Unleash Support

My character is level 92.75. I will be pushing to 94 for one last jewel slot.

On paper at least, my build is extremely tanky. I have 75% to elemental resists (not chaos). I make use of Glancing Blows from the Lethal Pride timeless jewel, Max Block + Spell Block with Rumi's Concoction (mid 50s to 60s block stats otherwise), 3955 Evasion, Fortify, 40% MoM, Brine King and I have positive chaos res (before amethyst flask) with the potential for max chaos res vs. Chaos DoT with Arakaali Pantheon and Atziri's unique flask.. My EHP is close to 8k. It should go without saying, but I do use a shield with a wand. I specifically have Phase Acrobatics and another 10% to both Dodge stats from Omeyocan. My build has a consistent source of mana gain, contains life leech, regens somewhere between 5 to 8% life a second and also has a massive amount of ES Leech/Recovery. I also have Elemental Ailment Avoidance from Elemancer. I have flasks for anti-curse and anti-bleed with a substitute flask for poison or for ele weakness maps. CWDT - Tempest Shield - IC - Wave of Conviction together. No endurance charges, 3 power charges, no frenzy charges.

My build can kill Shaper for sure, I've facetanked Minotaur and I killed most of the Shaper guardians so far. Elder and Uber Elder might be doable but I don't particularly enjoy spending exorbitant amounts of currency just for an attempt so those fights are not in my interest. I've killed the i83 Mastermind easily and I would have killed A8 Sirus before the changes to the storms had I not been nervous and clumsy during the fight (left him at 1% HP or less).

My build, as tanky as it is, can only put out roughly 623k Shaper DPS in the most ideal conditions (auras, curses, exposures, Vaal RF, etc), i.e everything hits and I have flask uptime. The actual calculation of this is a tad difficult and may have a margin of error between 8 to 10%. Practical scenarios may have more margin of error because of Slower Projectiles support lowering my effective range against moving bosses. The spell I use with Unleash Support is Ball Lightning in a 6 link containing Spell Echo, and by my calculations the max DPS I could obtain in ideal conditions is 835k, +-10% DPS, maybe another +10% with a GG Watcher's Eye, possibly a bit more with an actual lab enchant. I assumed two specific max level awakened supports and left out a level 21 Ball Lightning in my estimate so the ceiling is a tad higher than first expected.

I can't forget to mention this either -- I realized in writing all this that I never actually factored in the Less Damage modifier spells have when they Reoccur through Unleash Seals at any point in my theorycrafting. So my DPS minimum and maximum is lower than what I wrote out by roughly 20% by default, and the previous margin of error stated is still an additional factor as well.

My current build has an anoint in the form of Thunderous Salvos. I don't use EE for more damage and didn't factor it into a DPS ceiling because using it in this build would be catastrophically impractical in the form that I could use it (at least, as of this writing). I would have another 100-150k DPS from a perfectly positioned and manipulated Orb of Storms. I have roughly 40-42% Lightning Penetration against a Shaper tier boss, assuming they aren't hexproof. I can swap in Lightning Pen for another 37%.

[1] Unleash Support does not reward aggression as a self-caster in any way. This gem almost punishes it, even. I can think of a lot of fights I had in Metamorph league where I actually could just stand still and just spam my spell. Not just Metamorphs, but actual bosses too ranging from map bosses to Shaper/Elder Guardians. In those cases, with roughly 5 casts a second in my build, Unleash Support is just a 20% More Damage modifier... With literally nothing else going for it. Its usefulness is just so binary in real game scenarios where simply waiting for 3-4 seals has a steep opportunity cost; Should I take too long waiting for seals to be "optimal" with the gem, I am actually just wasting my real time.

[2] Unleash Support does not reward safe play in any way beyond DPS Uptime and player recovery from successfully landed hits (healing, leech, etc). It's great to maintain DPS against bosses or other difficult content, there is no denying that. That is part of why Traps, Mines, Totems, Minions and DoT style builds have always been the hotness, beyond just their mighty damage. These kinds of builds are very safe and Unleash closes the distance a tad.

But, it feels shallow and frankly boring that there are no other kinds of benefits for using this support gem. Safety is a weak gimmick in this game where the newest hottest league content tends to contain monsters or bosses capable of killing you instantly regardless of how well you dodged or leeched the minutes before. Where bosses can regenerate ES and negate the usefulness of "safety in a gem" by making fights intrinsically longer and more prone to human error.

Unleash doesn't have to be OP to be "good" in my eyes, it just needs to reward the selfcaster for interacting with the game more. The whole hit-and-run style of Unleash only holds up well when the bosses or mobs in question have less than 10 million HP. Otherwise, the gameplay loop starts to feel unrewarding and tiresome, especially when one factors in how unrewarding Shaper-tier bosses or even Map Metamorph bosses tend to be. At least in my own experience, I got to a point where I started to wonder why I bothered using Unleash at all when a simple More Damage gem would be more useful in almost all possible iterations of gameplay.

To better understand how Unleash is so shallow as a gem, look at Inspiration Support, look at Infused Channeling Support. They were clearly inspired creations (no pun intended) by a thoughtful designer. Not only does Inspiration Support reduce mana costs, it grants you a variable amount of More Elemental Damage and Critical Strike Chance depending on how much mana you've spent in the last ten seconds. If you spend too much, your extra benefit is reset to its minimum. It's clearly complex and comes with situational benefits that may one day prove essential to some special build. Infused Channeling has a similar motif -- the player channels a spell, meets a condition, and is rewarded with a wide variety of buffs whose benefits may not always be useful but are nonetheless appreciated when they are actually relevant.

Those are only a handful of support gems GGG has made in an effort to make better gameplay for certain kinds of builds or classes. Feeding Frenzy and Deathmark were so good they broke an entire class for two leagues straight. So clearly, GGG is capable of more generous implementations of QoL support for selfcasting.

With the previous spoiler's knowledge in mind, we have a GGG-approved schematic for what Unleash could look like. That is to say, we meet some kind of a condition, we are given some kind of buff or buffs outside of the main function of the support gem and the buffs may or may not have a limited duration.

Here is my suggestion for making Unleash a more comprehensive support gem without breaking it by suggesting something simple like "haha more damage or seals lmao". It's by no means the only way to make the gem better, it is just what I think of as a polished draft for a universal solution.

If the player's seals do not fully restock within (single seal replenishment time * number of seals - (minus some arbitrary amount of time to make the condition more reasonable, if necessary)), the player gains a buff called Excitement Unleashed. This buff lasts for the same amount of time as the player normally requires to fully restock their total number of seals, more or less. Excitement Unleashed grants the player 1-3% (tweak-able number, decimals are fine) movement speed per stack, stack limit being determined by their maximum limit of Unleash Seals.

This buff would also grant one or two other benefits, such as a small amount of Dodge, Evasion, Travel Skill Cooldown Reduction or Stun/Block Recovery. I think that Movement Speed + Dodge fits the motif of calculated aggression well, personally. But there are other fun alternative things that could be tried, like making the buff reward Action Speed for some undetermined duration. Another possible QoL suggestion would be to partially reduce the penalty of Unleash for reoccurring spells with this suggested buff mechanic. This last bit is just a personal complaint since the folks over at GGG seem to want people to build tankier and I don't feel like I have an enjoyable amount of damage or damage potential for how hard I've worked to set up such a tanky build. I don't think that my experience is representative of all Unleash uses however, since I know for a fact the whole 1h + shield playstyle is extremely atavistic and not optimal for damage.