(Not needed, but slightly faster)
For Curse Immune/Status Effect Resistant maps use Power Charge on Crit
For lower level maps where you do way too much damage use Innervate for the move speed

Other options are Faster Attacks, Slower Projectiles, and Added Cold Damage, but using any of those prevents you from having a spare Blue socket to swap in PCoC, which significantly damages your ability to do certain map mods.

Single Target options
Frenzy, Power Siphon, and Barrage, all do almost the same damage, so it’s mostly personal preference.
However I strongly recommend Barrage for the infinite mana sustain, as opposed to the slow drain you get with the other options. Links are the same regardless:

<Single Target Skill> + WED + Added Lightning + Crit Damage

Other Links
Ice Golem - Stick this wherever you have room, it doesn’t need supports
Wrath + Anger + Enlighten
Herald of Ice + Curse on Hit + Assassin’s Mark + Enlighten
Increased Duration + Vaal Haste
Blood Rage + Enhance*

* You don’t need to Enhance your Blood Rage, I just like to, adds a pretty minimal amount of DPS compared to how much it costs.(Only like 1-2k DPS)

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Gear
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Budget Gear - About 50k GMP + Chain DPS in a 6L with the following gear and level 20 gems(ignore incorrect socketed gems)
Spoiler








End-game Gear
Spoiler









In-depth gear breakdown
Spoiler

Helmet

Obviously Crown of Eyes is the best in slot helmet, it has everything you want, and in good quantities, plus it provides an absolutely massive damage boost. Second best helmet is Alpha’s Howl, with Rat’s Nest coming in third, assuming you're already using Maligaro’s.


Body Armour

Again the best in slot piece is pretty obvious. Lightning Coil, especially if you’re in Standard where there’s a plentiful supply of legacy ones. However I did level up to 90 with a 5L Daresso’s Defiance, and it’s fine to do this, but you are a lot squishier, get a Lightning Coil as soon as possible.


Gloves

You can use either any generic Rare Gloves with Accuracy/Attack Speed + Life and Resists, or choose between Maligaro's, Facebreakers, Southbound, or Thunderfist, based on what you happen to need. I've included a write-up on the costs and benefits of using either option.

Since this slot will most likely be filled with a reasonably affordable Unique, this is the best slot to try to get a +1 Gems item for your Auras, which is a significant DPS upgrade.

Maligaro's

70k DPS

Due to the difficulty crit capping, Maligaro's both provides the most consistent DPS boost, as well as the largest DPS boost. It provides nothing at all defensively, but is a very solid offensive option, especially with regard to AoE clearing. Probably the best option, especially if legacy.


Facebreaker

68k DPS

Facebreakers provides almost as much DPS as Maligaro's in my experience, slightly less, but it's of course far less consistent in where that DPS comes from, since it doesn't provide any crit chance. Not a bad option if you need an item to Vaal spam, but other than that, I wouldn't bother using them unless you found a way to crit cap without using Maligaro's.


Southbound

61k DPS

On the plus side, they provide as much flat damage as a Legacy Thunderfist, it's all cold damage so you can freeze things more easily, and you get increased freeze duration, which means even easier freezing. On top of that you get a solid amount of resists, which really helps with the strict resist requirements of the build, and I go from 4.4k life all the way up to 4.7k.

The downside of course is that your hits can only kill frozen enemies. As for how this plays out in practice, it's actually not that bad. Since Anger burns enemies, and the burn damage can still kill, even if you fail to freeze your target. So for boss killing, or something, where you don't do enough damage to reliably freeze, you can still kill without troubles.

The real issue is you have a much lower crit chance compared to Maligaro's, and you are unable to kill things on a non-crit, since you will neither burn nor freeze your enemies. This can be annoying, but it's a cheap item, so it doesn't really cost anything for you to see if that's worth it to you or not.


Thunderfist

60k DPS - 200k Single Target

The main benefit of Thunderfist is of course the potential to have a 5L single target skill, but at the cost of having worse AoE potential. My single target Power Siphon/Frenzy went up from 175k to 200k DPS, which is a pretty significant boost, but at the cost of a pretty significant hit to your AoE damage. This may be worthwhile if you're at a similar damage level to me, especially if you don't play in parties very much.

Since you should still be 1 shotting everything anyway, and the better single target goes a long way to solve what is otherwise a pretty big problem for Wanders.




Boots

Just Rare Boots with Life + Resists and as much Move Speed as you can afford. There aren't any Unique Boots that are worth losing the resists over, so just focus on getting the best Rare Boots you can afford.


Shield

Again, a Rare Shield is the way to go, the rolls you want can be tricky, since you really want a high roll on all of Life + Flat ES + Spell Damage, all of which are prefixes. Then on top of that you’ll likely need some good resists as well. Not an easy piece to get a hold of, but definitely worth it if you can manage it. You can skip the ES if that’s closer to your price range, and just get Life + Spell Damage.


Wand

A Rare Wand is the best way to go, but for a Wander, the wand is surprisingly unimportant so long as your other gear is in order. The most important rolls are a high attack speed and high crit chance, even an old CoC wand will likely give you ideal performance. Try your best to get better than mastercrafted values on both crit and APS. As for damage, go for high phys damage or elemental damage, either works just fine, since all your damage scaling is generic and scales both phys and ele, you can’t really go wrong either way.

Piscator's Vigil is an option, however any fast, high crit Imbued Wand is going to beat it. So it should be looked at as a cheap stepping stone, and nothing more.


Amulet

A Rare Amulet is always the way to go, ideally you’d want as much offensive potential as possible. Unfortunately I needed at least 38% fire resist on my amulet to cap resists, so my amulet is quite bad. If you’re not in that situation, then stack as much Crit Multi + WED + Spell Damage + Crit Chance + Flat Ele Damage as you can while still maintaining good life.


Other Jewellery

Rings and Belts are more or less the same, just a Rare Item with, high life, and lots and lots of resists. You need to compensate for a -90% resistance from using a Lightning Coil+Crown of Eyes, and this is not easy, especially if you intend to use Unique Gloves without resists. In addition to that you need at least some accuracy to reach a decent chance to hit, and of course any WED or Flat Ele Damage you can get is an added bonus.


Flasks

- Always use Atziri’s Flask, since it’s incredibly cheap and a strong damage/survivability buff.
- Always get Taste of Hate if you can afford it, it’s OP.
- Use at least 1 Surgeon’s Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline, having 120-140% move speed at all times is worth the slot.
- Some life flask of some sort, ideally of Staunching
- I just use another Quicksilver for my 5th flask, you can use whatever, possibly another life flask.


Jewels

Jewels are the cornerstone of this build, you can skimp on a lot of areas when gearing this build. But strong Rare Jewels are the one place where quality gear is very important. You will likely need to craft the Jewels yourself, for each jewel I would say the mandatory mods are either Life or ES on Hit, getting both is pretty GG, but also quite rare. A minimum of +12 ES on Hit total is needed for the build to even function.

Offensive mods to look out for in order of importance are:
- Attack Speed(Especially with Wands and with Shields)
- Crit Multi/Chance
- Spell Damage(Especially with Shields)
- Projectile Damage
- Generic Damage/Area Damage

+x% Increased Physical Damage isn't nearly as good as it seems, and is not worth getting, same with specific elemental damage like +x% Increased Lightning Damage. Mods that are nice to have are Reduced Mana Cost, and Knockback, but neither are worth specifically trying to get, they're just very minor QoL benefits.

If possible, try to fit a Chill of Corruption into your Jewel setup somewhere, it's extremely powerful, and allows you to easily reach 100% uptime on Vaal Haste with time to spare. Definitely worth the point, although it will cost you a few thousand tooltip DPS vs. a strong rare Jewel.



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Build Concept
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The idea was originally to try to make a low-life wander. After realizing how expensive that was, I chose to instead try to make the strongest life-based wander I could by borrowing the best ideas from both low-life, and life-based wanders, while also trying to incorporate as many of the strongest additions of the 2.0.0 patch as I could, especially taking advantage of Jewels and the Eldritch Battery changes.

This build can effectively be done for around 10ex, but scales immensely for each exalt you spend after that, and has one of the fastest clear speeds in the game currently, at least within its budget.

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Mechanics and Synergies
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Damage

The damage comes largely through scaling elemental damage, this is due to the low base damage of wands. Even with a mirrored wand you’ll get more DPS out of using Wrath than you will with Hatred, the most you get out of the physical damage is extra leech.

For those worried about mobs high elemental resistance stopping you from face rolling, I’ve been successfully 1 shotting level 80 packs with 6 player life. If you map solo, you will 1 shot everything in the game short of bosses, the damage is definitely enough, elemental or not.


Auras

The auras this build uses are Wrath + Anger + a Curse on Hit Herald of Ice

Sustaining these auras can be done in one of four different ways, based on your available gear. In the order of best to worst they are:

1: A +1 Gems Item and one Level 3 Enlighten
2: Skipping Influence, and using one Level 4 Enlighten
3: Using the Influence cluster with one level 3 Enlighten
4: Using Influence + Conqueror's Efficiency + 2x Level 2 Enlightens



Hatred vs. Flat Damage Auras

In this case I'll be doing the math with Foe Bite, both with and without PPAD(PPAD also being a pretty poor choice for support gems, especially due to the less attack speed)

Since almost all damage scaling on this build scales both ele and phys damage, I'll ignore increased modifiers, and mostly focus on WED and PPAD, since those are the significant ones.

I'll also be operating under the assumption that all gems are level 21, since if we're dealing with a Mirrored Wand, then you can afford to do that. At lower budget levels the numbers look even worse, so I won't even mention them.

I'll also ignore flat damage on gear, I know you can roll 9-15 Physical Damage on rings, but you can also roll 7-72 Lightning Damage on rings, which is just way more, so looking at flat damage on gear does just make Hatred look worse, as opposed to better.

Now for the math:
Foe Bite deals 165-305 phys damage/hit | 235 average/hit
Wrath deals 17–267 lightning damage/hit | 142 average/hit
Hatred deals 36% of phys as extra cold
PPAD is 50% more phys and 10% less APS
WED is 60% more ele damage

Foe Bite + Hatred = 320 average damage (235 phys, 85 cold)
Foe Bite + Wrath = 377 average damage (235 phys, 142 light)

Foe Bite + Hatred + PPAD = 480 average damage (353 phys, 127 cold)
but at 10% less APS so 432 if compensating for speed
Foe Bite + Wrath + WED = 462 average damage (235 phys, 227 light)

Foe Bite + Hatred + PPAD + WED = 556 average damage (353 phys, 203 cold) 500 after compensating for APS
Foe Bite + Wrath + PPAD + WED = 580 average damage (353 phys, 227 light) 522 after compensating for APS

The numbers are a bit closer if you compare Hatred to Anger, since Wrath does more damage than either. But no matter how you go about it. Hatred just can't stack up in terms of DPS, it's a utility aura if you're rich enough to afford a mirrored wand, and even that's iffy.


Sustaining Kinetic Blast

My Kinetic Blast costs 90 mana per attack, and I can get between 4-5 attacks/second. Resulting in at least a 400 mana/second cost. To deal with this you take Eldritch Battery and use Jewels with ES on Hit mods to sustain your skill.

+12 ES on Hit in my experience is enough to sustain a GMP + Chain KB, but NOT a GMP + Pierce KB. This is one of the main reasons I don’t ever recommend using Pierce, sustain is harder, and the clear speed is lower. Using it is just a lose/lose. More ES on Hit is always better, but 12 is the minimum.


Reflect

The build can handle all forms of physical reflect without issue, no gear or gem swapping required to run a phys reflect map. Be careful using your Single Target on a phys reflect enemy, since you do not have life leech linked to your single target skill, and this can result in you taking a dangerous amount of physical damage.

Elemental Reflect is another issue entirely, ele reflect rares aren’t too much of a challenge, you’ll attack them with your KB, you’ll lose about 2k life in 3 frames of animation, then will instantly leech back up to full life over another frame or two of animation, it looks a little sketchy, but levelling from 88 to 93, I’ve only died once to reflect.

Note: NEVER attack an ele reflect rare with your single target skill, you will die instantly.

It is theoretically possible to run a Ele Reflect map, although I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re desperate. You just need to swap out WED for the Life Gain on Hit gem. The combination of drastically lowering DPS, and increasing how much life is gained from enemies seems to solve the issue. However you are giving up a massive portion of your DPS by doing so. See the video section below for an idea of how this performs in practice.


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Videos
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I apologize in advance for the poor quality videos. Potatoes make for a bad recording environment.

Ele Reflect Map
Typical 78 Springs Map
Last edited by Shotgun_Surgeon on Mar 11, 2016, 4:50:38 PM
Last bumped on Apr 26, 2016, 7:02:51 AM
Looking for feedback, I intend to upload a 6 man party level 80+ map next chance I get to record one. Since that's the only scenario that properly shows off the DPS potential of the build.

Other than that, is there anything else I should add/fix?
Have you compared wrath vs hatred with a high pdps wand while using ppad support gem?
For try, for see, and for know.

This is a buff
"
Etherfire wrote:
Have you compared wrath vs hatred with a high pdps wand while using ppad support gem?


Right, knew I forgot to explain something. The short version is that Hatred is pretty much objectively bad for Wanders, you can make it work if you have a mirrored wand, but even then, you're mostly doing it for easier freezing, and not for the DPS. I've included the math below, if you're interested in reading a bit more on why, if not then you can just take my word for it though, Hatred just isn't that good on Wands:

Spoiler

In this case I'll be doing the math with Foe Bite, both with and without PPAD(PPAD also being a pretty poor choice for support gems, especially due to the less attack speed)

Since almost all damage scaling on this build scales both ele and phys damage, I'll ignore increased modifiers, and mostly focus on WED and PPAD, since those are the significant ones.

I'll also be operating under the assumption that all gems are level 21, since if we're dealing with a Mirrored Wand, then you can afford to do that. At lower budget levels the numbers look even worse, so I won't even mention them.

I'll also ignore flat damage on gear, I know you can roll 9-15 phys damage on rings, but you can also roll 7-72 Lightning Damage on rings, which is just way more, so looking at flat damage on gear does just make Hatred look worse, as opposed to better.

Now for the math:
Foe Bite deals 165-305 phys damage/hit | 235 average/hit
Wrath deals 17–267 lightning damage/hit | 142 average/hit
Hatred deals 36% of phys as extra cold
PPAD is 50% more phys and 10% less APS
WED is 60% more ele damage

Foe Bite + Hatred = 320 average damage (235 phys, 85 cold)
Foe Bite + Wrath = 377 average damage (235 phys, 142 light)

Foe Bite + Hatred + PPAD = 480 average damage (353 phys, 127 cold)
but at 10% less APS so 432 if compensating for speed
Foe Bite + Wrath + WED = 462 average damage (235 phys, 227 light)

Foe Bite + Hatred + PPAD + WED = 556 average damage (353 phys, 203 cold) 500 after compensating for APS
Foe Bite + Wrath + PPAD + WED = 580 average damage (353 phys, 227 light) 522 after compensating for APS

The numbers are a bit closer if you compare Hatred to Anger, since Wrath does more damage than either. But no matter how you go about it. Hatred just can't stack up in terms of DPS, it's a utility aura if you're rich enough to afford a mirrored wand, and even that's iffy.
"
Etherfire wrote:
Have you compared wrath vs hatred with a high pdps wand while using ppad support gem?


I tried both with my Warbands hybrid wander using a 200pdps wand, Wrath is always more raw dps with either a 5L or 6L even with PPAD. This is raw tooltip dps which doesn't even account for shock. The one thing hatred does have going for it is utility, you'll shatter everything if you run hatred.

Also, with or without hatred PPAD is not a good support for wanders. The raw phys of wands is too low for it to cut it vs supports like crit damage, fast attacks, or added lightning. FWIW my wander runs KB, GMP, WED, Crit Damage, FA, PCoC[1]

[1] HoI + CoH + AssMark can sustain charges as long as 1) you aren't running curse immunie maps and 2) you get most of the kills. My wander only has 1 power charge duration node and I mostly duo'ed maps with another very high DPS player, keeping charges up was sketchy enough it was easier to just leave PCoC socketed than swap in/out for curse immune maps.
Last edited by rangda on Sep 23, 2015, 1:26:41 PM
Cool stuff. Thanks for explaining it to me. I guess I'm just way too used to hatred being my go-to aura for all things dps :P

I made a wander in the past(phys) but never really got used to the rather mediocore single target dps, but then again, I didn't have 175k frenzy. I also stopped playing at a pretty low level(77).

A few more questions, what are your thoughts on pierce vs chain? Also, how does this build perform at atziri?

Thanks
For try, for see, and for know.

This is a buff
Last edited by Etherfire on Sep 23, 2015, 2:17:53 PM


hey which wand would u recommend to use?? its an old wand i used when i played kb coc

are they okay or should i buy a new one??
"
Kramerika wrote:


hey which wand would u recommend to use?? its an old wand i used when i played kb coc

are they okay or should i buy a new one??


If I were you I'd buy a new one, with better damage on it.
For try, for see, and for know.

This is a buff
"
Kramerika wrote:
hey which wand would u recommend to use?? its an old wand i used when i played kb coc

are they okay or should i buy a new one??


The second one's better out of the two that you listed. But you can easily and cheaply find an upgrade for either. On Standard there's no shortage of strong phys wands you can buy for a reasonable price, and on Warbands there's no shortage of Elemental Wands you can buy(But for whatever reason there are absolutely no Elemental Wands worth buying on Standard, oh well)

Just make sure that whatever you get, it has crit+attack speed. Since those are probably still the two most important mods.

"
Etherfire wrote:
A few more questions, what are your thoughts on pierce vs chain?

I would say Chain is pretty much objectively superior to Pierce, so long as you can handle the mana costs. Thankfully due to the EB + ES on Hit method of sustain, that is easily done.

On average Chain just results in far more hits/attack than Pierce does. This is especially noticeable when I swap gems from Chain to Pierce and suddenly can't effectively sustain my mana, even though Pierce costs like 30% less mana/attack. The only way that would be the case is if Chain was getting around twice as many hits/attack, which of course easily makes up for the loss in damage, both in terms of consistency and AoE coverage.

I like to think of Kinetic Blast as a sort of Super Lightning Arrow, the two skills are definitely quite similar on a mechanical level.

"
Etherfire wrote:
Also, how does this build perform at atziri?

If I swap my AoE and Single Target skills I get like 300-400k DPS with a 6L Single Target, and 30-40k with KB in a 4L, the build can probably do normal Atziri, but I doubt Uber would be as doable, especially since a set-up like that causes you to easily run into mana issues.

To add on to that, the build has 4.4k life, which is plenty for mapping with a Coil+ToH, but does leave you in a position where most of what Atziri does can 1 shot you.

The build was made for mapping, and that's what it excels at, there are many better options for farming Atziri, although I'm sure it's possible if you know what you're doing.


Last edited by Shotgun_Surgeon on Sep 23, 2015, 2:42:38 PM
What are your thoughts on Frost Wall for single target? Then you could drop barrage and use those four sockets for another setup. I guess the problem might be mana sustain.
The chance to Vaal +1% maximum resists on an amulet is less than 1/300.

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