Skill Development - Blade Vortex

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nhansen wrote:

I think most people are not aware of how broken pledge of hands with CoC, Cyclone, AF, IW, Fortify, LL (echo from pledge). The crit nodes for staves are mostly global crit chance so crit everything into oblivion!!!. Don't for get Crown of eyes to get that gucci 160% spell dmg plus any other from ammy as melee dmg. Also maybe +curse amulets wont be so hard to come by with talismans so just run CoH, HoI, Warlords mark, Assassins mark. Then of coarse blood rage with cyclone. Thus we have no effort perma charges of all kinds. Leggo my eggo.

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Catharsis wrote:

So I tested the actual number of Cyclone CoC procs with SRS, even on big packs turns out it's a lot less than I thought.
It's only 6-7 casts per second with a Vagan dagger, 86% crit chance and 2.13 APS.
The most I could maintain was 35 skulls at one time for a few seconds (3.5s duration)
Self cast is still a bit slower, but definitely comparable and at a much lower investment.

So yeah, scratch everything I said self cast looks like the way to go right now. :)

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MrTastix wrote:

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Catharsis wrote:

So I tested the actual number of Cyclone CoC procs with SRS, even on big packs turns out it's a lot less than I thought.
It's only 6-7 casts per second with a Vagan dagger, 86% crit chance and 2.13 APS.
The most I could maintain was 35 skulls at one time for a few seconds (3.5s duration)
Self cast is still a bit slower, but definitely comparable and at a much lower investment.

So yeah, scratch everything I said self cast looks like the way to go right now. :)

We need to focus less on blades and more on their damage output. We also should be looking at CoC Cyclone with more than just Vortex in play (like other spells).

An average self-cast Vortex is going to run: Blade Vortex > Spell Echo > Increased Duration > Increased AoE.

An CoC Cyclone will run: Cyclone > Cast on Crit > Blade Vortex > [Whatever Else]

Assuming a 4L what I want to know is if an extra 20 blades is worth more than:

* Cyclone's damage: Still scales with crit and physical nodes, and now that it costs the same mana at level 20 as it does at level 1 we can even level it.

With 6L in mind CoC can then take spells like Bladefall and two extra supports like Added Chaos/Fire. Will that make up for the loss of those 20-something blades?

I feel Pledge of Hands might make self-cast better because of the extra socket (though crit will be harder) but CoC might still be viable with the right gear regardless, particularly since it doesn't need to stand still at all or worry about increased duration (without which self-cast crumbles as standing still every 2 seconds is not ideal).