[3.7] Storm Brand Elementalist. League Starter, Deathless Uber Elder.
" Hello, First of all I'd like to thank you for this fun build, I'm having a lot of fun clearing maps and delve so far. I'm trying to craft a +1 level to socketed gems wand with faster casting and I've invested in the following wand a lot of alterations already and now I have this: I'm currently using these two: I can'T really decide if I should imprint this and keep the chaos damage mod and try to get +1 level to socketed gems mod on it then regal and multimod it ( so i can use brand recall+empower+enhance with this), or if I should try +1 level to socketed gems and faster casting support. I'm also vacillating if i should switch to a profane wand for casting speed. I hope you could give me an advice what should I do. Thank you very much for this nice build! | |
|
Profane tends to be better, but if you want to know for sure you should try both with your gear in PoB to see which ends up giving more damage for you.
+1 wand is an attractive option for a clearspeed setup. If you craft +2 support gems on it also, then it will give you the same level brand recall as you'd get from the +2 unique shields, but also potentially have damage stats. It would look something like this:  With my setup, that wand makes me do about 12% less damage. Noticeable, but still more than enough damage for clearing. (A blank wand with no stats is ~35% less damage). Now, that's obviously a lot more expensive than a +2 shield, so another option is simply to use a +2 shield on swap. The disadvantage of that is primarily that you might have jewels that give "while dual wielding" bonuses (cast speed while dual wielding, lightning damage to spells while dual wielding, whatever). If you do decide to craft a wand like that, there's a decision as to whether to use a shaper base or not. You're not targeting a shaper mod (+1) so you have higher odds of getting what you want if you use a non-shaper base. On the other hand, you can potentially "miss" and land on 20% ele as chaos or such, and re-sell that (or use it for your other slot, or whatever). Trying for 20% ele as chaos and +1 (both prefixes) is quite challenging, since you have to land one of them with the regal. Metacrafting like you do with bows to exalt +1 isn't much good either, as there's several available mods that are neither caster nor attack mods. As for whether to imprint T1 ele as chaos, ehh... Imprint is about 90 chaos, which can buy you ~800 alts. Of course imprint does save your wrists using the alts, so there's that. I tend to save imprints for items with 2 good stats pre-regal. Like if it had T1 ele as chaos and T1 cast speed, I'd definitely imprint that. Last edited by magicrectangle on Jan 23, 2019, 6:06:23 PM
|
|
|
Thank you for helping with this, well i think i will use a profane setup as that gives more dmg in the end as you said.
I've gone and gambled a bit and augmented the wand so I got 16% cast speed - though only Tier 4 - but that doesn't sound too bad. I might make some profit if I regal it and get some good mod then i could perhaps multicraft it. | |
|
16% cast speed is within the range you would get from crafted cast speed in a multimod, so while not exciting, it is high enough not to ruin the item.
|
|
|
I don't really write posts, but man am I thankful for you putting up this build, I was able to do my first Shaper , first Uber Elder with it. 2500hrs in the game, and this build has widened my horizon by quite a bit. Thanks again.
Did Uber Elder on first ever try when i was lvl 89, also have watcher's eye with mana leech while Wrath. Even decided to record lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYd4zAWONc&feature=youtu.be | |
" Huge congrats getting it on your first try. IIRC it was two tries for me. (GC totems in bestiary league) If you're going to do it again, I have a few notes. Some of this probably became obvious to you already, after experiencing it, so forgive me if I'm pointing out what you already know: 1) Purity of ice is an option instead of wrath, but I wouldn't run it in addition to wrath (reserving mana). Your effective HP (even against cold damage) is lower by losing the ~1k mana. 2) If you can make the resists work, Kaom's roots will make you immune to the elder's snare effect. One of the most dangerous things is getting snared by the elder, then gunned down by the shaper. The stun immunity is nice too, since if you get hit by a shaper ball, you won't get stunned in place and hit by the following one. 3) Battlefield management is key to having the fight not go to shit towards the end. Mainly that means prioritizing killing the poopers (noticed you only dropped 1 brand on them, they need 2, they need to die immediately), and carefully placing the shaper vortexes in out-of-the-way places. That way you can move freely as you avoid mechanics nearer the center of the field. Congrats again. Love to see more people getting to experience the endgame. Last edited by magicrectangle on Jan 26, 2019, 6:12:56 PM
|
|
|
Excuse me, I have a superficial question as someone new to the game. Your video with clear shows such beautiful soft blue explosions occurring as you kill and yet I notice you're not using heralds. Is that Storm Brand's native appearance against packs or, if not, what might that be? It's pleasing to my eyes. Very very looking forward to trying this build out.
|
|
" It's the effect of the boby amour - Inpulsa's Broken Heart - Shocked Enemies you Kill Explode, dealing 5% of their Maximum Life as Lightning Damage which cannot Shock. |
|
" Thank you very much! All the more motivation to obtain access to that gear piece! |
|
|
Yeah the inpulsa visuals are great. It is also a great item, but a somewhat expensive item still, so not near the top of the list of things you should be picking up. It is more important to get decent items in every slot than it is to get that big ticket inpulsa. (Looks like inpulsa is currently 2.6 ex unlinked, 5.2 ex 6-linked)
3.5 saw inpulsa nerfed slightly (explosion damage is locked at 5%, used to be 5-10% variable roll). The nerf does actually matter, but doesn't ruin the item at all for our purposes. It hurts more for crit builds, because crit builds have a harder time scaling up the explosion damage (it doesn't crit). Damage stats that scale inpulsa: elemental overload increased damage increased minion damage (with spiritual aid) increased elemental damage increased lightning damage increased area damage elemental damage as extra chaos damage non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage damage penetrates elemental/lightning resist increased effect of shock (because our prolif has shocked the nearby enemies) increased effect of non-damaging ailments (shock) frenzy charges (the damage component, not the cast speed component) chance to deal double damage Damage stats that do NOT scale inpulsa: increased spell damage added damage to spells cast speed wrath crit chance / crit multi (unless you use some +base crit shenanigans) Also since I've seen some confusion about this, I should point out that supports socketed in inpulsa do not do anything to the explosions. The explosions aren't an active skill. ---------------------------------------------------- So this build has a lot of damage scaling for inpulsa. We have a good amount of the stats from that first list, and it ends up being not that difficult to get enough inpulsa damage to make a single brand insta-pop a whole pack of monsters. The insta-pops are as much a safety feature as they are a clear speed feature. Without inpulsa you still clear almost as fast, but the packs don't die instantly. They die as you're running past them instead, which offers them a little time to potentially harm you. Without inpulsa it plays like a bit more like a damage over time build. Another often under-appreciated safety feature of inpulsa is the "unaffected by shock" text. Even if you have a shock flask, it is likely not up all of the time. A fair bit of the "wtf just happened" style deaths are actually attributable to shocks that you didn't notice, in my experience. The lightning mirage nemesis mod is noticably less scary with inpulsa. The lightning elder guardian is also a lot less scary with inpulsa - I can just stand in his barrage attack (I think that's also partially due to the golems soaking some of it though). --------------------------------------------------- TL;DR: I do consider inpulsa important, and the best chest for the build. But it isn't at all mandatory. You can go carcass jack, loreweave, shroud of the lightless, a decent rare, or even tabula rasa, and the build works fine. |
|
