[3.1] The Laserbeam! Crit Ball Lightning build - Clearspeed & Bosskills!

So, in short, how does 3.1 affect this build? Buff, nerf, same-same?

@Aedax:

Impossible to tell before the final 3.1 patchnotes are released.

The Vaal Pact changes will affect the playstyle. Some things will get easier, some will be harder.

A first pro/con brainstorm, assuming we choose to pick CI without VP:

Pro
-immun to any chaos relying boss and chaos in general
-easier no-leech maps due to fast regeneration
-more resistance against oneshot due to higher effective HP
-easier labyrinth runs

Con
-no more afk facetanking shaper beams
-high energy shield gear required
-harder no-regen maps
-stuns can be annoying early with CI

Any additional thoughts now, post patch note release? :)

"

onlyjb wrote:

@Aedax:

Impossible to tell before the final 3.1 patchnotes are released.

The Vaal Pact changes will affect the playstyle. Some things will get easier, some will be harder.

A first pro/con brainstorm, assuming we choose to pick CI without VP:

Pro
-immun to any chaos relying boss and chaos in general
-easier no-leech maps due to fast regeneration
-more resistance against oneshot due to higher effective HP
-easier labyrinth runs

Con
-no more afk facetanking shaper beams
-high energy shield gear required
-harder no-regen maps
-stuns can be annoying early with CI

Correct me if I am wrong ! Once you switch to CI, is Stun Effect based off your ES or life ? AFAIK, this could be a problem for low life but not CI. I had to wear the stun immune ammy with my low life build but not needed for CI build. Maybe we get stunned longer with CI ?

@Aedax:

Beside the changes to Vaal Pact, nothing affects this build.

@thinhnham2806:

With CI stuns will occur more often, right.

You can use the pantheon power

"Soul of the Brine King"
(You cannot be Stunned if you've been Stunned or Blocked a Stunning Hit in the past 2 seconds)

to avoid being stun locked. Since there is an energy shield / stun & block recovery hybrid mod we will build some stun & block recovery anyways and a single stun will be incredible short.

Once you archieved a realy high stun & block recovery you can even get rid of that pantheon power to abuse the frequent stuns. To do so combine "Cast when Stunned" together with "Shock Nova". We used that setup with "Cast when damage taken" in the past, other than CwS this can only be triggered every few seconds. CwS can be triggered up to 4x per second, resulting in brutal Shock Nova waves, annihilating everything in close range.

Why is Herald of Ice used in a lightning build?

Whenever you kill an monster with a crit, Herald of Ice will cause it to explode & shatter.

The explosion deals serious damage to sourunding enemys. Effective especialy if a rare monster stands in a big pack. The pack explodes, explosion damage kills the rare instantly. Also monsters that wasnt touched by your Ball Lightning will die, resulting in a higher clearspeed.

The shatter effect is pretty awesome aswell. Do you ever deleted a pack of porcupine birds and riped on their spikes? Shattered monsters wont trigger effects like theese, cant be revived and cant be exploded by strongboxes etc.

While we scale a lot of spell damage & crit multi (more than % inc lightning damage) and we are using Call of the Brotherhood, even ice damage will scale our total DPS nicely.

I'm playing this build in the abyss league, and i'm lv74 atm. I somehow seem to die a lot. Can this be, it's because this build was aiming for VP? You say I should go for CI now instead, so should I put some skill points into Energyshield now instead into Life?

@VirFortis:

VP was the only reason why this build relied on life in 3.0 - apparently i did not update the build yet.

If you can afford it, the best thing would be to go without life and instead full energy shield in gear and tree. If you cant afford that, you could try to reach the new VP and test it out.

Another option would be to use Artic Armor instead of Herald of Ice for some increased defense.
Playstyle affects your survivabilty heavy, too.

Good luck exile!

This is the only curreny guide about lightning ball. You mind updating the tree for CI? I play mainly HC and would love yo know your thoughts about viability + updating the tree