[3.16 - RETIRING BUILD] VD Brands: S-Tier Bosser, A-Tier Map! -- MURDERED BY GGG_INTERN SOMEWHERE--

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IceColdPorkSoda wrote:

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FunkyM0nkey64 wrote:

Can you please let us know why you think this build is dead? A lot of DD players think the desecrate changes don't really matter and they added a lot more cast speed. I planned to play this build this league

Desecrate changes nerf damage for hit based builds. DD ignite won’t really care. It’ll just make uptime on big ignites a little more challenging. Arcanist brand changes nerf damage. Build lost 30-40% of its damage? Probably still fine if you swap to it with a level 95+ necro and fully decked out gear, but I wouldn’t recommend swapping before that. All in all there are other builds with just as much or more damage and a much smoother progression curve.

Isn't it possible that VD gets a buff in patch notes though?

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FunkyM0nkey64 wrote:

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IceColdPorkSoda wrote:

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FunkyM0nkey64 wrote:

Can you please let us know why you think this build is dead? A lot of DD players think the desecrate changes don't really matter and they added a lot more cast speed. I planned to play this build this league

Desecrate changes nerf damage for hit based builds. DD ignite won’t really care. It’ll just make uptime on big ignites a little more challenging. Arcanist brand changes nerf damage. Build lost 30-40% of its damage? Probably still fine if you swap to it with a level 95+ necro and fully decked out gear, but I wouldn’t recommend swapping before that. All in all there are other builds with just as much or more damage and a much smoother progression curve.

Isn't it possible that VD gets a buff in patch notes though?

I'll post any that I see here. 2 things already

1) "Raise Spectre's most recent monster types are now saved to your character and may be Desecrated. The size of this list is capped by your Spectre limit." HUGE QOL buff.

2) New chase unique jewel gives corpse pact to occultist or elementalist. Maybe hit based alternate quality DD occultist? Or Necro with mastermind of discord, to get back some of that lost damage? Who knows! Theory craft away.

RIP

Problem:
Certain Corpses have far higher life totals than others, giving extreme survivability when used as a Spectre and very high damage of skills based on their corpse life.

Solution:
Lower the life of Spectre versions of monsters that have very high life totals. Their life is being brought down to match Kitava's Herald monsters. This will affect their corpse when created with Desecrate.

RIP the first build i've ever gotten challenge rewards with ;_;

..anyone know a build thats similar in playstyle? the sudo-auto bomber vibe was sooo fun, and damn wasnt it neat visually to watch all the VD orbs zoomin round

VD damage came out, and even w/ AB nerf the VD buffed spell dmg is still higher than before by like 4-6, which is nothing to write home about, but net dmg overall is not nerfed at least.

So, is it still viable to scale VD balls instead? Is Necro still BIS to scale VD balls?

The entire build revolves around rapidly hitting basically a 1-3 link active skill. It only worked because of the insane “bonus” corpse damage which is still halfway decent but not busted, then you add in the arcanist brand nerf and you would do better to literally just cast storm brand in a 4 link.

Hey everyone!!

Touched to hear some of you will genuinely miss the build, haha. At least I know we've made some difference in the meta-build machine that is PoE!

To hopefully answer most of your questions about the viability/damage of the build, here is a cursory look at how I expect it to play out.

TL:DR Mapping faster than before, boss damage 40% nerf, but the build actually gained say 30% QoL + smoothness from certain changes so if you REALLY loved the build you may in fact love playing it more at the cost of 3-25sec more bossing time. Read on!




Also, to the guy who plays this as a duo and considers the Brittle/Scorch a party play buff - that's fascinating and I've always maintained it's a crazy debuffer/high damage 'support', glad to see it worked out for someone! :DDD

I do also want to point out that you could return to the roots of the build.

When it was first conceived, we used Incinerate as a "Debuff Loop" in place of Cyclone.

The Incinerate itself did ~1.5-2m DPS even with CWC and support gems. Incinerate has received a huge self-cast buff.

EDIT: Here is Incinerate 6L damage! I used Lifetap because it would drain about 140-150 mana per second otherwise - see if you can overcome that to put it back on mana.

Cyclone only came in as a need to address the mobility in Ultimatum due to the insane amount of zone control the hostile spells infliced (not even the mob damage.)

It continued to have usefulness in Scourge, where stacked rare 300 could clap you out of nowhere. However since the Fortify Nerfs, it became less valuable to Cyclone anyway.

In the next league however, the league is returning to bossing. How important is true mobility and tankiness now, considering Determination being so strong we can afford to stand still again?

I will posit a Flame Surge/Incinerate/Unearth 6L could really just melt bosses, returning much of the ST DPS to the build, while functionally VD still trucks for mapping.

(Flame Surge gets tricky because you need ignite on the enemy for it to pop off. Maybe our Lithomancers (no reason for Flayers now) can help. Or any spectre that inflicts burning for us.

So the build isn't 100% dead, just 75% dead. :D

For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGi4OVC5kVQ

Get creative people!


(Edit: Also, this frees up a Utility Spectre spot for Frenzy Gen (Carnage Chieftain) or Arena Masters (40% cast speed).

Quick query on the numbers in the updated (up to just before the 360% change) spreadsheet:

- Currently using 800% on the Litho's and 400% on the Flickershade's where I'd have thought those should be 800/300? (or possibly 900/400, though I wouldn't expect it, depending on what the scaling on poedb refers to relative to base health).

So the new figures would come out 360/300 rather than 360/360?

- I did my calcs applying the 15% rates and 44% rates to the full 12 desecrated mobs and calculating the average health per individual corpse from there. I can't see off the top of my head why that would lead to a large discrepancy (I'd have expected some rounding errors, but this looked bigger than that) from doing it on the 9 popped by VD, but it lead to quite a difference (something like 7-8% on the original 800% numbers. Haven't run it again on the 360% ones).

I could be making a mess of something on either/both of those, but said I'd ask them just in case. Doesn't change the situation regarding the build and the overall picture for it, just alters specific numbers here and there.

Thanks again for the amazing work on this build. Was an absolute joy to play. Cheers!

Can't wait to see the new monster you're working on. Setting up your recent forum post page on refresh for when it drops ;)

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TsuDhoNim wrote:

Quick query on the numbers in the updated (up to just before the 360% change) spreadsheet:

- Currently using 800% on the Litho's and 400% on the Flickershade's where I'd have thought those should be 800/300? (or possibly 900/400, though I wouldn't expect it, depending on what the scaling on poedb refers to relative to base health).

So the new figures would come out 360/300 rather than 360/360?

- I did my calcs applying the 15% rates and 44% rates to the full 12 desecrated mobs and calculating the average health per individual corpse from there. I can't see off the top of my head why that would lead to a large discrepancy (I'd have expected some rounding errors, but this looked bigger than that) from doing it on the 9 popped by VD, but it lead to quite a difference (something like 7-8% on the original 800% numbers. Haven't run it again on the 360% ones).

I could be making a mess of something on either/both of those, but said I'd ask them just in case. Doesn't change the situation regarding the build and the overall picture for it, just alters specific numbers here and there.

Thanks again for the amazing work on this build. Was an absolute joy to play. Cheers!

Can't wait to see the new monster you're working on. Setting up your recent forum post page on refresh for when it drops ;)

I'll get back to you on that! I hope they mean old stuff is Kitava Herald'ed but some new stuff appears. Very annoying that they were so vague about those numbers. (I think I did the Forgotten math somewhere too..)

By the way, this build MAY not be dead, it will just be wildly different.

I was gonna run my Trickster build right off the bat, but now, the mission...

Is to make this a Self-cast VD build that will deletus-bosses. :D Maybe even THE Self-Cast VD build. There are a few ways to trigger auto-corpse gen but almost all desync at max Corpse Pact stacks - multitotem Desecrate is the next one but has a 30% cast speed desync, plus totems die and need range. Corpsewalker boots really suck. Kitava's Thirst eats the helmet slot which is crazy because 8L is relevant again (Immolate is now one of the BiS links with damage effectiveness up.)

(Core concept: Arcanist Brand remains one of the best ways to abuse Corpse Pact + automate corpse gen. Have you ever seen self-cast VD though? No, because there's no reason to do it over a PP/SS/Arc Brand.)

Now with Arcanist damage in the bin, we simply use that for corpse gen, and unleash the VD.

Using just pure napkin math, we were operating at 17% less damage on VD (to branded target - 46% less to trash). We will now be 100%. We now have a 50% damage buff on selfcast. Due to double brands, we get double the corpse gen and ramp much faster and PRESUMABLY can reach maybe 1.7x the VD output of running just one VD brand.

100/83 * 1.5 * 1.7 = 3.07 damage multiplier from whatever the build was doing before, with an insanely fast ramp for perhaps 5 times the damage.

(vs Trash no cast speed: 100/54 * 1.5) = 2.7 plus whatever QoL high cast speed has.

All this for the cost of losing the soul of the build, which is running around when stuff dies, but... defenses are easy enough that standing still casting is no longer the bane of builds. Drop Brands, pop VMS and spam VD a few times - boom boss dead. The autotargetting of corpses still happens! :D

Will update! going to nap now. :) Out of hospital yesterday, in time for leagggggueeeeeeeeeee