[3.11] CoC Ball Lightning Assassin - 20M+ Shaper DPS/10k ES/fortify - League Starter Guide Included

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Pandaro wrote:

I started this league with spell slinger and then transitioned to the life version, then the budget version with the fenumus boots and lycosade and now i'm slowly upgrading the gear to be considered the actual build.

I'm sitting on comfortable 8.6k es and i killed Sirus8 a couple times now but bosses in general take atm a little too much time.

I feel like i still do way too little damage but i can't really pinpoint which kind of items would help me the most in terms of damage.
I'm playing at the 14% cdr bracket with around 7.1 aps and i don't think i will reach the 54% bracket any time soon. Awakened Hextouch would be a decent upgrade for the extra curse but i feel like i'm missing something more essential.

Would you mind taking a look at my gear and give me some advice on what to upgrade next in terms of damage?
I'm thinking the main things atm are Awakened Hextouch, a max roll(with catalysts) shaper ring and bottled faith.

Here is my POB/Gear https://pastebin.com/6yRWA8EE

Edit: Looked at difference in gear and tree from vlockheads pob (https://pastebin.com/snFrJRKP) and changed many parts of the tree to be able to include 2 "Storm Drinker" jewels and "Energy from naught" jewels. Also changed the amulet to a +1 int gems. Overall somewhat cheap changes for a pretty decent damage boost. Only thing i'm worried about is that i'm now on 0% increased aoe which might actually be a really big damage loss too?

If you are struggeling with the DPS of the build you could also consider taking in "Transcendent Flesh" Jewel into the left socket. (about 12% DPS boost from the pastebin you've posted)
And also check your gem setup, it is a really bad one. I'd recommend:
4Link: B-B-B-B
Conductivity
Vortex
Awakened Hextouch (or normal one)
Elemental Weakness (if awakened hextouch)

4Link: B-B-B-B
Zealotry
Discipline
Wrath
Enlighten

6Link: Quite fine until now, try to get more crit and swap increased crit strikes for Inspiration -> a lot more DPS

4Link: R-G-B-B
Wave of Conviction
Blade Blast (WILL UNNERVE ENEMIES -> GOOD DPS BOOST)
Cast when Damage Taken
Tempest Shield (Some blockrate)

Weapon1: R-R B (Blue one unlinked - it has a better usability)
Cast when Damage Taken
Immortal Call
Vaal Righteous Fire (Good DPS boost)

Weapon2: B-B-G
Flame Dash (as high as you can)
Arcane Surge lvl 1 ---> Good Dps Boost when using it right
Phase Run (For the Speedup, as high as you can with your Dex and Mana)


Overall just with the right Gem Setup (without 6link change) and a Transcendent Flesh will let your DPS skyrocket.
in short you'll get:
+42% crit multi
28% MORE spell damage (Vaal RF)
Unnverve enemies
10% MORE spell damage (arcane surge)
about 40% movement speed

What is the thoughts around Cast on Crit vs Cast while channeling? The problems I have with Crit is you invest in crit chance when you could be investing in damage. I know crits are more damage and cyclone speed = higher effective crit chance, however, it just seems to play less flashy, big screen damage, and more single target. I know from BL's aoe that map clearing is pretty easy with it. Cyclone as well. So I know it handles maps just fine with on crit and channeling.

Would you feel that you could have either/or and get close or near the same dps?

What is the reasoning behind using Phase Run instead of Withering Step? I thought this was a remnant from before Withering Step was added to the game, but I see Phase Run being used and recommended still today.

Somehow, Withering Step is superior in every aspect:

- Phase Run 20/20 has 49% increased MS for 1.8sec with downtime of 2.2sec => average speed increase is 22.05% MS

- For Withering Step, the calculation is a bit more complex, so I made a spreadsheet with a chart, here's the chart schreenshot:



TLDR: If we keep our Withering Step decaying for between 3.4 and 6.6 seconds (which is a generous timeframe), we have a higher average speed increase over the duration of the buff including the following cooldown (Withering Step's Elusive can be interrupted, triggering immediate cooldown by e.g. tapping cyclone).

- And the unique feature of Withering Step: casting it non-stop during cycloning (every 3 seconds) resets our crit-triggered Elusive to 125% every 3 seconds. Instead of the average Mistwalker Elusive effect being 72.5% (half of 125%) it becomes half of (125% + (125%-3*20%))/2 = 95%. The 22.5% Elusive effect difference means an average improvement of 6.75% increased MS and 3.4% Spell/Attack Dodge during our cycloning.

While this last point doesn't seem like a major thing on its own, it's a min-maxing opportunity at absolutely no cost. Unless you generate frenzies for Phase Run, there's nothing Phase Run does better than Withering Step.

Edit: 2 benefits of Phase Run over Withering Step are (dependent on your situation):

- It's not a blink skill, so you can combine it with instant blink-skills like Frostblink which is huge if you prefer Frostblink (doesn't interrupt cyclone, is really sweet) -- not relevant with non-instant skills like Flame Dash though.
- As soon as you have place for an extra link, Phase Run is far superior with Increased Duration => 78.3% uptime, surpassing Withering Step in total average movement speed.

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Seikojin wrote:

What is the thoughts around Cast on Crit vs Cast while channeling? The problems I have with Crit is you invest in crit chance when you could be investing in damage. I know crits are more damage and cyclone speed = higher effective crit chance, however, it just seems to play less flashy, big screen damage, and more single target. I know from BL's aoe that map clearing is pretty easy with it. Cyclone as well. So I know it handles maps just fine with on crit and channeling.

Would you feel that you could have either/or and get close or near the same dps?

I haven't theorycrafted cwc that much, but I think coc is superior because:
1) In this build, we don't invest in something that increases only attack crit chance. Anything that increases cyclone's crit chance also increases BL's crit chance. Thus, "The problems I have with Crit is you invest in crit chance when you could be investing in damage" is not valid.
2) The benefit of cwc is that you don't have to be in melee range to deal damage. However, you want to use slower projectiles support with BL, and if you use it, BL is essentially a melee skill and thus the benefit of cwc is small.
3) At the end of the day, coc deals more damage because its cd is lower.

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Irfy84 wrote:

What is the reasoning behind using Phase Run instead of Withering Step?

I tried both, but I prefer phase run because withering step shares cd with flame dash. This means you can't use withering step right after flame dash.

I want to transition from the 14% cdr bracket to the 52% bracket and i have around 7.3 aps atm.
I read the guide about cdr but my question isn't answered since it's a little specific.
Lets say i have 7.5 aps and 14% which is almost at the breakpoint of aps ,so that's very good. What happens if i stay at 7.5aps and get my cdr to 52% which ideally needs 10.1 aps. Does that extra CDR affect my dps since i'm now sitting at a aps value which is not ideal or is it just a stat which doesn't do anything untill i go above the 7.5 aps breakpoint?

I assume it affects my dps negatively?

Also, does hitting multiple targets change anything about the way CoC would trigger? When i use cyclone and i hit 2 targets, are those targets hit sperately at different timings which could help me out in triggering CoC, or do they get hit by the exact same instance which would be used against a single mob?

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Pandaro wrote:

I want to transition from the 14% cdr bracket to the 52% bracket and i have around 7.3 aps atm.
I read the guide about cdr but my question isn't answered since it's a little specific.
Lets say i have 7.5 aps and 14% which is almost at the breakpoint of aps ,so that's very good. What happens if i stay at 7.5aps and get my cdr to 52% which ideally needs 10.1 aps. Does that extra CDR affect my dps since i'm now sitting at a aps value which is not ideal or is it just a stat which doesn't do anything untill i go above the 7.5 aps breakpoint?

I assume it affects my dps negatively?

Also, does hitting multiple targets change anything about the way CoC would trigger? When i use cyclone and i hit 2 targets, are those targets hit sperately at different timings which could help me out in triggering CoC, or do they get hit by the exact same instance which would be used against a single mob?

Additional CDR does nothing to you.

You are trying to trigger BL every 133 (1000/7.5)ms, and the cooldown of BL is 132 ms with 14% CDR. This means you can trigger BL every time you hit enemies with cyclone because 133>132. BL is always off-cooldown when you try to trigger it. Now, you have 52% CDR. The cooldown of BL becomes 99 ms. The situation doesn't change and you can still trigger BL every time because 133 > 99.

The number of enemies you hit doesn't matter for this build because cyclone hits all enemies at once.

Thanks for your explanation i feel like i get it now.
In my case the APS is actually the bottleneck. Both 14% and 52% allow me to get the maximum amount of procs considering the APS i have. The moment i reach more than 7.57 aps however, 14% will give us some issues because we're hitting too soon when the BL is still on cooldown. And this is where i have to transition into 52% and as close to 10.1 aps as possible.

I still got a couple questions sorry about this...

All of those proc rates are assuming you have 100% crit rate to make calculation easier. With budget gear 95% will not be realistic but that's just a matter of investment.

I'll work with 7.57 aps and 14% cdr in the next example because that's the breakpoint most people are using i would assume.

If i have for example 50% crit chance, that means half of my hits will not proc BL. Ideally i would want twice as many hits to compensate for the lack of crit to be able to actually proc the cooldown as fast as if i had 100% crit chance. So 7.57 * 2 = 15.14. Is that a conclusion which follows/makes sense?

Another example would be having 80% crit chance and optimal/same (7.57) aps. We are missing some procs, and i'd like to know how much of a damage difference additional 10% crit would be.
Same aps but 90%, that means we are now having 12.5% MORE balls than before. (80 * 1.125 = 90)

Hitting 100 times wit 80% gives me 80 balls
Hitting 100 times with 90% gives me 90 balls
Every 1% of crit chance increases the amount of balls by 1.
So the scaling is linear right?

This calculation i assume happens at the very end, so it's not considered like more sppell damage or crit multi. It's one stage after those. It's a linear MORE multiplier which scales the ball itself which consists of every multiplier, be it increased or more multipliers. I guess you can see it as being the same as Attack and Cast speed?

The same line of thought i want to excercise with APS.
If i haven't reached a certain APS breakpoint then that means every missing APS would mean proccing less balls. Which would also be a linear MORE multiplier, right?

Not N0esy, but I'll answer nonetheless:

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Pandaro wrote:

Spoiler

Thanks for your explanation i feel like i get it now.
In my case the APS is actually the bottleneck. Both 14% and 52% allow me to get the maximum amount of procs considering the APS i have. The moment i reach more than 7.57 aps however, 14% will give us some issues because we're hitting too soon when the BL is still on cooldown. And this is where i have to transition into 52% and as close to 10.1 aps as possible.

I still got a couple questions sorry about this...

All of those proc rates are assuming you have 100% crit rate to make calculation easier. With budget gear 95% will not be realistic but that's just a matter of investment.

I'll work with 7.57 aps and 14% cdr in the next example because that's the breakpoint most people are using i would assume.

If i have for example 50% crit chance, that means half of my hits will not proc BL. Ideally i would want twice as many hits to compensate for the lack of crit to be able to actually proc the cooldown as fast as if i had 100% crit chance. So 7.57 * 2 = 15.14. Is that a conclusion which follows/makes sense?

Another example would be having 80% crit chance and optimal/same (7.57) aps. We are missing some procs, and i'd like to know how much of a damage difference additional 10% crit would be.
Same aps but 90%, that means we are now having 12.5% MORE balls than before. (80 * 1.125 = 90)

Hitting 100 times wit 80% gives me 80 balls
Hitting 100 times with 90% gives me 90 balls
Every 1% of crit chance increases the amount of balls by 1.
So the scaling is linear right?

This calculation i assume happens at the very end, so it's not considered like more sppell damage or crit multi. It's one stage after those. It's a linear MORE multiplier which scales the ball itself which consists of every multiplier, be it increased or more multipliers. I guess you can see it as being the same as Attack and Cast speed?

The same line of thought i want to excercise with APS.
If i haven't reached a certain APS breakpoint then that means every missing APS would mean proccing less balls. Which would also be a linear MORE multiplier, right?

In short, yes. Both APS and Crit Chance are independent multipliers to our final DPS, as long as breakpoints are honored.

The only problem with your logic that I see is the assumption that 50% crit + double-the-breakpoint APS would equate to 100% crit + breakpoint APS. This is simply not true, because the crit roll is random, like a coin flip. You could happen to roll crit-crit-miss-miss-crit-crit-miss-miss with a 50% total chance to crit -- and with double-the-breakpoint APS, this is the worst-case scenario, you would actually be producing balls just twice out of the 8 cyclone hits above. Your assumption would hold true only if it were guaranteed that you would get crit-miss-crit-miss-crit-miss-crit-miss, perfectly alternated which is not the way random rolls work, and crit is random roll.

What bugs me in your hypothetical analysis is the statement that 95% crit is not realistic. I disagree, initially you can run Precision and Ice Golem to help, but very soon you'll cross 95% with diamond flask. I don't have any investment into crit chance, except from t1 crit roll on my weapon (<5c, combined with a <5c Lycosidae). I'm still using Increased Crit Strikes, and with 7 Power Charges you'll be good to go.

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Pandaro wrote:

All of those proc rates are assuming you have 100% crit rate to make calculation easier. With budget gear 95% will not be realistic but that's just a matter of investment.right?

Getting high crit chance while flasks are up should not be that hard.

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Pandaro wrote:

If i have for example 50% crit chance, that means half of my hits will not proc BL. Ideally i would want twice as many hits to compensate for the lack of crit to be able to actually proc the cooldown as fast as if i had 100% crit chance. So 7.57 * 2 = 15.14. Is that a conclusion which follows/makes sense?

No, infinite aps is better because you can proc BL every 7.57 sec. This means that, as long as your aps is a multiple of 7.57, more aps is always better. Your crit chance doesn't affect this conclusion: the more aps the better. However, having 15.14 or 22.71 aps is not realistic because it requires too much investment.

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Pandaro wrote:

Another example would be having 80% crit chance and optimal/same (7.57) aps. We are missing some procs, and i'd like to know how much of a damage difference additional 10% crit would be.
Same aps but 90%, that means we are now having 12.5% MORE balls than before. (80 * 1.125 = 90)

This is correct. Remember that if you have 75% cyclone crit chance without a diamond flask, the effective crit chance is 94%. At this point, further investment on crit chance has little room to improve your dps.

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Pandaro wrote:

The same line of thought i want to excercise with APS.
If i haven't reached a certain APS breakpoint then that means every missing APS would mean proccing less balls. Which would also be a linear MORE multiplier, right?

Correct.