[1.2] Novastorm - crit elemental aoe - triple curse - templar/witch - cheapish -
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WORK IN PROGRESS
My first character in Rampage was a freezing witch, who could/can freeze anything that can be frozen, but who isn't very good at rampaging through large packs of mobs. So I created an aoe templar who is a lot better at this, and who turned out to be my funnest character yet. For me, fun =/= power, this build cannot do atziri and comes short against single targets with massive amounts of hp. It is also not hardcore viable. Since I've had so much fun with it and it's a very accessible build imo, I thought of sharing it for a while now. Hence I am now creating my first build guide :)
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Main skills Herald of Ice Herald of Thunder Ice Nova Storm Call Lightning Warp Bandit choices Normal: Oak or passive point. I've chosen the passive point. Cruel: passive point. Merciless: Power charge or passive point. I've chosen the power charge. Passive tree Rampage Gear
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Essential items + explanation
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1x 5l. Best an energy or energy+evasion chest to get the right colors. This will contain the triple curse setup. 6l is a lot more flexible, I've always planned on incorporating an enhance gem once I get a 6l, I'm considering the following colors bbbbbg or bbbbrg.
The bread and butter of this build are the Pyre and The Three Dragons uniques. Effect on Ice Nova: My main spam attack against normal mobs is ice nova, supported by the heralds of ice and thunder. Normally crits of ice nova would freeze, while the added lightning would shock unnoticably short. Thanks to pyre+3dragons that is reversed. Shocks caused by my ice nova last long enough so that the next ice nova hit benefits from it. Usually the killing blow on mobs is a crit, triggering both herald of lightning and herald of ice procs. Effect on Storm Call: My main spam attack against bosses is Storm Call, supported by the heralds of ice and thunder. Thanks to 3dragons my storm calls freezes. Thanks to pyre+3dragons the added cold from herald of ice shocks. Although this shock lasts very short, thanks to the storm calls stacking up and triggering one after another, this short duration shock still usually increases damage, further increasing the freeze duration Different setups depending on circumstances:
General setup
This is my general setup, since the triple curse is on demand. I use this for the following: Solo/group rampaging against low hp mobs & group support in highlevel maps where rampage cannot be maintained + tougher boss fights. And also in ele weakness maps since I don't have enough free mana for running purity of elements together with a herald of thunder+curse on hit. What low hp mobs are, depends on your level+ice nova, gear and the number of people in group. In a full group, for me it's roughly level 71 maps and lower. Triple curse setup in 5l: Ice nova + curse on hit + elemental weakness + assassin's mark + temporal chains/warlord's mark. Personally I run temporal chains since it's good defensively and increases freeze + shock duration. Dps+freezing in 4l: Storm call + spell echo + increased critical multiplier + concentrated effect. Multiplier and concentrated effect to Maximize damage and spell echo to maximize the number of hits to compensate for the large spread of lightning damage. Auras in 4l: Reduced mana + herald of thunder + herald of ice + tempest shield/purity of elements. Purity of elements for ele weakness maps. Burst dps in second 4l: Vaal Storm Call + spell ech + concentrated effect + vaal storm call/lightning penetration. Use this on large packs that will charge it back up, or use this on what is left standing (exiles/bosses/...). Movement skill in a 3l: Lightning warp + reduced duration + faster casting. Faster casting is considered optional once you have quality lightning warp, but I still prefer it. Without faster casting, aa can be put in here, making a full 3l available for the defensive proc setup. defensive proc + aa in a 3l: Arctic armour + cwdt + frost wall. Cwdt/cws, active skill gem, ... These are personal choices. In my experience the frost wall offers the best defence in most situations, while all my damage is aoe and thus not hindered by it at all. In groups you have to take care with positioning yourself so that your frost wall does not hinder other players (too much).
Rampaging setup
In this setup my triple curses are applied with the proc from herald of thunder. So before I can curse something, I have to shock and kill stuff first, after that I have to keep on killing to keep the momentum going. This greatly limits the use of the setup I find most fun. I use this for the following: Solo/group rampaging against higher hp mobs. Mobs that die to non-crits don't trigger herald of lightning, so it's actually less good for rampaging through low level stuff than my general setup. Triple curse setup in 5l: Herald of Thunder + curse on hit + elemental weakness + assassin's mark + temporal chains/warlord's mark. Aoe dps+stunning+shocking in 4l: Ice nova + spell echo + increased critical multiplier + faster casting. Large aoe covering rooms, fast shocking hits stunlocking rooms, clearing out normal mobs fast and safe. Auras in 4l: Reduced mana + herald of ice + tempest shield. Others: No changes.
Curse immune maps
This map type is a very common zana map type, so you need a setup for it imo. I'd advice against doing the combination of stun+curse immune. Aoe dps+stunning+shocking+blinding in 4l: Ice nova + spell echo + increased critical multiplier + faster casting + blind. Same as previous, also now you are blinding entire rooms as well. Others: See general setup.
Support mode
This is basically my general setup, where I change around curses in function of the damage types of the group. I'm working on getting all curses up to 20/20. Srs will love you if you can cast enhanced vulnerability+ele weakness (+flammability in 6l). With my 5l, the most common swap I make is flammability instead of assassin's mark. Srs, incinerate, flame blast, some very popular builds and skills benefit from this greatly. WORK IN PROGRESS, MORE INFORMATION WILL BE EDITED IN AT A LATER TIME. Is there an easy way of linking individual gems that are socketed into items? All feedback or ideas to improve my build or my buildguide would be appreciated. |
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Hi
How much dps and defense you got? I have a build with pretty much the same skills below yours but a totally different approach. I'd like to compare. Have a look at it too, you could get some ideas. I think swapping shock and freeze costs you a lot (2 item with just res). |
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Totally different approach is a bit of an understatement here :)
I was planning on making screenshots with and without charges of the tooltips of the main skills this evening. I also try to level as many gems as possible, so I generally play without my unsuccessfully corrupted 20/20 gems, but for the screenshot bragging I was going to put them in anyhow :p From memory I can give you the following ballpark numbers: Defence hp: 3750 (too low) Block: 55% Spell block: 65% Level 20 AA. Ideally I'd get a 6l cloak of defiance for tankyness and run warlord's mark instead of temporal chains, but I've had no luck yet fusing my 6s one. Offence 70% increased aoe size from tree and gear. General setup Ice nova with triple cursing: about 3800 dps with charges I think. Storm call: 7000 avg with charges, 5 casts per second. So about 35k dps. Vaal Storm call: avg 3500 per hit with 35% lightning penetration. Rampaging setup Ice nova in 4l: 14k dps with charges with faster casting, 17k dps with concentrated effect instead of faster casting. I prefer faster casting, tooltip dps isn't everything. The numbers are misleadingly low, since I benefit from my own triple cursing: 20/20 ele weakness and assassin's mark multiplied by 1.24 (failed corruption curse on hit + passive tree). As well as the 50% more damage against shocked enemies. The procs from herald of ice and lightning also add in their damage for helping to clear the screen. Without vaal storm call (not always up) and in my general setup my personal damage in 78 maps is pretty low, but since the triple curses are applied instantly and to large groups of mobs, group clearing speed with me still tends to be higher than without me. Using the three dragons + pyre allows me to solo low level ele reflect maps and function as support in highlevel ele reflect maps. With my current gem setups I have 0 active leech. I've done tests a couple of times and I prefer these to the alternatives. I was going to give testing alternate setups another go when I got a 5l or 6l cloak of defiance with warlord's mark, but that hasn't happened yet. Three dragons are also fairly cheap and available, so perfect for corrupting in bulk :) |
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Yeah for the numbers I know, i curse too and proc heralds too.
Interesting numbers, I do only 3k with my stormcall. Maybe I should get more crit multi. But I do overall more damage due to the number of spells cast as soon as I have 4 mobs to hit. Yeah forgot the 3 dragons vs AA stuff. I go quite far to get vaal pact to deal with it myself. 3.75khp and spell block and pots... hm don't know, I think i'll have to spec one of my other guys into my build but with life just to try it. At the end they are just a few exalts away in gear one from another. If I was on life. You should try to increase elemental damage (catalyst, belt, tree), at some point you should be able to sustain curse via herald just by shocking with herald of ice. Anyway. I need to try to get a doedre for the triple curse. I'm not corrupting astramentis lol, don't have that kind of wealth. |
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My storm call is selfcast and supported by 3 support gems, so it's normal that the damage per hit is higher. Since it's also selfcast it's logical that the total damage is much lower. Coc and selfcast are just different animals.
My previous ambush build was coc discharge that did much better dps than either of my rampage builds, but I couldn't join pugs using those links and when my friends played characters that needed a chance to react, they asked me to change gems as well. So I made group friendly characters this league :) 3.75k hp is too low in my experience for my playstyle (lightning warp into the middle of packs and nova), I still expect to be able to reach 91 with it, but not higher until I've done some serious gear changes. Doryani catalyst instead of divinarius is something I've wanted to test out for a while now, but I couldn't afford one in rampage. Changing belt to doryani is no option as long as I use 3dragons+pyre/carcass cause my total hp would drop too low. Herald of ice and thunder have no innate crit chance, I've got no freeze/shock chance, so they only crit mobs debuffed with assassin's mark. I don't think that with only 10% crit chance, I'll ever be able to get the heralds to be selfsustaining. |
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Not what i meant.
If you crit with storm call AND the added damage from herald of ice is over 1% of mob life, you should be able to shock them while you kill them. I know I proc herald of thunder even when I run ice nova and firestorm. Just by the added lightning on spells and attacks. |
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Yep, I misunderstood. And it does indeed proc both heralds + shock, I had already added an explanation of it under essential items + explanation. Storm call is only used to kill harder mobs though, the main spam attack is ice nova, which also triggers both.
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Ok the switch is not only to ensure herald proc but also damage related and maybe to apply curses faster than herald (quite fast already), got it!
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