[2.5] CI Witch Scorching Ray CWC Whispering Ice - Version 2.0 Released - Now with more damage!
i have a hard time choosing Shaper of Desolation over Mastermind of Discord. 25% fire penetration seems like a lot. so i was hoping some1 with better knowledge of the two skill can clarify for me
1. Shocking Conflux, thus chance to shock and increase damage from shock is only up for 6 every 14 seconds?
2. the wiki it says shock duration is based on % of "target maximum life dealt by Lightning damage", so the increase damage duration window would be really short on map bosses or anything with high hp when its really needed?
3. does shock even work on guardian ubers or shaper etc?
consider that compare to mastermind of discord which has flat 25% fire penetration all the time, or am i missing something here, thx a lot
I've fallen in love with this build :) I'm lvl 86 and is working like a charm. The only thing that bother me is the cumbersome activation of the first icestorm cwc, it hurts a little the clearing speed w. r. t. faster, classical spell.
Anyway, I'd like to share a couple of thoughts with you:
-I don't love the strength to int jewel usage in our build. I mean, it is an usage of, if I remember correctly, 6 points for getting converted 50 str to int, plus the jewel int bonus and 10 int node, it is actually 6 points for 84int total. It is good but to me it doesn't seem awesome. Especially because we seem to have cheaper +int nodes near our tree path! Just look on the lower part of our tree path, where we take +20 maximum es / +% increased es node: there is a anode that gives 20 int 16 spell damage and we don't lose anything to reach it, just some increased es modes to take.
Another thing that can be taken is under vaal pact, a Dex node that is already converted by us to int and then a +20 int(and projectile damage/speed).
I still need to do the math, but actually I think I get better dps with this setup, and I'll put a spell damage / fire damage / cold damage jewel inside the jewelry slot on the strength zone. It is 40% increased damage to our icestorm.
-another consideration that come in my mind: this build is nice because it is simple, especially simple for building&gearing:I mean, we get rid of cast speed, mana, regen mana, mana reserved, we only care about int, es and some spell /elemental damage. This leave use so free for gearing that I'm thinking myself if this build would shine even more if it would be critical.
Especially if we get rid of the left, strength-ish part of our tree, we recover something like 15 points that can be invested in taking crit nodes(that we already reached actually), then in our gear we can put some +crit chance / mult, finally swapping controlled destruction by elemental focus and taking the 25% ascendancy fire penetration when using lighting spell(which we use cast often by cwdt) while taking out the burning /freezing/shocking effect node. I thing those two are of equal value for us, because we trade 25% constant penetration (25% *more* damage in our case) with the 50% (shock) more damage half of the time.
The build could reach 50-70 crit canche, we can even benefit from staff crit nodes, I thing that, while gearing would become a little more complicated and expensive (but is soo simple actually!) we could easily do 2-3 times the actual damage.
I don't think I will do that because I don't want to chance my whole gear that is already almost end-game, but it is a viable option if someone want more damage.
I am glad you like the build and I love to hear other peoples thoughts on the build.
Regarding the jewel placements:
The strength jewel convertion
In my opinion the travel notes are really great, we only go through int + 1 dex note to get towards great valuable notes.
The notes that are great value:
1) Elementalist which gives 12 % all res, 10 % ele damage
2) Light of divinity which gives 15 % spell damage, 20 in, light radius and cast speed
3) Retribution which gives 10 int, 10 str, 14 % spell damage, 5 % cast speed
The rest of the pathing is to get towards celestial punishment and judgement
The jewel itself also is just a 20 int note.
If you want to remove the str convertion I would recommend a tree like this:
Other options
By the 20 int 16 % spell damage, are you talking about Path of the Savant ? Because that is already in my skill tree
The dex note under vaal pact "20 dex + projectile damage" is just like taking the catalyse for the STR convertion, since we have no benefit from projectile modifiers.
2 str notes + catalyse = 40 int
1x int note + 1 dex note + Ballistic mastery = 40 int
Critical build
I have been wondering about this myself also, actually theory crafted a lot on it, and I will make a conclusion on it later after I have cleared end game with my current build. I agree this has a lot of potential.
Another thing reasoning at ascendancy notes with numbers at hand.
Flame golem+ice golem is giving us 20*2 + 40 + 40 = 120% increased damage right?
I just checked the final numbers:starting from 3096 for iceStorm, summoning the two golems brings me to 3652 for 556 net bonus.
This is equivalent to 17% "more" damage.
Well, if we take the 25% penetration note, we are getting 25% "more" damage.and it Will be always active, as we shoot ball lightning all the time.
And for those boss like Izaro, we can cast an Orb Of Storm (putting it in the gem slot freed from ice golem) .
And we still get 20% damage from normal flame golem, that is 1.5% damage. So actually we are getting 17% damage while we could get 26.5%.
Finally,think that when the boss is not gettingcursed by flammabilityy (it happens sometime) the 25% fire pen is much more "25% more damage".
I think I will get rid of the two golems, and even of flame golem, i'll get 25% more damage instead of 17% and I will use chaos golem for more Phys Reduct - at that point 4% phys red seems to be more appealing.
Regarding swapping liege of the primordial for Mastermind of Discord:
Having uptime with cwdt ball lightning alone is unstable
Let's say we have fire penetration + the 5 % from skill tree and the 24 % from scorching ray (let's no calculate flammability into this, since not everyone uses it):
That adds up to 67 %:
So if we got against a 0 % resistance monster with 2 k damage icestorm:
2000*1.67 = 3340 damage
with mastermind
2000*1.92 = 3840
3840/3340 = 1.1497
Since mastermind adds to an already current more modifier, this would actually only provide us with 14.97 % more damage (not 25 % more)
Let's take the 98 tree for this example, since people most likely arn't level 100 yet.
We have 324 % increased damage for icestorm, so the base on a 2000 icestorm would be 472 avg damage.
Let us get liege into the mix:
472*(4.24+1.20) = 2568 avg damage.
2568*1.67 pen (No mastermind) = 4288.56 damage
Edit : added your other quote
Last edited by Mathoddie on Dec 14, 2016, 5:41:57 PM
I'm glad I lvled this build it's awesome. Got a question, I'm currently at the end of cruel and using doedres ring for my second curse and all of my resists are overcapped even for merciless. So I'm thinking maybe skip the nodes for the second curse and rather put them in ES which I prefer to have more. i already have energy from within in stash, so maybe use that life/es cluster on the right? what do you think? oh, and why ball lightning? I'd rather self cast Orb of storms and have a total control over my curse, but I guess there is a catch somwhere :) great great build!
I am glad you enjoy this build.
Doedres ring and skipping the +1 curse in the skill tree is a viable option, which frees up points for other options like ES.
Just remember the other stats on doedre is not that "great". My ring forexample has 59 int + resistance + flat ES.
I use ball lightning since it pierces through all enemies, even hitting the ranged monster far away, I add nova for a huge curse adder to everything around me.
If you prefer orb of storms, you should definitly stick with that.
Would Astramentis be BiS? Or will a rare amulet be better?
Without math I'd say, that only perfect rare amy with +1 curse corruption can be a decent replacement. But this is from HC player perspective using 3curse.
Astramentis is a REALLY great amulet, really close to BiS material in my opinion.
The best neck to get in my opinion is a rare neck tho:
Mine currently has:
99 intellect
52 Strength
29 Dexterity
49 flat ES
16 % Max ES
5 % All res
26 flat mana
so the gain and loss vs a PERFECT rolled astramentis is:
Loss:
17 int
64 str
87 dex
Gain
49 Flat es
16 % max ES
15 % Resistance
26 flat mana
Remember my neck is not perfect, and can definitly be better.
i have a hard time choosing Shaper of Desolation over Mastermind of Discord. 25% fire penetration seems like a lot. so i was hoping some1 with better knowledge of the two skill can clarify for me
1. Shocking Conflux, thus chance to shock and increase damage from shock is only up for 6 every 14 seconds?
2. the wiki it says shock duration is based on % of "target maximum life dealt by Lightning damage", so the increase damage duration window would be really short on map bosses or anything with high hp when its really needed?
3. does shock even work on guardian ubers or shaper etc?
consider that compare to mastermind of discord which has flat 25% fire penetration all the time, or am i missing something here, thx a lot
I have answered mastermind of discord vs conflux in the comments a few times already I believe.
Regarding the shock, yes the duration on every hit is really small, but my duration on icestorm is currently 4.78 seconds, which means that I can cast icestorm 13.7 times in that durations.
Which means we have 12.7 full duration icestorms running simultaneously, everyone hitting one shard per 0.1 seconds. which is 127 shards per second. If we have shocking conflux on, even if the window is low, we just need a window on 0.008 seconds before the next shard hit.
I have not yet been on shaper etc. but after my testing I will get back with more concrete facts.
I've fallen in love with this build :) I'm lvl 86 and is working like a charm. The only thing that bother me is the cumbersome activation of the first icestorm cwc, it hurts a little the clearing speed w. r. t. faster, classical spell.
Anyway, I'd like to share a couple of thoughts with you:
-I don't love the strength to int jewel usage in our build. I mean, it is an usage of, if I remember correctly, 6 points for getting converted 50 str to int, plus the jewel int bonus and 10 int node, it is actually 6 points for 84int total. It is good but to me it doesn't seem awesome. Especially because we seem to have cheaper +int nodes near our tree path! Just look on the lower part of our tree path, where we take +20 maximum es / +% increased es node: there is a anode that gives 20 int 16 spell damage and we don't lose anything to reach it, just some increased es modes to take.
Another thing that can be taken is under vaal pact, a Dex node that is already converted by us to int and then a +20 int(and projectile damage/speed).
I still need to do the math, but actually I think I get better dps with this setup, and I'll put a spell damage / fire damage / cold damage jewel inside the jewelry slot on the strength zone. It is 40% increased damage to our icestorm.
-another consideration that come in my mind: this build is nice because it is simple, especially simple for building&gearing:I mean, we get rid of cast speed, mana, regen mana, mana reserved, we only care about int, es and some spell /elemental damage. This leave use so free for gearing that I'm thinking myself if this build would shine even more if it would be critical.
Especially if we get rid of the left, strength-ish part of our tree, we recover something like 15 points that can be invested in taking crit nodes(that we already reached actually), then in our gear we can put some +crit chance / mult, finally swapping controlled destruction by elemental focus and taking the 25% ascendancy fire penetration when using lighting spell(which we use cast often by cwdt) while taking out the burning /freezing/shocking effect node. I thing those two are of equal value for us, because we trade 25% constant penetration (25% *more* damage in our case) with the 50% (shock) more damage half of the time.
The build could reach 50-70 crit canche, we can even benefit from staff crit nodes, I thing that, while gearing would become a little more complicated and expensive (but is soo simple actually!) we could easily do 2-3 times the actual damage.
I don't think I will do that because I don't want to chance my whole gear that is already almost end-game, but it is a viable option if someone want more damage.
I am glad you like the build and I love to hear other peoples thoughts on the build.
Regarding the jewel placements:
The strength jewel convertion
In my opinion the travel notes are really great, we only go through int + 1 dex note to get towards great valuable notes.
The notes that are great value:
1) Elementalist which gives 12 % all res, 10 % ele damage
2) Light of divinity which gives 15 % spell damage, 20 in, light radius and cast speed
3) Retribution which gives 10 int, 10 str, 14 % spell damage, 5 % cast speed
The rest of the pathing is to get towards celestial punishment and judgement
The jewel itself also is just a 20 int note.
If you want to remove the str convertion I would recommend a tree like this:
Other options
By the 20 int 16 % spell damage, are you talking about Path of the Savant ? Because that is already in my skill tree
The dex note under vaal pact "20 dex + projectile damage" is just like taking the catalyse for the STR convertion, since we have no benefit from projectile modifiers.
2 str notes + catalyse = 40 int
1x int note + 1 dex note + Ballistic mastery = 40 int
Critical build
I have been wondering about this myself also, actually theory crafted a lot on it, and I will make a conclusion on it later after I have cleared end game with my current build. I agree this has a lot of potential.
Another thing reasoning at ascendancy notes with numbers at hand.
Flame golem+ice golem is giving us 20*2 + 40 + 40 = 120% increased damage right?
I just checked the final numbers:starting from 3096 for iceStorm, summoning the two golems brings me to 3652 for 556 net bonus.
This is equivalent to 17% "more" damage.
Well, if we take the 25% penetration note, we are getting 25% "more" damage.and it Will be always active, as we shoot ball lightning all the time.
And for those boss like Izaro, we can cast an Orb Of Storm (putting it in the gem slot freed from ice golem) .
And we still get 20% damage from normal flame golem, that is 1.5% damage. So actually we are getting 17% damage while we could get 26.5%.
Finally,think that when the boss is not gettingcursed by flammabilityy (it happens sometime) the 25% fire pen is much more "25% more damage".
I think I will get rid of the two golems, and even of flame golem, i'll get 25% more damage instead of 17% and I will use chaos golem for more Phys Reduct - at that point 4% phys red seems to be more appealing.
Regarding swapping liege of the primordial for Mastermind of Discord:
Having uptime with cwdt ball lightning alone is unstable
Let's say we have fire penetration + the 5 % from skill tree and the 24 % from scorching ray (let's no calculate flammability into this, since not everyone uses it):
That adds up to 67 %:
So if we got against a 0 % resistance monster with 2 k damage icestorm:
2000*1.67 = 3340 damage
with mastermind
2000*1.92 = 3840
3840/3340 = 1.1497
Since mastermind adds to an already current more modifier, this would actually only provide us with 14.97 % more damage (not 25 % more)
Let's take the 98 tree for this example, since people most likely arn't level 100 yet.
We have 324 % increased damage for icestorm, so the base on a 2000 icestorm would be 472 avg damage.
Let us get liege into the mix:
472*(4.24+1.20) = 2568 avg damage.
2568*1.67 pen (No mastermind) = 4288.56 damage
Edit : added your other quote
thanks for the detailed reply. in your case liege of primordial brings damage from 2000 to 2568, so it is a 25% "more" damage.in my case I get 17% because I have way more spell damage then you, and way less int.
Anyway, I'm thinking about another solution: give up to the reflect mitigation ascendancy note!
Actually I can do reflect map but a t13+ boss is dungerous with reflect so I avoid him and I avoid breaches for the same reason, my LL is sucked up by reflect. So I'm doing reflect map missing the two main reasons to do them. I think I'll choose to lose the possibility to do any ele reflect map at all, and I'll bring back both liege and mastermind for more offensive setup; single rare reflect mob still don't do anything to me thanks to 11k ES :D
thanks for the detailed reply. in your case liege of primordial brings damage from 2000 to 2568, so it is a 25% "more" damage.in my case I get 17% because I have way more spell damage then you, and way less int.
Anyway, I'm thinking about another solution: give up to the reflect mitigation ascendancy note!
Actually I can do reflect map but a t13+ boss is dungerous with reflect so I avoid him and I avoid breaches for the same reason, my LL is sucked up by reflect. So I'm doing reflect map missing the two main reasons to do them. I think I'll choose to lose the possibility to do any ele reflect map at all, and I'll bring back both liege and mastermind for more offensive setup; single rare reflect mob still don't do anything to me thanks to 11k ES :D
No problem! And yes the numbers differ from every build and gear piece you add into the mix, so for some mastermind of discord might be a better choice.
The reason I choose the reflect as the "basic choice" is because that you have to corrupt high tier maps in order to complete them in the atlas. Sometimes this will result in reflect maps.
Removing the reflect for mastermind is a total valid option, especially if you dont mind skipping ele reflect maps.
But I am glad I could help you with my answer! I love getting long questions like yours so I can theory craft around it and come up with detailed answers (since sometimes I am wrong, since I am just a player like everyone else)
what would you say is the min. amount of leech for this build?
I ended up with the .6% life/mana leech enchant on boots, and since this leech is enough to cover no mana regen maps (I tested) - I wondered if I would be better:
-remove warlord's mark and put flammability in its place, add elemental weakness for dps or enfeeble/temp chains for surv in the cwdt setup.
Any reason not to?
PS. Yea, I'd kill for that stun enchant but since this is what it rolled... :P
what would you say is the min. amount of leech for this build?
I ended up with the .6% life/mana leech enchant on boots, and since this leech is enough to cover no mana regen maps (I tested) - I wondered if I would be better:
-remove warlord's mark and put flammability in its place, add elemental weakness for dps or enfeeble/temp chains for surv in the cwdt setup.
Any reason not to?
PS. Yea, I'd kill for that stun enchant but since this is what it rolled... :P
It's a great trade of for more dps yes, but a huge loss for defenses, remember that warlords mark is our endurance charge generator for immortal call and just for phys reduction. It also increases the chance to stun enemies and their recovery speed.
First of all, thanks for the guide!
I was curious as to why you don't pick up blast radius and amplify? It would add 20% radius and 50% area damage for a 5 point investment. Is it because these nodes don't scale scorching ray?
