[3.0] Berserker BLS Shaper Farmer on a Budget - Millions of BALLS, DPS and INFO Inside! - VP, RT, US

Quick update. I just started playing with this character again on Standard in 3.1. I'm using an extreme high budget version now with legacy Acuity.

• Pastebin with ancestral call: https://pastebin.com/8mCw33Eg
• Ancestral call is amazing for clearing.
• I'm not sure how good AC really is for bosses. Here's a post discussing estimating pure single-target boss DPS with AC and there I assumed that AC is a 80-100% more DPS multiplier if you position your character well. I just did 4 shaper runs trying AC vs. fire pen. AC felt a lot worse for all the bosses after the initial 4 mini bosses (hard to tell with them without a lot more testing because they keep changing). The only time I took down Shaper in a single mini-phase was with fire pen. The best I could do with AC was about 80% of a big phase before he transitioned to the bubble or portal mini-phase. Maybe I just need more practice.
• In his Oni thread, ojejku pointed out that Path of Building doesn't report ball DPS correctly with multistrike. It ignores the attack speed bonus. A good approximation is to replace multistrike with ele focus in PoB to get very similar damage numbers (assuming you don't use ele focus in your real links).
• For legacy acuity's leech, crit chance is very important. We only get one crit roll for all the melee hits and balls coming from a single skill use (all 3 multistrike procs + all AC procs). This means that if that roll is bad, we lose the acuity leech bonus for a long time (e.g. if we have 10 APS then we stop insta-leeching for 1/10*3 = 0.33s where the 3 comes from the 3 multistrike hits that share the same roll). This means it's important to use the increased crit gem (replaces ele focus). I accidentally tested a triple beyond (map + zana + prophesy) minotaur map with brightbeak and prismatic eclipse instead of BLS. I got absolutely destroyed because the low crit from those weapons left long leech gaps even with their much higher APS. "Facetanking shaper with dual brightbeak" is no longer viable, even with legacy Acuity.
• I bought a cheap ring to cap my resistances since I relied on my gloves before. Much better ones are possible.

There's still a bunch more theory crafting that can be done.

• It might be worth tweaking the tree a little to stack some regen now that we don't need Vaal Pact (with legacy Acuity). E.g. Heart of Oak instead of Primal Spirit.
• Abyss jewels: not sure if they're worth using. BLS has massive flat damage and Abyss jewels are best for turning stat-stick weapons with horrible flat damage into crazy good weapons. If you're stacking Abyss jewels but still want pure facetanking abilities, bloodseeker might be a better weapon. Bonus: doesn't require any legacy gear.
• We could use a legacy vinktar instead of legacy acuity. We'd have to drop Xoph's Blood and come up with a decent source of flat lightning damage for leech. An attack vinktar seems like a good choice.
• Watcher's eye: this jewel opens up some interesting choices. Anger+leech could make it easier to switch ascendancies. Anger+pen is obviously great. Haste+onslaught and haste+phasing would be nice.
• If you want to use BLS but don't want to use legacy Acuity, then another class is likely a better choice. Jugg is tankier, slayer has nice leech properties, pathfinder or raider might work okay, something with crazy high combination of evasion, dodge, and/or block might not care as much about leech (ranger or inquis seem like good things to try), or perhaps ascendant + slayer + ???. If others have good ideas, I'd love to hear them.
• You can try stacking life gain on hit especially with the new rings, but it still seems a bit sketchy for isolated bosses.

hi buddy, update for 3.2 ?

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Colloda wrote:

hi buddy, update for 3.2 ?

BLS should be viable again in temp leagues since Torment will be a Zana mod again. The main thing that's different from 3.0 is no instant-leech. With non-legacy gear, this makes Ascendant-Slayer, Slayer, and endurance charge -> regen setups more interesting. The Ash mod from ascendancies is also intriguing.

I'm not that excited about PoeMon league, so I plan on starting on Standard. If BLS is affordable enough on league, I'll consider doing a build with it. Probably spectral throw this time just to mix things up.

I did a bit of theorycrafting last night for a standard version of the build. I focused on legacy Acuity and legacy attack Vinktar. Here's a quick rundown:

• Berzerker still gives the most damage (432k/ball). I'll be starting with this build using my 3.1 setup with legacy Acuity and Xoph's amulet. It's not clear whether rage is good versus bad for boss killing. It's a lot of DPS, but it's also a lot of degen, and GGG loves adding long phased boss fights now with big time gaps where you can't leech. If rage is great, then it's a question of whether it's worth losing cloaked in savagery (massive savage hit buffs) or aspect of carnage (40% more damage) to get rite of ruin (double rage buffs) or whether just crave the slaughter is enough (base rage). If rage is actively bad, then I'll take war bringer instead of crave the slaughter and use enduring cry to counteract it.
• Chieftain is pretty interesting (404k/ball). The best setup I came up with was with legacy vinktar, a good crit + str->dmg amulet, rare gloves, and inpulsa. There are a lot more buffs to micromanage than with Berserker, but if you can do it, you get almost as much damage but with less life (6.9k instead of 7.2k). If I took the time to properly account for shock from vinktar and its magnification by inpulsa, it'd be more damage than zerker, but a lot more conditional. For example, without inpulsa's recently-shocked buff, the DPS is much lower than zerker (376k/ball) with astral plate). Stacking endurance charges was weaker than stacking strength. The extra 100% fire resistance opens a lot of gearing options (like using inpulsa instead of an astral plate or belly).
• Jugg's DPS is bad (306k/ball). Stacking endurance charges doesn't help (better to stack strength). The best build I could come up with used the chieftain's rare amulet, zerker's astral plate, rare gloves, and legacy attack vinktar. Since jugg gets so much accuracy, I tried replacing Lycosidae with other shields and there weren't any compelling alternatives. Some gave a little more damage but no defense, some much better defense but no damage, and most were simply worse overall. That said, Jugg can be a tanky beast. If Uber Elder does a lot of oneshot damage, I'll probably get more serious about Jugg and stacking 7-11 endu charges, even if I lose half my DPS.
• Scion Ascendant with Elementalist, Chieftain, and marauder start wasn't too bad (331k/ball). Zerker-grade life, no-inpulsa chieftain DPS, jugg's gear. So, a bit meh.
• Trickster was surprisingly good given that most of the points aren't that useful (365k/ball). Harness the void is amazing. Swift killer is an obvious choice. Weave of the Arcane is semi-useful. Patient Reaver is at least a little helpful.
• I didn't play with any slayer or ascendant-slayer variants. Feels like it's too much opportunity cost to get the max leech rate high enough to tank endgame bosses, at least on std.
• I didn't play with block+dodge variants since they typically require a lot of passive investments.

I'm holding back on publishing PoB codes since not all the buff combinations are realistic, in some cases I had to drop stun immunity (dangerous when you're melee range without guaranteed instant leech).

Side note: in 3.1 I tried figuring out how to make a good build with the new dex->dmg shaper mod on claws. It's not a good choice even though claws are much better weapons than maces. Like BLS, the mod is local so dual wielding doesn't double the mod, and it's roughly half the added damage of BLS. Attack speed can be higher and you can get real base physical damage (if you want to spend a fortune crafting), but crit is lower.

Here's the pastebin for the zerker variant I'm planning on starting with: https://pastebin.com/CUA7mAM8

Let me know if you have other ideas.