[2.0] Low Life Kinetic Blast Wander (for the upper middle class)

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cmphx wrote:

I'm asking myself how much mana i actually need to run a 20 or 21 AA. do you have some numbers there on how much %regen and %mana one needs to reach the mana regen with inner force? and how much regen would i need to sustain a 6linked KB with no leech on gear? at the moment i use a 5Link which is easy to sustain with just regen for me , but it might change on the 6th link. Getting just enough mana/mana regen is definetely something one should min/max for endgame, because it takes up quite some points in the tree and suffixes on rings/amulet which in turn cant be used for resist or crit/accuracy.

That's right, and I must admit that I haven't thoroughly calculated what was needed to run the highest level AA for this build until now. The tight passive tree doesn't offer a lot of room for variation with this particular setup, but those improvements you added earlier are actually all that was needed to get to the required mana regeneration in my case. The real issue is, that the level of your character immensely helps out with reaching the mana regeneration requirement for a high level Arctic Armour. I made a preliminary level 85 Scion tree, leaving out some mana and mana regeneration passive nodes. The reason for not getting those nodes earlier is simply that there are many other essential nodes to get, especially during that phase of leveling.

Here are some rough numbers for level 85:
maximum mana: 1000
calculated off 340 Intelligence, 100 mana on gear, 60% increased mana on passive tree;
mana regeneration: 210
calculated off 1000 maximum mana, level 20 Clarity, 57% buff and aura bonus for Clarity, 280% mana regeneration on passive tree and gear

These rough numbers enable you to run a level 14 Arctic Armour at level 85. The wiki page on Arctic Armour has a useful table for the total mana drain with Inner Force. Unfortunately that page doesn't cover the base mana drain with Inner Force, but if you're interested, I'll list them in the spoiler:


Here are the numbers for my level 95 character:
maximum mana: 1537
calculated off 364 Intelligence, 101 mana on gear, 120% increased mana on passive tree;
mana regeneration: 294
calculated off 1537 maximum mana, level 22 Clarity, 69% buff and aura bonus for Clarity, 306% mana regeneration on passive tree and gear

Until recently I ran Arctic Armour level 17 with my level 95 Scion. I'm currently leveling the gem to 20 since I now have 294 mana regeneration, which - on paper - allows me to use a level 21 Arctic Armour. I say on paper, because I feel I either am missing an important part or the game sometimes bugs or lags a little during play. My character sometimes complains about lack of mana while attacking with Kinetic Blast, when in fact she shouldn't according to my calculations. Especially since the mana regenerates during the second we calculate and while attacking, there should be no instance where mana is lacking, theoretically at least. Nothing major, and certainly not often, but something I would like to look into sometime.

My 6 link Kinetic Blast setup has a mana cost of 56 with an APS of 0.47 unbuffed, 0.25 with Blood Rage and 0.24 with Blood Rage and three Frenzy charges leading to a cost of 233 mana per second. The higher the level of Arctic Armour, the higher the discrepancy between the base mana drain and the total mana drain while moving, meaning as always, the higher the mana regeneration the better. My current 294 mana regeneration covers a total mana drain of 289 while moving and a base mana drain of 48 + 233 while attacking. I suspect these numbers don't have to match up perfectly, just because I managed to level with far lower mana regeneration and similar mana cost even without the Auxium. During the attack time you also regenerate mana, giving you enough buffer to kill a monster pack before your mana runs out completely.

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cmphx wrote:

How much accuracy is enough accuracy? For TS rangers you usually stop at around 1800, but thats because you need ondars to be reflect safe. would you say 2000accuracy is a good mark?

Yes. :) Here's a very nice table on monster level / chance to hit / accuracy relations. I currently have 2278 accuracy for 89% chance to hit at level 95 and am very pleased with it, especially since accuracy is hard to get due to the lack of a high dexterity rating and the general passive node starvation. I'm still looking to upgrade one of my rings with an additional accuracy mod, and I currently have no % increased accuracy rating passive node allocated. So in general it could be doable to reach a high enough accuracy rating even without the Additional Accuracy gem.

Thank you very much for your feedback and questions, those always help me reviewing and min-maxing. :) I'll try and add some of the info to the OP, it's propably nice to see some number crunching for comparison and clarification.

thanks again for your large post, im gonna comment on that later; for now i just wanted to note that 2.0 will bring some interesting changes that youve not listed yet:

Discipline was slightly nerfed and now seems to only take 40% reservation ! (source: somewhere on reddit)
Slower projectiles is now a multiplier, so its a very interesting option for single target damage.
Frenzy charges now give MORE damage per charge, so that makes them very OP too.
Crit on daggers has been nerfed, same for wands, but in exchange we got the golem that youve already mentioned.
bloodrage will be less effective with the removal of inner force, but also the degen will be less hard to deal with.
there are a lot of possible jewel sockets for the scion in our tree, so probably it will be very influencial on this build - i just hope the price is not going to be astronomial.
the announced change to VP/leech mechanics has not been revealed yet and will be something to be careful with.

Yeah, with every little detail from the closed beta it's starting to feel like the damage will skyrocket, but the defense will gradually become worse. As of the current state I hope GGG will implement the option of getting Infused Shield with Intuitive Leap into the expansion. Although it takes 5 points in total plus the unique jewel, it'll propably be a must have for most low life builds.

I had some theorycrafts ready, but everytime new findings in the beta make me scrap them. Making a new tree to get most or all of the nearby jewel sockets is actually very hard to accomplish. As you said, jewels will propably be very influential on this build and also offer a wide variety of skill tree customisation. I'll be on vacation a week from now until the end of the month, but afterwards I hope that the info from the closed beta will be comprehensive and reliable enough to start working on the new build!

EDIT: As posted here, Selfless Leadership would be the means to go through CI to Infused Shield. That would take 8 passives total though, which is an awful lot for 15% more ES compared to other nodes / jewel slots we could get. We'll have to see ...

In the light of the potential Reduced Mana and Enlighten changes I did some rough testing with Mikelat's Aura Calculator Beta about the new aura reservation state with the Prism Guardian.

Version #1 - Without Enlighten and only 10% reduced mana reservation, opposed to 22% at the current state, from the current beta skilltree we would still be able to run all of our 1.3.1 auras and heralds. Roughly 1500 mana will be required to have enough free mana for our skills. The auras and heralds would be placed in our Prism Guardian and one 4 socketed item. (1300 mana would be required to run this setup with 14% reduced mana reservation from the skilltree, which equals one passive point. We can choose depending on our mana pool.)

Version #2 - With one lvl 4 Enlighten, one lvl 3 Enlighten and 14% reduced mana reservation we would be able to run all of our 1.3.1 auras and heralds PLUS Herald of Ash. 1900 mana, Prism Guardian, one 4 linked and one 3 linked item would be required. This also depends on how much mana will be needed to have a good base for our mana regeneration to run Arctic Armour.

Items with +1 to level of socketed gems for aura reservation are not required so far. Overall the Enlighten change is not so much a concern for this build. Not quite feeling it though.

Thanks for the info about the beta concerning auras and low life stuff. I'll keep looking at this thread since I don't have that much time to play and theorycraft as much as I used to. The work you are putting into this is appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback, dime! I've updated my OP with a link to a beta database and skill tree. It'll be nice to see what has changed in two weeks time after my vacation. I'll be on my toes especially about the state of the beta skill tree. Although the jewel sockets have already been added and rumor has it that the skill tree otherwise may stay untouched I suspect there's a lot more to come.

Hey, really appreciate the build guide, I've always wanted to have a wander since I started playing, and this build looks really nice.

Because I'm not the richest player on standard, some of my gear is kind of lackluster, and I was wondering if I could still pull the build off.



Gems are kind of random, and I'm still looking for some rings, but I hope what I have is decent enough.

Another question I had was "is unwavering stance really necessary?" from Korean Gamer's old video, he thinks that you kill stuff pretty quickly, and you barely ever see anything in your face really. Since my gear has a lack of dex, I could use these extra ~6 points to spec into some 30 dex nodes. What are your thoughts?

Sorry for the huge wall of text, but I was just curious. Any and all replies and advice are appreciated, thanks! :)

Hey there ThePaleOne!

Your gear seems to be fine so far, very good for starting the build I'd say. Especially with the new content in mind I suspect that it will become a little bit easier to complement gear with the right jewel mods. Finding the right rings may be a tedious task, and I'd recommend not spending too much at the current state just because the new expansion might shake up some things that we don't know of yet.

Regarding Unwavering Stance I'd generally strongly suggest taking it at least in higher levels. There will always be some circumstances where you get hit by stray mobs, and being stunned without any investment in stun recovery will very likely get you killed. Think of a stray Flicker Strike spider, a hasted charging Rhoa or the Flicker Strike Dischargers. The leech mechanic is the most important mechanic to keep us alive and if we get stunned and can't execute our attack to leech back we're exposed and helpless.
That being said, with very careful play you might be able to go without Unwavering Stance but you're taking a risk. The new expansion also forsees a change to mob group density allowing for more control and quicker kills due to the nature of Kinetic Blast's excellent AOE. This would enhance the chance to go without Unwavering Stance. For now I'd still recommend planning to take it at least, check how you do without it, but have the points ready to spec into it just in case it doesn't work out.

Also if you still have the link to KG's video I'd be happy to check it out. :) Was quickly searching but couldn't find it.

Thanks for the feedback and good luck on making it work! :)

Updated my OP with some of the new changes. Feeling a little bit salty and worn out about the yet again added pressure on survivability but I'll keep trying to find a workaround.

So Blood Rage has lost its efficiency, but I still think that it'll have a place in this build. The changes to Frenzy charges, 6% physical attack damage leech and 15% (23% with quality) attack speed bonus will probably be worth the roughly tripled degen and 40% reduced duration of the skill. Compared to a previous Blood Rage setup with lvl 4-5 Enhance we lose 8.8-10.4% physical attack damage life leech and 57-63% increased attack speed. Those are the numbers without Inner Force consideration.
The loss of a great amount of life leech from Blood Rage is huge. Jewels may save the day and fill in some of the gaps.

There are only a few "upsides" to the change to Arctic Armour which would be that we are no longer obligated to spec into mana and mana regeneration and could drop Clarity from our setup. Having mana regeneration solely to sustain our attack feels like a waste of points and there may be more efficient ways to sustain our attack without the big investment into mana regeneration.

Blood Magic with Mortal Conviction or mana leech with Acuities may be the way to go now.

Most of people forget the most important thing on new BR gem - the degen will apply to both Life AND ES. That makes BR gem unusable for LL builds unless u got Acuities and invest into liferegen.