[3.5] Pure Uniques Molten Strike HOWA. 4 Mill Shaper DPS, Good Defences

You really don't want to take point blank with spectral throw, it's really bad.

Hey man, first off I just wanted to say that I've been quite liking this build. I tried a HOWA build last month and didn't love it, yours has been much better for me. Anyway, this is my first league, and I'm basically not sure how to progress from where I am to doing Guardian farming/eventually Shaper. I have my gear listed below. My next step is getting a 6 link, but I'm not sure where I'm going from there. I'll obviously 20/20 my gems before I do anything too intense, I do have several there already. I'm not sure how to link jewels easily, so you can check my profile, it's public and the name is DKsHOWAboutThat, if you care.

I have about 30 ex to my name, and my character is level 80. So... what's next? Once I get 5ish more levels and a 6 link, am I good to go straight into guardians? Thanks for the help, loving the build :)

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Nursh wrote:

So if I cut off Dark Arts, what jewel should I put near that area? Still Fertile Mind? Also, would it affect me stats significantly If i go with 23 INT Fertile mind instead of 24 because it was too expensive?

The answer to your question is in the "jewels" section of the build. Without dark arts the fertile mind isn't better then a good rare. Getting a fertile mind with a bit less Int is fine but if all your jewels have 5 less Int then that starts to add up into a whole jewel worth of lost potential

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j33bus wrote:

You really don't want to take point blank with spectral throw, it's really bad.

Many other spectral throw guides disagree with you as you kinda need the damage when going up against guardians. I agree that it tanks your clear damage but thats why I don't play the skill in general

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dksdragon wrote:

Hey man, first off I just wanted to say that I've been quite liking this build. I tried a HOWA build last month and didn't love it, yours has been much better for me. Anyway, this is my first league, and I'm basically not sure how to progress from where I am to doing Guardian farming/eventually Shaper. I have my gear listed below. My next step is getting a 6 link, but I'm not sure where I'm going from there. I'll obviously 20/20 my gems before I do anything too intense, I do have several there already. I'm not sure how to link jewels easily, so you can check my profile, it's public and the name is DKsHOWAboutThat, if you care.

Thanks! Its always nice to hear positive feedback. You've saved up quite a bit of bank so your choices for upgrades are to buy better rolled jewels, amulet, claws to gradually increase your Int and therefore ES/damage or save up for skyforth which has the quality of life movement speed, some ES and saves the two skill points you spend on iron reflexes. If you can handle the movement speed of Kaoms then the other upgrades are probably better first

I'd suggest getting a 6 link before tackling guardians but after that you should be able to take them down. Learning their individual mechanics and how to dodge is more important for survival as your damage still has another 10 levels worth of skill tree boosts to get as well as possible improvements to gear but the first time you fight them generally takes minutes instead of seconds while you learn what your damage is on them

I have this running very smoothly at Level 82 and Frost Blades right now. Couldn't afford skyforths yet but with Kaoms Roots, Iron reflexes, and Vertex it's running T14+ maps with relative ease. Have you given any thought to switching a few points out for the sake of crit/crit multi? Seems like you could accomplish it with relative ease given the pathing of the tree.

For instance, the entire bottom portion where you grab Life/Mana Leech at Vitality of the Void, could be inherently replaced by the claw crit/life leech circle up in the shadow tree. There are also several other crit chance/crit multi triplets through the witch/shadow areas that seem very obtainable. Not to mention passing right by each power charge node and having the pipe dreams of Skyforth in my hopefully near future.

So my question is - do we do enough damage such that we simply don't feel the need to spec crit? or is there an aspect of the build that proves non-crit/Elemental Overload is more worth it? I'm sure I would need to sacrifice a few elemental damage nodes, but without doing all the math/planning in the tree it seems like it might be worth it

You clearly have done extensive work to tinker this to it's best possible outcome - and it's easily one of my favorite builds I've ever played. Thanks for the efforts and I look forward to your answer!

In the meantime I think I'll play around with the tree and see where I end up :)

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JigglyRuff wrote:

I have this running very smoothly at Level 82 and Frost Blades right now. Couldn't afford skyforths yet but with Kaoms Roots, Iron reflexes, and Vertex it's running T14+ maps with relative ease. Have you given any thought to switching a few points out for the sake of crit/crit multi? Seems like you could accomplish it with relative ease given the pathing of the tree.

For instance, the entire bottom portion where you grab Life/Mana Leech at Vitality of the Void, could be inherently replaced by the claw crit/life leech circle up in the shadow tree. There are also several other crit chance/crit multi triplets through the witch/shadow areas that seem very obtainable. Not to mention passing right by each power charge node and having the pipe dreams of Skyforth in my hopefully near future.

Glad to hear your are having fun with it. That my aim with making this build :)

I find it kinda boils down to "the claws have low base crit" as the reason why it turns out to not be worth it, coupled with ele overload actually being very good. We spread out so far across the tree that we are near everything so it seems like all the crit nodes are nearby but crit is very point greedy and by taking the crit nodes we need to remove the reason why we travelled that far in the first place. Much of the good damage nodes this build gets also contain Int which is ES so as we start cutting out those nodes to pick up crit we lose ES and there is no way to get crit up to any sort of reasonable level without losing a good chunk of ES and probably swapping to inquisitor

I discussed this in the "ascendancy" tab of this build as if you are happy to run around with about 7-8k ES glass cannon style then swapping from scion into crit inquisitor or frenzy ranger is better as those classes can get that damage while retaining the same items and basic framework of this build but just cannot get that high ES even after taking the big value ES nodes like Foresight which a more Int focused build doesn't need to take.

Thanks a lot for the response! Pretty much what I figured, but great to get confirmation, thanks :)

Since your reply I've upgraded to a 6 link, got a 115 astramentis, upgraded one claw to 12/10/30%, upgraded a couple gems and jewels, and got a new vertex for a big ES boost. I'm also level 85. Looking to level once more, grab a new jewel for my tree, and attempt some of the guardians! I'll let you know hot it goes, thanks again! Really enjoying this build, it's my favourite bossing build so far, uber Izaro was cake :)

Should I favor Kaoms + Iron Reflexes or any other Unique boots(No ES) with MS+80% avoid stun enchant?

Hey guys

I am relatively new to the game and since I wanna play a reave char, I'll use this build along with reave. Will start it as soon as I am done with my EA toon.
Will keep you guys posted.

P.S. Tips about reave/how to progress would be appreciated :D

hello i started playing your build and it seems fun but i got 109 dps with blade flurry atm ( using hand of thought and motion) was wondeting if that is fine im lv 35.

interesting build xD