Shock burn proliferation build: redux

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"BRavich wrote:

Edit: nevermind, it says it here in the mechanics thread:

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All three are capped at considering 1/3 of max life - if you deal more than 1/3 max life as that element, the status ailment occurs as though you did exactly 1/3.

Actually, the full quote is:

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Burning, Chilled, Frozen, and Shocked are collectively known as Status Ailments.
The duration of the chilled, frozen, and shocked statuses is related to the amount of cold/lightning damage dealt:
Shocked: 276ms per 1% max life dealt as lightning
Chilled: 138ms per 1% max life dealt as cold
Frozen: 100ms per 1% max life dealt as cold

All three are capped at considering 1/3 of max life - if you deal more than 1/3 max life as that element, the status ailment occurs as though you did exactly 1/3.

The maximum unmodified durations are therefore:
Shock: 9.2 seconds
Chill: 4.6 seconds
Freeze: 3.33 seconds

If the duration would be less that 300ms, it's ignored entirely (the effect is not applied).
For characters using Chaos Inoculation, these durations are calculated based on what the character's maximum life would be if they did not have Chaos Inoculation.

The cap therefore only applies to the duration calculation for shock, chill and freeze. Burn does not seem to be capped as I have seen a fire sorc 4 Hit Vaal Merciless (2 crits).

This looks pretty interesting, think I'll give it a go. Will probably go the fireball route as I already have a Searing Touch (albeit only ilev 30's) and a 7% quality fireball. Might try Firetrap too. This may also be a good opportunity to give Elemental Equilibrium a whirl.

Oh cool, I didn't know somebody was doing something similar to me. I've been theorycrafting a build also based off of burn/shock Elemental Proliferation. However, I'm not going with any of the skill options you listed; I chose either a staff or dual sceptres. A link to the build is in my signature.

I would say the routes with the most potential at the moment are Chin Sol + Point Blank + Blackgleam + Burning Arrow and Fireball + Fire Trap + Searing Touch (probably with Elemental Equilibrium and a Spark Totem).

The reason I went with staves or dual sceptres is because my passive tree routes make them work very well in this scenario. Plus, in the future I'll be able to respec into Avatar of Fire if it ever returns to the game and see massive benefits.

I had an idea for a shock + burn build, too. I was thinking about using lightning strike (never in melee) and either staves or sceptres. The staves give you access to serpent stance and higher base weapon damage to be converted to elemental damage, while the sceptre has a (slightly) higher base crit chance (6.98% vs 6.68), albeit lower base weapon damage, but comes with an implicit +20% elemental damage. Also with a sceptre you can use a shield, so that's a nice defensive bonus.

Here's the idea: You use lightning strike to get 50% phys --> lightning (while lower than a spell, it's more reliable - none of this 1 to a million dmg crap - remember, you need to make sure those crits do enough dmg to proc shock. I dont care if your crit multiplier is 500%, if you roll a 2 for damage, no one is getting shocked). Added fire damage is a great support gem for these purposes, as it is "more" and adds around 30% of your base phys dmg before the conversion.

Next up is elemental weapon dmg, which can go as high as 70ish % with quality, and again, it's a "more" multiplier. This will boost fire & lightning damage. After that you need prolif and that's about it. Lots of other choices would be nice as gravy, but aren't really neccessary.

I guess some leech couldn't hurt, although you do have some phys damage so you could use leech from gear instead of a support gem.

You never run out of ways to improve the damage, as phys dmg nodes, elemental nodes, crit nodes, and of course fire & light nodes all help.

As for survivability, well, that part's tricky. I came up with a build in the planner that seems great . . . . if you could start at level 65ish. I have NO idea how you would level this guy.

It starts in the templar area, moves through witch, and then picks up a ton of crit & shock nodes before moving to the outer edges of the ranger area before finally going all the way to mind over matter. Of course you get eldritch battery for this guy (and run discipline aura), and basically your giant mana pool is your mitigation, while all the dex nodes on the way to MoM help make sure you can hit with LS and stack up a little evasion (and get the stat req for evasion or evasion/es gear).

Here's a link to one of many possible variations of the build. This one is an attempt to streamline it on it's way to Mind over Matter, so it misses some of the crit nodes on the way in an attempt to get there sooner. There may be some alternate routes that one might use while leveling, and then switch to this later on. I made an attempt to include some +30 strength nodes as you do need some STR gems. This variant is for one that employs staves, so it picks up serpent stance, although you might want to respec the beginning nodes to 2-hand dmg & weapon elemental dmg (including catalyst) later on to get a massive boost to damage overall, rather than taking the short elemtal dmg path shown here.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUBBVuLjOFz7SBG113GtQTkIhpsna4SaRcccXmnCBVQj0aBSbI4Zk_Q0M9lVcaboUjnZ73ub_Tp99dbWZ-0WK6smBSwAP0XUEwtgh7bC4hCwcV_xiepEZado_yrDkjjhMBRcNVwUohrGdc2Ped03vbo1s3q6xSNv1FHMHx_K9aKd9d0QRR1Dq1DnBjbdPGFMg==


ondars guile is on the way, so I guess that could help you dodge ranged attacks if you go with evasion gear and try to keep moving (to avoid melee mobs).

Minion instability is right next to the shock nodes, so I figure a spell totem with skellies could serve as a pretty good meat-shield / extra damage source.

Curses leave me scratching my head. I'm really torn. There seem to be at least 5 good offensive choices: Flammability, conductivity, temporal chains (to increase shock & burn duration), elemental weakness, or . . . the leading contender: critical weakness. This build rests on getting crits, and making them big, so bumping up from ~36% crit chance to ~46% seems like a good way to go. Crits help both elements. On the other hand, without some way to lower resists, all that damage stacking may not amount to much if they resist 3/4 of it. Dual curses aren't too far out of the way, but this build is already all over the tree and stretched thin as it is.

anyway, that's about it. Not sure if this has anything to it.

Pro's: can use melee multipliers at range, weapon enhancements for what amount to spells, huge damage, epic crits, but single target DPS is high, reflect shouldn't end you, since you're not nuking the whole screen, just one guy, and then letting prolif do the rest. Skelly meat shield + MI, and high mana pool for casting, discipline, and mitigation via Mind over matter. Might even be able to run arctic armor with this set up. Good evasion, too. Avoid ranged attackers twice as well.

Con's: Miss chance may end up reducing effectiveness dramatically
No life nodes, so you may be a bit squishy even with skellies, MoM, and decent dodge chance.
Totally dependent on crits, which don't always happen. HAve to choose between reaching MoM or maxing crit until VERY high level.
questionable base damage: added fire dmg is a percentage of physical, which is reduced by a percentage for the lightning strike projectiles, which are reduced by misses. Same for shock.

**Takes forever for the build to come together. Can't get MoM til late game (or good crit - sort of have to prioritize which you want first, and neither til 60s), if you start as templar. Less efficient if you start anywhere else. (shadow would probably work pretty well) Extremely low on passive skill points. Never have enough. Triple stat dependent, too. (silver lining: you gain access to at least 3 of the +30 str nodes, which should be plenty for the whole build. All the required int & dex are acheived just trekking all over the tree for all those crazy keystones.)

what are your thoughts?

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BRavich wrote:

1) Burn damage. This is obviously the core element of this build, as it is the only thing causing damage. As it is capped at 1/9 of target HP per second (One third of one third),

lol , a wall a text, and already completely wrong in the first sentences...