Natharias' Noob Guide: Build Guide and FAQ (Work in progress)

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Waterzipper wrote:

Thanks for the guide.

I want to try the summoner build you linked to but the link is not working for me.

Was in the middle of updating and forgot to add that part.

Now put two variations of the same build.

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Sheriff_K wrote:

Well, a bare bones Ele Buzzsaw needs only Anger, Wrath, and a weapon with 2.0 aps. Not that expensive. But there is great room for improvement with gear/currency, which is always nice.

You're forgetting rings and amulet. Those provide the major increases of elemental damage.

Those are also the best source of resistance, so getting the proper rolls is hard, not to mention upgrading.

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Sheriff_K wrote:

A min/max'd RF build wouldn't necessarily grab ALL Life. You'd need some Fire Damage, and Aura Nodes as well. I've got a fairly nice one. And I meant a Pure Life RF build doesn't vary much.

I didn't say "all", I said "maximize".

Of course a RF build would likely grab burning nodes, specifically the one above the Templar just across from Elemental Adaptation.

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Sheriff_K wrote:

My first build was RF, back when Rise of the Phoenix first came out, so it is a build near/dear to my heart. Although I somewhat fear it being nerfed, I just hope it isn't nerfed too badly. Just removing snapshotting should be enough.

I doubt that RF will be nerfed.

The only possible reason to nerf it is if they think it is too powerful in PvP, but the builds with 200+k dps are more of a problem. Not even RF can deal that much damage so quickly.

Additionally, elemental buzzsaw builds do a ton more damage than RF, and have little problem with reflect.

Nice work, some good advice in here.

A few random comments:

1. Do ES builds really need as much %ES bonus as life builds need %life? It seems to me that life is a precious resource (not just for HP, but stun protection, BM fuel and so on) and life nodes are the only way to build it up to a reasonable level (short of legacy Kaom's and whatnot), whereas ES is abundant on gear, Int gives a further substantial percentage bonus, and ES builds tend to fall down for reasons more complex than 'not enough HP' (e.g. inadequate protection against stun/shock/freeze). I'm not saying that an ES build should ignore ES nodes, but they're not needed in quite the quantities that life builds need to stack life nodes.

2. You say that a (beginner) build should focus on a single damage skill. This is a good rule of thumb, but there are important exceptions: for instance, trappers often need multiple skills (because of the limited stock of each trap) and summoning skills naturally go together. It's also fairly common to have a special 'boss-killer' or 'boss-finisher' skill (for MF purposes, or simply because it's an extremely powerful single-target ability).

3. Following on from the previous point, Elemental Equilibrium is pretty clearly designed for builds that use multiple damaging skills. They gain enormous elemental penetration at the cost of having to juggle damage types. This may take the form of two 'main damage' skills, or it may take the form of a 'priming' skill followed by a 'main skill'. There are various tricks available, but as a general rule it works much better with spells and traps that each deal single-element damage. Elemental Hit is a red herring in this regard, as there's no practical way to augment the elemental damage with gear, auras and so on without ruining the effect.

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Incompetent wrote:

Nice work, some good advice in here.

A few random comments:

1. Do ES builds really need as much %ES bonus as life builds need %life? It seems to me that life is a precious resource (not just for HP, but stun protection, BM fuel and so on) and life nodes are the only way to build it up to a reasonable level (short of legacy Kaom's and whatnot), whereas ES is abundant on gear, Int gives a further substantial percentage bonus, and ES builds tend to fall down for reasons more complex than 'not enough HP' (e.g. inadequate protection against stun/shock/freeze). I'm not saying that an ES build should ignore ES nodes, but they're not needed in quite the quantities that life builds need to stack life nodes.

2. You say that a (beginner) build should focus on a single damage skill. This is a good rule of thumb, but there are important exceptions: for instance, trappers often need multiple skills (because of the limited stock of each trap) and summoning skills naturally go together. It's also fairly common to have a special 'boss-killer' or 'boss-finisher' skill (for MF purposes, or simply because it's an extremely powerful single-target ability).

3. Following on from the previous point, Elemental Equilibrium is pretty clearly designed for builds that use multiple damaging skills. They gain enormous elemental penetration at the cost of having to juggle damage types. This may take the form of two 'main damage' skills, or it may take the form of a 'priming' skill followed by a 'main skill'. There are various tricks available, but as a general rule it works much better with spells and traps that each deal single-element damage. Elemental Hit is a red herring in this regard, as there's no practical way to augment the elemental damage with gear, auras and so on without ruining the effect.

1. Essentially yes.

For example, a build with 200% life and 1,000 base life has 2,000 life. This means that larger hits are required in order to stun, chill, freeze, and shock. Bleed effects are more effective due to lower number of hit points.

A build with 200% ES but with 1,500 base ES will have 3,000 ES. This can be stunned, chilled, frozen, and shocked with almost any attack, but can leech at a faster rate due to higher hit points. Bleed effects are less effective since there are more hit points for the bleed to remove.

However, if you calculate more defenses, life is more survivable. An end game 3,000 life build will have much more armor and evasion than a 5,000 ES build. This is because ES is a defense type on gear, and means much lower armor/evasion. The advantage of ES is that it can take more advantage of block and leech, as block drastically multiplies your effective hit points. Life builds make more use of each hit point through raw mitigation.

In theory, the strongest build would be a 200% life/200% ES, that takes full advantage of hit point maximization. Instead of just 3,000 life or 5,000 ES, they would have 3,000 life and 5,000 ES, which would make their few defenses much more worthwhile. The downside is that you can only regenerate and leech one type of hit point. This is where Life Gain on Hit would be most useful. Life regen and LGOH for life, and Life Leech for ES. Additionally, you could use Mind Over Matter. Add in a Mana Leech gem, and the build would be practically unstoppable. I'm still trying to figure out just how to set one up, however. The damage always comes out extremely low for me. Maybe I'm just missing something.

1. Further notes: ES is why I love Perandus Signets. I can easily obtain 3,000 ES on my aura build just from a few items with less than 100 ES and a max level Discipline by using all unique items with two Perandus Signets. The 60% increased intelligence gives my build roughly 500 intelligence right now, which is 100% increased ES. So without any ES nodes my ES is just 2k below par. Imagine if I used Shavronne's Wrappings, with about 500 ES on it. That's a total of 4,000 ES now.

2. Very true, but if someone thinks they can use multiple skills all the same they will think they can. It's better to have a CWS and two CWDT setups than having three active skills that you can use. Additionally, if you set up three attacks, none will have the power of a single skill. This drastically lowers your DPS and thereby your survivability. Exceptions are ones like the Trapper, but that can easily be altered by using Mines instead. One can easily use Firestorm + Remote Mine and destroy content. The only weakness is that they cannot leech and have to try permafreezing mobs.

2b. It is useful to have a two socket culling combo. If you've had trouble whittling the life of a boss down to 10%, you can save a huge amount of time by using this. This also helps against rares with the "Regenerates life" and "allies regenerate life" combo. I've found this to really kill low DPS builds.

3. Not necessarily. EE is most commonly known for party augmentation. You can use something like Frost Nova with IIQ, IIR, and Faster Casting to augment all lightning and fire damage by party members. It can easily be swapped out for Firestorm or Arc depending on party members. Also, I think it was primarily meant for Elemental Hit, as the damage is random but does all three types. The only problem with that is EH has high mana cost and low damage.

3b. I've tried a Fireball/Freezing Pulse EE combo, and found it hard. It's much easier to just use the element specific curse, Elemental Weakness, and the penetration support gem. This game promotes specializing in a single thing, quite different from Diablo II.

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Natharias wrote:

For example, a build with 200% life and 1,000 base life has 2,000 life. This means that larger hits are required in order to stun, chill, freeze, and shock. Bleed effects are more effective due to lower number of hit points.

A build with 200% ES but with 1,500 base ES will have 3,000 ES. This can be stunned, chilled, frozen, and shocked with almost any attack, but can leech at a faster rate due to higher hit points. Bleed effects are less effective since there are more hit points for the bleed to remove.

However, if you calculate more defenses, life is more survivable. An end game 3,000 life build will have much more armor and evasion than a 5,000 ES build. This is because ES is a defense type on gear, and means much lower armor/evasion. The advantage of ES is that it can take more advantage of block and leech, as block drastically multiplies your effective hit points. Life builds make more use of each hit point through raw mitigation.

Ah OK, so you are including the Int bonus in that 200% figure.

As for the defences, you are probably right, although for armour specifically, it seems ES builds still do quite well because of the strong hybrid nodes in the Templar area combined with off-gear sources of armour (such as flasks or Grace + IR). Life builds do have a significant advantage with Evasion, due to Acrobatics (although the large HP pool of ES does help with the 'spikiness' of Eva) and also hybrid armour/eva (because juggling all three defences is difficult to do well).

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2. Very true, but if someone thinks they can use multiple skills all the same they will think they can. It's better to have a CWS and two CWDT setups than having three active skills that you can use. Additionally, if you set up three attacks, none will have the power of a single skill. This drastically lowers your DPS and thereby your survivability. Exceptions are ones like the Trapper, but that can easily be altered by using Mines instead. One can easily use Firestorm + Remote Mine and destroy content. The only weakness is that they cannot leech and have to try permafreezing mobs.

The strength of CWS/CWDT depends on how much of a pounding you're taking. Three damage skills is overdoing it, but I think two can often be justified.

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3. Not necessarily. EE is most commonly known for party augmentation. You can use something like Frost Nova with IIQ, IIR, and Faster Casting to augment all lightning and fire damage by party members. It can easily be swapped out for Firestorm or Arc depending on party members.

Sure, that makes sense, if you're playing a support character rather than a primary DPS dealer. (I suppose EE has problems anyway for a primary DPS dealer in a party, as your friends will screw up your lovely combos.) But again, Elemental Hit is too unpredictable to be all that useful in this regard.

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3b. I've tried a Fireball/Freezing Pulse EE combo, and found it hard. It's much easier to just use the element specific curse, Elemental Weakness, and the penetration support gem. This game promotes specializing in a single thing, quite different from Diablo II.

Rapid-fire combos like that are hard, but maybe if you have only one of them manually cast, and the other is triggered automatically somehow (e.g. Tempest Shield, trigger gems, minions or totems), the combo becomes much more workable without giving the player repetitive strain injury. It also helps if the main damage skill is something big and slow, e.g. Flameblast, so that you don't need to worry too much about the enemy becoming resistant to follow-up strikes.

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Incompetent wrote:

Ah OK, so you are including the Int bonus in that 200% figure.

As for the defences, you are probably right, although for armour specifically, it seems ES builds still do quite well because of the strong hybrid nodes in the Templar area combined with off-gear sources of armour (such as flasks or Grace + IR). Life builds do have a significant advantage with Evasion, due to Acrobatics (although the large HP pool of ES does help with the 'spikiness' of Eva) and also hybrid armour/eva (because juggling all three defences is difficult to do well).

Yes. The reason being that you can easily obtain 400 intelligence from a Witch starting point. Not sure about a Templar or Shadow start. This means fewer points are required for ES allocation and can be allocated into damage or utility.

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Incompetent wrote:

The strength of CWS/CWDT depends on how much of a pounding you're taking. Three damage skills is overdoing it, but I think two can often be justified.

Three isn't overdoing it.

Here's what I personally have planned:

Level 1 CWDT: Enduring Cry + Detonate Dead + Frost Wall

Level 5-10 CWDT: Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Increased Duration

CWS: Enduring Cry + Molten Shell + Detonate Dead

Clears up bodies while dealing damage. Very useful. Even more useful if you use Desecrate to create corpses.

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Incompetent wrote:

Sure, that makes sense, if you're playing a support character rather than a primary DPS dealer. (I suppose EE has problems anyway for a primary DPS dealer in a party, as your friends will screw up your lovely combos.) But again, Elemental Hit is too unpredictable to be all that useful in this regard.

Only a person with EE can proc EE. That is why it would be used in the manner I explained. Your allies would always get the benefit, while you keep the EE buff active.

If they use EE, it would cause extreme problems.

Elemental Hit has the advantage of doing all types of elemental damage with the only capability of taking advantage of EE. The drawback is that it is random and will either hit on a +25% resistance mod or -50% resistance mod. You have a 33% chance to hit the +25% res mod and 66% chance to hit the -50% res mod.

TL;DR: 66% increased damage with 33% decreased damage. Overall, 33% increased damage. Not much worth it.

This alone should show how weak Elemental Hit is.

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Incompetent wrote:

Rapid-fire combos like that are hard, but maybe if you have only one of them manually cast, and the other is triggered automatically somehow (e.g. Tempest Shield, trigger gems, minions or totems), the combo becomes much more workable without giving the player repetitive strain injury. It also helps if the main damage skill is something big and slow, e.g. Flameblast, so that you don't need to worry too much about the enemy becoming resistant to follow-up strikes.

Not true. It's only efficient if you self cast.

Using a totem will sometimes leave you hitting at least one target more than once, making EE reduce your possible damage.

Using minions isn't an option. This only applies to your attacks, not those of your minions.

Tempest Shield would only have a chance to deal damage, and that's if you block.

Trigger Gems are even worse. CWS only has a chance if you're stunned and CWS can have much better spells to cast for you.