Eearthquake dead at 87.
Ice Trapper dead at 87.
Spec Throw aborted at 47 or 48.
Yes, I have a problem. But I'm really enjoying this league, so I don't want to stop yet. I think I have one or two more deaths in me, then it's going on the proverbial shelf for another 3 or 4 months.
Don't ask me to /played, I don't want to know. The Steam timer is bad enough.
It's about mitigation, which I'm terrible at. High Life on It, CWDT jank, MoM/EB are all things I should do, but I seem to like playing glass cannon style
Remade my Earthquake Maurader and I'm lv52 in act 4 cruel already. I basically ran through most of the leveling process, mainly killed blue mob packs and anything that was blocking my path. Probably my fastest leveling feat (3 days).
Daresso is gonna be tough. I'll get to an appropriate level with some Dried Lake grinding and then go for it. Lost two characters to him last league lol. Assuming I kill him it'll be smooth sailing to act 3 merciless. My plan is to get to Dried Lake merciless and just farm shit. Build wealth and gear for future characters.
BTW yesterday was rng heaven for me. Ten alch and fuse drops, a nice 2H leveling unique, lots of scouring drops. And Cardiro sold me 10 chaos for 103 coins lmao.
OK, you don't need more life. 202% is quite enough. Though I suppose you're reserving some of it. Hm.
Alright, a few things I would change:
- Abandon Blood Magic and use the gem instead. There might be way to cast Cyclone off of mana, but I've never investigated how difficult this is.
- Weapon Range > AoE for Cyclone, but I supposed you want it for Ice Nova. My solution would be to abandon ComK entirely. Ahem.
- Definitely Run Blood Rage for Frenzy Charges, no matter what. Every one of them is +4% more damage. "More" means they're multiplicative, so they're worth a lot more than the additive "increased" multipliers. You already have enough life regen to run it without degen.
- See if you can comfortably proc Elemental Equilibrium (self-cast ice nova if ComK doesn't work out) or see if you can hit ~90% accuracy without Resolute Technique so you can use Orb of Storms + Increased Critical Strikes to proc Elemental Overload on top for 40% more damage. This combo would massively boost your damage.
- Invest into a dual curse set-up using Blasphemy to turn them into auras. Flammability and Ele Weakness for pure damage, Flammability and Enfeeble/TempChains/Warlord's Mark for defense, or Flammability + Warlord's Mark. How: Whispers of Doom passive, Windscream boots, Doedre's Damning ring, or a +1 curse corrupted amulet
- If you're OK with ditching Oro's (which is what I would ultimately recommend), you can use an axe for max weapon range and all those juicy two-hand damage nodes... Phys damage also holds up much better than elemental. You don't have to jump through as many hoops (see above) to keep up. Kaom's Primacy might be cheap and plenty damage for a while yet.
Here's what I've come up with under the assumption that you'll keep Oro's, use the BM gem instead of the passive and run two curse-auras and proc EE using Ice Nova or another non-fire spell. The Inquisitor's Instruments of Virtue would be a logical choice going forward:
That Duelist stuff is really good, especially the Weapon Range node, even though it looks like a waste.
Your main link would then be:
Cyclone - Blood Magic - Weapon Elemental - Fire Penetration - Fortify, which should be good for both AoE and maybe for single target... You miss out on Fortify's damage with Oro's though, so effectively it will only be a 3L. Hm. :/
In summation: Words, words, words.
Level another character or effectively change this one into a pure Oro's Cyclone character. /shrug Best I could do.
- See if you can comfortably proc Elemental Equilibrium (self-cast ice nova if ComK doesn't work out) or see if you can hit ~90% accuracy without Resolute Technique so you can use Orb of Storms + Increased Critical Strikes to proc Elemental Overload on top for 40% more damage. This combo would massively boost your damage.
I've seen this Orb/Ele Overload combo before, but don't understand how it's a thing. The gem says it has a normal crit rate (5, 7?). Why does everyone think that it'll always trigger Ele Overload?
Couple of things come together there. It's stationary, has decent AoE and hits fast enough to hit every mob within range at least once during its life. Since we're dealing with groups most of the time you have plenty of chances to get a crit. Add on top the buff's duration of 8 seconds and you can pretty much rely on it being up.* On my Ice Trapper I even used it on bosses, although many are too mobile for it. Cyclone solves that issue, incidentally.
*I expect that to be cut in half by the end of the league.
I've been thinking about how Perandus mobs will impact a less tanky character lol. I want to make a Storm Call Templar, not glass cannon but not tanky...given how Perandus mobs swarm I wonder how that will play out.
Right now all Perandus mobs/bosses do is keep my endurance charges up thanks to Warlord's Mark. That plus Fortify on Earthquake makes me unkillable against them.
Yeah, I was clearly not prepared for this given that my first two characters dumped on them. Can't let yourself get cornered by the bosses as a caster. Oh well, live and learn. Or rip and sorta kinda learn, I guess.
Vulnerability, Enfeeble, Temporal Chains on Heretic's Veil (links with Blasphemy)
Clarity and Discipline on Prism Guardian (links with Blood Magic)
And to top it all off I have Voice Beacon and Singularity. I'm a walking debuff engine.
I can't wait to go full low-life, get another aura in there (Grace? Haste?) and then Pain Attunement + Redbeak.
OK, you don't need more life. 202% is quite enough. Though I suppose you're reserving some of it. Hm.
Alright, a few things I would change:
- Abandon Blood Magic and use the gem instead. There might be way to cast Cyclone off of mana, but I've never investigated how difficult this is.
- Weapon Range > AoE for Cyclone, but I supposed you want it for Ice Nova. My solution would be to abandon ComK entirely. Ahem.
- Definitely Run Blood Rage for Frenzy Charges, no matter what. Every one of them is +4% more damage. "More" means they're multiplicative, so they're worth a lot more than the additive "increased" multipliers. You already have enough life regen to run it without degen.
- See if you can comfortably proc Elemental Equilibrium (self-cast ice nova if ComK doesn't work out) or see if you can hit ~90% accuracy without Resolute Technique so you can use Orb of Storms + Increased Critical Strikes to proc Elemental Overload on top for 40% more damage. This combo would massively boost your damage.
- Invest into a dual curse set-up using Blasphemy to turn them into auras. Flammability and Ele Weakness for pure damage, Flammability and Enfeeble/TempChains/Warlord's Mark for defense, or Flammability + Warlord's Mark. How: Whispers of Doom passive, Windscream boots, Doedre's Damning ring, or a +1 curse corrupted amulet
- If you're OK with ditching Oro's (which is what I would ultimately recommend), you can use an axe for max weapon range and all those juicy two-hand damage nodes... Phys damage also holds up much better than elemental. You don't have to jump through as many hoops (see above) to keep up. Kaom's Primacy might be cheap and plenty damage for a while yet.
Here's what I've come up with under the assumption that you'll keep Oro's, use the BM gem instead of the passive and run two curse-auras and proc EE using Ice Nova or another non-fire spell. The Inquisitor's Instruments of Virtue would be a logical choice going forward:
That Duelist stuff is really good, especially the Weapon Range node, even though it looks like a waste.
Your main link would then be:
Cyclone - Blood Magic - Weapon Elemental - Fire Penetration - Fortify, which should be good for both AoE and maybe for single target... You miss out on Fortify's damage with Oro's though, so effectively it will only be a 3L. Hm. :/
In summation: Words, words, words.
Level another character or effectively change this one into a pure Oro's Cyclone character. /shrug Best I could do.
Thanks for the insight. The Pyre is there for Herald/Ice Nova. So it wouldn't proc ele unless I started adding some other damage and removed Pyre?
I was running a single curse aura before for a while to before putting it on a low level 'cast when taken' since I go through basically all T9 mobs very quickly while moving at 180% speed. The Fortify on other Cyclone is just for ease of tapping 'Q' every 5 seconds, weapon swap Oro has single target DPS on it.
I got some ideas to work with now though. As much fun as auto pilot Vengeance+CoMK is it's gotten a bit old and I want more damage / advance in maps.
Yeah, Pyre would have to go, at which point you might as well drop CoMK as well since you lose all the fire scaling on Ice Nova.
This is the kind of thing that makes builds less intimidating after a while. Some choices naturally fall into place because the alternatives are too prohibitive for one reason or another.
Some suggestions, ordered from simple to more elaborate. They involve giving up CoMK and switching to pure fire dmg cyclone. (I did play an Oro's cycloner 2 major patches ago. Cyclone the skill gem itself is weaker compared to before, but several other things are stronger.)
Gems:
- Fitting in Blood rage will be a small boost in terms of attack speed. (You should already be getting frenzy charges from your Oro's ignites.)
- In terms of changing your main 5L, the simplest boost would be to swap out CoMK and Ice Nova for Concentrated Effect and Increased Area of Effect.
- Possible alternatives include Added Cold, if you're keeping the Pyre ring. However, this gem has high dex requirements. Another alternative is Elemental focus, but that has anti-synergy with Oro's because it stops you from igniting (not that important since your ignites with cyclone are relatively weak), but also stops you from getting free frenzy charges from those ignites, which are quite valuable. Blood rage should keep your frenzy charges up against packs, but if you have a prolonged fight against a boss without adds to regularly kill, they could expire. You might still want to give the gem a try just to see if you like how it feels in the end. Faster attacks will also do a lot for your build right now since you have hardly any other sources of increased attack speed.
Passives:
- First off, I am entirely unconvinced by the viability of elemental equilibrium, even if you keep CoMK, because cyclone does a lot of small hits, and as soon as you land that first hit, mobs will start to have bonus fire resist against your cyclone until CoMK procs
- If you don't want to spend a lot of refund points/regrets, there are a few minor things you can try. First off, there is a unique jewel, Warlord's reach, that gives you +1 weapon range. Since Oro's as a 2h sword has 6 range, the +1 effectively gives you 16% more weapon range. Second, if you unspec Resolute Technique and find that you have 80% or more accuracy without RT, taking Elemental Overload should increase your overall damage.
- However, if you are willing to change more of your passive tree, I would suggest acquiring a fireborn jewel (which can be used to convert melee physical damage nodes into melee fire damage nodes) and pathing down to duelist. The main benefits of pathing this way over your current tree is the +2 weapon range node (which overshadows the witch aoe nodes you currently are taking) along with a large amount of valuable attack speed, along with an ample amount of increased damage.
Perhaps something like this (the fireborn jewel goes into the socket below the duelist start): https://www.pathofexile.com/passive...07QUteu9AoF4TIVXcPQd1wKYuU9NvcmxsRjIJbzsAAA==
You can also later path towards the attack life leech nodes nearby too. They work with elemental damage like Oro's, unlike most other sources of leech.
- The "Augury of Penitence" ascendancy node is also good for your build, since "enemies take x% increased damage" is effectively a more damage multiplier because of its unique wording.
Gear:
- I don't see many simple ways to boost your damage from gear, except perhaps some attack speed on gloves. However, assuming you already have capped elemental resistances, getting gear with more armour and life will help survivability. The fire version of the Doryani's unique belt might also be helpful to provide a (tiny) amount of life leech and some armour.
- If you really want to take full advantage of the consecrated ground nodes you have, why not carry a sulphur flask? The granite/basalt flask combination is also quite useful for mitigating physical damage, but perhaps you don't really want to give up the zoom-zoom flasks you have now. Atziri's promise is also another flask to consider, it gives a damage boost when it's active, along with a bit of leech
Gear:
- I don't see many simple ways to boost your damage from gear, except perhaps some attack speed on gloves. However, assuming you already have capped elemental resistances, getting gear with more armour and life will help survivability. The fire version of the Doryani's unique belt might also be helpful to provide a (tiny) amount of life leech and some armour.
- If you really want to take full advantage of the consecrated ground nodes you have, why not carry a sulphur flask? The granite/basalt flask combination is also quite useful for mitigating physical damage, but perhaps you don't really want to give up the zoom-zoom flasks you have now. Atziri's promise is also another flask to consider, it gives a damage boost when it's active, along with a bit of leech
Yeah I was looking at IAS on gloves as an upgrade along with some extra damage / life on rings.
I took a look at the belt you mentioned previously and the flask as well but wasn't ready to sink anything until I had a better overall picture.
I could carry a 'ground' making flask instead of quicksilver but I like the zoom zoom. Currently I swap out flasks if needed (Stack Granite and a +90% armor bonus on another flask if its a hard hitting phys boss).
I'll have to fiddle around with the numbers and see how clear speed with better cyclone feels first.
Any of you buy that new currency tab? That thing is the best thing I have ever purchased in this game. I was going to wait until it was a little cheaper to get it but I had some leftover points and decided to jump in.
Any of you buy that new currency tab? That thing is the best thing I have ever purchased in this game. I was going to wait until it was a little cheaper to get it but I had some leftover points and decided to jump in.
after a run + vendor stop, rapidly ctrl clicking everything into place is so easy now when not having to worry about management - love that it does the partial currencies as well
Any of you buy that new currency tab? That thing is the best thing I have ever purchased in this game. I was going to wait until it was a little cheaper to get it but I had some leftover points and decided to jump in.
I'm having a blast with my Earthquaker (no pun intended) lol. Lv64, 3.6k life, 6.4k armor. And I just bought this
(my passive tree attack speed nodes gets the speed to 1.4)
Needless to say I'm going to be salty as fuck when I eventually die. Almost died right before buying that last night. I opened a rare lockbox in an enclosed area...bad idea.
High chaos res is pretty nice for the Perandus bosses that can show up.
As for Dom, you'll be fine. I don't know if they nerfed him or if it's just power creep, but I shit on him every time. Just avoid his attacks and make sure you have a bleed flask for 2nd phase. It was over in a flash on my EQ character.
Thanks for the offfer but i worked out a deal with a friend of a friend so it didnt go to waste. Been pretty lucky so far this league in general but didnt expect that to popup.
Yea drops have been great this league. Also the trading economy has been beneficial to me currency wise. I have (well, had) a shit ton of jewellers/chrom/fuses/etc which I've traded for chaos or alchs. Last night I made 18 chaos just by trading jewellers.
Dominus wasn't bad. His lightning attack does a lot of dmg but is easy to avoid. I'd imagine if you aren't lightning capped it could kill you. No problems in the Septre Of God either, although admittedly I did skip Caligula. Lots of map drops - I have two tropical ones, a desert map, and one more I can't remember.
I think I'll farm/grind Dried Lake until I'm 70 and then do a tier one map. Then go back to grinding Dried Lake until the mid 70s or so. I'm guessing Daresso is no fucking joke.
That Blade Vortex character I was making? Already killed it.
Zana mission this time. Forgot what the Academy boss does and thought I'd just burst it down. Big mistake.
I had switched to CI shortly before and you know what? It was not worth it. Because I 'only' had 7.5k ES. The stun and freeze susceptibility is really, really not worth it until you have like 9k ES.
As for Blade Vortex: I really like it, but it's annoying without Increased Duration. I had my only red slot reserved for Life Leech, so I couldn't use it. The skill duration nodes were just not enough. Also, using the skill on a Witch was perhaps not the best idea, as she only had her ES and a tiny bit of block for defenses. Shadow makes more sense with Evasion, considering how close you are to the mobs at all times.
I briefly considered stacking freeze chance for extra defence, or buying a Heretic's Veil to plop Temp Chains into it, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't as I was pretty much done with that character already. Really didn't feel like mapping with it.
Now I have 7ex pure and a couple more in change burning a hole into my stash. I think I'm just going to make an EQ Champion to finish up a couple challenges (I'm two away from the weapon effect), and then push into red maps until I get bored or run out. I think I'm mostly done with this league otherwise.
I'm 91 on my new char now, since my 92 died died last week. Thinking of benching this char and starting a new voltaxic spark. That build looks very fun to me.
Sustaining red maps is a chore anyway. Only white maps or low yellow maps drop in t12 and t13 and you're spending 5 chaos minimum on rolling maps, which includes chisel+90iiq15packsize±vaal+zanamod. I've done like 500+ maps in PHC and I've only gotten one pendarus maps chest and zero carto boxes, meh. I'm still walking away with a small profit from all the drops in red maps though.
Also, did a village ruin map with a friend that was funny. He just got lvl 80 on his new voltaxic spark and wanted to join my maps, lol. He runs in to the boss room, kites the dog out and kills him first even though I tell him to bring them down together, then proceeds to get one shotted by the chicken even though he has 5k hp and fortify up, lmao. I tried to solo the enraged chicken, but his rain of arrows and single bow shots were hitting me for 4k each, had to back out.
I'm having a blast with my Earthquaker (no pun intended) lol. Lv64, 3.6k life, 6.4k armor. And I just bought this
(my passive tree attack speed nodes gets the speed to 1.4)
Needless to say I'm going to be salty as fuck when I eventually die. Almost died right before buying that last night. I opened a rare lockbox in an enclosed area...bad idea.
8 chaos. The lowest I saw on poe.trade was 5c but the guys who were selling it weren't online. Saw someone offer it in trade chat and pulled the trigger. So far I haven't bought or sold anything with poe.trade, or used the new trading system.
I really want the portal effect, which means I will have to do 36/40 challenges?
Which 4 (or so) do you think would be the hardest to do?
Its already forcing me to do things I haven't had to do before. In previous challenges, I only had 2 level 87 characters and the highest zana I got was ~7.5 levels. I think those are some of the easier 'hard achievements' to do so I need to focus on completing them.
My Frost bomb/Ice Trap saboteur is progressing nicely. Just starting mapping blue tier 1/tier 2 yesterday @ lvl 70 or so.
At the start of the league they were going for up to 1ex, which was kind of crazy. I guess everyone has one now, so it tanked hard. This is on top of the devaluation from them increasing a bunch of drop rates and higher tiers of physical mods. They were pretty low last league as well.
Perandus made a lot of uniques dirt cheap though, that's true. Most of my wealth came from Cadiro flipping.
In the past I've mostly been self-found depending on the chaos/regal recipes for most of my wealth and trading in fusings/jewelers/chroms/alters up for exalt.
I'll probably have to do lots of trading to generate currency to pay for some of the harder achievements.
Any thoughts on how GGG will incorporate Perandus stuff into the standard league as well as whatever new league they introduce in 3 months? I think I've asked this before but since then GGG has kinda reduced some of the uniques that Cardiro can sell. Clearly the league is very successful/popular, I'm sure it'll make it into the next league. Whereas Tempest and Warbands kinda seemed like they were DOA in terms of hype.
I wouldn't mind a new addition where fragments of Perandus portals drop. Once you collect x amount you can open a portal to a past era of Wraeclast, during the Perandus reign. Cardiro would be inside the portal and give you daily-type missions (assassination, kill x of enemies in y minutes, sneak into palace and steal x without being detected, kill Izaro, etc). The reward would be a large amount of coins (50-200) depending on difficulty. That way GGG could reduce the amount of Perandus packs you find in the game, to make room for whatever new league feature they introduce.
In the past I've mostly been self-found depending on the chaos/regal recipes for most of my wealth and trading in fusings/jewelers/chroms/alters up for exalt.
I'll probably have to do lots of trading to generate currency to pay for some of the harder achievements.
I seem to have hit a wall trading stuff now. I only really sell cheap uniques for 8alts and the occasional piece of rare gear for 1c. Granted most of my items are pretty meh and all the good ones I sold were towards the beginning of the league. My spotty play time hasn't helped either but at least the league will probably last much longer for me than usual since I am dragging things out.
Any thoughts on how GGG will incorporate Perandus stuff into the standard league as well as whatever new league they introduce in 3 months? I think I've asked this before but since then GGG has kinda reduced some of the uniques that Cardiro can sell. Clearly the league is very successful/popular, I'm sure it'll make it into the next league. Whereas Tempest and Warbands kinda seemed like they were DOA in terms of hype.
I wouldn't mind a new addition where fragments of Perandus portals drop. Once you collect x amount you can open a portal to a past era of Wraeclast, during the Perandus reign. Cardiro would be inside the portal and give you daily-type missions (assassination, kill x of enemies in y minutes, sneak into palace and steal x without being detected, kill Izaro, etc). The reward would be a large amount of coins (50-200) depending on difficulty. That way GGG could reduce the amount of Perandus packs you find in the game, to make room for whatever new league feature they introduce.
I think they might revert back to their previous form after this league. They seems to have gotten quite a few new players hooked this league and they can try something a little more "hardcore" the next league as I am sure they will higher a higher player count than usual. I am not sure what is so appealing about this league honestly. Don't care too much for the lab but the ascendancy classes are a nice twist and the coins being another source of income is nice to help lessen the grind for players who can't commit huge chunks of time per day. It is going to be hard to try and balance the perandus caches in the game without making the economy for the coins too hard for many casual players to get into. Reducing their spawn rate by about 60% I think would be a good start to see how it plays with the other parts they have implemented already.
After 5 rips with melee heroes I decided to go range and try Tornado Shot. I've never made a char around this skill which was clearly a mistake since it's ton of fun
I don't know what changed for me but every attack is causing a mini stun on me. If a group of tentacle things start shooting me I'd be locked in place until they are done.
