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

I've been playing MoM Berserker in ssf standard now, and it works totally great up to T15 maps. I only have 940 int at the moment, and using Kaom's Heart. Haven't found higher maps, but I'm 100% sure this build will be awesome in 3.0 with buffed life/MoM.

Can't wait for your test results Kelvynn! :)

Update from Beta:

Beta is really slow, it's almost like playing SSF. The market is tiny and crappy, can't find anything good for sale for any price. The 2-week event starting on Live seems to have killed most of the activity on Beta.

I'm up to lv 85 and T15 maps. Facerolling Uber Izaro and farming the Uber lab is fine with 3k life. Except for when he has charges. Then you either don't let him get the charges, or you dodge him and don't get hit. Without the charges he can't 1-shot me with my current (pretty shabby) gear. With the charges he does.

Another good thing about the Lab in 3.0 is that they reduced the number of rooms and traps, by a lot. It's a lot faster and easier now. I only carry 1 Life flask and even that one I rarely use.

The new Pantheon is a very good addition. I'm still undecided on the Minor powers (and some of them come from Acts 9-10, nobody saw those yet). But the best Major power for this build is the Brine King, hands down. 'Cannot be stunned if you've been stunned recently. Cannot be frozen if you've been frozen recently. 100% increased stun recovery. 5% reduced cold damage taken. 50% reduced effect of chill on you.' - this is just awesome for us. And yes, I am thinking ahead to the Shaper too.

Now, what's not quite good: 1-shots from elemental damage. With 3k Life you can get 1-shot by the things you never noticed before. Maxed resists is a MUST. We have the flexibility of using a Purity instead of WM when needed. But even with maxed resists I've got 1-shot by strongboxes in maps with 'NN% increased monster damage', the ones that explode or do Ice Nova. Apparently the monster damage mod applies to them too. Obviously, getting away from them is easy enough, but it's just something new you have to pay attention to.

On the other hand, Volatile X-Blood is trivial now. Instead of exploding outright, it now produces a ball that chases you with increasing speed and explodes 0.5 sec after touching you. You simply run thru it, and it stops and explodes behind you. Just don't fail to notice it. But that's not really different for the Berserker, he could get 1-shot by the Volatiles with ES too.

There are also some weird changes, not sure intended or not, they aren't mentioned in any patch notes. At the moment it looks like the targeting is screwed up: VS is ridiculously hard to target, like it was in the old days before they improved single target skills; and SR behaves like a single target skill instead - the beam tries to auto-target nearby enemies instead of firing where you point it. I hope it's a bug and they fix it eventually.

Another unannounced change is that all bosses below T16 got their Life pool increased by 100-150%. I can understand doing that for most of the map bosses, because the gap between T15 and T16, for example, was that T16 bosses had 9x Life of the T15 bosses. But this also includes Uber Atziri and her minis. Now, that is a big deal. They all have more than 2x Life on Beta than on Live right now. Meaning that instead of 5 sec to kill the statues you need 10 sec, so then you need to dodge the stuff they do at least 1-2 times. And then there are the Uber Vaals that live longer, etc. I hope this is just a Beta thing and they don't go with this particular buff for 3.0. Uber Atziri may be lv 80 but she is VERY different from T13 (lv 80) map bosses.

Overall, the things on Beta are slower than in any league, and the bugs and experimental changes make it harder to test builds. I expected it to be more polished by this stage, but it's still pretty raw. I think they will delay the release of 3.0 again, probably no sooner than mid-August.

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There are also some weird changes, not sure intended or not, they aren't mentioned in any patch notes. At the moment it looks like the targeting is screwed up: VS is ridiculously hard to target, like it was in the old days before they improved single target skills; and SR behaves like a single target skill instead - the beam tries to auto-target nearby enemies instead of firing where you point it. I hope it's a bug and they fix it eventually.

I am trying a Trickster WI build with Blight as channeling skill. While targeting the WI effect area i noticed, that WI stops if I move the mouse curser over a "unreachable" part of the map. Eg. a wall or in the lunaris temple somewhere off the platforms. I never noticed this before. In most cases this isn't an issue but some maps like jungle with lots of trees its really annoying because WI stoppes regularly ...

Here's a small update from Beta:

Beta WIzerker with IR vs 275% Core

This beta is really slow, more like SSF. Can't find anything for sale, even maps sometimes. You know it's a dead league when nobody in /global 820 is doing master rotations at the reset time.

Everybody on Beta is currently missing at least 2 skill points because of the absence of Acts 9-10. Some of the Pantheon powers are missing too. All map bosses below T16 have been buffed and have 2-2.5x more life than in 2.6. This map has a 35% more life mod on top of that, so this is about the same as 275% life Core in 2.6.

I'm using Int/resist rares with whatever Life I could find, still leveling the gems, and running with IR all the time, missing about one third of the DPS. 3.8k Life in T15, no problems once you adapt to being more careful and avoid getting 1-shot by the things you used to ignore with 10k ES.

The rumors of this build's demise are greatly exaggerated. ;)

Thanks for the beta feedback!

I have the same experience on the beta: dead league, everything goes so slow, it's almost impossible to acquire currency or item upgrades. I went back to the 2w turmoil event instead...

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Now, what's not quite good: 1-shots from elemental damage. With 3k Life you can get 1-shot by the things you never noticed before. Maxed resists is a MUST. We have the flexibility of using a Purity instead of WM when needed. But even with maxed resists I've got 1-shot by strongboxes in maps with 'NN% increased monster damage', the ones that explode or do Ice Nova. Apparently the monster damage mod applies to them too. Obviously, getting away from them is easy enough, but it's just something new you have to pay attention to.

On the other hand, Volatile X-Blood is trivial now. Instead of exploding outright, it now produces a ball that chases you with increasing speed and explodes 0.5 sec after touching you. You simply run thru it, and it stops and explodes behind you. Just don't fail to notice it. But that's not really different for the Berserker, he could get 1-shot by the Volatiles with ES too.

[...]
3.8k Life in T15, no problems once you adapt to being more careful and avoid getting 1-shot by the things you used to ignore with 10k ES.

The rumors of this build's demise are greatly exaggerated. ;)

well, the likelihood of getting oneshot by overlooked volatiles is still multiple times higher with 4-5k ehp compared to 10k.

and you say it yourself: the build is more vulnerable to chaos damage and burst ele damage now; it also is more vulnerable to phys damage, even though a granite and a basalt usually take care of that IF one has them up at the right moment. as you say: the build has to be played more carefully now. to paraphrase GGG: "This is a nerf!"

moreover, it's crystal clear that at least some passive points have to go into life nodes, which means losing some 100-200 int compared to the pre-3.0-version of this build. so the build loses a lot of ehp and some damage. it did indeed get substantially weaker, even though it's (of course) still functional for mapping in t1-15.

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Kelvynn wrote:

Here's a small update from Beta:

Beta WIzerker with IR vs 275% Core

I appreciate the effort, but this video doesnt impress me. You dodge almost all big damage, and when yo do take damage, it's close to a oneshot on multiple occasions. with more nasty damage mods, you would have died in this fight several times. this is far from facetanking. as you yourself said in the witch thread: it remains to be seen how far the ehp pool can be brought in the 90s with maxed out gear.

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Black_Gun wrote:

I appreciate the effort, but this video doesnt impress me. You dodge almost all big damage, and when yo do take damage, it's close to a oneshot on multiple occasions. with more nasty damage mods, you would have died in this fight several times. this is far from facetanking. as you yourself said in the witch thread: it remains to be seen how far the ehp pool can be brought in the 90s with maxed out gear.

I was just being careful because high tier maps are very hard to get on Beta and this was my first Core. You don't facetank the first phase there anyway because Malachai turns invulnerable and you can't leech from him, plus his 1-shot Scepter Smash always needs to be dodged. With nasty mods I'd probably die a couple times, sure. This character is not ready for the nasty mods yet, and it hasn't been my goal either.

For now I'm just trying to make a viable 3.0 version of the build that could achieve league goals with relative ease. And we'll think about more difficult situations later.

Forgot to reply to this point:

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Black_Gun wrote:

and you say it yourself: the build is more vulnerable to chaos damage and burst ele damage now; it also is more vulnerable to phys damage, even though a granite and a basalt usually take care of that IF one has them up at the right moment. as you say: the build has to be played more carefully now. to paraphrase GGG: "This is a nerf!"

More vulnerable to phys damage? Quite the opposite! It is now a lot tankier against phys damage than before. Did you completely ignore AR gear and just went with Life on the same Int bases as the CI version? You shouldn't ignore AR, it's an important part of the build now. Don't have to get a ton, but with the stuff I have in the video my phys mitigation is 20% without flasks, and that makes many things a lot easier.

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Kelvynn wrote:

Forgot to reply to this point:

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Black_Gun wrote:

and you say it yourself: the build is more vulnerable to chaos damage and burst ele damage now; it also is more vulnerable to phys damage, even though a granite and a basalt usually take care of that IF one has them up at the right moment. as you say: the build has to be played more carefully now. to paraphrase GGG: "This is a nerf!"

More vulnerable to phys damage? Quite the opposite! It is now a lot tankier against phys damage than before. Did you completely ignore AR gear and just went with Life on the same Int bases as the CI version? You shouldn't ignore AR, it's an important part of the build now. Don't have to get a ton, but with the stuff I have in the video my phys mitigation is 20% without flasks, and that makes many things a lot easier.

Armour is still bad when you need it the most: big hits. 20% average tooltip phys reduction from armour is equivalent to something like 5-10% phys reduction against big hits. Going from Granite + Basalt to Granite + Basalt + Base Armour wont change too much in the big scheme of things. It will certainly not make up the difference between 10k ES and 5k life. ;-)

Yes, armour isnt completely useless and we ofc want armour/es gear or even pure armour gear (essence crafted astral plate for the chest slot) instead of pure es gear. But that doesnt change the fact that the build lost a lot of its power.

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I was just being careful because high tier maps are very hard to get on Beta and this was my first Core. You don't facetank the first phase there anyway because Malachai turns invulnerable and you can't leech from him, plus his 1-shot Scepter Smash always needs to be dodged. With nasty mods I'd probably die a couple times, sure. This character is not ready for the nasty mods yet, and it hasn't been my goal either.

I totally get that, my point is just that you will, even with heavy investments, not be able to get anywhere near the old "facetankability" on the life-based version. And each point that is now going to life nodes is not going into int, this is a fact that cant be changed by gear or higher level either.

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For now I'm just trying to make a viable 3.0 version of the build that could achieve league goals with relative ease. And we'll think about more difficult situations later.

I understand that you are trying to "save your baby". But let's be realistic: the build lost it's "inherent power" and its "awesomeness". It will still be perfectly functional, but it wont be "special" anymore. Unless you come up with something groundbreaking that no one of us has thought about yet, the build will no longer be in a position where I would chose it as my dedicated build with which I start and end a league.

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Black_Gun wrote:

I understand that you are trying to "save your baby". But let's be realistic: the build lost it's "inherent power" and its "awesomeness". It will still be perfectly functional, but it wont be "special" anymore.

So you are saying it won't be OP anymore. :)

It's almost like back to the first version in 2.1, my first WI Scion. Killing Core Malachai was by far my biggest achievement at the time, and then I started dreaming about Uber Atziri. And look where it ended up.

I don't care about 'saving' the build. TBH I was getting tired of facerolling everything. By 2.6 it was at the point of 'level up, gear up, murder the Shaper, make a video, league done in 2 weeks'. This is a new challenge I'm going to enjoy.

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Kelvynn wrote:

So you are saying it won't be OP anymore. :)

... TBH I was getting tired of facerolling everything.

YOU may be tired of that but some of US still haven't fully enjoyed our facerolling ration! 8-)

More to the point, I think we've lost some understanding of what the new minmaxed build will be. Which is good, of course!

In 2.6, I knew exactly what rare or unique I wanted in each slot, exactly which I should craft and which I should just suck up and buy. I knew exactly the optimal passive tree to take and in which order. Etc., etc., etc.

That's going to be different in 3.0, especially since I don't think we've seen all of the new uniques yet, nor do we know if Charged Dash will make sense to use, nor if there's a new synergy we haven't found yet. (For example, in beta, I was ending up with a fairly significant amount of ES for my pizza flameblast character; your 800 ES seems kind of low at level 88.)