[3.15]Archmage Ball Lightning Hierophant, will it work in Expedition?

Hey, Ive been running a variation of this build in SSF. Anyone mind to take a look at my pob in case Ive missed some obvious optimization?

https://pastebin.com/E4wNKuCL

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srslyFaileR wrote:

Hey, Ive been running a variation of this build in SSF. Anyone mind to take a look at my pob in case Ive missed some obvious optimization?

https://pastebin.com/E4wNKuCL

You have supreme ego, but no aura skill that I can see, so not sure what's going on there.

Your AoE radius is woefully low. 26 AoE with GMP lets your BL's hit only 3.6x per second max with proper spacing, so max of 7x per cast each.

With Slower Proj, you can get 5.2 hits per second, or about 10 max per cast. Again, if spacing is perfect (meaning you start your cast from approximately 26-27 units from the target and cast directly through the center of the target).

You're casting 5 BL's with a full unleash stack, with an average hit of around 58,000. So that's around 2.9M damage per cast ((5 * 10) * 58k), or 1.45M DPS.

If you had 33 AoE radius, you could add about 30% more damage and hit the 13 hit max.

I also can't tell what lab enchantments and anoints you have.

If you get the 80% to avoid stuns on boots one, and use Brine King, you can probably save those 5 points being used on Unwavering Stance for some more AoE.

Maybe anoint Adjacent Animosity on amulet and then you only need 29 AoE to reach 13 BL hits per cast.

If you can figure out how to get a 2nd curse applied, Proj Weakness would be a huge boost. Windshreik boots or Whispers of Doom are your best options for that. You're probably not shocking with Wave of Conviction (doubt it's doing enough damage to reach even the 5% min threshold) so the Phys to Lightning support is kind of useless. Your wand's +lightning damage and arcane cloak is more than enough to make sure WoC procs the lightning exposure instead of fire.

And lastly, I would try to fit Holy Flame Totem in the build somewhere. It's perfect utility for you. Spam it to generate power/endurance charges (thanks to conviction of power), while it also gives you curse strip/immunity on demand and 6%/sec life regen. Looks like you have an open slot on your shield for this, too.

Very nice build. I found that in red maps its nice to switch out wrath and ele focus for a call of the brotherhood and ele prolif. Makes those damn porcupines a non-threat.

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SkylerOG wrote:

You have supreme ego, but no aura skill that I can see, so not sure what's going on there.

Your AoE radius is woefully low. 26 AoE with GMP lets your BL's hit only 3.6x per second max with proper spacing, so max of 7x per cast each.

With Slower Proj, you can get 5.2 hits per second, or about 10 max per cast. Again, if spacing is perfect (meaning you start your cast from approximately 26-27 units from the target and cast directly through the center of the target).

You're casting 5 BL's with a full unleash stack, with an average hit of around 58,000. So that's around 2.9M damage per cast ((5 * 10) * 58k), or 1.45M DPS.

If you had 33 AoE radius, you could add about 30% more damage and hit the 13 hit max.

I also can't tell what lab enchantments and anoints you have.

If you get the 80% to avoid stuns on boots one, and use Brine King, you can probably save those 5 points being used on Unwavering Stance for some more AoE.

Maybe anoint Adjacent Animosity on amulet and then you only need 29 AoE to reach 13 BL hits per cast.

If you can figure out how to get a 2nd curse applied, Proj Weakness would be a huge boost. Windshreik boots or Whispers of Doom are your best options for that. You're probably not shocking with Wave of Conviction (doubt it's doing enough damage to reach even the 5% min threshold) so the Phys to Lightning support is kind of useless. Your wand's +lightning damage and arcane cloak is more than enough to make sure WoC procs the lightning exposure instead of fire.

And lastly, I would try to fit Holy Flame Totem in the build somewhere. It's perfect utility for you. Spam it to generate power/endurance charges (thanks to conviction of power), while it also gives you curse strip/immunity on demand and 6%/sec life regen. Looks like you have an open slot on your shield for this, too.

Thanks for the input. Rn I'm running clarity with supreme ego while im waiting on an essence worm drop for wrath. I also havent annointed my amulet yet as I'm super low on those vials so I kinda wanted wait for my foible drop. Getting my aoe up would be nice for sure though. Good point about phys to lightning I can free a socket there. Gonna see about trying totems as well (:

Another question if you don't mind.. Ive been toying around with spell echo vs unleash and tbh echo feels a lot smoother even with the 5 seals I have. I know burst is less but sustained dps feels great with echo. Not sure which one I should be using tbh.

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srslyFaileR wrote:

Another question if you don't mind.. Ive been toying around with spell echo vs unleash and tbh echo feels a lot smoother even with the 5 seals I have. I know burst is less but sustained dps feels great with echo. Not sure which one I should be using tbh.

In PoB, you can easily quantify this. Just add spell echo to your BL group and switch between checking/unchecking the boxes for spell echo vs unleash, and then do the math.

Let's just look at 3 second clusters of cast time, for instance (anything more than that and you're assuredly out of mana).

With Unleash, you have a cast rate of 2.06s. So in one second, with Unleash, you get your normal BL x2 + 4 unleashed BL's (1+4 then 1 on 2nd cast). Your Unleash seal regen is .69s per, which means you'll get 1+1 at the beginning of second 2, and then another single. But your next seal doesn't come until .38s into the 2nd second, so it won't unleash until the beginning of second 3 (1+1). And you should have another seal by the 2nd cast in second 3 (at 0.07s), so another 1+1. But I'm not even sure if they will sync like that. That seal might not unleash until the beginning of second 4.

So in 3 seconds, with Unleash, while holding down your BL key, you can launch approximately 12-13 BL's.

With Spell Echo, you have a cast rate of 3.47s. So in one second, with Spell Echo, you can launch 6-8 BL's (you should get a 4th cast before the end of the 1st second, so it should be 8). Which means in 3 seconds of holding down BL, you get approximately 20 BL's cast with Spell Echo support instead of Unleash.

So at least 7 more BL's (potentially 8) with Spell Echo per 3 seconds if you were to simply stand stationary and hold down your BL key.


There's also about a 10% difference in average hit (10% less with Spell Echo), HOWEVER, each Unleash re-occurance also has about 11% less damage than the normal BL.

But 20 @ X-10% >>> 6 @ X + 7 @ X-11%. By about +30% more.


So clearly Spell Echo is the way to go for you at this stage without a Pledge of Hands.


But once you get a Pledge of Hands, you then need to consider play style and mana pool, because PoH has a casting animation that will lock you down in place if you try to stand stationary and hold your BL key down (which is dangerous, obviously), and your mana pool with archmage and arcane cloak isn't going to allow you to just stand there continually casting.

Unleash also has this nice feature with PoH/Spell Echo where if you hold down your movement key and just tap your BL key, you can launch 1 BL + your Unleash stack, and then continue moving. It bypasses the spell echo and greater spell echo, so you don't get stopped by any casting animation. This is HUGE for map clearing. It speeds up map clearing tremendously.


At end game, I personally use both PoH (with spell echo support, too) + Unleash because my play style is burst-move(regen unleash & mana)-burst-move(regen unleash & mana), and so on. That's about 8 BL's every cast with only 1 second of animation lock. I also have a level 5 awakened unleash, and a lot more cast speed, so my 4 unleash seals are full in about 2 seconds, and my PoH/GSE casting animation is barely 1 second, so I can do both. But early on, without these higher level gems, etc. it's difficult to play with both, so most people just go with PoH + spell echo and forego unleash for lightning pen or controlled destruction.

But these folk's biggest limitation is they continually run out of mana, so they end up taking small breaks to regen anyways. So it's arguably more DPS with Unleash if you're ultimately forced to take small breaks for regen for obvious reasons (more BL's when you do cast).

Again, it's a matter of how you want to play at end-game when you get to that point.

But for now, at this early stage, you should replace Unleash with Spell Echo, for sure.


Good news is, there's 5 more passive points for you. Between Unwavering Stance and Thunderous Salvos, you could free up 10 points for more AoE and Whispers of Doom.

Adding more AoE + Projectile Weakness curse + Spell Echo would easily double, and quite possibly triple your current DPS.

So I got to make the "Luxry helm" (not that hard with harvesting mechanic actually), but - disregarding the neg Light resist - it does not increase my damage, even though it increases my mana by about 400 compared to Crown of Inward Eye (I also lose around 500 points of HP/ES).

Again, at my current setup im still lacking https://pastebin.com/grtWzEUp (Have not yet found Pure Talent, but have installed a Thread of Hope for some nice bonus nodes).

About my flasks - not sure what to do since I cant really go Agnostic yet, sadly.

Otherwise Im thinking of target-farming "The Admirer" for better chances of Atziris Foible.

To recount missing key pieces: Chest, Amu, Shoes (although Im very happy with my current ones, thanks to harvest

This looks great, I'm planning on trying it out next league! I did have one question about the Arcane Blessing ascendancy node: if you have level 20 Arcane Surge up already from Arcane Cloak when you hit an enemy with a spell, will the level 20 buff get overwritten with the level 1 buff?

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Victoriolue wrote:

This looks great, I'm planning on trying it out next league! I did have one question about the Arcane Blessing ascendancy node: if you have level 20 Arcane Surge up already from Arcane Cloak when you hit an enemy with a spell, will the level 20 buff get overwritten with the level 1 buff?

No. The higher one always overwrites or stays up.

This is why it's still great to link a level 21 AS with Arcane Cloak. Not to mention, when you do this with Second Wind and Increased Duration, along with Dynamo, AS has a really nice long duration.

Perfect, thank you!

Sooo I've been trying to incorperate as much of the advice I've gotten as I can and this is where I'm at right now: https://pastebin.com/AftuhCfm

Upgraded a lot of gear, added atleast 29 radius, added holy flame totem, added culling strike and some other stuff. Would love it if someone could take a look (especially at the gear/gems as well).. Id love some pointers on what to prioritize next. I'm in the process of crafting some tailwind boots and I'm looking for a shaper shield base so I can get a nice life% on block shield as well.

Is there anything I mightve missed? DPS feels kinda okay, not great not bad I can clear t16s and i'm up sirus a6 so far.

Thanks for any input

e: this is ofc all ssf