[3.15] Elemental Hit Ballista Totem Hiero | Budget Friendly | League Start to Endgame

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aaOzymandias wrote:

Oh, I think you misunderstand. I was thinking the blizzard crown with flat added cold damage, not the exposure helmet, since I of course already have the exposure from cluster :)

I bought this base that I am rolling on to see what I end up with (nearby enemies and crit multi and increased damage all good contenders):

Do you want to play fire ele hit with blizzard crown ? If yes, it really makes a difference, if you use a normal helmet with ele hit enchant or blizzard crown without ele hit enchant. You better check this out, if you cant get a blizzard crown with ele hit enchant.

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kikeuy wrote:

You can do and probably will do whatever you want , look at my auras , im using normal Precision instead of divergent. Does it work? of course , i killed everything i fight against, but that doesnt mean its an optimal choice , i should use divergent , even anomalous is better.

This is a bad comparision. 10% reduced mana reserved or You and nearby Allies deal 2% increased Damage is a very minor Min Max thing. So this completely fine. Use whatever you need/like.

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kikeuy wrote:

Another example is the famous wall of shame that every league someone post on reddit about EH users with Atziri promise flask. Does it work? probably , they get chaos resistances out of it. Is it optimal? clearly no, if they want the resistance they should use a normal amethyst flask and get some useful affixes , if they want the damage they are completely wrong.

Well this is a fail. You said it: useful affixes. There is nothing to discuss about this. Anti-Shock or some other affix, if not allready on another flask, is important. There are players in softcore, who also care about not dying much ;)

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kikeuy wrote:

Im making this point because if someone new to the build see a recommendation on taking divergent ballista or even upgrading to 21 or 21/23 maybe they will pursue that without knowing why and if they are taking Point Blank they shouldnt use divergent ballista, is worse and more expensive.
In the end you will use whatever you want and you can make it work but again, that doesnt mean is the correct choice.

I have to disagree on this and i will exactly explain why.

1. You have a different playstyle for ele hit totems. We talked about this ingame like 2-4 leagues ago.


2. In Heist league, i have played Tricker ED/contagion and Chieftain Tectonic Slam. So you could say, i forgot totally what the exact range of Ballista Totem support is. Now in Ritual i play Siege Ballista and 2-3 hours after playing it the first time, ive allready noticed how much bigger the range is and how nice this is. I have been expecting it to be the same range as ballista totem support(normal quality). The Ballista Totem placing direct near you was a nerf and was really bad for clear speed. So getting some range back is nice.


3. Even with Point Blank you can play close for red beasts, map bosses, big bosses and for all the rest you can mix ranged or closed play as you like in maps. More range means, you cover a bigger area, so it clearly helps to place less totems per map(normal, magic, rare monsters). The range helps to kill stragglers or almost dead monsters at edge of screen, while you are allready moving forward.

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Kharadas wrote:

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kikeuy wrote:

You can do and probably will do whatever you want , look at my auras , im using normal Precision instead of divergent. Does it work? of course , i killed everything i fight against, but that doesnt mean its an optimal choice , i should use divergent , even anomalous is better.

This is a bad comparision. 10% reduced mana reserved or You and nearby Allies deal 2% increased Damage is a very minor Min Max thing. So this completely fine. Use whatever you need/like.

"

kikeuy wrote:

Another example is the famous wall of shame that every league someone post on reddit about EH users with Atziri promise flask. Does it work? probably , they get chaos resistances out of it. Is it optimal? clearly no, if they want the resistance they should use a normal amethyst flask and get some useful affixes , if they want the damage they are completely wrong.

Well this is a fail. You said it: useful affixes. There is nothing to discuss about this. Anti-Shock or some other affix, if not allready on another flask, is important. There are players in softcore, who also care about not dying much ;)

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kikeuy wrote:

Im making this point because if someone new to the build see a recommendation on taking divergent ballista or even upgrading to 21 or 21/23 maybe they will pursue that without knowing why and if they are taking Point Blank they shouldnt use divergent ballista, is worse and more expensive.
In the end you will use whatever you want and you can make it work but again, that doesnt mean is the correct choice.

I have to disagree on this and i will exactly explain why.

1. You have a different playstyle for ele hit totems. We talked about this ingame like 2-4 leagues ago.


2. In Heist league, i have played Tricker ED/contagion and Chieftain Tectonic Slam. So you could say, i forgot totally what the exact range of Ballista Totem support is. Now in Ritual i play Siege Ballista and 2-3 hours after playing it the first time, ive allready noticed how much bigger the range is and how nice this is. I have been expecting it to be the same range as ballista totem support(normal quality). The Ballista Totem placing direct near you was a nerf and was really bad for clear speed. So getting some range back is nice.


3. Even with Point Blank you can play close for red beasts, map bosses, big bosses and for all the rest you can mix ranged or closed play as you like in maps. More range means, you cover a bigger area, so it clearly helps to place less totems per map(normal, magic, rare monsters). The range helps to kill stragglers or almost dead monsters at edge of screen, while you are allready moving forward.

Ok, here we go again:

Point 1 just make nonsense , its not a matter of playstyle.
You take Point Blank - Normal Ballista support is better
You dont take Point Blank - Divergent is arguably better
You have Farshot - diverget ballista is clearly better.
In all cases normal also have the advantage of being cheaper and you also gain a little placement speed so it can be argued against divergent because of that but if you arent taking Point Blank is a sign you dont want to get close to enemies so it 100% make sense you use divergent.

Point 2
You werent playing this build when you first tried Divergent and somehow you extrapolated that experience to this build which is not correct.

Point 3
Here is why your point 2 is not correct.
The stragglers point make no sense , maybe in that other build it did , not in this.
This build have 100% or very close to 100% chance to ignite , maybe that doenst helps on map with mods that make you cant or have a less chance to ignite? what about the built in aoe of EH? what about the extra arrows coverage and the extra pierce is adviced to get?
You know how long a projectile goes after it pierces and the difference compared to the extra range activation you get from Divergent ballista is HUGE , piercing arrows usually kill thing that are one screen away from the pack it hit first, we shouldnt even be talking about this. That comparation isnt really valid anyway because the extra activation is not extra range actually.
If the pierce arrows didnt killed a pack that is behind the pack your totems are aiming that pack wont die no matter if using normal or divergent , you will have to place totems again.
But thats 2 totems placement were you will keep walking sooner using normal ballista. Already say "how many totems you place per map?/session/league", it seems you ignored that point.

And wanting to be closer for beast etc, like why arent you using normal ballista instead? you will place your totems faster, start to deal damage faster , keep walking faster after job is done.
For general map clear is not that you will obsess to place totems right on top of enemies if you have Point Blank , you dont have to since extra arrows + pierce will blast all packs anyway .Same as you wont place your totems right on the edge of the activation limit if you are using divergent, you just place totems and go.
The benefits of Divergent are real but is real too that is not that great and using both divergent ballista + Point Blank makes absolutely nonsense.
In practice it doesnt make a big difference using one or the other (at least on this build) but one is worse and doesnt make sense that you use a more expensive support when its worse.

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Kharadas wrote:

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aaOzymandias wrote:

Oh, I think you misunderstand. I was thinking the blizzard crown with flat added cold damage, not the exposure helmet, since I of course already have the exposure from cluster :)

I bought this base that I am rolling on to see what I end up with (nearby enemies and crit multi and increased damage all good contenders):

Do you want to play fire ele hit with blizzard crown ? If yes, it really makes a difference, if you use a normal helmet with ele hit enchant or blizzard crown without ele hit enchant. You better check this out, if you cant get a blizzard crown with ele hit enchant.

That is a fair point. And I do have one now actually! I went with Ele Hit damage, though attack speed would also have been nice enchant. :)



Not totally happy with it yet, but not all bad.

The first one was mostly an experiemnt for fun, but turned out alright:


Finally hit chaos res on my damage ring as well:

As i was bored, I went for SSF with this build.

20hr playtime so far. Could be faster, but was experimenting with different totem spells.

So far i have only 1 item that is needed for the build: Quill Rain.
Rest are just random rare items dropped from the game.



so far working on the atlass running T8/T9 alched maps.

Biggest issue will be Combat Focus jewels and Legion Jewel.
We'll see how it goes over next couple of days.

Still nice though.

Just want to echo the other people that mentioned headhunter. Gave it a spin today, it is amazing for this build for just clearing maps. And so cheap this league.

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bartpio wrote:

As i was bored, I went for SSF with this build.

20hr playtime so far. Could be faster, but was experimenting with different totem spells.

So far i have only 1 item that is needed for the build: Quill Rain.
Rest are just random rare items dropped from the game.

so far working on the atlass running T8/T9 alched maps.

Biggest issue will be Combat Focus jewels and Legion Jewel.
We'll see how it goes over next couple of days.

Still nice though.

Pretty though challenge that, but the build is solid regardless!

One tip is to focus on Einhar missions, and hope for lots of red beasts with the random unique jewel beast :)

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bartpio wrote:

As i was bored, I went for SSF with this build.

20hr playtime so far. Could be faster, but was experimenting with different totem spells.

So far i have only 1 item that is needed for the build: Quill Rain.
Rest are just random rare items dropped from the game.

so far working on the atlass running T8/T9 alched maps.

Biggest issue will be Combat Focus jewels and Legion Jewel.
We'll see how it goes over next couple of days.

Still nice though.

Combat Focus Jewels are the main problem in SSF. The jewels just drop very very rarely. Your best chance to get them quicker is farming Heist unique reward chests. You can use level 67 contracts for this, which you buy from the NPC(shop refreshes every level up).

thx for hints.

I'll see how it goes.
For now i must say i am surprised. Without jewels or anything from the build i do easily T10's. I also managed to do alched T14, but it requires to be very carefull.

I already got my heatshiver, so only thing missing is prophecy :)

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bartpio wrote:

thx for hints.

I'll see how it goes.
For now i must say i am surprised. Without jewels or anything from the build i do easily T10's. I also managed to do alched T14, but it requires to be very carefull.

I already got my heatshiver, so only thing missing is prophecy :)

Remember that you can craft a better helm than Frostferno with a Shaper helm , an Essence of Horror , a couple of crafts from harvest and benchcrafting any +1 to gems.

Ths's nice hint. Indeed without corruption it trumps frostferno :)