[3.21] Vatinas' Spiders + HoP Guardian - CI, 70K armour, 1400 ES on block, millions of DPS

"

AlGor3Rythm wrote:

I am definitely not using spirit offering, I will try that out.
During boss fights without adds I guess you desecrate>spirit offering?

I facepalmed once I actualy checked my crawlers DPS after the fight, pretty sure that was the biggie.

Should I change gems for my fang for the spiders?

you should be switching out your melee splash support for damage on full life on boss fights if you are not doing that it's a big dps difference, and yes i put down desecrate for spirit offering.

Is it possible to play a version of this as a league starter? What are the mandatory uniques for this build to function early game? I'm just planning for 3.10.

Why do you need 3 healthy mind jewels? I saw your char using just 1.

I've looked at your build and I have a few questions and comments. Please pardon me if these have been addressed previously, but I didn't see them in the last few pages at least. Here's the version I'm running, for reference:

https://pastebin.com/2FCszSeW

I'm not entirely sure I understand the choice of supports. I haven't checked in PoB (as it's difficult to play with supports for Raise Spiders in the UI) but it seems like Melee Phys should give better dps than Withering Touch, as my understanding is that a comparatively small portion of the spider damage is chaos. I also read somewhere that Damage on Full Life doesn't work with the spiders, though I have no idea whether that's true, and am running it myself. I keep considering switching Minion Damage to Deathmark to allow targeting when there are lots of adds.

Correspondingly, I'm not sure I see why the despair corruption on gloves is good. Vulnerability certainly is, and synergizes with your crawler, but it's also an 8ex+ corrupt instead of a much cheaper one.

I'm running Presence of Chayula over Astramentis, which is probably an error. Astramentis loses a little ES and stun immunity but picks up several passives in the form of dex and str nodes freed up, and the stun immunity is at less of a premium due to cyclone also granting it. I'll have to test to see how noticeable the loss of stun immunity is.

I'm not sure I see the value of picking up the Sacrifice/Spiritual Command clusters. Most of the Sacrifice cluster is useless, since both spiders and HoAg are unkillable, so the only benefit is the 1% regen to you. Spiritual Command is a good pickup, but 5 points for that cluster feels pretty expensive.

"

procproc wrote:

I'm not entirely sure I understand the choice of supports. I haven't checked in PoB (as it's difficult to play with supports for Raise Spiders in the UI) but it seems like Melee Phys should give better dps than Withering Touch, as my understanding is that a comparatively small portion of the spider damage is chaos. I also read somewhere that Damage on Full Life doesn't work with the spiders, though I have no idea whether that's true, and am running it myself. I keep considering switching Minion Damage to Deathmark to allow targeting when there are lots of adds.

Withering Touch support gives, wither defbuff on the bosses which increases the chaos damage taken. It's main reason is to buff the crawler's dps.

"

procproc wrote:

I'm not entirely sure I understand the choice of supports. I haven't checked in PoB (as it's difficult to play with supports for Raise Spiders in the UI) but it seems like Melee Phys should give better dps than Withering Touch, as my understanding is that a comparatively small portion of the spider damage is chaos. I also read somewhere that Damage on Full Life doesn't work with the spiders, though I have no idea whether that's true, and am running it myself. I keep considering switching Minion Damage to Deathmark to allow targeting when there are lots of adds.

Withering Touch gives increased Chaos damage taken, which also helps your Crawlers DPS (rough calculation/explanation below). Not sure about Damage on Full Life, i'm personally running Feeding Frenzy to give Buff to the Crawler, Withering Touch and Melee Splash for faster clearing.

"

procproc wrote:

Correspondingly, I'm not sure I see why the despair corruption on gloves is good. Vulnerability certainly is, and synergizes with your crawler, but it's also an 8ex+ corrupt instead of a much cheaper one.

If you run withering touch on your dagger, that combined with spiders using viper touch as their attack skill makes them do about half of their damage as chaos. Agony Crawler has an implicit 40% phys to Chaos conversion. Add Spirit Offering to that mix, and about half of all of your damage is Chaos.

"

procproc wrote:

I'm running Presence of Chayula over Astramentis, which is probably an error. Astramentis loses a little ES and stun immunity but picks up several passives in the form of dex and str nodes freed up, and the stun immunity is at less of a premium due to cyclone also granting it. I'll have to test to see how noticeable the loss of stun immunity is.

If i put in Presence of Chayula into my PoB and add in the missing Dex that i need because of loosing Astramentis, i still lose almost 2k ES by running Presence. I don't see how you would gain ES. Astramentis can give you around 140 of all Stats. Combine that with the Utmost Intellect cluster, Shaper's Touch, Memory Vault and Radiant Faith and you're all set. Chayula doesn't help at all, except for maybe the Chaos resistance. But you could go CI to solve that, see my tree and post on the last page for reference.

"

procproc wrote:

I'm not sure I see the value of picking up the Sacrifice/Spiritual Command clusters. Most of the Sacrifice cluster is useless, since both spiders and HoAg are unkillable, so the only benefit is the 1% regen to you. Spiritual Command is a good pickup, but 5 points for that cluster feels pretty expensive.

All the life nodes going that way are also wasted, check my tree for reference. I'd rather go around the top left and if you think you need minion damage, you can pick up the Fearsome Force cluster there.

really well written guide tyvm, especially gearing section is great for noob like me.

I have 1 question, in forum post you said we need 3 healthy mind jewels, but in imported pob you use only 1, and there is one empty socket for lethalpride.

where to put other 2 healthy mind jewels?
are you using %es minion damage jewels instead of healthy mind? which one is optimal?

thank you.

You only use 1 healthy mind, just follow the Pob, some parts of the guide are not updated.

Thanks Blob for your previous post explaining the changes you made, I followed you, still missing currencie to upgrade my eye watcher.

By the way i didn't had the money to get a enchanted memory vault, so i runned 1 Uber lab and got it at the first try, 65ex lab run :D

Made quite a few changes to the build personally, already cleared all content in the game with the original build however had currency to improve upon it:



Not sure where to go from here gear wise, would definitely like a %Mana gained as ES Watcher's Eye but other than that not much more from what I can see.

"

Boltonsquads wrote:

Not sure where to go from here gear wise, would definitely like a %Mana gained as ES Watcher's Eye but other than that not much more from what I can see.

You can go CI. That would require Memory Vault with reduced Herald of Agony mana reservation. 30% is rare and starts at 65ish exalted, 20% is more than enough but is even rarer. I managed to snipe one for 25exa. CI version gets even more ES and a lot more damage from herald of agony because of level 28 and more reliable virulence stacking against single target because of golden rule.

You can get better boots. Mana>ES. You can make aspect of spider boots that are going to host all of your auras supported by englighten, which makes it easier to squeeze in a war/dread banner. Same with belt. High es and armor mods are nice, high mana mods are better.

Honestly, %mana as es watchers can be nice, but it's just raw es, which we do not lack.