[3.13] GOLEMENTALIST (Flame Golems Elementalist) Build (Easy & Safe for everyone!) +Video guide!

But you see, unlike Ignites, the possibility to apply Chill and Shock and indeed their effect are intrinsically tied to the damage dealt by a single hit.

Shock:

Hits below the minimum threshold of 1% effect are discarded, effectively requiring a hit of 0.2% enemy maximum life (now, this is regardless your chance to shock, even a critical strike which has an inherent 100% chance to shock does not help if the minimum damage requirement is not met). So if you want to apply Shock on The Shaper with his 18m HP your Storm Brand must deal a minimum of at least 36.000 lightning Damage with a single hit... not a hope in hell. And even if you could mitaculously muster that much damage, the Shock effect would be a measly 1% more damage taken.

Chill:

Here the odds are even worse: Hits below the minimum threshold of 1% effect are discarded, effectively requiring a hit of 0.33% enemy maximum life to chill that enemy. In case of The Shaper you will need to deal almost 60k damage with a single hit to apply Chill with 1% reduced action speed.

Now, Beacon of Ruin changes all that dramatically. Any hit with 1 pt Cold Damage will apply Chill at 13% effect (10% base effect plus 30% increase because Chill is a non-damaging ailment). In case of Chill crit chance and chance to chili does not matter for the Elementalist with Beacon of Ruin, any hit with cold damage (or any type of damage while having Chilling/Elemental Conflux) will do the trick. In order to apply Shock with only 1 pt lightning damage we still need a critical strike or else we're depending on chance to shock, which is 50% in my case with with Arc + Elemental Proliferation (150% while I have Shocking Conflux) so every second hit will apply Shock to the the tune of 24% effect (15% base plus 30% effect for non-damaging ailment and 30% shock effect from Arc).

With 3.7 proliferation has been removed from Beacon of Ruin so now we'll have to link the Elemental Proliferation support gem if we want that mighty "chill/shock one, chill/shock 'em all" effect, in addition the gem with 20% quality gives us 20% chance to shock, making us less dependent on critical strikes.

Bottom line, there is no way for you to apply Shock or Chill on magic/rare/unique monsters in high tier maps without having Beacon of Ruin. Now at the moment you have Paragon of Calamity which grants you a rather random 8% elemental damage mitigation after the initial hit which you will take at full value, I'd say 13% slowdown from Chill also amounts to less damge taken and isn't really a trade-off. However, for perma-chill a source of added cold damage (to spells) is required otherwise we can only apply Chill while having either Chilling or Elemental Conflux and Chill duration is only 2 seconds.

Understood, Beacon of Ruin here I come. :) ty for clarifying

I'll probably add EP as well, but not Arc. :)

Yea, Arc requires you to be stationary while casting but EP and a source of Cold Damage are invaluable.

It is a style preference no doubt and certainly may squeeze out a little extra juice but i do like my storm brand.

Well, Orb of Storms or Storm or Storm Brand are a more passive/convenient approach (fire and forget) and this passiveness/convenience comes at a price, in this case reliability and damage.

Reliability:

Shock duration is 2 seconds and it will only be applied with OoS or SB while you have Shocking Conflux or deal a Critical Strike with these skills or randomly, calculating your chance to shock (much higher with Arc) which can be increased with ICS support.

Damage:

Arc gives 30% increased Shock effect which means 24% rather than 19% more damage taken.

Regardless if you're using Arc or OoS or SB, linking Culling Strike will give you another 10% more damage effectively... or Curse on Hit for max lvl Enfeeble.

Lots of details to ponder... decision time again I'd say. ;)

They are passive, but also suit the play style and play style is everything for both offense and defense. You should know this as a leap slam health build. :)

SB + EP + finally making the move to Beacon is going to give my min/max well oiled machine more than I need.

TBH, with that obscene cast speed buff from the Lightning Golem it's almost impossible for me to release the mouse button fast enough as to not cast arc twice, so that's a guaranteed shock/chill right there and zapping them every two seconds isn't all that much of an effort. One can get used to it. ;)

i know, i bet you love it, just like the pounce of leap slam. :) my focus is well positioned convocation play + lots of well rolled harmonies to maximize dmg + other tactics on defense, i would rather not be messing around with anything other than fire and forget on the EE + conflux apply

Well, there is that yea... feels kinda nice to be good for something. ;)

But it's also a formidable "remote control" in certain boss fights... Elder for example, when you zap the Null Portals the golems know exactly what they have to do (minion AI still leaves a lot to be be desired).

I may remove Blind from my Arc setup And replace it with Bone Chill. Although being a Cold Support Gem, the character sheet shows 75% increased Chill effect for Arc (30% of that obviously from the Beacon of Ruin), that'd be 17.5% reduced action speed, a lot more than Temporal Chains.

I dont know, 8 flame golems + GMP + Aggressive = what portal? :) i might phase run by one to encourage from time to time - but they melt

i have the feeling when i add beacon of ruin to arsenal ill be looking for a /sleep gem.