[3.0 HC/SC] The ORIGINAL Hybrid HoWA ST Raider [ALL CONTENT] [2:45 Shaper Run][Vids Included]

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najo wrote:

On a 5L, is lightning pen better than damage on full life even with way less tooltip DPS?

Yes lightning pen is way better. Don't worry about the tooltip DPS. The effective DPS with lightning pen will be higher versus mobs with elemental resists.

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Grohlvaan wrote:

I theory crafting a build very similar to this for HC, but eventually I came to the conclusion of having the split life / es is pretty pointless for the most part, especially when you can just focus on the life aspect and get much higher values. Not only that but you don't always have full ES, where as you would always have full life and you don't have instant leech on the ES.

All in all I think it's a really fun gimmick using Soul Teather, but at the end of the day I think you'd just be better off using a well rolled rare or a Belt of the Deceiver for more damage.

You're not completely wrong!

I had the exact same reasoning you had, which was why I initially went the HP/MoM route, as mentioned in my FAQ section in the second post.

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1. Have you tried building HoWA with just HP/MoM instead of HP/ES/MoM?
I have indeed! I'll list a few versions that I've tried with brief descriptions regarding each.

Spoiler

Version 1: HP/MoM with Belly of the Beast and Unwavering Stance

PoB code: https://pastebin.com/g4XkS139

The gear in PoB is the gear that I had at the time. The jewels are what I felt were the ideal jewels for the build.

I ended up with a relatively tanky character, but the projected effective DPS against Shaper was not up to my required standards.

Version 2: HP/MoM with Belly of the Beast and Kaoms Roots

PoB code: https://pastebin.com/aVmjSApV

The gear in PoB is the gear that I had at the time. The jewels are what I felt were the ideal jewels for the build.

I ended up with slightly more DPS (which was still not good enough), and I ended up sacrificing movement speed to get there.

Version 3: HP/MoM/ES with Soul Tether and Kaoms Roots

The concept was to utilise Soul Tether and a good hybrid rare chest to maintain a healthy ES buffer so as to allow us to make use of the Damage on Full Life gem to the fullest.

PoB code: https://pastebin.com/ptY5eRJv

The gear and jewels for this code are actual examples which I have in game and the reflected effective DPS is on show in my shaper and guardian fights (videos below).

I ended up with slightly more DPS while becoming even more tanky, albeit still with no movement speed boots :(

Version 4: HP/ES/MoM with Soul Tether and Stun Avoidance

After considering different alternatives, I have decided to for stun avoidance instead of unwavering stance/stun immunity because:

I want movement speed boots (which would also make capping res easier)

Having a layer of ES grants us 50% chance to avoid as it is, which with the Heart of Oak cluster would give us approx. 68% chance to avoid stun, which itself can be nullified somewhat by the brine king pantheon, having high stun and block recovery and having high attack speed.

Having all that INT and DEX granting bonus %evasion (from Shaper) would all go to waste if I get Unwavering Stance. A single white Jade Flask alone grants me 50% chance to evade and significant damage mitigation (thus allowing ES more time to recover).

This is also the verison that I'm currently using. PoB code: https://pastebin.com/F1u3ufcW

The gear and jewels for this code are what I have in-game currently.

I am much happier with this version because of the higher DPS and movement speed, and gameplay thus far has been extremely satisfying.

Version 5: HP/ES with Soul Tether and Stun Avoidance

This is the version that I am working towards once I farm enough to get level 4 Enlighten and level 4 Empower. The objective is to sacrifice some (but not too much) survivability by dropping MoM so as to use Empower + Herald of Thunder for much higher DPS while also grabbing more HP nodes to improve our instaleech pool of defense.

PoB code: https://pastebin.com/7S0amUMR

The gear in this code is what I have in-game currently. The jewels are the ideal ones I am aiming for.

In fact, I even essence crafted a great leather belt just for my pure HP version of HoWA.



However, after playing it up to level 80+, I realised that it was a sub-optimal way to build the character. I will go into details below.

Firstly, in my opinion, a pure HP variant would only be better than having HP/ES if both of the following conditions were fulfilled:
1. Both had similar DPS output
2. You would be able to attain significantly higher HP values with a pure HP variant alone compared to a HP/ES or HP/ES/MoM variant

However, both aren't fulfilled.

Firstly, the hybrid variant will have a significantly higher DPS output compared to the pure HP variant because as a pure HP variant in HC, you'd inevitably want belly of the beast for more HP (and will therefore lose out on an INT slot). You'd also be constantly prioritising HP nodes on the tree (which is not wrong), but you will sacrifice DPS for it. At level 97, even with high life on gear, each 5% HP node will only grant about extra 60 flat HP or so. Hybrid on the other hand has the option of getting more DPS and eHP in the same move (i.e. getting more INT, which grants more damage for HoWA and more %ES). It has huge synergy, and I'm a sucker for builds with synergy. Also, a small point, but with an ES shield covering your HP globe, you will be at full HP more often than not, and your damage on full life gem will thus have a larger impact.

Secondly, hybrid is able to attain higher eHP than a pure HP variant with more efficient point and gear investment. My current gear is prioritised for max DPS. In any other build which doesn't prioritise INT, such as a standard elemental spectral throw build, I would be a pure glass cannon. However, I'm still able to reach 5.5k HP and 2.9k ES even with my DPS-oriented gear and lack of a ES helm. A pure HP variant will be struggling to push past 6.6 ot 6.7k, and here I am with not that many HP nodes, barely putting in any effort in survivability gear, going full DPS and still being able to reach 5.5k HP and 2.9k ES. If I respec my tree a little bit, I can even hit 5.7k HP and 3k ES at the cost of only 15k DPS (and 15k out of 750k is a negligible amount really). Also, if I get a decent ES helm with +90 life and >220 ES annd craft flat ES on my rings instead of flat lightning damage, I would be at 4.4k ES instead of 2.9k ES. While you're right in that I am never at full ES, the question is: do I have to be at full ES? For a build such as HoWA which is both fast clearing and mobile, you'll be at >80% ES >80% of the time. Is 5.5k HP with 3.5k ES (80% of 4.4k) better than 6.5k HP (with poorer DPS)? To you it might not, but to me it certainly is. In a game where one shots are what kills you and reflect damage can still be dangerous if you have a high damage output, having a high damage buffer is better than having a lower one, in my opinion.

Thirdly, having an ES buffer has an added bonus which is often overlooked: innate 50% chance to avoid stun. It makes for much smoother gameplay and helps avoid unnecessary deaths due to stun. Its not a huge plus point for sure, but it is still something worth factoring.

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All in all I think it's a really fun gimmick using Soul Teather, but at the end of the day I think you'd just be better off using a well rolled rare or a Belt of the Deceiver for more damage.

From the points I've mentioned above, I hope you understand why we cannot consider the issue of Soul Tether versus a rare belt versus belt of the deceiver in terms of raw damage output from item stats alone, in isolation, without considering how the lack of that unique ES leech mechanism affects the entire build on a whole. Belt of the deceiver in particular isn't going to be very useful for a ST build as we're not going to be very close to vast majority of monsters that we'll be killing, so the intimidate bonus will only come into play a minority of the time.

The only situation in which I would advocate going pure HP instead of HP/ES with Soul Tether would be if you had a headhunter, because the amount of DPS you'd have with all the buffs from HH will be significantly higher as compared to a Soul Tether variant, even with the loss in eHP, although you can argue that if you kill an ES rare you'd end up with a huge ES buffer anyway which will remain as long as you kill mobs before they can kill you, which is rather likely with HH. And that is why I've also included a tree for the HH users.

Nice build Invalesco. I was messing around with Soul Tether on my fakener. Now I've found another use :)
Build seems really optimal, good work like always !

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sev7NN wrote:

Nice build Invalesco. I was messing around with Soul Tether on my fakener. Now I've found another use :)
Build seems really optimal, good work like always !

Thanks! :)

How detrimental is not having an amulet that gives INT? I was looking for a build that could clear maps insanely quickly and is still relatively cheap (like this one). Could I still get away with using anamulet that gives iir and iiq like a bisco's?

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Deathsphere22 wrote:

How detrimental is not having an amulet that gives INT? I was looking for a build that could clear maps insanely quickly and is still relatively cheap (like this one). Could I still get away with using anamulet that gives iir and iiq like a bisco's?

Hejtero seems to be doing ok with full MF gear, but he is using HH which improves map clearing speed.

Its not that detrimental - perhaps a 12% DPS drop. My hideout DPS drops from 75k with GMP to 66k if I remove my amulet. That is still ample DPS for clearing maps quickly. You can make up for that lost INT by using 2 fertile minds instead of 1. Probably the larger issue, and the bigger problem is that if you use Bisco's (which doesn't have res), you'll have to make up for that lost res on another piece of gear, such as jewels, which can make gearing abit difficult. That said, if your clear speed is fast enough, you can also just have rely on capping res by having wise oak up all the time, which shouldn't be difficult if your clear speed is fast.

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Invalesco wrote:

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catmouth1984 wrote:

Hey nice build. Can't seem to get more hp i feel a bit squishy (hc) any tips? Currently 3,2k hp and 1.5k mana reserved. Damage and leech is very good though.
Was thinking of going down to all those 5% life nodes below "shaper" , not sure if it's worth it probably lose alot of dps.

Hey, what's your level and gear like? you won't need all those 5% life nodes below shaper. Based on our pathing alone, even excluding the melding cluster, we can still grab at least 221% increased life from the tree alone, and that's excluding the extra %Life you can get from jewels.

This image below shows the relevant HP clusters. You can always choose to give up some DPS for more life nodes for now KIV respec later on.

Lvl 76. Man it's hard to get INT Res and Life on every item heh.
I'm getting all those life nodes you linked and it bumped me up to 3.8k life and 2.5 ES.

Looking on advice on what to improve more.
Right now I'm looking for better boots and helmet.

Rings are very expensive and hard to find with INT, HP and RES.



Thanks!

Hi, whats the diffrence between this build and this one
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1884719
Im wondering which one to build...

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catmouth1984 wrote:

Lvl 76. Man it's hard to get INT Res and Life on every item heh.
I'm getting all those life nodes you linked and it bumped me up to 3.8k life and 2.5 ES.

Ya it can be tough to gear. My suggestion is to prioritise high life rolls and high res rolls on at least 1 piece of gear for now. i.e. If you can get an item that has high life and high triple res, don't feel swayed against using it even if it doesn't have INT. That extra res still frees up a suffix on one of your other items, and allows you some flexibility in gear.

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shALK3 wrote:

Looking on advice on what to improve more.
Right now I'm looking for better boots and helmet.

Rings are very expensive and hard to find with INT, HP and RES.

Thanks!

Your priority for now will be to level another 2 levels, grab the jewel socket next to conduit, slot your carrion ichor viridian jewel in it and put a fertile mind jewel into the jewel socket to the left of vaal pact. That's the easiest way to get more INT for now and improve your damage. Your rings are ok for now, I'd suggest getting an opal and using essences of spite on it to get life and res.

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noornapso wrote:

Hi, whats the diffrence between this build and this one
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1884719
Im wondering which one to build...

There's no difference. Mine is the original. He's essentially copied my idea and concept but hasn't given me credit in his post. Feel free to ask him if you doubt it.