Discharge Marauder

IGN: TheHammer

I've been asked a couple of times, and a lot of people don't know exactly what makes a discharge build so strong, so I thought rather than answer questions repeatedly, I'd put the answers in a thread and point people to the thread.

First off, I have some really nice gear for discharge, but most of it has come recently and is not necessary, but it is really nice to have. Some of the gear is mediocre at best. Also, using most of my gear costs me other things that are possibly better (I'd have to sit down and do the math/dig for items that I don't currently have).

Gear/gem layout:


Quick notes on the gear: I duel-wield outside of Chaos, use the shield in Chaos, for extra survivability.

Passive Tree

Notes on the tree, I started out heavy on life bonuses and once leveled up, went after the key discharge nodes, which left me quite gimped for a while. It's not perfect, but I like the feel this build gives me, more so than other builds that focused more on damage.

The added area of effect was invested in to counter the negative effects of concentrated effect, but now I'm at the point where I do enough damage I don't need concentrated effect (although I would still use it if I had 5 linked armor, the Kaom's Heart removes that possibility and I've never seen a good Spell damage staff, other than the Searing Touch).

Iron Will gives 0.2% spell damage for every point in strength, which is sitting at 441 (88.2% spell damage boost) with the amulet - also the reason for the very mediocre strength belt. A good critical damage amulet would give a way bigger bonus to damage than the amulet, but I haven't found a decent crit damage/cast speed/spell damage amulet yet. For now, I'll take the additional bonuses, life, mana, etc.

It's kind of tough to build discharge from the beginning because you can't use it until level 19, you'll be a gimped physical marauder until then (hence why I invested in life early). Once things start falling into place, it is nice, but it really is handy to have 4+ linked armor ready.

Future plans:
Going to be investing in the spell critical damage nodes by Templar really soon, probably removing some life nodes as I have plenty right now. (EDIT: done and changed the link to reflect it)

Thoughts, complaints, criticism are all welcome.

Edit: Found this buried in my inventory, made almost no difference from the Astramentus Amulet in most stats (a little less mana, a little more life, don't really need dexterity/accuracy, but gave me an extra 1k in dps thanks to the crit damage multiplier..

Edit:
Iron will is a pretty cheap way to get extra damage, but I have passives that virtually nullify the area of effect penalty of concentrated effect, so I chromed my gloves to get 4 blue sockets and now am running increased area of effect with concentrated effect which still hits almost everything on screen, but does significantly more damage.

Since Concentrated effect changes base damage it increases, everything else (fire damage%, spell damage%, crit damage%) is applied multiplicatively (I believe), which is why the 67% increased area of effect is considerably stronger than the almost 90% spell damage boost I was getting from Iron Will (400+ strength at 2% spell damage per 10 strength). I'll try and get some screenshots up showing the exact DPS with Iron Will, Concentrated Effect and the two combined (as well as Increased Critical Damage)

New gem setup:


Also didn't link the flasks, which are an absolute key to this build.

Early on I run Life flasks/Mana flasks, when I start finding Diamond flasks/they're available, I work my way up to 3 and run 1 Life flask and 1 Mana flask. Once Godly vials are available I switch to those. My life regens fast enough to not need dedicated life flasks, although there are times I would like to have one, I run into more mana problems, so Godly vials make more sense. Try to get high perpetual diamond flasks so they'll stay charged easier, also a belt can have a mod to have flasks use less charges, which is quite handy.

My tactical use:
Before hitting discharge, I hit one of the Godly vials (whichever is more full) and a diamond flask, a group of 4 or 5 at a time will keep one of the diamond flasks charged at any given time, but without the perpetual mod, flasks will fill much slower and therefore need bigger mobs. Large mobs (maybe 20 or so) will refill all of them. If you're lazy, you can tie life leech/mana leech to discharge and really not have to worry about anything except the Diamond flasks, but your dps will suffer.

Hello

nice explication but can you link us your skill tree?

And different stats like your DPS with/without crit


Do you run chaos easily ?

Thanks

Skill tree is linked where it says passive tree with an underline. =D

I could run chaos pretty easily before getting the Kaom's Heart, but I'd die with some regularity, maybe every 4 or 5 rounds, although that may be low. After Kaom's, I think I've died maybe once (maybe not at all?) in 20 or more runs.

Also, I'm really not very good, I do pretty stupid things sometimes, I'm much better at sports games and shooters, but have thoroughly enjoyed this game. I'm more or less a complete noob when it comes to hack n' slash games (hence the change that I'm about to discuss). My build is NOT perfect, it improves quite often when I realize I'm doing something stupid/silly.

Speaking of me doing something silly or stupid, I changed a couple of things, which are noted in the OP.

2 Questions;
1. Why not take the bottom most endurance charge?
2. You took a cluster of critical damage multiplier above Resolute Technique, it does not say Spell critical multiplier does it still apply?

Thanks for your thread by the way.

"

NyllA wrote:

2 Questions;
1. Why not take the bottom most endurance charge?
2. You took a cluster of critical damage multiplier above Resolute Technique, it does not say Spell critical multiplier does it still apply?

Thanks for your thread by the way.

The 11 nodes invested in to get to the Duelist Endurance charge node are a high price to pay. I'd rather invest in survivability (life nodes), area of effect nodes, or straight damage nodes. 11 nodes will get you a decent combination of those things. Not ridiculous to go get that node, but I've done it before and like this way better. DPS is higher, but not really comparible because I know a lot more than before.

That critical damage cluster is an all encompassing cluster, any critical damage in any form, spell, physical, etc., falls under this. Anywhere you can get relevant critical damage is huge, as it's multiplicative. Also, anything done to base damage, like concentrated effect, is huge as well, as everything multiplies off of it.

I have a spreadsheet that calculates my DPS and is accurate to within a few points, which comes in handy. Spell/Fire/Elemental/Area damage are all nice, but because it is so much easier to come by those types of damage modifiers (inherent to the weapons, large numbers on the spell damage mods on sceptres, etc.), each 6% fire damage node becomes less and less valuable. A 6% fire node would only give me a 1.6% boost, where as another endurance charge would be far more valuable at this point.

If I changed my passive tree to this my dps would go up about 530, but I'd lose some burn damage and a tiny bit of survivability, not to mention 10% area of effect. Burn damage really isn't important at this point, if something survives, it has fire resistance, and if it has fire resistance, the intial blast gets resisted n% and the burn damage gets resisted n% as well - commonly referred to as double resist. But the area of effect loss would hurt. I could sacrifice defensive points to get there, as well, but I really don't want to. I need that defense to cover for my mistakes.

Also, I'd have to gain one more charge before being able to hit that dps, which usually isn't a big deal, but against single targets, it is.

Thanks for clarifying :)

I can attest. This build is the best.

this seems pretty wierd to me,doing it like this just to get more survivability with endurance charges

where do you get the discharge gem? is it a drop or class quest reward?

"

Flair wrote:

where do you get the discharge gem? is it a drop or class quest reward?

Drop/Trade