Mathil's Voltaxic Crit LA/Blast Rain - Cruise control the entire game. Uber Atziri Viable 2.2 ready

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Prophecy falling stale for me so I'd like to play my old LA char for fun in Standard. I'm going to get around to testing this, but from what I gather build is still pretty safe.

My original plans were swap Void for ICS; has anyone tested Added Light > Added Chaos or +Chaos Damage on Jewelry? Looks safer, actual WED suffers a little but should be okay in theory.

I haven't tested the chaos damage gem or crafts on jewelry.

I am currently going with LA + GMP + Chain + WED + Added light + ICS (I'm not a fan of Frost Wall + Pierce on anything which isn't a wander). Going towards critcap was a good thing, especially because I am an Acuity user.

The build is extra safe even after Voltaxic conversion nerf. The only thing which can give some trouble is elereflect / -max res, unless you run Purity of lightning in place of Wrath and add a Topaz flask to the mix. Then it becomes pretty safe again, but that map affix combo is really rare, even in red maps.

Another elemental archer I am testing at the moment is a cold-based one with the new Harbinger bow. It's loads of fun.

Good to hear. Originally many pages ago I had thought about Enlighten + Wrath + POL in 2.3. At least there will be space to play around a bit.

Might go Raider for some safety. Deadeye is nice, but feedback on new Raider seems to be good too.

What's a reasonable gear level to attempt Atziri if you're a noob who's never done her? (tried once like 4 leagues ago and lost my last portal with less than 5% left on her). Found a midnight last night randomly and it got me thinking.

At level 87 I'm sitting on 5.1k hp, 25k LA (with all charges) and 50k Burning Arrow (STD setup when using FW isn't working out/too slow). Finally 5linked my Voltaxic last night which gave me a pretty decent boost in damage with 20% crit chance. Somehow I'm more afraid of the trio than Atziri. I might change setups just for Atziri and 5link my burning arrow and 4l LA, probably get 60-65k BA.

Why are you using burning arrow?

When playing with voltaxic, the main purpose of the build is to get full advantages by flat lightning damage added by the bow, the support gem, eventual modifiers on gear (rings, amulet, quiver) and wrath + herald of thunder. Then the goal is to bring that lightning damage to the stars with high crit, passives and high WED from gear / support gem.

Voltaxic, in the end, converts 60% of that lightning damage into chaos, making your attacks only partially open to reflect mechanics, and making your skills available of inflicting both shock and poison (since you are a raider, to poison with a skill when using voltaxic you have to use the poison support gem).

If you use burning arrow with that setup, you don't take any advantage from the build. I highly suggest going for blast rain + added lightning + wed + concentrated effect + poison in a 5L setup.

Atziri if you have blast rain on a 5L should be a joke. You have good HP and if you know the mechanics of the fights you should success.


EDIT: I took a look @ your character, and saw you didn't take the pierce nodes on the right part of the tree. Using the frost wall trick with LA is good only if you have 100% pierce, and to reach that value you have to invest at least 6 extra passive points in your current tree. I don't love frost wall, and seeing you are using two different skills, one for aoe and another for single target damage, I advise you to remove frost wall and spell echo, and use some more useful skill / support gems in those slots.

In my opinion, in your 3 4L gearslots, you should have:

Herald of Thunder | Frenzy | Curse on hit | Assassin's mark (if using power charges, poacher's mark if not)
Blood Rage | Vaal Haste | Vaal Clarity | Increased Duration
Summon Ice Golem | Wrath | Blink Arrow | Mirror Arrow

Mirror Arrow is extremely valuable @Atziri.

Thanks for the info. I tried Blast Rain for a while and it was doing significantly less damage than my burning arrow. I know it's not the best skill to use with Voltaxic but everything else I've tried was doing so much less damage that I kept it all this time. I use LA like 99% of the time anyways, only using BA for single targets that have no adds around (or Vorici missions where you can't kill guards). I guess I'll try blast rain again but at same gem levels (in a 4L) it was doing so much less than BA (even when factoring that blast rain hits more than once). Only reason I have frost wall was to test it out and see if it was worth putting those extra points into pierce. I'm not a fan of the mechanics of FW so I prefer to stay with a single target setup.

Is herald of thunder better than Ice for curses/power charges? Most guides, even for Voltaxic, recommend HoI. I get that lightning damage is king but it's not like reflect is giving me any issues right now (ele reflect maps are a joke, double ele monsters I have to be a bit more careful but still not a huge threat).

I'll go get a mirror arrow gem to help out and move some gems around.

You really need to embrace Frost Wall. The game is so much easier, and you have the added benefit of either saving a shitload of cutrency buying another 5L/6L and potentially wearing Kaom's (game is even easier then).

I've done Blast Rain and it's okay but the fact that you have that split second where you're standing still is so dangerous. Things disappear with Frost Wall. Abuse what is broken for the mad scrilla.

I did Atzoobi this League with LA/FW using Reach around 84, should be similar with Voltaxic. More about your mechanics than anything.

Frost Wall + Pierce LA is insanely overpowered.

It's a "like" matter at this point.

LA + Pierce + FW = easy mode
LA + Blast Rain = normal mode

:D

@Namcap: Blast Rain excels if coupled with poison. It hits very fast, so the poison really stacks up.

Without poison, it's a "normal" skill.

About the HoI vs HoT question: HoI is fine for mapping, the shatter is useful, especially against the spike on death mobs. On single target, HoT is miles ahead.

Dammit all this talk about FW LA being OP makes me want to be OP :( Guess I'll respec a couple points and try it out with 100% pierce. Do I have to use drillneck in that case? 100% increase projectile is big but I like my current quiver for crit/WED.

Plus I could use my newly found Kaom in that case.



Sigh... why am I stupid and I Vaaled it...

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Namcap wrote:

Dammit all this talk about FW LA being OP makes me want to be OP :( Guess I'll respec a couple points and try it out with 100% pierce. Do I have to use drillneck in that case? 100% increase projectile is big but I like my current quiver for crit/WED.

Plus I could use my newly found Kaom in that case.

Sigh... why am I stupid and I Vaaled it...

I weep for you. Ya when resources are low like in a temp league, the only thing I Vaal are Viridian Jewels :(

And no, Drillneck not necessary. I like landing Crits more anyways. Get a good Spike Point, which are much cheaper because everyone is on the Drillneck plan these days. Example a phys bow quiver I picked up in Prophecy:



5 Mod with decent Dex Roll. 45 fuses, basically pennies honestly since it converts to be less than 20c. You can probably get a similar one with Lightning Damage roll np. They are under the radar for sure.

hey

for frost wall, using with Cast when damage teken.?