[3.23] Self-cast Ice Nova of Frostbolts (Pledge-Kitava's) | Low-Med Budget | All-Rounder
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Just wanted to showcase my take on the new gem.
It's been pretty fun so far and scales well from off-meta (thus cheap) items. I'm just gonna highlight what I think's important and lmk if there's any questions I guess? Pros/Cons + league start viable since items off-meta, common af, and cheap + extremely cost-efficient and easy to get corrupts for + Solid mapper, but not zoomy, stutter-step playstyle + freezes/shatters mostly everything - for the same reason it's cost-efficient (lots of uniques) the dps is also sort of hard-capped even if you farm out more currency since the only flex slots are your life/resist rares & chestpiece. - limited uber viability if you're potato at the fights (like I am) I think its best use case is as a league starter. It makes for a very comfortable general mapper & invitation runner, 300-350 delver, but would ultimately not recommend it if you plan on farming ubers (too squishy/self-cast) or simulacrum (too slow). You get a lot of initial damage and QoL very cheaply, but you can't hard invest on it like you can other builds, outside of a mageblood. MB is also portable in that you can just swap it from this build to your endgame build w/o any hassle, but I've contained all the MB talk within a single subsection. Damage It played smoothly from the end of the campaign at ~190k dps on junk items up to about 2.5m dps with 4L pledge and 2d invest. It can comfortably hit 25m dps on about 10d, but from there it becomes less budget efficient as it slides into optimization hell. At the top end on "normal" gear, I would estimate it to cap out around 49m dps (56m with 1 flask) on about 60d. I farmed out a mageblood and with that it, depending on cluster/brutal restraint/qol choices, can cap out around 93-100m. This estimate range doesn't include shock, but because of investment in generic non-damaging ailment mods our relatively small lightning pool does give up to a ~34% shock on conquerors and ~17% on shaper. It requires preloading the sigil, which is capped at gaining 1 stage/sec, so it's not always up, but in phased fights or bosses that have intro animations it's easy to just pop it and load it up with mana. Gameplay videos: single target: sigil -> brand -> fbomb -> spam novas mapping: fbomb or don't -> spam novas sort of a stutter-steppy playstyle, but once the fbolts are going you can just run behind them casting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddGU1E--4W8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S5U-Zl-nGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZopI2bEETk feared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-xQpKVZKsg Main Interactions Pledge of Hands gives Greater Spell Echo, which causes your spells to repeat 2x. When you spend 100+ mana on a single spell, Kitava's has a 50% chance to trigger. When INoF is triggered on a frostbolt it skips the animation lock letting us spam it comfortably, blowing through a ton of mana, chaining more balls. Fbolt is linked to Greater Volley + Returning Proj to maximize ball coverage. It's sort of like spectral throw, with novas. Painseeker's "Inflict Non-Damaging Ailments as though dealing % more dmg" lets our somewhat piddly-at-first hits freeze and chill everything. It's double what's available on Expedition's End and doesn't tie up our body slot for mods that are largely redundant to Occultist. The downside of crits not inflicting ailments innately doesn't matter since we have ~100% freeze chance anyways. I have 97% with the TWwT jewel (20-25%), but you can also pick up freeze chance from the Divine Judgement wheel (15%) or get Frostbite on hit (25%). Mostly everything being perma frozen is so comfy defensively, and shatters = no corpses. " (awakened spell echo does give 5% more cast speed in general though) Nova cast on 1 fbolt = 1 expansion. Nova + echo cast on 1 fbolt = 1 expansion x2 = 2 total. Nova + echo cast on 4 fbolt = 4 expansions x2 = 8 total. Each repeat (spell echo) adds another set of expansions. So it's clear that we need additional balls in order to leverage the "up to 4 frostbolts". For this reason, the Volley vs Greater Volley question isn't really a question imo. The argument for using Volley is that it provides a smaller spread w/ 3 balls (+2), and Greater Volley has a wider spread w/ 5 balls (+4). But the spread is largely immaterial because we have so much AoE from power charge stacking. But more importantly, the nova won't expand 4 times on 3 projectiles. You lose an expansion, so using volley over gvolley only gives you 12/16 novas in a single cast. Positioning  Don't hug the boss' butt, you'll lose dps. (the order of the novas on the fbolts is random, it's just an example) Obviously it depends on the size of it's hitbox a bit, but it's important to stand back far enough that the 1st set of novas just barely clips it, in order to ensure that by the 4th set, it hasn't traveled too far through the boss. This is also why there's no quality on Returning Projectiles, bc that adds proj speed and that lowers our effective dps in practice. Ascendancy cold/chaos res, power charge, cold dmg, no stun while es Vile Bastion is sort of a tossup idk, I wanted anti-stun mostly, but I also only have like 1.2k es so it's not entirely reliable. Hexproof cursing can come from charms (and +1 does nothing with Anathema) and chaos pops don't add much clear since the novas are huge. The chaos resist one is okay but not super compelling with Arakaali pantheon resist. Primalist for charms and comfy invent space. Using Abberath bc burning ground wrecks ES -> makes us stunnable and Arakaali bc 40% chaos res vs dot is a nice bandaid. Items Required: Pledge of Hands + Kitava's Thirst Should probably get: Anathema, Painseeker, Badge of the Brotherhood Flex: ring, belt, boots: rare/resist; chest piece: whatever you feel like leveling dump points into damage, become frozen glass bitterdream @ 32 i just used fpulse and two +1 daggers Endgame equipment:
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Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable older gear:
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Itemization / Optimization Discussion:
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The jewels cover raw hp/mp/resist balancing. Charms: the spell crit/spell block ones are ideal but also $$. Anti-reflect / anti-hexproof is just plain comfy since I tend to not watch my map mods as closely as I should, but reflect could be subbed out for 10% to recover 10% mp or spell block. It's not worth taking the hexproof ascendancy over half a charm mod imo. I considered Anathema's with anti-bleed corruption, but I think having the flask mastery is more flexible in that it also lets you remove poison without needing specifically-modded flasks. If you ditch the entire wheel maybe consider grabbing the corruption. I was originally considering an elevated spell crit chest with 18% phys taken as cold, spell block, and %life/mp -- but even with all that it kinda pales compared to Shroud of the Lightless since that modset loses raw evasion, ES, and 12-28% penetration depending on your jewels. I'm a huge fan of Shroud and it's cheap. Not needing to bother with another 6L is really nice too. I put the utility gems in it so there'd be more chances to proc Shade Form. For body corrupts, I got the 50% reduced crit implicit, which makes the league mech & multi maps a bit more comfortable. The belt is a toss-up, I had intended to use a Micro-Distillery belt since I'm using the Traitor keystone anyways, but they were 12d uncrafted when I started (6d today). When I was scrolling through trade, there were a lot of stygians with 130-160% resist, so I snagged this one with T1 T1 T2 resists and mana, crafted life, and slammed with a redeemer exalt. All the redeemer prefix outcomes are positive for the build: evasion%, cold dmg%, or dmg vs chilled%. Darkness Enthroned even edges out my redeemer belt, assuming a high roll on belt & jewels. You do lose some overcap resistance, but this can be offset by getting a better anti-curse flask to reduce the need to overcap as much. It should be noted that you're comparing <stygian + 1 jewel> to <2 jewels at 2x value> or rather, that the difference is just <jewel 1 copy, jewel 2 copy, and jewel 3 (new)> in which we need to make up the stygian stats. In my case I decided to use which gave more life, but fell slightly shy on resist, so the new jewel needed to have a fire & cold resist, but could then run 7% cast speed, and 2 flat damage mods, which pulls ahead of 38% dmg by about 1.7m dps with even just 1 T2 flat cold mod. This also gives us another iteration of the Shroud jewel bonuses. It is incredibly tempting to put my heavy damage jewels in the belt, but the build is so short on resists that it's not possible atm. However, none of these jewels existed on trade, which is ultimately the limiting factor: getting pob jewels on realm. As such, I just kept using the redeemer belt until Mageblood. Anathema enables 8 curses but only 6 are useful to the build. I put enfeeble in Kitava's for defensive coverage. The glove double corrupt gives TC + Ele Weak. It's slightly less dps (1-2%) than putting Ele Weak in brand but it's full uptime and recovers a socket. Then Arcanist Brand is linked to Punishment, Frostbite (could get on ring instead), and Assassin's Mark. Further optimization includes getting a large cluster with +3-4 str, blanketed snow, prismatic heart, and widespread destruction. The strength let me drop Practical Application and put those 2 points towards jewel sockets, for 4+mod jewels. 3 str is fine, but 4 str enables lvl 21/20 Eternal Blessing (114). Since we have shroud, we get 3% hp/mp, 4% pen per abyss jewel. As such, a global crit multi, flat ele dmg w/ staff, 7% cast spd if crit jewel outdpses the typical 3x multi jewel cobalt, and costs so much less. These two were 1 div & 110c respectively. Alternatively you could put Flame/Flesh in there - Bastion of Elements for EHP and anti-reflect (then swapping charm prefix to spell crit); or Withering Presence for just 60% chaos resist lol. Mastermind of Discord and Shaper of Storms lose out to jewels though. I ended up further upgrading my boots, dropping the str base for dex, rolling for ~11d. The cheapest equivalent on trade was 40d. I'll go over how to craft them in the crafting section. This is the ideal outcome for prefixes; however, much more expensive to craft: This then gave me an extra jewel socket, sort of. I dropped culling strike out of my Flame Dash link, because I wasn't really using it that much in practice. It adds an effective / theoretical 4.5m dps, but requires me to get into melee range to dash through the mob. It's 10% (or 1/10th of a second), so the effective time saved becomes lesser and lesser the more dps we gain, even if the relative dps that culling adds stays the same as a ratio of your total dps. By getting a socket, again, we get another iteration of Shroud bonuses and 2 potential damage mods. I needed to use 1 suffix on 16 str, and move a 5% hp node to 30 str (since we traded T1 str for the abyss socket). So this leaves a tradeoff of: ~1 skill point reassigned from 5% life to 30 str = -19 life (diff btw boot hp, hp from str, -5% life node, +3% shroud bonus) -55 mana (old boots) vs 3% mana (shroud bonus) = -154 mana loss + x-x fire spell damage = negligible gain, 0.4% dps - cold would have been better + 7% cast spd if crit recently = +1.5m dps + 4% pen = +1.3m dps or +2.8m (5.7%) dps for -19 life, -154 mana. which seems decent enough. (also +300k flask dps) Mageblood swap I'm not sold that a 4-flasker is the way to go. I was crutching hard on the 3k mana flask (with ignite removal too!) and the hybrid just doesn't really match up in that regard. Maybe a 3-flask for QoL, keeping dedicated life/mana flasks. Mageblood gear + discussion:
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new pob: https://pobb.in/dJEH14KZhrfC Some of the gems/jewels have changed slightly. I no longer need as many resists so I've largely dropped those jewels out or swapped them up. I dropped the Traitor keystone too for obvious reasons. The dex/str on the belt let me drop 2 pts from Precision (near Templar start) and 42 str from the tree/jewels/boots. While the cast speed pre-MB was a valid use of points at 5%/pt, I now have enough cast speed that it's no longer contributing as much dps per point, so taking these 3 points and throwing them into a med cluster makes more sense. Given sufficient dex from the MB, the badge can be swapped out for a corrupted one. The cold leech is super nice QoL particularly given the weaker hybrid pot. It feels like there haven't been many dbl corrupted badges on trade, nvm ones with usable mods for the build. Spell block or movement speed as secondaries would also be comfy. I had originally considered %str/%int but you can get +8 str from the med & large clusters combined which is sufficient to hit 114 and drop the final strength jewel suffix, freeing up the amulet corruption slot. Anathema could also be corrupted, but keeping the 18% cast speed is a priority, which limits the options or again turns this into a money sink project which just doesn't feel like a very good use of currency. Losing the flat +25 es is more painful than 24 int, but "cannot be ignited" would be huge qol. In an attempt to fix the mana feeling a bit awkward I crafted a new unset ring. The mana cost has to stay > 100, so unfortunately this precludes the use of the mana mastery as well. The unset socket is for Sigil of Power, moving Arcane Surge out of the main link (slightly decreasing overall cast speed & regen) to Frost Bomb, which I normally spam since it helps generate Frostbolts in a new direction (and exposure, bonechill). Arcane surge is only dropped enough that Fbomb will always trigger - in my case, 4 lvls, to 16. Looking back, I kind of want to recraft it with a gilded fossil now, to get the corrupt on the vendor implicit. Of course it would be abhorrently expensive, but it also kinda feels bad being unable to upgrade the build any further at this point. Cast speed is great for scaling the overall dps and helping to minimize the feeling of clunkiness when you get rooted with spell echo, but it's also a scaling factor on how mana we burn. I prefer chunkier hits, so I've swapped crit multi into the main link. I also decided to pick up Alira instead of the 2 passive points, since I was already spending a skill point on the 5 mana regen.
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 (recipe: 20 regret orbs + a lapis amulet from npc) The flat 15% resist lets me drop a resist suffix from the ring (and harvest swap the boot's fire res to lightning), gaining back the cast speed we lose from changing the starting path.  Unfortunately, I blew thru ~30d and didn't hit the %reduced mana cost as an unveil. It was ~160 attempts at 65% conf, and 86% conf at ~320 attempts via Misery essence to hit T1 cast speed. I hit it twice in ~300 ess, after bricking the first one w/ a failed annul. This raises the mana cost by 2%. So I'm a bit puzzled what's better at this point: (1) craft -6% on ring, then still slot the +5mp/s mana regen mastery (2) craft -6% on ring, then unslot the +5mp/s mastery (since 5 from alira), and slot that point into Lord of the Dead instead for 5% cast speed (1.8% dps) .. 1.8% is kinda substandard as far as the use of 1 pt goes but nothing else is in range of us. It's that or a 6% life node and I'm 100 now so I don't really care about dying anymore lol (it would add 1.3% ehp). (3) craft cold/lightning damage on ring (1.5% dps) or generic %dmg (1.7% dps, but have to ask sm1 else to do it), then slot the 10% reduced cost mana mastery. I'm not sure how pob derives the mana cost/sec, it seems inaccurate as it says 105mp cost/skill use but only 181mp/sec with 6.92 cast speed. surely that should be 105*6.92? If it was only 181/s I would never run out of mp. It follows cost/cast*cast speed for the other skills. (1) = 90.7m dps, 111 mp/cast, 6.92 cspd, 3622 mp, 423 mpr/s -> 768 mp/s (55.1% of spend) (2) = 92.3m dps, 111 mp/cast, 7.04 cspd, 3622 mp, 398 mpr/s -> 781 mp/s (51.0%) (3) = 92.2m dps, 105 mp/cast, 6.92 cspd, 3461 mp, 384 mpr/s -> 727 mp/s (52.8%) opt2 costs more (54mp/s in a vacuum), but only regens 14mp/s more than opt3. so opt3 > opt2 opt1 has better regen (39/s), but less dps, and higher spend (41/s). Opt1's higher regen and spend are basically equal, not skewed like opt2. But ice nova isn't the only skill and we're also casting enfeebles, frostbombs, and frostbolts left and right. So I think opt3 still wins out in that the total cost is lesser while sacrificing minimal dps compared to opt2, whose dps is predicated on driving the mana cost up. Even if it has the lowest passive regen it's also got a much lower global spend. (4) use mana mastery for -10% and craft a shittier vers of the craft on the ring (+30 mana/-3% cost) This results in 90.7m dps, 101mp/cast, 6.92 cspd, 3562 mp, 393 mpr/s, 699 mp/s (56.22%) where 4 > 3 > 1 > 2 in terms of mana usage So I guess it'll largely come down to feel - if that extra regen is necessary or if it's saccable for dps. I tend to prioritize QoL over pure dps but it's really hard to say based on all of this. tl;dr Alira was a net dps/mana regen gain even though my ring didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. The tradeoff is 4 skill points (4% cast spd x3, 12% spell dmg) for 20 int (pathing), 16% cast spd (new ring suffix), 20% multi, 15% all res, 5mpr/s. This leaves the mana mastery as a floater -> dump into another 5% cast speed on Lord of the Dead (only 1.8% dps) or use it to bolster mana further. With just the pathing nodes exchanged it's already more efficient. I dropped one of the 0.93% crit strike charms in favour of a 5% multi/power charge charm (still with spell block). MB diamond flask gives us enough leeway in that regard that we still hit 100% crit chance vs boss w/ sin mark, and ~84% in the field without. I dropped the chaos/curse cluster because of the Amethyst flask w/ reduced effect of curses (>100% w/ flask enchant) and redirected it into the Arcane Potency group. The flask mastery was changed (which makes us somewhat vulnerable to poison and ignite) to 25% chance of a charge on crit. This basically instantly refills the hybrid flask which uses 20 charges/sip, so it needs a little help. I didn't find a megalo combo that could outperform a crit medium + abyss jewel bonuses. I'm currently using a NDA medium with Astonishing Affliction and Inspired Oppression which is like the hybrid QoL/dmg option. The difference between a flask, NDA, and crit medium is approx 3m dps between each. I don't really need the ailment effect itself from the NDA med, but IO effectively gives 20% dmg & 60% mana regen rate in maps/crowds/boss fights with adds. We always freeze and we occasionally shock at a low value via sigil & archmage's flat lightning. AA is mostly taken as a 20% dmg node but also adds 20% ailment duration. For freeze this allows our freezes to be effective against mobs with a higher ailment threshold required. e.g. with 1.7x duration mod the max ailment threshold would be ~20.22m. Adding in AA's 20% allows a 0.3s freeze on up to ~23.05m. I'm not sure if there's any actual difference in practice. Pinnacles have a threshold of ~6.35m, and Sirus ~13.99m (if poedb accurate). The NDA cluster basically gives us 40% dmg, 60% mana regen, and 20% freeze duration. The flask cluster would give ~300 mp/5.8s over the current flask, which is ~52mp/s and limited to flask charges (while also decreasing the reliability of having our "oh shit" button up). IO provides a conditional 47mp/s all the time, which is good enough. In bosses I have to dodge and do mechanics occasionally, which allows for sufficient mp regen. The only time I really find the mp a bit sketch is when you're holding the button down for a sustained period of time, like you would in azurite or dropbear nodes when mobs are constantly falling onto you. That coupled with taking a few hits = mana uncomfortably low. Mageblood has basically doubled the dps and made it more resilient to chaos and curses, but, again, more vulnerable to ignite/psn and successive hits since we no longer have a massive mana restoration flask. I suppose I could put a different prefix on, but I heavily dislike not having an instant flask in some form. -11% for Instant on Low Life seemed like the best compromise. The mana feels much better after the new ring so I don't think it's necessarily worthwhile dropping the 4th utility flask, but it's also not quite the same level of QoL that it was before. The only other minor upgrades have been taking most of the gems to 21/20 or 6/20. I usually get 1-2 gem sets leveled 1-20 in a play session, so it's been quite comfy not having to pay for corrupted ones. At the top end, a 2/2/crit multi ammy is better than badge, but only by a few mil dps, also you lose the life leech corrupt (solid qol given the crappy hybrid flask), and it's ~9x the cost of the entire build. You might try Ralakesh + Olesya's pre-MB, but I don't think it's worth the loss of MB flasks in the long run. Budget / Cost: ~10d lvl 91 setup @25m pinnacle dps: https://pobb.in/aOb2d6pph3jh ~35d endgame-ish char: https://pobb.in/9d0iBgM0M42i 98+ optimization: https://pobb.in/9wXm4N6Enn8n setting divines on fire: https://pobb.in/dJEH14KZhrfC Mostly this character was geared the way it was in the beginning because I was poor due to league starting relatively late. But it still became quite playable. The freeze really carries. I farmed out a mageblood in ~3 days with it, and a mirror in about 1.5 weeks. It is currently my only lvl 100 too. I haven't enjoyed a build this much since I played staff cwc arc in Delve league. I'm running a delirium/essence/destructive play atlas setup with shrines and 7th gate to get the +2 essences/map. I started out with an atlas that was more invested in delve but found it wasn't an efficient use of points vs just getting sulphite from scarabs or niko missions, as I wasn't running delve frequently enough to stop overcapping on sulphite. Here's an alternative 122pt setup w/o 7th gate. The 10 floater points are for completing the league challenges. The freeze nukes explody corpses and makes delirium and general mapping quite comfy. The dps is high enough to comfortably nuke juiced pinnacles and sideways delve at 300-350.
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* Pledge is off-meta and cheap. I got a 155% for 50c. 1.6d in fuse to 6L. -- fsr the conversion of fuse:div was way better than fuse:chaos * Anathema's were ~20c for a corrupt junk roll, the 15/40 I picked up for 40c. * Badge 40c, anoint silver-silver-crimson 45c * old resist ring 5c, new resist ring 75c * old belt 5c, new belt 2.25d + 600c in catalysts (res so tight ;_;) * old boots 5c, fractured life boots 3d (1d + scbc) * shroud 10c * kitavas +1 power charge 50c, this specific one was 2d * painseeker 198%+ 2c, this 2x corrupt was 2d (but hard to replicate) -- there are quite a few ele weak ones on trade * life/mana/es/resist abyss jewels 5-20c (1x res) to 1d (2x res) * reflect/hexproof charm 20c * Brutal Restraint 6184 1d; 4832 is more damage; 7153 is slightly better too (but couldnt afford) * That Which was Taken - 1d (use the Count search group and just fill it up with mods, adjusting your charms based on what you don't get on this jewel - example) Gem Links: check pobb.in or gear
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archmage is on the fbomb link to boost it over 100mp, so we have another chance to proc kitavas as an opener. Sometimes it just doesn't proc and you're kinda rooted in place while spell echo does its thing. Sigil is nice defensively, I pop it pre-fight to stack it up (1s between stages, 4 stages), and gives "enemies deal 24% less dmg" with quality.
Flame Dash can be replaced w/ frostblink if you like it more. The CD is fast enough w/ badge that I initially used it as my main movement skill, blinking thru things to cull them. Fdash culling is sort of a league starter crutch though, I dropped it from my links after hitting about 35m dps, in favour of an abyss jewel socket. Eternal Blessing - Grace frees up the whole mp pool I prefer it over armor since my gear has more eva and having to heal chip damage is annoying. Arcane Surge in the main 6L is less ideal. Because we're using archmage in the Frostbomb link to jack the mana cost up, this also enables a relatively high Arcane Surge (16). I spam Fbomb anyways to help generate/aim Fbolts so it's basically constant uptime on Arcane Surge. Sigil of power can be moved to an unset ring or the boots if no abyss socket yet. The flask is supposed to be slow, I pop it around 30% mp usually. The slower it is the more consistent your mana is + the less you need to babysit it. It's mostly to cover the cases where you don't get 10% mp restore procs. Enduring flask doesn't run out when you cap but it also restores like 1/4 to 1/3 as much, which can be kinda sketch when you take a big hit during burst. Bandits Kill all or Alira All 3 Alira stats are useful to us, but the cast speed / spell damage is nice when starting out (vs not pathing to the left of witch start thru 2 int nodes). You can also swap later if it suits you. Defenses * capped resists (most of the optimization revolves around keeping them capped while dropping crutch nodes and improving chaos resist) * grace and 10.3k eva (76% evade w/ vaal grace per pob, 61% w/o) * 3.4k life, 1.2k es, 3.6k mp with Mind over Matter * cannot be stunned (while ES exists) * cannot be chilled/frozen (ascendancy) * cannot be shocked at max power charges (mastery - all the time) * ignite removal on mana flask * no corrupted blood via chaos res wheel * bleeding/psn removed on life flask use via mastery * ~80% reduced effect of curses (flask affix + chaos wheel) * 23/65% block - can get more but need to sacrifice damage * 30% chill on pinnacles * 95-100% freeze chance - don't need freeze prolif * mostly no corpses It is somewhat squishy, about 70k ehp with a low phys max hit since our main defense is freezing everything and not getting hit. Can take a stray lightning boi from a juiced T16 but not two, basically. Can survive a stray Omni bonk w/ phys as 100% extra ele, but not impale. Weak to "accurate"-type phys dudes that overcome the evasion. Map Mods
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Can run but it sucks:
* no regen - reliant on flask for mana and we shred mana so it feels rly bad. if you accidentally pop one, there is enough mana to just use flame dash, proccing 20% for 10% mana and just beeline for the end of the map to dump a globe's worth on the boss, but it still feels awful. Can run but might die: * monsters avoid 70% ailments - we hit freq enough that we'll chill/freeze/kill them anyways but they're liable to get a hit in and when you play as sloppy as I do sometimes where I just dash into the middle of packs + nova cuz it's faster, you might occasionally die. * stacked offensive mods - 2 phys as extra is usually okay, but not when comboed with multiproj, 100% aoe, phys as chaos, impale, etc. anything that allows ranged mobs to potentially barrage snipe you. Okay with: Everything else. I usually play fairly rippy maps and it just doesn't matter most of the time because everything is frozen. It's only situations like some 8mod prox shield essences, with deli running, in the 2nd tunnel of like Overgrown Ruin where you've got the spinny chaos swords and tight quarters. Situations where positioning, divine shrine lag, or mobs that can't be slowed/frozen get to dogpile ontop of the dmg mods. Bossing Strong enough to comfortably obtain all the voidstones and catapult you through atlas progression, but not recommended for endgame bossing / carries.
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Outside of Ubers, it's fine unless you eat a slam or multiple hits in a row.
I'm not the most mechanically sound and my cpu's a bit potato so it's hard to record at the same time. I've killed all the dudes and deleted a few delve bosses. The dps is comfy enough to do the fights if you know the mechanics but it's not instant. For Ubers, I've only done L85 Cortex and Maven so far. Maven was annoying because I suck at memory game, but Cortex was basically training dummy tier. That said, Cortex isn't profitable to run alone since the market value is based on running it as a bottleneck for Uber Feared, and the build struggles with the other Uber bosses due to not being able to stand still (uber phys hits ohko it) and poor visibility = can't see mechanics like Uber Eater tentacles. Imo it's not worthwhile to farm simulacrum on this build, compared to just running invites & mapping, but it is viable to clear it without too much hassle outside of "monsters cannot be slowed below base movement speed", which is super awkward at 20+, slowing the runs as you hafta play more defensively. I cleared W30 okay a few times, but it's not the best build to farm it imo, jack of all trades issue ig. e.g. https://i.imgur.com/K7ayEjO.png I did spend 5+ min sorting loot, but that's still a ~35 min run, which is too slow to be competitively profitable. Acknowledgements "FrigidFrailFrannie" whom I stole the Eternal Blessing tech, hat enfeeble, & mana flask wheel from. They look like the only other person running a similar build on ninja rn. ThatsRealNeato for suggesting Painseeker. Last edited by hqDM on Feb 29, 2024, 7:43:27 AM Last bumped on Feb 4, 2024, 8:05:34 PM
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I finally 40/40'd yesterday and have just been mindlessly farming all week having a blast. The main post is getting a bit long, resembling more of a build diary than a guide, so I'll need to go through it and reorganize at some point.
Ppl dm'd me asking about how to craft some of the items so I'll put that in this post. The process is relatively simple and once you finish all suffixes, you can either settle on prefixes, or try for something a little more luxurious. It's quite flexible. If you're in the league start position, check trade first for comparable rare boots and see if you can't just slap on movspeed or life/mana to an existing pair. Or maybe hybrid chaos res + use the pantheon chaos resist. Anyways: Fractured crafting (boots/ring) Because chaos resist is by far the hardest mod to hit, it is also the ideal fracture for this build. Also instead of SCBC, if suffixes are full, you can use Wild Bristle Matrons which are cheaper than 2d and will guarantee SCBC if there's only prefixes open. Unset Ring
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1. get a fractured 34-35% chaos res unset base 2. scour it -> fertile catalyst x10 (on blue) 2a. optionally gilded fossil at this point 3. Spam Deafening Essence of Misery (70-76% mana regen) until you hit T1 cast speed (or a resist, if pre-MB). 3a. if it's a resist, it doesn't matter which type - just take any T1 and harvest swap it later 4a. if no open prefix, yolo annul 4b. craft suffixes cannot be changed It's about 1/120 on avg to hit T1 cast speed. I hit it 2x in 300 essences when I did mine, which was about 2700 chaos + 5d for the base. At the time Aisling was going for 7d ea. Atm they're selling for 15d. I opted to SCBC veiled chaos instead. The reasoning for this is that there's a ~10% chance you'll fill all 6 affixes, forcing you into a 50-50 yolo annul. ~65% 1 prefix, 25% 2 prefixes, 10% 3 prefixes. So, 5% to brick & recraft per veiled chaos for this ring specifically. But recrafting it would still be, on average, cheaper than an Aisling success. Aisling would also require reforge life to succeed (and be better than crafted). We basically only need 2 mods on the prefixes (though ES is nice too), so veiled chaos adding +1 prefix is not really a problem as it would be a yolo exalt later anyways. Unfortunately, there is a large amount of crap in the veiled prefix pool and blocking hybrid ele dmg no longer blocks all of them. But by blocking hybrid fire & lightning flat, it guarantees there will be at least 1 mana mod (though maybe not the one we want) in the unveil pool.  The worst outcome would be 2 hybrid +dmg mods and one of life or mana, guaranteeing us at least one mod base that we want. We then craft the other one via bench. Ideally we want the reduced% mana cost of skills, but if getting one of the others, you can still use the mana mastery for -10%. If life, you can craft the lower tier 3% reduced mana cost to not exceed the 100 mp threshold/cast in conjunction with the mastery. If you don't hit reduced mana% you can also clean prefixes and go again. Boots
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Again, check trade first. The pair of titan greaves with frac life under the "older gear" section I had bought for 1.5d or so, and just crafted movspeed onto. You can also use eldritch annuls to yolo a prefix off for this purpose. It can be much cheaper to pick up a pair of boots like this and modify them than crafting from scratch. Starting again with fractured chaos res on, ideally, an evasion or hybrid evasion/es base. At the time, the base was 1d (34% chaos) to 1.5d (35%). 1. get some 3os resonators, hollow - abberant - scorched fossils Took 8 tries to hit T2 res. The 65% confidence avg is 6, 95% confidence is 16. Each attempt was ~105c. Suffixes should be: frac chaos res, any T1-T2 res, and the abyssal socket Time to make another value decision. Because boots can be eldritch influenced, we can safely annul prefixes w/o needing SCBC, as long as the tier of Exarch implicit is > the Eater implicit. Ideally we want life, mana, and 30% movespeed. Pre-MB, 2/3 of the unveil movespeed options are good (onslaught, +10-12 if not hit recently), with chill being useless but also just generic ~30%. Post-MB we ideally want "if not hit recently" since onslaught comes from flask. Crafted life is p.competitive with T1 life, falling only 15-20 short. Crafted mana perfectly acceptable too, so this gives us a lot of flexibility. We can either 1. SCBC veiled chaos, hoping to hit +1 useful prefix - then eldritch annul if it fills or 2. eldritch chaos into T1 life/mana, annul extra prefixes, then SCBC aisling - aisling is currently 15d for a 50/50 Aisling will produce a superior pair of boots but it's just so expensive rn that unless you don't have anything better to spend $ on, it's so much more efficient to veiled chaos reroll your boots. 3. block focused evasion for the unveil, then unveil movespeed ideally. If you e.chaos or veiled +1 prefix into 30% movespeed I would just settle tbh, and go for the life/mana unveil, crafting whatever you don't unveil. Last edited by hqDM on Feb 4, 2024, 8:44:54 PM
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