[3.25] Looping League Starter - Heartbound Autobomber
"
adizs wrote:
I can't for my life figure out what I am doing wrong. The loops are slow and sometimes stops. Can someone please shed some light on what I might be missing to make it work optimally?
https://pobb.in/fhvf9pFQvGuE
You should reread the guide and make sure everything is correct, for example your less duration is 16/0 instead of 15/0. I've also found that the loop sometimes gets weird with bad internet on lockstep/predictive (Im not sure which one it was).
"
Poochavist wrote:
had me looking for hours for how to activate nine lives only to find it hasnt been in the game for 6 months
Its still in the game, just locked behind forbidden flesh + forbidden flame. (As seen on step 21) Cheapest rn is ~30 div (per piece), so unless you did all the other steps I wouldnt bother
"
Assashra wrote:
Hello,
I have to say first of all, I love loop builds, and of course also those who make such a build. However, can someone tell me why the character kills himself shortly after I start it? If I calculated correctly, I have 112% recoup, max resist, ect ect
What did I not notice? Let's say maybe I shouldn't do this now, I just got home from a double shift..
But if someone could point out the obvious, I'd appreciate it.
https://pobb.in/-6aLAPhLtsyE
Regards
See "Starting the Loop", but basically [pressing our life flask twice] until you get some piece of the build I forgot is necessary
For anyone with more questions im gonna stop responding, seeing as the author just gave up on the build? Not sure maybe theyre just unable to respond.
Introduction
This is my take on a looping autobomber! The build revolves around triggering spells in Kitava's Thirst from a Heartbound Loop.
League Start POB (what's used in league start video and gif): https://pobb.in/WfuLkma3vMyG
Delirious Forge of the Phoenix League Start: https://youtu.be/yvpSGxSvgrY ________________________________________________________________________
Pros & Cons
+ Fast and strong mapper
+ Looping Autobomber!
+ League starter
+ High scaling potential
+ No 6-link required
+ Solid defenses
+ No temporary league power is used in any of the showcases (see tab for league specific suggestions)
- Not SSF viable (requires Kitava's Thirst and 2x Heartbound Loop)
- Not HC viable (can be at higher investment)
- Complicated to put together (need to avoid armour)
- Have to level as something else (guide included)
Only a few Necropolis modifiers have been revealed so far, but one was 34% of damage taken recouped as life which is excellent for our build (it alone removes the need for all 6 jewels with recoup or lets you easily run Righteous Fire with just few recoup jewels). Tattoo's are also back and there are some decent defensive modifiers we can use to replace intelligence nodes (reduced effect of curses on you, reduced critical strike damage taken and chance to hinder enemies on hit). Will be updated again a few days into the league once all the modifiers are known!
At the core of this build is a loop of spells constructed by Heartbound Loop. Heartbound Loop hits us with physical damage whenever one of our minion dies or expires. We use that self-inflicted physical damage to summon more minions, creating the loop.
The way we trigger minions is by linking them to Cast when Damage Taken, causing them to trigger whenever we've taken enough damage and going on a brief cooldown. To create a loop out of this, we need to make sure the minions summoned die or expire after they come off cooldown, so they can trigger themselves, but not much longer than that, since we want to maximize the frequency of the loop (see Cooldowns and Durations).
Cooldowns and Durations
Spoiler
Cast when Damage Taken has a cooldown of .25 seconds by default and by getting at least 9% cooldown recovery rate we can lower it to .231 seconds (since cooldowns are rounded to the .033 second tick rate). Zombies (from Raise Zombie of Falling) take ~.462 seconds to fall, which means if we get one cast followed immediately by another we can create a loop! Casting a spell in a .033 second window by hand is difficult, but we can use another minion skill triggered at the same time as the zombie which expires expires in any ~.461 second offset of that .033 second window (since the zombie will loop itself on a ~.461 cycle). Summon Raging Spirit is the easiest to use since it has the next shortest duration at 5 seconds, which lets us scale its duration more precisely. There are many offsets we can choose (see Two Broken Loops), but shorter is better since the spirits can fall far enough behind that their deaths no longer affect us. We scale the duration with Swift Affliction and Less Duration, which lets us use quality and gem level to precisely scale the duration. The duration used here is 2 seconds which requires Less Duration to grant 47% less duration (15/0 is probably the easiest level/quality). 1.55 is even slightly better but requires high quality and gem level(20/20), that may not be available on league start.
Two Broken Loops
Spoiler
You may notice that these numbers (see Cooldowns and Durations) have started to get a little strange (e.g. ceil(2/.033) = 61 and 61%14 = 5 instead of 7 like you might expect and the same with 1.55). This circles back to the reason we fully loop two minions, instead of just using one minion to kickstart the other minion's loop. This is because, on their own, neither of these loops can sustain themselves. The zombies die instead of expiring and, as mentioned before, spirits can fall too far behind for their deaths to affect us. Zombies dying when they hit ground instead of expiring means they don't die exactly every .231 second (it probably(?) depends on the relative height of thing they're falling on), which means they can't loop on their own. The spirits occasionally falling too far behind for their deaths to affect us means the spirits can't loop on their own, because we can never replace the spirits that fall behind and that will slow and eventually end the loop. But the broken loops of zombies and spirits can sustain each other, since the spirits keep the zombies looping and the zombies replace the spirits that fall behind.
Starting the Loop
Spoiler
We start the two loops by weapon swapping at the start of each new zone, casting a Summon Raging Spirit socketed in our offhand, weapon swapping back (which makes the spirit expire), pressing our life flask twice (it queues, see Recoup) and making sure Petrified Blood is on. Unlike other loops we only every have to start our loop after loading into a new zone, since having two loops also makes us able to withstand rare monsters with Temporal Bubble (and the flask charge draining one because we don't need to sustain flasks) and walk through doors, things that often force other looping builds to restart their loops. The downside of two loops is that sometimes they won't fully synchronize when started(happens ~20% of the time), which you can tell happened when you don't have two zombie's the majority of the time. Fortunately, we can weapon swap, enable Determination socketed in our off hand, wait for all the Spirits to die and then restart the loop. The loop never desychronizes once it is fully synchronized, so you would only need to do this at the start of 1 in every ~5 zone (less when you get a 20/20 Less Duration). You can also choose to not bother fully sychronizing and keep mapping, since the loop will still sustain itself (just will be missing ~1 cast per second) and will fully synchronize all on its own once you get hit by enemies for at ~500 or more damage.
Triggering Kitava's Thirst
Spoiler
Now that we have our Heartbound Loop going, we need a way to use it and that means Cast when Damage Taken. The Heartbound Loop does relatively little damage to us per hit and enhancing that self-damage with something like Forbidden Rite doesn't give our recoup enough time to ramp up (see Recoup). That limits us to triggering relatively low level spells with a significant damage penalty. Fortunately (for us anyway), low level spells can still cost a lot of mana, especially with Cast when Damage Taken's 250% mana cost multiplier combined with a few other high mana cost multiplier supports. By getting these low level spells to cost 100 mana we can use them to trigger all the spells in Kitava's Thirst without any damage penalty or level limit!
Recoup
Spoiler
The Heartbound Loop deals a large amount self damage (~1200 damage every .231 seconds or ~5000 damage per second), which we need a way of sustaining. Achieving enough flat or % life regeneration to recover 5000 life per second would be difficult, so we use % of damage taken recouped as life instead (note that recoup scales with % increased life recovery rate). By taking all the available recoup nodes on the tree and getting some recoup on jewels, we can get more than 100% of damage taken recouped as life (eventually from eldritch implicits too along). Since we take so much self-damage from the Heartbound Loop, even slightly more than 100% of damage taken recouped as life is a massive amount of net life regeneration and will eventually let us sustain Righteous Fire as well. Life recoup takes a few seconds to ramp up though, so we use Petrified Blood which spreads incoming damage out over a few seconds and lets us safely start the loop. Petrified Blood is also a solid defensive layer combined with the life mastery that lets us count on low life below 55% instead of 50% as well as enabling Pain Attunement for more damage. It also lets our life flasks queue and gives us overleech, which is a nice source of extra recovery during mapping (not necessary for sustaining the loop though).
We spend a lot of mana on all the spells we trigger. Fortunately all the self-damage we take lets us use % of damage taken recouped as mana, which we get from the mana mastery, anointing Battle-Rouse and crafted on our amulet (unveil item level 60+ amulets with the "Veiled" modifier (not "of the Veil") to find the craft).
Finally, at higher investment Nine Lives gives us a massive amount of recoup and is an extremely powerful capstone for this build.
Mandatory Items: Kitava's Thirst
2x Heartbound Loop
5-link body armour
Medium Minion Life Cluster Jewel with Blessed Rebirth (alteration orb re-roll on item level 68+ cluster, takes ~50 on average)
5x jewel with 6% life recouped as life
Amulet anointed with Battle-Rouse (all cheap oils)
Belt with crafted 9%+ cooldown recovery rate (unveil belts with "of the Veil" modifier to get craft)
Recommended Items:
Amulet with 6% of damage recouped as mana (unveil amulets with "Veiled" modifier to get craft)
General Rares: Make sure you are resistance capped. Then look for life, spell suppression, strength, dexterity and chaos resistance in that order.
Flasks: No required flasks, recommend Life Flask with Corrupted Blood/Bleed immunity, Quicksilver Flask, Jade Flask, Quartz Flask and Stibnite Flask
Leveling as cold DOT, which is always excellent on league start. We use Freezing Pulse into Creeping Frost before we get all the cold DOT gems. Don't forget to buy the gems from the Skills section from Lily in act 5 and leveling them in your off hand (note that most gems don't need/want to be high level)!
Transition when you have enough currency to afford the mandatory items (shouldn't be more than ~20c day 1) and have hit at least level 75. Don't worry about swapping immediately on reaching maps, cold DOT is a strong build through early red maps with minimal investment. I swapped in early yellow maps and it felt smooth before and after. Recommended items should generally be your first upgrades.
Upgrades (loosely ordered)
1. Add Eldritch Implicits (prioritize life recovery rate and life recoup)
2. Quality stuff (gems, flasks, not Heartbound Loop yet)
3. Get jewels with at least one or two other good modifiers besides life recoup
4. Well rolled flasks
5. Get two Void Batteries
6. Upgrade rares to have high tier life and a combination of suppression, resistances, strength and dexterity
7. Drop Practical Application and pick up Steeped in the Profane
8. Swap to a 20/20 Less Duration gem
9. Get a Militant Faith devoted to Dominus for Inner Conviction
10. Get Dying Sun and drop Stibnite Flask
11. Corruption hunt on uniques (eventually double corruption, + power charge on helmet is especially powerful)
12. Craft % physical damage reduction body armour with high life and other high tier modifiers (Resists, Spell Suppression, Additional Curse Delve Modifier) and get high tier eldritch implicits (recoup, life recovery rate)
13. Add Righteous Fire(add as soon as it is comfortable for sustain)
14. Craft 30/35% movement speed boots with other high tier modifiers (Life, Resists, Spell Suppression) and get high tier eldritch implicits (movement speed/action speed and cooldown recovery rate (getting 9% here/from a jewel frees up a belt suffix))
15. Craft Gloves with high tier modifiers (Life, Resists, Spell Suppression) and get high tier eldritch implicits (spell suppression + unnerve) (Kalisa's Grace is a good budget damage option)
16. Craft an Elder Stygian Vise with % increased life recovery rate and 5 other good high tier modifiers (life, resists, strength) and an Abyss jewel (life, phasing/onslaught on kill, strength + dexterity, % of damage taken recouped as mana)
17. Add high tier eldritch implicits on rares (orb of conflict eventually)
18. Get a large cold damage cluster jewel (ideally with Blanketed Snow, Prismatic Heart and Doryani's Lesson)
19. Awakened support gems
20. Get The Adorned with a high roll and craft corrupted rare jewels (look for life recoup, % life and critical strike multiplier
21. Get Nine Lives from Forbidden Flesh and Flame
22. Get Ralakesh's Impatience, Malachai's Loop and Badge of the Brotherhood (operating on the assumption Ralakesh is becoming a tier 0 unique, if not do this earlier)
23. Get a Mageblood
Defensive Upgrades
Spoiler
1. Swap out Elemental Weakness for Enfeeble and/or Temporal Chains (can also look for additional curse on body armour/amulet)
2. Get flat physical damage reduction (endurance charges, pantheon, body armour modifier) and quality (noxious catalysts) Heartbound Loop, making sure that the self-damage is always enough to trigger the level 1 Cast when Damage Taken's (quality them) each time a minion dies.
3. Get more chaos resistance on gear
4. Get curse effect reduction (flask, Steeped in the Profane)
5. Get a Watcher's Eye with one or two good Grace modifiers
6. Get a Progenesis
Luckily I went back to read this thread despite my original response.
And I can say I absolutely do not regret investing in this build, just for everyone that isnt convinced though make sure you follow the build rigorously to a T.
Its like a bunch of puzzle pieces that HAVE to fit together or youll make the same experience as the other guy. For example Lvl 5 of the two spells, damage recouped as MANA and all the other stuff.
Edit: Lack of endgame examples and how this would actually work kinda make this build mid, also the author no longer responding for some reason
Really sorry about the lack of responses, wasn't getting thread response notification for some reason. I'll make sure to manually check every few days now. For endgame examples I'd recommend following upgrades section, especially for builds like these there's a lot of inter-dependence between items and upgrades that endamge POBs have a hard time capturing (prices also vary league to league and endgame budget varies person to person).
I still havent gotten it to work im dying so much haha but i keep it up and am still trying! I just got a headhunter also so im trying to fit it in this build but its going so and so... check out my POB and help me please im dying so much still
https://pobb.in/fhvf9pFQvGuE
Headhunter can fit in this build (just need to get the cooldown recovery elsewhere). Core problem is probably lack of Blessed Rebirth on a cluster jewel though.
Sorry to bother again, but do I want a badge of the brotherhod or a replica of it?
With the malachai loop setup, how do we avoid getting shocked?
And if we replace our amulet with it do we just ignore the 6% damage to mana recoup?
AND how do we get our resistances up with that setup? All of that on just the boots + gloves + belt + chest with all the strength / dex needed / Spell suppression later
I recommend normal badge of the brotherhood (replica could work as long as you're careful to not get too much physical damage reduction elsewhere and catalyze the Heartbound Loops). Ignoring it is an option (will slightly decrease trigger rate, but not that much), but other sources of mana recoup (and mana recovery rate) include rare jewels (POB jewels only have life recoup), Watcher's Eye Clarity (either increased mana recovery rate or mana recoup), eldritch body armour implicit, belt, Nine Lives (this is the very lategame solution) and haunting modifiers (just this league). In the midgame we can get a lot of resistances and stats from rare jewels (POB jewels only have life recoup) and eldritch implicits. Very lategame Mageblood solves resistance and lets us get more damage on jewels.
I can't for my life figure out what I am doing wrong. The loops are slow and sometimes stops. Can someone please shed some light on what I might be missing to make it work optimally?
https://pobb.in/fhvf9pFQvGuE
Probably due to not having Blessed Rebirth, let me know if that doesn't fix it though.
I have to say first of all, I love loop builds, and of course also those who make such a build. However, can someone tell me why the character kills himself shortly after I start it? If I calculated correctly, I have 112% recoup, max resist, ect ect
What did I not notice? Let's say maybe I shouldn't do this now, I just got home from a double shift..
But if someone could point out the obvious, I'd appreciate it.
https://pobb.in/-6aLAPhLtsyE
Regards
Possibly due to flasks granting physical damage reduction. Might also be due the self-damage ramping faster than recoup (using a life flask when starting the loop, taking recoup occurs over 3 seconds or getting more recoup should all fix it). Let me know if it's still not working though.
I can't for my life figure out what I am doing wrong. The loops are slow and sometimes stops. Can someone please shed some light on what I might be missing to make it work optimally?
https://pobb.in/fhvf9pFQvGuE
You should reread the guide and make sure everything is correct, for example your less duration is 16/0 instead of 15/0. I've also found that the loop sometimes gets weird with bad internet on lockstep/predictive (Im not sure which one it was).
"
Poochavist wrote:
had me looking for hours for how to activate nine lives only to find it hasnt been in the game for 6 months
Its still in the game, just locked behind forbidden flesh + forbidden flame. (As seen on step 21) Cheapest rn is ~30 div (per piece), so unless you did all the other steps I wouldnt bother
"
Assashra wrote:
Hello,
I have to say first of all, I love loop builds, and of course also those who make such a build. However, can someone tell me why the character kills himself shortly after I start it? If I calculated correctly, I have 112% recoup, max resist, ect ect
What did I not notice? Let's say maybe I shouldn't do this now, I just got home from a double shift..
But if someone could point out the obvious, I'd appreciate it.
https://pobb.in/-6aLAPhLtsyE
Regards
See "Starting the Loop", but basically [pressing our life flask twice] until you get some piece of the build I forgot is necessary
For anyone with more questions im gonna stop responding, seeing as the author just gave up on the build? Not sure maybe theyre just unable to respond.
Thanks for answering the questions I missed! Also gave some individual responses to these questions too.
I still havent gotten it to work im dying so much haha but i keep it up and am still trying! I just got a headhunter also so im trying to fit it in this build but its going so and so... check out my POB and help me please im dying so much still
https://pobb.in/fhvf9pFQvGuE
Im not OP but ill help regardless, first your Less duration isnt level 15 (its 16 - Read further before downgrading)
Given that you got a headhunter already I assume you have some money, so try following the upgrade path under "Upgrades". Most notably, why dont you have more chaos resistance and (two void batteries) or if you got more money ralakesh etc. yet.
If you also have the money it says further down a Less duration with level 20 and 20 quality is better, so dont bother downgrading to lvl 15 if you have the budget.
Im not knowledgeable enough to know if a HH will work on this build or itll brick something, probably issues with Strength? But im sure OP can answer any open questions
Yep! Just to add on, headhunter works (will need to get cooldown recovery elsewhere though) but I'd recommend mageblood over it (better defensively and takes care of resistances).
Last edited by Juminoh#0785 on Apr 16, 2024, 3:01:13 PM
