[3.0] Molten Strike Berserker: Weapon choice analysis [WITH MATH]

Your calculations are interesting, for sure, but the rings you put for the BLS are not even remotely good, and that's an important dps slot. Any opal ring with only elemental damage on attack provides more dps. plugging mirror rings into your BLS setup gets me to 532 dps.


That said, you do raise some interesting calculations. can we talk actual numbers for complete builds?

At lvl 91, without frenzy:

mirror gear BLS reaches 950k shaper dps, with 7.5k life. My own gear before I respecced was at 545k with 7k life. My gear with proper helm and rings goes to 700k dps.

Can you post comparable complete PoBs for frostbreath?

On another note, can we talk about the BF comparison? the way you present the 831% and 334% numbers is misleading. I've seen BF PoBs with 9mil shaper dps, are you implying there are molten strike PoBs with 22 mil dps? of course not, because the base can be vastly different. Furthermore, you are assuming in this comparison that all balls hit, which is unreasonable. You state elsewhere that 40% or less of the balls hit (10mil->3 or 4mil), even using those misleading numbers from before, once we account for only 40% of the balls hitting, molten strike scaling comes out to slightly below BF

(edited in life totals, BF comparison)

You're not reading carefully.

831% dps is with expected 47.2% chance for a ball to hit with reduced effect (1.38) of Point Blank. People manage to get 9m DPS on BF because of very high (>600) crit multiplier. Unrealistic number for MS is 1729.88%, probably only possible against Kitava, because his hitbox is very big. 334% for BF taken from Wiki, you can check it yourself.

'Increased damage' from opal rings has diminishing returns already (boost for 100->150 is significant, 700->750 is not). After allocating another 120 'increased elemental damage', which is equivalent of your perfect opal rings, you're getting 20% damage increase, that's it.

There is not that many MS builds with 22m DPS, because people haven't used it at all before 2.6 (no Wildfire jewels), and at 2.6 few people used it because 60% less damage gave negative double dipping for poison. Also, getting Point Blank on crit non-bow build is difficult. BF is an universal skill, MS feels like shit for mapping => not very popular skill.

I'm not arguing that you'll get 20-30% (EDIT: more like 3.3%) more damage from BLS setup with mirrored gear, what I'm saying people with mediocre gear with BLS will have the same or even lesser DPS compared to frostbreath setup that costs nothing.

Final results, not doing this shit anymore.
Everything is on(frenzy charges, vaal haste, onslaught, Vinktar's, golem, max rolled rings, belt and jewels):

Maxed BLS (unreal gear, doesn't exist): 1489858.7 DPS
https://pastebin.com/MxeS3tVz

Maxed Frostbreath (closer to reality gear): 1441490.0 DPS
https://pastebin.com/K9NJkHbj

^ Difference: BLS deals 3.3% MORE damage

Maxed Frostbreath with Hyrri's Ire (glass canon): 1599073.1 DPS

^ Difference: Frostbreath deals 7.3% MORE damage

Difference in HP: considering BLS users will have ~1000 more strength (500 hp), but helmet, gloves and boots w/o hp (minus ~300-450 hp, plus 158 hp from ring rolls). And Frostbreath having the possibility to wear Kaom's roots and belly of the beast, frostbreath will have more hp in the end (minus 158 hp from ring rolls, hp rolls on boots, gloves and helmet; more increased maximum life from jewels and passive tree overall).

Conclusion: Frostbreath has the option to have either MORE HP or MORE damage.

so far my character is progressing nicely.

any tips on items or skills would be great.

I feel sunder is clunky and I just stick with shield charging into packs and throwing molten strikes.

Is there some faster movement skill that also clears that I could use for trash?

thx

pob:
https://pastebin.com/F6KBvbAT

I feel like I'm falling behind in HP despite having hp on all possible gear that I can.

"

SuckLord3000 wrote:

so far my character is progressing nicely.

any tips on items or skills would be great.

I feel sunder is clunky and I just stick with shield charging into packs and throwing molten strikes.

Is there some faster movement skill that also clears that I could use for trash?

thx

pob:
https://pastebin.com/F6KBvbAT

I feel like I'm falling behind in HP despite having hp on all possible gear that I can.

Leveling my char up, he's mowing thru everything fairly easily and is nearly at Act 8. But was able to buy a really nice Tempest's Binding helmet with +3 to MS projectiles enchant for 3.5ex. I run Lightning Strike+Ele Dmg with Attacks+Multistrike+Hypothermia on it and obviously it gives level 18 innervate and ice bite for that extra light/cold damage. Does a good job clearing trash.

My movement skill is a pretty common leap slam+faster attacks+fortify combo.

I figure for other aoe skills, you could try Ice Crash+Inc AoE+faster attacks+ele dmg with attacks, or even Glacial Hammer+Multistrike+ele dmg w/attacks+? and one Winter Burial gem socketted to give GH AoE. No idea how effective those would be though, just tossing out alternatives. I personally prefer lightning strike, but point blank gimps it as it reaches further out of the screen to damage mobs.

What about ngamahu? 20% fire pen (which is basically 20% more damage against shaper) + molten burst should be also ok. Also, you can do cyclone for clear.

Shield charge considered to be the best movement skill right now, but you can also use leap slam or lightning warp.

Ngamahu flame DPS is just too low, even with additional fire pen and Molten Burst procs. I tried to do different build with Ngamahu cyclone + Eye of Innocence and Scion (juggernaut, raider) for permanent immortal call (self procing CWDT + IC with 100 fire damage from Eye of Innocence ignites).

You can use different skill from Sunder for mapping, just remember to use Molten Strike against single target. It's one of the very few abilities that has "Shotgun" effect from additional projectiles. Again, Sunder is considered to be all around efficient.

I leveled this build till lvl 69 (MonkaFrost), got busy and deleted the game. I like theorycrafting for the game a lot more than the game itself.

Instead of leveling as berzerker I am giving a shot at elementalist. The tradeoff being reflect immunity, higher levels of penetration and phase acrobatics for the elementalist vs zerker leech (which is just broken), 33% life and a bit of damage when fully buffed.

Not sure which way is better. what do you think?

Here is the pastebin for the witch version: https://pastebin.com/EtWhSiin .
Great idea for a build!

Note: the above pastebin is w/out Phase acro.

I don't like the idea of Elementalist, because:
1) Pendulum gives increased AoE, which is bad for shotgun from MS
2) you need to cast fire skill every 10 seconds to get additional cold pen, and we already casting too much stuff (totem + orb of storm + frost bomb)

I think Scion(Elementalist,Raider) is a better alternative if you want reflect protection, but I would've just swapped into Sibyl's Lament for reflect maps and that's it.

Well, it works somehow