ELE LIGHTNING STRIKE - ALL T16s, Shaper, Uber Atziri, HOGM, Chayula, Elder

HC viable i guess? and what did you level with until switching to lightning strike and what lvl should i start use Lightning strike?

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Tecken1407 wrote:

HC viable i guess? and what did you level with until switching to lightning strike and what lvl should i start use Lightning strike?

Hi bro please see prior page about leveling. I'll add this to the front page since lots of people are asking. LS strike is great skill for leveling because of the high single target on the melee hit and the hgih AOE from projectiles. You can start using LS whenever you can but since the ranged attack starts to shine when you use Multistrike you will ideally need to at least get your mana nodes (Primal Spirit and mana leech) first.

HC viable? Yes, but just to be clear I did not make this build for HC so ideally you would want to customize a few things (higher life, fortify, etc.) for HC. Good news is that reflect has been changed - since we play at range most things cannot come near us, so the only times I died unexpectedly while mapping was from hitting reflect. With reflect changes as long as you have good movement with whirling blades it should be fine to avoid the mortars.

Noob question!

When you use lightning strike are you always holding down shift and attacking in place?

Currently leveling and I was wondering what 4L would be the best one for Lightning strike until I can get 5L or 6L

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Kaustix wrote:

Noob question!

When you use lightning strike are you always holding down shift and attacking in place?

Hi yes, I hold shift to attack in place

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frallan123 wrote:

Currently leveling and I was wondering what 4L would be the best one for Lightning strike until I can get 5L or 6L

Hi bud, try going:

LS > Ele Damage with Attacks > Damage on Full Life > Multistrike > Ele Focus/Light Pen > Added Lightning. But ofc feel free to use different combos depending on what kind of gear/colors you get when leveling

CONCLUSION ON VAAL PACT

- With VP looks like we are capped at approx 2k life per sec for leech: health pool x default leech cap rate x Vaal Pact boost

- This is a good amount of leech, but the problem is it takes time to ramp up. This 2k life per sec leech will not happen instantly, rather we get to 2k life leech per sec over approx 1 second (with Multistrike) or approx 1.5-2s without Multistrike, because leech is done per instance of damage and we need to ramp and accumulate enough instances of leech to get to the max rate

- Increasing attack speed significantly will lower the time it takes to get to maximum life leech rate
- Increasing life pool will increase the maximum life leech rate, but I think this is difficult to get substantial gains
- Hitting more mobs will also get you instances faster, but of this is not reliable or relevant for 1v1 bosses
- Adding more % leech (e.g. Atziri flask, non-legacy VoV) will help increase teh duration of each instance allowing more leech instances to overlap, however this does NOT help us because with our attack damage already so high we hit the cap even with Blooddrinker 0.4%. So, unlike the old Vaal Pact where we needed to have VoV high % leech on for VP to really shine, this new Vaal Pact gives us good leech without needing flask uptime

- However, like flasks, life leech is removed when we get to full health (unless ofc you can get Slayer or Ascendant Slayer), so you will always have this issue of your life leech starting off slow and then getting faster and faster until you hit the cap - which I really don't like. When I take damage I want to recover fast and not have to keep attacking to get my leech to ramp up. Overall I think getting Vaal Pact doesn't hurt though on the new tree we lose about 70k DPS on the projectiles (mostly because I had to take out some crit chance nodes) in exchange for more life.

- I think complementing Vaal Pact with a life flask with Bubbling or Catalyzed is probably the best. And if you have access to a Belly of the Beast you will get even faster life recovery from flasks (and ofc higher HP too)

- Regarding Blood Rage - I tried dropping Damage on Full Life for Blood Rage, but I felt Blood Rage's degen detracted too much from life leech that it wasn't worth it.

- Overall for me I think I prefer the old tree and keep the same setup and just use life flasks (I'll probably change from Cautious Eternal life flask to a Catalyzed Eternal life flask), the old setup relied on VoV which was only good for 1 sip to get the instant leech which really only worked well on Atziri maps with lots of mobs to reload VoV, so I feel comfortable just skipping VP. If you REALLY want Vaal Pact for peace of mind and not to rely on flasks then please use the alternative tree I've posted under the "Tree" section.

What's your opinion on using inpulsa's broken heart over belly?

I've been using one at abyss and it seems perfect. Not to mention it's way easier to get right colours on it

Does this skill still ruin your framerate? :p

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SourThoughts wrote:

What's your opinion on using inpulsa's broken heart over belly?

I've been using one at abyss and it seems perfect. Not to mention it's way easier to get right colours on it

That's cool you got your hands on one already! Must make clearing even faster. You will have to forego Ele Focus ofc, but it is still a very good chest to use. I had really wanted to combine it with Esh's Visage adn VoV to get full shock on bosses like Shaper, but now that VP has changed - VoV is not a priority anymore.