Spark : We reached another level of stupidity

Thing is only certain builds can viably stack all of that stuff to counter Spark plus need to know they are facing it beforehand to prepare. Though any build could potentially go all out the first round, get a win then attempt to stall with such a method. It's a method that's been used versus other builds in the past. It's just very boring and lame especially in a tournament setting. If you can swap between it on and off though it's just strategy. If melee knew they were facing spark they could use this to advance on them then get a kill. Could do it every round with mixed results or like I said, go all in on the first game then lame it out for the rest. Some builds can do this all the time while still doing damage while others can only do it situationally.

1h melee can do this at all times yet still need to close distance
2h melee situationally
trapper all times
caster at all times
bow user situationally similar to 2h melee but without the need to close distance

Texas has a fire trap staff,ea swap so he was able to use this effectively at all times plus control space and the pace of the match via traps/ea.

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lapiz wrote:

Some notion-worthy thoughts:

I dont think assmark is a good idea when opponent is already using all the crit counter things in the game..

Also texas wasnt even using a talisman and most importantly, he didnt use frost wall at all.. Add those and theres very little spark can do.

Its not like you would double your damage if you decided to go full dps and 8k ES

Assasins mark is the best curse to use in any situation with a crit caster, it will add more damage than any other curse will ever add if youre using crit. Even if the opponent has uniyielding and deceiver, you should use assasins mark to negate the effect of those reductions.

Vulnerability is a good side option if your spells deal physical damage, but again the damage is still reduced uppon critting so ass mark is still better.

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@ others, stop worrying about how much tooltip you need to beat X person, its about how high your x-y is paired with crit chance, crit multi and cast time. The damage of 1 spark is what you should focus on, you can have insane cast speed and get 150k dps, but your spark can deal shit base damage yet the cast speed makes up for that on the tooltip.

Focus on x-y and crit before looking at the tooltip, infact... tooltip is garbage in pvp.

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hauntworld1 wrote:

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lapiz wrote:

Some notion-worthy thoughts:

I dont think assmark is a good idea when opponent is already using all the crit counter things in the game..

Also texas wasnt even using a talisman and most importantly, he didnt use frost wall at all.. Add those and theres very little spark can do.

Its not like you would double your damage if you decided to go full dps and 8k ES

Assasins mark is the best curse to use in any situation with a crit caster, it will add more damage than any other curse will ever add if youre using crit. Even if the opponent has uniyielding and deceiver, you should use assasins mark to negate the effect of those reductions.

Vulnerability is a good side option if your spells deal physical damage, but again the damage is still reduced uppon critting so ass mark is still better.

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@ others, stop worrying about how much tooltip you need to beat X person, its about how high your x-y is paired with crit chance, crit multi and cast time. The damage of 1 spark is what you should focus on, you can have insane cast speed and get 150k dps, but your spark can deal shit base damage yet the cast speed makes up for that on the tooltip.

Focus on x-y and crit before looking at the tooltip, infact... tooltip is garbage in pvp.

All true.

Why wouldn't you use Assassins Mark as a caster if you're facing unyielding/deceiver. It's the perfect way to offset it.

On the same note, I know we've been over this a lot. Both crit reduction options lower multiplier by a realistic 40% or so.. versus someone with 500% multiplier they are still doing 3x damage per crit. Crit builds are also pushing the same base damage numbers x-x as non crit..so you're at the end of the day still doing x times more damage on a successful crit. Why as an attack build that can be enfeebled/blinded as well, it's worth it to use Poachers over Assassins mark if you're having trouble hitting people because the damage is still there. As a crit caster Assassins is hands down the best curse though.

Lapiz is right too though you wont do 2x your damage by re-specing to a less tanky spec. The impact passive nodes have on the tree toward damage output is actually very small compared to gear itself/crit itself.

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lapiz wrote:

Some notion-worthy thoughts:

I dont think assmark is a good idea when opponent is already using all the crit counter things in the game..

Also texas wasnt even using a talisman and most importantly, he didnt use frost wall at all.. Add those and theres very little spark can do.

Its not like you would double your damage if you decided to go full dps and 8k ES

You bring up a couple fair points. My initial reactions below:

-Why not use assassin's mark? It takes 1 gem slot and can easily add a ton of damage to your crits. It's especially handy if the person is just running around trying to be immortal. Also forces them to use charges of warding flasks. Not saying I'm right since you have a lot of pvp knowledge but I've found it to be pretty useful and intuitively it makes sense to use if you're going against a tanky build.

-Frost wall is definitely good against spark but not every build has room for CWDT + frost wall nor the cast speed to interchange frost wall / attacks in a fluid manner. Also, spark builds can swap into the pierce gem pretty easily - for example I am able to kill Texas with my pierce setup.

-I'm low life so that's prob why my dps is higher. You're right you can't double your dps just by moving passives around but you can increase it probably ~30% which is still a lot. My point also was that you don't need a giant ES pool while running spark since you're standing still half the time casting spark like a madman while the opponent is off screen.

And just to clarify, I'm in agreement that EA is definitely the strongest build still.

Yeah, I hate this more than EA. It is taking over Sarn arena. I'm very casual--I focus magic find, but have very good gear, which puts me pretty even with a lot of regular builds.

EA is very annoying, but it requires being shot at. There is no hiding from spark. There is no outrunning spark. I hate it.

My friend and I actually encountered this two days ago. The guy literally was killing everyone in Sarn Arena. He wasn't strong but eventually you get tagged with enough sparks that you die. Did I mention the Sparks become invisible?

Anyways, we decided to try and kill him 2v1, me being a Templar with Max block and resist. I managed to get to the guy but he has several layers of defense like temporal chain and frost wall. When you come next to him hundreds of sparks are hitting you and hit recovery kicks in where your character just stands there block without being able to move. Nice!

My friend died on the way there.


It would not be that strong if not for its insane range and duration.

With the release of the multimine support gem: minefield!

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SIQI wrote:

Hence come forth the Full Out DMG Spark Saboteur PVP!
using winds of change + lioneye chest for the 7th link pierce

Spark - Minefield - Remote Mine - Duration - Lightning Pen - BlockPen/FasterProjectile

Start planting mines n popping n as soon as match start. Since your 2k life pool is useless, might as well go in balls deep with a wrath on blood magic for more lightning damage and another 30% from pain attunement. Now sitting at spawn with a gazillion invisible knock back/piercing sparks protecting u from afar, there shall be none to pass that will take away your remaining unreserved 100 life :D

Needless to say, the mana cost will be insane, but you will pretty much win 5/5 by loading up 5 mana flasks hue hue.

And_When_Melee_Bro_Goes_Rant_On_Forum

You just tell him how difficult it was for you to have to press that extra detonate button + mana pots heuhuehue, and the amount of skill involved in the battle for one to take down 10000 hp enemy with only 100 life unreserved
*Kappa.

THOU SHALL NOT PASS THE WALL OF PAIN.

Spark mines were already ridiculous in 2.0. When testing I could instagib Sonnehagal reliably with them using a concept build and a 19/20 spark gem. Sadly it turned into vaal spark and I forgot to sell it when those were hot, since I had no backup I've done no more tests with sparks on my miner. This was with a concept build, not an actual build, just my arc miner with gems removed to scale down damage towards what could be expected from a spark build with mandatory spark support gems.

I also always considered this potential build so broken, that I never advertised it or tried to build for it. it's by far the most anti pvp build that I've been able to imagine.


To me, both those support gems seem bad for pvp in it's current state:
Elemental focus seems the worst to me: players tend to carry immunity enablers to freezing, so when his opponent switches in this gem, that person loses nothing. It's basically a controlled destruction gem without the reduced crit chance. Since I think overall damage after 2.1 was increased too much for pvp, I consider adding even more damage to be bad. And since with the templar ascendency you'd no longer need penetration, a gem slot just happened to free up :p

Minefield too could be considered broken since it will increase the damage of what is already a very high dps skillset. If you use tremor rod to lay mines, an issue you will encounter on live server is that it is easy to lay mines faster than they can be detonated a second time, lowering your actual damage over time. That might be the biggest buff this gem offers. Because of the current implementation pvp damage reduction formula, actual damage per spark will be lowered less than what the less% on the gem says.

We've also only seen the gems at level 1, elemental focus at 20 is pretty predictable, minefield less so. Imo there's not enough data to make a definite conclusion on how broken it will be.

Minefield is most likely going to be like multi trap being 20% less dmg at lv 21

The thing with multitrap/minefield for pvp is that it is a direct 2.4x dmg multiplier, cuz no matter how fast you lay mines, the T used in pvp calculation is still going to be .9 unless the skill has its own fixed T value which overrides it (or unless they do some major changes to pvp calculations in ascendancy).

In pvp with remote mine spark, one is still not going to be using tremor rod. It's still going to be 2x wand/2x dagger with block pen crafted and projectile speed. Going full dmg tree atm with jewels can achieve over 700% increased dmg total to your spark (so x8) with no gear while still having the main projectile speed, pierce, and increased duration clusters. Add in bonuses from gear and a bloodmagic wrath to reach low life mid fight, that is going to be some insane dmg hehe.

With minefield You probably could choose assasin over saboteu

The first time I looked at saboteur, I considered it a noobtrap. People that reason: "it's got mine/trap nodes, therefore it must be best the best choice for my miner/trapper". It has some flavor and will work nicely in concept builds, but any elemental crit miner will be better off choosing something else imo.

On life servers, building a sparker with tremor rod would be pretty unconventional and probably come with some harder gear requirements, but I think that it would ultimately it would have been a lot better than a cookiecutter. I saw getting a lot of projectile speed as the biggest challenge to overcome when going for tremor rod sparks.

And I actually read the minefield gem wrong when I skipped through the video earlier (text > video for me). The gem will give max 9 mines out (without the noobtrap ascendency), placing 3 at a time, which makes tremor rod not the best item for it since the 4th placement will come before the mines can be triggered a 2nd time. The damage potential of minefield in a mine laying speed build does seem completely over the top and would dwarf what I can do with tremor rod.