[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice Berserker - Viable for Everything

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Black_Gun wrote:

we're talking about berserker, he has built-in mana leech. ofc I can sustain my mana without WM... there is really no reason to have 100% uptime on warlords mark on a berserker. I'm only having a cwdt(1) - wm(5) setup so that I can safely run reflect maps without having to use a ruby flask. (reflect damage is too low to reliably trigger cloaked in savagery.)

for bossfights, I would take it out and stick to enfeeble only. I can, of course, put my enfeeble in an orb of storms - cast on hit - enfeeble - inc dura setup for when I do endgame content.

I kept WM mostly because of thinking about the other classes. I guess it can be a Berserker-only build for now, things change with every league anyway.

When it comes to mana, the biggest difference is self-cast vs CwC. If you use self-cast, MoM is a bad idea. A fight where you constantly take hits will drain your mana, and your casting staggers and things go south quickly. No MoM means your life bar is all you have. Whereas with CwC you don't care about mana and your EHP is your life + unreserved mana, and that's enough to make up for the difference in the life pool. MoM can use up to 43% of the mana pool for defense, and with AA + Purity you have 40% unreserved, or about 1350 mana on my modestly geared char. That's as good as several 5% life nodes.

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dont get me wrong, I would very much prefer to keep playing WI. but I'm just afraid the life you can reasonably reach on WI will be very uncomfortable in the endgame. in general, WI will probably feel a whole lot weaker in 3.0, and I'm not sure I really want to keep on playing a build that feels so much worse than what I was used to...

anyhow, show me a clean shaper kill on a life-based WI char that doesnt involve mathil-like skill and we can talk. until then, I assume that the transition to life will make WI lose a ton of its tankiness and a noticable amount of offensive power.

If you go CwC with Firestorm, I think you'll lose too much DPS, right? That's even without the difference in duration where Icestorm's DPS against a boss is 1.5x higher than Firestorm's with the same tooltip.

Overall, I really don't see how Firestorm can become better than Icestorm even after the ES nerf. Have you actually done T16 with that? The Shaper? I cleared T16 (without extremely bad mods) and only ran into trouble against the Shaper. The only reason I haven't made a video of T16 is because I don't want to risk getting it nerfed further before 3.0. As for the Shaper, I typically spend 5-10 ex depending on the league to get to the point where I can farm him. I haven't bothered to invest in pre-3.0 Life gear, and my test char is lower level than in any league. For this char with this gear, clearing T16 is a very good result IMO. I don't think it will work quite so well for a Firestorm version. Or have you already tried it?

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btw have you ever tried WI without vaal pact? I mean... even with the nerfs to ES numbers, a CI based WI char should still be able to easily reach 10k ES without giving up a lot of int. using ZO, some regen and a beast fur shawl (increases the life leeched per second by 40%, from 20% per second to 28% per second!) could yield a net ES recovery of around 35-40% of our maximum ES per second. which might be enough to deal with the shaper or guardians on easily-rolled t16 maps. but I'm not sure if thats a viable approach, would have to test it out myself. the nice thing about this approach would be that we could keep on playing elementalist. or switch to scion (the elementalist- & raider-subclasses seem like a nice combo).

I haven't tried playing without VP on this build. When you are facetanking T16 bosses, even if you could recover 33% of your ES per second, that's still 3 sec to recover it all. So then the question is: can you survive 3 sec with zero ES recovery? The obvious answer is No. Which means that even with 33% recovery you will gradually lose ES and die within a matter of seconds. The only viable non-VP facetank option is Occultist with a huge ES pool and ES regen (at the cost of DPS). DemiGodKing made a couple versions of that, and T16 bosses basically die of old age there. I don't remember if he ever got the Shaper down with that build, probably not.

And that's with godly items and insane ES that won't be possible anymore. Dunno about reaching 10k ES easily in 3.0. The loss of 15% ES on CI and 30% on Discipline and items will hurt. Beast Fur Shawl is already not great ES-wise, and it will suck even more. I don't know if its 'ES recovery speed' applies to leech or just to recharge. GR will penalize the recharge rate in 3.0, so that's another nail in the ES coffin.

i've been playing around with some setups in path of building and here's what i got.

8946 dps on just 875 int and calculating the wise oak flask. still missing second ring to keep it real and missing int on belt and not using jewels.

beserker saves you a lot of trouble with leech and some extra dps so that stays.

i opted to go for full cold dmg and so far, with only 110 points spent on the tree, the average dps on icestorm is better without the fire conversion. frost bomb provides enough extra penetration to make up for losing scorching ray and with the frostbite it's gonna be even better. there's no reason to use enfeeble anymore since the life pool won't be anywhere near es levels. for 8-9k es builds enfeeble was the difference make between one shot and 100 es left. no matter what you do now, some hits will end you. mapping will probably still be safe with blight, temp chains, frost bombs .. all that chill is gonna help and it might be a bit better on some bosses if they do change the way ailments interact with them.

on the defensive side, frostbite + temp chains should do the trick. using kaoms just for the life gets me at about 5900 at lvl 90 with mediocre life numbers on the rest of the gear. i suppose the only good thing that comes out of this life version is the ability to get armor/es gear and that combined with granite+basalt would make things a lot easier to tank.

the biggest 2 issues i see with this build are:
1. leveling with it is not as easy as the CI version. you travel way too much to get vp and don't get enough life to use it or dps. i think it's best lvling as something else and making a switch at lvl 80.

2. bye bye lab farming unless you want to carry 4 life flasks with you. the movement speed is still very low for lab standards and even with the smoke mine phase run combo... it's not worth doing anymore. not to mention there's no safety net for izaro elemental hit crits. 8k es could sometimes save u but gl with 6k life, argus can still be killed with basalt and granite up.

maybe you could run lab as well as before 3.0 if you get to lvl 90, achieve godlike dps and skip boss phases but by that point, there's no reason to do lab anymore. i used lab to get gear to do higher content and level faster in maps. doing it after 90... why bother.

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LastMagus wrote:

i've been playing around with some setups in path of building and here's what i got.

8946 dps on just 875 int and calculating the wise oak flask. still missing second ring to keep it real and missing int on belt and not using jewels.

Sorry, that just can't be real. Path of Building doesn't work well with Icestorm. Please check what skill is that for? Maybe that's DPS for Scorching Ray? But no way you can have 9k Icestorm avg hit (the tooltip) with 875 Int.

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i opted to go for full cold dmg and so far, with only 110 points spent on the tree, the average dps on icestorm is better without the fire conversion. frost bomb provides enough extra penetration to make up for losing scorching ray and with the frostbite it's gonna be even better.

I tried staying with cold, but ended up with lower DPS than with fire. Frost Bomb can compensate for Scorching Ray, but you then need to do extra work: pop Orb of Storms and Frost Bomb. And do it quite often while fighting endgame bosses.

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there's no reason to use enfeeble anymore since the life pool won't be anywhere near es levels. for 8-9k es builds enfeeble was the difference make between one shot and 100 es left. no matter what you do now, some hits will end you.

I disagree completely. Enfeeble is the reason why I can facetank T16 bosses and even survive Shaper Slam with 4.5k life and flasks. Without Enfeeble I'd definitely get 1-shot. And what do you propose to do when 'some hit will end you'? Run around and dodge instead of facetanking? That's not the play style for this build. Something with Whirling Blades would work much better for dodging.

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1. leveling with it is not as easy as the CI version. you travel way too much to get vp and don't get enough life to use it or dps. i think it's best lvling as something else and making a switch at lvl 80.

I disagree again. Leveling as a life build is very easy, you can actually have more life than ES early on, and flasks can bail you out in any situation. Need better pathing, that's all. Not needing CI and GR makes it much easier, you can take some other good things before lv 38 (which I think will be the switching point now, as soon as CwC is available). Or maybe even lv 33 with some mana flasks.

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2. bye bye lab farming unless you want to carry 4 life flasks with you. the movement speed is still very low for lab standards and even with the smoke mine phase run combo... it's not worth doing anymore. not to mention there's no safety net for izaro elemental hit crits. 8k es could sometimes save u but gl with 6k life, argus can still be killed with basalt and granite up.

Not at all. You need 2 life flasks to be safe through the traps (anti-poison and anti-bleeding), 1 granite/iron skin for Izaro, and you can still bring 2 quicksilvers for speed. You won't need to worry about freeze as a life build, you don't care about chests along the way.

Oh wow, if I understand it correctly, MoM works on non-hit damage in Beta. So that's going to solve the Shaper issue. MoM is the new CI.

LOL

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Kelvynn wrote:

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LastMagus wrote:

i've been playing around with some setups in path of building and here's what i got.

8946 dps on just 875 int and calculating the wise oak flask. still missing second ring to keep it real and missing int on belt and not using jewels.

Sorry, that just can't be real. Path of Building doesn't work well with Icestorm. Please check what skill is that for? Maybe that's DPS for Scorching Ray? But no way you can have 9k Icestorm avg hit (the tooltip) with 875 Int.


POB worked great for me on 2.6 (on icestorm) so I can't see why it would be different this time. just import your stuff and play around with the tree for fire/ cold. after i tweaked a bit on it and added missing jewels, some more gear I got to a 11k tooltip smth like that, without taking into account resist curse. on almost 1.1k int. and 7k+ life with kaoms.

As far as lab goes, i want to run lab not waste time in it. CI was great. smoke - phase + quicksilver and bypass almost any trap. if i ran into temp chains traps or traps that hit you with more things than one at a time i could always reset. If you get a stupid layout with life and you mess up you can lose flasks and not have means to recharge them. It's kinda similar to what you were saying about facetanking, it's the playstyle etc. You don't have room for error with a life build. And on 4.5k life as i said, it's not the phys hits you need to worry about it's always the crits and the ele hits. Most of the 6k + spikes i ever took on a char where elemental hits, and on ci it was easy to mittigate.

but, once A8 hits i'll give it a go on beta and see how it performs. Stuff should be cheap enough at the start, especially after a rollback

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Kelvynn wrote:

Oh wow, if I understand it correctly, MoM works on non-hit damage in Beta. So that's going to solve the Shaper issue. MoM is the new CI.

LOL

it does work on dot and degen damage in 3.0, yes. But im not sure if the natural mana regeneration while standing in one of the shaper ground effects will be enough to support the mana cost of SR...

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8946 dps on just 875 int and calculating the wise oak flask. still missing second ring to keep it real and missing int on belt and not using jewels.
Sorry, that just can't be real. Path of Building doesn't work well with Icestorm. Please check what skill is that for? Maybe that's DPS for Scorching Ray? But no way you can have 9k Icestorm avg hit (the tooltip) with 875 Int.


POB worked great for me on 2.6 (on icestorm) so I can't see why it would be different this time. just import your stuff and play around with the tree for fire/ cold. after i tweaked a bit on it and added missing jewels, some more gear I got to a 11k tooltip smth like that, without taking into account resist curse. on almost 1.1k int. and 7k+ life with kaoms.

would you mind sharing your tree and gem setup with us? I also cant believe you would reach such high damage numbers. Maybe you are talking about "effective dps" in path of building? we're talking about "buffed damage", which gives the tooltip avg damage you would have with icestorm while standing in your hideout. the effective dps factors in a lot of other stuff, for example the 40% more multiplier from elemental overload.

for example, some weeks ago I was fooling around with PoB and made the "perfect" WI elementalist in there. It reaches a "buffed damage" of 10.6k with it. the "effective dps" tab for this char shows 27.3k. (and thats without wise oak!) this theoretical perfect WI char would have 2401 int btw...

so in this sense, achieving 9-11k "effective dps" with 900-1.1k sounds more like it. these numbers would have to be compared with the "effective dps" that "our" WI chars currently reach, which is around 16-18k.

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LastMagus wrote:

As far as lab goes, i want to run lab not waste time in it. CI was great. smoke - phase + quicksilver and bypass almost any trap. if i ran into temp chains traps or traps that hit you with more things than one at a time i could always reset. If you get a stupid layout with life and you mess up you can lose flasks and not have means to recharge them.

I see what you mean. Less room for error since you can't regen life with VP. But it takes more mistakes to screw up in the lab with life than with CI. With CI you get hit 4 times in a row by a nasty long trap section and you die. With life you need to make something like 10 mistakes to die with 2 life flasks, however those 10 mistakes don't have to be in a row, just between trash packs. For example, you go wrong way through a long trap section, kill all trash along the way, and have to go back with no way to refill the flasks.

Well... don't make that many mistakes. People who are really bad at Lab running are just as likely to get hit by 4 traps in a row and die with CI. Hell, there are people constantly crying on the forums that they can't even get thru the trials, not even the Lab itself. But once you practice a little and become better, I really don't see screwing up 10 times per area as a big issue. With even a little bit of skill and experience running the Lab with life should be easier than with CI.

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Black_Gun wrote:

it does work on dot and degen damage in 3.0, yes. But im not sure if the natural mana regeneration while standing in one of the shaper ground effects will be enough to support the mana cost of SR...

Regenning 5 mana is pretty much instant. The aptly named Shaper node (+40% mana regen) and the Perandus Signet (50%+) guarantee that. All you need it to land 1 Icestorm, and then the leech kicks in.

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Black_Gun wrote:

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Kelvynn wrote:

Oh wow, if I understand it correctly, MoM works on non-hit damage in Beta. So that's going to solve the Shaper issue. MoM is the new CI.

LOL

it does work on dot and degen damage in 3.0, yes. But im not sure if the natural mana regeneration while standing in one of the shaper ground effects will be enough to support the mana cost of SR...

"

8946 dps on just 875 int and calculating the wise oak flask. still missing second ring to keep it real and missing int on belt and not using jewels.
Sorry, that just can't be real. Path of Building doesn't work well with Icestorm. Please check what skill is that for? Maybe that's DPS for Scorching Ray? But no way you can have 9k Icestorm avg hit (the tooltip) with 875 Int.


POB worked great for me on 2.6 (on icestorm) so I can't see why it would be different this time. just import your stuff and play around with the tree for fire/ cold. after i tweaked a bit on it and added missing jewels, some more gear I got to a 11k tooltip smth like that, without taking into account resist curse. on almost 1.1k int. and 7k+ life with kaoms.

would you mind sharing your tree and gem setup with us? I also cant believe you would reach such high damage numbers. Maybe you are talking about "effective dps" in path of building? we're talking about "buffed damage", which gives the tooltip avg damage you would have with icestorm while standing in your hideout. the effective dps factors in a lot of other stuff, for example the 40% more multiplier from elemental overload.

for example, some weeks ago I was fooling around with PoB and made the "perfect" WI elementalist in there. It reaches a "buffed damage" of 10.6k with it. the "effective dps" tab for this char shows 27.3k. (and thats without wise oak!) this theoretical perfect WI char would have 2401 int btw...

so in this sense, achieving 9-11k "effective dps" with 900-1.1k sounds more like it. these numbers would have to be compared with the "effective dps" that "our" WI chars currently reach, which is around 16-18k.

https://pastebin.com/J4ep7Rcj

nothing too special when it comes to gear. i can't factor in the 20 int jewels and stuff like that, belt rolls with essences etc. blight cwc ele focus cold pen conc CD.

so, I guess thats the new take on the build then. the massive int we get on a WI build buffs the mana like crazy, pick up some efficient mana nodes (some of them have int on them anyway!), pick the new, buffed cloak of defiance, some life nodes and the build is good to go. with a 50% MoM, 5k life is like 10k ES as long as we can sustain our mana. with 4k+ mana, some mana regen nodes that we pick up anyway, plus 20% of maximum mana per second leeched when at maximum leech "stacks", should be enough to keep the mana up in all but the most ridiculous cases of damage intake. might fall flat when standing in several stacked esh lightning balls tyring to facetank that, but it should easily be enough to facetank guardians or the shaper.

the only downside is that we lose the res and int from the chest slot. but the new CoD is just too good. with only the regular MoM and assuming that we can sustain our mana, 5k life is equivalent to 7.1k ehp (5k/0.7). with the new CoD, 5k life is equivalent to 10k ehp. sacrificing up to 80 res, 130 base life and 55 int hurts a lot, but probably its still worth it.


this should also make all the other, non-berserker classes viable again for WI in 3.0.