Yeah, losing the ring slot would hurt my resists a good chunk, but my amulet slot is basically doing nothing (Ignomon) right now. I'm working on replacing my boots and belt with tri-res versions, which will at least balance the loss.
The other question is, is Queen worth keeping? And I'm not really sure if Abyssus is pulling weight, and something like Alpha Howl seems like it might be a decent Evasion alternative.
Fair enough. I'm experimenting with Bino's today, but it looks like it already boosts DPS flat out, without taking crit into account.
Side note: I can't remove any of my links from Cyclone without tanking like, 4k or more DPS. Is there a way you guys would put together a Culling+IIR/IIQ to swap in and out? Or is it just not worth it in general?
Fair enough. I'm experimenting with Bino's today, but it looks like it already boosts DPS flat out, without taking crit into account.
Side note: I can't remove any of my links from Cyclone without tanking like, 4k or more DPS. Is there a way you guys would put together a Culling+IIR/IIQ to swap in and out? Or is it just not worth it in general?
A classic approach to extra mf culling is to have a reaper's pursuit with leap slam-IIR-IIQ in the weapon swap.
Just use your regular setup to drop the boss down to below 10% life, the reaper has in built culling so do a quick swap, cull and profit
So many strikes within one breath.
But only one strike needed, for certain death.
In 2.0, cyclone has halved in its mana costs. If there is a way to run a full 6L cyclone on mana then i will most likely drop Soul Taker for a Catalyst. It all dependant on how the build runs with leeching changes. But for now i'll stick with ST.
As for rapier+ST or dual rapiers with fatal blade, thats something i might explore in the future.
With the leeching and enduring cry changes, the Bino and Defiance are now more important than ever.
The aura reservation changes allows us to gain more links to play with. All auras can now fit in the 2x 3L weapons. If the Catalyst is used, then there is another slot again.
Auras used:
Total reservation reduction needed from tree: 12% taken from Charisma
Hatred
HoA prolif
HoI auto curse
total mana reserved: 97%
Chest: GGRRBB
cyclone
MPD
WED
conc eff
phys to light
hypothermia
I'm adding hypothermia instead of added fire because the 39% MORE damage against chilled enemies is too good, it also synergises with Soul Taker and its physical chill effect.
soul taker: GRB
Hatred
Hoa
ele prolif
Bino: BBB
HoI
CoH
AM
Gloves/Boots:
These slots are up to persona taste. Some may choose a cwdt set up, a second cyclone, movement skills, etc. An important consideration is including Fortify in some way.
There are 2 jewel slots plus 1 within 2 nodes.
2.8% life regen to counteract BR.
3x +30 attribute slots to take if lacking in equipment
there are 2x +1 frenzy charges on the tree for 2 nodes each. 4% more damage and 4% as is great but i'm unsure if they're worth 4 nodes.
For a list of Community builds and variations, CLICK HERE
This is a duel wielding build that specialises in dealing massive critical damage at a near-capped critical chance. It offers impressive DPS and clear speed, high mobility and great survivability in mapping. It's great fun in a group and offers fast paced gameplay.
The mobility of Cyclone, massive critical damage, the AoE devastation of Ash, auto-cursing from Thunder, and the anti-reflect properties of Physical to Lightning, creates a character for those who love to mix constant movement with high damage, while being perfectly safe from reflect and physical damage.
Defence is a Armour/Evasion hybrid, with the keystones Acrobatics, Phase Acrobatics and Ondar's Guile. Reflect management involves the P2L gem, spreading out the damage output as a ele/phys hybrid. Physical reflect is negligible, while ele reflect can be dealt with a Topaz flask.
Showcased here are 2 versions of this build:
The Normal Set (Bino's/Snakebite/Soul Taker)
126k dps with full charges
56k dps in town 178k max solo dps
The Advanced Set (Dragon Hunger/Acuity/ Soul Taker)
221k dps with full charges
105k dps in town 316k max solo dps
The builds uses these essential items:
Abyssus
The most powerful helm for crit builds. No other helmet comes close to the pure power of this helm.
The only downside is the 40-50% increased physical damage taken, but this stat is is not as bad as it looks.
Firstly, it is known that the physical damage received is first mitigated by armour. Confirmed here. This means that the 40%-50% increase in damage taken only applies to a fraction of the original damage.
The higher the crit multi (100-150%), the better.
Daresso's Defiance
A powerful chest that when used correctly, has better mitigation than a Lightning Coil.
The important feature to this chest is the generation of Endurance charges. Killing 1 enemy will grant a charge, killing 3 in a row will max them out.
When used with a manual cast Immortal Call, or in my case, a secondary attack linked to a Cast on Crit - Immortal Call, you can easily maintain constant uptime of physical immunity.
See "Secondary Cyclone" in the Notes section for full details on the use of this chest.
Soul Taker
Cyclone's high mana costs, and up to 88% mana reservation, makes this weapon essential to this build. The damage and crit values of this weapon are sub-par, but the utility of it in negating mana costs is excellent. We can class this weapon as a Keystone passive called "Infinite Mana".
Other gear
Bino's Kitchen Knife and Snakebite
A highly effective combination that, when used in this build, allows for near immortality. The main function of the 2 items is the regeneration of life:
The potential of achieving over 6k life regen means this combination of items can be a better life multiplier than Acuity.
This version uses Bino's Kitchen Knife in synergy with Snakebite and Blood Rage.
Advanced Spec:
This is the final build that uses Atziri's Acuity and a mirrored dagger. This is here show the possibilities of the build in its final form.
Notes on Equipment requirements
There is slight difficulty in attaining adequate INT for this build. The minimum required is 117 for the Bino's, up to 151 for Herald of Thunder. I needed to have +77 INT from my equipment to fill the requirement.
If this is too difficult, you can easily drop a node and choose Wisdom of the Glade (+30 INT).
Chest
GRRRBB
Cyclone
Melee Phys
Added Fire
Weapon Elemental Damage
Conc. Effect
Physical to Lightning
Boots
GGGR
Cyclone
Whirling Blades
Cast on Crit
Immortal Call
See "Secondary Cyclone" in the Notes section for the use of this gemset
Soul Taker
RRB
Herald of Ash
Increased burning damage
Elemental Proliferation
Helmet
RG
Reduced Mana
Hatred
2 free slots. I usually run a secondary CwDT (2) - IC (4) to cast IC when hit, the endurance charge generation from Daresso's keeps up
Gloves
RBBB
Herald of Thunder
Curse on Hit
Assassin's Mark
Reduced Mana
See "Auto-cursing" in the notes section for the description of this gemset.
Reduced mana is recommended. Without it, the reservation fits, but the leftover mana isn't enough to cast Blood Rage.
153% increased maximum Life
64 to maximum Life
20% increased Life Recovery from Flasks
5 Life gained on Kill
3.8% of Life Regenerated per Second
2% of Physical Attack Damage Leeched as Life
20% increased Flask Recovery Speed
Mitigation
48% increased Evasion Rating and Armour
30% increased Armour
10% to all Elemental Resistances
2% additional Chance to Block while Dual Wielding
30% Chance to Dodge Attacks. 50% less Armour and Energy Shield, 30% less Chance to Block Spells and Attacks
30% Chance to Dodge Spell Damage
10% additional chance to Dodge Attacks
Damage
140% increased Critical Strike Chance
135% increased Melee Critical Strike Chance
125% increased Weapon Critical Strike Chance while Dual Wielding
50% increased Critical Strike Chance with One Handed Melee Weapons
34% increased Accuracy Rating with One Handed Melee Weapons
20% increased Accuracy Rating
80% increased Physical Damage with One Handed Melee Weapons
68% increased Physical Weapon Damage while Dual Wielding
68% increased Melee Physical Damage
26% increased Physical Damage with Attacks
20% increased Physical Damage
20% increased Elemental Damage
30% increased Attack Speed
15% increased Attack Speed with One Handed Melee Weapons
12% increased Attack Speed while Dual Wielding
4% increased Melee Attack Speed
Other
260 to Dexterity
190 to Strength
60 to Intelligence
12% reduced Mana Reserved
12% increased Radius of Auras
8% chance to Avoid Elemental Status Ailments
6% increased effect of Auras you Cast
2 to Melee Weapon and Unarmed range
5% increased Movement Speed
Cyclone is great for unstoppable mobility, it has a innate stun immunity and the movement itself is fast enough to dodge long range projectiles, and dodge huge telegraphed one-shot hits.
Don't let the tooltip numbers fool you, cyclone has been and still is the fastest clearing melee skill aside from flicker. The fact that you are constantly moving forward means there is no need to stop and wait for multistrike animations to finish.
The Ash AoE overkill effect, boosted by ele prolif and increased burning makes sure you wont need to backtrack to kill that stray that that was outside of your cyclone.
Why Blood Rage?
Blood Rage is our only source of Frenzy Charges, which is necessary for the Snakebite's to operate and in turn, necessary for Bino's.
BR also gives 10% life leech (13% coupled with Enhance)
Secondary Cyclone
This cyclone is part of a 4L that pairs with Daresso's Defiance:
cyclone
whirling blades
cast on crit
immortal call
Mechanics:
Killing an enemy with Daresso's Defiance grants an Endurance Charge.
Killing 3 enemies in a row grants max endurance charges, so charges are maxed almost all the time.
Using this secondary cyclone casts Immortal Call on crit at 68%, so the likely hood of IC proccing is high.
Immortal Call with with 3 endurance charges lasts about 3 secs, easily enough to generate 3 more charges and to proc IC again. IC can be activated almost constantly using this cyclone.
My movement skill (whirling blades) also procs IC.
Auto-cursing
Herald of Thunder
Curse on Hit
Assassin's Mark
This is currently the best way to curse targets without requiring to manually cast the curse. So effective is this setup that power charges are maxed all the time.
If you kill a shocked enemy, lightning comes down striking targets around your vicinity. These lighting bolts are classed as "hits" so they work with the Curse on Hit gem. Every single monster within melee distance will be cursed as a result.
This is especially effective with cyclone as we are constantly moving forward, leaving only death behind, so HoT only curses things in your path.
Reflect
We use the physical to lightning gem for reflect management.
50% of physical damage to converted to lightning, and this "spreading out" of damage allows no one type of damage to dominate and we don't one-shot ourselves.
Approaching reflect groups still require care, and ele reflect is more dangerous than physical, but the use of a single topaz flask is enough to deal with ele reflect.
89% increased maximum Life
3.8% of Life Regenerated per Second
10% to all Elemental Resistances
At this point, no specific weapon nodes are taken and no playstyles are established.
From here its a choice between 2 paths:
- You take Resolute Technique and have more equipment and playstyle choices. Equipping BoR and any 2x 1h weapons is a good option. We can save currency for critical gear and a decent rare dagger (or Bino's).
- Go straight into critical pathing and build DPS, providing you have the equipment to back it up.
One thing to consider is to run Hatred, HoA, and HoT, Charisma is required. You won't be able to collect these nodes until late game. But running just Hatred and HoA and a manual curse is fine until then
At any time, when you're ready to set up the HoT auto-curse, pick the 4 nodes at Charisma
Crit Pathway
Its quite basic, go left and collect the Disembowelling cluster.
Then we systematically right through Ranger then up through to Shadow, collecting all the notables and keystones along the way.
The important ones are Acrobatics, Phase Acrobatics and Ondar's Guile, as well the life nodes.
When we reach the Shadow area, it might be time to start introduce the HoT auto-curse by collecting Charisma first, but this can be done at any time when you're ready
I want to express my opinions regarding to 2.0
In Awakening, Blood Rage grants only 25% chance to get frenzy charge on kill, 2% life leech and 10% AS. And -4% life regen, which increases to 5.6-6% with Abyssus.
Why bother with Snakebite at all, when you can just get Adder's Touch passive and poison enemies regardless of your frenzy charges? Keeping Frenzy Charges at max with just 25% chance to gain one on kill would be impossible due to RNG. Even if you get Blood Dance boots, it will be quite a task to keep max charges.
And since you deal elemental damage mostly, you cant use life leech effectively. It's almost useless stat for you. Well, maybe not totally useless, but ofter it got nerfed so much, it's close to useless state.
Elemental Proliferation now grants 30% less damage. HoA proliferation wont be as strong as before. Maybe, you should consider to remove it?
About sustaining Cyclone... In 2.0, there will be new Claw item base - Gemini Claw, which grants 14 life and 14 mana per hit. IDK for sure, but it could be an alternative to Soul Taker. You should drop HoA for that, probably, to release some reserved mana.
I also think your tree should be somewhat different, then. Something like this -
It grants more evasion, block, AS and dagger crit chance/mutiplier, than yours, along with poison on crit (no need for Snakebite). There are no jewel sockets, though , but you can get up to 5 of them for 2 skillpoints each (though you need really well-rolled jewels for that).
Hi MortalKombat3, thanks for these thoughts, this build has had a constant flow of other people's ideas inject into to it so I'm glad you keep the ball rolling.
Blood Rage grants only 25% chance to get frenzy charge on kill, 2% life leech and 10% AS.
Why bother with Snakebite at all,
Taking Adder's Touch only improves the performance of the dagger and does nothing for the secondary.
I need to test the right number of frenzy charges to take from the tree that can be easily sustained with blood rage. The charge hopefully lasts long enough that 25% can reset the timer before they run out. If not, I'll drop HoA for HoI+ ice bite
About sustaining Cyclone... In 2.0, there will be new Claw item base - Gemini Claw, which grants 14 life and 14 mana per hit.
If i can get away with using cyclone without soul taker i would, i plan to test with things like the claw you mentioned and elreon jewellery, etc.
The reason for the soul taker / bino combo is how easy it is to find these items for sale. Nobody's willing to wait for the right Gemini claw to become available.
Taking Adder's Touch only improves the performance of the dagger and does nothing for the secondary.
But i thought life regeneration, granted by Bino, doesnt stack anyway. Yes, i'm aware, that the bonuses wont apply to secondary weapon, but at least for Soul Taker, that isnt a big issue, since Bino's hits contribute around 2/3 of your DPS, while Soul Taker's - only 1/3. Even if Secondary weapon is close to Bino in terms of DPS, i still think Adder's touch is worth it, as is doesnt depend on any frenzy charges (which is quite handy).
The reason for the soul taker / bino combo is how easy it is to find these items for sale. Nobody's willing to wait for the right Gemini claw to become available.
Yeah, you're right there, but claw with decent rolls will greatly out-perform Soul Taker in terms of DPS, and no, i dont mean perfect gear only...
As far as i know, Ice Bite grants frenzy charge when you kill a frozen enemy with supported skill. Do you really plan to kill enemies with HoI? Its explosion damage is quite pathetic compared to your attack damage, you know... Even with Culling Strike added, i dont think it will be good enough with your attack DPS and crit damage...
Few other thoughts and questions about 2.0:
Rallying Cry. This Warcry grants decent mana regeneration (free Clarity) and a bit of "increased damage" as well. OF course, you got 300+% increased attack damage already, but for HoA burning effect and on-hit poison (which directly converts into life regeneration for you) your "increased damage" is pretty low. I think, it's worth a try, at least.
Also, i noted, that (quality) Cyclone itself now has smaller AoE (+10% instead of +20%), and Concentrated Effect's drawback is now multiplicative.
So, i want to ask, is it really better, that Increased AoE gem? I heard, that AoE increses for Cyclone directly affect clear speed...
I also found, that your build has quite low bonus to evasion, despite being evasion-based (due to acrobatics). Shouldnt you try to get a bit more evasion, if possible?
And if you intend to use Snakebite+Blood Rage anyway, shouldnt you get more %life regen from the tree? You got just 2.8%, while Blood Rage deal 5.6-6% degen, so you'll lose HP over time when out of combat, and that is not cool.
You can also try using Blood Dance boots for Frenzy charges, but they got quite crappy stats (and you already have gloves and helm slot occupied by uniques), and with all that regen from Bino, you dont really need extra 3% life regen...
