[On Hold] Glacial Cascade Totems [ALL Content in the Game]

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bibanul wrote:

Why do you say that using Controlled destruction you will no longer freeze the mobs?

Woops, my bad. I meant Ele Focus, which gives the most DPS increase for me.

As for Controlled Destruction, I have no experience with it, I think the dps change is very dependant on your crit chance and multi though, as in, if you depend on your crit multi for the dps then controlled destruction will not actually be that good for your build. I'll check it out in PoB in the evening.

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tduong wrote:

Here is my character at lv 93 4k8 hp, 2k4 mana, 950 mana unreserved.
DPS with current setup using Bisco is around 100k-120k depending on how many curses I have on me lol.
If going full damage with my dps amulet 10% cast speed 38% crit multi + ele focus + conc effect, dps can jump to 150k - 180k per totem, again depends on the number of curses on me :)

So in my opinions, the Kikazaru + Self-flag jewel is easier to gear for and also more lazier for mapping, you don't have to care much about curses anymore, pretty much can do any map mods, although still get ripped in insane 8 mods maps :(

The lightning golem enchant is much nicer than other enchants because it provides dps as well as faster shield charge for mapping.

Not so sure if it's easier to gear for. I mean, your shield alone is probably over 10 ex. The rest of your gear is also in 1 ex+ range.

What's more you're running lvl 4 Empower (which gives a lot of dps as it ramps up your already level 21 GC to 24) and taken out the IAoE gem.

I tried a similar setup myself, but I found the IAoE more comfortable to run with, as with 50-60k dps per totem, you're pretty much wrecking maps anyway and increasing the dps doesn't really change much at that point, however, making your AoE smaller actually hurts the clear speed.

In general, your setup is much lazier because of Kikazarus, but it's more expensive to gear for because of the missing reses. You also have a worse survivability without Essence Worm with only 900~ mana unreserved. I found myself getting one-shot and/or out of mana much more common when I didn't have the Essence Worm. Now, with over 2,5k mana, I can even survive a Volatile if I'm unlucky to get one while clearing Harbingers.

I'll try out how Empower and Controlled Destruction impact the dps though, a bit curious if I could ramp my DPS even more.

Small question about the build: I played a bit with the build in PoB, and as far as I can see, Hypothermia is the 3rd best support after Concentrated Effect and Elemental Focus. Thing is Hypothermia and Ele focus can't be used at the same time (aside from using vortex on the CwdT setup, which may actually be a good option) but wouldn't removing Ele Focus allow to chill AND shock thx to phys to lightning, hence increasing the dps greatly?

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Milkcow91 wrote:

Small question about the build: I played a bit with the build in PoB, and as far as I can see, Hypothermia is the 3rd best support after Concentrated Effect and Elemental Focus. Thing is Hypothermia and Ele focus can't be used at the same time (aside from using vortex on the CwdT setup, which may actually be a good option) but wouldn't removing Ele Focus allow to chill AND shock thx to phys to lightning, hence increasing the dps greatly?

The thing is Hypothermia only makes your attacks stronger vs chilled enemies. When mapping, you basically one hit most of the mobs anyway with crit strikes and when bossing you want to use ele focus to get your dps even higher. Hypothermia is somewhere in between that, you need to attack the mobs first to chill it and then hit it again for the increased damage, so it doesn't really sound too useful for your regular mapping/bossing scenarios.

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The thing is Hypothermia only makes your attacks stronger vs chilled enemies. When mapping, you basically one hit most of the mobs anyway with crit strikes and when bossing you want to use ele focus to get your dps even higher. Hypothermia is somewhere in between that, you need to attack the mobs first to chill it and then hit it again for the increased damage, so it doesn't really sound too useful for your regular mapping/bossing scenarios.

The setup was actually meant to deal with endgame bosses (though it would require a 2nd chest or recoloring it everytime). Swapping out Ele Focus for Hypothermia results in a ~2k dps drop per totem from my calculation but opens the room shock with phys to lightning, though I'm not sure about how efficient would the shocking be against bosses like shaper or guardians.

The absolute best single target DPS I can come up with is using Ele Focus, Phys to Light, Conc Effect, Hypothermia, Controlled Destruction. This setup would require to use vortex but is a huge DPS increase compared to anything else (~20% more than the 2nd best setup). That is using gear providing 561 total Crit multi (30 amulet and dagger + 17% crit multi jewels and Alira as bandit), and 62.42% effective crit chance (diamond flask up).

On another topic: OP is considering using %Phys dmg on his weapon in the gear section. AFAIK this is a local prefix and has absolutely no effect on GC.

EDIT: Finally found the numbers for shock. TLDR: Endgame bosses can't be shocked through regular damage (would need to hit for 5% of their hp to proc the minimum shock).
The question remains for Hypothermia, which might still be worth using with Vortex but the gameplay would probably suffer (can't see a Cwdt configuration because the uptime would be to low on bosses like Shaper or Uber Atziri where the point of the fight is to dodge mechanics and take no dmg...)

I think he mistook it with Ele focus

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On another topic: OP is considering using %Phys dmg on his weapon in the gear section. AFAIK this is a local prefix and has absolutely no effect on GC.

Yes on weapons this is only a local modifier! % Physical everywhere else is competitive with % Elemental and % Cold. This will be dependent on which support gems you're using and your helm enchant. % Elemental will worth with well... all elemental damage like your "Extra damage as Fire/Light/Cold" as well as any Added Fire/Light/Cold flat damage to spells. Remember that you can't have over 100% conversion so it will scale your conversions down.

I'm seeing some great discussion around other potential gems (hypothermia, added fire, increased crit, controlled destruction, conc effect, ele focus) and like I tried to mention in the guide - there are a lot of different possibilities to make the build your own.

If you want the highest potential single target damage then in general you'll be losing ailments, cast speed, and/or AoE for MORE multipliers.

If you want to map safely then you'll likely want to keep the ability to freeze/chill and have large AoE and/or faster casting.

The support gems that work best for you will highly depend on 1) what you're trying to accomplish 2) what your gear is like.

Is there any reason to use a dagger over a scepter if I'm using a shield? I'd switch the Whirling Blades for Shield Charge then, so it looks like it boils down to what item has better stats. Daggers have that 30-50 extra crit chance, but getting a decent dagger is much more harder, as cast speed is an essence-only craft.

The scepter that I'm using right now, gives me more damage than the dagger that I have in my offhand. So it seems that if I were to switch to a weapon + shield setup, I'd rather keep the scepter than the dagger. Is there any other benefit of dagger over scepter that I'm missing?

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Slowacki wrote:

Is there any reason to use a dagger over a scepter if I'm using a shield? I'd switch the Whirling Blades for Shield Charge then, so it looks like it boils down to what item has better stats. Daggers have that 30-50 extra crit chance, but getting a decent dagger is much more harder, as cast speed is an essence-only craft.

The scepter that I'm using right now, gives me more damage than the dagger that I have in my offhand. So it seems that if I were to switch to a weapon + shield setup, I'd rather keep the scepter than the dagger. Is there any other benefit of dagger over scepter that I'm missing?

A dagger can give you crit chance ~150% (50 implicit from a platinum, golden or cooper kris, plus at least 100 from a T1 suffix), while a sceptre only ~100%. Indeed the sceptre comes with 40% increased Elemental Damage.

So I guess that it only depends on what stats you have on your other items and your total crit chance.

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bibanul wrote:

A dagger can give you crit chance ~150% (50 implicit from a platinum, golden or cooper kris, plus at least 100 from a T1 suffix), while a sceptre only ~100%. Indeed the sceptre comes with 40% increased Elemental Damage.

So I guess that it only depends on what stats you have on your other items and your total crit chance.

Okay, thanks. So as I expected, it's only about the implicit CC. I'll crunch some numbers with PoB for scepters and daggers available on poe.trade and check if it's better to get a scepter with cast speed or that extra CC from the dagger.