[3.7] LL RF Scorching Ray Guardian | 19K ES | 52k Armour|1.5 mil dps| Uber Elder & HoGM DEATHLESS

Hum, I do not realy agree. There is no notable changes in the patch that ruin this build mechanics. Also, the basics build will probably not suffer as much as more min-maxed version about those nerf.
But the min maxed version might be strongly suffer about those changes.

This build isn't directly targeted neighter by nerf nor by buff.
But we suffer some little indirect nerf while not gain direct benefits of 3.7 buffs :

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Infused Channelling Support

- Now works correctly with the new Physical gem type.
- No longer implicitly provides a reduction to physical damage taken, and will only provide such a reduction while channelling a skill with a physical gem tag.

We lose some dmg reduction in our SR setup. It's negligible nerf but have to be mentionned.

In terme of stuffing :

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- The Dense Fossil can no longer craft increased Armour, Evasion or Energy Shield suffix modifiers and now has new mods it can craft on each slot.

- The values on Life, Mana and Energy Shield modifiers on Abyssal Jewels have been reduced, and the top tiers made rarer relative to lower tiers. The top roll for these modifiers is now 40 (from 50). Divining existing jewels will update them to these new values, so don't do that unless you're hoping to create one of those 'viral videos' that are all the rage these days.

So it will be harder to reach higher max ES on few slot like boots for min-max.

But the most important part is obviously the tree changes :

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Ascendency

- Each of the small passives on the Guardian Ascendancy tree now grant 5% increased energy shield (from 6%).

Tree changes

- The Inspiration notable and preceeding small passives behind Mind over Matter have been removed.
- Reduced the amount of increased Energy Shield granted by early Witch passives.
- Undetermined changes on tree that might affect the path we are following

Ascendency change makes us losing 4% inc ES which is almost equal to a small ES node. So, in some ways, this can arguably seen as a 1 skill point lost.

And we will lose an undetermined amount of %ES from Witch start.

But the most concerning nerf is from Inspirationnal wheel suppression ... We lost ~50-55% inc mana (which can represent something like 5% of our total mana depending on the level of stuff we have) !
As an illustration, this change alone represent it self a raw lost of 1k ES on the last pastebin you added.

Also, we don't know yet how far the tree change will hit us. Changes in path can leads to be much more expensive to reach some keystone or notable in the tree, while we are already extremly short on point considering how great each points buff us from lvl 90. So this might force us to drop other extra ES nodes.
What I fear is that we end with a total of ~20% less max ES regarding all those changes/nerfs.

And regarding the power creep of build and mobs, I fear this build may not be competitive anymore with many build (even good off-meta builds).
Do not forget that some of you had the impression of laking a bit of dps due to power creep of mobs, that leads some of us to switch Determination for Malevolance.

So as a conclusion, while the build was already off-meta since few leagues, we were indirectly hit by many little nerf and a strong nerf on Inspiration suppresion without being buffed.

nice, i spend like 20+ ex for this build i think.

the reason why i started this build was to kill Uber atziri and Uber elder with a 90% chance of doing it deathless...just to be sure not wasting frags and nerves ...

is there any chance without spending like 50ex (standard, i dont play legion) to get sure and deathless Uber Elder & Uber Atziri done, with this build ?

not asking for more...

Don't disagree with that assessment.

There are some other tree changes.
- Around Arsonist you gain 8% fire damage and 0.4% life regen. Or lose 8% fire damage but gain a skill point.
- Further down you need an additional skill point to go to Warrior's blood. There is a loss of 0.5% life regen but gain 23% all res. Quite a lot.
- The mana behind MoM is gone. We can recover the 2 10% nodes by taking the 8% nodes instead. The flat mana hurts, but I assume Arcane Will will at least somewhat compensate that.

Comparing trees 3.6 - 3.7:
Defenses
Gain 10% Mana regen
Lose 40 flat mana and 14% increased mana
Gain 23% res all
Gain 10 str
Lose 12% increased armour
Lose 0.1% life regen
Gain 30 flat ES
Lose 36% Increased ES.
Gain 4% mana as extra ES.

Offenses
Lose 8% fire damage

All in all a bit of a defense hit, but not a disaster. Comparing the base build, that is indeed ~1kES loss.

Biggest indirect buff is likely the price of Shav's which will hopefully go down :)

Edit: New tree, might have small mistakes.
I did not use the Insightfulness cluster which might give more total ES than Arcane Will.

https://poeplanner.com/ABEAAPkAEQUAAHlPBEPIcU2az0NjaPJ8S5Z0r2wLYcauPC2DXwxfHKdTpcT2J-0GDgn2GS7ZYa2Nz35XDdIhfLgpLvGsGj5fP3KprKpZ83IPZp63MYx2-tIXLySwgKT3wR0UEmkXHHF5j0anCOvuhTLYJFZIFVCboffXrJg6WFXGdFVfKvFsIbA095eFLpR8gxEtLJy86mpDCPRtGRFQpysc3LiTKPpXyQ186rq0DLJwKlOTJ1yKe9fviPk3189JsYnYaFjXloLH-egYPL0nGFaYrY8avoqhL8rThEhca8NtlG9mVPObaGX-s2ob6-QRDzsN7-vZWxslS67pAgAAAAAA

Any idea how we can get Molten Shell in somehow? Might mess up EE w the fire damage and no real sockets left (manual cast on shield charge links? Add unsocket and try to get CWDT somewhere?) but on the base build it would reduce damage taken by 75% until 13k hp has been taken and explode for 136k damage (base, 2M w our current tree), basically every 4 seconds.
Guardian + this seems super strong somehow. Might be totally different build though.

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NeoLearner wrote:

Any idea how we can get Molten Shell in somehow? Might mess up EE w the fire damage and no real sockets left (manual cast on shield charge links? Add unsocket and try to get CWDT somewhere?) but on the base build it would reduce damage taken by 75% until 13k hp has been taken and explode for 136k damage (base, 2M w our current tree), basically every 4 seconds.
Guardian + this seems super strong somehow. Might be totally different build though.

I was using Molten shield in a previous RF build and you can cast it while channelnig scorching ray and running so just link it with Arcane surge and spam it while channeling scorching ray/moving/alive

I checked out what would be my stats with 3.7 tree and I will go from 16.134 ES to 15.646 ES (with a shaper belt, and not the elder %inc attribute one)
But considering the extra resist I get from Diamond Skin, should be able to switch to a tree closer to zzang's one.

/E : with a diffent path, I end with 17.887 ES at lvl 96, with slightly similar net life regen as on my previous tree.

https://pastebin.com/nTVjT3RC

Actually 3.7 doesn't hurt us much

https://pastebin.com/q87jraB1

Comparing with current 3.6 tree

DPS: +3k more on SR, same on RF
Regen: +2615 hp/sec no flasks, no config (+20 hp/sec)
ES: 19347 (+326)
Armour: 50745 (-2500)

But we're still at 90% phys dmg reduction so that armour loss isn't a big deal.

I updated the budget friendly pastebin : https://pastebin.com/sUZ6gZk5

Effect of the nerfs (3.6 -> 3.7) :
- ES : 8078 -> 7729 ;
- Net life regen : +184.9 -> +152.8 ;
- Overcap resist : 8/10/7 -> 29/31/29 (so basicaly it's EW overcap).

@zzang : no need to update it for the moment. PoB will be updated and some little fix might change in the tree so the pastebin might change in the coming days.

Just noticed there is q +1 to max res node - Soul of Steel - bit south of Warriors blood. Also gives res, phys res and armour. Might make sense for a budget/league start build?

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NeoLearner wrote:

Just noticed there is q +1 to max res node - Soul of Steel - bit south of Warriors blood. Also gives res, phys res and armour. Might make sense for a budget/league start build?

Soul of Steel looks formidable but it's far from our path. Going for it would cost us 6 skill points.
Personnaly with 82 fire res, this extra max resist only provide me 327 net life regen. I don't see this as worth 6 skill points honestly for the moment.