[3.5] Guffin's McSundae Strike | All Bosses Down | Fast and Safe Mapping | Skillchoices

Hey Guffin, I was really sad to see the stat sticks go as this was my planned league starter. I hope you can update the guide in time for the new league! I've been itching to play reave/bf and will play it despite the changes.
I have a question as well, apologies if its been addressed already. But I checked your POB and put the claws in the primary and the off hand, the DPS was higher than having lycosidae in the off hand. Is this a viable option?

Here are my general thoughts and conclusions for the 3.5 Changes.

Changes affecting this Build:
Statsticks as a Concept got removed, which is a big Damage Hit for every Build that used one (which was 95% of Melee Builds), and my Build as well obviously.
That said, the core concepts of the Build received no changes or Nerfs at all: Slayer Overleech is still Insane, Ele Conversion (and Crit) stays to rule supreme, Claws are the best Melee Weapons, Might of the Meek and Unnatural Instinct are still great, etc.
And when switching to the Molten Strike Variant as explained later, we will still have exactly the Same DPS as we had with Blade Flurry before the Nerf.

The new veiled Mods, as well as maybe one of the Uniques, will surely add some new Power Creep like it happens in every League.
One thing to note though, is that levelling with Sunder will be a bit more difficult now. I intend to add a some new levelling Options later.



Gearing Consequences for us:
Since Dual Wielding with a Statstick is dead, we are left with 2 Options:
- "True" Dual Wielding with 2 proper Weapons
- One Hand + Shield

"True" Dual Wielding is the best for DPS, but incredibly espensive, as crafting 2 equal weapons for a Build is an insane Task. This simply won't be feasible to do for anyone that doesn't have Mirrors at his disposal.
Besides that, there are some fun/interesting interaction with dual wielding some Uniqes like Grelwood Shank, but these generally are a bit weaker.

One Hand + Shield is the option we will go for.

Lycosidae is our best Option for a Shield, as many people have guessed.
100% Accruacy is insane offensively, and a bit of Life and Block are a nice derfensive Addition. Gearing with Lyco will be significantly cheaper, as the Shield itself costs less than good Statsticks and our Jewellery no longer needs to have Accuracy on it.
Lyco will probably become Meta for many Melee Builds, but don't fear that it will get too costly. It's price is capped by Ancient Orbs since people can just print Lycosidaes with the Ancient Orb Trick.


Other Starter/Progression Options in terms of Uniques would be The Great Old ones Ward, The Unyielding Flame and Kaltenhalt/Soul. These all offer offensive Benefits and survivability alike, and will end up cheaper than Lycosidae. Kaltensoul is the most questionable one to use, maybe the max cold Res could come in handy on Uber Elder though.

Rare Shields are something to look out for as well. In the end they wont't offer the same offensive Benefits the Unique Options do, especially not Lycosidae, but they will end up adding more Health and Survivability. Especially Shaped/Eldered ones with their maxres Rolls.
As a Headsup, a rare Shield can roll "%inc Phys Damage", "4 to 7 phys added to Attacks", "12% WED", "+400 to Accuracy", "13% Attack Speed" etc. for us. This is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and rare Shields are a perfectly valid Option for us.

I bet people will find other fun/interesting/strong Options for Melee in the next few weeks and months. I myself will theorycraft a bit in my free Time, and I urge you to do the same :D Maybe we find something interesting, feel free to share if you do!



Skill and Tree Choices:
The move over to one hand + Shield makes a switch to Molten Strike or Spectral Throw seem pretty obvious
These 2 Skills never used Statsticks and boasted extremely high Single Target DPS due to their supreme mechanics. Even before the Statstick Nerf, I had more DPS with Molten Strike + Lycosidae than Blade Flurry (just a bit though).
As a Benchmark: I had 8.6 Million Shaper DPS with BF prior (~11m With Vaal Skills).

Molten Strike will generally be the best Option.
Yes, it was nerfed. We're now limited to 1 Wildifre Jewel and the Uber Lab Enchantment got reduced to 2 additional Projectiles (from 3), so that in the end we have 3 Projectiles less under ideal circumstances.
While this is a DPS Loss, it was a totally justified Nerf as MS was truly obscene prior to this (and still is).

Right now, with the nerfs taken into Account, I'm chilling at 8.8 million Shaper DPS with Elemental Focus as my 6th Link for MS, and 7 million Shaper DPS with Ancestral Call with no Vaal Skills active.
The Links will take you to a Molten Strike DPS Calculator with my own Values (and the Projectile Amount adjusted for the Nerf). PoB doesn't calculate Molten Strike Damage correctly, as it can't show multiple Balls hitting the same Target and their chance to Hit (not Accuracy, but the actual Chance that a ball lands near the Target). This Webcalculator does a great Job at estimating MS DPS.
That said, here is a Molten Strike PoB for you guys: https://pastebin.com/96PE1cR5
Take into Account that These Numbers are without the Buff die Moltenstrike Base Damage coming in 3.5. So the DPS will actually still be higher.

As you can see, even after all the Nerfs I didn't lose any Singletarget DPS after moving to the Molten Strike Version. And neither will you.

Since Molten Strike has inbuilt 60% Conversion, we will switch away from a Conversion Watchers Eye to a crit one:


Spectral Throw is a top tier Skill as well, but results in less DPS than Molten Strike. Also, the Mana Requirement is incredibly high and we will need 1 or 2 rare Jewels with Mana gained on Hit.
That said, the playstyle is extremely fun and it serves as Clear- and Singletarget Skill alike.

The Tree for the Molten Strike and Spectral Throw Versions will look something like this:
Spoiler


Blade Flurry remains a top tier Skillchoice, but falls behind compared to Molten Strike. It is obviously more than enough to clear the whole Content with, but Molten Strike will simply be better. If you enjoy the Skill and Playstyle, go for it though :)

Both Spec Throw and Blade Flurry would use a Conversion Watchers Eye like always:


Reave still stays the best Melee Clear Skill by far and stays the Clearskill in all variations of the Build. Its DPS will obviously always suffer from the Statstick Loss, but it's still fine. Trash doesn't have any Life compared to the Damage we do, this is true for every Build in PoE. If I can clear T16s without a HH on a 5link Windripper with only Wrath scaling my Damage, this Build will also not have problems with a weaker Reave :P



New Additions to look out for in Betrayal:
The Strength of Veiled Mods is still largely unknown. I bet there is some OP shit hidden there, let me know if you find something!

Some of the new Uniques might be beneficial for us, who knows.

The Bonechill Support seems like a very strong option in a Utility Setup with Vortex or Vaal Cold Snap to increase the Enemies Damage Taken quite a bit. We would only use this on Bosses though, and we already make full use of our Sockets there.
Whether or not we take it will depend on how the Damage works out compared to our other Options, I will get to that later.



My thoughts on the Statstick Nerfs:
If it interests you, I'll ramble a bit about my Opinion on the Nerf:
Spoiler

Mostly everyone, and I as well, agrees that statsticks needed a heavy nerf.
Statstick Builds were already better than other melee Options before the introduction of shaped items, and shaped statsticks only furthered the Problem.
The concept of gaining more DPS by simply adding a white Sceptre with an ele Damage Implicit compared to someone who was actually using 2 Weapons is quite insane.

But instead of nerfing Statsticks, which even GGG admits are interesting and/or fun at their core, they completely removed the whole concept of statsticking. Which is what a lot of the outcry is about.

Surely there were ways to adjust statsticks while still keeping them in the Game. My suggestions have always been:

1:
Make the shaped mods local to the weapon, thus disabling global benefits for statsticking purposes while also keeping one more useful Mod to the Pool of crafting phys weapons.

2:
Remove the dual wield bonus when youre only using one Weapon to Attack, resulting in 10% less AS, 20% less phys Damage and 15% less Block.

3:
Revoke access to any dual wield Nodes on the Tree for Statsticking Builds.

These 3 changes would disable shaped Statsticks while still leaving unique ones in the Game, which offer unique and sometimes interesting build possibilities.
All the while making them both offensively and defensively weaker than before due to taking the nonsensical DW bonuses away from them (and the strong dual wield nodes).
That would make both true dualwielding as well as Sword and Board stronger in comparison. True Dual Wielding gains a LOT of Damage comparatively, and some defensiveness. While Sword and Board gains a bit less damage comparatively, but gets strengthened in the Niche of defensiveness even more.
Also, Movementskill Choices etc. would've been left in tact.

The whole 2h vs 1h and 1h Option balancing wouldn't be finished with that, but it would maybe be a start.

Instead, they completely removed one Avenue to Play, which was (again, as they say themselves) quite interesting.

I will say again that I think a Statstick nerf has been long overdue and well justified. But I think that it could've been done in a better manner than completely removing that way to play the game.



Short Melee Meta Discussion:
No, Statstick Nerfs didn't kill Melee.
The Player-Power in the game is still insanely high, we will have no problem to do all content it has to offer.

Champions will still be the best Leagustarter and offer great Damage.
The new Impale-Node added the phys Values of a whole Abyssus to the Ascendancy, which is a bit obscene and more reliable/safer than Adrenaline ever was.
Still, my Ele Conversion Ascendant had higher DPS and Life than Champions (like Don the Crowns) in way cheaper Gear and I don't think that will change.
This Build here has more DPS, more Life and waaaay better Life Recovery through overleech.
But Champion is easier to Build and gear, and thus great for League Starts and people that don't wanna spend much time and thought.

Juggs will still have the best Tankyness but worst Damage among these 3 options. Jugg MS with 2 Nebulochs and Kaoms Way is quite insane for deep Delves.

Ascendants will have the best Damage lategame and veeery good Survivability and faster map Clear than the other Options.
Not as tanky as a Jugg, but equally as carefree for 99% of the Game due to Overleech. Gets higher damage and faster map Clear.

CI Howa MS Occultist is the best Delver, but doesn't compete with these Builds here at all since it is specialized for Deep Delves. It has pretty subpar bossing capabilities (on the DPS Side) and maps very slow while costing more.

Raider/PF/etc. are all still pretty inferior.

Basically nothing has changed in the Melee Meta so far.



I will start updating the Guide for 3.5 this evening, and will probably finish on Friday.
That will also be the day when I record new, up to date Videos.

Other than that, I will work on a complete Foil Variation for the Guide. This will be posted in the second Post.
While Claws are still the Superior Melee Weapon, even more so now since Life Gain in Hit is obscene with Molten Strike, Foils have a wider Skillvariation to explore.

After all of that I will look into some new Build Guides. Firstly I planned a quick Guide for the new "Steel" skills If they Work out to be decent. Mostly lancing Steel has me hoping.
Secondly, I wanna make some Selfcast Trickster Builds. While Selfcast is generally weaker than triggering skills, it is still perfectly fine for all the content and I find it fun. The Goal is to Provide one Guide on how to build for 99% of Selfcast spells and Provide deathless Uber Elder Videos.
Thats something of a Long Term Project though. Maybe I manage to Finish it Just in Time for the eventual Selfcast Buffs :P

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Last edited by Guffinn on Dec 6, 2018, 9:25:57 AM
Guffin that`s cool, can you update the PoB for BF/Reave skill choice? This is what I requested last time from you just to keep going on with this build. BF for bosses and reave for map clearing is the best option for me to get into game once again. Kepp doing what you started. If Lycosidae, we might have tree changed one more time. Update PoB por favour. Gracias.
Gold is most liberating of metals.
"
kakarotto225 wrote:
Guffin that`s cool, can you update the PoB for BF/Reave skill choice? This is what I requested last time from you just to keep going on with this build. BF for bosses and reave for map clearing is the best option for me to get into game once again. Kepp doing what you started. If Lycosidae, we might have tree changed one more time. Update PoB por favour. Gracias.

I'm already running late for University.
I will do that once I'm back home.
.
Cool things. Will have a look after I finish my shift, thanks.
Gold is most liberating of metals.
Hmm that 3.5 updated build look nice for reave as well. POB shows almost 2mil shaper dps on it.
Last edited by monoriee on Dec 6, 2018, 10:18:20 AM
In the new Molten Strike version the Power Charges option is active in Configurations. Where are these coming from? I see the claw stealing mechanic, but that wouldn't work in boss fights?
-Bilo
"
monoriee wrote:
Hmm that 3.5 updated build look nice for reave as well. POB shows almost 2mil shaper dps on it.

Which one do you mean? Regardless, 2kk Shaper DPS is way too much for a clearskill. You one Shot Trash with way less than half of that even in T16s.

And again, I Personally have above 8 Million Shaper DPS in pretty mediocre (as in: very good but veeery far from Mirror worthy) Gear



"
Bilo wrote:
In the new Molten Strike version the Power Charges option is active in Configurations. Where are these coming from? I see the claw stealing mechanic, but that wouldn't work in boss fights?

That has Always been ticked in my PoBs.

Ralakeshs impatience before the fight, and jaws of Agony in between/before phases.
With the amount of DPS I have I Phase Bosses instantly, and the Power Charges are always Up while I Attack them. If I bother to Deal with it.
I'll do that once again in the new Uber Elder Video for the updated Guide later on.

That said, I get that its
A: too much hassle for the average Player
B: Not reliable at all for characters with less DPS.

So I Might end Up removing it/adding a note regarding that.
Its just that These are my personal PoBs that I use to gauge my max DPS, and that includes Power Charges on Shaper, Uber Elder and Uber Atziri.

For mapping theyre Always Up due to Assmark CoH on the HoI.

Hope that clears it Up.



On another Note, I'm considering to make a seperate Post/Guide for all the Foil Versions.
I simply dont have space in the Thread anymore, its capped at 50k Letters. And even the second Post is getting extremely full.

Do you Guys think, that would be okay? Or would it clutter the Forum too much? Since its basically the same Build(s) as this one, just with some slightly different pathing and skills.

And im also torn on my Lancing Steel build. I have it planned for Deadeye currently. The Tree and Gear is all Set, and it Looks extremely promising.
That said, Scion is fucking hard to beat :D Slayer overleech is too sexy. But that would make it my 10th fucking Scion Build, simply because Overleech beats everything.
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Last edited by Guffinn on Dec 6, 2018, 1:07:12 PM
Excellent work! As for where to put the foil info, I would try to fit that in this thread somehow, I like having all the relevant info in one place.
@Guffin This is an offtopic question but Guffin what build you gonna play this league, this one or you already decided to play something different ??
Thanks for great work you are doing with very fast update for you're build.
Greetings John

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