[2.6] WormHammer - CoC Vortex with Emberwake+Berek's Respite+WORMS
 VIDEO GUIDE HAS ARRIVED VIDEO GUIDE HAS ARRIVED INTRODUCTION This build was born when I got this: off a Heterochromia. I thought, "Haven't seen any Berek's Respite builds yet, I wonder what the best way to use it would be?" Of course, my thoughts immediately leapt to The Writhing Jar. No, first they leapt to Emberwake. But then, Berek's only transfers ignites on kill, so I needed to solve the single-target problem. So then my thoughts leapt to The Writhing Jar. Every time we kill a worm with an ignite, the worm 'proliferates' the ignite onto surrounding enemies, which means that the Jar is a dps multiplier. Writhing Jar = Pathfinder, because the build wants to spam Jars as often as possible. And of course, Vortex as the ignite skill because of its double-dipping insanity. The problem was that I was a crit build but didn't want to use a Diamond flask. I wanted to use only Writhing Jars, but Vortex has a tiny ignite chance. Trypanon was the perfect answer. With Trypanon Cyclone CoC, I could quickly spam non-crit Vortex ignites with my short cyclones, while spamming crits to refill my jars, while being stun immune at +140% move speed. Berek's Respite, Writhing Jar, Trypanon CoC and the rest fell into place. LET ME WARN YOU. This is not a budget build, because you need fairly specific gears, especially getting good resists with essentially only 7 suffix slots to do it (2 on gloves, 2 on belt, 3 on boots). I also spent about 5 exalts just chroming my Hammer for 3B2G1R (though 2B2G2R is also acceptable). It's not the most expensive build, but it does have a high price floor.
SYNERGIES
When I started theorycrafting this build, it seemed like a wild pile of jank, but the more I've worked on it the more neat little interactions I've been able to add in: • Trypanon + Master Surgeon makes it really easy to hit the charge gain cap on Surgeon's. We just spam really short cyclones with high move speed and it does the trick. • We actually got a little bit of triple-dipping going on. We lower the worms' fire resistance with dual curses, which makes the initial hit hit harder, and the burn burn hotter. Then, when the worm (instantly) melts and transfers the ignite to the main target, fire resistance amplifies the burn once again. So our resist curses multiply our damage twice on the worms, once on the enemies, that's three dips from one stat! • The Gull works great with this build! We're constantly killing worms, which procs the shrines very regularly. • The Green Dream gives us 16% more damage for the price of 1 jewel slot. Value~~ • The Red Dream gives even more value. We are constantly splattering worms, which means that we're always topped off on Endurance Charges. That means that we can use Vengeance CoC Immortal call, to pop a 3.2 second IC every 3 seconds! In an ideal scenario, that's 100% uptime, but in reality it is not totally reliable phys immunity, of course. • This is the first build I've ever played that isn't too scared of bearers. I've stood in the middle of a Bameth DD and lived, just by mashing my flasks as the wave swept past me. The ability to pull 10k instant life recovery out of thin air has saved me many times, though it does take some quick reflexes. That said, bearers can still be deadly simply because you can't see shit with all the vortices, ignites, worms flying everywhere, etc. • 100% uptime on the leech boot enchant. This solves our mana problems and gives a little bit of extra life regen in a pinch. • Constant proccing of the glove enchant. That Commandment of Inferno does about 3-4x the tooltip damage of our Vortex, it's basically a second single-target setup. It is well worth the effort of grinding uber lab, for the fun factor alone. Slamming baddies with giant meteors just feels good. • The Overflowing Chalice is really insane with this build. It more than doubles our charge recovery, double-dips our damage, and triples our regen (that one's not so important...) ALL at the SAME TIME! With Overflowing Chalice active, we can spam worm flasks literally nonstop in Breaches, just piano all the time. • Nature's Boon is better for this build than any other, the occasional freebie worm jar is very meaningful. • With Trypanon's crit on hit, Ele Overload is ALWAYS up. ALWAYS. • Vortex drops chill, which is nice with all our point-blank cycloning.
WHY DOES THIS BUILD SUCK
• No instant leech. In prolonged fights, your worm jars can run out temporarily and you have to run around sober (unflasked) for a while.
• Berek's range is tiny. I mean tiny! It's hard to tell how much damage it adds, but I'd estimate that only about half of the worm deaths are 'prolifing' the ignites. • Curse-immune mobs with elemental resistance are the absolute WORST. Hexproof is one of the more dangerous mods, simply because of the extra time-to-kill it adds. • Worm flasks are both damage and survivability. It can be a little awkward when you want to burst some damage, but you're worried about spending all your flasks. In most circumstances you can just spam though. • Relying on life flasks for a good part of the sustain can be dangerous, and requires attentive play and even planning. Taking a lot of unexpected damage is a swift route to death, BUT, averting an early demise through fast fingers feels fine! • I haven't tried doing Atlas Guardians/Shaper/Atziri, but I don't think it would go too well. 80% curse resistance absolutely murders dual-curse flammability+ele weakness, and 50% less Ignite duration is rather harsh on Emberwake. Plus, as I mentioned, the build starts to stumble if you run out of flasks. It's more of a T15 sweeper than a boss-killer. Hmm, actually, maybe Vaal Breach would solve the boss-killing problem... I'll say the build is Untested against atlas bosses. THE BUILD PROPER
THE GEAR
Equipment
Mandatory items: The Hammer, chest, rings, and belt. For a more budget route, replace The Gull with an evasion helm with life, resists, and accuracy--this makes the gloves and boots MUCH easier to manage, as those are where we get most of our resists otherwise. I think The Gull's worth it though. That Talisman gives me about 500 life, almost as much as a typical build gets from Belly of the Beast. I swap out the Talisman for Bisco's if I'm doing easy maps. Try to get accuracy on some gear, I got it on ammy and gloves. It's not too important for Trypanon, because we hit very frequently and guarantee the crit (accuracy is not checked a second time), but is sort of invisible QoL especially in Enfeeble maps.
Flasks
This exact flask setup is what I would recommend. Wise Oak is the least mandatory flask, but gives about as much damage as another Worm flask and helps with single-targets with high resists/curse resistance so I advise against swapping it out. Try to get Worm Jars with 16 charges per use and a low roll on the Reduced Amount Recovered--they're cheap, and they're how we stay alive.
A word on why Overflowing Chalice is, in my opinion, BiS for flaskfinders
To understand how good TOC is, we need to touch on the mechanics of Master Surgeon. In version 2.5.0, Surgeon's-style effects were changed so that the player may gain 1 charge for 1 flask with a cooldown of .2s (instead of gaining as many charges as the player inflicted crits). Spread over 5 flasks, this equates to a baseline of 1 charge per flask per second.
However, TOC does not gain flask charges while in use. This means that, instead of 5 charges spread over 5 flasks, the player gains 5 charges spread over 4 flasks. This equates to a baseline of 1.25 charges per flask per second, or 25% more than before. Combined with TOC's "100% charges gained during flask effect", which we modify with our 50% increased flask effect, this means that TOC is roughly a 2.5x modifier on our flask charge intake. It is the difference between total sustain and partial sustain. For this build specifically, it also means 2.5x as many worms.
Jewels
Green Dream is optional, Red Dream is not. I felt too squishy, until I socketed Red Dream in. Constant Immortal Calls are too sweet to ignore. For the other jewels, life + fire/spell/area/%inc damage. The jewels are a little pricy because %fire damage is the only prefix that affects Trypanon CoC (since it isn't a staff, shield, or dual-wield). I needed resists on one of mine to be ele-weakness capped, and to balance my resists for Wise Oak.
BUDGET SUBSTITUTIONS
This build needs a 6link 5off-color hammer, a Kaom's, and The Red Dream. Level 21 Vortex and 20/20 curses+blasphemy are also preferred. For that reason, I don't think this build can be done under 10-15ex (depending on your chrome and fuse RNG). However, if you didn't want to spend more, you could drop Green Dream and Gull, get cheaper jewels, no talisman ammy, and buy all the non-essential gear for maybe 1ex. The boot enchant, while nice, is also not strictly required - we get most of the way with mana regen and the instant mana refill from Jar. You could probably get away with level 20 Vortex, though I haven't tried it myself. The difference between relatively cheap gear (L20 vortex, no gull etc) and relatively nice gear would not be noticeable in Shaped Strand I don't think. However, I wouldn't recommend going much cheaper, if you intend to farm anything T15+.
THE TREE
the tree at L92 We get the flask stuff at Ranger, and the fire stuff at Witch/Templar. The tree is pretty inflexible, and the last few levels really make a difference. Bandits are Oak - point - Kraityn Ascendancies are Master Surgeon and Master Alchemist. If you can't do uber lab, then Master Alchemist is more important, for the 20% ignite chance. LEVELING
Spoiler
Leveling was actually pretty fun. I started using Trypanon and The Gull when I could, at level 40, with Cyclone + CoC + Bladefall + Blade Vortex + Added Chaos + Controlled Destruction. Before that, just use Blade Vortex or whatever your preferred early skill is. I wouldn't really recommend leveling CoC without a Tabula, you could but the damage would be lower. The Gull doesn't really help that much, but it's fun.
For ascendancies while leveling, you want to get Master Herbalist (poison on hit) as fast as you can. You stick with the phys CoC until after merc lab at least, when you gain the option to swap your ascendancies to Master Alchemist + Nature's Adrenaline. Writhing Jar comes online after you do Uber lab and get Master Surgeon. I think I swapped from phys to ele at level 80, phys CoC feels pretty good so there's no rush. tree at ~40 tree at ~70, before the phys->ele switch and here's one pre-writhing jar, using coc vortex at roughly lvl 80 MISCELLANEOUS TIPS/FAQ
Spoiler
~under construction~
VIDEOS
Spoiler
VIDEO GUIDE + 8mod T15 courtyard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw0mZk0JKv4
strand run https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApRZEK0zvtc uul-netol domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBvpqv_TKbI All in all, it is a fun, fast build with a truly unique playstyle. I've been blasting through sextanted Shaped Courtyards and it has been great fun. Any questions, leave a comment below! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy the build ^o^ builds: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1663570/ Last edited by ThatsSoGoodman#2702 on Apr 21, 2017, 3:33:47 AM Last bumped on Apr 21, 2017, 3:38:31 AM
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Video guide is up, + an uul netol breach run! I might try some Guardians later
builds: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1663570/
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Very refreshing build!
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