I tried a version with indigon (last season when indigon was cheap af) / unreserved mana / enduring mana flask, but it got annoying to the point that when I was delving and had to constantly replace totems in front of me they would cost my whole mana pool. But maybe I just suck at indigon management.
This league it's really hard to survive on 4k hp and no other reliable defenses, I feel this mostly affects elementalists and deadeyes, but hiero without MOM / high mana regen will probably get close to that state.
Since you get 10% extra MOM power and 30% extra mana from ascendancy, it really pushes builds towards utilizing it, otherwise it feels like a waste to have it. Unless you make one of these memory vault's builds, then yeah, reserve all the mana away (well maybe not all).
P.S. Even if you manage to pick Scion life nodes, I feel any build stuck with 0 life chest as a mandatory build-enabler won't be able to reach good hp thresholds. Soul Mantle is unfortunately one of those. (So is Hyrri's Ire, Cloak of Defiance, Dendrobate and few other build-defining chests.)
I see your point. With Metamorphs and Conqueror's minions insta-shooting you when spawning, you need some good eHP !!!
To achieve that with the uniques in the build, you need god-tier item on free slots and very very good reflexes :)
Has any of you tried a version with the helmet "The Devouring Diadem" ?
We could have 3 auras for extra buffs (with Enlighten lvl 3). It should be doable to get around 2000 ES to compensate for the mana loss.
Hey Maximewoody,
I tried this in Legion league. It has a few good points and a few drawbacks to it. It makes it interesting to build though.
The main drawbacks are:
Since you are now EB (spending ES and not mana) you can no longer proc arcane surge simply by casting. This is quite a big DPS loss. I ended up using Command of the Pit gloves with a socketed searching eye jewel to get a lvl 1 arcane surge on hit with spells. It's not as good as the high level version the "normal" build gets but it's better then nothing. I used a storm brand + curse on hit setup to ensure it was up for bosses / tanky rares. Just bear in mind that now you are hitting a lot you need the ele pen enchant on boots and not the inc crit chance enchant! Also the Transfiguration of Mind notable we get on Hiero gives us damage from investing into Mana. Since we no longer invest heavily in Mana on the tree this is less effective.
Getting good EHP is pretty tricky. I was lucky to be playing in a league where ES wasn't the main focus so I could get a Watchers eye with the clarity mod, mana as ES & Hatred cold pen very cheaply. I expect this league it would be MUCH more expensive! That being said if you are prepared to throw a lot of currency at the build then both Reflection and the Diadem have reasonable ES amounts so getting extra ES everywhere you can gives you a pretty solid base to work from.
However the positives are:
Able to run multiple aura's easily. I think I got 5 on mine. Low level clarity & precision. Then Hatred, Zealotry & Discipline at max lvl. The ES recharge rate from Discipline felt quite mandatory for me to be able to spam totems at the start of a boss fight but you might be able to get away with what you pickup on the tree.
Ring slots are free. I used the Mark of the Shaper and Elder Ring for a nice damage boost.
Devouring Diadem has a nice little feature in boss fights / mapping whereby you periodically suck up any nearby corpses around you to recover 400 life, mana and ES. It can consume up to 10 corpses so I found a low level CWDT + desecrate + spell cascade to be pretty good in boss fights. That generates 9 corpses fairly consistently. You can go self-cast if you want to be able to generate them more reliably closer to you.
The other thing I found quite helpful for survive-ability was to use an Elegant Hubris Timeless jewel of Cadiro. This means your life flask recover to both your life and ES. Assuming you are running the high budget variant and use Cowards Legacy & a panicked life flask you get an instant 1500+ life and ES on flask usage.
Anyway, I think going the Devouring Diadem + EB route is pretty interesting to build around. It doesn't have quite the same synergy of the normal variant and is likely to be a bit less tanky but has a few fun features and if you are looking to build FP Totems in a different way I can certainly attest to the fact it works pretty well.
Hope that is somewhat helpful :)
Last edited by DrHarvey12 on Jan 7, 2020, 4:20:54 AM
I'm following the "mid game" recommendation, with frostbite, where Wallach says we need Arcane Surge enough to have it up all the time.
I'm quite newbie in this, and I would love an estimate of the lvl both gems should have for this.
atm my arcane surge is lvl 13 and my frostbite is 17.
I'm following the "mid game" recommendation, with frostbite, where Wallach says we need Arcane Surge enough to have it up all the time.
I'm quite newbie in this, and I would love an estimate of the lvl both gems should have for this.
atm my arcane surge is lvl 13 and my frostbite is 17.
Thanks in advance.
When you read your Arcane Surge gem that is slotted in your item, it will tell you "Gain Arcane Surge after Spending a total of # Mana with Supported Skills"
This # is the amount of mana you need to spend.
Now you just have to read the spell your are casting (in the bottom right part of the screen where you have the shortcut). You will have the mana cost displayed there.
The aim is to have the mana cost of the spell be over # so that Arcane Surge is triggered every time. Or at worse, every 2 time (so Mana Cost x2 > #)
To raise the mana cost of your spell there are different ways:
- Increase the rank of the gem
- Add more linked supporting gems with a mana cost multiplier
Has any of you tried a version with the helmet "The Devouring Diadem" ?
We could have 3 auras for extra buffs (with Enlighten lvl 3). It should be doable to get around 2000 ES to compensate for the mana loss.
Hey Maximewoody,
I tried this in Legion league. It has a few good points and a few drawbacks to it. It makes it interesting to build though.
The main drawbacks are:
Since you are now EB (spending ES and not mana) you can no longer proc arcane surge simply by casting. This is quite a big DPS loss. I ended up using Command of the Pit gloves with a socketed searching eye jewel to get a lvl 1 arcane surge on hit with spells. It's not as good as the high level version the "normal" build gets but it's better then nothing. I used a storm brand + curse on hit setup to ensure it was up for bosses / tanky rares. Just bear in mind that now you are hitting a lot you need the ele pen enchant on boots and not the inc crit chance enchant! Also the Transfiguration of Mind notable we get on Hiero gives us damage from investing into Mana. Since we no longer invest heavily in Mana on the tree this is less effective.
Getting good EHP is pretty tricky. I was lucky to be playing in a league where ES wasn't the main focus so I could get a Watchers eye with the clarity mod, mana as ES & Hatred cold pen very cheaply. I expect this league it would be MUCH more expensive! That being said if you are prepared to throw a lot of currency at the build then both Reflection and the Diadem have reasonable ES amounts so getting extra ES everywhere you can gives you a pretty solid base to work from.
However the positives are:
Able to run multiple aura's easily. I think I got 5 on mine. Low level clarity & precision. Then Hatred, Zealotry & Discipline at max lvl. The ES recharge rate from Discipline felt quite mandatory for me to be able to spam totems at the start of a boss fight but you might be able to get away with what you pickup on the tree.
Ring slots are free. I used the Mark of the Shaper and Elder Ring for a nice damage boost.
Devouring Diadem has a nice little feature in boss fights / mapping whereby you periodically suck up any nearby corpses around you to recover 400 life, mana and ES. It can consume up to 10 corpses so I found a low level CWDT + desecrate + spell cascade to be pretty good in boss fights. That generates 9 corpses fairly consistently. You can go self-cast if you want to be able to generate them more reliably closer to you.
The other thing I found quite helpful for survive-ability was to use an Elegant Hubris Timeless jewel of Cadiro. This means your life flask recover to both your life and ES. Assuming you are running the high budget variant and use Cowards Legacy & a panicked life flask you get an instant 1500+ life and ES on flask usage.
Anyway, I think going the Devouring Diadem + EB route is pretty interesting to build around. It doesn't have quite the same synergy of the normal variant and is likely to be a bit less tanky but has a few fun features and if you are looking to build FP Totems in a different way I can certainly attest to the fact it works pretty well.
Hope that is somewhat helpful :)
Wahou ! Yes very helpful thank you.
You can have some nice synergies but you have to work for it :)
For Arcane Surge, I was thinking of getting it with the Ascendency : dropping Divine Guidance and Conviction of Power for Illuminated Devotion + Arcane Blessing.
We lose Endurance charges but gain Immunity to Ailments and we can add a Power Charge On Critical Support with Storm Brand.
I'm following the "mid game" recommendation, with frostbite, where Wallach says we need Arcane Surge enough to have it up all the time.
I'm quite newbie in this, and I would love an estimate of the lvl both gems should have for this.
atm my arcane surge is lvl 13 and my frostbite is 17.
Thanks in advance.
When you read your Arcane Surge gem that is slotted in your item, it will tell you "Gain Arcane Surge after Spending a total of # Mana with Supported Skills"
This # is the amount of mana you need to spend.
Now you just have to read the spell your are casting (in the bottom right part of the screen where you have the shortcut). You will have the mana cost displayed there.
The aim is to have the mana cost of the spell be over # so that Arcane Surge is triggered every time. Or at worse, every 2 time (so Mana Cost x2 > #)
To raise the mana cost of your spell there are different ways:
- Increase the rank of the gem
- Add more linked supporting gems with a mana cost multiplier
Thank you very much for your expiation.
Actually this was a lot better than just saying "go for X lvl in your arcane surge".
Now there is something I won't need to ask again.
