[2.2] Ice Crash: Size does Matter (including leveling guide video)

This is a build that uses the skill Ice Crash, introduced in the Beta 2.0.



Ice Crash:
• 360’ AoE,
• non target (like groundslam),
• converts physical to cold
• and introducing a new mechanic; close enemies take full damage, the ones further way take less damage. The reverse of farshot kinda… why not call it closeslammin’.

Play style is a blast. Best defense is a strong offense goes so true for this build: Safety comes from agressively charging monsters.

Motto: "Strike first, Stun first, Kill first."

This build can be played as Solo, but can also really shine as a support character
in a party; Locking down screens of monsters or lethal bosses that would otherwise been left alive.

Since the build makes an investment into Stun resources,
it will never be anywhere near a top Tier1 PewPew build.

If you want a different way to approach deadly fights and supprise friend and foe with tremendous crowd control, you've come to the right place.

Link to 3min Video of latest Perandus HC character level 87 Juggernaut

Introduction TLDR

All Ice Crash characteristics mentioned above look promising.
Even though you might think you suck at clicking melee skills, you will find out for sure once you tried lockstep. Advantages of a non targetted skill remain. Shift button (force stand still) FTW, not only for icecrash, but also for leapslam, that this build frequently uses.

The first thing I worked on was, how big of an Ice Crash can I make and how big of an Ice Crash do i want to use. AoE is a good investment, since it also works on the Herald of Ash burning effect. Watch for the red bloom’s in some massive shrine video’s and you’ll see they are able to reach beyond all borders of a 1,9k-1k resolution screen. Besides Ice Crash and Herald of Ash there’s aura radius, curse radius, Enduring cry radius, Leapslam and Vengeance damage radius.
Making a big Ice Crash was all good fun. Stopped trying around 140%, and could only increase if I’d nerf myself with pillar unique staff or other gizmo’s. Since 2.2 you can push even further with the ascendancy Slayer and the new helm enchants. In the end I settled on roughly 80% increased area of effect on Ice Crash. It’s well beyond in the range where some close shooters stop moving and start to take pot shots at ya; so you can slam away at the target’s at hand, and don’t have to worry about the snakes creeping up to you. Another cardinal distance benchmark for me is the distance totem aura’s have. Once you engage a pack of monsters, and you do not want to fully commit by leaping into the pack with a crit buff, you'll need Range. Anough range to engage and stun the pack and clear that totem in the background simultaneously. You will need range to safely kill nemesis volatile rares. And that’s kinda the reason I’ve settled on 80%. Besides the range of totem and monster aura’s, there was another big motivation; it provides for a lot of freedom for positioning. Mainly generating forgiveness, quality of life, and safety.

80% would mean I would have to take the templar AoE nodes and wouldn’t be running concentrated effect by default. I would carry one with me for some boss fights, Master Vagan, maps with small hallways. Think and you’ll come up with more uses for the gem swap.

Another awesome introduction was Lockstep. Byebye desync. Second kickass bonus for this build would be stunning. Stuns could create armies of desynced monsters in predictive mode.

Converted damage into cold will help with chills, and thus longer stun duration. And there we have the weapon of choice cut out and brought to me on a platter; a two handed mace. Icing on the Ice Crash mace would be a Coronal Maul with 6% increased area of effect implicit mod.

The way to move forward from here is ofcourse Leapslam. Lockstep, AoE, Stuns, yeah can’t miss that one now.

For defense we turn to the classic marauder stuff; endurance charges and armor. Cast When Damage Taken – Enduring cry is no longer working since Enduring cry is a type “warcry” now and not a spell. Manual cast enduring cry it is then, and since we’re stunning…. Endurance charge on melee stun. Survival is our business, we don’t want to let the charges run out, and Immortal Call got nerfed and got kinda boring anyway. Curses that synchronise well with stunning are: Temporal Chains and warlord's mark. For armor we have to see if we can do without Determinaton & Grace.

That leaves another introduced survival mechanic: The fortify buff. Reduced damage taken, not just physical, its prismatic. Everything. Duration is short, so the trick is to keep it up somehow.

All of the above will consume most the the gems slots available, so the only thing to fix is mana management. The mother of all puzzles. We are not witches, No Parfumy blue potions for our Marauder, only man’s drink. Fortunately Patch 2.2 did wonders. Ice crash mana has been reduced, players mana has been increased at each level gain and it brought a new dual leech node near the duelist, not just for physical damage, but for all attack damage that solves it all.


[2.2] Perandus league HC (lvl 90 Juggernaut) Still Stunning!


cba to level up gems in the second weapon slot, so I'm dragging a heavystrike boss stunner
along for when I don't have time to swap stun/conc effect into ice crash setup.


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Character has been fine tuned, and running T10-12 maps mostly solo.
Im rerolling cannot be stunned and elemental reflect mods.
Preferring not to run curse immune maps.

Now that the character is sorta finished, doing unique maps like Oba's cursed trove for fun.


Link to Tree level 90

Act 2 Bandits quests:
Normal: Help Oak or kill all.
Cruel: Help Kraityn or kill all.
Merciless: Help Oak or Help Kraityn or kill all.


[2.2] Perandus league HC (lvl 87 Juggernaut) HELM ENCHANT & FLASK TUNING!




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The gloves where home made. Took me roughly 70-100 gloves, I lost count.
Luckily I also rolled elemental weakness & Vulnerability curse on hit to recover some
currency.
#1Note: I bought 4Linked rare gloves (with atleast 1 armor), master crafted them, used chromatics and rolled the dice.
#2Note: I've bought the amulet for 4 Ex since it was far superior to the nerfing Doedre's Damning unique ring. Was tired of failing corruptions. It's a real money pit.
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* Currently testing with:
.
I currently have 700eva / 9% tooltip. but when i jade flask it goes up to
8.000 eva / 42% tooltip. Usage of this flask is mainly to dodge projectiles. Ranged monsters
shooting from outside my ice crash range & Porcupines with elemental damage.
(got a warning in a map; went to 20% life after killing a pack with ele dmg)
I do not know the accuracy of porcupines, so I don't know how effective 42% tooltip will be. If it's evade 30%+ chance I'll seriously consider using it for extra proj maps and porcupine maps.

*

A nice combo: extra max cold resist versus reflect and besides all that do more dmg. What flask to replace it with? I really love to keep atleast 2 life flasks.
The price of this flask can be staggering. (2-6 Exalted Orbs, depending on league & age)
This build has a crazy amount of armor, I wonder if because of this flask I'd sometimes take more damage, in situations (Alot of small hits) where my physical mitigation is maxed out. 81% cold res versus 90% physical mitigation.

*

Drop granite flask and use this flask? I certainly appreciate a granite up to tier 9 maps, but after that the basalt is gonna be superior.
----------------------------------------------------

Currently deciding how to curse. Every option has implications on my former gem setup.
Since I gotta loose 2 gems from somewhere.

Blasphemy-Warlord's mark: Loose vengeance & endurance chance on stun in leapslam setup, or
drop Arctic breath-cwdt. The 10% increased mana reservation over Herald of Ash makes me unable to spam leapslam more then 4-5 times in a row. So I have to drop stun from the leapslam setup as well for bloodmagic. And I can't use my chest for blasphemy then.... cause the aura will reserve life instead of mana.

That's why I currently favor
CurseonHit-Warlord's mark: Although leapslam curses far less monsters, I do love the guaranteed stun from the stun gem. Up to rares and exiles can get stunned with a leapslam that isn't linked to damage gems.

Link to Tree level 87
#Note: I've respecced into the scion life wheel. I'm using 2x stun duration skill nodes
to juggle. So when I can reach a new life cluster I will respec them again.

Link to Video of the Character in action
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[2.2] Labyrinth Helm Enchants

I'm looking at the possible enchants for an Ice Crash helm:
*25% increased Ice Crash Damage
*10% of Ice Crash Physical damage added as Cold Damage
*8% increased Ice Crash Radius

I kinda like to have atleast one source of chaos resist, so that might be kinda
problamatic to craft. The trouble is after so much gear tuning, some suffixes are just locked in place because it would be too much trouble to replace other gear spots.
Running 200 labs for the right helm enchant are out of the question for me. I don't wanna
spend that much time in the lab.

Currently rolling:


Bought (31c) a ilev 84 armor helm with 8% IC AoE.

So life and chaos, im happy, I do not dare to keep rolling.



[2.2] Perandus league HC (lvl 84) SINGLE CURSE!




Tempest league HC (lvl 88) RIP

Ripped on Piety the abomination (Nightmare Manifest), map lvl 76.
Couldn't stun lock the boss, did it the old fashioned way, leapslamming like rope jumping over the beam. went fine untill boss 50%, had some lag, and found my corpse in 2 whirlwind puddles. Tough luck, but was cool to finish the character, had lots of fun.





5x 5-Linked pieces of gear with 6 sockets, too bad I didn't get a 6L.
Still working on carcass and trying to vaal corrupt gloves into temporal chains on hit.
The weapon was an awesome alteration orb; 164% ED Tyran + 26%speed. Going to 2x Yolo exalt it and hope for stun or other decent mods. 5 linked a carcass but decided to go for an astral for more armor and life. It's HC afterall. Sold it, yolo exalted the coronal maul, respecced into scion life wheel to try it. but respecced back because I missed the dps (25k tooltip in hideout)

Link to Tree


Warbands league SC (lvl 94)







DUELIST.
Respecced my cycloner into Ice Crash, to test some stunning on bosses. Wanted to see the effect of the changed made to chill (in combination with temporal chains & stun) mechanics.

Link to warbands Tree 94




Leveling Guide

I've made a couple long video's about leveling up your Ice Crash marauder.
Leveling GUIDE Video's: Normal-Cruel-Merciless-Maps HC

These contain not only a manual for Ice Crash, but also goes in depth about leveling in general (weapons, armor and flasks).

A few notes:
- Keep a look out for these uniques:
* Asenath gloves (trying to corrupt a rare for the temporal chains mod is very expensive. A level 1 temporal chains gem gives alot of slow, way more then pre 2.0.)
* Blood dance boots: Even though this build runs bloodrage, the boots give
**** Changed from 1 % to 0.5% each frenzy charge *****.
**** Bloodrage change: it has less attackspeed and 25% chance to gain a frenzy charge instead of 100%****

Be versatile:
- When things don't go your way, or you have trouble with the new boss fights:
* Level Fire gems in your weapon swap, and save a +x level fire sceptre and a shield (or double sceptre). Fire gems: Flame totem, Fire trap (A1 normal vendor), searing bond. Pick those up when available from vendor (forgot if searing bond was available in A3, might be good to keep it in mind for when flame totem gets nerfed at launch).

While leveling my 4th Ice Crash marauder I used a flame totem to devastating effects, even while having no fire damage skill nodes. If it stays the way it is, might be best (safest) way to level up, until the fun starts with a geofri's and ice crash gem around level 28.

The new totem Ancestral Protector has taken the good old flame totem role, to safely
kill nasty bosses with your first character.


Gem Setup

In [2.2] the mana problems are gone.
-Players get more mana from leveling up
-Ice Crash mana cost has been reduced
-Duelist tree area now contains manaleech with attacks
(leeching from all damage and not leeching from only physical damage)


1-Ice Crash
2- Increase Area of effect <=Swap=> Concentrated effect <=Swap=> Physical to lightning
Conc for bosses, Master quests, Maps with small hallways, etc etc.
The physical to lightning gem is to do zero physical damge for physical reflect maps
3- Faster attacks <=Swap=> Hypothermia
Quality Hypotherm is a rare source for increased chill duration. With 30% increased duration, it's much easier to chill the strongest bosses in the game. It will act like you are doing 30% more damage. Chilled bosses will be stunned longer. The physical to lightning gem is to do zero physical damge for physical reflect maps
4- Melee physical damage
5- Weapon Elemental damage
6- Added fire damage <=Swap=> Lifeleech <=Swap=> Fortify <=Swap=> Stun
Swap with Lifeleech for reflect maps, Fortify for when the monsters cannot be stunned (check play style in video Zana unwavering), you might not want to leapslam into unwavering mobs because of the obvious danger. Or for solo Haku missions where you cannot utilize leapslam, else you'd drop the spirit, so you swap in fortify. I've now accumulated 72% reduced enemy stun treshold. So if I socket a stun gem in here, it's the perfect safe boss killer. Stunlocked Dominus in Palace with it. pretty good stuff.

No setup is set in stone, be versatile.

Vagan level 8 Mod:
"
Taotao11 wrote:

The owner came up with an original option for leapslam too.
Thx for sharing Tao



1-Leapslam
2- Faster Attacks
3- Fortify
4- Endurance charge on stun


Alternative:
- Curse on Hit
- Warlord's Mark
- Temporal Chains
This really depends on the number of links available to you. If you have cursing gloves, then 6L is ideal so you can curseonhit-warlord's mark You'd drop endurance charge on stun first. Otherwise you might have to swap fortify back to Ice Crash.

1-enduring cry

1-Hatred
2-Blood rage

4- Increased duration
I do not turn on blood rage in Haku missions. All the regen is needed when running the gauntlet.


1-Warlord's Mark
2- CWDT
3-Herald of Ash
4-Increased burning damage

#Note: prefered curse is temporal chains on hit. If you do run a CWDT setup, linking it to Molten Shell is a nice buff to your defense. Do be aware of the danger involved: You do not control when your molten shell goes off.

Vengeance
- Endurance charge on stun
- Melee Phys
- Lifeleech

Chaos Gollem Flame Gollem Stone Gollem
- Life Leech
- Minion Life <=> Melee Phys dmg
- Fortify

1 2-4L Combo Vegeance and Gollem*
3-Life Leech
4- Melee phys dmg

#Note
Chaos gollem lvl 20 gives 4% reduction.
CHaos gollem lvl 22 gives 5% reduction.
That's a nice bonus, the gollem still does not do any significant damage on level 22 though, even with melee phys gem and hatred aura.
It does draw some agro, and dies like a fly to anything nasty.
(without fortify & minion life that is)
However, with some manual Enduring Cry casting (taunt), besides stunning the screen, he can live through alot without any investments. However the question remains if the 155 Int (lvl 20) investment is worth the max level. Might be better off with a lower level version, and use skill nodes for other stuff. So if you can get the int from gear, go for chaos.

other option could be
1 Bloodrage
2 3 Vaal Grace/Haste

4-Increased Duration

Latest change to bloodrage: 100% chance to gain frenzy down to 25%.


Another great option for boss slaying is using a second weapon with heavystrike. The benefits come at a financial cost: you cannot levelup spare gems. So think twice before selling your old weapons when you upgrade; it might be a perfect heavystrike weapon. This is especially true when you do not use ice crash with a blue gem swap: AoE <=> Conc effect.
P2W: Use cometics to make your weapons look different, so you get a visual confirmation about the weapon you're currently using.

I'm not particular fan of Arctic breath when you have 6L's.However it works great when you only have 5L's. This setup puts alot of pressure on your gollem/vengeance setup since it takes a compleet 4L for best efficiency.
CWDT-Arctic breath-GMP can create alot of frozen ground. This ground effect can be prolonged with increased duration and will chill monsters. A great defensive option that will also trigger temporal chains on hit. Although you won't get hit much when you stunlock the screen, it might save you from hazardous moments; like getting jumped by an unwavering pack on champions (unwavering= cannot be stunned).

If you want to see it in action; check the leveling guide, it's featured in the last minutes of the "maps" video.

*** Added august 2015: Since the bloodlines mod thron flesh (scary double reflect) from the Beta did not get implement in the awakening launch; molten shell is unlikely to RIP you.
Molten Shell
- Life Leech
- cwdt
This can be a nice defensive option if you have the room for it. For leveling surely nice, if you got a 4L can add warlordsmark.


Curses

Dual cursing is nice, but if you only use 1 I'd suggest
leveling up with warlord's mark, and changing to temportal chains later on.

Curses that synchronise well with Stun are:
-Temporal Chains
-Warlords Mark

Apply Temporal chains with Asentath uniqe gloves / corrupted gloves.
Apply Warlord's mark with either curse on hit or blasphemy





In comparison to current live stats (pre 2.0), the difference between lvl 1 and 10-12 Temporal chains is not that big.
However, the difference between asenath and a corrupted rare can be huge.



old 2.0

Warlord's mark -cwdt
or leapslam-cureonhit-warlord's mark.


and the dream is:
Temporal chains on hit on corrupted rare gloves.
+1 curse source would be a rare amulet.

At this time gimping myself with a pair of corrupted facebreakers, just because the curse on hit is so good (manaleech was on gloves.... so went to amulets....another nerf). Because of temporal chains, the monsters get chilled consequently stunned soooo damn hard, it's unbelievable.

It's also very offensive cursing, soooo unlike cwdt-warlordsmark.
Now that I'm consistently stunning anything that moves, I'm not getting hit much anymore. That's a good thing ofcourse, but the CWDT-Warlords mark is sporadicly triggered. And when it does trigger, I no longer need the extra life/mana leech, endurance charges or extra stun modifiers. So when your character is getting really strong, the second curse could be dropped or changed into something else, like Enfeeble or offensive like elemental weakness or Frostbite.


Everything you need to know about Stun



*******************************
Found another source for more reduced enemy stun treshold:
Warbands league item: ranged 5-10%


To determine how much stun duration / reduced treshold you need, consider this:

When you leapslam into a pack, you want them to be stunned so you can hit them again before they wake up. The whole first strike - first stun - first kill philosophy.

However, if you increase the stun duration even further you might be able to use another skill before the monsters wake up.
The skill rotation would be: 1) leapslam 2) Rallying cry-Enduring cry 3) Ice Crash

Latest patch changes:
"
GGG_Neon wrote:
Version 2.0.2
Temporal Chains' slowing effect now applies multiplicatively with Chill's slowing effect. This will result in less of an impact when both are used on the same target.

2.0.2 Patch Notes


Flask Setup

I usually carry 2 life flasks. One instant recovery (shock or bleed) and one fast recovery of staunching (bleed)

For reflect you need:
- Sapphire flask
prefer "of Heat": cannot be chilled and frozen. Monster cold dmg got an indirect buff. Because of the shotgun removal and consequent reballancing, the cold dmg has increased dramaticly, and thus you get way more chilled and frozen then when playing pre 2.0. Since we got lockstep, unwavering stance, this option will make sure everything will run smooth, no hickups or slowing down. Other option would be the unique Taste of Hate flask.
- Granite flask

that leave the last slot for a curse immune flask. Best charge/duration for that is a quicksilver flask.

- Aquamarine
Creates chilled ground, ideal to keep bosses chilled while stunlocking them.

If you going for the chaos combo: Jewel & Atziri's Promoise you'll have to swap out the quicksilver, and then move the anti curse to the saphire flask. Of warding on a life flask is Always less desired. In the case of Taste of Hate you'd be forced to move the anti curse onto the fast recovery flask, and then the instant flask has to be anti bleed.




Nerf to MI jewel, from 8 to 4 seconds. Will need uber clear speed to keep that up consistently. (only discovered the nerf on 29th of June)





TLDR: Beta testing: Gear Tooltip Defenses Trees

*Note: In the spoilers I mention Ice Crash v1.0 and v1.1. With v1.1 I mean the version that got nerfed for the first time on the 5th of june. Base damage was reduced on first, second and third ring. I've Noticed on end game (lvl 77+ maps) I needed unwavering stance. and respecced accordingly coinciding the v1.1 changes (respec cost me roughly 50% increased physical damage). So my damage did not go down because of the patch alone. Currenly leveling up another Ice Crash build that I call v1.2 after the lifeleech changes patched late June.


Gear & Tooltips & Defenses *** 2.0 OLD ***

gear

Ice Crash v1.2



Ice Crash v1.1

Went for stun, replaced weapon belt and helm.
Helm got +2 minion, trying out chaos gollem until it's level 20.

currently replace the windscream boots with rare, and dropped warlord's mark-CWDT.
I hardly get hit anymore.
chaos gollem-Minionlife-fortify-lifeleech
herald of ash-increasedburningdmg-vengeance-*****
Hatred-Bloodrage-increased duration-rallying cry
Chaos gollem 17/20% gem in a +2 helm, so level 19 gollem and it doesnt die much anymore. Mostly gets killed by frost/flame etc bearers.

Ice Crash v1.0




Tooltip

Ice Crash v1.2



Ice Crash v1.1



Ice Crash v1.0




Defenses

Ice Crash v1.2


So to summerize; Armor is really low, but with the effect of a granite pretty decent, and anough versus physical reflect. With alot of endurance charges^& Chaos Gollem you'll become pretty tanky.
Resists as usual overclocked, to counter damage taken while doing elemental weakness maps , or when cursed.
Unwavering stance & Ironreflexes is a wise choice end game.

Ice Crash v1.1

taken one more maximum endurance charge, will probably take the marauder 0.2 life regen per charge on next level.

So to summerize; Armor is really low, but with the effect of a granite pretty decent, and anough versus physical reflect. With alot of endurance charges^& Chaos Gollem you'll become pretty tanky.
Resists as usual overclocked, to counter damage taken while doing elemental weakness maps , or when cursed.
Unwavering stance is still a wise choice.

Ice Crash v1.0


Armor is on the low side. Caution is needed when without fortify & Endurance charges. Also use granite as a profylactic. Cannot safely run 77+ maps with unwavering map mod.
I strive to keep my resists overclocked; ie be able to run elemental weakness maps without a direct negative effect on my resistances.





Tree *** 2.0 OLD ****


Ice Crash v1.2

Help Oak 40life
Kill All +1 skill point (8% attackspeed, wouldve been fine too)
Help Oak +1 endurance charge (help Kraityn, +1 frenzy charge wouldve been fine too)
Ice Crash 1.2[/quote]

Alot depends on how much int/dex and what kind of jewels you have.

Another factor is your mana management, if you can take a shotcut like:

current tree



Ice Crash v1.1

Help Oak 40life
Kill All +1 skill point (8% attackspeed, wouldve been fine too)
Help Oak +1 endurance charge (help Kraityn, +1 frenzy charge wouldve been fine too)
There are 3 groups of skill points to ballance out:
Offense
- elemental damage nodes (double dip herald of ash)
- Physical damage nodes
- Attack speed
- Stun
- AoE
- Max Frenzy charges

Defense
- Life
- Armor
- Max endurance charges
- Ironreflexes & unwavering stance
- Increased Fortify Effect

Mana management
- Reduced skill cost
- mana gained on hit
- mana leeched as physical dmg (jewel)

Best possible route is determined by Jewels. There are some sick rare Jewels possible. Current tree has easy access to 5 jewel slots.





Tried if I can drop the route near templar taking the life & reduced mana cost nodes. I couldn't do that because of mana management. Too many default attacks popped up. When using 5L i'd prefer the route below in the picture. If you take the mace nodes of the reduced mana route, it becomes attractive again.



Min-Maxing

If you have the spare refund points, it's always good to respec when you're able to reach a new good node. In the picture below you see an example of 3 choices for 2 skill points; a uniq jewel, a rare jewel, and +1 max frenzy charge.



So what would would you choose?
The unholy might gives the highest dps bonus. It is not always active, but with ok clear speed it's triggered alot.
The rare jewel is the most consistent option. Always gives the same bonus.
The frenzy charge option is nice too, since it gives frenzy charge duration as well.

Think of what your choice would be........ then click spoiler and read mine.

Now to take the min maxing to the next level, I'd choose the uniq jewel, and if I encounter a boss with no adds, I'd swap the uniq jewel with the rare jewel.
(jewel swapping inside the skill tree does not cost a regret)





Ice Crash v1.0

There are 3 groups to ballance out:
Offense
- elemental damage nodes (double dip herald of ash)
- Physical damage nodes
- Attack speed
- Stun
- AoE
- Max Frenzy charges

Defense
- Life
- Armor
- Max endurance charges
- Ironreflexes & unwavering stance

Mana management
- Reduced skill cost
- mana gained on hit
- mana leeched as physical dmg (jewel)



still wondering about investments into:
- frenzy charges
- reduced stun treshold
- unwavering stance




@Minstrelshadrak
Last edited by MinstrelShadrak on Apr 14, 2016, 4:26:39 PM
Last bumped on Sep 1, 2016, 1:01:57 PM
Reflect

Physical Reflect: Is not much of a problem. Only 15% of your damage constitues out of physical damage. With endurance charges, chaos gollem, granite it won't hurt. However if you run a physical reflect map, you might want to swap some gems around for easy mode. The physical to lightning gem converts the last 50% of your dmg so you actually do no physical damage. If you want to be able to leech abit of mana, then there's Hrimsorrow gloves.

Elemental Reflect: Now here's trouble. You do alot of elemental damage. Especially in big parties you will not be able to take the spike damage. Sapphire flask & Purity of Ice all well and good, but why run the risk. You can either nerf your own damage or swap some gems around and go full phys with leapslam. If you have time to prepare, swapping Ice Crash for Groundslam is a good solution too. Best is to just reroll the map.

This Mod from the BETA has not been introduced (......yet!)

Bloodlines mod: Thornflesh. If you are on autopilot, cruising through maps and fall asleep behind the steering wheel, you will die. The packs can be huge, and you cannot take the spike damage. Especially in big parties. Every non vaal pact build has this problem. I do not wish to give up on the life regeneration, so the solution is simple: Do not engage the full pack. Since your leapslam doesn't do much damage, use that to kill and split the pack. Switch to Ice Crash only when you feel very save.
#Note: Vaal pact has been moved. It's no longer within reach of this build. No problem, it never was mandatory.

I've put a video up in the video spoiler where you can see some testing. There's a couple more video's about reflect in the beta play list.
#Note: During the beta rares would have a combined reflect mod. Both elemental and physical. At the time of writing these mods are split up again.


New Lifeleech

GGG Manifesto

"
GGG_Neon wrote:
The changes we will be making to leech, for testing on Beta will be:
  • Multiple leech effects will now stack (ie. a single hit against multiple targets will grant multiple effects, as will multiple hits against a single target).
  • Base leech rate will be substantially reduced for both life and mana, with less of a reduction to mana leech rate, bringing it in-line with life leech rate.
  • A maximum leech rate will cap the rate at which you can leech.
  • Methods of improving leech, leech rate and increasing your maximum leech rate will be added to new clusters in the passive tree, primarily in the regions between the Marauder, Duelist and Ranger sections.
  • Some of the already existing clusters in this region that specialized in specific weapon types will also have leech elements added to them.
  • All existing values of leech will be substantially reduced, including values on existing items.
  • Vaal Pact will be adjusted to account for the new values of leech.

The goal is to have leech be as effective as it is on the live servers, if not better, against packs of monsters, while being more difficult to get to the same levels of survivability and sustainability against single powerful monsters such as strong rares or bosses.

The new Base Values regarding Leech:
Base Maximum Life Leech Rate is 20% of maximum life per second.
Base Maximum Mana Leech Rate is 20% of maximum mana per second.
Base Life Leech Rate is 2% of maximum life per second.
Base Mana Leech Rate is 2% of maximum mana per second.

Update 2:

Taken from the State of Beta #8, Here are the latest changes to Leech:

We have worked out we need to change leech rate as it currently works. Currently, when you would already be at the Leech Cap, the rate increase does not give you more leech, as you are already at the cap, while it still reduces the time taken to leech. This can make Leech Rate detrimental to a player in fights against large number of targets, or who otherwise reaches the leech cap quickly.

We will be changing increased Leech Rate to increased Life/Mana Leeched per Second. This will be best against single targets, or in times when you do not reach the Leech Cap, but will not be detrimental in situations you are against a large number of targets.

We are also looking at increasing the values of the Leech Cap. We will then have two main bonuses affecting leech gained, with Leech Cap bonuses best against packs, and Increased Leech Per Second bonuses best against bosses. Neither will be detrimental to the player.


Reddit post Mark GGG

Increased leech rate does not modify the leech rate cap, just as additional resistances do not modify the resistance cap. The only way to modify the cap is with this new stat that adds to the cap.

Old Leech:

One at a time: Only one leech effect was active at any time. If you hit 10 enemies, the leech from each hit ticks down simultaneously, but only one is active.
Fixed Rate: All leech took place at a set rate. The base rate was 20% of maximum life per second, and this was modified by increased/reduced leech rate. Such modifiers were rare.
No cap: There was no cap on leech rate, as one was unnecessary - all leech happened at a set rate which could only be modified a small amount.
New Leech:
Multiple Simultaneous Leech: All leech effects are active at the same time. If you hit 10 enemies, you'll leech from all of them at the same time.
Since multiple of these effects can be active together, your actual rate of life recovery from leech varies based on how many enemies you leech from - if you hit 10 enemies, you're leeching 2% of max life per second from each of them, so you're gaining 20% of max life per second from leech.

Lower Rate, Easier to Modify: Each leech effect takes place at a set rate. The base rate is 2% of maximum life per second, and this was modified by increased/reduced leech rate. Such modifiers are likely to be more common now.
Capped: Since the total rate of life gain from leech is now limited only by the number of enemies hit, a cap has been added to leech rate.
The base cap is 20% of maximum life per second.
This means with base values, if you hit 11 enemies, and leech from all of them, you would be leeching 22% of your max life per second, but this value is capped to 20%, and you're not getting any benefit over the 10 enemy case. Obviously the point this occurs is different if using increased/reduced leech rate modifiers.

This new stat adds a flat amount to this new leech rate cap, in this case adding 4% to the 20%, making the new cap on the rate you can recover life from leech 24% of maximum life per second.



So I've leveled up another marauder, taken these life leech rate nodes and the +4% max life leech rate.

You can reach the cap of life gained / second (20% and with skill nodes 25%-30% or whatever the final changes will be, of maximum life per second) rather quickly. And leech rate does nothing if you are leeching at the maximum leech rate already. I had wrongly assumed they did. So the life leech rate nodes aren't good at all when you reach that capping point. You reach that cap quickly even with Ice crash where only a small part (20% orso) of your damage is physical.

And it get's even worse. When you stop hitting (example: because of movement to avoid a boss attack) the life that you leeched with faster leech rate will stop ticking sooner, and thus making you heal less because the life recover duration is shorter.

Life leech rate points might be a thing when you finish your build, and run the numbers with your dmg & attack speed versus how fast you reach the cap with 1 target (a boss) in front of you. increasing the cap life leech rate with 4% is good, but probably only worth it when you've reached end game.

So for leveling, life gain on hit is king, perhaps combined with a little bit of lifeleech.

*More changes have be done to the skill tree, life leech rate has been transformed into increased life leech per second. This removed a draw back of having increased life leech rate.


Atziri

Twin Vaal is easy, like always.

Trio is dangerous, but can do it either way, as long as you kill the machine gun demon first. Note: the end of the fight is bugged, there's always 1 remaining puddle spawning adds.

During the atziri fight I didn't want to spend my pots to remove curses. So i swapped the temporal chains gloves for elemental weakness. A "free" curse , because I overclock my resists.

During Quad atziri phase I tried to stunlock the flameblaster and burst that target down while popping a topaz flask. Or stunlock the lightning mini boss and pop a ruby flask.
Multi Atziri can be chilled and stunned, so I left the Hypothermia gem in the setup.

Still needed more practice to get skill rotation right. Removal of concentrated effect gem during adds phase seems efficient, but probably not needed. During adds phase it's vital you recharge blood rage & endurance charges and pickup the fight starting with a leapslam for the fortify buff. Can also linkup icecrash with fortify, but I tried to keep the burst dps as high as possible.

Was unsure of the amount of damage this character could take with the fortify buff. Seems with fortify and a ruby flask you can easily take a mini flameblast.



Still have a few things in mind to write up, but for the biggest part, the guide is done. Can improve with your help.

Feedback / Questions are welcome.
@Minstrelshadrak
Last edited by MinstrelShadrak on Sep 17, 2015, 7:28:05 AM
"
Still have a few things in mind to write up, but for the biggest part, the guide is done. Can improve with your help.

Feedback / Questions are welcome.


So you discussed several times how mana is an issue in several places, and wanted to take reduced cost skills, but did you consider Reverly at all? It only costs 2 points off of your tree and makes a huge difference in mana management. (Seeing as you aren't using blood magic)

For the most part I was surprised more people haven't responded since I think you did a pretty good write up + video.

Suggestions:
Progression guide. Links to use while leveling, tree while leveling (Like 20 / 40 / 60 / 80)

"
damelon wrote:
So you discussed several times how mana is an issue in several places, and wanted to take reduced cost skills, but did you consider Reverly at all? It only costs 2 points off of your tree and makes a huge difference in mana management. (Seeing as you aren't using blood magic)


I've used Revelry for quite some levels. Now and then Respeccing in and out of it. I noticed that the on kill effect & on hit effect where most usefull for trash. I believe it was 10 mana on kill, making it pretty good for trash. However that mod was removed on the 5th of june.

Latest problems arrived versus a single strong monster. Then default attacks where popping up. Versus a single target +2 mana on hit isn't much. That's why it's currently not in the tree, %Mana leech and abit of reduced mana is anough for both trash and bosses. Rich man's dream would be using Elreon Jewelry and GG Jewels to solve this problem without having to walk unprefered routes on the tree.

"
damelon wrote:
For the most part I was surprised more people haven't responded since I think you did a pretty good write up + video.

cheers for that.

"
damelon wrote:

Suggestions:
Progression guide. Links to use while leveling, tree while leveling (Like 20 / 40 / 60 / 80)

Yeah good idea, will do, although low priority atm. Leveling details don't matter much when you got the popular Unique 2handers lined up. I think I'll focus it on how to optain gear good anough to start mapping.
@Minstrelshadrak
Last edited by MinstrelShadrak on Jun 8, 2015, 3:38:33 PM
"


I've used Revelry for quite some levels. Now and then Respeccing in and out of it. I noticed that the on kill effect & on hit effect where most usefull for trash. I believe it was 10 mana on kill, making it pretty good for trash. However that mod was removed on the 5th of june.


I totally missed that it was changed on the 5th. Add one more thing to the troll patch. You are right though that it worked primarily as a mana saver for packs.

I was about to write something earlier but I wasn't totally sure if I want to go with maces or staves (crit)... or should I got cascade/shock nova witch ;D
Have you thought about facebreakers? or are the links really needed.
Nicely written nonetheless. Thanks for that.

Your gear is stunning (pun intended) for a beta.
Last edited by anone on Jun 8, 2015, 4:35:42 PM
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anone wrote:
Have you thought about facebreakers? or are the links really needed.


Funny Anough I'm wearing facebreakers! Although it's for the corruption on them. Failed and Ripped so many chaosed, pre coloured and 4Linked titan gauntlets, it's sickening. The 10% reduced stun treshold is a nice stat though. Something atleast. Unarmed is certainly cool style wise. Main reasons why I haven't done it fulltime is: I don't like to wear abyssus and indeed I'd loose a link on leapslam.
2- Fortify (so I can do alot more dmg with ice crash)
3- Bloodmagic (endless jumping)
4- Faster attacks

Gem lost:
5- Endurance charge on melee stun.
Ah probably not that bad. But the build alrdy invests sooo much in keeping the endurance charges up, and now with all the stuns, warlord's mark isn't triggering all that often.

Wanted to have a go with crit, but lacked the accuracy gear and a good weapon. If you're thinking of critting, uniq stave or double wielding is probably the way to go. Tried to roll a Fleshripper (2hand axe with 40% crit implicit) but failed miserably there. Transitioned from basic 2handed style (started with a Koam's primacy axe) into stun, enjoying the safety it provides. I'd hate to loose bloodrage gem for Vaalpact too when going crit, because otherwise the blooline reflect pack would kill you before you could say "blue berry pie". Besides that, Ice Crash converts alot of phys into cold, so you might not have anough % physical life leech and need to put in a LL gem. Crit looks like alot of hard work to make it do good damage without ripping, while keeping up a reasonable amount of quality of life.

thx for your interest.
@Minstrelshadrak
Last edited by MinstrelShadrak on Jun 8, 2015, 5:19:00 PM
thanks for your answer. I'll keep an eye out on your guide as well as any other concerning Ice Crash.

Any chance you could check how it plays with a lower tier weapon?

Cheers
"
anone wrote:
Any chance you could check how it plays with a lower tier weapon?



Loosing the 5L from leapslam hurts wtihout faster attacks. Damage is still good because of the 6L chest. If you had a 5L chest, you'd get the same results on lower level maps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USbzaOaR4eg
@Minstrelshadrak
Reflect tested.
Atziri run done.

Might be a reset soonish.
Anything you'd like to see tested?
@Minstrelshadrak

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