New Battlemage Possibilities!?

I'm definetely building one. Full Consecrated Ground build.

Consecrated Path for melee. Supported by Melee Phys + ElementalDam + Pulverize + Fist of War + flip-flopping between Fortify, Elemental Focus or Shockwave as 6L.

Purifying Flame for spell. Supported by Combustion + Intensify + Controlled Destruction + Inspiration + Empower

Weapon - high deeps War Stave or 2H Mace for juicy damage added to spells.

Strategy? Forget about attack speed. Hit hard once with Consecrated Path and Fist of War as a follow up (Shockwave is tempting as a 3rd hit), throw 3 purifying flame spells, follow with ConPath. Rinse/repeat.

Why Purifying Flame? Consecrated Ground and Pious Path ascendancy.

Sounds interesting and well worth a try.

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Sazed wrote:

Could you do a CoC with cyclone with battlemage?

Yes and no, key words in instruments of virtue being:

10% more Attack Damage for each Non-Instant Spell you've Cast in the past 8 seconds...

So, you will probably gain some benefits of the ascendancy, but not the 30% more damage because CoC is triggering the skills, not you.

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BMatrim wrote:

I'm definetely building one.

Consecrated Path for melee.
Purifying Flame for spell.

Ah, a man of culture.
I'm not sure if battlemage will be good enough for going hybrid spell/melee though. Or even if it is, it'd probably be better to have a weapon swap. Swapping wouldn't be that hard if your attack / spell are on the same button, just instead of having seporate attack buttons you press a every time you wanna change abilities. Easy.

I'll try it with and without swapping and see how it feels, anyway. My build will be similar to yours except im going ice nova as the spell. I think I'll get enough consecrated ground from consecrated path and also the ascendancy gives consecrated ground while standing still so Ill still have it when novaing. More importantly to me at least though is I wanna try out the new trinity support gem and for that I need two different elements.

Edit: I think staves are definitely the way to go for this sort of hybrid playstyle. You can get phys and spell mods on staves so they can work for both sides, they have a real nice cluster that gives a bunch of crit and can generate endurance charges and power charges with glancing blows, and also there are some sources of attack and cast speed on certain staff nodes. Its pretty hard to get attack/cast speed efficiently otherwise.

Has anyone considered Pillar with Battlemage? If it does work, it might have some decent synergies available with STR stacking.

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BMatrim wrote:

I'm definetely building one. Full Consecrated Ground build.

Consecrated Path for melee. Supported by Melee Phys + ElementalDam + Pulverize + Fist of War + flip-flopping between Fortify, Elemental Focus or Shockwave as 6L.

Purifying Flame for spell. Supported by Combustion + Intensify + Controlled Destruction + Inspiration + Empower

..

Sounds interesting and well worth a try.

I like the idea meanwhile there are not many synergys in pumping Consecrated Ground I think. Since Trinity is one of the strongest ele-supports, you can really good add it to your play style: Attacks with Element one (fire), spells with Element 2 (Lightning).

I think the meta goal with battlemage could be to find a attack that clears and a spell for ST. (Flickr Strike Oro Flamesurge for example.)

I had the idea to use Orb of Storms. Cast in the radius of mobs and stand inside the Orb of Storms with Galvanic Arrow or Lightning Arrow and attack. (These are Lightning Skills which is why the Orb of Storms zaps more). I could imagine that this could be very strong maybe who of you has ideas about it.

I am wondering something

Instruments of Zeal: Gain Fanaticism for 4 seconds on reaching Maximum Fanatic Charges, gain 1 Fanatic Charge every second if you've attacked in the past second.

Does it apply to multistrike? Meaning, will the 2 repeats give 2 extra stacks or will it still be capped as 1 charge secdons.
Meaning you only need 1 attack every second to get the maximum Charge rate?

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I had the idea to use Orb of Storms. Cast in the radius of mobs and stand inside the Orb of Storms with Galvanic Arrow or Lightning Arrow and attack. (These are Lightning Skills which is why the Orb of Storms zaps more). I could imagine that this could be very strong maybe who of you has ideas about it.

Yeah that's what I've been thinking about.
However, I believe it makes more sense to go Melee with a Staff, using either Smite or Static strike because then we can spec into the crit nodes that buff both our attacks and OOS.
I'm also not sure if going fanaticism is worth it. The cast speed isn't that great for OOS if we trigger most of the beams. Could just go Augury instead.

What about using some movement skill (Conc path, flicker strike, leap slam etc.) as the attack and then BV + Spell echo as the spell? I would imagine you could keep up some BV charges easily with all the cast speed while mainly using your attack skill to move around?

Still need to theorycraft further and it depends a lot on how fanaticism works but it seems to me simple set ups to put you in or near a pack and pump out big meaty spells is the best way to take advantage of the branch.

Using a movement skill like shield charge/leap slam/whirling blades to keep charges up and then pop off with shock nova or crackling lance into a pack or boss and moving on would be the smoothest play.

The weird per second limit would take practice and high attack speed to be consistent and part of me wonders if its even worth it tbh.

In any case my first try at this build will likely be some flavor of leap slam/shock nova. Keep it crit, keep it simple.