[2.1] Dual Apep's Chaos Crit - Stapling Chaos to a Level 1 Spell (Draft Spark Totem tree up)

Some comments from me playing on the beta. Spoilers for those of you who don't want to read about beta stuff.

I tried to level as self-found as possible using Lightning Tendrils, and once I hit 35ish, I switched to a level 1 Lightning Tendrils + Added Chaos. To augment this I used Eldritch Knowledge (5% Chaos damage per INT) and Fevered Mind (+40% spell damage and +100% mana cost). Eldritch Knowledge started out weak but ramps up quickly as Added Chaos gains levels.

This feels really awesome so far. It's weaker than using Lightning Tendrils as is, but that is to be expected since I do not have Apep's. Any experience with playing this build prior to acquiring Apep's? Surprisingly the difference isn't as much as I expected.

Additionally, when I tried to spreadsheet the damage numbers, I found that it was possible to get higher damage with a very good spell shield and one Apep's rather than 2 Apep's. Is this correct? Am I missing anything?

I am trying to acquire the Hungry Abyss Jewel to test that as well, but I suspect it is going to be amazing.

Fevered Mind is NOT limited to 1, so you can keep adding +40% Spell Damage and +100% Mana Cost if you want to, as long as your mana can sustain it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

A quick note on spell choice, I just happened to have Lightning Tendrils and no access to Cascade at the time. Secondly, I wanted to try building a tanky "pseudo-Incinerator" because I thought that would abuse Hungry Abyss the best. It's possible that Cascade is simply better. Do note that most of my comments are not talking about maps yet, but just normal/cruel/early merci, as I have not gotten to maps since the wipe yet. Also yes, as I was able to acquire more crit on the tree, the damage scaled beautifully. I don't even have an Apep's and the damage is reasonable.

Now, I actually have access to more gems, so I will give Cascade a try as well to compare. Is there any other spell that could be worth testing out? I tried Ice Spear and it was a little lackluster but maybe it's just me reacting to the shotgunning changes.

I did consider increasing damage further with heralds and auras, but I thought that would miss the point of being chaos-focused to utilize both the chaos nodes and Hungry Abyss, so I chose not to. Instead, I ran Haste as an aura because I could run nothing else. It was alright, but nothing to write home about.

I had the silly idea of trying this with Spark Totems as well. Yes, damage effectiveness is only 50%, but that is per Spark and with the number of Sparks it is possible to generate, that might not be a bad thing. Only disadvantage of using this with Totems is that it does not make use of Hungry Abyss, which I suspect is a huge draw to this in general.

Another silly idea was running Righteous Fire to further boost the damage of lvl 1 chaos spells with the more spell modifier. Could this work?

Have not been able to test over the last few days, but thanks to the kindness of another beta tester, I finally managed to acquire a Hungry Abyss today. I will be testing the jewel extensively over the next few days, stay tuned!

Alright, some comments on initial testing of the Hungry Abyss jewel. Do note that the description is very vague, so it took all my currency and a good amount of testing to narrow down what the jewel actually did.

Basically, it converts different types of spell leech into chaos spell leech. This is very important, because what this means is that you cannot use stuff like Carnage Heart and Life leech mods on amulets/gloves with this jewel if you are using a spell, it will not work.

Now, some comments.

- The requirements of equipping 5 corrupted items is a lot harder than I originally thought, because it DOES NOT include gems. You have to wear corrupted gear on 5/10 of your slots.

- What are the options of spell leech? I can only think of corrupted mods on Wands and Amulets, Catarina's mod and Doryani's Invitation. Do we have other options?

- This is rather awkward to make use of, because we cannot use Catarina's mod if we want to keep using Apep's. We can hope for a lucky corruption on an Apep's Rage to give 1%, but outside of that we'd need a corrupted Amulet with 1% there and a Doryani's Invitation for 1%, totalling 3%. Is that enough to ignore a life leech gem?

I will do more testing as I can!

Sure, but at that point your spell already has leech due to the life leech gem, so using Hungry Abyss is pointless.

Busy with work, so apologies!

"

SirDragos wrote:

I think he was wondering if it makes the life leech gem not work with cold, for example. Does override mean replace?

Thanks for testing this BTW.

Yes, override does mean replace. You cannot leech with other forms of damage as far as I tried.

Additionally, Fevered Mind has now been nerfed to 20-30% increased spell damage, down from 40%.

Overall, I can see Hungry Abyss being incredibly useful, but it would HAVE to either be used without Apep's Rage unless you get incredibly lucky with your corrupts. I am not sure how viable that can be since base damage does come from that Wand. However, it does free up a link. Additionally, if we have any other forms of spell leech, the Jewel gets better and better. You would also need to get an Amulet corruption and a Doryani's Invitation, and even then you get about 3-4% life leech. Is that sufficient?

Another gem that has a lot of potential is Eldritch Knowledge. I found 2 spots on the tree with plenty of INT nodes and was able to squeeze ~40% increased Chaos Damage from each jewel. An extra 100% is nothing to laugh at. The jewel was inferior to Fevered Mind, but with the nerf, I believe that it is superior in this build.

Weight of Sin seems not worth getting. Jewel sockets typically take 2-3 points to get to. I'm not sure if just 18% increased chaos damage is worth that point investment. Thoughts?

Am I missing anything else? Let me know if you have any thoughts on what I could try out, but remember that acquiring random uniques can be a bit of a pain.

So I couldn't acquire one to test myself, but I was told that it does apply when your allies shatter too. Take that as you will because I did not test it myself to confirm.

Secondly, I do think it's worth testing other spells with Chaos damage stapled onto it. Glacial Cascade is one of the most popular and effective skills on the beta and I'd be very surprised if it made it to release in this state, being leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. I want to see if Flame Surge has any potential but the AoE is so goddamn tiny that it's so annoying to play with. Tendrils was always decent. Maybe Flame Totem has potential.

I have actually done chaos spark totems before. I tried it in bloodlines. The damage was fine, but single target was lacking. This was before any of the buffs totems are getting in 2.0 of course. Chaos Spark totems with duration is a legitimate way to scale the damage.

The problem is, once again, you have to use an extra link for Spell Totem, so you're essentially down 3 links just for the initial setup of Spark - Spell Totem - Added Chaos. Then you need to add on either Pierce or Fork. You can avoid using the gem and get Pierce off the tree, but it's fairly expensive point-wise because you also need to head to the left of the tree to grab duration nodes. Duration nodes were the best thing that happened to Spark Totem and you cannot skip them. I would scale a build like this with running Righteous Fire because it's incredibly hard to scale with conventional means. Eldritch Knowledge would probably be an all-star here.

Yep, some major changes. I am leveling after the beta wipe as a Lightning Tendrils based character. I haven't made the switch to level 1 tendrils + added chaos yet, but the additional crit helps out a lot. However, it's worth noting that the AoE got slightly nerfed, so I do believe that the AoE nodes are 100% necessary for Tendrils.

"

SirDragos wrote:

Tendrils seems well positioned.

I'd be interested to know whether the AoE nerf might make Concentrated Effect considerably less desirable. Tendrils-Echo-Chaos-AoE-Crit Damage-Leech might be better than a link that includes CE.

It also makes me want to figure out a way to get Carcass Jack into the mix; the Acrobatics/Grace route looks even a little better now.

I think it does. The AoE is pretty underwhelming and Concentrated Effect makes it even worse.

Also Glacial Cascade is still solid, for those who wanted to stick with that. I'd say it's still arguably the top choice, though it's less clear cut now.