THOR'S RAINBOWNUKE: off to the Marauder forum

Several players asked me to comment on how this build differ from life/Kingsguard fire Juggernaut. Also I would like to comment on this quote from tackle70:

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tackle70 wrote:

Life based kingsguard is, in my opinion, a strictly inferior build to low life. Sacrifices too much damage for at best small gains in survivability.

So, to my knowledge (and I do have both builds up&running in 2.3 and I like both) damage output is pretty much on pair vs Bosses. Double Discharge - Fire Pen - Elemental Overload with 2-3/9 charges (life Juggernaut version) vs Arc - Discharge - Lpen - LL Pain Attunement's 30% - Zerker's 40% - Wrath - HoT - Haste but 3/3-4 charges (LL Zerker).

Been playing hours with both builds. There's pretty much no difference in killing speed vs Rares/Bosses (there's maybe, maybe a slightly advantage of Rainbownuke if gear is correctly optimized). Healing/s is MILES ahead with life Kingsguard version when VoV is out of charges. Its independent of actual dmg done, doesnt require anything. When VoV is in action both builds heal CRAZY fast. The good news is that Rainbownuke during VoV duration is pretty much able to take down most of T1-T14 content.

Rainbownuke is a bit faster for clearing packs with Lightning Strike + 20/20 Arc combo than life/Kingsguard fire Juggernaut with shield charge. But nothing like a day and night difference. Both are very fast.

Both are very good builds, the only weakness of Rainbownuke beeing physical dmg mitigation vs lots of small to medium attacks (like mentioned nados from Academy boss). Blue packs of Goliaths, physical dmg based spells (Evangelists), some Exiles - those are dungerous especially on reds maps with dmg mods.

If this one weakness could be somehow adressed (block? armor?) they would be equally good. For now, as far as 2.3 is concerned, life/Kingsguard is a bit safer with similar dmg output. But any future balance patch might reverse this.

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RicoKGB wrote:

the only weakness of Rainbownuke beeing physical dmg mitigation vs lots of small to medium attacks (like mentioned nados from Academy boss). Blue packs of Goliaths, physical dmg based spells (Evangelists), some Exiles - those are dungerous especially on reds maps with dmg mods.

If this one weakness could be somehow adressed...

This is addressed with CWDT immortal call. The Academy boss is the one scenario where small physical hits can outlast the duration of IC and remain dangerous. Exiles/goliaths/evangelists are not dangerous to this build unless you are very low level or have bad gear such that you have 5k ES or less.

And of course you have the big 1-shot physical mechanics which like palace dominus slam, conservatory vaal slam, core malachai slam... but as with 99% of builds, the strategy is just to not get hit by those, which isn't too much of a problem.

Here are the survivability problems with rainbownuke when geared/leveled decently, and the solution, if possible:

Solution = don't get hit:
-Palace/Residence Dominus Slam
-Core Malachai Slam
-Conservatory/Atziri/Uber Atziri Vaal Slam
-Wasteland Voll Slam

Solution = use Arc and don't facetank:
-Academy boss

No real solution (GG gear + good play = you've got a decent chance to not die):
-Uber/Vaal Temple Trio
-Uber Atziri

Life based kingsguard trades off a lot of damage to basically solve the Academy boss scenario and maybe the Uber Atziri fights. You're still going to be avoiding the one-hit mechanics, like every build in the game not specifically designed to tank them. Given that Uber is best farmed with a cheap meta build designed specifically for it, and that the Academy map boss is still quite doable on Rainbownuke without facetanking, switching to life based kingsguard seems like a solution in search of a problem. So, I stand by my statement - low life is the superior overall build.

I do own properly done Rainbownuke Zerker with over 7k ES @ lvl 88.

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Life based kingsguard trades off a lot of damage

I like and respect your point of view, but imo this is where it gets incorrect. Dmg is quite similar on both version. I have them both, compared them both, run the math for both, done dps checks. Rainbownuke requires near perfect gear to match dps of fire Juggernatu version, maybe it will outmatch it just by a tiny bit.

With fully developed Rainbownuke (~lvl 90) as low life Zerker I can reach up to 22k dmg per Discharge with LPen gem @full 4/4 charges, maybe a tiny bit higher with gg jevels.

With fire Juggernaut version I can reach 20k @full 3/9 charges with FPen gem.

However the main issue here is that Rainbownuke will have those charges jumping between 2-4 when facetanking, meaning real time dps will be lower than simply multipling 22k x aps x number of hits per 1 aps x proc chance.

With fire Juggernatu version power charges will jump from 2 to 3 but endu charges will stick @maximum, 9 in my case, meaning each blast will go with 2-3/9 charges. Thats 11 charges vs 4 at worse case scenario and 12 charges vs 8 at its best.

Adding Arc here wont help as Juggernaut can throw in secound Discharge. Both builds apply shock.

This is why dmg output on both is similar. Rainbownuke has more %dmg increases, more "more" multipliers across the board but less dmg in its root - less charges to go off with each Discharge.


So outside of Academy boss "problem" for me personally its a matter of preference. Which gameplay style I like more? Relaxing LS + Arc for packs with all nice blue colors on screen with Rainbownuke or maybe rushing with Shield Charge and get things done more personal? ;)

CUrrently I'm enyoing playing with both Mjolner versions and waiting to see what GGG will do with Unrelenting next balancing patch.

Arc is all I need to kill everything except rare mobs. Clear speed goes way down if you need to use discharge to kill any non-rare mobs. I've not seen a life based build that can achieve that level of DPS. I'm guessing that I can achieve similar clear speed to life based kingsguard while geared with an IIQ gem and Wondertrap.

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tackle70 wrote:

Clear speed goes way down if you need to use discharge to kill any non-rare mobs.

This is where Shield charge steps in. Basically both movement and AOE attack for packs. Works extremely well. I wont say its better than LS + Arc, but its at least not significantly worse, fun to use.

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I've not seen a life based build that can achieve that level of DPS. I'm guessing that I can achieve similar clear speed to life based kingsguard while geared with an IIQ gem and Wondertrap.

There are several life based builds of this class of DPS in the mara forums. Matching their dmg output with IIQ/IIR gear will be EXTREMELY hard if not impossible. Unrelenting passive changed things.

I can see from my experience on this forums that every build guide creator defends his creation. Some are more stabborn, some are more open minded. Thats normall, but seing things in a wider perspective - it would be much more benefecial to the community as a whole if some of that more stabborn creators would be more open minded (that doesnt apply to you tackle).

All right, enough said. Thank you for discussion, end of topic.

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RicoKGB wrote:

There are several life based builds of this class of DPS in the mara forums.

I probably was unclear; I just meant life based mjolner builds in comparison to low life mjolner. I'm aware that there are other types of life based builds which can do just as well as low life for DPS in the current meta.

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RicoKGB wrote:

I wont say its better than LS + Arc, but its at least not significantly worse, fun to use.

Exactly. Is "slightly worse" general map clearing a justifiable trade-off for basically being able to do the Academy boss more quickly? I don't personally think that it is.

If I were in hardcore, I would probably not run a low-life build like this; small errors in your play can result in a death compared to more tanky builds which offer a more forgiving playstyle. But in standard, I'll take the extra clear speed every time.

can you tell me why i can't kill malachai in core? he fucking one hits me every damn time even when he doesn't slams the ground

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DBM92 wrote:

can you tell me why i can't kill malachai in core? he fucking one hits me every damn time even when he doesn't slams the ground

What's your gear?

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tackle70 wrote:

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DBM92 wrote:

can you tell me why i can't kill malachai in core? he fucking one hits me every damn time even when he doesn't slams the ground

What's your gear?

Not sure why you're having problems getting 1-shot by Malachai's other non-slam attacks. Either you're doing really rippy map mods or you're not actually getting 1-shot and just dying because you are not playing the fight correctly.

I always had to use Dream Fragments ring to avoid being frozen during that fight - make sure you're not being frozen.