Lightning Tendrils

I leveled a LT char to 84 so far. Full twink gear leveling, spent around 10 exa in Rampage for endgame gear.

My plan was crit CI. Crit to see the full damage potential, CI because ES doesn't need as many nodes and many clusters are near crit or AoE nodes.

Gear


Build


Got around 50% critchance with 7 power charges, 7.6k ES and triple curse (assassin's mark, warlord's mark, ele weakness) linked to cwdt. DPS with charges is around 13k (lvl 18 LT + lvl 3 empower, so I'm basically using lvl 20 gem in a 4l atm).

I have no problems managing charges (curse + pcoc) and the critchance is reliable. Downsides are the same as in every melee build.

"

Sa_Re wrote:

I leveled a LT char to 84 so far. Full twink gear leveling, spent around 10 exa in Rampage for endgame gear.

My plan was crit CI. Crit to see the full damage potential, CI because ES doesn't need as many nodes and many clusters are near crit or AoE nodes.

Gear

Spoiler

Build

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUABUIFWw2NDkgQWBEPES8RUBGWFdcWQBcvGGobJRzcHRQi9CepKU8rCiycLL81uTwFPV9BlkNjRtdHBkuuTLNQMFJTVdZWY1gHWPVca13GXfJfKl9qY0NknWTnZp5sC20ZcFJwu3DVcU10VXYReC985X5Zfq9_xoCkhEiFfYauidOLjI0ZjmSPRo_6l5WX9JrPm6Gf36crrJius7UEtve2-rcxwcXDbdD12VvZX9te2-fdjN-K4BLhc-Qi6QLr9ewY7SDvfPId8uH3pvfX-tI=
Next point goes into Body and Soul, after I'll prolly head to Throatseeker

Got around 50% critchance with 7 power charges, 7.6k ES and triple curse (assassin's mark, warlord's mark, ele weakness) linked to cwdt. DPS with charges is around 13k (lvl 18 LT + lvl 3 empower, so I'm basically using lvl 20 gem in a 4l atm).

I have no problems managing charges (curse + pcoc) and the critchance is reliable. Downsides are the same as in every melee build.

Your damage seems surprisingly low to me....



With this gem set-up i'm at 11.5k dps with a lvl 15 LT and level 60 w/ 6 charges up..... Mind you I don't have lightning pen due to only a 5 link...

Conc. effect is amazing I would highly recommend using it.

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Gryphyn wrote:

Conc. effect is amazing I would highly recommend using it.

Conc is a no-go for me without Carcass Jack. I value range quite high with a lot of low-/midrange skills.

I also don't like echo with crit tendrils. When I crit, every trashmob dies in 1-3 shots, so 1 cast without echo is enough. When I don't crit I am locked in place forever. I switched echo for faster cast at some point. Pen is mandatory imo. Sure, its multiplier is worse than conc's but you don't lose range.

What I lack is crit multiplier. Throatseeker, Maligaro's gloves with 4R and increased critical damage gem would be the best upgrades imo.

After my first feedback, I tried spell echo and that solved desync issue significantly (I was using LT + light.pen + Conc.effect + Increased AoE with 13% casting rare scepter.)

Also compared 36% (faster casting) + 25% (apep's rage) casting with spell echo (66% more casting) + 13% (rare scepter) casting. I had bad desyncs every after casting when with former setting.

My LT templar is now lvl 88

tree


gear


23k tooltip DPS
8.5k ES

If my rough calculations are right: DPS vs. a shocked, triple cursed enemy with 0 lightning res is about 70k.

With a few more lvls, lvl 20 gems and a 6l with lvl 4 empower, avg. dps vs. triple curse shocked 0 resistance enemies would be above 120k. Seems balanced to me, dunno how to deal with reflect in this case though.

Currently finding new life as a mid range boss killer skill.
LT - blind - pcoc - life leech
Not sure how the blind applies with this skill (assuming all or nothing like everything else). So far, it is applying very reliably though so probably a moot point.

Doing merciless Piety runs as a test; I found Ball Lightning to be a much superior aoe trash mob killer.

This skill design is fiendish and brilliant!

What we have here is a skill that's got good "out of the box" stats, including a base non-crit DPS per target that's higher than Flame Surge's (by roughly 20% by my calculations) and which is easier to use, getting a potential boost from the shocks that it can inflict itself as opposed to the boost that flame surge can get, but only from another method of ignition.

That means it's got great potential for racing and early levelling, and for levelling in particular it also benefits from a mana cost that's very friendly towards "Elreon's" items, letting you cast it for free or cheap early on and saving you from having to worry about mana at all until you're ready to take on that burden.

The issue is how to develop Lightning Tendrils from that sort of light usage into something more long term, and this is where both the downsides and the cleverness of the design become apparent.

First, the downsides, which combine to indicate that it's much harder to develop into a strong stand alone skill than its competitors in the midrange field.

It has more DPS than Flame Surge, but Flame Surge has more base crit in roughly the same percentage, and so does Freezing Pulse. If you go for serious global crit investment, Lightning Tendrils won't serve you as well as its rivals could.

Elemental statuses don't help it out of this hole. Flame Surge's possibilities with another skill igniting targets are greater than what Lightning Tendrils offers from shock, and while Lightning Tendrils can shock, it's not great at it; it doesn't roll to see if it crits particularly often despite delivering smaller hits that won't shock as easily or for as long as bigger hits might. Freezing Pulse can be used as cold or as fire via Cold To Fire and Avatar of Fire which give it the option of an additional force multiplier over Lightning Tendrils, and any elemental status effect the user wants (via Three Dragons if necessary). Lightning Tendrils with shock doesn't reach Incinerate's final form base DPS without status effects. No help here for LT.

The situation with base damage effectiveness per second is much the same. Flame Surge equals it in base benefit derived from additional damage, undiminished Freezing Pulse beats it even without shotgunning and only gets stronger from there, and Incinerate, it's fellow lock-in-place skill, wipes the floor with it from relatively early into the casting process of Incinerate. No help for LT here either.

That seems like it should be a really dire prognosis, but here's where the cleverness kicks in. Lightning Tendrils is a perfect partner for Herald of Thunder.

Now, this isn't impressive at first glance. Why not? Because Freezing Pulse is a perfect partner for Herald of Ice, and has better basic damage efficiency per second than LT. So, it ought to be another dead end, Herald of Ice doing more for Freezing Pulse than Herald of Thunder does for Lightning Touch.

The reason why it's not, is that Lightning Tendrils supports Herald of Thunder really effectively in Herald's of Thunder's storm summoning role, and that storm effect is brutal.

Herald of Thunder is a lot like Lightning Tendrils. They're both midrange but with good potential for scope, they're both strong out of the box (Herald of Thunder's basic lightning storm DPS is massive, especially at higher levels) but take a relatively restricted pool of improvements, which is the sort of thing that normally holds the lightning storm back.

These two skills both want the same limited group of improvements. Elemental damage, casting speed, lightning damage, area of effect buffs (Lightning Tendrils can take spell damage and Herald of Thunder can't, but it's easy enough to exclude from free choices). The stuff that's really good on LT can be the same select few things that Herald of Thunder can actually employ. That's a great deal of synergy right there, but it gets better. Viewing LT as a Herald of Thunder trigger and support skill turns its weaknesses into strengths!

LT's weakness as a general shock infliction skill comes about because it hits in four small parts and only rolls once to see if they crit, all-or-nothing style. That's weak for causing shock, but it's great for causing shock fatalities because when the first crit hits and shocks the target, the remaining three quarters of the skill slam into it almost immediately at optimum strength. That's ideal for satisfying Herald of Thunder's trigger condition of killing a shock foe.

LT's pseudo-weakness in base crit value suddenly makes sense too, because Herald of Thunder can't crit. Global crit, which would be better on Flame Surge or Freezing Pulse, therefore makes less sense on a Herald of Thunder build in the first place. But you do still want to crit sometimes for the reason mentioned above, which is where the 5% value can be pretty solid. It's less than it's rivals, but better than some skills, and because Herald of Thunder's lightning storm acts over a reasonable duration, you can get a lot of the uptime you need from local critical in the form of a support gem on LT. Nothing wasted, no fuss, and you make up any shortfall from chance to shock passive nodes, gear, or curses.

LT's range fits with Herald of Thunder's range. LT's decent width is one advantage it has over its rivals, and Herald of Thunder takes that one step further by being able to take care of stragglers, and monsters that are creeping up behind you. The relatively small scope of relevant support plus decent base stats on both skills makes it easy to build defensively and have the tankiness you want in a mid-range character.

LT's strength in a support role is also quite broad because it's excellent at applying curse on crit (Conductivity, for example), blind, or knockback. You can have as much support here as you want in whatever form you want. Want to multicurse for Conductivity and Elemental Weakness to help Herald's storm wreck face? You can do that. Want to make it real hard for monsters to close with you and harm you? You can do that too.

Herald of Thunder further compliments LT as it is one of the few ways to deal damage while moving or distracted. There's something extremely cool about using a skill that locks you in place to trigger another skill that lets you attack while moving freely.

All in all, it's a marvellously satisfying interaction and usage for a skill that seems outclassed at first glance. The kind of coolness that can only come from a game of Path of Exile's complexity!

Just a short feedback and comparison on the skills effect degradation.

After a few hours Tendrils goes from a good looking Lightning skill:



to this abomination:



Also the size of Tendril's effect doesn't match the actuall area it deals dmg in, it's much bigger.

Feedback on leveling with Lightning Tendrils:
Potent skill
Scaling AoE is mandatory through "blast radius" style passives in Witch and Templar areas
Works well in conjunction with Clarity and Herald of Thunder buffs
Faster Casting support gem and Lightning Penetration increase effective DPS significantly

Dont know why you all are so negative about this skill, its superb.
Superb to deal with those pesky clusters of barrels and urns and what not, jk.
Love the skill, but indeed a little tweak to the sound would make it awesome.