[3.16 - RETIRING BUILD] VD Brands: S-Tier Bosser, A-Tier Map! -- MURDERED BY GGG_INTERN SOMEWHERE--
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Finally got the Twins contract but the resists on the amulet rolled terribly... Is it even worth using that (maybe with Loreweave) or should I try getting a new one?
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"12% lightning damage taken, 8% Fire and 4% Cold at base to gain Sap, up to 20% less damage taken, and a big chunk more damage and better clear. The synergy between applying the confluxes and our frequent high hits from our crit and 800% HP corpses makes scaling Leadership's Price effects a very solid choice for us. Stuff like Brittle getting our base crit chance up on explosions is huge for boosting clear in stuff like scourge where monsters aren't keen to fall over so easily and sapping bigger hits is huge for surviviability. I'd use a -3, -3, -3 Leadership over not using it. Though if you intend to try and min max you might want to save your Tainted Oils for a potential better rolled one if you're ok grinding out another Twins. |
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Let's talk Helm Enchants.
TL;DR First, the conclusion, and then the details: * For Detonate Dead, Detonate Dead has a 45% chance to detonate an additional corpse is your best choice. * For Volatile Dead, Volatile Dead Consumes an Additional Corpse is probably your best choice. * If you swap in DD for bosses, you'll need to choose your helm enchant based on whether you want better clear (VD) or better bossing (DD). If you only use one of the skills, or if you pick a non-VD/DD option, this is irrelevant. * In my opinion, if you use DD at all, you should get the DD enchant. The massive boss DPS increase is worth much more than the smaller clear DPS increase. I'd love to hear your thoughts. The long version This list makes a few important assumptions: 1) In cases where an enchant allows additional corpses to be consumed, all those corpses hit the target. In reality, this is not always the case, so those enchants are devalued slightly. 2) You are at full ramp (max Corpse Pact stacks). In reality, the enchants that allow additional corpses to be consumed will decrease your ramp time, so those enchants are increased in value slightly. Reliable DPS increases
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Detonate Dead has a 45% chance to detonate an additional corpse
Massive increase for DD. This is by far the best DPS increase for Detonate Dead and is essentially a 45% DPS increase for DD. 40% Increased Volatile Dead Damage This is just a straight up damage increase for both the Spell and Corpse Explosion portion of VD. This is a reliable enchant whose exact value depends on your other stats. For me, this represents a 6.2% DPS increase for VD. 40% Increased Detonate Dead Damage Essentially the same as above, a 6.2% DPS increase for DD. Wave of Conviction's Exposure applies -6% Elemental Resistance This actually depends on how much resist penetration/reduction you have already. This should be somewhere around a 5% DPS increase for either skill but it gets weird due to uptime, your gear, and if you have the exposure Elemental Mastery. Spells Triggered by Arcanist Brand Unnerve enemies on Hit for 4 seconds In theory this sounds great, but it's a bit of a trap because it does NOT apply to the Corpse Explosions, only the Spell portions of our spells. Depending on the skill you use, the Spell portion is anywhere from roughly 20-35% of our overall DPS, and this increases that portion by 10%, so a total of about 2 to 3.5% DPS increase for either skill (on the low end for DD, on the high end for VD). Situational
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Determination/Summon Skitterbots/Discipline has increased Mana Reservation Efficiency
This depends entirely on your tree. This could save you one passive point by allowing you to drop one of the Efficiency (Discipline or overall) masteries. If that single point gets you a huge increase or an important passive, it could be worthwhile. Good, but Hard to Quantify -- Important section for VD!
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Volatile Dead Consumes an Additional Corpse
In a perfect world, this actually would not do anything at all if you have Woke Spell Cascade. However, even with Woke Spell Cascade, Volatile Dead rarely explodes all 12 corpses generated. This is because of the overlap issue where the center explosion chooses corpses to consume that would have otherwise been consumed by the front, back, or side circles, leaving remaining corpses that could have only been consumed by the center circle intact. The extra corpse consumption will help with this issue by making it more likely that there are fewer overlaps. This is tough to quantify, though. This could cause anywhere from 1 to 3 additional corpses overall to be detonated, depending on the overlap spread. In the actual worst case (no overlap problem), this does nothing. More realistically, this is a 9.1% DPS increase (11 to 12 corpses consumed), and in the realistic best case, this is a 33% DPS increase (9 to 12 corpses consumed). Theoretically, that makes this anywhere from a 0 to 33% DPS increase for VD. In my hideout testing using manual Brand Recalls to proc the spells, the most common scenario by far was that I consumed 11 corpses without the enchant and 12 corpses with the enchant. This would seem to indicate that the 9.1% DPS increase is most likely and thus this is likely, but not certainly, the best enchant for VD. Arcanist Brand has 12% Increased Cast Speed PoB seems to think this does not affect the trigger rate of Arcanist Brand. If that's true, then this is just a small QoL increase to the cast time of your brands. If the cast speed does affect the trigger rate, then it should be an approximately 8% DPS increase while you are ramping and a 2.5% DPS increase when you are at full ramp for either skill, and it improves your ramp speed slightly. All other enchants are utility, defensive, or essentially useless. Last edited by Cryotron9000#3571 on Nov 23, 2021, 1:18:41 PM
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"I'd completely agree with that take. Going a touch further to add "... and if you don't use DD at all in high end bossing, you should." The clear is already really good and the extra dps/ramp/sustain that the VD enchants can give don't really move the needle on how it feels or plays in clearing all that much. The (limited as it is) friction there is still the stopping to cast and movement skilling, neither of which gain enough from ramp or higher dps to be meaningful gains relatively speaking. Bossing feels a little bit better with any of the damage enchants, but not to the same extent as DD which gets the same benefit of things like the additional corpse, but then scales those gains higher. Having your DD, that genuinely benefits from each increase in damage in high end bossing situations, able to pop up to the full 10 corpses (5 up to 7.25 average, assuming you have the corpses) or up to 6 (3 up to 4.35 average) for us non-awakened on a single cast is just nutty % gains in comparison. Lots to be said for the utility stuff like Discipline or Determination reduced mana reservation opening up space to squeeze in a Clarity/Vitality/Precision Watcher's Eye mod or the likes, but I can't see anything coming even close to +corpse DD for all round power gains. |
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If you are still using fenumus boots and don't have a discipline watchers eye, you can also drop discipline and run herald of ash along with spider aspect for a bit more damage. Since 50% of dmg bypasses ES, your onehit hp is only hp + 1.5*hp for ES which is really the big concern for boss fights, you should have more than enough with glorious vanity + body armour enchant to hit 1.5* hp. I've been doing this and haven't had any survivability issues even when mapping.
I'm finally closing in on 90 and have most of my crit nodes. Question for you guys with a mostly fleshed out build: I'm noticing that on big bosses, like guardians, even with my DD on and exposure on I'm not getting full ailments. Highest I've seen is about -15 to res w/ scorched (max 30), and 10-12% crit at peak with brittle (max 15), but usually around 8%. I'm not surprised since the build is mostly a lot of smaller hits, but I'm curious what you guys are getting. Reason I ask is because of the snowforged cluster. From my understanding we are no longer chilling or igniting, since we can't due to the amulet, and the chill comes from our skitterbots. The node says "you inflict" so in that case we aren't benefiting from the -5 res on this node, just some flat damage and I guess my primary guess for why we take this cluster the 40% increased ailment affect. I wonder if the 40% of whatever ailments I'm getting is worth it, or if it may be better to use those 4 points and path up to arcane potency for 40% more crit multi and a bit of inc spell crit chance. I don't see an option for brittle/scorched/sap in pob so not easy to calculate this. Last edited by zoinkjr#1774 on Nov 23, 2021, 3:53:12 PM
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Hello all!
I recently switched over to DD and the difference is insane, now I want to try and get that helmet enchant asap. I would like some advice as to what to invest in next as I can get either or at the moment; a Watcher's Eye or a Megalomaniac jewel (Brand Loyalty, Self-Control and Doryani's Lesson) I have two different trees in my PoB; Transition Staff Watchers and Transition Staff Cluster. (If I go with the Cluster I can drop a passive point for reservation and use Skitterbots as well) POB here https://pastebin.com/cHRvF5tw Thanks! Last edited by lillbrorsan#3643 on Nov 23, 2021, 4:55:31 PM
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"You can see most of the end game vids shared on the thread capping it out consistently. A recent one from Prima: https://streamable.com/fm42fk With exposures up, sulphur flask up and double damage while focused up I'd be very surprised to hear you're not maxing out yet glancing at your gear... even with Desecrate capping the corpses at level 81. When you were testing the numbers was Phantasmal Desecrate a lower level? The 19 is tanking your damage a little in a level 83 zone, but I wouldn't have thought it'd stop you hitting cap there. Although with Snowforged's 49% increased Fire damage combined with 40% increased effect of ailments you'd probably be hitting it easily once you grab the wheel. Are you using Lithomancer and Stoneskin Flayer specters? Phantasmal is eating those high HP corpses a % of the time making it slower for you to apply the big hits for the ailments, but we burn through so many corpse explosions you should still be hitting a crit on one of the big guys pretty often. "Unless you're specifically looking to scale your spell damage so your balls do more damage anything spell specific is going to be relatively inefficient. When stuff nearby like Trickery, Assassination and Elemental Focus can scale the more significant corpse explosion damage and the spell damage together any spell specific nodes like Arcane Potency will struggle to compete. Last edited by TsuDhoNim#6798 on Nov 23, 2021, 5:56:25 PM
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" Curious that in the video they show as max value, but with 40% increased effect those number should be higher...maybe it just doesn't display correctly. The skitterbots increased effects are displayed correctly though... Was recently, so desecrate was still 19, guess that will help getting it to 20. I have not been using specters recently, tried but they died too easily. I have been using lvl 21 DD for bossing, and keep forgetting that spell mods don't scale that damage so that makes sense that cluster would be mostly wasted. Last edited by zoinkjr#1774 on Nov 23, 2021, 10:35:05 PM
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I think Scorched, Brittle and Sapped still have a max cap value. Increased effect of non-damaging ailment just makes you hit the cap easier on the big bosses (where they matter). I have 100% increased effect of non-damaging ailment (40% snowforged, 60% boots), and I hit that cap on everything the game can throw at me really.
I still get a roughly 17% shock from skitterbots as well (on the big guys). I'm slowly working towards my real endgame setup. I still would like to see primaevas take on the endgame setup, for some ideas maybe? I figured now is a good time to go over a few of my choices and why I made them, since there's still no endgame PoB up and people ask regulary. I took +3 support staff because of enhance/phantasmal desecrate bumping this up to 60%, 68% when i can be bothered buying a lvl 4 enhance. I'm not convinced it is actually a dps increase over a crit multi staff, but it is definitely a huge quality of life (and probable dps boost) on bosses where the desecrate pool is kinda garbage (looking at you, shaper) I still farm enchant on this of course. Conc effect would be the absolute best but I slammed area which actually scales on the explosion AoE, and it's been absolutely awesome for clearing and DD spread (great for feared invitation). Rings with -curse effectiveness and one with life gain on spell hit. Gotta slam that 2nd ring still when I have Leo up again. As usual, when I'm done with new chest, I'll go save up for a triple +max one. Flammability on hit is huge, allows for 2 better rings rather than slotting a flammability ring in, and removes the need of a gem (+proc mana cost) craft phys to fire to scale explosions and so i can grab covered in ash from fire mastery. Generic life/str/resist belt to fill resists and get STR=INT Not happy with this, in the process of crafting some more chests and hopefully eventually hitting one with a good life roll and open prefix for the craft. Also still annoyed it slammed INT, but I would have to redo my passive tree slightly to make it work without the INT now, so there's that! Generic GG boots, elusive/tailwind for zoom and 60% non-damaging ailment effect to cap sapped/brittle/scorched on the big bois. It's been working out great, do recommend! Unlinked but featured: I have a megalomaniac with culling and -reservation. Last edited by falagar112#0878 on Nov 24, 2021, 1:04:09 AM
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"Not a display bug. The cap on Brittle, Scorch and Sap remains the cap (they'd be utterly op without it) the ailment effect just lets you hit that cap on bosses lowering the ailment thresholds, significantly. Probably worth diving into the wiki on this. It's a relatively broad and widely applicable part of the game that's a bit non intuitive. I had been wondering why someone would consider not picking up the effect mastery when it's clear they're not maxing out already, but it makes perfect sense as a question when viewed as a stat raising a limit you weren't hitting rather than the reality of letting you hit that limit. It's a good wheel. Grab away :p "The specters aren't optional or nice to have, they're core. You're removing a huge damage multiplier without them. Once you bring them into a map it's not a big deal if they die, you just need to make sure you have them resummoned before entering the next map. The ailments will be applied by your biggest hit. At the moment your biggest hit is likely to be a 300% flickershade crit. With a Lithomancer or Stoneskin Flayer that jumps to 800% hp scaling instantly ensuring your damage, and ailments, soar. Desecrate is definitely holding you back in anything higher than level 81 as that's your current cap. Getting it to 20 will push it to the zone cap instead, which is scaling corpse life by a chunk in level 85 or 86 content. It could also help explain why you struggled keeping your specters alive. With the extra damage from a leveled desecrate (and eventually snowforged) they'll stop dying as everything else dies much faster. |
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