3.15 League Starters

So since the entire forum is basically nothing but an infinite salt mine about the anti-power creep measures taken in 3.15 and that's super annoying and pointless to read...figured I'd ask the question, now that we've gotten patch notes. Further, I will stipulate - no bitching about nerfs in here. You have literally the rest of the forum to do that with, don't sod this one up too.

Anyways.

What're you doing for league start?

I find myself vacillating between Chieftain Earthbreaker totems and trying the new Summon Reaper. On the one hand, Krunks (Ancestral Warchiefs) has been a safe and stable league start since the dawn of time, and the thought of doing a Krunk build with (almost) any Slam skill I like is super tempting. The idea of Consecrated Path totems is absolutely hysterical, teleporting slambois leaving regen ground errywer...but as my brother pointed out, Perforate could also be pretty amusing depending on whether your Krunks respect your stance or not. if you can switch on the fly between wide-area Perforate and between dumping four Blood-stance Perforate totems on a boss based on stance, that could make for a very dynamic totem build. One could also argue that Krunks suffered less from the support gem rebalance, since you'd be blowing two links on non-DPS supports anyways (Multi-Totem and Earthbreaker Support itself), so you lose less overall damage than the builds that squeezed seven straight-up MOAR gems in.

Chieftain lets you convert damage if you go Cons Path and handles Ignite defense for you, as well as granting all-important totem leech, but it's not as great for Perforate if that works. Definitely the better defensive choice, and defense looks like it's gonna be more important than usual this league so definitely tempting.

On the other hand, Summon Reaper is just cool as hell. Yes, one big minion has never worked as well as flooding the screen with weenies and fighting numbers with numbers, but the Reaper is easier to support in this new ecosystem than other minions. Chance to Bleed could be great, depending on how the gem interprets "damage with weapons". I'll admit I'm hazy on that interaction, so don't quote me on it, but still. The Reaper can do a ton of damage to single heavy targets, and I don't think its debuff to other minions really matters for ordinary clearing. Your minions have never needed to be hory sheet ultra-powerful to clear maps, it's always been about whether your critters can live long enough to handle bosses. The Reaper heals itself by eating your easily summoned, highly disposable minions and is better for dealing with bosses already. A level 21 Summon Skeletons gem with From Dust to let you dump eight skellingbros wherever you need them at a moment's notice for clearing and keeping the Reaper fed, perhaps Summon Phantasm Support on the Reaper itself, and your Reaper build would be fine.

Obviously Necromancer is your premier Generic Minions build, but I could see an argument for Elementalist with Brolems. You don't need Primordial Chain anymore, and all the Elementalist Golem stuff also works with Carrion Golem. Have a Reaper up causing mayhem, have a Carrion Golem up buffing the Reaper and causing some havoc itself (sounds like a great place for a Hungry Loop), back up the Carrion Golem with Stone, Chaos, and Lightning golems (which also gives you your ailment immunity back), and keep something damagey on hand and debuff enemies with Shaper of Storms. Honestly sounds like a lot of fun, especially given the additional control you get over the Reaper. 6L Reaper, 5L Carrion Golem in a Hangerous Fingerband, set the other three up with meat Shield in a 4L, and go to town.

Wubbout you guys? Any fascinating ideas for league start?

Going with a plain, old Raider Smite character. Either 100% lightning, or 50/50 lightning/cold. Going for speed on my starter, to farm some maps and get some currency. Then we'll check out the META, and see if we'll make a character number two, or if we'll min/max the Raider as far as possible.

I'm not fond of minions so...it'll probably be Shield Crush....I have three different ideas about how to build it, once PoB is updated I'll crunch the numbers.

Or maybe I will try Inquisitor, got an idea about that too. Again, need new PoB to flesh it out.

And I'll probably mess with Reaper a bit too...I have a strange idea about how it MIGHT (stressing that might) be open to a kind of abuse...

bleed SST here I think, about the only skill that got a large enough numerical buff that i can start as it with some confidence :p

Reaper looks fun.. but i have Zero hope of it being strong Viable.


For me, it will be one of the 3.

EarthBreaker Totems
Absolution


Build ive used last 3 Leagues

Sadly the build ive been using it takes effort to die and will still hit 40mil+ DPS most likely even after the nerfs.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

bleed SST here I think, about the only skill that got a large enough numerical buff that i can start as it with some confidence :p

The shield skills are honestly starting to look a lot like spell-scaling builds. They get a bunch of flat damage based on gem level and finding a shield with Heap Big Shield Punch numbers isn't really difficult. Finding one with HBSP numbers and other stuff you want is harder, but that's Endgame Optimization anyways.

I have a sneaking suspicion shield skills are gonna be a surprisingly strong starter, and start re-enabling some of the old Southpaw-style builds. Who cares if Brightbeak's damage numbers are basically nonexistent when it's there to add a huge attack speed bonus to your Shield Hijinx. Between Shield Crush for bossing and reworked SST for clearing, I imagine the "Aggressive Shield" build as Chris calls it stands a pretty good chance of being one of those "oh shit this is actually really neat" starter builds.

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1453R wrote:

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Draegnarrr wrote:

bleed SST here I think, about the only skill that got a large enough numerical buff that i can start as it with some confidence :p

The shield skills are honestly starting to look a lot like spell-scaling builds. They get a bunch of flat damage based on gem level and finding a shield with Heap Big Shield Punch numbers isn't really difficult. Finding one with HBSP numbers and other stuff you want is harder, but that's Endgame Optimization anyways.

I have a sneaking suspicion shield skills are gonna be a surprisingly strong starter, and start re-enabling some of the old Southpaw-style builds. Who cares if Brightbeak's damage numbers are basically nonexistent when it's there to add a huge attack speed bonus to your Shield Hijinx. Between Shield Crush for bossing and reworked SST for clearing, I imagine the "Aggressive Shield" build as Chris calls it stands a pretty good chance of being one of those "oh shit this is actually really neat" starter builds.

Same. Plus, there is at least one nice unique shield for it that's not hard to get so it'll probably be cheap, and best weapon is a 1c unique that everyone drops multiple times.

It'll be a cookiecutter build, we'll see if it scales well enough for the endgame.

I'm still thinking about either a) fobidden rite occultist or b) word of winter miner. I'll spend some time in theocrafting tomorrow evening and afterwasds I'm hopefully able to decide.

Just one thing has become clear for me: my last build, vortex spellslinger, won't be played again, because of the trigger changes. spellslinger already reserves a big chunk of mana (which has become even bigger with the multiplier changes) and now I would still have to pay the mana cost for the triggered spells. NOPE.

It feels like Spellslinger gets double-whammied this patch, yeah. Overfat reservation plus full mana cost of the associated spell. Oof. On the other hand, I feel like Spellslinger is supposed to mate a not-insignificant attack with a less-than-6L spell, which it may be able to do. I'm hoping Spellslinger sees some adjustments in 3.16 either way, but it may not be entirely unsalvageable.

Agreed on maybe not using it as a league starter, though. Spellslinger feels like it's gonna be a dicey start, there's more stable options out there.

The cool thing with Forbidden Rite, for me, is that the skill is nearly four times stronger if you don't do the obvious thing and run Chaos Inoculation. Building for life-based Forbidden Rite will be much more difficult, but a lot more rewarding if one can pull it off. Any ideas which way you're swinging, and how to mitigate the huge self-damage you take if you go life-based?

Earthbreaker Chieftan. Has some nice damage amongst the nerfs and a fairly decent defensive node. Will end up trying most of the slams but I suspect blood perforate will be good for bossing, conc path for mapping.