[3.1] Poet's Pen Glacial Cascade/Bladefall Berserker
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Happy New Year everyone! I thought I'd share one of my favorite builds I've made this league since I've been enjoying it. I predict Poet's Pen will be nerfed next league so I'll make an attempt to update this guide in the future. I don't think this build could down Shaper and friends since it has very bad sustain outside of Lightpoacher during maps. It does, however, clear maps super fast.
Pros -Super quick clear speed -Karui boy Cons -Expensive to start (90-100c minimum) -Weak boss killing -FPS killer
Where the build came from
This originally was a volatile dead/unearth Poet's Pen build I took after a guy on the forums and decided to see what I could do to change it. While looking around, I found a glacial cascade/bladefall build for inquisitor that looked pretty weak and decided to see what I could do with my current tree/ascendancy with glacial cascade and bladefall. I'm not disappointed with the results.
Edit: Just found out someone else made a pretty similar build to mine... I feel dumb.
Current Gear setup
Gearing - Since we're not playing a melee build, it's difficult for us to get Fortify. If you feel like you really need it, make your weapon swap a high attack speed dagger and brightbeak off hand with whirling blades-faster attacks-fortify as your links. However, we do run a quicksilver, so if you do end up doing this you can swap it out for a Sulphur flask. Surprisingly, Taste of Hate does not beat a Sulphur flask in DPS by much, so you can save several ex on gearing. Get Chaos resistance where you can. If you're running Oskarm especially. Since you get -15-20% chaos resistance with Oskarm, you'll end up being down to -60% chaos resistance. An Atziri's Promise helps offset this but this is one of the few sources of damage that can burst you down (like a room full of spitters). You need Dexterity. Because of how we path the tree and go through many intelligence nodes. Finding rares with both Dex, resistances, and t1/t2 life is pretty difficult, but manageable. I ended up only spending 20c total on my belt, rings, and amulet. I found my own boots but I'd estimate they would up the price by another 3-5c. Once you get a cold conversion on glacial cascade enchant on your helmet, Watcher's Eye with cold pen becomes a viable option. You COULD get glacial cascade damage or bladefall damage and have your Watcher's Eye be phys to cold conversion + cold pen but they're worth a little bit.
Poet's Pen and how it works
When you attack, socketted spells will be cast. Cast when something happens, in this case Cast on attack, has a 250 ms (0.25 s) internal cooldown which means at most you can get 4 procs per second. Knowing this, it is crucial you don't go over 4 attacks per second and stay under. 3.99 attacks per second is ideal but 3.90 is fine as well. The reason for this is that if you were to attack 4.5 times a second, you're only proccing the wands 3 times a second. Many pen builds seem to disregard this and try to just maximize their DPS numbers on path of building instead of having practical numbers.
Required Items
Luxury Items
Here are some items I found extremely useful while playing.
Lightpoacher - This item vastly increases your clear speed. Considering the cost and the value of the item, I had to try it out at level 60. If you do decide to use this, I recommend slotting out all the basic jewels on tree with life + global crit multi + cold crit multi. Carcass Jack - If you're not running Lightpoacher (or can't because in the future Abyss isn't added baseline), then this is the next best thing. It gives you flat life, increased AoE, and AoE damage while also being cheap. However, without there being any armor on this chest does make you vulnerable to physical damage and Abysses do almost purely physical damage. Kaom's Heart - Just like every life build, everyone wants to use Kaom's Heart. The only downside to running Kaom's Heart here is that you have to drop Lightning Warp which can take some time to get used to. However, the massive health boost vastly increases your survivability when combined with Lightpoacher. Oskarm - If you're running Kaom's Heart, this is the item for you! Normally, you would run ~Frenzy- GMP-Life Gain on Hit-Curse on Hit-Assassin's Mark~ to pop off your Assassin's Mark to get power charges and easy crit. Without these, you wouldn't be able to run Kaom's Heart. Hrimsorrow - Though these barely are able to compete with Oskarm, they're a pretty good budget item. Expensive items tend to be extremely powerful but these can still hold their own. Hrimburn gives your cold skills the ability to ignite, which isn't particularly good in this build since it can limit the amount of Herald of Ice procs we get which turns into less clear speed. Atziri's Promise - Every league this is a cheap item while also being a staple in most build. Not only does it give us extra damage in both phys and elemental, it gives us chaos resistance! Great way to offset the Oskarm negative.
Path of Building link to the build
https://pastebin.com/nkQAh804
Links Poet's Pens >Glacial Cascade-Cold to Fire-Elemental Focus >Bladefall-Spell Cascade-Increased Critical Strikes If you can invest a 3rd poet's pen, you would want to swap out your Bladefall with freezing pulse >Freezing Pulse-Controlled Destruction-Cold Penetration Helmet (Lightpoacher only) >Increased Critical Damage-Increased Critical Strikes-Iron Will Gloves/Boots >Frenzy-GMP-Life Gain on Hit-Culling Strike Remaining Slots >Herald of Ice, Hatred, Enduring Cry, Lightning Warp (optional) Leveling - Poet's Pens are really easy to level with. There aren't very many good spells before act 4, so I ended up running unearth/volatile dead and used Barrage until I got frenzy. You might be able to use power siphon until frenzy but I can't clarify how much faster that is. Once you hit 28, you can pick up Bladefall and start popping off. Until act 8, it's not important that you hit any damage nodes. You should be able to faceroll content. Ascendany order: Pain Reaver -> Crave the Slaughter -> Aspect of Carnage -> Rite of Ruin.
Leveling Gear
Most of this is standard leveling gear to start, I only have one Elreon jewelry piece because I don't really find the need for more than one. Once you're level 6, make sure you have 2 Screaming Eagles. Not only is a DPS increase, it gives you a total of 20% movespeed which helps you fly through the first couple acts. At level 12, you've made it. At this point, you can equip your Poet's Pens and slam the rest of the campaign. Here's a list of leveling uniques that will help along the way: Doedre's Tenure Atziri's Foible Astramentis Praxis Le Heup of All I personally run Atziri's Foible over Astramentis since I'm already using a Le Heup of All and run a Praxis in my other ring slot. If you want, The Gryphon is the upgraded version of The Screaming Eagle which also gives you +30% movement speed total if you've killed recently. This tends to be pretty awesome in your weapon slot since you can pop a group, weapon swap and have a ton of speed. However, these are 9-10c per. If you want to drop your Tabula and have something that actually gives you stats, Briskwrap and Foxshade are both solid choices. Once you can your Poet's Pens, you can swap in Briskwrap since Foxshade is level 25. However, I'd choose Briskwrap over Foxshade since it also has 10% increased attack speed which is valuable this early. Alternatively, you can run an Infernal Mantle since you won't have much physical damage mitigation. Last edited by Deth_Meth on Jan 3, 2018, 4:08:54 PM Last bumped on Jan 12, 2018, 4:46:57 PM
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I might be dumb, but what's the purpose of the 3rd pen? Weapon swap for single target?
Also, your video links are broken | |
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The point of the 3rd poet's pen is for Freezing Pulse if you need to kill the boss. I'm currently gearing a second character for killing bosses.
As for the video links, I'm going to have to take them down, I won't be able to record video and upload it for a while due to my ISP. | |
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where can i find the passif skills tree?
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