Question about Elemental Equilibrium + triple Heralds concept

I had been contemplating building a Shotgun Elemental ranger utilising all three Heralds with Elemental Equilibrium. I am going to be playing the game for a considerable amount of time, so I hope to hit level 100:

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http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1197714

Summary:

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1. Your Mana pool will be used for Herald and Aura costs together with Reduced Mana.
2. Your main attacking skills will be linked with Blood Magic and sustain gems like LGOH and Life Leech to offset the cost.
3. Ghost Reaver is taken for Energy Shield sustain and to act as an instant buffer. LGOH is for Life sustain.
4. Poison Arrow is taken for Reflects, and so Concentrated Effect is taken to maximise its DPS against them by shooting a cloud of Poison and luring them through it.
5. The Heralds can be swapped out for Purity of Ice, Fire and Lightning, or just swapping out Herald of Thunder with Purity of Elements for the Elemental Resistance. Because you'd be running Elemental Equilibrium, dealing Ice damage and Fire damage would mean Ice and Fire are reduced by 25%, but then instantaneously increased by 50%.

I probably should have posted it here, not in the Guide section. Ignore the silly Cast on Critical Strike section, I didn't understand how the gem worked.

I have lots of questions for this concept:

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1. Would Elemental Equilibrium work to my benefit if I used all 3 Heralds?
2. I finally understand that end-game, tanking ability is of utmost importance. What kind of equipment should I get?
3. Is it more effective to stack HP or stack Armour/Energy Shield/Resists in general?
4. How do I maximise my Critical Strike chance to maximise my chances of freezing/thunder storming/igniting to keep the idea of shotgunning?
5. As far as I know, the highest Crit Chance is 95%. What is the maximum crit chance I can possibly achieve with this concept to ensure that I get them constant enough to utilise their "on-death effect"?
5. Is Culling Strike considered a crit?
6. If say I'm not aiming for level 100 to finish the build, what would be a good tree to use that still utilises this concept?
7. Based on the reply I got, how would I fix these problems with my concept?

Any help is appreciated, I do really want to give this a try. If it really doesn't work I will need to look for another build and will be pretty sad and disappointed :X Thanks in advance :D

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A hit carrying all three elements types will give +25% to all elemental Resistances.

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jooozek wrote:

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A hit carrying all three elements types will give +25% to all elemental Resistances.

Yeah, you have to hit with them separately to proc the buff. Otherwise it just gives them +resist to all three... I hate Elemental Equilibrium.

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majesw wrote:

Yeah, you have to hit with them separately to proc the buff. Otherwise it just gives them +resist to all three... I hate Elemental Equilibrium.

You hate EE because it isn't literally the most broken thing in the entire game? Please stop trying to get things to be made totally broken. Seriously. If EE worked the way you and OP apparently want it to, literally everyone would spec into it and just add tiny damage sources from gear onto everything. "Oh look at me, my enemies have -75% to all resistances at all times", yeah, no, that is bad game design, please never make a game.

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jooozek wrote:

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A hit carrying all three elements types will give +25% to all elemental Resistances.

I doubt it work like that and the reason is that its a trifecta , applying all three type of damage will always result in an EE state which would always be :

+resist
-resist
-resist

which mean that there is an order how elemental damage and ee is calculated.

OP its easy to test, take a mob, shot on it and look at EE state , the +resist will indicate which elemental damage hit last thus you can work around it and make EE swap which will result in a dps gain even if the swap is fast


PS : Also while testing look at the order of activation of your herald if it has a correlation with EE last state (so we can understand the code behind and how it apply damage and EE)

1. Would Elemental Equilibrium work to my benefit if I used all 3 Heralds?
A: No. Elemental Equilibrium works per hit, meaning the target gets +25% resist to all elements you hit it with (fire, cold, lightning) and -50% too all elements you do Not hit it with.

2. I finally understand that end-game, tanking ability is of utmost importance. What kind of equipment should I get?
A: Unless you have really high life (6000+) you need some form of mitigation for physical damage. The options are Armor/Endurance charges/Arctic armor/Mind of Matter/Damage Conversion (Cloak of flame and Lightning Coil). Evasion also works, even better so if you compliment it with damage conversion.

You can also see life leech and life on hit as a form of defense. Especially form small hits. For big hits Mind of Matter works best, in my experience but only if you have loads of mana. For rangers Lightning coil is the most effective for physical damage mitigation.

3. Is it more effective to stack HP or stack Armour/Energy Shield/Resists in general?
A: Stacking armor is not going to keep you alive. High life and high armor does work though, especially with endurance charges. High energy shield works just fine, see chaos inoculation. Elemental resists have to be capped. Also, See 2.

4. How do I maximise my Critical Strike chance to maximise my chances of freezing/thunder storming/igniting to keep the idea of shotgunning?
A: The most reliable way to keep targets frozen and shocked, in my experience, is to have Chance to Freeze and Chance to Shock while also using elemental proliferation. Chance to Freeze is checked per enemy, as opposed to crits which is checked per attack so you just need to freeze one target in order to freeze all with elemental proliferation. However, this works better for spells. So, having really high crit chance and accuracy and decent attack speed can work just as well if not better. Really high crit chance is 75%+.

5. As far as I know, the highest Crit Chance is 95%. What is the maximum crit chance I can possibly achieve with this concept to ensure that I get them constant enough to utilise their "on-death effect"?
A: In my experience, 75% crit chance is enough.
5. Is Culling Strike considered a crit?
A: No.

6. If say I'm not aiming for level 100 to finish the build, what would be a good tree to use that still utilizes this concept?
A: Many different passive trees works for this. Take all the nodes that gives the most crit for the weapon you use while also building for defenses plus taking enough accuracy nodes to be above 90% chance to hit. Take general crit nodes after that if needed.

7. Based on the reply I got, how would I fix these problems with my concept?
If the concept is to use all three heralds and and elemental equilibrium then the problem is unfixable.

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puviel wrote:

1. Would Elemental Equilibrium work to my benefit if I used all 3 Heralds?
A: No. Elemental Equilibrium works per hit, meaning the target gets +25% resist to all elements you hit it with (fire, cold, lightning) and -50% too all elements you do Not hit it with.

So how does it calculate what state EE will be after a hit with all 3 type following the logic of ee of course ?

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ffogell wrote:

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puviel wrote:

1. Would Elemental Equilibrium work to my benefit if I used all 3 Heralds?
A: No. Elemental Equilibrium works per hit, meaning the target gets +25% resist to all elements you hit it with (fire, cold, lightning) and -50% too all elements you do Not hit it with.

So how does it calculate what state EE will be after a hit with all 3 type following the logic of ee of course ?

The above poster has it correct let me try to clarify.

With EE it does nothing on the first hit for your damage the calculations work for 2nd hit....if you hit with fire, cold, and lightning the monster gets +25% to those resist, so THE NEXT hit on that monster will have +25% to fire, cold, and lightning resist (means less damage)

For EE to work you have to alternate fire, cold, fire, cold (or use burns like RF and Searing Bond...another topic)

1st hit with fire damage monster gets +25 fire -50 cold lightning
2nd hit with cold damage monster has -50 cold resist hit does more damage and monster gets +25 cold -50 fire lightning so on and so on

Ah man since they added an effect there is no way now to see what res is + and - ...

All this while I thought that EE worked like this:

If hit with all 3 elements,
Lightning Resist -50, Ice resist -50, Fire Resist+25 (Fire hit)
Lightning Resist+25, Ice resist -50, Fire Resist -50 (Lightning hit)
Lightning Resist -50, Ice resist+25, Fire Resist -50 (Ice hit)
Lightning Resist -75, Ice resist -75, Fire Resist -75 on the first hit

I still don't quite get it, shouldn't this only be important if I'm unable to OHKO anything? I'm still quite confused :/

If I still want to utilise Heralds + EE, how should I go about this?
Are any of these correct?

1. Drop one Herald or two (not sure how this would work)?
2. Pick two elements and alternate my attacks?
3. I did some research and saw Elemental Equilibrium with Elemental Weakness, Cold, Fire or Lightning Penetration. What would the outcome be?

I could just simply drop EE altogether, but this is a game mechanic I really want to try to understand to build around some day, and I really appreciate everybody's input.