[3.4] Teleports Behind You - Poet's Pen Lightning Warp & Arc, MF / Facetank t16 / Shaper / U. Elder

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Arc and Firestorm is such a weird choice to level a Pen character. Why not just use the usual VD links? VD has much higher effectiveness (DPS and range) on lower levels and with no gear; to a point where you could literally level to 70 without taking any skill points if you want, and you know this as well. You can always swap to Arc/LW later on.

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dariidar wrote:

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Arc and Firestorm is such a weird choice to level a Pen character. Why not just use the usual VD links? VD has much higher effectiveness (DPS and range) on lower levels and with no gear; to a point where you could literally level to 70 without taking any skill points if you want, and you know this as well. You can always swap to Arc/LW later on.

VD is slower because of ball travel time. And I don't know why it matters about "no gear;" If you can afford to twink with two poet's pens then you can easily afford a few extra spell damage items (doedre's tenure / le heup). When you have twink gear and oneshot enemies, relative spell dps is kind of irrelevant; all that matters is your instantaneous screen coverage, and Arc hits the whole screen way faster than VD does.

Firestorm is there for the single target while leveling but you could easily use ball lightning or whatever you want.

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That's not true for very early leveling though (Arc completely overshadows Unearth after around level 45 or so). Arc+Firestorm isn't better than VD+Unearth. Your Frenzy+Unearth is enough to kill whites and some blues instantly during leveling, and VD takes care of everything else, while Arc requires at least Beacon of Ruin and a reasonable crit rate to do the same, and VD performs much better on single target than Firestorm when you haven't taken any lightning/crit dmg multipliers yet (even with proper twink gear equipped).

Again, I'm only addressing the early leveling part of the build, and just my opinion.

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dariidar wrote:

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That's not true for very early leveling though (Arc completely overshadows Unearth after around level 45 or so). Arc+Firestorm isn't better than VD+Unearth. Your Frenzy+Unearth is enough to kill whites and some blues instantly during leveling, and VD takes care of everything else, while Arc requires at least Beacon of Ruin and a reasonable crit rate to do the same, and VD performs much better on single target than Firestorm when you haven't taken any lightning/crit dmg multipliers yet (even with proper twink gear equipped).

Again, I'm only addressing the early leveling part of the build, and just my opinion.

Again, Arc doesn't need any of this stuff you mention because damage is sufficient if built properly. A 3 linked Arc one-shots everything in Act 1-3, and by the time you get Diamond flask and dual heralds at level 27 the damage never falls off (even without ascending). What matters during leveling is the screen coverage and Arc is much faster at touching everything on the screen in milliseconds. (I'd even argue that Arc without any crit is perfectly fine dps-wise until at least act 6)

I don't agree with your point about Unearth vs Arc at level 45. The tiny cone you get with Unearth + LMP just feels worse than even Freezing Pulse. Firestorm + Arc provide very efficient coverage even at lower levels. And once you hit level 35, Arc starts hitting 5 enemies at a time and becomes an absolute monster. Also, because Unearth requires GMP or LMP or Volley, it starts out weaker than Arc which can just use pure damage supports like Added Lightning, Elemental Focus, Inc Crit Strikes, etc, which means Arc requires even LESS gear/tree investment for it to clear compared to Unearth.

A note on firestorm: you absolutely do not need crit/crit multi for it to be strong. There is a reason that every spellcaster racer ends up using firestorm totems; it has huge AoE and fairly reliable single target for miniscule investment.

Perhaps VD > firestorm for single target, especially because VD builds get the option of adding Cremation as well. But it doesn't even matter... if you're properly skipping all rare monsters as you speedlevel, the only single target that matters is the Act bosses, and in that case does it really matter if you kill Doedre in 13 seconds instead of 10 seconds?

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DrawingFlies wrote:

QUICK question what are your resists in end game gear?

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tornshoe wrote:

So first off, awesome guide! I just started messing around with this yesterday since I had a leftover full respec on one of my witches and I'm having a blast. I'm dirt poor so I haven't bothered to invest any currency in high level gems yet so I know that that's a big chunk of my missing damage, as well as the missing Berek's and Choir. I have two questions though.

1) For attack speed, are you relying largely on jewels/gloves? Even my Barrage is attacking fairly slowly right now (about 2.77 APS). Granted I don't have any jewels socketed yet, but is that really why I'm so behind?

2) Between Choir and Berek's, which would you say is more important? Currently, I've gone with Paragon instead of Beacon because I have a Poet's Pen with Proliferation on it and I like not having to pay attention to reflect at all. That means that I have a little (though not much) leech already, but mostly I'm suffering from low health (I imagine I should just get that by replacing gear) and low damage (which will be replacing my gems and getting attack speed somehow).