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

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SkylerOG wrote:

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Didn't exactly follow your build but the write down on BL mechanics helped me a lot and this was the first i found when searching around for BL archmage stuff. Just wanted to say that i've never played an archetype as broken as this. I'm more or less fully minmaxed now clocking in at around 125-135m total "real dps" now without vaal RF on.

So you have around 2.5M Average Hit showing for SDPS?

I doubt that.

Average hit hardly matters no? That wouldnt take into account cast speed, AoE or proj speed. I am at 11m PoB dps however times 12 avg hits per ball. Sirus, no shock, no RF ofc. Even though i dont use Ele Focus so some amount of shock would probably be realistic even but lets disregard that.

Average Hit is the basis damage stat needed to find out your true SDPS, so yes it’s extremely important.

If you have at least 32 radius and slower proj, you can get a max of 6.67 hits per BL per second (1 / 0.15 = 6.67). Each BL will travel ~36 units/second. Mob average hit-box is ~2 units. Hence why 32 AoE radius is the bare minimum.

Assuming PoH + spell echo, thats 4 BL’s per cast animation, which takes approximately 4.5 cast speed to sequence.

PoH, of course, affords some leeway due to each echo getting an AoE bump of 50/100/150 respectively. However, for BL#1 of every cast sequence (#1 of every 4) to reach 6.67 lightning strikes/hits, the basis radius must be at least 32, and you must be casting from precisely 32 units from the target at the start.

So if you have around 9.0 cast speed, you could effectively get 8 BL’s cast each second.

8 x 6.67 = ~53 lightning strikes per second. And if you’re standing there chain-casting for at least 2 full seconds, you can effectively double that number because you’d have 8 BL’s in the first 32 units (front of target) and 8 BL’s in the last 32 units (rear of target) all hitting at the same time.

Now multiply that times your “Average Hit” to get your true sDPS. This is what each lightning strike is hitting for.

But remember, if you have less than 32 AoE radius, you’re not getting 6.67 hits on multiple BL’s, and if you don’t have at least 9.0 cast speed then you’re shooting less BL’s per second and missing out on significant boosts from greater spell echo/PoH.

There’s actually even more nuance to this because PoB doesn’t properly account for Pledge of Hands staff, still. PoB wrongly takes the scaling +damage per echo mod and arbitrarily just breaks it down to +50% per BL, which isn’t at all precise or correct. But in the end it actually only ends up a couple/few percent off, so I don’t like making a huge deal about it. However, the further you are away from 32 radius and/or launching 2 full casting sequences (ie. 9.0 cast speed), the further this feature takes you from being precise when calculating DPS.


Calculating true SDPS for this build isn’t a simple task. And if you haven’t done it this way, then you surely don’t know what your DPS really is, much less just spitting out astronomical numbers like 125-135M.

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SkylerOG wrote:

Average Hit is the basis damage stat needed to find out your true SDPS, so yes it’s extremely important.

If you have at least 32 radius and slower proj, you can get a max of 6.67 hits per BL per second (1 / 0.15 = 6.67). Each BL will travel ~36 units/second. Mob average hit-box is ~2 units. Hence why 32 AoE radius is the bare minimum.

Assuming PoH + spell echo, thats 4 BL’s per cast animation, which takes approximately 4.5 cast speed to sequence.

PoH, of course, affords some leeway due to each echo getting an AoE bump of 50/100/150 respectively. However, for BL#1 of every cast sequence (#1 of every 4) to reach 6.67 lightning strikes/hits, the basis radius must be at least 32, and you must be casting from precisely 32 units from the target at the start.

So if you have around 9.0 cast speed, you could effectively get 8 BL’s cast each second.

8 x 6.67 = ~53 lightning strikes per second. And if you’re standing there chain-casting for at least 2 full seconds, you can effectively double that number because you’d have 8 BL’s in the first 32 units (front of target) and 8 BL’s in the last 32 units (rear of target) all hitting at the same time.

Now multiply that times your “Average Hit” to get your true sDPS. This is what each lightning strike is hitting for.

But remember, if you have less than 32 AoE radius, you’re not getting 6.67 hits on multiple BL’s, and if you don’t have at least 9.0 cast speed then you’re shooting less BL’s per second and missing out on significant boosts from greater spell echo/PoH.


Calculating true SDPS for this build isn’t a simple task. And if you haven’t done it this way, then you surely don’t know what your DPS really is, much less just spitting out astronomical numbers like 125-135M.

You're honestly just making overly complicated and misunderstanding what I'm saying. Obviously average damage matters but it does in the sense that it's used to calculate the "tooltip dps" part of your true dps. If you have your PoB tooltip dps that can still be used to calculate your real dps by skipping all the extra steps you wrote about cast speed.

The things you need are from my understanding:
Avg hit
How many balls per second
Hits per ball depending on AoE, proj speed as well as mob radius.
Tooltip dps in PoB calculates the first two just fine. The third is what PoB can't do.

But this is the tool I've been using and told is correct, feel free to correct the math
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F09xf5o_khdU2c8cjSBlZ4Sf94Grv7hSWeNN-qEv_gA/edit?usp=sharing

And here is my PoB as my character is right now so would appreciate if you could give a hand calculating the real dps if it's completely wrong.
https://pastebin.com/v50y7nWm


Though, the creator of the post's 3.13 PoB that he has posted at the top of the post seems to have a third of my avg dmg while also having 6.07 cast speed compared to my 7.96 and claims 32m dps so it seems quite likely by your logic that i should have more than 3x that dps no? He has 30 instead of my 29 radius as well of course, not sure if that's enough to break another threshhold.

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SkylerOG wrote:

Average Hit is the basis damage stat needed to find out your true SDPS, so yes it’s extremely important.

If you have at least 32 radius and slower proj, you can get a max of 6.67 hits per BL per second (1 / 0.15 = 6.67). Each BL will travel ~36 units/second. Mob average hit-box is ~2 units. Hence why 32 AoE radius is the bare minimum.

Assuming PoH + spell echo, thats 4 BL’s per cast animation, which takes approximately 4.5 cast speed to sequence.

PoH, of course, affords some leeway due to each echo getting an AoE bump of 50/100/150 respectively. However, for BL#1 of every cast sequence (#1 of every 4) to reach 6.67 lightning strikes/hits, the basis radius must be at least 32, and you must be casting from precisely 32 units from the target at the start.

So if you have around 9.0 cast speed, you could effectively get 8 BL’s cast each second.

8 x 6.67 = ~53 lightning strikes per second. And if you’re standing there chain-casting for at least 2 full seconds, you can effectively double that number because you’d have 8 BL’s in the first 32 units (front of target) and 8 BL’s in the last 32 units (rear of target) all hitting at the same time.

Now multiply that times your “Average Hit” to get your true sDPS. This is what each lightning strike is hitting for.

But remember, if you have less than 32 AoE radius, you’re not getting 6.67 hits on multiple BL’s, and if you don’t have at least 9.0 cast speed then you’re shooting less BL’s per second and missing out on significant boosts from greater spell echo/PoH.


Calculating true SDPS for this build isn’t a simple task. And if you haven’t done it this way, then you surely don’t know what your DPS really is, much less just spitting out astronomical numbers like 125-135M.

You're honestly just making overly complicated and misunderstanding what I'm saying. Obviously average damage matters but it does in the sense that it's used to calculate the "tooltip dps" part of your true dps. If you have your PoB tooltip dps that can still be used to calculate your real dps by skipping all the extra steps you wrote about cast speed.

The things you need are from my understanding:
Avg hit
How many balls per second
Hits per ball depending on AoE, proj speed as well as mob radius.
Tooltip dps in PoB calculates the first two just fine.

But this is the tool I've been using and told is correct, feel free to correct the math
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F09xf5o_khdU2c8cjSBlZ4Sf94Grv7hSWeNN-qEv_gA/edit?usp=sharing

And here is my PoB as my character is right now so would appreciate if you could give a hand calculating the real dps if it's completely wrong.
https://pastebin.com/v50y7nWm


Though, the creator of the post's 3.13 PoB that he has posted at the top of the post seems to have a third of my avg dmg while also having 6.07 cast speed compared to my 7.95 and claims 32m dps so it seems quite likely by your logic that i should have more than 3x that dps no? He has 30 instead of my 29 radius as well of course, not sure if that's enough to break another threshhold.

I’ll look at it closer tomorrow. It’s 2am for me and heading to sleep shortly.

But I can tell you already that if you only have 29 radius and 7.95 cast speed, you have much less DPS than you think.

You can cast ~7.1 BL’s per second, but your 1st and 5th BL of those 7 only hit 6.0 times (rather than 6.67).
So 1=6.0, 2=6.67, 3=6.67, 4=6.67, 5=6.0, 6=6.67, 7=6.67.
That’s 45.35 lightning strikes per second.

Your 1st second of casting = 45.35 x Average Hit, and every additional second after that if you’re standing there chain-casting is double that number. That’s your true sDPS.

And no, you can’t use the tooltip DPS. It has zero capacity to know how many times each of your BL’s hit. It makes no account for cast sequencing, max lightning strikes per BL, and radius. It’s nothing more than Average Hit x cast rate, which has zero to do with volume of lightning strikes.

I’m not being overly complicated. This thing is just that complex. And that spreadsheet is trash.

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SkylerOG wrote:

I’ll look at it closer tomorrow. It’s 2am for me and heading to sleep shortly.

But I can tell you already that if you only have 29 radius and 7.95 cast speed, you have much less DPS than you think.

You can cast ~7.1 BL’s per second, but your 1st and 5th BL of those 7 only hit 6.0 times (rather than 6.67).
So 1=6.0, 2=6.67, 3=6.67, 4=6.67, 5=6.0, 6=6.67, 7=6.67.
That’s 45.35 lightning strikes per second.

Your 1st second of casting = 45.35 x Average Hit, and every additional second after that if you’re standing there chain-casting is double that number.

And no, you can’t use the tooltip DPS. It has zero capacity to know how many times each of your BL’s hit. It makes no account for cast sequencing, max lightning strikes per BL, and radius. It’s nothing more than Average Hit x cast rate, which has zero to do with volume of lightning strikes.

I’m not being overly complicated. This thing is just that complex. And that spreadsheet is trash.

Why does it take more time than the time listed to cast BL? Doesn't 7.96 cast rate literally mean that you output 7.96 projectiles each second, can't find any source saying otherwise that there is an inherent delay in any of the spells or support gems not listed anywhere. And in that case dps in PoB is always wrong for every single case if it can't list the correct cast/attack speed.


And again, which I've already written but I'll repeat. I never said tooltip dps takes into account for how many times each ball hits in fact I said it can't.

The PoB tooltip dps is simply its calculations of your dps as if each BL only hit once, so what is wrong about using that number when applying the additional calculations?

If you deal 5 avg damage, 8 casts (and balls) per second with 6.67 hits per ball your calculation would be (with all the decimals calculating ofc):
8x6.67=53 hit per second, 53x5=266.67 dps.
While if you use PoB dps it would be
5x8=40 (tooltip dps), 40x6.67=266.67 dps

This is what I mean by the finished tooltip dps is what matters rather than avg damage, both work but if you already have the tooltip there's no need to go through the extra steps. felt like you were just arguing semantics here. The only thing I don't understand which would mess it up why you're saying 4 balls in 1 second takes 4.5 cast speed to cast. I've never heard of that.

The spreadsheet is from the wiki's entry on Ball Lightning and was updated specifically for 3.13 so I would assume it's correct or someone would have corrected it by now, no?

Also, compared to the post creator's 3.11 PoB with 132m dps, my numbers are almost exactly the same when accounting for the BL radius nerf and inputting his numbers in the sheet gives that dps. So is everything he has written on first page wrong in terms of dps calculation?

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Also, compared to the post creator's 3.11 PoB with 132m dps, my numbers are almost exactly the same when accounting for the BL radius nerf and inputting his numbers in the sheet gives that dps. So is everything he has written on first page wrong in terms of dps calculation?

What he means could be due to PoB's calculating mode on PoH (it just counts PoH as 50% increased AoE), your first ball does not really have the tooltip radius. However, he just realized part of this.

In your case, you have 114% increased AoE without counting PoH, so to a Humanoids mob (hitbox radius 2):
Frist repeat: 114% increased AoE, 26 radius and 0% more damage, 1*11
Second repeat: 164% increased AoE, 29 radius and 35% more damage, 1.35*12
Third: 214% increased AoE, 31 radius and 70% more damage, 1.7*13
Forth: 264% increased AoE, 34 radius and 105% more damage, 2.05*13

Add these up and divide by 4 and the PoH more multiplier in PoB (1.52), your actual DPS would be tooltip * 12.49. Although this means perfect distance control and is not so likely, I still think it is safe to time your tooltip number by 11 or so.

PS: Don't be so serious with numbers and this SkylerOG ;)

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Aniki_Leads_people wrote:

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Also, compared to the post creator's 3.11 PoB with 132m dps, my numbers are almost exactly the same when accounting for the BL radius nerf and inputting his numbers in the sheet gives that dps. So is everything he has written on first page wrong in terms of dps calculation?

What he means could be due to PoB's calculating mode on PoH (it just counts PoH as 50% increased AoE), your first ball does not really have the tooltip radius. However, he just realized part of this.

In your case, you have 114% increased AoE without counting PoH, so to a Humanoids mob (hitbox radius 2):
Frist repeat: 114% increased AoE, 26 radius and 0% more damage, 1*11
Second repeat: 164% increased AoE, 29 radius and 35% more damage, 1.35*12
Third: 214% increased AoE, 31 radius and 70% more damage, 1.7*13
Forth: 264% increased AoE, 34 radius and 105% more damage, 2.05*13

Add these up and divide by 4 and the PoH more multiplier in PoB (1.52), your actual DPS would be tooltip * 12.49. Although this means perfect distance control and is not so likely, I still think it is safe to time your tooltip number by 11 or so.

Guess my dps can be considered roughly 124m or so then, or 172m with regular RF on which I should be able to support with 4.2k mana regen at 8.7k mana total.

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Guess my dps can be considered roughly 124m or so then, or 172m with regular RF on which I should be able to support with 4.2k mana regen at 8.7k mana total.

Dude you are just forcing GGG to nerf ball lightning again XD

lol so after all that, just ended up confirming that Isanion's original dps estimate of 125-135m was correct...

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SkylerOG wrote:

I’ll look at it closer tomorrow. It’s 2am for me and heading to sleep shortly.

But I can tell you already that if you only have 29 radius and 7.95 cast speed, you have much less DPS than you think.

You can cast ~7.1 BL’s per second, but your 1st and 5th BL of those 7 only hit 6.0 times (rather than 6.67).
So 1=6.0, 2=6.67, 3=6.67, 4=6.67, 5=6.0, 6=6.67, 7=6.67.
That’s 45.35 lightning strikes per second.

Your 1st second of casting = 45.35 x Average Hit, and every additional second after that if you’re standing there chain-casting is double that number.

And no, you can’t use the tooltip DPS. It has zero capacity to know how many times each of your BL’s hit. It makes no account for cast sequencing, max lightning strikes per BL, and radius. It’s nothing more than Average Hit x cast rate, which has zero to do with volume of lightning strikes.

I’m not being overly complicated. This thing is just that complex. And that spreadsheet is trash.

Why does it take more time than the time listed to cast BL? Doesn't 7.96 cast rate literally mean that you output 7.96 projectiles each second, can't find any source saying otherwise that there is an inherent delay in any of the spells or support gems not listed anywhere. And in that case dps in PoB is always wrong for every single case if it can't list the correct cast/attack speed.


And again, which I've already written but I'll repeat. I never said tooltip dps takes into account for how many times each ball hits in fact I said it can't.

The PoB tooltip dps is simply its calculations of your dps as if each BL only hit once, so what is wrong about using that number when applying the additional calculations?

If you deal 5 avg damage, 8 casts (and balls) per second with 6.67 hits per ball your calculation would be (with all the decimals calculating ofc):
8x6.67=53 hit per second, 53x5=266.67 dps.
While if you use PoB dps it would be
5x8=40 (tooltip dps), 40x6.67=266.67 dps

This is what I mean by the finished tooltip dps is what matters rather than avg damage, both work but if you already have the tooltip there's no need to go through the extra steps. felt like you were just arguing semantics here. The only thing I don't understand which would mess it up why you're saying 4 balls in 1 second takes 4.5 cast speed to cast. I've never heard of that.

The spreadsheet is from the wiki's entry on Ball Lightning and was updated specifically for 3.13 so I would assume it's correct or someone would have corrected it by now, no?

So I looked at your PoB and here is one of your issues:



That generic +50% AoE from greater spell echo doesn't actually exist. Your echoes get 50/100/150 AoE boost respectively, but your first BL of every 4 sequence does not.

So you only really have 27 AoE radius, not 29. You should edit your PoH and add a line to it like, "50% reduced area of effect" if you want it corrected.

That said, this means your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd BL's, as well as 5th, 6th, and 7th BL's in every 1 second cast sequence aren't reaching the 6.67 lightning strikes max potential. (1@27 radius, 2@29, 3@31, 4@33, 5@27, 6@29, 7@31, 8@33)

And the reason it's not 1:1 ratio on number of BL's to cast rate is because of "animation lag". There is a thread somewhere on these forums where some of us had a discussion with GGG and they confirmed that several items in this game which have unique cast/attack animations cause slight delays in successive casting/attacking because of their animations. And Pledge of Hands was one of the culprits stated explicitly. You can also recognize/feel/see this simply by casting once and then trying to move immediately. It won't let you. We call it "animation lock" when referring to movement. That same delay also causes a slight interruption between successive casts, too. It's not always noticeable as the animation syncs with sound and spreads it out evenly, but it's there. Hence why I used additional 0.5 on cast rate just to make sure it's accounted for.

But, for the sake of not arguing over this and going further overboard, lets just ignore this and act like you are getting 7.96 BL's cast every second (or about 15 BL's in 2 full seconds).

At 1.41M Average hit, with 27 base radius, this is your true sDPS calc:
(if 32 radius = 6.67 hits, then 27 radius = 5.63 hits)

BL#1 = 1.41 x 5.63 = 7.94M
BL#2 = 1.41 x 6.04 = 8.52M
BL#3 = 1.41 x 6.46 = 9.11M
BL#4 = 1.41 x 6.67 = 9.40M
BL#5 = 1.41 x 5.63 = 7.94M
BL#6 = 1.41 x 6.04 = 8.52M
BL#7 = 1.41 x 6.46 = 9.11M
BL#8 = 1.41 x 6.67 = 9.40M

(^^This is why you can't use the tooltip DPS and can ONLY use Average Hit. Each BL must be separately calculated if each one has a different radius and number of possible lightning strikes.^^)

Total of 69.94M sDPS in every first second of casting.

If you chain-cast, your next second will be approximately 130M (69.94+60.54).

So in 2 seconds, it's now ~130 + ~70 for ~200M damage, which breaks down to around 100M sDPS.

If you stand there for 3 seconds, then it's 130 + 130 + 70 / 3 = 110M sDPS.

4 seconds is 130+130+130+70/4 = 115M.... and so on.

But I seriously doubt anyone is standing stationary for 3+ seconds on this char without dying. It can't tank like that. Most of us launch 1-2 rounds of BLs and move, then recast. Standing still is a death sentence on this guy.

BTW, this is also assuming you are standing the perfect distance from your target and your target is always on consecrated ground and bottled faith is always active, as well as 5 power charges, a frenzy charge, stage 4 sigil of power, and all other flasks active.

Don't get me wrong, we all add everything to our PoB's to see our "potential", but it's still not entirely realistic to think we're actually doing this much damage every cast all game. It's just not realistically happening... but I digress.

Still a very good build and your char is geared and designed extremely well. But be careful shouting it from any rooftops or you're just going to get our chars nerfed again for inaccurate numbers that are based on PoB super-maxed potential rather than reality.