[3.0] CWDT "Flickerpuke" ~48 Spells per sec, 12 spells per cast | With/Without Acuity | Facetank T16

Hey, just stopping by to tell you that your guide is great and comprehensive. I ran several Scold's characters in breach league and have to tried to make one work since the patch that requires you to actually spent mana.

Atziris Acuity are the light in the darkness.

I tried flicker strike but it never quite clicked with me. In breach league, I have done such excessive testing that I tried a purely caster build that is simimlar to the ones I am familiar with.

Long story short, I am running a 0,26 seconds/cast curse that deals me anything from 0-900 damage depending on the support gems and number of fevered minds I use. I am currently (and will continue to do so) running lvl 14 cwdt, since the premise is to cast all spells with each cast of my curse.

Why so "low"? Well, I have come to the conclusion that the exponentially required self damage for proccing the spells is gimping my effectife HP too much, so I settled for 1980 HP permanently missing from my max HP-pool to be enough. (cwdt lvl 18 is 50 more of missing HP with only 16% more damage)

This setup has several advantages / disadvantages over your setup:

Pros:
+ More life (currently 5790 life + 2760 mana)
+ More Jewel slots for resists/life/damage/threshold
+ Only a 4 linked curse needed for self damage
+ lvl 20 arcane surge to more than offset the lower cwdt lvl
+ Thus, I have 2 additional free gem sockets
+ Not having to be in melee range for scary bosses
+ No worries about attack speed, reaching the ~ 4 cast/secend is quite easy
+ Not bound to a melee weapon, which opens up the build to a HUGE pool of new concepts

Cons:
- No instant flickering into mobs
- Frenzy charges are hard to come by
- Accidently cursing a non-reachable area can be slightly annoying sometimes as you don't cast there

There is much more I can think of as regards of the pro/cons but I don't want to over-emphasize those here as the build concepts are similar but not identical. If you want to hear more or perhaps discuss what options can be chosen from, I am willing to help you. Again, I did extremely extensive testing on this kind of build in breach league, so anyone that can add to that knowledge is very welcome!

Oh yeah, before I forget, this is my curse-setup:
(not perfect yet gem-wise) ideally, you want a lvl 21 curse for the extra mana cost. When you then change empower to inc duration (140% vs 125% multiplyer), you can drop another Fevered Mind for a jewel / additional nodes.

Hey! That's a really creative suggestion. You can actually sustain it without Acuities, and it works really well too.

My friend did suggest using a curse instead (high mana cost, epic cast speed), but I was lazy since with flicker strike, i can clear the whole map just using one hand hahahaha...and flicker strike had the clear speed. Flicker strike is at a pretty big disadvantage in boss killing coz the boss can kill you this way.

Have you tried using MoM with % of damage taken gained as mana on gear? It helps a lot and you gain a huge load of effective hp, which is great for using higher level of CWDT. You can see in my build, with MOM, it allows me to face tank hydra.

Do you have a video of your build? If it works nicely, I think I'll try it next league for a change!

One thing though - level 18 and level 14 CWDT can't be only 16% more damage. Is this calculated after factoring the Arcane Surge? Also the frenzy charges for flicker strike grants 4% more damage per charge.

Oh, one more thing - what spells are you using? I remember I had difficulties picking long range spells, since the AOE spells had such tiny radius you practically had to be within a boss's melee range to cast it on them...The projectile spells all needed GMP and it cuts its single target by half...

First off, the absolute most important difference between Acuity and no Acuity is, that with the former, you stand much better against bosses for two reasons:

1. The instant leech is a considerably more potent source of mana leech and with high enough hits/sec, crit chance and Damage, you are unstoppable, nothing will kill you besides obviously one-shots.
2. As I found out, Acuities are also much better in tight situations, let's say you accidently start the fight without sufficient mana. One proc from your cwdt taken will be enough to "start the train", with damage over 4 seconds, you can kiss your character goodbye.


Our builds are quite different as I can choose where to go (while of course being slower). After testing all possible combinations, for me personally the following setup worked best overall:

CWDT - GMP - Crit Strikes - Magma Orb - Frostbolt - Ball Lightning

I do not consider these to be of particular value in boss-fights anyway, the reason being, using almost randomly targeted projectiles. But when clearing maps, this trio is huge. Sine I am lacking AoE besides Dying sun, I dismissed fireball and arctic breath. If you have noticed my Scold's has the magma orb enchantment which gives magma orb a big "range". The coolest thing about this combo though, is that I can move ahead of this trio, stand in the Group and what everything blow to smithereens. Also, if you are using MTX, this combo looks fantastic :D

You are right about my flawed calculations. Of course with a higher cwdt, the spell will also be of higher level. One thing here: Of course lvl 20 is the best damage but also the scariest, because you have to treat your effective HP as if the number is subtracted by the cwdt-value. So I have - 1980 HP and you have -2874 HP.

Of course, normally this won't make a difference. But always be aware of the fact that in the rare occasion that the enemy hits your HP to a value that will result in you killing yourself. It would be interesting to know what your flicker strike is costing you.

I could arrange making a video for you. Maybe a short "showcase" of some sort. There I could show you the rest of my gear/gems if you'd like.

I love to play spell puke builds like these, so I'd be grateful if you could show me! Would like to play around with it.

I think you could try discharge with Inya's, or even Dark Pact, for AOE. I'm not sure what's your single target boss killing spells though - would like to see your links :P

If you're not using Acuities, you'd be using Vaal Pact, so leech wise there is actually no difference, with VP arguably being better as you don't need to crit to leech. Mana wise, you can sustain infinitely with the % of damage taken gained as mana, which is fine from my testing. This way though, you can't use MOM (requires too much mana regen!), which reduces your effective hp. Though I do carry around a mana pot at all times in case of emergencies.

I actually use a GMP setup for speed clearing beaechheads.

I hope I'd be able to make a non-Acuity version of your build next league, since I'm doubtful I can farm this much currency to get Acuities next league...

Oh yes, of course. I was under the impression "damage taken gained as mana" was combined with MoM, which indeed, would be a burden and lowers the eHP by a rather large margin. Let me do a small demonstration video for you when I have the time over the weekend.

But your instinct is right, if you are not wielding a 2h sword filled with attack skills, the possibilities are endless. You could have one big spell supported by 4 support skills, 5 spells or run several auras, curses etc. This is why I always try to limit the "Scold-skill" to a maximum of 4 skills. Three are also possible with an additional Fevered (currently I have 4 I believe), but since I want my weapon slots to be for damage use, I sticked to a 4-linked-curse. (Empower is also nice, if only I had the balls to corrupt my Acuity to +1 to gems xD)

In regards if discharge, I must disappoint you. Discharge has 35% less dmg when triggered, which really hurts in this kind of build. Incorporating endurcance charges sucks (physical dmg reduction) and frenzy charges are hard to come by when not using Oro/Terminus. It requires 4 supportss for discharge to be comparable to simply socketing 5 random spells. Even if one centers his whole build around discharge with double Void Battery etc, it is not better than many other options. Even worse: Now you created the problem of reflected damage. (All tested and disapproved)

If you can make it work, I am very interested as discharge is generally speaking my favourite spell in the game.

Also, as a side note, I kind of disagree on the choice of amulet, it seems rather limiting and the dps is not that great. Am I missing something? They nerfed the crit chance to max 75%, only lightning damage and no life. I am wondering if you can really even tell if a lightning bolt procced. I don't know, i don't have the currency to spare atm to try it out myself.

DIVA

The proc is once every 0.5 seconds since you're always critting. 75% crit chance is double an average amulet. There's also mana for MOM. The damage of the lightning bolt is ~12k (I think), which translates to 24k dps. I prefer higher crit chance for more consistent mana leech, which is the most important thing when using MOM.

I see - losing discharge won't be a big deal though, there are plenty of other spells to use. BTW - I used discharge in the non-Acuity version and it is great with no reflect dangers. It's sustained on frenzy charges, and even with 35% less damage, it still does a heck load.

Have you tried using fire burst? from my testing before, I think your dps actually goes down with a fire burst weapon compared to just doryani's catalyst unless its epically rolled.

Edit: Mana cost currently is 672.

Not beginner friendly. You will need these mandatory gear before it work or at least make your life easy. Get Cloaked in Savagery ASAP!



Also try to get the "% damage taken gain as mana over 4 second when hit

Without those your won't be able perma flicker. At least for me.



Fun build and fit my cwdt taste.

"

jason8992 wrote:

Not beginner friendly. You will need these mandatory gear before it work or at least make your life easy. Get Cloaked in Savagery ASAP!

Also try to get the "% damage taken gain as mana over 4 second when hit

Without those your won't be able perma flicker. At least for me.

Fun build and fit my cwdt taste.

Hi! Thanks for your feedback! Yes, the build with Acuity is extremely expensive. However, there's a part 2 of the build without using Acuity and it's much much cheaper. Almost just as good too!

For me I didn't need to use the % damage on both pieces of jewelry. If you're tight on funds, you can drop the Choir and buy a regular rare amulet instead.

I also added your tip regarding the ascendancy in the build too.

Glad you're having fun with the build! :)

Do you really need damage taken gained as mana?