Ripped my lvl 88 Poison Trapper today. I was stupid enough to open a Detonate Dead Strong box in a long hallway. It hit me when I was almost off the edge of the last corpses but it one-shot me at 5k HP and 45 % spell dodge anyways.
A bit frustrated I did the merciless lab in standard which I wanted to do at lvl 90 (so sure it was going to be 90 this time but I guess I will never have lvl 90 char in HC, lol). Worked out although the last Izaro fight had me sweating.
Figuring out what to do next. Any suggestions for a fun spell build, a fun tanky-melee build? Also found a Voltaxic Rift the other day so I might go with that one.
Voltaxic spark is pretty faceroll, scion deadeye/zerker and there's two major build paths. One you go left towards templar for more hp + ele dmg, or you go to the right towards ranger for double dipping chaos damage, frenzy charges, acrobatics and a little less raw hp/ dmg. Lightning arrow + blast rain is pretty strong as well, and you could probably do something with shrapnel shot if you wanted.
Earthquake is pretty strong, but as with all melee it suffers from having to get close to stuff and is more limited in map mods. You can go gladiator for 75/75 block which is pretty good though. Varunasutra or w/e it's called makes gearing pretty trivial. Not sure what other melee are super great this time around.
Merc lab isn't that bad... you could probably have done it at 70-80 with no real problems. I waited a long time to do it and I ended up facerolling it completely (to be fair I did map argus with no problems before I did merc lab soooo~).
Voltaxic Spark is great, in fact a little too great. You can even go CI for it. I made a build with which I got about 6k ES without Discipline and 8,3k with Discipline and with Vaal Pact, Vaal Pact is ridiculous with Spark... I died a few times because I leveled without picking up many life nodes, but since mapping with Voltaxic and Vaal Pact I haven't died once (lvl 90 atm). Can offscreen bossess if necessary, but it usually isn't. Atziri is ezpz and I'm playing unidentified rare maps whenever possible without any problems. Even did Poorjoy's twice (monsters are really tanky against chaos dmg here) and Whakaruablabla Strand Map boss was easy too.
But I wouldn't really recommend CI, it's not fun for the lab. Even though it works pretty fine with Darkscorn + Soulstrike in weapon switch for traps.
On April 05 2016 03:06 ticklishmusic wrote: What movement skill are you using? I'm running blink arrow right now.
Not sure how to approach the trio, is it just running around and spamming spark?
I could get to 6k hp ezpz if I upgraded gear I think, still no jewels and eke out ~200 more hp on armor. Could probably pick up Atziri's step.
Yup, I got 15k dps Spark (idk how much with Elemental Overload which I also have) and in that trio room I just cast Spark until everything dies without worrying about the order. I got both 5L Spark and Vaal Spark though, and with both of them everything melts.
I'm just using Blink Arrow as well, not often needing it though. Mostly for faster movement when my Quicksilver is empty.
I might go for Voltaxic Spark then. A few questions:
- Piercing: Dead Eye + Piercing Shots Wheel seems obvious to me to achieve 100 % but what do you do if you go towards templar as ticklishmusic suggested?
- Poison: I did some research and some people seemed to use this in 2.1. Would you recommend this?
- Berserker: Not sure whether I wanna go Berserker on HC. I guess I'll need the leech though?
- Support Gems: Does Void Manipulation reduce your damage as well? Would you use GMP/LMP or are the spark enough already? Increased Duration/Faster Projectiles? Added Lightning Dmg/Controlled Destruction?
I dipped my toe in HC for the first time ever. Got my toon to 65 and ripped it in A2 merciless to a Perandus mob. I was running the high dex Iron Commander build. Fun build but also a bit boring at the same time.
-Pierce: pierce support + drillneck, don't need wheel. if you go towards templar i think you follow the tree ziggyd did, should be able to find by googling and IIRC he has a video. -I use poison, it does a ton of deeps, makes a lot of sense if you to the right b/c you get chaos dmg nodes which double dip. -Berserker is for the leech, yah. 10% more damage is also good. As Holy mentioned, Vaal Pact with spark is absolutely insane though I personally don't use it. None of the other masteries seem very good to me honestly. -I use spark-spell echo-void manipulation-poison-pierce. tooltip is ~15K without frenzy charges (I have 6, I took the merc kraityn one), it feels a lot stronger since your sparks are bouncing around and hitting enemies multiple times -You can easily break 100k actual dps if you cast a couple times. I melted chateau boss in about 5 seconds with regular old spark, vaal spark is probably a 1HKO on pretty much anything that's not a red map boss/ has big chaos res
this is my current tree, though I might spec out of the upper increased duration cluster (don't think I need) to get points to get a jewel slots + frenzy charge.
Other: -The one holy grail item is the helmet enchant that gives +2 sparks but it's insanely rare -Winds of change gauntlets are pretty good, but not required. Cheapish I think? The downside is you could get more life, res, castspeed with rare gloves OR consider some other unique gloves with whatever benefits and it has a movement reduction modifier, though I run a ton of frenzy charges which offsets that. -Victario's acuity is pretty good, ez frenzy + power charges and the other stats aren't awful -Atziri's step is an option -You can vaal drillneck if you feel lucky -Quality spark w/ increased proj speed is really good -I run clarity + warlords blasphemy + HoT usually, you can play around w/ what auras you want. I used to run grace but it was kinda meh. -Chaos or flame golem are both good options.
Use deadeye + the pierce gem (which is a more multiplier now so a justifiable link) The leech is better than any concerns about 5% increased damage taken Technically you do suffer from void manipulation "reduced dmg" but the double-dipping more multiplier (assuming you use poison) is more than good enough to compensate if you have the links
No GMP/LMP as there are enough sparks already. There are like a billion guides for this build up i think. I know ziggyd posted a video calling it the best build he'd ever played.
I suppose I am going to try and play around with some builds as well now that I'm nearly done with all 40 challenges. I'm sort of interested in practicing in a 'race setting', so builds that people use at the start of new leagues and such. What is most common to level with and then cheaply transition to?
Things I can think of: - self cast spark (level with orb of storms + spark and scales up to lategame quite easily). - traps - sunder -> earthquake - support style builds with tri-curse and/or auras (requires a dedicated party to pay off though). - ca always performs decently well but i think it performs better for solo play than an actual party race scenario.
I was wondering for windripper builds, is there such a thing as a sweet spot for attack speed? I have my crit capped and would like to know how to balance attack speed with raw damage
Just watch old streams of the winterheart racers if you want Kickstart, but most casters go into +1 firestorm after merviel. Before then its spark in corner room for speed brutus kill, firetrap + flametotem to kill adds while running and either spark or frostwavethingy for blue packs.
Melee you have to continuously craft weapons and hope you find correct 3 links and I didn't bother learning that.
On April 05 2016 12:00 AsmodeusXI wrote: Woo hooo~! Cleared Act 1! #NoobAchievements
Yay congrats!
Act 2 Cruel for me now... and on my way out of Act 1, I randomly stumbled across the whole Hideout thing o.O I got really confused when that happened lol. Which masters should I be keeping in my hideout for daily missions and other stuff? What other stuff exactly is there? Who crafts "the best"?
I really, really dislike the hype for what ZiggyD is trying to do with Voltaxic Spark. It puts out a bit more damage than a Champion version, sure but it's not like damage is the main problem of the build.
Scion Deadeye is cute for saving 4 points and the far shot and Berserker is cute for free leech and a bit more damage but the leech can be covered with a boots enchant for most situations and the rest combined doesn't keep up with "You take 24% less damage". Mayyybe a super tanky BM version with Wrath on Essence Worm but apart from that, for HC, Scion has nothing on Duelist imo.