[2.6] Hardcore CI Crittle Sparks - Legacy ability for a Legacy league!

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Fieryzone wrote:

Let's say I can only get one: spark level 21 vs spark 20%. Which one should I get?

Considering one is about 2ex, the other is about 7c, i'm not sure how you're comparing getting one or the other =p But absolutely the level 21 spark, no contest.

To explain: Quality on spark increases spark projectile speed. Projectile speed on spark is nice, it increases the total distance a spark can travel before expiring, increasing the chances of a successfull bounce-hit.

There's two things to consider however:
1.) Spark can only hit the same target once per second. Bouncing more doesn't necessarily transfer into more hits, particularly against lower count targets where you are intentionally aiming your bounces. too much projectile speed can actually be bad for spark, since it can only hit once per second, it moving, bouncing, and passing through the target again *too* quickly can actually be a loss of damage.

2.) Spark can only travel 150 units from you. It can bounce around within that radius theoretically indefinitely. However, if it reaches 150 units away from you, it dissipates. So projectile speed actually doesn't really help clear speed until you can move faster than spark can.

Projectiles in PoE have a bit of odd programming. When a projectile hits an obstacle, and the projectile is set to "reflect" off of obstacles, it actually doesn't. What happens is the original projectile dissipates, and the game creates a new projectile granting it velocity equal to the reflection angle. Think how Magma orb when it hits the ground actually creates a new magma orb for the next bounce, so multiple "bounces" can hit the same target in a short timespan, even though multiple magma orbs in the same bounce (GMP) can't.

Because of this mechanic, we used to be able to "shotgun" targets by putting them into a corner or hallway and have the sparks rapidy bounce off the walls, generating new projectiles and bypassing the hit cooldown for stupid levels of damage.

I may be mistaken, but from what I've read around, this was patched in 2.3 when they at the same time put a max travel distance from caster on spark, so that the newly generated projectile maintains the "hit history" from the projectile it was spawned by. So we can no longer shotgun. This may be incorrect, but we would need a GGG member to comment to be sure.

The guaranteed large damage increase from the extra level on the gem is going to be far more noticeable and effective then the potential for one or two extra hits from another bounce from projectile speed. Spark quality is actually not that critical, it's best to have a 21/20, but level is far more valuable.

very in-depth guide, a lot of attention shown to newer players for leveling advice and your thought process, and a very reasonable approach to playing a spark character.

easy addition to the builds listing.

I would ask you to consider showing your defenses as a picture, as well as possibly justifying why you need more than 80% or so crit chance. It seems nice, but perhaps excessive. But yeah overall pretty decent build.

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Kwitch wrote:

very in-depth guide, a lot of attention shown to newer players for leveling advice and your thought process, and a very reasonable approach to playing a spark character.

easy addition to the builds listing.

I would ask you to consider showing your defenses as a picture, as well as possibly justifying why you need more than 80% or so crit chance. It seems nice, but perhaps excessive. But yeah overall pretty decent build.

First of all: Thank you for the kind words. I've been having a lot of fun with the build, as I've always enjoyed spark as an ability, and I hope more people get to enjoy the ability. Lots of people after the heavy 2.3 nerfs kind of stay clear of it, but it can still be strong.

Justifying the crit chance is a bit complex, but I'll give it a shot.

We aren't picking up any innate chance to shock, so we're counting on our crits to shock our enemies. That shock is going to grant us 50% more damage against anything that survives the first hit. Increasing our chance to crit is doing more than just that crit's multiplier, it's also increasing our overall dps by increasing shock uptime.

A lot of the crit chance we get in this build is dynamic crit chance, such as that from power charges. The occultist ascendancy only offers a 10% chance to gain a power charge on crit, which means for every 10% crit chance, you get an additional 1% chance to gain a power charge on "hit". Having a higher critical hit chance before power charges is imparitive to get the power charges in the first place.

A lot of the current crit chance also comes from Choir of the storm (offering >100% crit chance by itself), so if you're using a rare instead, you're going to need the crit chance elsewhere which the build covers. Even with choir of the storms, we don't drop crit chance as previously mentioned with shock, and with choir's 50% increased lightning damage only on crits, we want to crit pretty much as much as witchingly possible.

Lastly, we're putting a lot of focus into crit multiplier instead of into increased damage. The result of this is when we're not critting, we're doing far less damage than when we crit, it's not a very subtle curve.

Say our base damage is 500, increased damage is 500% , and our crit multi is 500%. Now, we can chose a scepter with an inherent 30% increased elemental damage, or a dagger with 80% global crit chance.

Scepter with 30% increased elemental damage implicit:
(500 * 5.3) * ( 1 + 0.8 * (5-1)) = 11130 dps

Dagger with 80% crit chance implicit:
(500 * 5) * ( 1 + 0.856 * (5-1)) = 11060 dps

Of course this doesn't take into account shocks or choir of the storms increased damage on crit, as that just gets a bit too complicated. We just know once these are factored in the numbers might be even closer, if not even the dagger taking the lead.

But does that hold true? Those numbers are a bit low... What if our normal increased damage is 700?

Scepter with 30% increased elemental damage implicit:
(500 * 7.3) * ( 1 + 0.8 * (5-1)) = 15330 dps

Dagger with 80% crit chance implicit:
(500 * 7) * ( 1 + 0.856 * (5-1)) = 15484 dps

Crit chance works as a multiplier with damage, so maintains effectiveness with increased damage sources, where increased damage has a diminishing return. This means the higher crit chance is going to scale better as your damage from other sources increases. The mathiness is too complex for my brain tonight, but I recall going over this before, and this build hits the point in the curve where the crit chance is more effective than trading for base increased damage (though jewels aren't balanced, increased damage is more effective then crit chance there, simply because the numbers are horrible for crit chance on jewels)

In the tree, all of the crit chance we pick up is in the pursuit of crit multiplier. We never extend ourselves for pure crit chance. For a weapon, a scepter would offer superior DPS offering a bit more increased damage instead of crit before you hit higher tier gear, but you would need shield charge instead of whirling blades, which is also a bit slower.

Diamond flask will certainly cover a lot of missing crit chance. You could likely pull it off dropping crit chance, and depending on diamond flask, but I like the automation from the build innately sustaining itself for those mindless grindy leveling maps.

So in summary, what is the justification for the high crit chance? It comes naturally in the pursuit of crit multiplier, offers better quality of life with power charges, and doesn't lose by much if at all to trading for increased damage.

Why you dont use Viodwalker? With that boots u have free pierce and socket for Fast Proj + flat dex.

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AncorTm wrote:

Why you dont use Viodwalker? With that boots u have free pierce and socket for Fast Proj + flat dex.

You could use voidwalker if you wanted, but there's a few drawbacks:
1.) Voidwalker has a horrible ES value (52-61). As CI, we generally want to get as much ES as possible, so losing 100+ base ES on an item is quite a sacrifice
2.) High ES gear is fairly expensive as is, high ES gear with high resistances becomes stupidly expensive. By sacrificing another possible resistance slot, the rest of your gear has to pick up the pace. You'll need an average of 36~ resist to all elements per remaining piece of gear.


But lets say you could pull that off. You had tons of resists and high ES on all the rest of your gear, would Voidwalker be the better option over rare boots?

Yes. They would. You would drop the pierce passives, and go for Heart of Thunder. Next, drop the pierce support for one of: Added lightning, Controlled Destruction, Point Blank (would need to test to see which one would end up being the best.

Why not sacrifice base ES to pick up better resistances to take this route instead? Survivability is more important than damage. We have more than enough damage, more damage is great if you can, but it's not worth sacrificing defenses for when we already have so much damage.

Why don't I have this as part of the build? Because the gear you'll require to hit this point will likely be in excess of 1.5 mirrors. I currently don't have near the range of the ballpark the resists to pull this off, and my character is currently worth about 85-90~ exalt.

This is one A+ quality detailed build, will most definitely give this a shot.

Good job!

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VapidActions wrote:

as much as witchingly possible.

Bravo.

Also, thanks for the detailed write-up about your logic and math supporting excessive crit chance. A good read, and likely would be useful on the guide page. +1

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Butasama wrote:

This is one A+ quality detailed build, will most definitely give this a shot.

Good job!

Thank you for the kind words. If you do give it a shot, let me know how it goes! I know I rate it fairly highly among all the builds I've tried; but I'm afraid I must admit, I am a bit biased. I've been having no problems clearing end game content with it, so it seems fairly powerful to me; though would be nice to get other people's unbiased opinions of how it measures up for them.

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I apologize for the lack of updates lately, I've been Ill lately, and work has been quite busy, but I'll focus on finishing the in depth leveling guide ASAP! (I promise).

Due to the minimal time left in this league, and requirements from work, I'm going to be resuming this build in the new league. I might have minor updates posted to it before then, but I don't foresee much changing for the new league. Spark hasn't been in GGG's eyes since 2.3 and nothing has changed that. This build was more than successful enough that I will be repeating it next league as my followup build.

If anything in the patch notes does happen to effect the build, I'll most certainly be on it - but the build is in a very stable state right now. The only league specific item for the current league is not a requirement, just a recommendation, and the build can perform just as well on a good rare amulet - the league specific just offers a lot of punch for the price.

song name from example video? xD
btw well done build, but how good would be a spark build without crits or voltaxic -maybe berserker, EO and wrath aura /im not a fan of crit builds/?