Please Critique Build [Chaos Wander Assassin]

I reworked some things, taking into consideration the advice I have been given so far. Have a look? Original Post edited with revisions.
Otec CLAN
I have been playing this game in standard for a while now and have managed to mess up my first character and wasted my passive tree reset. So I started looking around for build ideas for my new character and came across a couple of similar builds that look promising to me. This is my first attempt at theorycrafting a POE build and I'd appreciate any critiques or recommendations on how to improve it. FYI this is for standard only at this point.

Concept

Chaos/crit barrage wander assassin variation based on these 2 builds.
------------------------------------------------------
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1680870
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1513844

Fast attacks with tons of crits and DOTs left over for tough mobs that don't die right away.

Uses Barrage with 4x volley fire gems to give 20 projectiles and better spread without giving up mana or damage by using GMP, LMP, fork, chain etc. Pierce can allow it to kill mobs off screen as well.

Uses chaos damage instead of elemental, plus lingering stacks of poison DOT (also chaos damage).

Assassin crit and poison nodes would yield enough damage to compensate for dealing chaos over elemental damage.

Generally tanky enough to survive, should cut right through any reflect map.

Pros:
Should be able to run any map mod.
Doesn't sacrifice life for damage, still has 160+% life from the tree.
Barrage with the volley fire jewels lets us clear packs quickly.

Cons:
Probably expensive
Not much room to change out gear, many pieces are necessary.

Build v2

My concerns:

- Arrow Dancing worth 2 points? If so, what should I lose to make room?

- Enlighten for AA and Grace or Fortify for my Stone Golem in my helm? Basic choice comes down to 6% mana reservation or hefty damage minion that is nearly unkillable. Both are QoL imo. Opinions?

Level 80 Passive Tree

http://goo.gl/ygwek2

Level 100 Passive Tree

http://goo.gl/xSglfj

Gear

Headgear

Rare with Evasion, Life, Resists. Corrupt: Minions deal (15 to 20)% increased Damage
http://poe.trade/search/usetitositonom

Chest

Kintsugi (100 to 120% Evasion Rating, 60-80 max Life, 30% Fire Res, 20% less Damage taken if you have not been Hit Recently, 50% increased Evasion if you were Hit Recently)
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Kintsugi

Addresses some of the 1 shot concern with Life-based Evasion builds.

Belt

The Retch (60-80 life, 24-50% cold res, .4% dmg leeched as life, 60% flask duration, 15% movement speed while on flask, 200% life leeched as chaos dmg)
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Retch

Gloves

Snakebite (150-180% evasion, 60-70 life, +2% attack speed, +6% accuracy/frenzy charge, when at max frenzy charges, attacks poision) Corrupt: +1 to Level of Gems in this item
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Snakebite

Boots

Atziri's Step Slink Boots (180% Evasion, 55-75 life, 30% movement speed, 14-16% spell dodge) Corrupt: +1 Maximum Frenzy Charge
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Atziri%27s_Step

Shield

Rare with Evasion, Life, Resists. Corrupt: 17-24 Physical Damage taken from Attacks
http://poe.trade/search/yewomyoketomga

Weapon

Rare wand that has high crit, high attack speed and + chaos damage.
http://poe.trade/search/mohahiranitomk

Amulet

Victario's Acuity (24 int and dex, 39% ltg res, 9% chaos res, 10% chance to gain frenzy/power charges on kill, 5% proj spd/frenzy charge, 5% proj dmg/power charge)
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Victario%27s_Acuity

Rings

2x Rares with Evasion, Accuracy, Life, resists. Corrupt: Adds 7-9 to 11-13 Chaos Damage to Attacks
http://poe.trade/search/noguhudoimonau

Gems

4x VOLLEY FIRE JEWELS (Each jewel adds 4 projectiles to Barrage sequence, 2 on first shot and 2 on the last for a total of 20 projectiles.) Corrupt: 1% increased Chaos Damage per equipped Corrupted Item
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Volley_Fire

Hungry Abyss (With 5 corrupted gear pieces, life leeches based on chaos dmg instead of physical.)
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Hungry_Abyss

Skill Gem Setup

Chest 6L

Barrage + Pierce + Iron Grip + Faster Attacks + Added Chaos Damage + Void Manipulation

Gloves 4L

Frenzy + GMP + Curse on hit + Assassin's Mark

Used to generate charges and make mobs easier to kill.

Wand 3L

Frost Wall + Vaal Haste + Increased Duration

Use Frost Wall against tough mobs in order to keep them at bay while aiming your Vaal Hasted Barrage shotgun at their face. Keep Frost Wall lowish in level to prevent high mana costs.

Shield 3L

Lightning Warp + Faster Casting + Less Duration

Helm 4L

Grace + Arctic Armor + Enlighten/Fortify + Stone Golem

Boots 4L

Spell Totem + Faster Casting + Wither + Increased Duration

Wither makes the added Chaos dmg hit hard.
Otec CLAN
Last edited by gleamingthecube on Jul 26, 2016, 4:46:32 PM
Bump?!
Otec CLAN
Iron grip doesn't work with chaos damage , only physical.
Having never played a Barrage wander (though it is on my list), I can only speculate, but...

For one, your build runs a lot of uniques. I dig it - my favorite build in Prophecy right now has all of four rares on it. Rares are boring, building around synergistic uniques is cool. But like I said, I've done that, and it makes gearing something of an expensive b*tch. I had to use both of my build's available jewel slots for both resistances and the strength/int I needed for my gems, and even then I'm only just regular resist-capped, not EleWeakness capped. It cost a pretty penny to do it, too. If you're up for the challenge, then by all means try it, but I think there's some better choices to be made in gearing. Especially since Kintsugi is currently a prophecy-specific item and Victario's Acuity costs 10+ex in Proph.

If you drop Acuity, the Retch (essentially impossible to acquire in Proph, expensive as sin in Standard), and Atziri's Step, that gives you three slots for rare resists/life/stats and such. You can then possibly drop one of your rare rings for a Ming's Heart, which adds 20% of your physical damage back into your attacks as chaos. Nice damage booster for a build that's mostly looking to deal chaos damage with one semi-crappy gem and a wand mod, means that +Physical mods aren't a waste either. If you're feeling froggy and can get some really slick rares with oodles of life, double up on Ming's Heart, but beware that life penalty.

Anyways.

Arrow Dancing
I find Arrow Dancing to be very useful on the right builds, which this is mostly lining up to be. You're a ranged attacker, which means you take a greater percentage of ranged hits to start with. Stibnite flasks are a thing - droppin' Ninja Smoke Bombs on enemies that come after you in close is both awesome and a very useful way to mitigate Arrow Dancing's penalty. I have this one:

Spoiler


That is basically my favorite flask ever. 196% increased Evasion for 7.7s and Ninja Smoke Bombs. I don't even feel Arrow Dancing's penalty with this sucker, but even a regular Stibnite flask counteracts Arrow Dancing's less melee Evasion quite nicely.

(as an aside, that particular set-up really pops with BlasFeeble bolted on as well. BlasFeeble, Ninja Smoke, Arrow Dancing, Acro/Phase Acro, and Kintsugi make for a very tough avoidance character.)

Enlighten v. Fortify
Fortify is cheap, Enlighten is not. You're using Grace and AA, so no trouble with meeting reservation limits. If you can't sustain your skill costs without Enlighten, adding Enlighten isn't really going to help. Fortify on golems is unfortunately not as practical as it sounds without any form of golem regeneration - it's cool, but you still end up having to periodically recast the things due to general attrition. Still, not really anything better to put in the slot that I can think of outside a one-off freebie like Blood Rage or some such, so unless Blood Rage interests you (look into it, it's often surprisingly helpful especially with Snakebite), go for Fortify.

Links
If you have the 6L, sweet. if not, plan your builds on a 5L and figure out what your 6L 'Nice Bonus' is. For leveling, even better to plan on a 4L, with a 5L and 6L upgrade path. In this case, your core 4L skill is Barrage > Added Chaos > Void Manipulation > Pierce. This is what you need, minimum, for the skill to work the way you want it to. Fifth link can be Faster Attacks, but you could also make a case for Increased Critical Strikes. Your build is very low on crit chance as it stands (more on that later), and now that Inc. Critstrikes increases base critical hit chance, it's kind of awesome for crit builds. Inc.C.S. replaces a lot of crit chance suffixes in your gear, which means you can get resists and accuracy a lot more easily. Any decent crit build wants to push as close to 95% accuracy as it can get (accuracy is checked twice for any hit that rolls critical - once to see if the skill hits, and once again to see if it actually crits. Accuracy is...critical...for crit builds. Tee hee hee...), but accuracy, crit chance/multi, and resistances are all item suffixes. Your gearing will suck rocks if you don't find more crit on non-gear sources.

6L upgrade would be Faster Attacks if you didn't use it before, or possibly Slower Projectiles for dat sweet 'More' projectile damage modifier. SP would scale your chaos damage as well, if you could otherwise tolerate the somewhat floaty arrows.

Assassin's Mark isn't doing you a lot of good here. Unstable Infusion is your primary source of power charges; Frenzy half-Piercing CoH isn't going to cover enough mobs in a pack for the PCoK effect to do you much good. Remember - any time you spend Frenzy-ing at critters to try and curse them all with AssMark so you get more charges is time not spent burning them down with Barrage. I would suggest you look into either Vulnerability (classic double/triple-dipper for Assassins using Toxic Delivery) or Temporal Chains. Probably the latter - TempChains increases your Poison damage by increasing its duration, and for a build like this without much life or heavy defenses, slowing things down then kiting the hell out of them is going to be a very valid death avoidance mechanic. Frenzy to keep your charges up and to tag threatening enemies with Chains, then kite like a boss and toss off bursts of machine gun fire when you're not in immediate danger of going squish.

Other than that, most of your links look workable enough. Experiment, tweak 'em around as needed, see what works and what doesn't.

Tree
Volley Fire trees suck... You get very low overall life for your investment, wandering all over the damn place for Dex nodes to fuel VF. You end up with low life, bad damage, and next to no crit in your crit-centric wander tree. UGH.

Okay. Cull Essence Sap down to the first 0.4% node - trust me, at higher levels that is all you will need. Use those two points to get to Arrow Dancing. Accept that this is going to be a high-level build and get both Heartseeker and Depth Perception when and as you can. Crit build needs moar crit and moar accuracy. The Revenge of the Hunted cluster is mostly on your way and gets you up over 140% life after taking Heartseeker and Depth Perception...by level 93. www.poeurl.com/ITY, by way of example. Ew.

Man, this is a great argument for using three Volley Fire jewels instead of all four. Yes, there are four places in the tree where Volley Fire works, but the opportunity cost of taking the fourth jewel is just obscene. Remember - the first Volley Fire jewel is a 100% 'More' modifier for Barrage, but the fourth Volley Fire is only a 33% 'More' over the third. Going from 16 to 20 projectiles is not anywhere near as impactful overall as going from 4 to 8, or anywhere else in between. With the 22(!!!) points you get back from culling the fourth Volley Fire and all the Duelist start nonsense it forces on you, you can do this, instead: www.poeurl.com/IT2

That gets you more life than the 4-VF version (if not by a huge percentage), but it also gets you more crit, more accuracy, more chaos damage, more evasion, some life regen (very helpful for Labyrinth runs!), a bit of extra DoT scaling, two extra Frenzy charges (actually not necessarily a great idea for Snakebite gloves, but you wanted them in the lvl 100 tree anyways so there you go), and also a level 90 build instead of a level 93. More reliable critting for more everydeepz, somewhat better defenses, better Frenzy-ing, a bit more life, at the cost of 20% of your Barrage projectiles. Up to you if you figure that's a trade you're willing to make, but it's what I'd do if I were building a VF Barrage wander.

Anyways. Hopefully that's of some help. Good luck with it, and enjoy the run.
"
link1313 wrote:
Iron grip doesn't work with chaos damage , only physical.

Ok, gone. That's my bad, I didn't realize it was phys only. I'll replace it with Faster Projectiles or Increased Critical Strikes if I end up needing the crit.

"
1453R wrote:

For one, your build runs a lot of uniques. I dig it - my favorite build in Prophecy right now has all of four rares on it. Rares are boring, building around synergistic uniques is cool. But like I said, I've done that, and it makes gearing something of an expensive b*tch. I had to use both of my build's available jewel slots for both resistances and the strength/int I needed for my gems, and even then I'm only just regular resist-capped, not EleWeakness capped. It cost a pretty penny to do it, too. If you're up for the challenge, then by all means try it, but I think there's some better choices to be made in gearing. Especially since Kintsugi is currently a prophecy-specific item and Victario's Acuity costs 10+ex in Proph.

If you drop Acuity, the Retch (essentially impossible to acquire in Proph, expensive as sin in Standard), and Atziri's Step, that gives you three slots for rare resists/life/stats and such. You can then possibly drop one of your rare rings for a Ming's Heart, which adds 20% of your physical damage back into your attacks as chaos. Nice damage booster for a build that's mostly looking to deal chaos damage with one semi-crappy gem and a wand mod, means that +Physical mods aren't a waste either. If you're feeling froggy and can get some really slick rares with oodles of life, double up on Ming's Heart, but beware that life penalty.

This is for standard and I already have Atziri's, Retch, Victario's and Kintsugi. Atziri's was a gift and it cost about 13 ex to get the other 3. A friend quit the game and gifted me some currency so I used it. Probably would not have sprung for the gear otherwise.

RE: Ming's, I don't like relying on the physical damage of this build since it is so minimal on a wand. I don't think the extra damage would be worth losing all that health on an already life-hungry build.

I am also only 'regular' resist capped on the gear I have acquired so far and will consider swapping out The Retch and maybe Atziri's for rares in the future for more life and resists. Kintsugi I want to keep because it helps me avoid being 1 shot.

"
1453R wrote:
Arrow Dancing
I find Arrow Dancing to be very useful on the right builds, which this is mostly lining up to be. You're a ranged attacker, which means you take a greater percentage of ranged hits to start with. Stibnite flasks are a thing - droppin' Ninja Smoke Bombs on enemies that come after you in close is both awesome and a very useful way to mitigate Arrow Dancing's penalty. I have this one:

Spoiler


That is basically my favorite flask ever. 196% increased Evasion for 7.7s and Ninja Smoke Bombs. I don't even feel Arrow Dancing's penalty with this sucker, but even a regular Stibnite flask counteracts Arrow Dancing's less melee Evasion quite nicely.

(as an aside, that particular set-up really pops with BlasFeeble bolted on as well. BlasFeeble, Ninja Smoke, Arrow Dancing, Acro/Phase Acro, and Kintsugi make for a very tough avoidance character.)

I had not really considered flasks yet. I will definitely put something like that on my shopping list. Wish I had room to run enfeeble with blasphemy but I don't think I can work it in.

"
1453R wrote:
Enlighten v. Fortify
Fortify is cheap, Enlighten is not. You're using Grace and AA, so no trouble with meeting reservation limits. If you can't sustain your skill costs without Enlighten, adding Enlighten isn't really going to help. Fortify on golems is unfortunately not as practical as it sounds without any form of golem regeneration - it's cool, but you still end up having to periodically recast the things due to general attrition. Still, not really anything better to put in the slot that I can think of outside a one-off freebie like Blood Rage or some such, so unless Blood Rage interests you (look into it, it's often surprisingly helpful especially with Snakebite), go for Fortify.

I was also thinking Blood Rage or maybe LoH if I can find a decent unset ring to stash AA or Grace into to make room. Blood Rage could be a nice source of damage and frenzy charges when I am using Barrage. LoH/Fortify along with Stone Golem's natural regen would keep him up, no?

"
1453R wrote:
Links
If you have the 6L, sweet. if not, plan your builds on a 5L and figure out what your 6L 'Nice Bonus' is. For leveling, even better to plan on a 4L, with a 5L and 6L upgrade path. In this case, your core 4L skill is Barrage > Added Chaos > Void Manipulation > Pierce. This is what you need, minimum, for the skill to work the way you want it to. Fifth link can be Faster Attacks, but you could also make a case for Increased Critical Strikes. Your build is very low on crit chance as it stands (more on that later), and now that Inc. Critstrikes increases base critical hit chance, it's kind of awesome for crit builds. Inc.C.S. replaces a lot of crit chance suffixes in your gear, which means you can get resists and accuracy a lot more easily. Any decent crit build wants to push as close to 95% accuracy as it can get (accuracy is checked twice for any hit that rolls critical - once to see if the skill hits, and once again to see if it actually crits. Accuracy is...critical...for crit builds. Tee hee hee...), but accuracy, crit chance/multi, and resistances are all item suffixes. Your gearing will suck rocks if you don't find more crit on non-gear sources.

6L upgrade would be Faster Attacks if you didn't use it before, or possibly Slower Projectiles for dat sweet 'More' projectile damage modifier. SP would scale your chaos damage as well, if you could otherwise tolerate the somewhat floaty arrows.

I have the 6L Kintsugi so I need to replace Iron Grip with something else. I was thinking ICS or Faster Projectiles. FP has the same potential proj damage as Slower Projectiles (29%) but doesn't make it look like I am shooting underwater. The quality bonus is attack/cast speed rather than proj damage but I think I can live with the difference to avoid the slow wand bolts.

"
1453R wrote:

Assassin's Mark isn't doing you a lot of good here. Unstable Infusion is your primary source of power charges; Frenzy half-Piercing CoH isn't going to cover enough mobs in a pack for the PCoK effect to do you much good. Remember - any time you spend Frenzy-ing at critters to try and curse them all with AssMark so you get more charges is time not spent burning them down with Barrage. I would suggest you look into either Vulnerability (classic double/triple-dipper for Assassins using Toxic Delivery) or Temporal Chains. Probably the latter - TempChains increases your Poison damage by increasing its duration, and for a build like this without much life or heavy defenses, slowing things down then kiting the hell out of them is going to be a very valid death avoidance mechanic. Frenzy to keep your charges up and to tag threatening enemies with Chains, then kite like a boss and toss off bursts of machine gun fire when you're not in immediate danger of going squish.

Other than that, most of your links look workable enough. Experiment, tweak 'em around as needed, see what works and what doesn't.

I did notice that I was running low on power charges when using this the way I have it. Sounds like temp chains is a better curse for my build. I like the idea of vulnerability for more damage but the utility of temp chains cannot be ignored.

"
1453R wrote:
Tree
Volley Fire trees suck... You get very low overall life for your investment, wandering all over the damn place for Dex nodes to fuel VF. You end up with low life, bad damage, and next to no crit in your crit-centric wander tree. UGH.

Okay. Cull Essence Sap down to the first 0.4% node - trust me, at higher levels that is all you will need. Use those two points to get to Arrow Dancing. Accept that this is going to be a high-level build and get both Heartseeker and Depth Perception when and as you can. Crit build needs moar crit and moar accuracy. The Revenge of the Hunted cluster is mostly on your way and gets you up over 140% life after taking Heartseeker and Depth Perception...by level 93. www.poeurl.com/ITY, by way of example. Ew.

Man, this is a great argument for using three Volley Fire jewels instead of all four. Yes, there are four places in the tree where Volley Fire works, but the opportunity cost of taking the fourth jewel is just obscene. Remember - the first Volley Fire jewel is a 100% 'More' modifier for Barrage, but the fourth Volley Fire is only a 33% 'More' over the third. Going from 16 to 20 projectiles is not anywhere near as impactful overall as going from 4 to 8, or anywhere else in between. With the 22(!!!) points you get back from culling the fourth Volley Fire and all the Duelist start nonsense it forces on you, you can do this, instead: www.poeurl.com/IT2

That gets you more life than the 4-VF version (if not by a huge percentage), but it also gets you more crit, more accuracy, more chaos damage, more evasion, some life regen (very helpful for Labyrinth runs!), a bit of extra DoT scaling, two extra Frenzy charges (actually not necessarily a great idea for Snakebite gloves, but you wanted them in the lvl 100 tree anyways so there you go), and also a level 90 build instead of a level 93. More reliable critting for more everydeepz, somewhat better defenses, better Frenzy-ing, a bit more life, at the cost of 20% of your Barrage projectiles. Up to you if you figure that's a trade you're willing to make, but it's what I'd do if I were building a VF Barrage wander.

Anyways. Hopefully that's of some help. Good luck with it, and enjoy the run.

Thanks a ton for the thorough feedback! I have reworked the tree again based on the tree you made and I think I can be happy with it the way it is now. I would like to fit a little more life in there but I feel like I would have to give up too much damage to make it work.

I dropped the Method of Madness wheel in favor of projectile damage from the shadow area as the proj damage impacts the physical part as well as the added chaos/poison. It takes til 92 as opposed to 90 to be finished but has a little more life too. Thoughts?

http://goo.gl/qrAhoa
Otec CLAN
"

This is for standard and I already have Atziri's, Retch, Victario's and Kintsugi. Atziri's was a gift and it cost about 13 ex to get the other 3. A friend quit the game and gifted me some currency so I used it. Probably would not have sprung for the gear otherwise.

RE: Ming's, I don't like relying on the physical damage of this build since it is so minimal on a wand. I don't think the extra damage would be worth losing all that health on an already life-hungry build.

I am also only 'regular' resist capped on the gear I have acquired so far and will consider swapping out The Retch and maybe Atziri's for rares in the future for more life and resists. Kintsugi I want to keep because it helps me avoid being 1 shot.


Kintsugi is fantastic. I've got two characters in it in Proph, both relying heavily on it. Step and Retch are both mostly 'nice to haves'. The Retch is really nice to have due to its excellent flask boosts, but Atziri's Step is pretty much just dodge stacking. Dodge stacking is nice but not critical. I simply wanted to throw that caution out there, having done a four-rare build in roughly an exalt and a half of currency. it's not necessarily fun, unless you like a challenge.

I've used Ming's well* on a pre-Ascendancy Blade Vortex Shadow, but yeah. Can see not wanting to pay 15% life for a relatively lightweight Chaos boost. Was mostly just throwing it out there.

"
I had not really considered flasks yet. I will definitely put something like that on my shopping list. Wish I had room to run enfeeble with blasphemy but I don't think I can work it in.


Flasks are something you ought to be considering early in a build, at least insofar as what they can offer you. Especially on a build with the Retch, which is important more for its awesome flask mods than for its leech-as-chaos effect. 60% flask duration and 15% speed during flask effect is incredible, and should be something you plan heavily on. Something like my Experimenter's of Reflexes Stibnite, above, would be 10+ seconds of +15% movespeed, along with triple Evasion and smoke clouds. A similar-ish Sulphur flask would be another ~8 seconds of +40% damage, life-regenerating Consecrated Ground. And the big one is 60% increased duration for unique flasks like Atziri's Promise or Taste of Hate, which is huge. That's the big allure behind the Retch, not its leech-as-chaos mod.

"

I was also thinking Blood Rage or maybe LoH if I can find a decent unset ring to stash AA or Grace into to make room. Blood Rage could be a nice source of damage and frenzy charges when I am using Barrage. LoH/Fortify along with Stone Golem's natural regen would keep him up, no?


I don't know if the Golem's regeneration affects the Golem. Pretty sure that's a you-exclusive buff, the Golem itself doesn't benefit from it. If 'LoH' means Life Gain on Hit, then yeah, that would potentially help. Fortify would probably be better for overall golem duration, though, if you're really looking for a golem mod. otherwise I'd just dump LoH/Fortify altogether for something more pertinent to you, and keep the Golem on a recast button somewhere for when it drops.


"

I have the 6L Kintsugi so I need to replace Iron Grip with something else. I was thinking ICS or Faster Projectiles. FP has the same potential proj damage as Slower Projectiles (29%) but doesn't make it look like I am shooting underwater. The quality bonus is attack/cast speed rather than proj damage but I think I can live with the difference to avoid the slow wand bolts.


Lucky you...I can't ever 6L a damn thing. Anyways. Faster Projectiles is an increased damage modifier; Slower Projectiles is a 'More' damage modifier. Same integer, completely different effects. FP is fine, but SP would be worth significantly more deepz. You can swap the two gems and check your tooltips for confirmation.


"
I did notice that I was running low on power charges when using this the way I have it. Sounds like temp chains is a better curse for my build. I like the idea of vulnerability for more damage but the utility of temp chains cannot be ignored.


I would generally favor Temp Chains myself. An Arrow Dancing range-y kite-y build with Poison is pretty much exactly the sort of thing that Temp Chains was built for. With the Assassin's maim-on-poisoned-enemies, you can also start stacking slowing effects on critters to keep them pretty much perma-pinned. If there was a good way to get Chilled Ground out there too, we'd be In Business.


"
Thanks a ton for the thorough feedback! I have reworked the tree again based on the tree you made and I think I can be happy with it the way it is now. I would like to fit a little more life in there but I feel like I would have to give up too much damage to make it work.

I dropped the Method of Madness wheel in favor of projectile damage from the shadow area as the proj damage impacts the physical part as well as the added chaos/poison. It takes til 92 as opposed to 90 to be finished but has a little more life too. Thoughts?


http://goo.gl/qrAhoa
[/quote]

The Ranger start projectile damage nodes offer 56% increased projectile damage and 4% increased attack speed for 5 nodes. The Method to the Madness cluster offers 54% increased Chaos damage and 12% chaos resistance for 4 nodes. Considering that you have yourself mentioned that you consider the physical damage in the build negligible, I'd seriously consider grabbing the difficult-to-acquire Chaos resistance and effectively equivalent damage for one less node. Alternatively you could dump them both and go for the Fatal Toxins cluster instead. 70% Poison damage for 3 nodes, which is less overall damage but also another node saved.

If you're considering Blood Rage (and just in general, given the Lab), I'd reconsider excising Growth and Decay. Blood Rage is annoying to use if you don't have enough regen to counteract it, and the tree can be pathed such that you use the same number of nodes to run to Written in Blood and Atrophy past Growth and Decay as past Ghost Reaver. You have to fidget with the tree a bit, but you can do it. I'd consider pathing that way even if you don't particularly feel like Growth and Decay, as running along the outside of the tree the way you're doing doesn't get you access to anything particularly useful if you end up going nuts with this character and grinding it to 98.

Hired Killer is really inefficient, but damned if we have a better alternative...life is just hard to come by in this area of the tree. Mostly just balance what you can where you can, and see what you can find.

"
1453R wrote:

"

I was also thinking Blood Rage or maybe LoH if I can find a decent unset ring to stash AA or Grace into to make room. Blood Rage could be a nice source of damage and frenzy charges when I am using Barrage. LoH/Fortify along with Stone Golem's natural regen would keep him up, no?

I don't know if the Golem's regeneration affects the Golem. Pretty sure that's a you-exclusive buff, the Golem itself doesn't benefit from it. If 'LoH' means Life Gain on Hit, then yeah, that would potentially help. Fortify would probably be better for overall golem duration, though, if you're really looking for a golem mod. otherwise I'd just dump LoH/Fortify altogether for something more pertinent to you, and keep the Golem on a recast button somewhere for when it drops.

I fixed this by putting the golem summon and blood rage on a level 1 CWDT so I don't have to mess with them manually. Golem (level 4) will die more often but will be recast often and still yields his buff even if he isn't a behemoth in combat. Blood rage works pretty well at level 7 yields 8% attack speed + frenzy charges.

"

I have the 6L Kintsugi so I need to replace Iron Grip with something else. I was thinking ICS or Faster Projectiles. FP has the same potential proj damage as Slower Projectiles (29%) but doesn't make it look like I am shooting underwater. The quality bonus is attack/cast speed rather than proj damage but I think I can live with the difference to avoid the slow wand bolts.

"
1453R wrote:
Faster Projectiles is an increased damage modifier; Slower Projectiles is a 'More' damage modifier. Same integer, completely different effects. FP is fine, but SP would be worth significantly more deepz. You can swap the two gems and check your tooltips for confirmation.
Damn these not obvious wording choices. To me, more=increased. I guess that is an important distinction. On some level I guess I knew this as I remember reading it but did not apply that knowledge to what I am trying to do here.

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Thanks a ton for the thorough feedback! I have reworked the tree again based on the tree you made and I think I can be happy with it the way it is now. I would like to fit a little more life in there but I feel like I would have to give up too much damage to make it work.

I dropped the Method of Madness wheel in favor of projectile damage from the shadow area as the proj damage impacts the physical part as well as the added chaos/poison. It takes til 92 as opposed to 90 to be finished but has a little more life too. Thoughts?

http://goo.gl/qrAhoa

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1453R wrote:

The Ranger start projectile damage nodes offer 56% increased projectile damage and 4% increased attack speed for 5 nodes. The Method to the Madness cluster offers 54% increased Chaos damage and 12% chaos resistance for 4 nodes. Considering that you have yourself mentioned that you consider the physical damage in the build negligible, I'd seriously consider grabbing the difficult-to-acquire Chaos resistance and effectively equivalent damage for one less node. Alternatively you could dump them both and go for the Fatal Toxins cluster instead. 70% Poison damage for 3 nodes, which is less overall damage but also another node saved.

The main reason I strayed away from growth + decay and fatal toxins is that is only affects the DOT. The projectile damage scales the main hit, DOT and the added damage. I will play with it and see how the numbers shake out. I don't have much regen so I may be stuck with growth and decay and need to switch my tree around a bit.

It's in the OP but here's my updated (hopefully final) tree. http://goo.gl/lONTGJ




Otec CLAN

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