GhazzyTV - Essence Drain & Contagion (or Bane/Soulrend) Trickster [SC/HC/Uber Elder/Shaper]

Yep, this is also a first time doing Guardians and Shaper for me, so I need to learn the mechanics. With a little bit of practice, this should be quite smooth I guess.

Regarding +3 Staff: it will be a big buff to DoT dps, but you will also loose quite a few things:
- replace Shield Charge with Flame Dash
- no Fortify due to that
- a bunch of def stats (depending on the stats of your shield vs armor)

EDIT: just checked, there are a few +3 staffs available. The ones with reasonable stats start at 10 ex, then you still need to fix the socket colors. In addition, you need a good chest as replacement, probably again in the order of several ex.

Although I feel +3 staffs are inferior to BotC/shield, I figured I should mention that crafting and multimodding one yourself will be cheaper than 10 ex. All you need to do is to hit +2 chaos on a yellow staff, which should be easily doable through "The Dark Mage" divination card, alts, regals and anulls. After that, it's around 5-6 ex for the +1 and multimod stuff. Should give you a staff with +3, crafted cast speed, spell damage and whatever second suffix you want. Check the wiki for crafting for more details.

"

Nedieth wrote:

Although I feel +3 staffs are inferior to BotC/shield, I figured I should mention that crafting and multimodding one yourself will be cheaper than 10 ex. All you need to do is to hit +2 chaos on a yellow staff, which should be easily doable through "The Dark Mage" divination card, alts, regals and anulls. After that, it's around 5-6 ex for the +1 and multimod stuff. Should give you a staff with +3, crafted cast speed, spell damage and whatever second suffix you want. Check the wiki for crafting for more details.

@Garyas - Thanks for checking for me.

@Nedieth - Thanks for the advice on how I should go about with the +3 staff if I go for it. Could you please elaborate on why you think +3 staffs are inferior to BotC/Shields?

See previous discussion on BotC vs Decay Sai. Pretty much along the same line of thought. You loose 40% duration, which makes the whole spell rotation much more difficult to maintain. Add that to loosing SC w. Fortify.

From a purely financial perspective, you also need to add the cost for a good chest armor.

Just FYI, I plugged in a simple +3 staff in my profile in PoB, with no further stats and hat actually drops my unbuffed DoT dps by approx 2%. Which makes sense, as I trade 2 ED levels vs. a bunch of stats on BotC and my shield. If I however would have added spell damage / DoT damage to the staff, along with increased Chaos damage (from Cherrubim's), the staff would come out on top of course. However, at an investment of significantly above 10ex, even with the crafting method explained by Nedieth, as you also need to get a 6L Cherrubim's with the right colors.

"

Garyas wrote:

See previous discussion on BotC vs Decay Sai. Pretty much along the same line of thought. You loose 40% duration, which makes the whole spell rotation much more difficult to maintain. Add that to loosing SC w. Fortify.

From a purely financial perspective, you also need to add the cost for a good chest armor.

Just FYI, I plugged in a simple +3 staff in my profile in PoB, with no further stats and hat actually drops my unbuffed DoT dps by approx 2%. Which makes sense, as I trade 2 ED levels vs. a bunch of stats on BotC and my shield. If I however would have added spell damage / DoT damage to the staff, along with increased Chaos damage (from Cherrubim's), the staff would come out on top of course. However, at an investment of significantly above 10ex, even with the crafting method explained by Nedieth, as you also need to get a 6L Cherrubim's with the right colors.

Thanks for the breakdown on that - makes sense.

On another note, just finished Phoenix too. About to attempt Hydra and see how it goes :)

Edit: Finished all guardians + Shaper! Yay =] - No starforge, only the Ruby Flask

srry the pastebin its messed up doesnt have any item SOMEONE could lend me one that its complete plz

"

kazafz wrote:

Edit: Finished all guardians + Shaper! Yay =] - No starforge, only the Ruby Flask

Gz on that! Maybe I will find time today to also give it a shot (Phoenix + Shaper).

"

Garyas wrote:

"

kazafz wrote:

Edit: Finished all guardians + Shaper! Yay =] - No starforge, only the Ruby Flask

Gz on that! Maybe I will find time today to also give it a shot (Phoenix + Shaper).

Thanks! Let us know how you go! :)

Not good :(

Somehow struggled with Phoenix (bad mods though), but made it.

Then went for Shaper, had bad luck and got Core Malachai as first mini boss. Ended up dying twice to him, which was the worst possible start imaginable.

Then things went smoother, but died once in phase 1 by getting stuck at the arena edge and caught by a teleport slam (wanted to SC away, but did not move due to being in a corner ) :/

The intermediate boss was no issue at all.

But then I completely f... up phase 2. Don't even know how that happened, but had 2 vortexes square in the middle, which made surviving bullet hell impossible: either be in Zana's bubble and die due to vortexes or be outside and die to bullets.

Otherwise I probably would have survived phase 2, but I guess without more experience I would have died in phase 3 for sure.

So, back to start.

But at least I saw Shaper for the first time now :)

Any tipps on flasks? I normally run those:


Should I swap to others?

How to best deal with the portal phase, somehow Zana get's immediately swarmed and then killed, which also makes bullet hell a no go. Should I blight them down? I feel that individual casts of ED don't work and they don't appear at the same time, so Cont ED also is tricky.

"

Garyas wrote:

Not good :(

Somehow struggled with Phoenix (bad mods though), but made it.

Then went for Shaper, had bad luck and got Core Malachai as first mini boss. Ended up dying twice to him, which was the worst possible start imaginable.

Then things went smoother, but died once in phase 1 by getting stuck at the arena edge and caught by a teleport slam (wanted to SC away, but did not move due to being in a corner ) :/

I had the exact same scenario when I died to Shaper on my first try! - was at the arena edge and couldn't shield charge away when he slammed me :( - lesson I learnt is to be more mindful of my positioning.

"

Garyas wrote:

The intermediate boss was no issue at all.

But then I completely f... up phase 2. Don't even know how that happened, but had 2 vortexes square in the middle, which made surviving bullet hell impossible: either be in Zana's bubble and die due to vortexes or be outside and die to bullets.

Otherwise I probably would have survived phase 2, but I guess without more experience I would have died in phase 3 for sure.

So, back to start.

But at least I saw Shaper for the first time now :)

That happened to me too so everytime I see vortexes creep up on me, I always drag it to the side and activate it there now - i kinda set that as priority now on top of dodging his laser beam and balls to ensure I have space to stand in Zana's bubble lol

In terms of flasks, I had the following lineup:


I totally agree with the portal phase and Zana did take quite a lot of damage but I did ED + Contagion + Blight them down. I felt that once I had those placed, the creeps were hindered so it took them some time to reach Zana. Just my 2c from two tries at Shaper xD