[3.15] Elemental Hit Ballista Totem Hiero | Budget Friendly | League Start to Endgame

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Chrono_Kun wrote:

Hi...
Do you think there will be room for the new focused ballista support in this build?
I'm not particularly a big fan of totem/minion gameplay and the like, because I miss the feeling of attacking together with them...
And with the new support, that changes, as the ballistas start to respond to our attack...

Hi,

I was curious how long will it take for a question on Focused Ballista Support to come up since I didn't wrote anything about it in my Initial Thoughts and Comments Section and here it is. :)


Two things that I thought about for this Gem.

Before I start, here's a picture of the Gem for easy references.



1. Functionality

When we link Focused Ballista Support to our Ballista, our Ballista will no longer auto attack but only attack if we fire an attack projectile ourself.


Base on this, I think Focus Ballista works great when our attacks are the Primary/Main Source of Damage and Totem Attacks are the Secondary/Supporting ones.

For this Build, it's the reverse, Ballista are our Primary/Main Source of Damage whereas our attacks are the Secondary/Supporting ones.


Thus if our Primary/Main Source of Damage becomes linked to our attacks which we only fire occasionally to curse the enemy, Focused Ballista just makes the build more clunky because:

- We have to stay stationary to fire projectiles so our Ballista will Fire which makes us vulnerable to enemy attacks/spells since it reduces our mobility.
- Our additional firing of projectiles doesn't contribute anything more to the fight
- Our Ballista which was originally automated became non automated, which reduces their uptime and defeats the purpose of using them


I believe the above should explain why it doesn't really make sense to use it in this build.


2. DPS Numbers

Point 1 above should be convincing enough but I checked the numbers just for the record. Currently it's lower than what Combustion and Elemental Damage With Attacks(EDWA) Support gave us so it doesn't make sense to replace Combustion or EDWA with Focused Ballista for DPS.

That said, since GGG mentioned nerfing Support Gems that is about Huge Damage Boost(My guess is EDWA will be nerfed), DPS Numbers might become much nearer after the nerfs and make more sense then to switch Gems(If Point 1 above became invalid for some reason that is).


Nevertheless, I will definitely test it after league launches, just in case I miss out on anything.

For now, these are my current thoughts on the Focused Ballista Support Gem. :)

Cheers

thank you very much for your attention and such detailed explanation about it.

Balance Manifesto comments(TLDR version)

So far it's pretty good for us, and what I meant by this is I didn't see any targeted nerfs to this build. The nerfs that affected us are Global Nerfs(e.g. Support Gem, Flask Rework, etc) which affects everyone.

Also they mentioned "less impact for characters that used utility support gems or who didn't have a six-link setup." We use a 5 link setup and only 1 Gem got hit hard which is the Elemental Damage with Attacks Support. Combustion probably get a slight bit reduced damage and the rest are not affected so far(Base on the Manifesto at least).

I did some rough calculation base on the estimated new Support Gem numbers, it seems like we got hit much lesser than the mentioned "20-40% Damage Reduction" at about 15% Damage Reduction which is great.

Other than the above, with the changes to the Diamond Flask, our choice of Amulet will change a bit on the Mid-Tier as Marylene's Fallacy will not be as strong later on as our equipment gets better.


Hopefully no additional surprises(I don't mind surprise buffs ofc ;)) in the patch notes tomorrow.

I'll wrote a bit more in depth breakdown of the above in my Initial Thoughts/Comments Section.

Link: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3005581#p23724378

really nice to see this build didn't get touched too much cuz this build is really fun and thanks a lot for your details . will you play this league?

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Dassort wrote:

really nice to see this build didn't get touched too much cuz this build is really fun and thanks a lot for your details . will you play this league?

Hey Dassort,

Good to see you again :)

With regards to playing this league, I have not really decided yet.

To be honest I am still not very moltivated to play after I took a break during Ultimate because of the many issues, Launch Issues, Loading Time, Texture Streaming and also the thoughts of having to do everything from scratch again(This really feels like taking up a second job, to me at least, one job is enough!). Plus this League of Nerfs definitely doesn't tempt me to play for sure. Other than that, I also have some real life commitments.

That said, the challenge reward is nice...

So... I think I will just go with the flow, if I do play the league, it will be on a casual level enough to get the 24 challenge weapon MTX. (Hmm... I wonder if this is still considered casual lol)

So I decided to check my min-max in Standard.



My standard gear - Can't believe I got a perfect 2.0 Bottled Faith.



PoB

I will compare after the league to see how things change. After the opening weekend of course ;).

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Ahewaz wrote:

So I decided to check my min-max in Standard.

Spoiler

That's some HUGE numbers there! Nice! :)

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Vei wrote:

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Ahewaz wrote:

So I decided to check my min-max in Standard.

Spoiler

That's some HUGE numbers there! Nice! :)

Found better gear!




PoB -

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Ahewaz wrote:

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Vei wrote:

"

Ahewaz wrote:

So I decided to check my min-max in Standard.

Spoiler

That's some HUGE numbers there! Nice! :)

Found better gear!

Spoiler

Spoiler

PoB -

Spoiler

https://pastebin.com/RQse6X1t

HUGE --> INSANE ;)

From Patch Notes:

"Added a new “Prismatic” Gem Tag. This applies to skills which pick a random element to attack with, avoiding choosing the same element twice in a row. Elemental Hit and Wild Strike now have this tag."

Build dead?
If new "prismatic" tag means no more fire, ice, lightning tag then all damage increase from "+skill gem level to this element type attacks" aka Frostferno is dead in the water.