[3.14] Gannicus, God of the Arena – Deathless Uber Elder for Everyone

Will Flesh and Stone 25 -> 35% mana reserve nerf break the build?

This was my first ever char in POE and it was great fun. Was looking to try it again this league. I never did get the gear needed to run Pride, but it was still a great build.

Break the build?????
I mean I can understand expecting some impact but... breaking the build because one of 5 auras costs a bit more? That's ...a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?

No, nothing is ...broken. If you give up precision and maim in F&S you lose around 5% of damage and you have the mana you need to run the new F&S. Maybe even giving up one of them could be enough. We'll see.

So the changes in the "Game Balance Manifesto" that seem to affect this build that I could see are as follows. I am wondering what your thoughts are on each of these changes.

"The Blood Magic Support gem has been split into two gems, as the lack of a damage multiplier made it a poor choice for primary skills. Now each of these new supports is balanced for the appropriate use case."

I am curious if this would be considered a buff?

"Bladestorm now has a multiplier to Bleeding damage while in Blood Stance, similar to the multiplier on Lacerate, to enable Bleeding builds on the blood themed skill.The Elder-influenced Weapon modifiers that grant a chance for Poisons or Bleeds inflicted with this Weapon to deal 100% more Damage have been removed. In their place, Elder-influenced Weapons can now roll a new Local Poison or Bleed Damage over Time Multiplier modifier. The double damage chance modifiers were too multiplicatively powerful for these builds, providing power that only the modifier granted, so they've been changed to an effect that is additive with other Bleed/Poison damage multipliers."

Might this change our 6 link gem selection?

"As a major benefit of these changes, reservation skills no longer have an associated cost by default, so you don't need the current mana available to reserve a skill. Even when your mana is completely depleted, you can still enable an aura, making it much easier to swap out auras or turn one on again if you accidentally disabled it. "

This looks as it could create some interesting ways to play with mana. Thoughts?

"Flesh and Stone now has a 35% mana reservation (from 25%). The defensive power of the skill in Sand Stance and the offensive power in Blood Stance was too high relative to other reservation effects. We've added a small reduction to Stance skill reservation cost on the Blood and Sand specialization cluster near the Duelist to bring the cost down slightly for appropriate builds. "

I am curious of your thoughts on the skill reservation for appropriate builds and if this was made more for certain non duelists abusing the mechanics? I know we do not know of the change in the tree to see how it will affect our points but this could not be near as bad as initially thought.

I wanted to say that I appreciate the build as I was able to start playing the game a few weeks into the season and I still managed to get 24 Challenges done despite being totally new to the game using this build.

Ok, the patch notes are in. Basically 2 things affect us (well, one actually).

F&S is now 35%. See the above post on how to mitigate that.

Blood magic is now called lifetap.

That's all.

If the new tree has anything interesting I might add it, otherwise no changes.


@Daktar111
I don't understand why you mention all those irrelevant things. We don't use DoT, don't use leap slam as a damage source, don't care about the intricacies of mana reservation and I certainly won't go into a discussion about what non-duelists might do. Sorry if this seems harsh but this all seems irrelevant to me.

The ONLY interesting thing for us is the new F&S mana reservation.

I had so much fun with this guy in ritual. Favorite character I've played so far.

Taking to the limits it can do anything in the game. I did 100% delirious farming successfully. Kills all bosses. All around extremely fun to play.

Really proud of what I finished off the league with, all self crafted.

"

Versatile Stance
The small node in this cluster that previously granted increased Cooldown Recovery for Stance Skills now grants 10% reduced Reservation of Stance Skills.

This looks like it could mitigate the higher reservation cost of F&S for 2 additional skill points.

Since it reduces reservation of stance skills by 10%, wouldn't this not only reduce F&S but also B&S which would actually give us more mana to play with and allow a bit more flexibility in Pride usage?

"

Daktar111 wrote:

Since it reduces reservation of stance skills by 10%, wouldn't this not only reduce F&S but also B&S which would actually give us more mana to play with and allow a bit more flexibility in Pride usage?

That was my thought as well. However I suppose it's 10% of the mana reservation of the skill not -10%. So B&S + F&S = 45% and this would mean a reduction of 4,5%.

@Domo: glad you enjoyed the build. Yeah it's a lot of fun to play. That's some great gear you have there.

Is it possible to replace Bladestorm with new skills like Reap or Exsanguinate?

"

eledil wrote:

Is it possible to replace Bladestorm with new skills like Reap or Exsanguinate?

Come on man... really? These are spells. You're asking if you can replace an attack with a spell?