Elemental Buzzsaw & Static Strike - Solo the entire game, quickly and cheaply 1.1.0 update

Any guide which direction with passives should I go first? Sorry, about stupid questions but I'm still relatively new to this game and if you could just tell me a few major points I should be aiming at and in what order. Thanks in advance.

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OwiecPL wrote:

Any guide which direction with passives should I go first? Sorry, about stupid questions but I'm still relatively new to this game and if you could just tell me a few major points I should be aiming at and in what order. Thanks in advance.

Seeing as people keep asking and I'm enjoying this build, I might as well give back a little. Mathil's advice would probably override my own.

For the passive tree linked in the OP.

The following is an attempt to balance getting across the tree as quickly as possible for critical early nodes in a way that won't get you killed while trying to do Cruel:

1) Get Harrier
2) Get Sentinel
3) Take the left side of the health circle
4) Get Resolute Technique (do not pick up Elemental Adaptation yet)
5) Get Charisma
6) Get the two aura nodes just above Harrier
7) Get Sovereignty
8) Get Influence

This can, and should, be tampered with depending on your gear, levelling experience and whether or not you will group to get past any issues you have with progression bosses. The following can either be followed during or after you finish the progression above - they are no particular order and you should be able to pick and choose what you want at that point if you've understood the way the build works.

A) Fill out the Scion health circle for more health
B) Acrobatics for more damage avoidance
C) Ballistic Mastery and the Projectile Damage nodes for more damage
D) Stun Recovery and Heart of Oak nodes for handling stun lock and life regen
E) Finesse for dexterity and attack speed
F) Catalyse for a big damage boost, and a bunch of health along the way and just past it
G) Holy Strength health cluster for a small aura boost, some strength and 32% health
H) Chaos resist and hybrid life nodes - these are usually only going to be important when you hit higher level maps. While levelling use flasks to handle chaos.
I) Inner Force for a chunky aura boost.
J) Berserking for a big attack speed increase.

Remember that you can look at your current character's skill tree by clicking on the portrait at the top of the page when you're signed in, that can help you compare where you are to where Mathil's tree suggests you be at 95.

I didn't strictly level with this build from 1 (I have a bunch of levelling uniques), but the above is a fairly accurate representation of the path I'd take if I had no gear and wanted to do this from scratch.

So I'm level 56 now, and I've taken all the "reduced mana reservation" nodes in the build, and my reduced mana gem is at 78%.

This allows me to run three 60% auras. However, if I stack Anger + haste + wrath I die. Fast. I have discovered that I need Grace up permanently to give enough mitigation, and Purity of Elements up 99% of the time to avoid being frozen/shocked etc to death.

This means that I'm actually only running one of the DPS auras: Anger.

I can't see how to improve on this without getting Alpha's Howl. Other than waiting (a long time) for my Reduced Mana gem to hit max level, which might allow 60%x3+40%, then the only other option I can see is to run one aura off my health - but that's not working for me as it reduces my health pool to far, and my health is too volatile in combat as it is.

What am I missing? Any way of getting more out of this?

Also, to-date I have found that LGOH >> LL, although I'm levelling both. Can anyone who has levelled past 56 tell me when they found LL surpassed LGOH?

Thanks,
A.

Hello OP and others,

This build looks very helpful and indepth. However, what do you think of replacing haste with empower? Would damage be better?

Also, perhaps one less aura will allow less mana reduced and allow us to remove blood magic?

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Altissimus wrote:

So I'm level 56 now, and I've taken all the "reduced mana reservation" nodes in the build, and my reduced mana gem is at 78%.

This allows me to run three 60% auras. However, if I stack Anger + haste + wrath I die. Fast. I have discovered that I need Grace up permanently to give enough mitigation, and Purity of Elements up 99% of the time to avoid being frozen/shocked etc to death.

This means that I'm actually only running one of the DPS auras: Anger.

I can't see how to improve on this without getting Alpha's Howl. Other than waiting (a long time) for my Reduced Mana gem to hit max level, which might allow 60%x3+40%, then the only other option I can see is to run one aura off my health - but that's not working for me as it reduces my health pool to far, and my health is too volatile in combat as it is.

What am I missing? Any way of getting more out of this?

Also, to-date I have found that LGOH >> LL, although I'm levelling both. Can anyone who has levelled past 56 tell me when they found LL surpassed LGOH?

Thanks,
A.

To be honest, your gear must be terrible and/or you're facetanking stuff you shouldn't be. If you need Purity of Elements while levelling in Merciless, you are lacking resists. If you need Grace, you either have zero health or you're standing still and taking large numbers of attacks when you shouldn't be.

You're dropping two DPS auras which is causing your outbound DPS to be poor, resulting in longer fights and bad life leech.

If you truly believe you can't fix any of the above, buying an Alpha's Howl won't help you aside from make you immune to freeze. The only recommendation if you can't fix your gear or stop taking damage is to stick to safe areas to level and join groups to get past progression blockers like Vaal.

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CNwhitenight wrote:

Hello OP and others,

This build looks very helpful and indepth. However, what do you think of replacing haste with empower? Would damage be better?

Also, perhaps one less aura will allow less mana reduced and allow us to remove blood magic?

You don't have any physical damage to leech mana using physical leech from gear and there are no mana regen nodes taken. If I take out Blood Magic from my 5L I end up with a 4 link spectral throw that consumes 104 mana a second. If you were to add another gem in there, you'd be likely looking at anywhere from 115 to 140 mana per second. If you put mana leech in as a 6, you'd need somewhere in the vicinity of 1100+ base mana pool to sustain using spectral throw in boss fights due to the 12.5% mana leech rate limit. With Acrobatics, this is an incredibly hard number to achieve. Keep in mind that you would only have approximately 22-24% of your mana pool available as a ramp and Spectral Throw has a slight delay before you start leeching.

Empower would need to make up the dps difference Haste's 17% attack speed increase makes, not counting the benefit of movement speed. The addition of two levels to Anger and Wrath gives just over 16% increase in average damage, not counting the damage from weapon and any other flat sources.

Edit: Lastly, Haste is an incredible addition to the party. I honestly don't spend much time soloing with this character, not because I don't enjoy it, but because it's so insanely efficient to group. One of the guys I run with is a top tier LA and my increase to his DPS is over 150% (not 50%) due to his attack speed and gear/build synergy.

is the elemental damage from rings / boots boosted by "%increase elemental dmg with weapons"?

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scorburel wrote:

is the elemental damage from rings / boots boosted by "%increase elemental dmg with weapons"?

Yes, the flat elemental damage applies to your Spectral Throw which is an attack which uses weapons. This is boosted by your increased WED. Keep in mind that at higher levels it's not really a significant amount of overall DPS due to the scaling of your auras.

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devoir wrote:

The following is an attempt to balance getting across the tree as quickly as possible for critical early nodes in a way that won't get you killed while trying to do Cruel:

1) Get Harrier
2) Get Sentinel
3) Take the left side of the health circle
4) Get Resolute Technique (do not pick up Elemental Adaptation yet)
5) Get Charisma
6) Get the two aura nodes just above Harrier
7) Get Sovereignty
8) Get Influence

This can, and should, be tampered with depending on your gear, levelling experience and whether or not you will group to get past any issues you have with progression bosses. The following can either be followed during or after you finish the progression above - they are no particular order and you should be able to pick and choose what you want at that point if you've understood the way the build works.

My advice:

1) Grab Harrier and Sentinel first.
2) Head towards Charisma. Grab intelligence nodes above Harrier and strength nodes to the left of Sentinel as necessary for gem leveling.
3) Acrobatics. This skill is great to have early on.
4) Heart of Oak, which will help you to use Blood Magic. Grab health nodes near Path of the Warrior as you see fit.
5) Alternate between heading towards Resolute Technique (you don't need this skill too soon) and Influence. Grab Berserking when you can.
6) Head for Sovereignty next.

That, to me, is the foundation of the build. Afterwards, whatever you prioritize is probably fine. The trick is to alternate between paths early on so you can use multiple gems that require different stats (Dex, Int, Str). Run Anger and Wrath together as soon as possible while using Spectral Throw with Blood Magic (as Mathil already said). My 3rd aura was Haste as I finished up Cruel difficulty, but Grace is so much better for Merciless.

"

Altissimus wrote:

So I'm level 56 now, and I've taken all the "reduced mana reservation" nodes in the build, and my reduced mana gem is at 78%.

This allows me to run three 60% auras. However, if I stack Anger + haste + wrath I die. Fast. I have discovered that I need Grace up permanently to give enough mitigation, and Purity of Elements up 99% of the time to avoid being frozen/shocked etc to death.

Anger + Wrath + Grace is the way to go (if you have a decent fast-hitting weapon, enemies will go down easily without Haste anyway). For elements, know what you'll be fighting and cater your accessories with elemental resists to the enemy if you're having trouble, or swap out one of your auras for a Purity one. Boots with +30% movement speed can really help you to get out of the way of elemental attacks. Chaos is another matter at first... I just kite.

After I switched out Faster Projectiles and replaced Karui Ward the range seams halved.
What options do we have for increasing the range?

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scorburel wrote:

After I switched out Faster Projectiles and replaced Karui Ward the range seams halved.
What options do we have for increasing the range?

Weird, I think the projectiles travel pretty far on their own. I've noticed that clicking on an enemy to attack walks you in closer than you need to be. If you attack the ground in front of you instead, you can hit enemies at a greater distance.