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

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Stealthyy wrote:

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How did you reached 3k mana regen?

Here is my live pob as heiro, I opted for a lot more life, so I have 4500 life with 50% MOM = 9000 ehp, since I don't need more damage for any content I am doing.

https://pastebin.com/aiurhUrd

For mana regen, POB does not calculate anomalous arcane surge lvl 20, linked with arcane cloak. It also does not consider mana recovery rate from watchers eye.

In game with lvl 1 arcane surge I am at 2400 displayed mana regen, if I pop arcane cloak I am at 3200 mana regen, then you multiply that number by 1.15 from watchers so my max mana regen is 3680.

Thank you! Did some changes, still need to sort out the gems plus other things but currently no currency left. Now have 1900 mana regen with arcane cloak and it feels ok for the content i'm doing atm.

Any idea for crit chance... what i should consider a decent value? Now i have 22.15%. Also not sure if i should drop worm essence ring (wrath) and look for a ring with conductivity on hit.

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Thank you! Did some changes, still need to sort out the gems plus other things but currently no currency left. Now have 1900 mana regen with arcane cloak and it feels ok for the content i'm doing atm.

Any idea for crit chance... what i should consider a decent value? Now i have 22.15%. Also not sure if i should drop worm essence ring (wrath) and look for a ring with conductivity on hit.

If you look at my latest pob on the previous page, I was able to fit in both the conductivity ring and essence worm.

Crit from the build mainly comes from power charges, diamond flask, and bottled faith, which is very expensive but is also ~30% dps increase.

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LivingHitokiri wrote:

I made some edits on SkyleOG pob and made a crit version of it with changes, more mana but less HP, didn touch items but could make some changes like add mana recovery on belt which gives a lot of mana regen (Redeemer belt, POB doesnt shows it) . You can also go skyforth for stun immunity,power charges on crit while having mana regeneration if you casted recently if you want for boots.

Here it is.

https://pastebin.com/u9k61bMk

I also replaced threads of hope for healthy mind to get more mana in there ands bonuses, didn't think Hearth of Thunder and Utmost intellect were that worth for it. Also removed some flask nodes and mana regen seems to be low at 500 but if you add boots enchant + belt +watchers im pretty confident you can have around 3.5k mana regen with arcane cloak and surge.

Im curious what do you think about this since the DPS with crits is seriously enticing.

I made a couple slight adjustments, which only cost about 60k Average Hit, but got life up over 4k. I also added mana recovery rate to belt just to illustrate what it would do, too, which brought mana regen while not on full life to nearly 1000, and over 2900 while on full life. It's also nice that they updated the PoB today added Sigil of Power in, with some other fixes. However, PoB STILL did not correct the Pledge of Hands errors or the nerf to BL base radius from 22 to 18. So I still have those corrected on the Pledge of Hands edit.

https://pastebin.com/VtHDv2BP


Needless to say, I like this version better (although the life is pretty low). 1.25M Average hit on 5.64 cast rate and 32 AoE radius.

So BL #1 = 6.67 hits/s x2(13), BL #2/echo #1 = 6.67 hits/s x1.64(11), BL #3/echo #2 = 6.67 hits/s, and BL #4/echo #3 = 6.67 hits/s. So that's 37 hits/s * 1.25M Average Hit = 46.25M sDPS.

So basically, every cast of 4 BL's is doing around 92M damage (since each BL duration is ~2 seconds), which is crazy.

I like it.

Still not as good as my version on Standard server using legacy 100% mana cost Fevered Mind jewel and Heiro Sanctuary of Thought (no Agnostic/no Righteous Fire = nearly 3500 ES + 4300 life and still doing ~1M Average Hit for only 3200 mana spent and 2800 constant mana regen), but it's good for anyone who wants to do Heiro on Heist.

Thanks for the re-work.

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pr13st wrote:

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SkylerOG wrote:

The alternative to all this is what I posted earlier, which is the Scion Inquisitor/Pathfinder version of this build that makes mana regen a complete non-factor and has permanent FULL mana sustain 100% of time with just a Foreboding mana flask + Pathfinder/flask charge passive nodes (ie. Primal Spirit, Druidic Rite, Arcane Chemisty, and Essence Extraction).

Combined with Agnostic, you're also pretty much invulnerable (except to large one-shots) because you're basically always regenning ~1500 life per second, too (20% of your mana pool turned into +life each second).

I've Almost started with that build but the mana potion spam was the dealbreaker for me, I can't imagine spamming non stop the mana button, ever. I'm considering this build only because it does not involve mana pot spamming

Yeah it's not for everyone.

But anyone who doesn't care about constantly mashing their Foreboding mana flask repeatedly pretty much has a char with endless mana and near invulnerable full life, unless it gets hit with a big enough hit to go over it's max hit pool and one-shot it. But that means nearly 9k+ single hit, which isn't likely except vs. chaos damage.


I personally hate the Righteous Fire/Agnostic setup and mana regen dropping to about 1/3rd once you take any damage.

I've basically scrapped this char on Heist since I have a bonafide beast of one on Standard that's crazy fun to play and destroys A8 Sirus in about a minute or less most times. The Fevered Mind nerf sucks and is why I just don't feel like making this char on Heist.

So I did my Toxic Rain Patherfinder on Heist instead, and anytime I want to play a beast of a BL char, I just do it on Standard.

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Cruxation wrote:

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pr13st wrote:

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SkylerOG wrote:

The alternative to all this is what I posted earlier, which is the Scion Inquisitor/Pathfinder version of this build that makes mana regen a complete non-factor and has permanent FULL mana sustain 100% of time with just a Foreboding mana flask + Pathfinder/flask charge passive nodes (ie. Primal Spirit, Druidic Rite, Arcane Chemisty, and Essence Extraction).

Combined with Agnostic, you're also pretty much invulnerable (except to large one-shots) because you're basically always regenning ~1500 life per second, too (20% of your mana pool turned into +life each second).

I've Almost started with that build but the mana potion spam was the dealbreaker for me, I can't imagine spamming non stop the mana button, ever. I'm considering this build only because it does not involve mana pot spamming

I made the exact same decision. Once I found out how intensive the flask is on that build I looked for alternatives. When I found this build I was sold. To be honest this build was a little challenging at league start but in a good way. Each upgrade was meaningful and very impactful. I’m now getting to the point of starting to min-max gear a little bit and it’s extremely powerful now. Game design wise it’s felt super rewarding to upgrade and struggle with at times.

The biggest issue I had with the build was cast speed (after you have most of the mana sustain tools covered) I’ve opted for several QoL upgrades and passive tree choices to get lots of cast speed. It makes this build feel much smoother to me. I haven’t gone crit yet but I am considering doing so once I buy some decent crit multi jewels.

It sounds like you're frustrated by the spell echo/greater spell echo animation lock that sticks your char in one spot while it casts the 4 BL's produced with Pledge of Hands/Greater Spell Echo.

There's a work-around to this.

Replace one of your damage gems on PoH with Unleash/Awakened Unleash, and then if you simply hold down your movement key and just tap your BL cast key, it will SKIP the 3 spell echos, cast your 1st BL and the 3 Unleash BL's, and completely bypass any animation lock.

You can literally move unabated and seamlessly cast without stopping more than a super tiny fraction of a moment.


I personally have a Sire of Shards in my weapon swap with BL + Archmage + GMP + Awakened Unleash + Awakened Controlled Destruction + Awakened Lightning Pen for map clearing.

And then I swap back to my PoH which has BL + Archmage + Slower Proj + Awakened Spell Echo + Awakened Controlled Destruction + Awakened Lightning Pen for when I'm bossing.

By the way, I don't use Elemental Focus because our BL's can easily shock everything, including big bosses. White trash mobs get shocked upwards of level 40-50 shock, and bosses lvl 15-25 shock. And, since we're using Conductivity + Wave of Conviction to debuff lightning resist, Lightning Pen is a great alternative since it can go into negative resistance.

I highly recommend this setup.

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SkylerOG wrote:

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ronfckinjeremy wrote:

Your current POB proposes a ~4m dps drop from OP's for roughly a 6k EHP increase and some QOL improvements? Could you elaborate on that a bit, I feel like I'm missing something...

Also, why use crown of the inward eye as opposed to indigon when you already get transfiguration of mind from Divine guidance?

Now the next problem is PoB and it's errors in calculating Pledge of Hands, as well as the incorrect base radius on BL (since the 3.12 nerf took it from 22 to 18, but PoB still has it set at 22).


PoB has mistakenly taken the spell echo from gem, and the 2 echo's from greater spell echo, along with the original ball, and averaged out the +150% AoE and +105% more spell damage across all 4 balls to come up with that Average Hit figure.

But that's not how it works. The first BL is X damage and X AoE, the 2nd BL/1st echo is X*35% more damage & X*50% more AOE, the 3rd BL/2nd echo is X*70% more damage & X*100% more AoE, and the 4th BL/3rd echo is X*105% damage & X*150% more AoE.

And you can't simply average 105%/4 and 150%/4 to get the Average Hit value of each BL hit. Because you may have 24 radius with the 1st BL, but 45 radius with the 4th BL. So the first BL is only going to hit maybe 3-4x each second for 26% less damage (105%/4) on those 3-4 hits, while the 4th BL is going to cap out at the 6.67x each second at 105% more than the 1st. And BL's #2 & #3 are also different non-linear values, too.

So the way to fix the PoH error is to EDIT your Pledge of Hands and add "38% reduced Area of Effect" and "26% less Spell Damage".

But we're not through. PoB hasn't updated the nerf to BL radius yet, either. It still lists it at 22 even though it was dropped to 18.

So to fix this, you have to add another line to Pledge of Hands, "50% reduced Area of Effect"

For brevity ive clipped the majority of your post, but please show me where the information is that backs up the assumptions you've made on how PoB calculates damage, AoE radius, etc, and same for the game.

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ronfckinjeremy wrote:

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SkylerOG wrote:

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ronfckinjeremy wrote:

Your current POB proposes a ~4m dps drop from OP's for roughly a 6k EHP increase and some QOL improvements? Could you elaborate on that a bit, I feel like I'm missing something...

Also, why use crown of the inward eye as opposed to indigon when you already get transfiguration of mind from Divine guidance?

Now the next problem is PoB and it's errors in calculating Pledge of Hands, as well as the incorrect base radius on BL (since the 3.12 nerf took it from 22 to 18, but PoB still has it set at 22).


PoB has mistakenly taken the spell echo from gem, and the 2 echo's from greater spell echo, along with the original ball, and averaged out the +150% AoE and +105% more spell damage across all 4 balls to come up with that Average Hit figure.

But that's not how it works. The first BL is X damage and X AoE, the 2nd BL/1st echo is X*35% more damage & X*50% more AOE, the 3rd BL/2nd echo is X*70% more damage & X*100% more AoE, and the 4th BL/3rd echo is X*105% damage & X*150% more AoE.

And you can't simply average 105%/4 and 150%/4 to get the Average Hit value of each BL hit. Because you may have 24 radius with the 1st BL, but 45 radius with the 4th BL. So the first BL is only going to hit maybe 3-4x each second for 26% less damage (105%/4) on those 3-4 hits, while the 4th BL is going to cap out at the 6.67x each second at 105% more than the 1st. And BL's #2 & #3 are also different non-linear values, too.

So the way to fix the PoH error is to EDIT your Pledge of Hands and add "38% reduced Area of Effect" and "26% less Spell Damage".

But we're not through. PoB hasn't updated the nerf to BL radius yet, either. It still lists it at 22 even though it was dropped to 18.

So to fix this, you have to add another line to Pledge of Hands, "50% reduced Area of Effect"

For brevity ive clipped the majority of your post, but please show me where the information is that backs up the assumptions you've made on how PoB calculates damage, AoE radius, etc, and same for the game.

is common knowledge that pob is garbage to calculate any mechanic (including dps) that includes ball lightning

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sisco1985 wrote:

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ronfckinjeremy wrote:

For brevity ive clipped the majority of your post, but please show me where the information is that backs up the assumptions you've made on how PoB calculates damage, AoE radius, etc, and same for the game.

is common knowledge that pob is garbage to calculate any mechanic (including dps) that includes ball lightning

??? why would you reply this? if someone came to you and asked you what the specs of your car's engine are, would you reply "car go vroom vroom"?

he has quoted very specific mechanical errors in PoB which I have no way to verify. Similarly he has made very specific statements about how the game calculates BL damage, which again, are without substantiation. I am not saying they are wrong, I'm simply asking for the back up.

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ronfckinjeremy wrote:

Spoiler

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SkylerOG wrote:

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ronfckinjeremy wrote:

Your current POB proposes a ~4m dps drop from OP's for roughly a 6k EHP increase and some QOL improvements? Could you elaborate on that a bit, I feel like I'm missing something...

Also, why use crown of the inward eye as opposed to indigon when you already get transfiguration of mind from Divine guidance?

Now the next problem is PoB and it's errors in calculating Pledge of Hands, as well as the incorrect base radius on BL (since the 3.12 nerf took it from 22 to 18, but PoB still has it set at 22).


PoB has mistakenly taken the spell echo from gem, and the 2 echo's from greater spell echo, along with the original ball, and averaged out the +150% AoE and +105% more spell damage across all 4 balls to come up with that Average Hit figure.

But that's not how it works. The first BL is X damage and X AoE, the 2nd BL/1st echo is X*35% more damage & X*50% more AOE, the 3rd BL/2nd echo is X*70% more damage & X*100% more AoE, and the 4th BL/3rd echo is X*105% damage & X*150% more AoE.

And you can't simply average 105%/4 and 150%/4 to get the Average Hit value of each BL hit. Because you may have 24 radius with the 1st BL, but 45 radius with the 4th BL. So the first BL is only going to hit maybe 3-4x each second for 26% less damage (105%/4) on those 3-4 hits, while the 4th BL is going to cap out at the 6.67x each second at 105% more than the 1st. And BL's #2 & #3 are also different non-linear values, too.

So the way to fix the PoH error is to EDIT your Pledge of Hands and add "38% reduced Area of Effect" and "26% less Spell Damage".

But we're not through. PoB hasn't updated the nerf to BL radius yet, either. It still lists it at 22 even though it was dropped to 18.

So to fix this, you have to add another line to Pledge of Hands, "50% reduced Area of Effect"

For brevity ive clipped the majority of your post, but please show me where the information is that backs up the assumptions you've made on how PoB calculates damage, AoE radius, etc, and same for the game.

Here are the 3.12 patch notes confirming BL base radius going from 22 to 18.




Here is today's version of PoB still showing BL base radius incorrectly at 22.




Here is PoB showing Greater Spell Echo giving +52% MORE spell damage to every BL cast (ie. that's +208% between the 4 BL's per cast in this build, even though all 4 have the potential to have different AoE radius and different number of hits per BL as a result)




Here's PoB doing the same thing with +AoE percent, giving +50% AoE to each BL, even though the first one has no such +50% AoE, the 2nd BL has +50% AoE, the 3rd BL has +100% AoE, and the 4th BL has +150% AoE.




And here are the Wiki explanations on how BL has a base travel speed of 48 units per second, and that each BL can hit once every 0.15 seconds (150ms), and how echo's do not share that hit cap cooldown with the first, or any, BL (meaning every BL has it's own separate cooldown). It also explains how +AoE increases the range of each 0.15s lightning strike, and how slower proj will slow the balls and thus potentially increases the amount of time targets could be in range of lightning strikes and therefore potentially receive more hits. There are links here to GGG posts where they confirm all this, too.




1 second / 0.15s = 6.67. Therefore each BL can get a max of 6.67 lightning strikes/hits per second IF the mob is in range of those lightning strikes inside that 1 second.

This is why when you add slower proj (-30% speed of each BL), it takes the base travel units from 48 to 33.6. Then each mob has at least 2 units of character size/hit box. Thus we need 31.6 AoE radius for each BL to possibly get it's 6.67 max number of hits per second.

And how do we figure out how much each individual lightning strike does? Well that's the PoB "Average Hit" number (IF PoB didn't have errors with Pledge of Hands and BL base radius, this number would be accurate. But right now, it's not at all).

Now how does Cast Rate come into play? Well if you were to go into PoB and backout every +cast speed mod, including spell echo and greater spell echo, the cast rate would be 1.0 (meaning with zero +cast rate modifiers, BL fires one ball per second at it's base cast rate).

Then you add spell echo and greater spell echo/pledge of hands, and the cast rate is 4.0. Because we are now shooting 4 BL's.

Therefore, any subsequent +percent cast rate added, is simply the process of looping/partially looping those 4 BL's cast.

If you have a 5.0 cast rate, for example, you do the first 4 BL's and then you again cast BL #1 (which isn't an echo, it's simply back to the start of the cast cycle and the start of a new cast animation cycle, too).

If you could get up to 8.0 cast rate, you would essentially complete 2 full cast/animation cycles of the 4 BL cast in 1 second.


As a result, when determining how many BL's you fire per second with this build, it's simply the cast rate number in PoB.

But understand, each one of those BL's follows this pattern (because of spell echo and greater spell echo):

-> BL's that are the 1st BL cast of each cycle are base damage and base AoE radius.
-> BL's that are the 2nd/1st echo of each cycle are +35% more damage and +50% more AoE.
-> BL's that are the 3rd/2nd echo of each cycle are +70% more damage and +100% more AoE.
-> BL's that are the 4th/3rd echo of each cycle are +105% more damage and +150% more AoE.


As a result of all this, DPS is obviously not correct in PoB. Not even remotely close.

The closest thing I could come to a solution to PoB's errors with Pledge of Hands and BL radius was to add/edit Pledge of Hands and insert lines to reduce AoE and damage to try and reconcile the errors.


Needless to say, if I get the time one of these days, I may create a google spreadsheet calculator for all this. But right now, I just don't feel like it because everyone would screw it up because of the PoB errors on Pledge of Hands and BL radius, and nobody would have a correct number anyways.

If someone wants their true sDPS, the numbers and math are all right there for anyone who wants to plug it all in. I did the homework and my PoB's and numbers are correct.

This one, that says it's producing 130M sDPS is not correct at all. It's no where close to that.

SkylerOG, what area would you then recommend people go for? I see your numbers being much more accurate, and with that I'd love to recommend you looking into pinpoint, as it appears to be incredibly powerful with the apex mode gem, effectively making you cast at full intensity everytime you want to basically.


Edit: skylarOG I noticed you have surpreme ego while having several auras, how exactly does that work?

Another edit: SkylarOG, in your setup you use hextouch to curse with sniper's mark, but that curse cannot be applied with hextouch, so the setup itself doesn't seem to work? I can see how getting more than 1 curse on target, but if you have to apply them in different ways it starts becoming cumbersome?

I can see getting a second curse and then having conductivity on hit could be a great boon, and then selfcast sniper's mark, however setting these things on a cwdt setup doesn't seem to work for these purposes. I'd rather setup an arcanist brand with sniper's mark alongside wave of conviction. if one doesn't have a curse ring, and happen to have a second curse available you could even have conductivity in there.