After hitting Delve 300, I've found my wand version to be too rippy to realistically go much further. I'm probably just going to reroll another char and bench this one, but curious to see how high you guys running the claw build can push! It's definitely a lot tankier than my build.
Why not just change your wand? instead of starting a new character
Could someone outline the choices for the 6th socket for spectres?
I am using 4 Frost Sentinels with:
-Minion Damage
-Feeding Frenzy
-Summon Phantasm
-GMP
I tried Chain but didn't notice much of a difference in clear speed.
I tried spell echo because it's common in other builds and PoB likes it for damage/dps
The guide/thread mentions Faster Projectiles, Slower Projectiles, and Elemental Focus in several places as other options.
I'm currently doing the low-red maps (11s and 12s or so)... I don't notice much of a difference because no matter what the gem is, the clear speed is already great at this point, but I do want to try to be leveling up the most relevant gem for the 6th socket!
For a spectre phantasm setup, you have to pick supports that effect the dps of both minions for the best outcome, so supports like controlled destruction (only spell damage, nothing to phantasms) and vicious projectiles (only attack damage, nothing for sentinels) are not optimal.
If you're going to use 2 green supports, then pierce could be a good addition to GMP since you need a lot of piercing for blights and regular mapping. For bossing, you may switch to slower projectiles and hypothermia (since your skitterbots will apply chill).
Unlike skellies or zombies, frost sentinels (or any other ranged spectre for that matter) don't need feeding frenzy to be effective, they already have great target acqusition. So I'd go for another support here like deathmark. Your overall setup would be like
Deathmark is weak for clear (better for bossing), but I can't think of any other support that would effect both minions. Neither spell echo, nor ele focus fully supports phantasms.
How does the physical damage to chaos conversion from spirit offering work with all green triad grips? If we're converting all damage to cold, does that mean we're missing out on the bonus to chaos dmg from spirit offering, or is it calculated first before the conversion?
Thanks!
Engineering eternity has done a great video on this subject
tldw; The extra chaos from physical applies before conversion, so you deal chaos + cold damage. If you have vis mortis aswell, then you apply a second chaos damage on top of the first.
1. Move zombies to the hungry loop with appropriate support gems and fully support the spiders on the Fang. Not sure of the correct gems in either case, but I thought getting minion damage in the loop was a good start. A fully dedicated Spider build insists multistrike is key for cold setups, so I included it here.
Spiders are definitely worth supporting. I dropped Zombies for good for a long time and didnt miss them. The spiders are very fast and agressive and manage to kill most things before i aproach them.
I think multistrike is good for though bosses, for mapping, melee splash instead is great. So the gems could be:
minion damage - melee physical damage/damage on full life - melee splash/multistrike
I think i will add Hungry Loop Zombies not for damage, but for the debuffs:
Raise Zombie
- Maim (for the inc phys damage on enemies)
- Feeding Frenzy (to activate the buff)
- Minion Speed (to keep up, i like to go fast)
- the last link i have not deceidet between elemantal army (so i can take it off from my spectres) or melee splash (to spread the maim debuff faster?)
-> what are your thoughts of it?
[4. Drop the CWDT and adjust the CWC to include Desecrate and Spirit offering as it has been recently suggested. This would remove Ball lightning and likely mirror some of the changes Hercanic has made.
I use Cyclone-CWC-Ball Lightning-Desecrate
and CWDT-Desecrate-Spirit Offering
As someone mentioned this earlier in this thread, autocasting esecrate while cycloning makes maintaining the Spiders a breeze, because Desecrate applies a dot on enemies, and when your minions kill them it still counts as your kill and Triggers the raise Spiders kill. Also, if you press your writhing jar while cycloning, there are most likely some corpses around to summon at least 10 Spiders.
I am curentlty testing if removing desecrate from the CWDT Setup has a big Impact on survivability.
I also tried to include Spirit Offering, but it makes summoning the Spiders more difficult. And i had to drop Ball Lightning, which easily generates max Frenzy charges for your minions. On the other hand, i could completely remove the CWDT setup and open up three sockets.
5. Reduce my support for Carrion Golem and drop Golem Commander based on the math that Hercanic posted. Perhaps bring holy relic back into my build?
I dropped Golem Commander and the Golem and never missed it.
Although i have him currently equipped, but thats just because i didnt know what to socket, it will be gone again when the Hungry Loop is ready.
This are just my thoughts on this build, i and open for any corrections or suggestions from the community :)
Last edited by TheDoomsdayDevice on Sep 24, 2019, 5:08:11 AM
I assume a midnight bargain is a nono due to 30% life loss and no cyclone, aka big defense impact, esp at high end maps? Only wonder because an additional spectre is also a huge gain.
I've been mixing and matching ideas from this topic for a while and I've just gotten to red maps so I'll be sharing what I think works and doesn't work for my build.
1) The core of the build is these 2 items :
Instead of ball lightning, I'm using CwC > desecrate > Spirit offering with cyclone. This gives me (and all my minions) a constant ES heal of 1300 every 0.72 sec, so its about 1800 ES per second. Unlike CwDT, the chaos damage ands ele resist buffs are always active aswell. The boots are amazing for this setup since they negate cyclone's slow movement speed, so you are constantly moving and healing (you dont even left click to move, just left click to loot =P) and don't need movement speed potions either.
I'm using the cold variant of the triad gloves. I've tried 50% cold 50% lightning in the past (with an ele weakness curse on hit corrupt on gloves aswell) , but the scaling from hatred is unmatched, especially with skitterbots and bonechill. Wrath reserves more mana and gives less bonuses so full cold it is.
Since I have cyclone on boots with spirit offering setup, I have alot of unused green sockets in triad gloves. I'm using Dash as an escape/terrain skill here and it has worked out quite well. Hatred is also here due to lack of sockets elsewhere and not having generosity linked with it causes me to lose some dps, as well as forcing me to take avatar of fire but it's a trade-off I'm willing to make for better survival. Hyphothermia and cold penetration are to be leveled and switched out for spectre bossing setup, since I've found smoke mine to be very clumsy, and with 150% movement speed cyclone we don't need whirling blades.
I've also specced in to Necromantic Aegis, since without ball lightning it's very hard to keep frenzy charges up. It offers a nice clear speed bonus due to added power charges aswell.
2) Complementary items :
Vis mortis scales really well with triad grip ele conversion builds and 400 ES isn't that bad either. The shield is a no brainer and needs no explanation.
As for spectres I've tried a lot of physical variants (Kitava's herald, knitted horror, sandworn slave, undying evangelist) to better scale hatred but nothing beats frost sentinels. Actually frost sentinels are almost as good as slave drivers, so I believe PoB is somehow not calculating their damage correctly. Phantasms also appear to be a better support than any other. In green sockets I'm using GMP and Pierce for clear, but that's rather a personal preference. Faster proj/chain etc. any combination would work aswell.
After skitterbot - bonechill combo, I have a single slot left in my shield and I've used it for carrion golem. Hercanic has done a detailed calculation in the previous pages and I have similar results from testing that both golem commander and linking carrion golems with zombies are a net dps loss. Just summon a single golem and use it for its buff.
3) The rest is pretty standart I belive :
Having both +2/3 to minion gems and minion damage support (or hypothermia support for a cheaper +3 alternative) in helm is very important I belive. Also for the weapon, the shaper variant of ele damage with attacks (50% more damage), maim (30%) and faster attacks (20%) combination was the best one I could find on a budget, elder weapons only offer 2 useful supports.
One of my rings has frostbite (~7% more damage to bosses), I've also enchanted it with channeling mana cost for QoL, since I only cyclone through the maps (before that no regen maps could be painful). A combination of life, resist, stats and ES is good enough for the rest. One thing I could (should?) go is a kingmaker animated guardian setup in the ring with curse on hit gloves and -9 cold resist aura helm but that needs some more budget.
4) Jewels and Flasks
As for jewels, I've found that mediocre life + ES rolled jewels offer the same (or even better) protection for a cheaper budget than well rolled life jewels so I've went that way. And while the unending hunger doesn't pull its weight in regular mapping (up until T12 everything is blown to pieces with or without it anyway), it does make a noticible difference in blight encounters so I've kept it.
Sorrow of the Divine flask is another item that I've learned from this topic which works very well with hybrid builds like ours. Forbidden taste needs to be changed with another insta heal (possibly karui) but it'll manage for now. 1 anti-freeze and 1 anti-curse are always mandatory, and rumi is a cheap defensive option regardless of build.
As for upgrades, I really need to upgrade my skelly-zombie-spectre gems to lvl21 ones asap, then comes animated guardian - hungry loop setup and then a better helm. +1 weapon with good supports and lvl4 empower for skellies would then close the deal. But I'm open to suggestions all the time.
Could someone outline the choices for the 6th socket for spectres?
I am using 4 Frost Sentinels with:
-Minion Damage
-Feeding Frenzy
-Summon Phantasm
-GMP
I tried Chain but didn't notice much of a difference in clear speed.
I tried spell echo because it's common in other builds and PoB likes it for damage/dps
The guide/thread mentions Faster Projectiles, Slower Projectiles, and Elemental Focus in several places as other options.
I'm currently doing the low-red maps (11s and 12s or so)... I don't notice much of a difference because no matter what the gem is, the clear speed is already great at this point, but I do want to try to be leveling up the most relevant gem for the 6th socket!
For a spectre phantasm setup, you have to pick supports that effect the dps of both minions for the best outcome, so supports like controlled destruction (only spell damage, nothing to phantasms) and vicious projectiles (only attack damage, nothing for sentinels) are not optimal.
If you're going to use 2 green supports, then pierce could be a good addition to GMP since you need a lot of piercing for blights and regular mapping. For bossing, you may switch to slower projectiles and hypothermia (since your skitterbots will apply chill).
Unlike skellies or zombies, frost sentinels (or any other ranged spectre for that matter) don't need feeding frenzy to be effective, they already have great target acqusition. So I'd go for another support here like deathmark. Your overall setup would be like
Deathmark is weak for clear (better for bossing), but I can't think of any other support that would effect both minions. Neither spell echo, nor ele focus fully supports phantasms.
How does the physical damage to chaos conversion from spirit offering work with all green triad grips? If we're converting all damage to cold, does that mean we're missing out on the bonus to chaos dmg from spirit offering, or is it calculated first before the conversion?
Thanks!
Engineering eternity has done a great video on this subject
tldw; The extra chaos from physical applies before conversion, so you deal chaos + cold damage. If you have vis mortis aswell, then you apply a second chaos damage on top of the first.
"
I'll be sharing what I think works and doesn't work for my build.
Nice write-up! I like your approach for keeping CwC.
The loss of Generosity stings, though, and while The Stampede offers a nice convenience for Cyclone, it's a dead slot defensively (sans anointment). With Triad Grip, Necromantic Aegis, and Hungry Loop, we're already losing a lot of flat life. Not sure I'm a fan, but I do plan to take The Stampede for a test drive.
"
supports like controlled destruction (only spell damage, nothing to phantasms) and vicious projectiles (only attack damage, nothing for sentinels) are not optimal.
Phantasms cast a Physical Spell, not an Attack, so they do indeed benefit from Controlled Destruction.
I have seen several players posting about incorporating Arakaali's Fang into the build and attempted to do the same. The addition of the Fang feels solid and matches the master of a minion army aesthetic. My concern here is if I am negatively impacting the build effectiveness due to "neat, spiders!".
Here is what I am considering for adjustments based on my current config:
1. Move zombies to the hungry loop with appropriate support gems and fully support the spiders on the Fang. Not sure of the correct gems in either case, but I thought getting minion damage in the loop was a good start. A fully dedicated Spider build insists multistrike is key for cold setups, so I included it here.
2. Dropping Grip of the council gloves for the triad grip all green setup. Hercanic is indicating that this has the greatest potential for build improvement as far as DPS and fully committing to cold.
3. Dropping discipline for skitterbots. I guess an alternative is to keep discipline and get a watcher's eye with ES on hit for more survivability? Not sure that is warranted if I do the next item.
4. Drop the CWDT and adjust the CWC to include Desecrate and Spirit offering as it has been recently suggested. This would remove Ball lightning and likely mirror some of the changes Hercanic has made.
5. Reduce my support for Carrion Golem and drop Golem Commander based on the math that Hercanic posted. Perhaps bring holy relic back into my build?
Any and all feedback is welcome. Feel free to check out my character for my build details.
@Hercanic
Can you please add your thoughts on if Arakaali's Fang is indeed worth utilizing? I am having difficulty understanding the net impact of such a change to the build and am hoping you can provide some clarity.
Would I be better off just grabbing a +1 claw and forgo all of this?
Again, thanks for the build and all the effort you put forth into the guide.
"
A fully dedicated Spider build insists multistrike is key for cold setups
Part of their build might depend on faster poison stacks (e.g. Vile Toxins) or something, but in general Multistrike shouldn't matter.
I assume "cold setup" just means Hatred/Grip. I wouldn't recommend Spiders with cold conversion Triad Grip, since you'll completely lose their Viper Strike poison damage.
"
Can you please add your thoughts on if Arakaali's Fang is indeed worth utilizing?
It's an easy 4M DPS if you can maintain them. L30 Zombies (+1, +2 Support, L4 Empower, Maim, Added Fire) clock in at 1.4M with Grip/Discipline.
Another way to keep Zombies is to place them with Skeletons. You'll lose ~1M on Skeletons and gain ~1M from Zombies. It's still an overall DPS loss due to Vaal Skeletons, but you gain 10 persistent minions while clearing. You then have your ring slot back for something else.
After hitting Delve 300, I've found my wand version to be too rippy to realistically go much further. I'm probably just going to reroll another char and bench this one, but curious to see how high you guys running the claw build can push! It's definitely a lot tankier than my build.
"
After hitting Delve 300, I've found my wand version to be too rippy
Our top player last league nearly reached depth 1k before becoming bored. The secret is Ball Lightning -> GMP -> Unleash -> Knockback. Projectile Weakness in Mark of Submission can add more knockback. Everything will be bulldozed away from you, so you just have to watch out for Unstable Weta and Zombie on-death corpse effects.
Not really. Ball Lightning will overwrite EE back almost right away. But yeah, it's better to rewrite it with something more adequate.
"
Ball Lightning will overwrite EE back almost right away.
Depends whether the boot enchantment applies to Spells as well. Since it isn't local to a weapon and doesn't specify only Attacks, it probably applies to both.
Check your Ball Lightning DPS tooltip (put it on your skill bar and mouse over it) after being hit to verify.
1. Move zombies to the hungry loop with appropriate support gems and fully support the spiders on the Fang. Not sure of the correct gems in either case, but I thought getting minion damage in the loop was a good start. A fully dedicated Spider build insists multistrike is key for cold setups, so I included it here.
Spiders are definitely worth supporting. I dropped Zombies for good for a long time and didnt miss them. The spiders are very fast and agressive and manage to kill most things before i aproach them.
I think multistrike is good for though bosses, for mapping, melee splash instead is great. So the gems could be:
minion damage - melee physical damage/damage on full life - melee splash/multistrike
I think i will add Hungry Loop Zombies not for damage, but for the debuffs:
Raise Zombie
- Maim (for the inc phys damage on enemies)
- Feeding Frenzy (to activate the buff)
- Minion Speed (to keep up, i like to go fast)
- the last link i have not deceidet between elemantal army (so i can take it off from my spectres) or melee splash (to spread the maim debuff faster?)
-> what are your thoughts of it?
[4. Drop the CWDT and adjust the CWC to include Desecrate and Spirit offering as it has been recently suggested. This would remove Ball lightning and likely mirror some of the changes Hercanic has made.
I use Cyclone-CWC-Ball Lightning-Desecrate
and CWDT-Desecrate-Spirit Offering
As someone mentioned this earlier in this thread, autocasting esecrate while cycloning makes maintaining the Spiders a breeze, because Desecrate applies a dot on enemies, and when your minions kill them it still counts as your kill and Triggers the raise Spiders kill. Also, if you press your writhing jar while cycloning, there are most likely some corpses around to summon at least 10 Spiders.
I am curentlty testing if removing desecrate from the CWDT Setup has big Impact on survivability.
I also tried to include Spirit Offering, but it makes summoning the Spiders more difficult. And i had to drop Ball Lightning, which easily generates max Frenzy charges for your minions. On the other hand, i could completely remove the CWDT setup and open up three sockets.
5. Reduce my support for Carrion Golem and drop Golem Commander based on the math that Hercanic posted. Perhaps bring holy relic back into my build?
I dropped Golem Commander and the Golem and never missed it.
Although i have him currently equipped, but thats just because i didnt know what to socket, it will be gone again when the Hungry Loop is ready.
This are just my thoughts on this build, i and open for any corrections or suggestions from the community :)
"
minion damage - melee physical damage/damage on full life - melee splash/multistrike
I would recommend:
1. Minion Damage
2. Damage on Full Life (boosts all damage, including any added elemental)
3. Melee Splash (clear) -> Melee Physical Damage (bosses)
Multistrike is a bit more damage (58% vs. 49%) against a stationary boss like Shaper, but for anything that moves around Multistrike will be a DPS loss because your Spiders will be locked in place for three swings regardless if they can reach the target after they've moved.
Hi everyone.
Is Dead Reckoning Cobalt Jewel worth using?
I would need to double-check whether GGG made any stealth changes like they did with Holy Relic.
If there are no overt differences, then no. Mages were far weaker than Warriors, even before their weaker supports like Faster Projectiles or LMP/GMP. Their random element meant a third would deal less damage due to EE, too.
With dramatically more minion movement speed available on the tree and things like Dash from Feeding Frenzy, Warriors are even competent for clear now.
I assume a midnight bargain is a nono due to 30% life loss and no cyclone, aka big defense impact, esp at high end maps? Only wonder because an additional spectre is also a huge gain.
We use many minion types. Spectres are only part of our damage. Going from 4 Spectres to 5 is a mere 25% more damage, for something that's already only a fraction of our total damage. Midnight Bargain is definitely not worth losing 30% of our life for.
Last edited by Hercanic on Sep 24, 2019, 6:33:14 AM
So, while trying to get a better enchantment on my Triad Grip gloves, I got an enchantment called "Commandment of Reflection", that creates a copy of my character whenever I'm hit, that attacks with my weapon.
I was wondering if I was to start using Arakaali's Fang, this would mean that my clone is also capable of generating spiders?
For now I'm using a 3 Socketed weapon and Flicker Strike instead of Whirling Blades. I find that I can easily move with Smoke mines alone and apply EE with Cyclone.
Flicker has been great for bosses, as I can quickly strike them if I lose sight of them in all the chaos.
Already managed to beat Uber Elder twice with the fight lasting less than a minute!
PS: I can't seem to link weapons to the forum, so the sockets are: 18 Maim, 16 Melee Splash, 18 Ele Damage. All fueling my zombies.
