Discontinued
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This guide has been discontinued due to the death of damage avoidance.
Last edited by Natharias on Feb 6, 2015, 2:42:20 PM
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Starting A Character
When you create a character, there are four ways that you can determine what they will be and how to make them.
1. Main Skill Gem 2. Keystone(s) 3. Unique(s) 4. Ad lib (as you go) If you ad lib, your character will be extremely weak and poorly built. By the time you get to the end of Merciless, your character will have a very hard time surviving and may have a hard time dealing damage. As a general rule of thumb, you must always plan out your characters. Never plan your character's build for more than 100 points, as this translates into a level 80 character. This can be fairly hard to achieve with your first character. Try to plan your build for no more than 90 points, translating into a level 70 character. This is much easier to achieve and you will have that accomplished feeling sooner.
Build Basics
If you can't survive, you can't deal damage. Survivability comes first in this game, and should be the first you obtain with your passive skill tree. Damage can come after survivability, and should only come after it.
The first thing you must decide is if you are a life-based or energy shield-based character. It is very challenging to play a hybrid life/ES-based character and only experienced players should attempt one.
Life
Life is the easiest hit point type to use in this game. Status effects (stunned, chilled, frozen, and shocked), are all based on the amount of damage dealt compared to life. So higher hit points means that status effects have a shorter duration on you and have a lower chance to occur.
The pros of life: 1. Life is easy to obtain on all gear, regardless of defense type. 2. Life can allow high armor, evasion, or the stacking of energy shield as well for even more hit points. 3. Life can be restored naturally through four means: regeneration, leech, gain on hit, and flasks. The cons of life: 1. Life is hard to obtain in large quantity. Life will always have fewer hit points compared to energy shield. 2. Using life as your main hit point prevents you from reserving auras on life.
Energy Shield
Energy shield is the hardest hit point type to use in this game. This is because energy shield is a defense type and can only spawn on certain types of gear. This gear is always intelligence based, and can limit your socket choices.
After a 6 second delay, you will regenerate 33% of your energy shield per second. From zero energy shield, it takes a full 9 seconds to fully regenerate your ES. The pros of ES: 1. Energy shield can obtain the highest hit point pools in the game. It is easier to get 5,000 energy shield than it is to get 3,000 life. 2. Energy shield allows you to reserve life to run auras, but to do this you must avoid Chaos Inoculation. 3. If ES builds use Chaos Inoculation, they are immune to chaos damage but cannot reserve life to run auras. The cons of ES: 1. Energy shield is a defense type, so you cannot obtain as much armor and evasion as a life based build. 2. Energy shield only spawns on gear that is intelligence oriented. This means that sockets will tend to be blue and this limits gem selection. 3. Energy shield cannot be leeched unless you have the Ghost Reaver keystone. This converts all life leech to energy shield leech. 4. No flasks can currently restore energy shield, but the effects of flasks can still have an effect. 5. Energy shield cannot benefit from Life Gain on Hit, as this only gives you life, not ES. 6. Energy shield can only be regenerated if you have the Zealot's Oath keystone. This converts all life regeneration to energy shield regeneration.
Minimum Survivability Requirements
You can't deal damage if you're dead. Make sure you are capable of surviving before you get any damage.
Hit Points: You should have no less than 150% increased life or energy shield from your passive skill tree. This is the first and most important attribute of your passive skill tree. The only time that your life/ES should be below 150% is if you have at least two of the following: 1. Max block (75%) 2. Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics 3. Mind Over Matter You can also have less than 150% life/ES if you are a true summoner, which means you have allocated all of the minion nodes excluding Minion Instability and Necromantic Aegis. Resistances: There are three sources of resistance: passive points, rolls on gear, and auras. The easiest place to get resistances is in the passive skill tree, especially after the 1.2 update. Almost all of my builds end up with 90% to elemental resistances. Getting more resistances from your passive skill tree means less you require on gear, and that means you can focus on other rolls on gear like life, sockets, attributes, and so forth. It is better to get resistances in the passive skill tree and use the gear you need, rather than getting resistances on gear and trying to make up for it in the passive skill tree. Build Enablers: The next thing you want to look at in your passive skill tree are your build enabling keystones. These are purely based on your build. Keystones always require passive node investment and most have a drawback. None, however, are game changing or breaking and overpowered. This is purely based on the build as to how powerful they are. Damage: This is the absolute last thing you want to get in your passive skill tree. It's easy to level from level 1-60 getting your life, resistances, and build enablers, but harder to level from 61+. Plan your damage for later and just get as much as you can. You can't deal damage if you're dead.
Build Enabling Uniques
There are many useless uniques and many fun uniques. The example I'll be using is a personal favorite, Ungil's Gauche.
While dual wielding any weapons, you have a base chance to block of 15%. Each Ungil's Gauche gives you an additional 20% chance to block. This makes your chance to block 55%. Although that isn't max block, you can easily obtain the missing 20% at the bottom part of the passive skill tree for only six points. So two of these items and only a few passive nodes can give you the greatest defense in the entire game. Many uniques are like this, and offer strange and different play styles that can be very fun. The reason why I like Ungil's Guache is that it can also work for a Cast on Crit build. Since a CoC build requires more than half of your points into critical strikes, this allows you to get away with it without taking much survivability from you. The most commonly known build enabling unique is Shavronne's Wrappings. It allows you to play a low life build by preventing chaos damage from bypassing your energy shield. Another thing you must consider is your main skill gem. This is not like Diablo II where you could use multiple skills. This game rewards the ability to use a single skill very well while using other utility skills. Your main attack should do all of your damage, and is best augmented by curses and auras. Your utility gems will deal little to no damage and will only allow certain play styles.
Refining a Build (WIP)
You may have already done some research and have been pointed to other builds, guides, compendiums, and other sources of information.
You may also have noticed that all of them claim to be the best build, to be cheap, to be "noob friendly". Note that many of these builds have various "problems", that are based on preference. Even though many experts may agree that one build is best built by one person, there may be a better version for you. It's up to you to find a build and tweak it as desired. These changes can be in one of many ways. The most common will be the gems used, then the passive skill tree, and finally gear.
How to Select Gems
There is a sizable selection of gems available for players to use. The most common place that gems may vary are in "proc" setups.
Proc Gems: Which Do I Use?
Proc gems are generally used for one purpose. They help prevent damage and provide support for your character.
For instance, a character with lower survivability would use Enduring Cry and Arctic Armor to provide defense. Additionally, they could use Rejuvenation Totem to provide life regeneration after taking damage. Another example is a build that is ranged but does not use projectiles that travel. By this I mean Fireball and Arctic Breath, as they must traverse space in order to get to the target. Firestorm has projectiles, but is cast on the area and comes down on the area. This is where a setup with Frost Wall and Increased Duration would provide a good defense, as it would block all other projectiles that would normally damage you. This effectively makes all ranged enemies deal zero damage while the Frost Wall is up. I will cover proc gems and how to use them in detail in the "Support Skill Gems: Explained" section.
Main Skill Gem
Another thing that you can change is the main skill gem, but this cannot always be done.
An instance of when this could be readily changed is with most melee builds. Instead of using Dual Strike, you can easily swap it out with Cleave or Cyclone. It is likely the supports will still be useful, or you may need to change some of the supports. An instance of different supports would be if you switched from Fireball to Firestorm. Fireball would benefit from Lesser Multiple Projectiles and Greater Multiple Projectiles, but Firestorm wouldn't. Firestorm is based on duration, so an Increased Duration gem would benefit it much more. One gem you would keep would be Fire Penetration, as it applies to both Fireball and Firestorm equally.
Passive Skill Tree: How to Select and Change a Build
Many builds out there explain that you can start with different characters with only a few differences.
For the most part, some builds will remain relatively the same without much difference between character classes. Some will have drastic differences. A good example of a build that won't change much between classes would be a summoner. You'll always allocate mostly minion nodes, and that leaves little room for variation. A good example of a build that can change a lot is a Righteous Fire build. A Marauder would focus more on raw life and regeneration, while a Scion would have much easier access to increased aura effect. The Marauder would have no problem obtaining enough life regeneration, but the Scion needs slightly less since she would benefit more from her required auras. Both builds will achieve the same thing, but with different methods. The Marauder would probably get 5% increased maximum fire resistance from Purity of Fire, while the Scion could get up to 8% with gear and passive nodes.
Gear
This is probably the hardest to change.
Builds that require unique items cannot exchange that item with any other, as the unique is usually considered a "build enabler", which makes the build playable. Removing the item usually makes the build unplayable. For instance, Romira's Banquet gives you a power charge for each non-critical strike, but removes all power charges upon scoring a critical strike. Resolute Technique removes your critical strike chance. Cold Snap has a four second cooldown that can be ignored by consuming a power charge. Romira's Banquet and Resolute Technique can allow you to self-cast Cold Snap at will without worrying about the cooldown. The advantage of such a build is a high damage cold spell with a high freeze chance. Cold Snap also greatly increases the duration of freeze and chill on all effected enemies. Rare items are extremely easy to replace, provided that you obtain the same attributes that are required for the item. If you are playing an Elemental Buzzsaw build, you will always want a weapon with elemental damage and attack speed rolls. The variation would be if you also get crit chance on the weapon or if you prefer to get resistances on your weapon.
Keystones
In here I'll be going over all of the keystones and what they are commonly used for. Keep in mind that keystones only offer a different style of play and are purely based on preference. No keystone makes you all powerful or makes the game easier. There are a few exceptions that only enable things that are normally impossible, but still require passive node investment. Since you only have so many points, the keystones still have a drawback of taking passive skill points.
Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics
Acrobatics reduces your armor and energy shield with a "less" modifier, meaning that it is multiplicatively reducing your armor and energy shield. Although this seems like a painful drawback, Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics give you a 40% combined chance to dodge non-spells and a 30% chance to dodge spells.
Phase Acrobatics does not help against ground effects like burning ground or poison clouds. In my opinion, Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics are best used in conjunction with max block, as each defense type must be checked separately. Having high evasion and using the Blind support gem can further increase your chance to avoid damage, especially from attacks.
Ancestral Bond
This keystone prevents you from dealing any damage, but does not prevent any on-hit effects. For instance, if you attack an enemy with an attack that would give you life on hit, you will still gain the life from the hit.
It is important to note that this only prevents you from dealing damage. This does not prevent your traps, mines, minions, and totems from dealing damage. They are not "you", so they are not affected by this keystone. Since you do not deal damage directly, you do not take any damage from reflect. On the same token, you cannot leech damage to restore life, mana, or energy shield.
Avatar of Fire
Avatar of Fire converts half of your physical, cold, and lightning damage into fire and prevents you from dealing non-fire damage.
Now, most people will think and say that such a keystone is useless or will reduce their overall DPS. This many be true in most cases, but AoF can actually help. The only way to increase physical damage is through better weapons, support gems, and attack speed. Fire damage can be drastically multiplied through the use of two curses and a support gem: Flammability, Elemental Weakness, and Fire Penetration. I'll explain more in the "Physical Damage versus Elemental Damage" area.
Blood Magic
In my opinion, Blood Magic is a keystone best used for leveling a character. It can be hard to get enough mana regeneration in the lower levels.
However, the main drawback to Blood Magic is that you cannot effectively run auras. Since auras are such an important part of your character, Blood Magic is almost never used for end game builds. The great thing about BM is that it allows you to play the early and mid levels without the hindrance of low mana and low mana regeneration while having a high cost skill. Try not to plan an end game build with Blood Magic unless you specifically plan on not taking advantage of auras.
Chaos Inoculation
This is a good example of a keystone with a huge advantage with a huge disadvantage.
Earlier, I mentioned that an energy shield build that did not take Chaos Inoculation could use their life to reserve additional auras, potentially allowing for up to twice as many auras than a life or CI build could. Chaos Inoculation completely negates chaos damage, but sets your life to a single point. Although you cannot reserve auras with your life, it removes chaos damage and this is a huge part of many enemies, especially some bosses. Chaos Inoculation has a high gear requirement, and it is suggested that you have no less than 3,000 energy shield before allocating Chaos Inoculation.
Conduit
This is a party oriented keystone. The only drawback is that you may not generate your own charges as quickly as you may like.
A good example of this keystone being a huge help is through the use of a unique ring. Romira's Banquet gives you a power charge each time you score a regular hit, but removes all of your power charges when you score a critical hit. Now you might think this is pointless, but it can be abused. Resolute Technique prevents you from scoring a critical hit, which when used with Conduit and Romira's Banquet, you will get a power charge each time you hit. This means you can easily generate power charges for your entire party. If you find yourself generating charges quickly, and are near Conduit, you might want to grab this simply to help benefit your party. There are a few people that really love characters with Conduit.
Eldritch Battery
If you find yourself with low mana and are not relying on energy shield, this is a great way to increase your mana.
Many builds that are life based but require additional mana will allocate EB instead of spending 10+ points to increase their mana. It's also very easy to get energy shield on gear, and therefor easy to get mana by using this. This cannot be used with energy shield based or CI builds as it removes your main, if not only, hit point type. Only use this if you are life based with some extra energy shield you do not need.
Elemental Equilibrium
I strike an enemy with fire damage, they gain +25% fire resistance and lose -50% cold and lightning resistance.
I strike an enemy with fire and cold damage, they gain +25% fire and cold resistance and lose -50% lightning resistance. Elemental Equilibrium raises the resistances of the elemental damage types you strike with, and lowers the resistances to those you didn't hit with. This isn't commonly used and has two well known purposes: 1. Party augmentation. Let's say you are a MF Culler (have high magic find and cull targets, killing them at 10% or less life), you use Frost Nova with Elemental Equilibrium. You will be lowering the damage of any cold-based damage builds in your party, but you will be increasing the damage of fire and lightning-based builds in your party. This is a great way to help party members, as your damage isn't going to be worthwhile. 2. Elemental Hit. This skill isn't used due to its relatively low damage and high mana cost, but Elemental Hit and Elemental Equilibrium go hand in hand most of the time. Since EH's damage type is random, there is a 66% chance that each strike will theoretically gain 50% increased damage while 33% of your strikes will lose 25% of their damage. Multistrike will deal the same damage type, and is not suggested for use with this.
Ghost Reaver and Zealot's Oath
These keystones are the only way to replenish your energy shield without waiting for it to regenerate out of combat.
Zealot's Oath will take your life regeneration and apply it to energy shield. The best form of this is percentage based regeneration as your energy shield is many times higher than life. Ghost Reaver takes your life leech and applies it to energy shield. This is useless without any leech, and does not offer any leech of it's own.
Hex Master and Whispers of Doom
These are very powerful keystones. They lack a drawback but offer the ability to use up to two curses.
Hex Master removes the duration of your curses, making them last forever. This is useful if you need to kite enemies, have long fights, or have more than one curse you need to use. It is best used when you have three unique items allowing you to use up to five curses. Whispers of Doom allows you to use one additional curse. Note that if you cast two curses, the target will have two curses. If someone without Whispers of Doom or unique items, the target will only have one curse. Curses are overridden based on the time they are cast. Newly casted curses will always replace older curses, and targets can only be cursed by one person at any given time. The maximum amount of curses a player can use is five. Three of which are obtained from unique items.
Iron Grip
This is an exception to the general rule that keystones offer something without any drawback other than passive skill points.
Iron Grip applies your strength to ranged attacks. This means non-melee and non-spell damage. This does not increase the damage dealt by Ethereal Knives, even though EK has the "projectile" attribute. EK is a spell.
Unwavering Stance
Unwavering Stance prevents you from being stunned but prevents you from evading attacks. Note this says evade, not dodge. Iron Reflexes applies all evasion rating to armor instead, but does not remove your chance to evade.
If you only allocate Iron Reflexes, you will still have a base 5% chance to evade all attacks and this means the Blind support gem is still usable. If you only allocate Unwavering Stance, you will have no chance to evade but are immune to stun. If you allocate both of these keystones, you will be immune to stun, have no chance to evade, but your evasion will still be converted into armor. If you have any evasion from gear, Unwavering Stance will essentially lower the effectiveness of your armor. It's best to avoid Unwavering Stance unless you either have no evasion from gear or have Iron Reflexes.
Mind Over Matter
It might not seem to have a drawback, but it does.
Mind Over Matter takes 30% of all damage, with the exception of degeneration effects, and removes it from mana before life. If you don't have enough mana to take all 30%, the rest will be taken from life. "Damage gained as mana" will only be applied before the damage is actually applied. So if you have full mana, you gain no mana. If you only have enough mana to take 15%, but would gain 5% of it as mana, then you gain the 5% mana and then it takes 20% of the damage from mana. The only current items that do this are Mindspiral and Ondar's Flight
Minion Instability and Necromantic Aegis
These two keystones are situational to summoners only.
Minion Instability will cause minions to explode upon reaching 35% or less life, dealing 33% of their life as fire damage in an area around them. If your zombies are durable and don't explode, then Minion Instability is great for skeletons, as it offers a great way to increase AOE damage. If zombies do die to MI, then it is best not to allocate it as your minions must first act as a shield wall for you. Necromantic Aegis is the best way to increase the survivability of your minions, as it applies the attributes of your shield to your minions but prevents you from gaining anything from your shield. If you are having trouble surviving while your minions are alive, then it's best to avoid this. If you are having trouble surviving because your minions are dead, then it's best to get this.
Ondar's Guile
This is another keystone who's only drawback is passive node investment.
This doubles your evasion chance against non-spell projectiles. If you have 2,000 evasion with a 32% chance to evade, your evasion chance against projectiles will by 64%.
Pain Attunement
Another keystone who's only drawback is passive node investment.
This only applies if you have 35% or less life. This uses a "more" modifier, multiplying other modifiers. It gives 30% more spell damage.
Point Blank
This keystone offers up to 50% more damage to targets up close.
You gain 50% more damage to targets up to 10 points away. You deal 50% more down to 0% more to targets between 10-35 points away. You deal 0% more to 100% less to targets 35-120 points away. This applies to projectile attacks, not projectile spells. Freezing Pulse and Ethereal Knives are projectile Spells.
Resolute Technique
This keystone removes all chance to crit but guarantees your chance to hit.
If you must get those hits and rely on leech, Life Gain on Hit, and other "on hit" effects, Resolute Technique is a near must-have. This frees up countless passive skill points for life and damage instead of accuracy and makes the accuracy rolls on items useless.
Vaal Pact
This keystone does not give you any amount of leech!
This keystone reduces the amount that you leech by 60% This keystone makes your leech apply instantly. This keystone is only useful if you need to restore life faster than leech is applied to your life/ES. Leech is applied to your life/ES at a rate of 20% of your maximum life/ES per second. This can only be changed by a quality Life Leech gem or this keystone. The only time you want to grab this keystone is if you deal too much damage too quickly and need to leech faster. This keystone is commonly used to counteract reflect from enemies.
Important Passive Nodes
There are a number of important passive nodes that everyone needs to be aware of. Some nodes are obvious and some may seem useless. Just keep in mind that many things are not as they may seem.
If you have any trouble finding these nodes, there is a search box on the web-based version of the Passive Skill Tree. Nodes that meet the search box will be highlighted in yellow, and may appear as small yellow dots on the edge of your screen.
Keystones
Keystones are the most noticeable nodes in the game. They are very large and have elegant designs.
Keystones are known as "game changers". No, not because they are powerful. This is because they offer a different play style or enable builds.
Notables
These nodes are slightly larger and more powerful than regular nodes.
Notables are almost always worth the investment, especially the attribute versions. These nodes never have drawbacks and usually offer huge rewards. Notables are also a great way to tell if a circle of nodes will benefit you, as they commonly mirror the same nodes that lead up to them. 1. First and foremost is the Alchemist notable. This circle gives 30% increased flask effect and 12% increased flask duration. This is worthwhile to all builds, whether you use life/mana flasks, movement speed, resistances, and so forth. This is most important if you use resistance flasks, as you gain 3% additional maximum resistance. 2. The Barbarism, Survivalist, and Unnatural Calm notables. These are the only passive nodes that increase your maximum resistances. Although it is only 1% and spread out, these nodes are very valuable. 3. Inner Force and Athleticism. Together these offer 26% increased effect of buffs. This is especially powerful if you play in groups with multiple auras. The only known drawback is that it increases the damage you take from Righteous Fire and the mana drain of Arctic Armor, but it is also the only way to increase the effectiveness of Arctic Armor. I almost always grab these nodes unless using Righteous Fire. I especially grab them if using Arctic Armor, and just use gear to compensate for the mana drain. 4. Resistance nodes. Due to the 1.2 update, resistances are slightly easier to get in the passive skill tree. These nodes make gearing much easier. 5. "Multi-function" nodes. The single best example is the Sentinel notable south of the Scion start. It gives 24% increased armor and evasion, and then tops that hybrid modifier with +10% to elemental resistances. The amount of armor/evasion increase is about four points in and of itself, and then another point for the elemental resistances. There are many other nodes like this in the passive skill tree. 6. Attribute notables. These nodes offer +30 to a single attribute and are must-haves. It is common for +30 nodes to do much more than a 6% or 8% increase node. For instance, a +30 strength node adds 15 base life, which makes all of your previous % increased life nodes much better. 7. Charge nodes. These nodes increase the maximum amount of Endurance, Frenzy, and Power charges your character can have. This is also the most effective way to increase your maximum charges. Unique items can offer additional charges, but may not be the most useful item for you to use. 8. Reduced Mana Reservation. These nodes allow you to use more auras by making auras reserve less mana/life. If you have any trouble finding nodes, use the search function in the passive skill tree. Also make sure to use this function when making your build as it will help you make better passive choices.
Basic Gem Information
All gems are oriented towards an attribute, and attributes are represented by a color.
Strength: Red. They are usually oriented towards fire or melee. Dexterity: Green. They are usually oriented towards cold or mobility. Intelligence: Blue. They are usually oriented towards lightning, critical strikes, curses, or minions. Gems also have an attribute requirement based on their color, but some have a requirement in two attributes. Gems that require only their core attribute will need 151 points at level 20. Gems that require two different attributes will need 95 in their color's attribute, and 66 in their secondary attribute at level 20.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE
Not leveling a gem because you lack the attributes for it shows the sign of a weak build. Spend the few points in your passive skill tree to fix this.
In order for a build to be successful, it will need at least 151 strength, dexterity, and intelligence to run any skill at maximum level. Very few builds do not use gems of certain attribute requirements and there is no reason not to use gems of each type. However, it is acceptable to leave a few gems at a lower level. Cast When Damage Taken is a prime example. CWDT will proc supported spells much more often at level one than it will at level ten. A strong build will always take advantage of gems in other attributes. For instance, if you plan on playing a build that uses Fireball, you will require the Fire Penetration and Greater Multiple Projectiles gems. Fire Penetration is red, GMP is green, and both require only their attribute. This means you'll need at least 151 strength, dexterity, and intelligence for all three gems to be used fully.
Why Won't My Support Gem Apply To My Active Skill Gem?
Check the keywords on the top of the gem. This won't be in the tooltip, you must mouse over the actual skill gem.
For example, Fireball has "Fire", "Projectile", "Spell", and "AoE". This means that any supports that have those keywords will apply to it. The two we shall use are Fire Penetration and Greater Multiple Projectiles. Both of these support gems will apply to Fireball. However, Greater Multiple Projectiles won't apply to Firestorm, while Fire Penetration will. This is because Firestorm has "Fire", "Spell", "AoE", and "Duration". It cannot be supported by projectiles. Another example of confusion is Detonate Dead. Detonate Dead has "Fire", "Cast", and "AoE", but does not have "Spell". This means that increased fire damage nodes in your passive skill tree will increase it's power, but increased spell damage won't.
Damage Types: Why Won't My Damage Increase My Skill's Damage?
There are four sources of damage:
Attack: This means the damage dealt is done directly through an attack. Spell: This means the damage dealt is done directly through a spell. Degeneration: This means the damage dealt is done indirectly through an effect of a skill. Things like Puncture, Viper Strike, and Fire Trap have degeneration sources of damage. This is also the case with Searing Bond. It benefits from fire increases, but not spell increases. Secondary: Damage dealt is a byproduct of something you've done. For instance, Shockwave only creates a totem. The totem then casts a shockwave. This means the shockwave is secondary and therefor cannot benefit from your bonuses. Last edited by Natharias on Aug 30, 2014, 1:13:42 PM
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Note: Many skills will be abbreviated.
LMP will refer to Lesser Multiple Projectiles, and GMP Greater Multiple Projectiles. AA means Arctic Armor, and so forth. If you do not know what "DD" means, just look at the spoilers until you see a skill that starts with those letters. This would refer to "Detonate Dead".
Active Skill Gems: Explained
Strength Active Skill Gems
Animate Guardian
Animate Guardian is a spell that takes any identified items on the ground and consumes it for the Guardian to use. The Guardian will remain with you through weapon switching, log outs, and zone changes. It can only be lost through death.
Animating a new item will apply it to the minion and restore 25% of it's total life. It is possible to use magical gear to make a much stronger minion, and is much like Iron Golem from Diablo II. So if you play a summoner, try to keep extra rare gear to use for Animate Guardian instead of selling it to a vendor.
Cleave
Cleave is a melee attack that swings with one or both of your weapons in an arc in front of you.
Note that if you use a two-handed weapon or a weapon and a shield, you only deal 80% of your base damage. If you use two weapons, you deal 60% of 80% of your base damage from both weapons.
Decoy Totem
Decoy Totem is the most useless gem in the game.
The only purpose of this gem is to draw enemy attention and it only does so about every second. Rejuvenation Totem still manages to attract enemy attention but gives you considerable life regeneration. I never considered using this gem. I doubt I ever will.
Devouring Totem
Devouring Totem is a wonderful option if you need to restore life and mana while disposing of bodies.
This is a great way to prevent necromancers from raising corpses.
Dominating Blow
Dominating Blow strikes a target. If you kill the target, or if the target is killed within about half a second of you striking it, it will resurrect for a short period of time as your minion.
Minions created from Dominating Blow still have the properties they did as an enemy, so it is possible to get the beneficial auras from certain rares through this method. Supports that apply to Dominating Blow may also apply to your Minions. The physical damage increase that applies to minions also applies to your attack, even though it won't say so.
Enduring Cry
Enduring Cry grants you Endurance Charges based on the amount of nearby enemies.
It also states that it "taunts all nearby enemies to attack the caster", even though the aggro doesn't last long enough for them to do so. This is also the most efficient way to generate Endurance Charges.
Flame Totem
Flame Totem is a totem that shoots out rapid jets of flame.
Glacial Hammer
Glacial Hammer is a useful skill for melee builds. It converts half of your physical damage into cold damage, allowing you to easily chill or freeze enemies.
Another great attribute of this skill is the fact that it essentially culls targets, provided that they are hit while frozen and have 33% or less life. If a target is frozen with 33% or less life and you hit them again, they die instantly.
Ground Slam
Ground Slam slams the ground with your staff or mace and has a greater chance to stun enemies with it's built in reduced enemy stun threshold.
Heavy Strike
Heavy Strike will always knockback on hit and has a built in reduction to enemy stun threshold.
This skill isn't very useful unless used with Melee Splash and for the purpose of keeping enemies away from you. Melee usually doesn't want to keep enemies away.
Immortal Call
Immortal Call consumes Endurance Charges and makes you immune to all physical damage for a short period of time.
It is possible to obtain 10+ seconds of physical immunity repeatedly, and make your character essentially immune to physical damage.
Infernal Blow
Infernal Blow is a very good melee skill. It converts half of your physical damage into fire, but has a built in Detonate Dead effect. Anything that is killed or dies soon after being hit by this explodes, dealing 25% of it's maximum life as fire damage.
It is possible to explode whole mobs in only a few shots with this skill.
Leap Slam
Leap Slam is considered mostly a mobility skill. It isn't efficient to use as a main attack as the time to travel is based on attack speed instead of distance. This can make Leap Slam slow and weak against close targets but more useful against distant targets.
If you use this only for mobility, always try to aim as far away as possible while holding Shift.
Lightning Strike
Lightning Strike is a great "ranged melee" skill. The strike itself will create three lightning projectiles, regardless of if you hit a target.
This skill is great for melee builds that want to keep distance between itself and some tougher enemies, while still being able to melee with other enemies.
Molten Shell
Molten Shell casts a buff on you that confers armor and will detonate after you take a certain amount of damage. This includes mitigated damage, so you may notice only 200 life as damage when you really took 500 damage, with 300 mitigated.
Molten Strike
Molten Strike causes molten balls of magma to erupt from your weapon. The projectiles deal area damage while the melee strike remains single target.
Point Blank will benefit the projectiles created by this attack.
Punishment
Punishment is a curse that causes enemies to reflect physical damage back to themselves.
Note that players are registered as "normal" enemies, so they reflect back the largest amount from the curse.
Rejuvenation Totem
Rejuvenation Totem is a personal favorite and the most powerful totem in the game. If you need life regeneration, this totem provides a huge amount of it.
The life regeneration is also increased by aura effect and effect of buffs, so it is possible to get 78% increased aura effect and 24% increased effect of buffs, for a total increase of 102%. At level twenty, that's 226.644 life regeneration.
Searing Bond
Searing Bond is a powerful "leveling" skill, but is weak for most end game content. This is because it cannot penetrate resistance and requires curses to be effective against enemies that are resistant to fire.
Beams will not stack on top of each other to increase damage. This means it is best to use a different totem if you can summon two or more totems, as the beams will be shared between you and all of your totems.
Shield Charge
Shield Charge is a relatively useless skill. In order to maximize its effectiveness, you must use this skill from a distance. Since you attack from a distance, enemies are highly likely not to be there and this wastes your time.
This skill is only useful as a mobility skill, and it doesn't excel at it. Whirling Blades moves you faster, and Lightning Warp and Leap Slam can traverse impassible terrain while this can't. Even though it states you always stun the target in the description, you must use it from a distance of 20 in order to obtain the stun.
Shockwave Totem
Shockwave Totem is a totem that sends out a shockwave periodically. This shockwave deals physical damage and knocks back enemies.
This totem is especially useful for keeping melee enemies away. Your spell damage increases will not increase the damage this totem deals, while totem damage nodes will.
Sweep
Sweep is a melee skill that swings your staff or two-handed mace or axe in a circle around you.
Although this skill has a built in AOE, it is not commonly used and is considered fairly weak.
Warlord's Mark
Warlord's Mark is a curse that grants life and mana leech, a chance to gain an Endurance Charge when you slay an enemy, and 100% increased flask charges from the slain enemy.
Dexterity Active Skill Gems
Animate Weapon
Animate Weapon consumes an identified item on the ground as a minion.
You cannot animate ranged weapons, so you cannot use this on wands or bows.
Arctic Armor
Arctic Armor is one of the most powerful skills in the game.
The Voidbearers that shoot jets of flame at a rapid rate deal no damage if you use a high level Arctic Armor. This is because their damage is low but their rate of damage is high. It is important to note that there is no efficient way to support Arctic Armor. Reduced Mana reduced mana cost, not drain. The only way to increase the effectiveness of Arctic Armor is through the Inner Force and Holy Strength nodes in the passive skill tree. This also increases the mana drain, however. If you use Mind Over Matter, you should use this skill.
Barrage
Barrage initiates an attack with a bow or wand that fires four projectiles in a small cone in front of you.
Since this skill already has a good number of projectiles, it is not wise to use LMP or GMP, but is wise to use Fork or Chain.
Bear Trap
Bear Trap is a trap that deals a considerable amount of physical damage and has a damage effectiveness of 150%. This means Added Damage gems will be 50% more effective.
Enemies are held in place based on the amount of physical damage dealt. There are three ways to increase the physical damage of this skill. First is through helping Oak in Cruel difficulty, second is through certain global attributes on unique items, and quality on the gem itself.
Blood Rage
Blood Rage places a buff on you that causes percentage based chaos degeneration.
The chaos damage can be mitigated, or increased by, chaos resistance. It can also be totally negated by using Chaos Inoculation. This is a good way to generate Frenzy charges if you can kill enemies and deal with the degeneration. Low life refers to having 35% or less life. This does not apply if you have Chaos Inoculation, since your life is 1 and 1/1 is 100%.
Burning Arrow
Burning Arrow fires a projectile that deals increased physical damage and adds some of your physical damage as fire damage.
Cyclone
Cyclone can be a high mana cost skill or a low mana cost skill.
The mana cost is set, but the rate of consumption is based on you. If you click close to your character, you will consume X mana just to travel that short distance. However, if you click to the edge of the screen, you will consume the exact same amount of mana but travel a much greater distance. Do not use Multistrike with this skill. It can get you killed due to various reasons.
Desecrate
Desecrate is mainly a utility skill for other skills.
It will create three corpses that are either limited to the level of the area you are in or the level of your gem. If you have a Desecrate that can create corpses of level 22, but are in a level 33 area, the corpses will be 22. If you are in a 50 area but it creates corpses of level 99, the corpses will be level 50. The chaos damage it deals is insignificant and relatively useless.
Detonate Dead
Detonate Dead was a somewhat useless skill before the addition of Desecrate. This is because you require corpses to use this, and that means you had to deal damage to kill enemies.
However, with Desecrate, you are able to create corpses wherever you need and deal great damage. This skill deals a huge amount of up front damage, and does not need to be leveled. Leveling this gem only increases its mana cost and gives you a tiny amount of physical damage.
Double Strike
Double Strike strikes an enemy with a single weapon, twice.
Since this skill hits twice, "on hit" effects will apply twice.
Dual Strike
Dual Strike strikes a single target with both weapons simultaneously.
Since you are striking twice, "on hit" effects will apply twice.
Elemental Hit
Elemental Hit is a high mana cost skill with low damage potential. In theory, this skill is best used with Elemental Equilibrium to maximize its effectiveness. However, this means that 66% of attacks will gain the -50% enemy resistance while the other 33% will receive the +25% resistance.
This skill isn't commonly used due to adding base damage, not increased damage, and the high mana cost.
Ethereal Knives
Ethereal Knives is a very powerful spell. It deals physical damage, so things like Hatred and Added Fire Damage will drastically increase its damage potential.
Only one projectile can ever hit a single target. Only Forked or Chained projectiles can hit a target in the same cast.
Explosive Arrow
Explosive Arrow fires an arrow that has a secondary effect.
Since the effect is not part of bow, Quill Rain's "50% less damage" won't apply. However, projectile damage increases and decreases will apply.
Fire Trap
Fire Trap throws a trap that deals initial fire damage and leaves a temporary fire DoT when triggered.
The only way to change the damage of the DoT is through Multiple Traps or Increased Burning Damage.
Flicker Strike
Flicker Strike teleports you to a targeted enemy and strikes them.
If no target is selected, it will select a random nearby enemy. Frenzy charges grant additional attack speed separate from their inherent bonus.
Freeze Mine
Freeze Mine sets down a mine that deals cold damage when detonated. It is important to note that the mine freezes as though it has dealt more damage, and that frozen enemies lose 15% cold resistance.
Frenzy
Frenzy is an attack that can generate up to one Frenzy charge with each attack, and gains increased physical damage and attack speed for each Frenzy Charge you have.
It is possible to deal more damage with this skill than any other attack if you have maximum Frenzy charges.
Ice Shot
Ice Shot fires an arrow that explodes in a cone when it hits an enemy. It leaves ice on the ground which chills enemies.
Lightning Arrow
Lightning Arrow fires an arrow that will strike an enemy with a bolt of lightning.
Each bolt of lightning will hit up to three additional targets, allowing a single projectile to damage four total targets.
Poison Arrow
Poison Arrow fires an arrow that creates a poison cloud whenever it pierces an enemy or reaches its destination.
Only one poison cloud can affect any enemy at any given time.
Projectile Weakness
Projectile Weakness is a curse that grants projectiles additional chance to pierce, knockback, reduces enemy evasion against projectiles by a less modifier, and increases the damage enemies take by projectiles.
If an enemy has a 0% chance to be pierced and knocked back, a level one curse will make them 40% likely to be pierced and 15% likely to be knocked back.
Puncture
Puncture is an attack that causes enemies to bleed afterwards. If the target stands still, they take a minimal amount of damage, but take a huge amount of damage if they move.
Movement speed has no effect on how much damage a target takes. A target is either moving or standing still. This skill is best used when enemies must constantly chase you, such as knockback or Flicker Strike.
Rain of Arrows
Rain of Arrows fires a volley of arrows that land after a short delay.
According to the wiki, both attack and projectile speed will reduce the animation and time it takes for the arrows to land.
Reave
Reave is an attack that gains a huge AoE bonus with each subsequent attack.
Smoke Mine
Smoke Mine lays a mine that you will teleport to when detonated.
Both your previous and new destinations will leave a cloud of smoke that will temporarily blind enemies while you get a small movement speed bonus.
Spectral Throw
Spectral Throw throws a magical copy of any weapon that hits enemies while it is out.
Provided that you and the enemy in question don't move, each projectile will hit each enemy in it's path at least twice. It is possible for a projectile to hit an enemy more than two times as it reaches the end of its flight and hangs in the air.
Split Arrow
Split Arrow fires multiple projectiles with each attack.
Only one arrow can ever hit each target, unless the projectile was forked or chained from another projectile.
Temporal Chains
Temporal Chains is arguably the best curse in the game.
Many will argue that it can "lower enemy DPS by x%", but this is the least important quality of it. The most important trait of this curse is that it causes all other effects to last twice as long, buy causing them to decay 50% slower. This means that a freeze that should last one second will now last two seconds, and that's a whole second more that they deal no damage.
Viper Strike
Viper Strike strikes an enemy and inflicts a chaos charge on an enemy. Each chaos charge will deal a certain amount of chaos damage per second.
This skill is fun to use, but is not effective to use. With all 162% increased damage from the tree, +5 levels, a level 25 Viper Strike will only deal 1,326.768 chaos damage per charge, for a total of 5,307.072 damage/sec The "minimum" DPS for low end maps is 8,000. This can be achieved without any passive investment, and this skill can't get that with maximum investment.
Whirling Blades
Whirling Blades is a useful mobility skill. It doesn't do very much damage and is limited to one attack per use per enemy.
Attack speed increases the actual movement speed of this skill, making you travel faster. The main advantage of this skill is the ability to quickly leave an area with high attack speed.
Intelligence Active Skill Gems
Arc
Arc is a spell that strikes a certain number of enemies with lightning damage.
This is the only lightning spell with an inherent chance to shock enemies, but this does not necessarily mean that it will shock them. Shock duration is based on damage, so if you deal 10 damage but get the shock, it won't shock them.
Arctic Breath
Arctic Breath casts a projectile that leaves a trail of ice and detonates into a patch of ice.
This skill is particularly useful if you want to slow enemies, as the ice left on the ground chills enemies so long as they stand in it.
Bone Offering
Bone Offering consumes any nearby corpses and gives all of your minions a chance to block attacks and spells.
Cold Snap
Cold Snap is a very powerful cold spell. It has an inherent chance to freeze, increases chill and freeze duration, but deals little damage compared to other spells.
It is possible to use Romira's Banquet and Resolute Technique to bypass the cooldown repeatedly, without having to invest in critical strike chance.
Conductivity
Conductivity is a curse that lowers enemy lightning resistance and gives lightning damage a chance to shock them.
Conversion Trap
Conversion Trap is possibly one of the strongest gems in the game. It will convert any non-unique enemy to your side for the specified duration.
If an enemy has an aura, that aura will apply to you and your allies since they are now considered friendly. This is a powerful skill not just because you can gain benefits from enemies, but you could theoretically benefit from them indefinitely.
Convocation
Convocation is a new skill that teleports your minions to you and gives them some life regeneration for two seconds.
This is useful if you are in a tight situation and require your minions to be by your side immediately.
Critical Weakness
Critical Weakness is a curse that causes enemies to take more damage from critical strikes and gives all attacks and spells damaging them an additional base chance to crit.
Discharge
Discharge is a powerful spell that consumes your Endurance, Frenzy, and Power charges to deal damage based on the amount and type of charges consumed.
Bonuses from charges apply up until you cast the spell, and the last time you benefit from the consumed charges is with Discharge. This means that the cast speed increase from Frenzy charges will apply to the cast of Discharge, and the crit chance increase from Power charges.
Elemental Weakness
Elemental Weakness may seem better than the other elemental curses, but it does not offer the chance to ignite, freeze, or shock enemies.
Enfeeble
Enfeeble is a curse that reduces enemy accuracy, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, and reduces their damage by a less modifier.
If your character is able to use two curses at once, this curse best works with Temporal Chains to reduce enemy DPS drastically.
Fireball
Fireball casts a projectile that will detonate and damage all nearby enemies.
Firestorm
Firestorm is a spell that causes fireballs to barrage a small area for a set period of time.
The duration of the spell can be increased, but there is no way to alter the rate at which fireballs rain down.
Flameblast
Flameblast is a channeled spell.
Each stage of the spell grants 110% more spell damage, and stacks up to 1,100% more spell damage at stage ten. The main disadvantage of this spell is that it requires time to reach higher stages. This means you spend less time leeching and more time taking damage. However, it is possible to avoid this. Bind your left mouse button with "move only", and your right mouse button with "Flameblast". Then hold down your left mouse button to move around, and when you want to cast a Flameblast just click the right mouse button until you see your character start to channel. The moment you want Flameblast to detonate, just let go of the right mouse button. Because you started to move, Flameblast will immediately detonate. Following this method can allow your character to rapidly cast and deal damage to enemies with Flameblast.
Flammability
Flammability is a curse that lowers enemy fire resistance and gives fire damage a chance to ignite targets.
Flesh Offering
Flesh Offering is a spell that consumes nearby corpses and gives your minions increased attack, cast, and movement speed. Note that spectres already have their movement speed capped, so they do not benefit from increased movement speed.
Freezing Pulse
Freezing Pulse is a cold spell that sends out a projectile. Enemies closer to you take full damage while enemies further away take less damage.
Frost Wall
Frost Wall is a spell similar to the Diablo II Bone Wall. It creates a short-lived wall of frost that knocks back enemies and prevents most movement across it.
Projectiles and regular movement are blocked, while things like Cyclone, Leap Slam, and Firestorm can still be used over and through it. This spell is best used in a "proc" setup to prevent ranged attacks from hitting you or to keep melee enemies away. Note that this also stops your projectiles, so Firestorm can be used while Fireball can't.
Frostbite
Frostbite is a curse that reduces enemy cold resistance while giving cold damage a chance to freeze targets.
Glacial Cascade
Glacial Cascade is a spell that causes multiple "circles" of ice to explode in a line in front of you. Due to their being multiple parts of the spell, it is possible to hit each enemy more than once with a single cast.
It is important to note that this spell has a physical damage component, but Hatred and Added Fire Damage won't greatly benefit this spell due to the low amount of physical damage.
Ice Nova
Ice Nova is a spell that sends out a pulse of cold around you.
Although it will damage all enemies within the radius, it deals a very low amount of damage. A level twenty Ice Nova deals up to 253 base damage, while Arctic Breath will deal 701. As you can see, this spell is very weak and does not offer much.
Ice Spear
Ice Speak casts a projectile that will pierce enemies up to a certain distance and then change to a second form.
The first form only has a 100% chance to pierce, and therefor cannot chain or fork. The second form no longer can inherently pierce but has a 600% increased critical strike chance.
Incinerate
Incinerate casts a projectile that always pierces, so it cannot fork or chain.
When used with Greater Multiple Projectiles, Cybil's Paw, and a max block build, this spell can offer the greatest source of DPS and survivability. This is because Cybil's Paw grants life on hit with spells and Incinerate has a very fast cast speed. Add in the four additional projectiles, and you can get up to 35 life per cast. Incinerate also benefits from casting for prolonged periods of time. You can gain up to 300% more spell damage. At stage four, your damage is four times that of normal.
Lightning Trap
Lightning Trap is a skill that throws a trap. When the trap explodes, it deals lightning damage to the enemy that triggered it and sends out lightning projectiles.
Since this skill has so many projectiles already, adding LMP/GMP is not effective and the player should consider Fork or Chain only when trying to increase the number of projectiles.
Lightning Warp
Lightning Warp is a mobility skill.
Lightning Warp only calculates the time it would take the player to walk in a straight line to the targeted location. Even if there are multiple obstacles in the way that would cause you to turn and move around, Lightning Warp will ignore them. Faster Casting and Reduced Duration make this skill much, much better to use as it causes you to actually teleport to the location faster.
Power Siphon
Power Siphon is a unique skill in that it has two built in effects.
First and foremost, any time you hit a target it culls it. This means that if you hit and bring an enemy to 10% or hit them while they have 10% or less life, they immediately die. This ignores energy shield, as it only calculates if they have 10% or less life. Secondly, if this skill culls a target or a target dies shortly after being hit by this skill, the character will gain a power charge and a visible effect will show. Even though other skills like Frenzy can obtain higher DPS, Power Siphon is useful in that it basically comes with two support gems, one of which being a much better version. Power Charge on Crit only gives you a chance on a crit, and this skill guarantees a power charge if you kill an enemy with it.
Raise Spectre
Raise Spectre is a minion skill that raises a ghostly figure from a corpse.
The spectre will have the exact same behavior and offer the same skills it did in life. The only exception is that necromancers cannot raise undead while the mages in Lunaris temple can summon zombies of their own. This means enemies that could cast multiple fireballs will still cast multiple fireballs.
Raise Zombie
Raise Zombie is a minion skill that raises a zombie from a corpse.
Righteous Fire
Righteous Fire is a skill that creates a buff and a debuff on the character. This means that things such as Inner Force will increase the burn damage that you take.
This skill causes you to burn for 90% of your maximum life and 70% of your maximum energy shield while burning enemies within a short range for 50% of your combined hit points. This is mitigated mostly by high fire resistance and high percentage based life regeneration. This skill also provides a huge increase to spell damage by a more modifier, drastically increasing the amount of spell damage dealt.
Shock Nova
Shock Nova is a skill that shocks a nearby circle around you. Enemies that are too close won't take damage.
Spark
Spark is a skill that sends out three projectiles that randomly wander until they either hit an enemy or expire.
Spark is a spell that can shotgun, meaning that more than one projectile can hit the same target. This also means that this skill can cover a great area, but is weak the further away an enemy is for two reasons. First, it will take longer for projectiles to wander and hit the enemy. Second, many projectiles will miss the enemy as they may time out or go down a very different path than desired.
Storm Call
Storm Call is a skill that creates beacons. After a short time lightning will strike each beacon and damage nearby enemies.
Reduced Duration will reduce the time required for lightning to strike the beacons.
Summon Raging Spirit
Summon Raging Spirit summons a fiery skull. These minions are flying, so they can pass over enemies and some terrain. This means that ground effects won't affect them.
These minions also cannot be targeted directly by enemies, but can still take damage from projectiles.
Summon Skeletons
Summon Skeletons is a minion skill that conjures two skeleton soldiers for a short time.
Tempest Shield
Tempest Shield is a personal favorite of mine. This skill offers 4% base block chance and deals lightning damage to any enemy that you successfully block.
Supports that are applied to this skill will apply to the lightning damage. For instance, linking Life Leech and Mana Leech to this is a great way to cause each block to offer some life and mana back. Blind can also be used to possibly blind enemies when you block.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is a powerful curse that causes enemies to not only take increased physical damage, but to take more damage from damage over time effects.
Puncture is a skill that causes a bleeding effect. Bleeding deals a percentage of your physical damage per second, and even more when the target moves, regardless of the rate of movement. Since Puncture's bleed damage is based on its physical attack damage in the strike, Vulnerability increases the damage twice. First in the initial strike and then by increasing the damage taken from the bleed, which was already increased once.
Auras
Auras are skills that reserve mana in order to provide a bonus to both yourself and all nearby allies. The more allies you have near you, the more effective auras become. It is possible to reserve life with auras by using the Blood Magic gem or the unique item Prism Guardian. All auras have the same quality bonus: increased area of effect. This is because auras are meant to augment more than just your character and are oriented towards party play.
Anger
Anger is an aura that adds base fire damage to any attacks of both you and nearby allies.
Clarity
Clarity is a must-have for any character that uses mana. It provides a huge amount of base mana regeneration, which is unique to this aura and cannot be found anywhere else.
Determination
Determination is an aura that increases the amount of armor you have by a more modifier.
Discipline
Discipline is an aura that adds a considerable amount of base energy shield.
Grace
Grace is an aura that provides a considerable amount of base evasion.
Haste
Haste is an aura that grants a considerable amount of increased attack, cast, and movement speed. It may not seem to offer much, but it can be a good way to increase your DPS.
Hatred
Hatred is a very powerful aura. It adds a percentage of your physical damage as cold damage.
Purity of Elements
Purity of Elements is an aura that provides a boost to fire, cold, and lightning resistances.
Purity of Fire
Purity of Fire is an aura that provides fire resistance and increases your maximum fire resistance.
Purity of Ice
Purity of Ice is an aura that provides cold resistance and increases your maximum cold resistance.
Purity of Lightning
Purity of lightning is an aura that provides lightning resistance and increases your maximum lightning resistance.
Vitality
Vitality is an aura that provides a tiny amount of life regeneration.
Because of how little this aura offers, it is only used in a few builds since it does require some investment.
Wrath
Wrath is an aura that adds a base amount of lightning damage.
White Active Skill Gems
Portal
Portal is a white gem that creates a portal.
This is currently the most valuable gem, in my opinion. Sure it takes up a socket, but you can easily leave it in your inventory and equip it when you need it.
Vaal Skill Gems
Vaal skill gems require a certain number of souls (kills) in order to be used. Souls are reset between instances, except when going to town. Souls gained are split between all equipped vaal skill gems. Note: I do not like Vaal gems nor think I ever will. This is because every time I try to use a vaal gem to replace one of my known gems, it lacks. The most common reason is that it simply won't be available unless I have killed a certain number of enemies. The example I'll use is Vaal Detonate Dead. It requires 96 kills in order to use, and I would use it to clear a room of corpses with a single cast to make sure enemies cannot raise or detonate the corpses on me. I found Flesh Offering, Bone Offering, and Detonate Dead to be vastly superior since I can use them always, and at will. Yes, vaal skills are powerful and offer unique powers but I do not consider them to be worth any amount of sockets. However, please keep in mind that your preferences will differ and you may find vaal skills to be to your liking.
Vaal Arc
Vaal Arc is a spell that will chain up to 40 times.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Burning Arrow
Vaal Burning Arrow is an attack that cannot be evaded, has a high chance to ignite, and deals more damage than the regular gem.
It requires 12 souls to use in Normal, 18 in Cruel, and 24 in Merciless.
Vaal Cold Snap
Vaal Cold Snap is a spell that causes a series of Cold Snaps around the caster in a snowflake-like area, freezing enemies while dealing damage.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Cyclone
Vaal Cyclone is an attack that causes you to Cyclone in a set position while drawing in all enemies to you.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Detonate Dead
Vaal Detonate Dead is a casted skill that causes a chain reaction of Detonate Deads.
It requires 48 souls to use in Normal, 72 in Cruel, and 96 in Merciless.
Vaal Discipline
Vaal Discipline is a skill that provides a temporary aura granting a huge amount of energy shield and causes your energy shield to recover despite taking damage.
It requires 24 souls to use in Normal, 36 in Cruel, and 48 in Merciless.
Vaal Double Strike
Vaal Double Strike is an attack that attacks an enemy and conjures a clone of you that will use Double Strike for a short while.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Fireball
Vaal Fireball is a spell that fires 32 fireballs in a spiral.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Glacial Hammer
Vaal Glacial Hammer is an attack that creates a circle of frost that traps enemies inside.
It requires 12 souls to use in Normal, 18 in Cruel, and 24 in Merciless.
Vaal Ground Slam
Vaal Ground Slam is an attack that slams your weapon into the ground to send a shockwave around you that stuns and knocks back all enemies hit. It cannot be evaded.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Haste
Vaal Haste is a skill that provides a temporary aura granting a huge boost to attack, cast, and movement speeds.
An unknown amount of souls is required to use this. Will be added when I find out.
Vaal Ice Nova
Vaal Ice Nova is a spell that sends out an Ice Nova. Each enemy that is hit by an Ice Nova creates an Ice Nova.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Immortal Call
Vaal Immortal Caal is a spell that consumes all Endurance Charges to grant a temporary immunity to death.
You will still take damage, but you cannot drop below one life. It requires 48 souls to use in Normal, 72 in Cruel, and 96 in Merciless.
Vaal Lightning Strike
Vaal Lightning Strike is an attack that causes the struck enemy to shock nearby enemies periodically. It cannot be evaded.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Lightning Warp
Vaal Lightning Warp is a spell that teleports enemies while damaging them twice.
It requires 16 souls to use in Normal, 24 in Cruel, and 32 in Merciless.
Vaal Molten Shell
Vaal Molten Shell is a spell that creates a Molten Shell that remains for the full duration. Every time you are hit, a fiery explosion deals damage to all nearby enemies.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless.
Vaal Power Siphon
Vaal Power Siphon is an attack that fires a single projectile at all nearby enemies. It cannot be evaded and has the properties of the Power Siphon gem.
Even if you kill 30 enemies with this, you can only have your normal maximum Power Charges. It requires 16 souls to use in Normal, 24 in Cruel, and 32 in Merciless.
Vaal Rain of Arrows
Vaal Rain of Arrows is an attack that pins all enemies hit in place. It cannot be evaded.
It requires 16 souls to use in Normal, 24 in Cruel, and 32 in Merciless.
Vaal Reave
Vaal Reave is an attack that repeats multiple times.
This skill does not have a limit to how many Reave stacks you can have, unlike the base Reave skill. It requires 16 souls to use in Normal, 24 in Cruel, and 32 in Merciless
Vaal Spark
Vaal Spark is a spell that sends out 150 sparks in random directions.
It requires 48 souls to use in Normal, 72 in Cruel, and 96 in Merciless.
Vaal Spectral Throw
Vaal Spectral Throw is an attack that sends out a copy of your weapon, hitting enemies in its path. It cannot be evaded.
It requires 8 souls to use in Normal, 12 in Cruel, and 16 in Merciless.
Vaal Storm Call
Vaal Storm Call is a spell that creates a beacon. Lightning will strike enemies near it, and after a short duration a larger lightning strike will hit the beacon.
It requires 8 souls to use in Normal, 12 in Cruel, and 16 in Merciless.
Vaal Summon Skeletons
Vaal Summon Skeletons is a spell that summons a wave of skeletons. The skeleton general will have various skills at their disposal, sometimes offering an aura or even summoning minions of their own.
It requires 32 souls to use in Normal, 48 in Cruel, and 64 in Merciless. Last edited by Natharias on Jun 8, 2014, 10:56:07 PM
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Support gems are gems that augment skill gems.
Support gems can only affect gems with similar tags. For instance, Fire Penetration will apply to Fireball because both gems have the "Fire" tag. Support gems can only affect gems they are linked to.
Support Skill Gems: Explained
Strength Support Gems
Added Fire Damage
Added Fire Damage will apply to any skill gem that deals physical damage.
This is a very powerful support as it adds a percentage of the skill's physical damage as fire damage.
Blood Magic
Blood Magic is a support gem that causes supported active skill gems to cost life instead of mana.
Cold to Fire
Cold to Fire is a support gem that takes your cold damage and converts some of it to fire.
Empower
Empower is a tricky support gem. For some skills like Dual Strike, this support would never be used because the benefit is too small compared to any other support gem. However, other skills like Arc benefit greatly from it because those gems benefit more from increased levels.
At level one this support does nothing but increase the mana cost of your skills. Every level above level one grants all supported active skill gems an additional level.
Endurance Charge on Melee Stun
Endurance Charge on Melee Stun causes all melee skill gems to grant an Endurance Charge when you stun an enemy with that skill.
It also lowers enemy stun threshold to increase the chance of stunning.
Fire Penetration
Fire Penetration is a support that causes any supported skill's fire damage to penetrate some fire resistance.
Increased Burning Damage
Increased Burning Damage is a support that causes any supported skill's burning damage to deal increased damage.
Increased Duration
Increased Duration is a support that causes supported skills to last longer.
It is important to note that this support will only affect the skill, not any secondary effects it causes. For instance, using this with Enduring Cry, it will not increase the duration of Endurance Charges gained by Enduring Cry. The charges are a secondary effect of the skill, and therefor cannot be supported by Increased Duration.
Iron Grip
Iron Grip is a support gem that causes any projectile attacks to benefit from your strength's melee physical damage increase.
Iron Will
Iron Will is a support gem that causes any spells to benefit from your strength's melee physical damage increase.
Item Quantity
Item Quantity is a legacy gem that is no longer offered as a quest reward or obtainable through drops.
This causes any supported skills to grant increased item quantity if they land a killing blow.
Knockback
Knockback is a support gem that grants any supported skills a chance to knockback enemies when hit.
Life Gain on Hit
Life Gain on Hit is a support gem that causes any supported attacks to immediately grant life when you score a hit.
Increasing the amount of attacks you can deal and the rate at which you deal them can greatly increase the effectiveness of this gem. This gem also synergizes well with Life Leech, as this gem offers immediate replenishment while Life Leech offers replenishment over time.
Life Leech
Life Leech is a support that causes you to leech a percentage of your total damage.
Leech restores up to 20% of your maximum life per second, and can only be increased by increasing the quality of the Life Leech gem. Leech can only apply once at any given time and the leech with the highest rate of replenishment will be applied. Leech requires a high amount of damage, a high amount of leech, or a mixture of both in order to be effective.
Melee Damage on Full Life
Melee Damage on Full Life is a build specific support gem. It causes any supported attacks to deal more melee physical damage while you are at full life.
This support should only be used on characters with Chaos Inoculation.
Melee Physical Damage
Melee Physical Damage is a support gem that causes any supported melee attacks to deal more physical damage.
Melee Splash
Melee Splash is a support gem that causes single target melee attacks to deal AoE damage.
Multistrike
Multistrike is a support gem that causes supported attacks to strike three times with more attack speed. It will automatically seek out different targets even if you select it to hit a single monster.
Ranged Attack Totem
Ranged Attack Totem is a support gem that causes any supported skills to be used from a totem. This changes the skill you use to a totem and the totem uses the skill.
For instance, Rain of Arrows will instead summon a totem that attacks with Rain of Arrows.
Reduced Duration
Reduced Duration is a support gem that causes supported skills to expire sooner.
This support is best used with Lightning Warp.
Reduced Mana
Reduced Mana is a required support gem for all characters that reduces the cost of any supported skills.
These are most commonly used for auras and are the only effective support for auras.
Spell Totem
Spell Totem is a support gem that causes any supported spells to create a totem that will cast the supported spell.
For instance, using Fireball + Arc + Spell Totem and casting Fireball will create a totem that only uses Fireball. Casting Arc will create a totem that only uses Arc.
Stun
Stun is a support gem that causes any supported skills to stun enemies more often.
Weapon Elemental Damage
Weapon Elemental Damage is a support gem that causes any supported attacks to deal more elemental damage.
It does not add elemental damage.
Dexterity Support Gems
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Intelligence Support Gems
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Proc Gems: Explained
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SG:E Last edited by Natharias on Jun 27, 2014, 2:38:57 PM
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Bandit Rewards: Which Do I Take?
Before going into what the rewards are, it is most important that you are aware that these rewards can be changed. However, the cost to change these is expensive for new players.
To change your bandit quest reward, you need 20 Orbs of Regret, a specific amulet, and must trade the items with a vendor in the difficulty in which you wish to change. The amulet which you use determines which reward you will gain. Here is a list of the possible rewards and the required item: Oak Reward: Amber Amulet (Strength implicit mod) Kraityn Reward: Jade Amulet (Dexterity implicit mod) Alira Reward: Lapis Amulet (Intelligence implicit mod) Skill Point: Onyx Amulet (All attribute implicit mod) Trading 20 Orbs of Regret and an Amber Amulet with any Normal difficulty vendor will grant you Oak's reward in Normal difficulty.
Oak Rewards
Oak rewards +40 base life in Normal difficulty. If you are a life-based build, this is one of the best bandit rewards.
In Cruel Oak rewards 18% increased physical damage. Note that this only says "increased physical damage", so it applies to any and all physical damage. This is a good way to augment the damage of Bear Trap and Ethereal Knives. In Merciless Oak rewards one Endurance Charge. Builds that use Endurance Charges should always take this reward. If your build uses multiple types of charges, you should consider which charge would benefit you most.
Kraityn Rewards
Kraityn rewards 8% to fire, cold, and lightning resistances in Normal. This is an uncommon reward to take.
In Cruel Kraityn rewards 8% increased attack speed. This is another uncommon reward, and fits into very few builds. In Merciless Kraityn rewards one Frenzy Charge. Builds that use Frenzy Charges should always take this reward. If your build uses multiple types of charges, you should consider which charge would benefit you most.
Alira Rewards
Alira rewards +40 base mana in Normal. Builds that rely on mana, plan to take Mind Over Matter, or run Arctic Armor should heavily consider taking this reward.
In Cruel Alira rewards 4% increased cast speed. This is yet another uncommon reward and is not usually taken. In Merciless Alira rewards one Power Charge. Builds that use Power Charges should always take this reward. If your build uses multiple types of charges, you should consider which charge would benefit you most. Killing all bandits rewards a skill point the next time you talk to Eramir.
Defenses: What Are They and How Do They Work?
I'm going to list these in the order in which they apply, not in order of preference.
Evasion
Evasion is an "entropy" system, so the chance to evade is not totally random.
Evasion is only used against non-spell sources, so melee attacks and physical projectiles. If you evade an attack, you evade all parts of the attack since the attack did not hit. If you use evasion, in any amount, you should heavily consider using the Blind support gem or the Smoke Mine active skill gem. Chance to evade is capped at a minimum of 5% and a maximum of 95%. If you don't evade the attack, your last chance to avoid the entire hit is dodge.
Dodge
Dodge is a "non-entropy" system, and is therefor totally random.
You can have a dodge chance of 50% but dodge ten attacks in a row. However, you can also have 75% dodge and not dodge ten attacks in a row. Dodge can only be obtained from the Acrobatics keystone, Daresso's Defiance, Atziri's Step, and the Darkray Vectors. Dodge is capped at a maximum of 75% If you fail to evade or dodge the attack or spell, you've been hit. This is where "on hit" effects will now apply.
Block
Block can be obtained in one of six ways.
Shields
The most efficient way to obtain block is by equipping a shield. The lowest possible block chance obtained by a shield is 24%, while the highest block chance is obtained by the Crest of Perandus which has 40% chance to block.
Dual Wielding
Dual wielding any two weapons grants a 15% chance to block. Two unique items increase block chance while wielding two weapons.
Prismatic Eclipse offers 10%, so you can get 20% additional block chance when using two of these. Ungil's Gauche offers 20% chance to block, so you can get 40% additional block chance when using two of these.
Two Handed Weapons
The only two-handed weapons that currently offer block chance are staves. They offer either 12% or 18%.
Tempest Shield
Tempest Shield is a buff that grants 4% increased block chance with shields and deals lightning damage to anyone you block.
You must have a shield equipped in order to activate Tempest Shield. Switching weapon sets will cause Tempest Shield to deactivate, even if you have a shield in your alternate weapon set.
Unique Items
Certain unique items grant additional block chance.
For instance, The Anvil grants a "10% chance to block", which is applied regardless if you have a chance to block. It is also the only way to increase your maximum block chance above 75%. Other items, like the Stone of Lazhwar doesn't grant you any actual block chance. Instead, it grants some of your block chance as spell block chance.
Passive Skill Tree
The passive skill tree is a good way to augment your block chance, but requires massive investment without using a lot of the available unique items.
If you failed to evade, dodge, or block the attack or spell, you've taken damage.
Armor
Armor only mitigates physical damage.
"Estimated Physical Damage Reduction" can be found in your character sheet. Note that this says "estimated", as your armor will mitigate different amounts of damage depending on how big the hit is. Endurance Charges grant a "flat" physical damage reduction of 4% per charge. So having the ten maximum Endurance Charges will grant you a 40% reduction in physical damage regardless of how big the hit is.
Resistances
Resistances reduce the amount of elemental or chaos damage taken from all sources.
Resistances are capped at 75%. It is possible to increase your maximum resistances in the Passive Skill Tree, unique items, auras, and flasks.
Physical Damage versus Elemental Damage: Which is better?
Physical Damage
Physical damage is usually done with a weapon. The only non-weapon sources of physical damage are Bear Trap, Ethereal Knives, Glacial Cascade, Shockwave Totem, and Detonate Dead.
Armor and Arctic Armor, besides certain unique items, are the only ways to mitigate physical damage. Armor works better against smaller hits and is less effective against bigger hits. I'll cover armor and other defenses in more detail later on.
Elemental Damage
Elemental damage is almost always dealt through spells but can be dealt with weapons. It can also be obtained from auras and support gems.
Weapons can obtain elemental damage from attribute rolls, the Anger, Hatred, and Wrath auras, and the Added Damage gems. As you can see, it makes sense to almost always go physical if you don't use spells, and spells limit you to non-physical damage unless using Ethereal Knives or Glacial Cascade. The disadvantage of elemental damage is that resistances limit its damage potential to as little as 25%, as resistance cap is at 75%. The advantage is that Penetration gems allow you to penetrate resistance to guarantee damage. If an enemy's resistance can be lowered to or below 0%, penetration begins to multiply your damage. Curses can also lower enemy resistance, possibly lower than 75% or even below 0%. The advantage of physical is that most enemies don't have much armor, so almost all of your damage is always dealt. The disadvantage is that you are either using melee or ranged skills. Melee must always engage all enemies at close range, making you susceptible to all forms of damage. Ranged attacks can be ran away from, and ranged builds that use bows never have the option to use a shield or benefit from dual wielding. It might seem like physical damage is better, but elemental damage has more than just gear options up its sleeve. Status effects are effects caused by dealing a substantial amount of elemental damage. Different damage types have different effects.
Fire: Ignite and Burn
Fire is one of the most impressive. When you ignite an enemy, they burn for 20% of the total damage dealt per second, for 4 seconds.
For this example I'm going to use a Fireball that deals 100-200 damage. Chance to Ignite has a 25% to ignite. Let's say you have Fireball + GMP + Chance to Ignite + Elemental Proliferation. Each fireball would deal 50-100 damage due to the "50% less damage" mod on GMP, but has a 25% chance to ignite targets. You ignite at least one target and they begin to burn for no more than 20 fire damage per second. Sure, you had five fireballs, but enemies can only have one burn active at any time. Now let's say you have Fireball + Concentrated Effect + Chance to Ignite + Elemental Proliferation. The CE has 50% more damage, bringing your damage to 150-300. You have a much lower chance to ignite since your fireball will hit fewer targets, but if one ignites, all enemies will burn for no less than 30 fire damage per second. This is 50% more than the previous example, and can easily burn them for 60 per second, which is three times that.
Cold: Chill and Freeze
Lightning: Shock
Shock used to be the most powerful status effect.
Shock causes a target to take 50% increased damage from all sources. A target may only have one shock stack at any time. They used to be able to have three. The maximum, unmodified shock duration is 9.2 seconds. However, there is one more effect that should be considered:
Stun
Stun is an effect caused by damage in general, and is not specific to any type of damage.
In order to stun, you must deal at least 10% of the target's "effective maximum life". If you deal any less than this, you cannot stun. If you deal 50% or more than the target's effective maximum life, you will always stun it. Stun always lasts 350ms, or 0.35 seconds, regardless of the amount of damage dealt. Another important note about stun is Energy Shield. So long as you have 1 point of Energy Shield, there is a 50% chance to ignore the stun outright.
Leech: How To Get It and How It Works
There are two kinds of leech in this game: Life Leech and Mana Leech.
Life leech can restore up to 20% of your maximum life per second. Mana leech can restore up to 12.5% of your maximum mana per second. Life and mana leech end if it restores you to your maximum potential life or mana. For instance, if you have 95 life available and 5 is reserved for an aura, life leech ends if you reach 95 life. Only one leech of any type can apply at any time. The leech with a higher rate of leech will apply first. Life Leech can be converted to restore energy shield instead of life. This is done with the Ghost Reaver keystone. Leech can be obtained by the Life Leech or Mana Leech support gems, the passive skill tree, or attributes on most equipment. As of update 1.2, Warlord's Mark offers global life and mana leech. This applies to all damage you deal.
Skill Setup: One Skill or More Skills?
If you know Diablo II, you should know that you were expected to have multiple skills of different types to deal different forms of damage. This was because enemies had immunities and considerable defenses.
This is not the case with Path of Exile. In PoE, you will fare much better if you invest into a single skill to maximize its effectiveness. For instance, you'll have a much easier time just using Fireball and maximizing it's power than trying to use Fireball, Arctic Breath, and Arc alternatively. However, there are some builds that cannot rely on a single skill.
How Do I Know When I Need To Use More Than One Skill?
Certain builds require multiple skills for various reasons. I'll use a few examples here.
Note that I am talking about skills you use to attack. This does not include mobility skills, auras, curses, and so on. All builds rely on using multiple skills, but some benefit more from using a single damaging skill while others benefit from using multiple damaging skills.
The Trapper: Using Multiple Skills Always
Trappers are builds that use any skill that comes in the form of a trap or mine.
Traps are skills that throw a trap. The trap can only be triggered when an enemy passes by or over the trap. Mines are skills that are laid at the player's feet and triggered by an alternative key. Traps are also skills that have cooldowns, but mines do not have a cooldown. Because of this, Trappers commonly use two or more skills of different types to employ various types of damage and effects. For instance, a Trapper may use Cold Snap + Trap + Multiple Traps + Elemental Proliferation, Fireball + GMP + Trap + Multiple Traps, and Bear Trap + Added Fire Damage + Culling Strike. This way he can use Cold Snap to freeze enemies, then throw fireball to kill most of the enemies, and then use Bear Trap to stop harder enemies in their tracks. Because he has three different trap skills, he always has something available to damage and affect enemies.
Single Target and AoE Skills
You'll also notice that some builds have one gem setup for a single target and another setup for hitting multiple targets at once.
A good example is a physical build. They might use Cyclone to cut through mobs, but they switch to Frenzy when they come across rares or bosses. This is because Cyclone has a high amount of attacks per second but a lower base and potential damage. Frenzy benefits more for being single target since Frenzy charges augment its damage. Some builds can use their AoE skill against bosses, but some require a different setup.
Cast on Crit: Only Use One Skill Ever
Cast on Crit is a support gem that applies to linked attacks and spells. This means you usually have one attack, LGOH or Life Leech, and spells. Sometimes you augment it with GMP if you use Spectral Throw.
This is an example of a build that would only want to use one skill. This is because it requires a huge amount of links and requires a lot of hits in order to deal damage. The more hits it can get, the more crits it gets. The more crits it gets, the more its spells will proc and be cast by Cast on Crit. Cast on Crit would suffer from using multiple attack setups because it would limit their damage output. As you can see, different builds will have different setups based on necessity. Some will require multiple damaging skills while others would be best using only one.
Auras and Curses: Which Should I Use? Which Benefit My Build More?
The best way to augment your build is through curses and auras. Both of which can drastically increase your survivability and damage output. The first and best way to augment your build is by running at least one aura. Every build can benefit from auras and should run at least one. The only exception are builds that use the Blood Magic keystone, as auras would actually hurt your survivability by consuming your hit points. Auras are meant for party play, since they can buff both you, your nearby friends, and all of your minions. They are also always beneficial to you directly. This means they augment something of your character to make you stronger. Curses are meant to debilitate enemies by making effects on them stronger. Curses can make enemies take more damage, reduce resistances, slow them, make them less likely to hit, and more. It is important to note that some enemies are curse immune.
Auras: Augmenting You and Your Friends
Auras are skills that reserve a specific amount of mana. All auras but Clarity reserve a percentage of your mana. Clarity reserves a raw numerical amount. This means that Clarity is easier to run on larger mana pools while all other auras reserve the same amount regardless of the amount of mana you have.
In here I'll cover auras in detail in what they function best for. Builds can usually run between 2-3 auras without much investment, and up to about 9 with a lot of investment.
Clarity
Clarity is one of the most important auras. This provides the only numerical mana regeneration in the game, so it can provide a huge amount of mana regeneration.
Determination, Grace, and Discipline
These auras provide a huge boost to defenses.
Determination drastically bolsters your armor, so it works best on builds that have a lot of armor and a lot of increased armor. This is because Determination uses a more modifier. Grace and Discipline add numerical amounts of evasion or energy shield. This means that these auras work best on builds that don't have a lot or have a lot of increased evasion/energy shield.
Purity Auras
Purity auras are good at one thing: augmenting resistances. There are four auras.
Purity of Elements augments all three elemental resistances, but does not augment maximum resistance. It also provides a lower amount than the other auras. Purity of Fire, Ice, and Lightning provide a substantial boost to one specific element and increases your maximum resistance in that element. These auras are nice, but they do not provide much more than one attribute on a piece of gear. If you must run one of these auras, try getting some increased aura effect to make them more worthwhile.
Anger, Hatred, and Wrath
These auras add damage to your non-spells.
Hatred is the most commonly used because it synergizes with melee builds and Ethereal Knives. This is because it adds a percentage of your physical damage as cold damage. Anger and Wrath add a numerical amount of damage, so they do not synergize well with previous damage. However, they do synergize very well with attack speed and damage increases of their own.
Vitality
This is one of the weakest auras in the game. Without any investment, it can consume 40% of your mana for only 1.65% life regeneration at level 20.
Even with 94% total increased effect, which is grabbing all applicable bonuses besides the aura effect at the bottom of the skill tree, it can provide no more than 3.201% life regeneration. That's roughly 3 passive skill points for roughly 15% of your mana for only 3 passive skill points. Because of this, this aura is only used in a few builds that require high percentage life regeneration.
Curses: Reducing Enemy Effectiveness
Clear Speed: Why Is It Based On Preference?
Just like everything else in this game, clear speed is based on preference.
Just because one build can one-shot everything and clear maps faster than anything else isn't going to make it the best. Some players want uber-strong characters that are immortal. Others prefer harder play styles that get by on just barebones gear. There are even some players that have gotten by on just magic (blue) gear just to prove it can be done. So knowing this, clear speed rate isn't better or worse.
Example One
Let's say you play a Cast on Crit character. You clear most mobs in only a few hits, and then suddenly you don't crit and one or a few monsters kill you just as fast as you had killed so many others.
The sudden shock of dying so quickly and easily shocks and demoralizes you. Some areas, map mods, and monsters can do this to some builds. Your clear speed just went from fast to dead.
Example Two
You have a summoner that just walks through content. You don't really need to do anything other than move and make sure your minions are all alive. This can get extremely boring for many players, even though it has a very easy and fairly quick clear speed.
In short, you go from entering an instance to slowly walking through it. You almost never die or hit a wall since your minions can destroy everything. As you can see, faster or easier clearing of enemies doesn't necessarily mean it's better for you. You need to find a build you enjoy but that also has a clear speed that you can enjoy. Last edited by Natharias on Aug 30, 2014, 1:22:28 PM
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Here is my current build, and here is my planned build.
My Gear
Tooltip DPS with FP: 1,116.2 Stage 4 DPS with FP: 22,324 Tooltip FC: 1,357.5 Stage 4 DPS with FC: 27,150 If I use Incinerate + GMP + Echo + ALD + ACD + FC: 1,729.2 Stage 4 with ALD/ACD: 34,584
Attributes
2,624 life
263 free mana 375 unused energy shield 75% block chance 53% spell block chance 76% fire resistance 59% / 65% cold resistance 75% lightning resistance -48% / -23% chaos resistance Resolute Technique is taken since I'm trying to chance a Mjolner. That's two wasted points. I tried the Apex of Sacrifice about a week ago with slightly less life and was killed by the Oversouls. Each beam took about 1/3-1/4 of my life, and my block didn't hold up for three beams. So with good rare gloves, boots, helmet, and belt, this build should be able to clear regular Atziri. Last edited by Natharias on Sep 1, 2014, 7:57:26 PM
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