Talisman Build Logs

Waterways

My first character this league, the build went through many changes.

Defensively, started as life based, then into hybrid early cruel (my endgame plan), and finally into ci during the mid lvl 80's because fuck chaos damage.

Offensively, started off with the idea of a dot trapper using contagion and caustic arrow. Then realised contagion does shit damage and essence drain cannot be trapped. Decided to try out contagion+bladefall (cruel a4 I think) and suddenly started doing damage (cuz bladefall). Later saw videos of people using poison support gem with great success and decided to make that my endgame build.

However, as a character intended to simply fund my next build I did not want to spend the currency required to get a bino's and needed a cleanup skill to compliment bladefall. Consuming Dark was like 20c at the time so I gave that a go with firestorm and enjoyed it a lot.

After completing challenges I decided to grab a bino's and see just how good that poison prolif was. Was k. Dropped firestorm then in favour of just using bladefall and a 4l kreygasm cry.

Overall quite satisfied with this character, and it was my first trapper that I levelled into any meaningful content. The damage started to drop off in red maps, then I tried putting conc effect into bladefall instead of multitrap. I did not like it when I tried it before due to having lower screen coverage and not needing it to oneshot things, but with bino's+kreygasm cry it was well worth the massive damage increase. Inb4 bladefall nerf.

Quite pleased that my first and only vinktar kill dropped the ideal flask for this build. It op. Repentance is roughly 25% more damage, but I had to drop a slot of life and my nice rare amulet for it. Not sure it was worth it but cba to do any more changes to the build when it performs how I want it to.

Courtyard

One of my strongest characters and was a lot of fun to play. After scrapping the idea of crit mjolner, this ended up being my boss killer via a simple gem swap and ring change to discharge. Very high clearspeed with the double arcs up until about t12 maps. Pack clearing is almost instant up to and including t15s, but single target was far too slow for my tastes so I typically switch to discharge+arc on any maps that make mobs harder to kill.

Damage and overall performance was far higher than I expected, to the point that I would recommend a similar setup to anyone looking to try mjolner that does not have access to voll's devotion.

One issue is that I could not kill core malachai with any sort of reliability (simply take too much damage), and I think uber is out of the question. Everything else is perfectly doable without deaths.

I went into this build knowing I would lose a lot of damage, but consideration d it a fair tradeoff for being able to sustain surgeon's flasks making me essentially unkillable. Turns out that on top of doing fuck all for damage, my flasks did not even move despite having over 70 crit chance on discharge. Promptly respecced back and realized I could kill every boss in the game quickly enough as rt that flasks were not an issue.

Apex
Village Ruin (outdated setup)

Build is exceeding my expectations, and I'm excited to push it even further. The fastest I've ever levelled, hitting 88 in 25 hours /played, maintaining 150-200m exp per hour. Not sure how this is the case, probably because I have more maps and am less bad at the game than when I was playing higher damage builds.

Despite low tooltip (19k self buffed with only frenzy charges) it held up surprisingly well in group play while hosting some t10-12 maps, even managing to solo an extra damage double boss necropolis mrevil on 6 player hp when everyone else had died or fled. I don't expect to get more than 30k tooltip, but other variations have the potential to get immensely more than that so I may do some testing in standard. The mitigation, leech nodes (mana especially), and pierce nodes are why I chose this particular skill tree however. Ofcourse tooltip does not factor in poison, or wither on bosses, but with no duration nodes I can't imagine the poison doing much compared to a typical crit ele kb build that will deal 2-5x more tooltip damage. The main advantage is being able to run all map mods and being more survivable.

Currently looking to improve my crit chance and defenses. Died several times in t12+ maps because I can't melee some mobs as a ranged character with this level of defense (astonishing right?). Also may pick up vaal pact, for bosses specifically as I am having issues sustaining where burst damage is involved (basically everything t12+ with only lightning coil for phys reduction). Thinking enfeeble+enduring cry will do the trick but we will see, may be able to squeeze in aa.

No matter what I do pathing wise I can't justify getting the wand passives unless I'm like level 98, which is what originally stopped me from trying this build (on top of getting the wand). For now that leaves just the option of getting better jewelry and divining my wand.

Ended up respeccing my norm and cruel bandits and taking the wand passives. Hit 94 and am satisfied with how the build has performed. I think I would have trouble levelling this easily with a normal wander, grace+blasphemy enfeeble are a huge boost to survivability, and it is still a crit kb build so clearspeed is not an issue. If I go back and ascend this character when the expansion hits my choice would be deadeye, taking the additional proj+projectile pierce nodes. Scion deadeye might actually be superior as I could drop the pierce gem for another damage support (slower proj or increased crit strikes).