[2.0] Hurricane Katrina 2 - Eyes of the Storm [CoMK Cyclone/Shock Nova]

INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________________________

As is probably evident from the name, the build is a rework of the original Hurricane Katrina, created back when it was much harder to push Cyclone to unreasonable area size. Instead of pushing Cyclone to the limits, this build has a goal of vastly improving its clear speed.

MECHANICS ______________________________________________________________________

The main problem with CoMK gem is the hard requirement of being able to deal considerable damage with both spells and attacks. If our attacks do too little damage we wont kill fast enough to get a lot of spells off, and if our spells do too little damage we probably don't even need them, so balance is the key.

This goal is achieved by using a formerly #1 OP headgear in the game, Crown of Eyes. Very rare and once too expensive to be used for messing around like this, the item can be gotten very cheaply these days, fulfilling the role it was meant to from the start, the creation of attack-spell hybrids.

The other problem is pushing cyclone to ~25 units in radius, which is enough to keep you out of arm's reach and always on the move, covering a wide swath of ground at the same time. To get that, it's enough to get a fast elemental rapier with a free suffix slot, which are very cheap, craft +2 weapon range on it, and finish the job with +2 range from Master of Arena notable, further +2 from Daresso Amulet and +1 from the unique quest jewel, giving you a respectable base radius of 14. That radius is pushed further by taking 52% AoE radius from the tree, which coupled with 20% from Carcass Jack and 10% from quality Cyclone gives you the final Cyclone radius of 25.

PASSIVE TREE ____________________________________________________________________

A lot of ground to cover here, you need all AoE nodes, Master of Arena, enough spell damage to make Crown of Eyes meaningful, life and some resists because a large number of uniques makes capping them a chore. the build has access to 7 jewel slots which are useful in getting some more damage boosts and even more in covering the 200+ dex requirement a rapier has.

Something like this at level 90


GEAR ____________________________________________________________________________

There's a longish list of uniques to get, fortunately none are too expensive.


~30c in temp leagues, roll unimportant


5 link is recommended but I suppose it can do with 4 in a pinch, the chest is chump change in standard but a lot more expensive in temp because of high demand


Due to rise in Cyclone popularity this is a lot more expensive than it should be, I recommend getting a bunch of citrines and chancing it in anarchy map, it's really common, you can get 3-4 per full run.


A lazy way to eliminate mana problems and get a lot of survivability too, costs 1/2ex or so.


Not a must, any shield with a decent spell damage roll will do.


You can use any gloves you want, I always wanted to use these on a build like this one.

So, you got a free belt and boots slot at worst case scenario, adding gloves and shield at best, you should use it to take care of resists.

Nice stats to look for on jewels are
Spell damage with shields
Spell damage/AoE damage/Elemental damage
Resists
ES on hit could be good too, haven't tried it yet

Total cost: 5+ exalts, depending on exact setup, your trading skills and chancing luck.

SKILLS ___________________________________________________________________________

The only required quality gem is Cyclone, everything else is optional.

Main skill setup is
Cyclone - CoMK - Shock Nova - Lightning Penetration - Added Lightning Damage
to maximize damage potential of both Cyclone and Shock nova

Other slots are as following
Whirling Blades - Faster Attack - Fortify
as an escape-buff skill

Vaal Storm Call - Spell Echo - Lightning Penetration
good help on killing bosses and tougher rares

Storm Call - Spell Totem - Faster Casting - Lightning Penetration
some more help on killing bosses and tougher rares

CwDT - Shock Nova - Curse on Hit - Enfeeble
a lot of AoE allows it to curse half the screen with a high level enfeeble, dramatically boosting survivability

It's light on auras with just Wrath and Herald of Thunder, no aura investment either.

LEVELLING ________________________________________________________________________

It levels as a regular caster until level 69 when you can equip all your required items. I used Ball Lightning with Storm Call totem and Flame Dash, it was pretty much a breeze.

Q&A _____________________________________________________________________________

- Are there any downsides?
Yup, killing bosses isn't very fast, which might or might not be an issue, totem and Vaal Skill help a bunch with that. If the boss is melee you can usually stay away well enough. Bosses that summon a lot of adds like Pit boss are easy, though. Also pretty squishy so you have to mind what you're doing, not an AFK build by any means.

- And advantages?
Very high clear speed for the price, the more enemies are on screen the happier she is. Also very fun and visually attractive without causing much lag (good job there with Shock Nova, GGG).

VIDEOS __________________________________________________________________________

https://youtu.be/cQnnuIkwSho

FINAL WORD _____________________________________________________________________

This build is dedicated to all CoMK fans out there, a daresso* salute to both of you.

*T/L note
daresso [dah-ress-oh] - adjective
triumphant, dashing, bold, flamboyant,

It looks pretty nice!
I'm going to try a version with Doryani's Fist instead of Crown of Eyes, and removing Daresso's Ammy, I don't think I'll need it.

Which were the bandit's choices? I Guess Oak - Kraityn - Point

What is the tooltip dps of your shock nova?

I am also thinking in Romira's and Discharge as a second spell. Not sure about it, tho. Resists are already hard.

BTW, is accuracy an issue? How do you handle it?

may i know your cyclone toltips dps?!

"

Rodrux wrote:

It looks pretty nice!
I'm going to try a version with Doryani's Fist instead of Crown of Eyes, and removing Daresso's Ammy, I don't think I'll need it.

Right, you won't need it, the reason it looks like this is I really wanted to marry CoMK to XL Cyclone, you can get a much more solid build by skipping the extreme Cyclone stretching step.

"

Rodrux wrote:

Which were the bandit's choices? I Guess Oak - Kraityn - Point

Considering the number of uniques involved it would be worthwhile to take Oak, but I'm used to just taking points, it hardly makes or breaks anything except for the merci reward, extra charges aren't easy to come by. So it was all points originally, however I had to make the build sturdier than it is in the video for more comfortable playing. So it ended up as point-point-Oak.

I reworked it shortly after posting, it has EB now and uses ES on hit jewels to take care of resources instead of Thief's Torment, got a lot sturdier in the process as below 4,5k life is sketchy for a melee even if its tanking time is minimal. It also allows her to use HoI too but the dps gain is small, AA isn't that good for Cyclone either so HoI stays there until we will get something more interesting. It would also be an option to use Wrath+Anger instead of Wrath+HoT+HoI but I don't like breaking the build theme unless I really have to and HoT wouldn't be much behind Anger in actual dps because of lightning spell multiplier on Wrath and Lightning penetration, it would also lose the option to autocurse with HoT.

"

Rodrux wrote:

What is the tooltip dps of your shock nova?

Once you link it to CoMK, it doesn't show dps, I think it's 2,5 to 3k per hit or something and dps is really anyone's guess. I've also tried using sequential spells like Firestorm which have the advantage of stealing your cyclone kills significantly less so you get more spells out, breaking the game by cycloning in a crowd around a shrine and triggering twenty firestorms at once is also kinda fun but the big issue is you have no bloody idea where are you going and what are you doing :)

"

Rodrux wrote:

BTW, is accuracy an issue? How do you handle it?

It isn't that bad, I've got some acc taken on tree and there's some on CoE, it's a fast attacking build so it isn't annoying, you only have some dps loss so it wouldn't mean much if I took it some 5% up. If I had better jewelry that would also be a possible source of acc.

"

xenochaos1 wrote:

may i know your cyclone toltips dps?!

A bit over 8k now I think, it had something below 5 in the video so it's a lot smoother. I've used it a bit to farm Leo, you can double it by swapping CoMK and Nova for WED and Added Chaos if you want to mess around in PvP or if you expect a tough solo boss.

Guess I should update this once next expansion hits, it's a lot better build now, what I posted was more of a concept showcase so people would attempt it themselves, I've had a lot of fun with it. You can see the current gear and tree in my profile.

I have made the Doryani's Fist version. At lv 68, i'm oneshotting whites and blues on 68 maps. Taking RT improved the build a lot to me. Took my cyclone from 2.7k to 3.9k dps, but I had no accuracy at all (68% hit chance).

I am experiencing some mana issues, tho. Is that why you specced into EB? Wonder if I could sustain it just with the 30 ES on kill from Doryani's Fist. (mana cost 50 on a 5L atm, I have no idea how would I sustain a 6L, mana cost goes to 71 with Increased AoE)

Yeah, I meant your average damage on shock nova, not the DPS.

Thank you for the response and for the build, it's really fun to play it!

"

Rodrux wrote:

I am experiencing some mana issues, tho. Is that why you specced into EB? Wonder if I could sustain it just with the 30 ES on kill from Doryani's Fist. (mana cost 50 on a 5L atm, I have no idea how would I sustain a 6L, mana cost goes to 71 with Increased AoE)

Yes, it was easy with 25% free mana and Thief's torment but both ring slots are a high price to pay. Using a few mana on hit jewels (or corrupted rings) also works but then you have to make longer runs with cyclone to get more space between uses, that's possible if your Cyclone is large but not so much if it's of average size. Also, long runs are tricky to pull off in tight quarters so it can be unreliable.

I'm thinking mana on hit would work almost equally well as ES, however viridian jewels can't roll spell damage like cobalt and I really want to use Crown of Eyes so I opted to give it something substantial to work with.

Anyway, your biggest problem in general are 1v1 fights, mana/ES on hit works great when there are a lot of targets to hit and ES on kill would also sustain you well when there's a lot of cannon fodder around. However if I don't switch over to making long runs I sometimes run out of steam even with 700ES pool to play with as bosses and very tough solo enemies take longer to kill.

That strategy isn't an option for you anyway, but there's another thing you can do as a Doryani user, you could go BM as ele auras don't really add much damage to your huge base and other buffs aren't all that interesting. If you really need something like Grace or a Purity for certain bosses you can always totemize it at the price of one jewel slot and a 3 or 4-link.

I think there are more CoMK builds with Doryani's Fist in other sections, you could check them out for ideas.

"

raics wrote:

I reworked it shortly after posting, it has EB now and uses ES on hit jewels to take care of resources instead of Thief's Torment, got a lot sturdier in the process as below 4,5k life is sketchy for a melee even if its tanking time is minimal. It also allows her to use HoI too but the dps gain is small, AA isn't that good for Cyclone either so HoI stays there until we will get something more interesting. It would also be an option to use Wrath+Anger instead of Wrath+HoT+HoI but I don't like breaking the build theme unless I really have to and HoT wouldn't be much behind Anger in actual dps because of lightning spell multiplier on Wrath and Lightning penetration, it would also lose the option to autocurse with HoT.

Could you please link me your current tree with EB? I just played a wander with ES gain on hit and as you said, it should work well for Cyclone, too.
Also, if you have any insight on playing this build in a HC temp league, I'd appreciate it.

cheers

No need, you can see the current gear and tree on my profile, kinda obvious but the char is 'Katrina'.

"

therealjcool wrote:

Also, if you have any insight on playing this build in a HC temp league, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, don't do it, the build is far from being HC-friendly, it's stretched a lot, uses a few non-life uniques and you need to level it as a half-spec caster, which sucks. Too squishy for HC, really, you don't necessarily need to die a lot if you're playing a good game, paying attention and keeping your charges up but it will punish every mistake.

Though, you could play CoMK in HC if you build it with different skills and go tanky, saving the points reserved for Duelist trip and AoE chasing. If you're sticking to a theme, I'm thinking Ice Crash / Ice Nova would work nicely if not for Hatred which won't really work all that well as a dps aura, Molten Strike / Firestorm would be easier to set up but that's as melee as it gets so it might be a bit risky for HC and Firestorm is really obstructing, maybe Ground slam / Firestorm.

Thanks for that. I just repecced an old standard char to try, it's really nice going. I've used your "Lightning theme" and added Doryani's Fist, which seems to work nicely. However, I did run out of Mana despite some mana nodes on tree and mana reg on gear (it was a caster originally).
So I came up with this tree:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMA37CCEI-mRKtVriycEFgRLXYRfIPk7OvuMjQc3DLRHwKPGkVHBAfAZoPbTLPZ_K3xBLM8BVXGl5UJqhhdogDvfJ_fOlhSU8Ca8B_hc5o7PV-X9IuMaPKCm_nd7DiFe2ZUlG9yD3GFWfPMt6yqnz4aONV1cqkt0pBVsULE9vcyJy_aucauffWvp-oYfNlG1zwtDF8cznas-OuDzINfHKcrUM9-FHHz3bvttz5TpQ3N2XwOPGhlkc7-Cv5Uggffv9i98kXyQdtPNZI64eDD_o-18qZXJbxN43JsbqpsRkrIMgk=

What do you think? It's got 193% life and a ton of armor scaling, also up to 6 endurance charges. No auras obviously but I could use the "clear mind" jewel, granting me an additional 60% spelldamage. Due to the insane base damage the gloves provide, this may be equal to - or better than - running auras.

Gear-wise I'd go all armor/HP with CoE.
Oh yes, and I've been using Arc as 5th link instead of added lightning. Helps with the clearing and I think you can afford to lose the added lightning gem with Doryani's Fists.

Looks good, going BM solves mana problems with cyclone and you can also go for cold variant that way if you wish, no auras anyway and clear mind makes up for it somewhat, should be fine.

And yeah, added lightning isn't really worth the slot if you already got a lot of added damage, good choice.