Thanks for sharing your build! I'm tweaking my own build as well.
However it looks like you only have 3700 life - does that feel like enough?
Honestly, yes. I actually only have like 3545 life. Should be able to get it to 3600 once I can land a t1 life roll on my shield. Between these gear pieces and my choices on the passive tree, my ability to scrape together a bigger life pool has been pretty constricted:
Now, if you had told me at the beginning of the league that I'd be comfortable with such a small life pool, I would have laughed in your face. But it's honestly quite doable. How?
1. The Agnostic. The higher your mana is, the closer you are to being unkillable. I may have only 3500 life, but I have 10k mana, which means 2k life/second worth of recovery. That's so much better than any life flask could conceivably be that I ended up dropping mine altogether to eliminate redundancy. When it comes to most damage over time in the game, the size of your life pool is irrelevant with that kind of recovery keeping it topped off. When it comes to hits, there's enough block chance between Rumi's Concoction and Bone Offering that any hit short of a one-shot you can shrug off almost immediately.
2. Cloak of Defiance. The extra 10% of damage taken going to mana is effectively a disproportionate increase to the size of your total life pool, something in the neighborhood of 23%. This together with Agnostic leverages our ridiculous mana recovery to support our otherwise unremarkable life recovery. I truly was on the verge of swapping my increased mana recovery Watcher's Eye with one that redirected another 10% of damage taken to mana, because that would have been an even more significant survivability increase against being one-shotted, but I ended up using Fevered Mind for more damage instead. (Getting both on the same Watcher's Eye would be insane but I don't have 60+ ex.)
3. Storm Brand over Orb of Storms. Allows you to keep your distance while procking everything that OoS does, and also makes repositioning much simpler.
Obviously there's no way around the reality that a smaller life pool will lower the threshold of damage it takes to one-shot your character, but that's really a possibility for this build no matter what choices you make. I would not have been able to push my damage as high as I have without sacrificing a significant amount of life, but it didn't affect my overall survivability nearly as much as you'd expect. That said, I'm as human as anyone else and I certainly do rip sometimes.
Bonus: a smaller life pool makes Righteous Fire less of a burden on your mana recovery.
Ah, that all makes sense. That's awesome, thanks for posting the video.
I overhauled my build (swapped out a crafted chest for the cloak of defiance, moved around a bunch of skill points on the tree, etc.) and now I have around 3300 life and almost 8k mana. POB is giving me around 2.5 mil effective DPS.
My DPS is still far from yours though. I'm trying to incrementally get better rolls on my current items, but would you be able to provide any advice on any glaring holes you see? That would be really appreciated if you could take a look!
This is my POB: https://pastebin.com/ZXcKmAP7
Character link: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/timbosaurus/characters
Before I saw your post I was actually in the process of crafting up this helm:
Only big things I'm missing on it I believe are life and "Nearby Enemies have -9% to Lightning Resistance". Got unlucky with the AOE mod but whatever.
However I'm wondering if I shouldn't bother anymore and just stick with the crown of the inward eye and just sell the helm. I honestly spent almost all of my remaining currency on it to get the double influence and now I'm super poor.
Just spent 20ex on these gloves before realizing they are too low ilvl to roll unnerve chance lol. Hopefully I can sell them for something.
Running out of stuff to upgrade, will try crafting gloves again and need to reroll increased wrath aura effect on wand to a higher tier and divine it a bit after, but other than that I'm pretty much bis I think. If anyone wants to know the process for crafting any of these items, I'll be glad to detail it. Don't think I spent more than 10ex on anything other than wep and shield, and most things can be made pretty cheap if you are fine with lower mod tiers.
POB: https://pastebin.com/YFbt5gud
At 15.6m shaper dps right now.
My DPS is still far from yours though. I'm trying to incrementally get better rolls on my current items, but would you be able to provide any advice on any glaring holes you see? That would be really appreciated if you could take a look!
This is my POB: https://pastebin.com/ZXcKmAP7
A better wand would be huge. You can buy a wand with a high tier of spell damage and mana for cheap, and harvest craft cast speed on it pretty easily.
With just those three stats it should be a huge upgrade.
Quickly glancing at the trade site there are ones with T1 mana and T2 spell damage for less than 50c
The only caster suffixes are cast speed and crit chance, so fill up the prefixes and you should get a nice tier of cast speed in just a few add/removes. EDIT: Just realized add/remove caster can remove the spell damage, so you'd either have to bench craft 'prefixes cannot be changed', or simply buy a new wand and try again if you brick it, which should be cheaper I think
+Lightning skill gem level is nice but a bit overrated, it only gives me as much damage as like 30% spell damage.
If you can sell the head for a nice sum it might be worth selling, so that you could improve other things faster, but once you finish it it should be better than the crown. Not sure by how much though, you'd have to check in PoB.
I sold a bricked crusader/shaper head with the arc chain enchant for 5ex, yours isn't bricked so you might get more.
I don't know how all you guys are running around with less than 4k life, I have 6.2k and still die once in a while. Leveling is super slow right now so I'm keeping myself tanky, but I might try things like healthy mind soon.
@WorderMostFoul thanks for suggesting the crusader annoint, boosted my damage by quite a lot.
Yeah, that +2 frenzy charges affix on your shield is so good! Definitely no reason to run Blood Rage with that.
Chaos resist is -45%, but yes, I'm that confident in my mana sustain. I never really worry about poison or even chaos damage at large except vs Al-Hezmin and in Hall of Grandmasters. Curse immunity, on the other hand, is an absolute must!
Each notable you can allocate within range of Fevered Mind is about 6% more damage, and you can get up to 4 of them in that particular socket, so it's quite a bit of extra damage. It comes at the cost of Devotion and skill points elsewhere in the tree, but it's definitely a solid DPS boost. You will notice the increased mana cost if you sit and spam Arc, but I rarely have issues with it because the damage output is already pretty high. Definitely experiment in PoB.
so i swapped my stibnite to a quartz and i feel slightly tankier, and am running curse immunity instead of poison immunity. i'll have to do the hunter conq to see if i can take that kind of poison dmg
i played around on PoB a bit with fevered mind. after alot of changes i gain about 80k dps, from 2.4m to 2.5m, but lose about 500 ehp, from 6.8k to 6.3k. i'm probably better off with getting another skill point and allocating another jewel socket.
i'm still loooking at your small cluster jewel and struggling to find a way to fit it into my build, or maybe even replacing my megalomanian cluster jewel.
This build has been working wonders for me so far at lvl 78 :) i've just been noticing that when in boss fights, i struggle to regen mana fast enough even when using a concentrated eternal mana flask. Was wondering if anyone had any tips/insights on how i could fix that issue, thanks!
Running out of stuff to upgrade, will try crafting gloves again and need to reroll increased wrath aura effect on wand to a higher tier and divine it a bit after, but other than that I'm pretty much bis I think. If anyone wants to know the process for crafting any of these items, I'll be glad to detail it. Don't think I spent more than 10ex on anything other than wep and shield, and most things can be made pretty cheap if you are fine with lower mod tiers.
POB: https://pastebin.com/YFbt5gud
At 15.6m shaper dps right now.
OK, technically you're at 12m if you take off Vaal RF and all your flasks, since those are only temporary buffs. :P
That said, your gear is absolutely insane and 12m DPS is higher than I thought feasible, so my hat is off to you. Your gear is absolutely insane and probably close to the pinnacle of what can be achieved without major structural changes to the build. The thread is really lucky to have your build as an example of what to strive for.
I looked at our calcs last night and saw four ways you're getting 50% more damage than I:
1. Cast speed (like 2 more casts per second)
2. Lightning penetration (like 36% additional penetration)
3. Unnerve
4. Frenzy charges
Those are all good things to aspire for. I don't know if I have the patience to craft a helmet and amulet like yours for the penetration--that could not have been cheap, right?--but the cast speed and Unnerve are definitely attainable. This confirms my suspicion that t1 cast speed needs to be prioritized on a wand and profane wands are the best base.
My DPS is still far from yours though. I'm trying to incrementally get better rolls on my current items, but would you be able to provide any advice on any glaring holes you see? That would be really appreciated if you could take a look!
This is my POB: https://pastebin.com/ZXcKmAP7
A better wand would be huge. You can buy a wand with a high tier of spell damage and mana for cheap, and harvest craft cast speed on it pretty easily.
With just those three stats it should be a huge upgrade.
Quickly glancing at the trade site there are ones with T1 mana and T2 spell damage for less than 50c
The only caster suffixes are cast speed and crit chance, so fill up the prefixes and you should get a nice tier of cast speed in just a few add/removes. EDIT: Just realized add/remove caster can remove the spell damage, so you'd either have to bench craft 'prefixes cannot be changed', or simply buy a new wand and try again if you brick it, which should be cheaper I think
+Lightning skill gem level is nice but a bit overrated, it only gives me as much damage as like 30% spell damage.
Completed agreed with Yarbl here. Follow his advice on the wand. You can use a speed/crit annul on the unwanted caster suffix, if you have these horticrafts available (rather than using a 2 ex metacraft).
If you can sell the head for a nice sum it might be worth selling, so that you could improve other things faster, but once you finish it it should be better than the crown. Not sure by how much though, you'd have to check in PoB.
I sold a bricked crusader/shaper head with the arc chain enchant for 5ex, yours isn't bricked so you might get more.
I don't know, how close are you to attaining what you want with that helmet? It's not bricked, is it? It has the potential to be much better than a Crown of the Inward Eye if you keep investing...I'd at least try to finish it, later if not now. I can't examine the affix pool at the moment, but couldn't lightning and life slams get you t1 life and lightning penetration, with a flat mana benchcraft to finish it off, assuming all of that constitutes 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes? Maybe list it for a lot of ex while you try so you can sell it for a profit if someone really, really wants it while you work on it?
I don't know how all you guys are running around with less than 4k life, I have 6.2k and still die once in a while. Leveling is super slow right now so I'm keeping myself tanky, but I might try things like healthy mind soon.
@WorderMostFoul thanks for suggesting the crusader annoint, boosted my damage by quite a lot.
Hah, my pleasure!
I can't believe how big your life pool is. It's coming at the expense of mana sustain, and that would be my only issue with it (a liability against DoT), but it does give you an appreciably bigger life pool against single hits. (Edit: I see now why you are stacking so much chaos resist. Have you tried out Healthy Mind to see if it truly lowers your overall survivability? I'm curious about that. I'm sure it'd be a DPS boost either way.)
Timbosaurus and CliffAhead, regarding Fevered Mind, I think there are better investments. I tinkered with it because I was trying to min/max DPS that was already at 7m+, but as Yarbl has driven home even more, there are much better places to invest before you get to the point of considering Fevered Mind.
Last edited by WorderMostFoul on Aug 19, 2020, 1:56:57 PM
I'm not an arc guru yet but personally for me getting 10% damage taken applied to mana before life on watchers eye helped alot for me. I was hard stuck at around level 92 and after the purchase I'm just 20% exp away from hitting lvl 97. Its unbelievably tanky, coupled with cloak of defiance of course. I decided instead of trying to build a big life pool I'll just focus more on damage mitigation to mana and a bigger focus on mana regen. After all the build seems to focus heavily on mana regen. I think I died like 4 or 5 times from lv92-96. 3 times from sirus cuz I'm just bad and cant get out of his crater maze. Anyways consider it if you guys do have the funds it helps a ton.
I'm not an arc guru yet but personally for me getting 10% damage taken applied to mana before life on watchers eye helped alot for me. I was hard stuck at around level 92 and after the purchase I'm just 20% exp away from hitting lvl 97. Its unbelievably tanky, coupled with cloak of defiance of course. I decided instead of trying to build a big life pool I'll just focus more on damage mitigation to mana and a bigger focus on mana regen. After all the build seems to focus heavily on mana regen. I think I died like 4 or 5 times from lv92-96. 3 times from sirus cuz I'm just bad and cant get out of his crater maze. Anyways consider it if you guys do have the funds it helps a ton.
Yes, exactly this. Assuming you have the mana pool and sustain, which you already should, 6k life with MoM provides the same size hit pool as 4.3k life with Cloak of Defiance plus the Watcher's Eye mentioned above. Still toying with dropping fevered mind and getting a Watcher's Eye like that; they're much cheaper than similar ones with mana recovery, if you're looking for more than one useful affix.
Thanks for sharing your build! I'm tweaking my own build as well.
However it looks like you only have 3700 life - does that feel like enough?
Honestly, yes. I actually only have like 3545 life. Should be able to get it to 3600 once I can land a t1 life roll on my shield. Between these gear pieces and my choices on the passive tree, my ability to scrape together a bigger life pool has been pretty constricted:
Now, if you had told me at the beginning of the league that I'd be comfortable with such a small life pool, I would have laughed in your face. But it's honestly quite doable. How?
1. The Agnostic. The higher your mana is, the closer you are to being unkillable. I may have only 3500 life, but I have 10k mana, which means 2k life/second worth of recovery. That's so much better than any life flask could conceivably be that I ended up dropping mine altogether to eliminate redundancy. When it comes to most damage over time in the game, the size of your life pool is irrelevant with that kind of recovery keeping it topped off. When it comes to hits, there's enough block chance between Rumi's Concoction and Bone Offering that any hit short of a one-shot you can shrug off almost immediately.
2. Cloak of Defiance. The extra 10% of damage taken going to mana is effectively a disproportionate increase to the size of your total life pool, something in the neighborhood of 23%. This together with Agnostic leverages our ridiculous mana recovery to support our otherwise unremarkable life recovery. I truly was on the verge of swapping my increased mana recovery Watcher's Eye with one that redirected another 10% of damage taken to mana, because that would have been an even more significant survivability increase against being one-shotted, but I ended up using Fevered Mind for more damage instead. (Getting both on the same Watcher's Eye would be insane but I don't have 60+ ex.)
3. Storm Brand over Orb of Storms. Allows you to keep your distance while procking everything that OoS does, and also makes repositioning much simpler.
Obviously there's no way around the reality that a smaller life pool will lower the threshold of damage it takes to one-shot your character, but that's really a possibility for this build no matter what choices you make. I would not have been able to push my damage as high as I have without sacrificing a significant amount of life, but it didn't affect my overall survivability nearly as much as you'd expect. That said, I'm as human as anyone else and I certainly do rip sometimes.
Bonus: a smaller life pool makes Righteous Fire less of a burden on your mana recovery.
Ah, that all makes sense. That's awesome, thanks for posting the video.
I overhauled my build (swapped out a crafted chest for the cloak of defiance, moved around a bunch of skill points on the tree, etc.) and now I have around 3300 life and almost 8k mana. POB is giving me around 2.5 mil effective DPS.
My DPS is still far from yours though. I'm trying to incrementally get better rolls on my current items, but would you be able to provide any advice on any glaring holes you see? That would be really appreciated if you could take a look!
This is my POB: https://pastebin.com/ZXcKmAP7
Character link: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/timbosaurus/characters
Before I saw your post I was actually in the process of crafting up this helm:
Only big things I'm missing on it I believe are life and "Nearby Enemies have -9% to Lightning Resistance". Got unlucky with the AOE mod but whatever.
However I'm wondering if I shouldn't bother anymore and just stick with the crown of the inward eye and just sell the helm. I honestly spent almost all of my remaining currency on it to get the double influence and now I'm super poor.
Thank you!
So glad anything I shared was of any help! I see you've also gotten a better wand, which I imagine helped a lot. Try to get cast speed on there, too. As I said above, I would also shelf Fevered Mind, at least for now; it's not the best use of your skill points at this time. 3.3k life is doable with enough mana sustain, but it's pushing it, and I'd want to have another 2k mana to even consider it. Again, I think the helmet is worth pursuing for a good damage boost, when you're able (change amulet anointment to Crusader if you make the switch).
Another thing I noticed was your gems. You want 20% quality on almost every gem (a few don't matter), especially in your Arc setup. Getting some Awakened gems with 20% quality will scale your damage noticeably as they start to level up. Also, try to get 2x Scintillating Idea in your cluster passives, it'll help your DPS, too.
How are you guys getting over 10k mana? I have atziri's foible, cloak of defiance, and t1 or t2 mana rolls on almost all my gear and I'm just under 9k. Do I need t1 on everything? My boots have a low mana roll, but getting tailwind boots with a t1 or 2 mana roll seems like a huge pain, and I dont know if i can give up tailwind.
Same with the shield, a t1 or 2 mana roll and %mana on block would cost a lot of alt/regals.
Last edited by potato321 on Aug 19, 2020, 2:42:09 PM
A better wand would be huge. You can buy a wand with a high tier of spell damage and mana for cheap, and harvest craft cast speed on it pretty easily.
With just those three stats it should be a huge upgrade.
Quickly glancing at the trade site there are ones with T1 mana and T2 spell damage for less than 50c
The only caster suffixes are cast speed and crit chance, so fill up the prefixes and you should get a nice tier of cast speed in just a few add/removes. EDIT: Just realized add/remove caster can remove the spell damage, so you'd either have to bench craft 'prefixes cannot be changed', or simply buy a new wand and try again if you brick it, which should be cheaper I think
+Lightning skill gem level is nice but a bit overrated, it only gives me as much damage as like 30% spell damage.
If you can sell the head for a nice sum it might be worth selling, so that you could improve other things faster, but once you finish it it should be better than the crown. Not sure by how much though, you'd have to check in PoB.
I sold a bricked crusader/shaper head with the arc chain enchant for 5ex, yours isn't bricked so you might get more.
I don't know how all you guys are running around with less than 4k life, I have 6.2k and still die once in a while. Leveling is super slow right now so I'm keeping myself tanky, but I might try things like healthy mind soon.
@WorderMostFoul thanks for suggesting the crusader annoint, boosted my damage by quite a lot.
So glad anything I shared was of any help! I see you've also gotten a better wand, which I imagine helped a lot. Try to get cast speed on there, too. As I said above, I would also shelf Fevered Mind, at least for now; it's not the best use of your skill points at this time. 3.3k life is doable with enough mana sustain, but it's pushing it, and I'd want to have another 2k mana to even consider it. Again, I think the helmet is worth pursuing for a good damage boost, when you're able (change amulet anointment to Crusader if you make the switch).
Another thing I noticed was your gems. You want 20% quality on almost every gem (a few don't matter), especially in your Arc setup. Getting some Awakened gems with 20% quality will scale your damage noticeably as they start to level up. Also, try to get 2x Scintillating Idea in your cluster passives, it'll help your DPS, too.
@Yarbl @WorderMostFoul thank you both so much for your suggestions - I already made some changes - as you mentioned @WorderMostFoul like the wand and I swapped out Fevered Mind for Thread of Hope, which I was using before. This allowed me to re-allocate a bunch of skill points elsewhere.
I'm now close to 3mil DPS, 3.4k life and 9.1k mana. I'll definitely keep working on the wand, helm, cluster jewels, and gems. A lot of direction here to work on. Thanks again!!
