[3.0 Theory Craft] Scion Crit Ele Spectral Throw / Dual Strike (Inquisitor/Elementalist)
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This thread is a placeholder for the time being for a build I've been working on in POB and been leveling in the hardcore harbinger league. I just wanted to create this thread to write down all of my thoughts and considerations that I've gone through when creating this build.
The build is very cheap, and the DPS is solid but there are only a few cons which I have yet to figure out workarounds for which I will go over later. Please share your thoughts if you have any ideas for improvements. Path of building link: https://pastebin.com/X2eLLZyv About:
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This build's main DPS comes from crit-strike elemental damage. With over 80% effective chance to crit, we will perma-freeze most mobs and are guaranteed to have ignite up constantly throughout fights to take advantage of the inquisitor's 125% increased crit strike chance.
Spectral Throw is used to clear mobs and map, whereas dual strike is used to handle single-target/bossing. Nodes:
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The build takes the inquisitor and elementalist ascendancy
Inquisitor - +25% elemental damage is a huge damage boost, and taking 8% reduced elemental damage is great for damage mitigation. On top of that the +125% crit strike chance makes this build feel much more consistent in terms of damage. Elementalist - 6% elemental damage penetration is a huge DPS boost, 50% reduced ele reflect helps to prevent a 1-shot against ourselves, and elemental conflux is fantastic. Pros:
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-Super fun to play (It's nice to always crit strike stuff for the sound effect) -Super high crit strike chance (80%+) -Cheap (Using a lot of unpopular uniques which cost ~1 chaos each or less) -Solid DPS (40k DPS 6L Spectral Throw and 100k DPS with a 4L dual strike) -Unique non-meta build Cons:
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-Kinda slow to level between 40-70 (Figuring this out) -Not super tanky life-wise ~4k -Not stun immune (Unless you get a stun amulet) -Can't do ele-reflect maps Item discussion:
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Key items: Weapon - We will use 2 bino's kitchen knife for the crit chance. Armour - Lightning Coil for physical damage mitigation, hybrid armor makes it relatively easy to find the colors we need for spectral throw. Gloves - Hrimburn to convert 50% of our physical to cold. Cold damage igniting is a plus until we get elemental conflux from elementalist. Helmet - Starkonja for the added life and crit chance Links:
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Spectral Throw - Lesser Multiple Proj - Elemental Damage - Physical to Lightning - Added Fire - Increased Crit Dual Strike - Multi-Strike - Phys to Lightning - Elemental Damage CWDT - Enfeeble - Immortal Call - Increased Duration Alternatively if you want to level up your enfeeble (highly recommended), you can socket it in another slot for CWDT - Enfeeble, or CWS - Enfeeble. Enlighten - Hatred - Purity of Lightning Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Fortify Bandits:
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Help Alira - Mana regen is nice, resists are good to help us deal with the -res from lightning coil, and the crit multiplier boosts total DPS. Damage Mitigation:
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We use a combination of lightning coil and enfeeble to try to prevent 1-shots from hits. Purity of lightning + inquisitor's elemental damage reduction further negates the lightning damage. Combined with fortify from whirling blades, we are generally safe from most 1-shots. We also take acrobatics and phase acrobatics to have 40% physical dodge and 30% spell dodge. If you choose to wear atziri's step (Very cheap boots which also give life) you can further increase your spell dodge to 45%, although I think it's more important to get your resists from boots which atziri's step gives none. Vaal pact - Instant leech + seething flasks helps us to immediately get back to full when taking damage. Kryptonite:
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Stun: We cannot or I should say, should not take unwavering stance because it is too far from the tree. Doing so sacrifices A LOT of DPS and we also lose all of our evasion bonus which provides ~40% chance to evade. Kaom's roots + Iron Reflexes could work since IR is only 2 points from the tree, so the DPS sacrifice is not as severe, but once again we are losing a ton of evasion bonus from our tree and it puts more dependence on other gear to get resists. Eye of chayula is the only viable option I have found to gaining stun immunity that doesn't sac a lot of DPS. Presence of Chayula would be fantastic, but it's a very expensive item. Ele Reflect: We can't touch ele reflect for obvious reasons, even with the damage mitigation from the god power + elementalist. The main reason we get those reflect mitigation is to avoid 1-shotting ourselves from a single target with a reflect mod, but as far as dealing with full mobs that have reflect, it's out of the question. Leveling:
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I am still figuring out the optimal way to path the tree and level up, so far I've had the easiest time using sunder and taking the dual-wielding nodes close to the scion tree early and forgoing the dagger nodes/vaal pact 70+. The biggest problem with a crit build is that the damage does not really shine through until you are closer to the end-game/mapping (70+), early game leveling will be extremely slow and painful if you opt to use spectral throw so I would not recommend it so stick to sunder and use the rustic sash recipe to keep upgrading your axe/mace when you feel your DPS is starting to slow down. Other considerations:
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Items: Hyrii's Armour is a decent choice, but you will probably never be able to get the optimal colors for it. 6L Dual Strike - Yes, you can swap armour if you're interested to 6L your dual strike, it will more than double your dual strike DPS to over 250k but it comes at the obvious cost of being tedious and having to carry a second armour in your inventory. Also a 6L dual strike is RRRRBG so you'd probably have to use a tabula and you'd be giving up the phys mitigation from coil. Other Ascendency Choices: I'll start off by saying I think inquisitor is the best ascendency to get hands-down from the DPS, but the second choice is much more difficult to make because you can either pick the extreme of DPS (Berzerker) or the extreme of survivability (Champion) or something in-between (Elementalist) or something that only focuses on improving 1-skillset (Deadeye/Spectral Throw). I'll go over the other viable choices and share my opinion. Deadeye - Decent DPS, it will definitely boost your spectral throw damage and help you hit more on the map with the projectile speed. I would recommend this if you want to focus more on mapping/faster clearing. Only downside is that this doesn't help your dual strike DPS at all. Pathfinder - 50% chance to gain a flask charge on crit when we have 80%+ crit chance means we will be constantly filling our flasks, and maintain the 30% increased damage as well. However, this ascendency is a lot more involved in terms of button pressing/flask management, but it can be much more rewarding in terms of DPS than berzerker because it doesn't trade defense. Definitely the best choice if you are confident in your flask management. Keeping up a silver and diamond flask helps keep your damage consistent. Raider - Good choice, I can't say I dislike it. Frenzy charges + onslaught are nice to have during a boss fight, and the attack dodge is great, but I don't think you're getting enough from this class to justify taking it over others. Assassin - Good class but doesn't boost your DPS as much as elementalist/inquisitor unless you are able to incorporate power charges into the build. If you choose to swap out bino's for a different weapon, then the crit bonus from assassin would become more relevant, but based on using binos, your DPS is only marginally increased. Only take assassin if you're intending to use a different weapon with lower crit strike chance. Berzerker - The best DPS boost, but a little risky in hardcore. It's up to you. If I was playing softcore, inquistor/zerker provide the most damage so that's what I would choose. YOLO. Slayer - Just OK, decent DPS against bosses. Not really a big fan because it doesn't do much in terms of DPS or damage mitigation. The nice thing about this choice is that you can possibly forgo getting vaal pact, but the physical reflect is completely useless (Though the same could be said for the pierce from deadeye, but I feel like deadeye you get a lot more in terms of map clearing speed). Champion - Comparable DPS to slayer/zerker against bosses when using dual strike and gives you fortify + damage reduction for taunting. This combined with lightning coil + acrobatics makes you very hard to kill in fights. I'd say this is the best choice if you want to be defensive. The only issue I can find with this is that it does not do much for spectral throw. Juggernaut - This is an option I would only consider if you went with the kaom's roots/Iron reflexes route. I have not given this option much consideration in terms of simulating the damage/survivability. Ranking All of the alternative choices, I think the best are: Berzerker - Highest DPS boost Champion - DPS/Survival (More focused on boss fight survival with fortify from dual strike, but less-so on spectral throw. You can still get 1-shot from a reflect mob) Pathfinder - Second highest DPS and good survival (Defensive flasks), but requires good flask management (Which I suck at because I always double use flasks) Elementalist - DPS/Avoid 1-shot from Ele-reflect, but more risk to dying in boss fights. Niche choices: Deadeye - Clear-speed for spectral throw Assassin - DPS if you swap out binos and need crit chance. |
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I am running an Ascendant Elemental Crit Spectral Throw build right now (level 88).
The 5L GMP DPS with Charges is 46k. I have 17% Elemental Penetration. Defensively, I have 12k Evasion (27k with Flasks), 5k Life, Kintsugi Damage Reduction, Leech + LGOH, 40% Dodge and 30% Spell Dodge. Elemental Reflect maps are fine because I have 85% reflect reduction (50% from Elementalist, 25% from Pantheon and 10% from Tree). Character is here https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/cookeemonstah/characters You can use it as your reference. Last edited by monstahz on Aug 16, 2017, 7:43:56 AM
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" Very nice build. I didn't think of taking shadow as an option, I also like the idea of thunderfist as a 4L for your single target, it's a good. Few questions: 1. How do you feel the survivability is without leech/vaal pact on your build? 2. Did you take assassin mainly for the purposes of getting the pathing? 3. Had you already considered inquisitor? What was your reason for not taking it? From my calcs, inquisitor gives the highest DPS boost for elemental crit. 4. Why do you opt to run a second 4-L spectral throw vs something like double strike - wep elemental - multistrike - increased crits? I did a comparison and the DPS on double strike is ~150k vs 85k w/ spectral throw. 5. I guess since you're kiting and you don't rely on leech, stun isn't a big problem for you either? 6. You aren't converting your phys to elemental at all, have you considered that route and figured that stacking ele damage worked out better than doing a conversion with phys-lightning or hrimmburn? I did a comparison with my current build and yours is currently outputting more DPS and has higher life, for all intents and purposes I'd say it's better except it's using claws which I believe raises the price significantly. I'm very curious to see if I can get my increased life % around the same as yours though and I want to look over the damage calcs on the mutipliers on POB. I'll let you know what I find. Thanks again. |
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Hey, I'll go over your questions one by one.
1. Currently, I have 1.6% attack damage leech. This is because the claw passive 'Soul Raker' gives me 1.2% attack damage leech and 0.8% mana leech, it also gives me 50% increased life leeched per second. Blood drinker gives me an additional 0.4% leech. My claw implicit also gives me 40 life gain on hit, which is quite significant since I attack very fast, and spectral throw pierces and returns as well (with GMP I heal insane amounts). Combined together, the 1.6% attack damage leech, 50% increased life leeched and 40 life gain on hit, I have been able to facetank all bosses so far, even in T14 maps. This is why I highly recommend going claws. Vaal Pact is unnecessary and makes bloodrage very annoying to sustain. 2. I went assassin because it offers very reliable power charge generation, it also gives +1.5% crit chance which is a huge DPS boost. The pathing also helps a lot too and makes my skill tree more efficient. Maim is also great for kiting. I weighed my options and assassin is definitely the best for a crit build. 3. Inquisitor looks strong on paper, but it is not as effective in practice. the consecrated ground bonuses are alright, but considering that I whirl through packs very quickly, i dont really get many opportunities to take advantage of it. The 120% increased crit chance against enemies affected by status ailments is alright, but it only works on your second hit, assuming the first one crits. But considering the fact that i one-shot most packs with a crit, it seems a bit pointless. 4. Spectral throw is actually one of the strongest single-target skills in the game. My DPS with spectral throw is 85k, but you need to remember that the spectral throw will return to you (so it hits twice). Therefore its true single-target DPS is actually 170k. 5. I have 30% stun avoidance, since I have a high life pool and damage reduction from Kintsugi, I rarely ever get stunned so it's not an issue. You can get the stun avoidance boot enchantment if your worried about stun, but its generally nothing to be concerned about. 6. Generally, physical conversion is usually not a good idea. The damage bonuses are lower and also, you are converting away good physical damage (which is unresisted) into elemental (which can be resisted). Most players either go pure elemental or pure physical (maybe with hatred + HoA). Hope this helps! (I actually bought my current claw for 10 chaos, since I'm running on a low budget as well. Look for high crit and high APS, the damage is irrelevant) Last edited by monstahz on Aug 16, 2017, 9:59:07 AM
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