[2.0] Dr. Strangelove's CoC AoE or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discharge
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Welcome friends, I am here to take you on a journey, a journey that I have been on over the past 2 years playing Path of Exile and leading to a Nuclear Apocalypse!
Well, not quite a nuclear apocalypse but something pretty close - it's a build, a build designed around one singular question: How can I, in a temporary Hardcore league and with a first character, get as many max-power (or as close to it as possible) discharges every second - even against single targets - and without a major respec at high levels? Now before we start in earnest I feel it only appropriate that I demonstrate what this build is capable of in order to entice you further; that being said I have not yet nearly plumbed the depths of possibility but here is a video demonstrating it's power thus far:
As a note, to do the Merciless Malachai Facetank I used Immortal Call instead of Life Leech in my Cast on Critical Strike loop and Warlord's Mark as my curse. You will notice my DPS is consistent even against single targets. This is typically a massive weakness of Cast on Critical Strike builds that use Discharge as their main source of damage, including the build guide on this forum that boldly claims to be '...the most OP build in PoE'. It has become apparent to me, due to replies to this build guide, that I need to explain what is so special about Barrage, Greater Multiple Projectiles, Cast on Critical Strike, Discharge and a support spell such as Firestorm or Ball Lightning right at the start. As such, contained within the spoiler below is a full mathematical justification:
Why Firestorm/Ball Lightning and Why Barrage?
Well, that took a lot more effort than I expected! Over the last few days I have crafted a full Barrage, Cast on Critical Strike, Discharge Simulator. It rolls three separate attack sequences, one with Firestorm, one with Ball Lightning and one with a customisable single hit spell, for example Ice Nova or Freezing Pulse. In the future I will likely add the ability to customise the settings for both attack sequences separately to compare different builds. If I'm feeling really enthusiastic I may add a Cyclone simulator as another 'Sheet'. The simulator can be found here: Barrage CoC Firestorm Discharge Simulator Note you can edit any of the green boxes to change parameters. From my simulations so far, in prolonged fights Firestorm appears to increase Discharged Charges by roughly 45% when compared to Single-Hit supporting spells. The most I have seen is a 75% improvement and the worst was 36% after refreshing 30 times. The above results were for 1 radius 2 enemy (humanoid) with 715% increased spell crit, 431% increased weapon crit and 92% accuracy with 6 Power Charge max and 6 Endurance Charge max. On an interesting final note this process has also reassured me of the viability and advantages of Ball Lightning. Even with Firestorms advantage over single hit spells, Ball Lightning has far more instant feedback as it hits as soon as it is cast and each ball wave will ultimately hit a similar number of times to Firestorm in total, especially against lower radius targets. It seems, however, that Firestorm still remains the best choice for large bosses like Malachai or High Templar Voll. As such I have returned to Ball Lightning as my primary support spell but swapping in Firestorm for longer fights, especially where the enemies have a bigger radius (i.e. they are fat!). On a slightly crazier note I've had an idea! Cyclone, Cast on Critical Strike, Discharge with a 6 link Whispering Ice Staff. You can get Elemental Equilibrium because Icestorm provides constant ice damage and you shouldn't ever get 2 Discharges in a row without ice damage in between (unlike with single hit spells) so the Elemental Equilibrium buff is permanent and should never be a detriment to your Discharge damage. It also gives you an extra slot (effectively 7 link) which allows you to try and make up for the low attack speed/6.6% base crit of the staff.
The Journey
Now my journey took some time to arrive at this goal, my first ever character was in Domination and it was an elemental spell casting Templar. It was terrible but I got to Dominus and unlocked Scion and then decided that if I was really going to succeed in this game I needed to understand the mechanics and plan my builds.
My second character was in Hardcore and it was a Scion and I planned my build - this character was far more successful focusing on Freezing Pulse and block (which was easy to get back then). At some point however I discovered Flicker Strike, CI, Blood Rage and Cast on Critical Strike. Back then Flicker Strike's quality bonus was increased crit chance (up to 100% I think or maybe 60% either way it was significant). I realised at this point that something amazing was possible, something absolutely insane but also beautiful; a build that could clear a map simply by holding down a single button. This became my first goal and I got very close to achieving it, during the process I also fell in-love with Discharge as I quickly realised it was the ability with the most damage potential of all abilities. I also want to make it clear at this point that all of this was self discovery, only later when I wanted to learn how to race efficiently did I even look at another persons build and I always played solo, never in parties. Sadly, after about a year of playing and refining this crazy build there was a huge nerf to block, despite this I persevered and came up with new defensive and offensive strategies but the core of the build remained Flicker Strike, Cast on Critical Strike, Discharge with Blood Rage and Chaos Innoculation, this was then completely destroyed in 2.0 with the changes to Blood Rage, the most important being the drop from 100% of kills granting frenzy charges to 25%. I realised at this point that I needed a new goal, I needed to change things up; I thought about it and realised that whatever I did I wanted it to be hardcore viable as, other than my first ever character, I had almost exclusively played hardcore temp leagues. So I had my first requirement, hardcore viable. I have also been gaming, PC gaming, for a very long time, 27 years in total (since I was 2!) during which time I have built a healthy but also somewhat embarrassing collection of games - all of which I have played and completed and almost always on the hardest available difficulties. As ashamed as I am of being such a no-life nerd it has grown within me an obsessive min-maxing perfectionist and this part of me screams 'CRAZYINSANEDPSPLEASE' whenever I look at the PoE passive tree and this leads to my second and third requirements - use the most powerful ability in the game and make it happen as often as it possibly can. So now here we have the core concepts I would craft my build around:
After thinking about things further I realised that I didn't just want the build to be hardcore viable, I wanted it to be viable for a first character that wasn't terribly rich. This, as most of you will know, is a significant limitation. I also didn't want to have to respec my passive tree, I would clearly have to use alternate skills and items until I was ready but I didn't want to have to change my passive tree around as that comes at an extra cost. Finally, thinking more about the DPS side of things I realised that, although its easy to generate powerful discharges when there are a lot of enemies near by and it's easy to generate a lot more discharges when there are lots of enemies near by, I wanted my single target DPS to be as high or as close to my multi-target DPS as possible. This then left me with the following list of requirements:
Creating the Build
So, generally speaking, there are great community resources available for Path of Exile, we have lots of 'youtubers' and streamers and we have great build guides here on the forums. One thing I think is lacking, however, are building guides and by this I mean guides and information that help people in creating their own builds.
For this reason I thought it would be a good idea to create a video in which I plan an entirely new build and discuss my thought process as I do it and the steps I take to refine it: https://youtu.be/pFKn-5ZKOVI As long as the video is, I spent an order of magnitude more time planning and creating the build in this guide and that is before play testing variations of it. Path of Exile is an incredibly deep and complicated game if you really get into it and, as such, it can be incredibly rewarding also. My first iteration of this build (in something resembling it's current form) was in the Awakening Beta, I had maybe 3 characters at different stages during the Beta that were my original prototypes. After the Beta I thought I was pretty much set for Tempest, I died pretty stupidly on day 2 I think but my second character got to level 74 using the levelling process which will be discussed later in this post. Unfortunately this level 74 character died to due Flame Dash not casting (as it would have landed on a cliff) something which would kill me again, later in the league, on a level 78 char. Flame Dash is an amazing ability but right now it is a little tricky in hardcore due to it not casting if it would land on an obstacle or impassable terrain. After this moderate success I set about levelling a new character, same build, and recorded my progress in a series of videos which will be later with discussion of progress to that point. By this time the build had taken its core shape, over time and testing I have learned much that has improved the build but most of that is regarding gear and gem choice, the passive tree has remained the same since that first level 74 character in Tempest. Here in a second video I discuss the theory behind the build and look at item choices as well as the passive tree: https://youtu.be/ZaD_nAWXxZo I made a few mistakes in the video, most of them minor though - the most noticeable is at some point I say '...3 or 4 firestorms which would be generating 40 or 50 balls per second' I forgot I said 3 or 4 and thought I said 4 or 5 initially. Go short term memory, you're a winner! woo! As you can see from the video I quickly came to the conclusion that the fastest way to cast any spell was to use Barrage and Cast on Critical Strike. Now I had a way to cast Discharge repeatedly and very fast I needed a way to make each cast powerful. To achieve this I started messing around with various supporting spells; the ones that hit multiple times had the obvious advantage of being able to generate more power charges. At first I tried silly things like dropping Greater Multiple Projectiles for a third spell but I quickly realised taking something like Arc which chains is much more effective at increasing the damage of Discharge. My problem with spells like Arc, however, was that against a single target they would only ever hit once. I quickly realised that the best way to increase my DPS, against both single targets and groups, was to find whatever spell would generate the most critical strikes per cast and support Discharge with that. It came down to two choices, Firestorm or Ball Lightning - Firestorm has higher base critical chance (6% compared to Ball Lightning's 5%) and the balls fall 10 times a second but don't necessarily hit the same spot. Ball Lightning on the other hand hits 5 times per second but it hits instantly and it hits everything within it's Area of Effect. After play-testing a little I found I enjoyed the responsiveness of Ball Lightning more and the fact that it would fly out ahead of me clearing weaker enemies before I even got close. After some play testing with Firestorm, bought straight from the vendor, I quickly discovered that it performed even better against larger enemies and tough bosses like Malachai. This caused me to use it as my primary skill for a while, however, after creating an in-depth calculator (in the above 'Why Firestorm/Ball Lightning and Why Barrage?' spoiler) I began to understand, to a greater extent, the advantages of Ball Lightning and Firestorm. As such I now use Ball Lightning as my main support spell and swap in Firestorm for prolonged boss fights or particularly large enemies. The Build Itself: So here it is! The actual build - the skill tree: Dr. Strangelove's CoC AoE Note that this build is weapon agnostic this means it works with any weapon at all and any Cast on Critical Strike skill setup as long as those skills benefit from Increased Area of Effect there is no inefficiency in the tree. I have run, at times for fun and to test, Cast on Critical Strike with Cold Snap for example, it also uses power charges and generates endurance charges (with Voll's Devotion) and can be extremely effective. Another great combo is Magma Orb + Flame Surge, this is actually insanely high DPS and feels great to use. On a side-note I sort of wish that, with the changes to shotgun, Freezing Pulse was affected by Increased Area of Effect as that would make the skill relevant again and also make it a viable spell to cast with this build. I created a little video in which I test some of these combinations and others in an attempt to demonstrate the flexibility of the build as a whole: https://youtu.be/b7O5jeUzAF4 Core Concepts Despite the weapon and spell agnostic nature of the passive tree, it was designed with one specific setup in mind which can be communicated through these core concepts:
There are other concepts which are important and hugely beneficial to the build, such as defensive gem loops, Chaos Inoculation with Vaal Pact and Ghost Reaver, Surgeon's Flasks for permanent 85% all resists and burn/freeze/shock/curse/bleed immunity but they are not vital to the mechanical function of the build. My recommendation for Ball Lightning and Firestorm is to use Ball Lightning as your primary and swap in Firestorm for prolonged boss fights, especially against large bosses like Malachai or High Templar Voll. Minimum Required Gear:
Along with this gear I heavily recommend using Warlord's Mark as your primary curse for Life Leech, also make sure you have Ghost Reaver and preferably Vaal Pact by this time also. Key Upgrades:
My gear at Level 87
discussion
This helm was chosen for it's Energy Shield and Accuracy - the resistance is also nice and it has an open prefix. I believe it cost me 30 chaos. A perfect helmet would be triple ES prefixes (ES%, Hybrid ES/stun recovery and flat ES) with Intelligence, Accuracy and 1 resistance as suffixes.
The gem loop is my curse - Ball Lightning is great for spreading curses efficiently and an quality Curse on Hit gem can be used to increase the curses potency. Currently this build is using Increased Area of Effect to increase the area cursed by the Ball Lightning but ultimately a +1 to number of curses Voll's Devotion would mean I used a second curse instead (Assassin's Mark). The primary curse for this build before a 6 link Voll's Protector is acquired is Warlord's Mark for the life/mana leech however, since I have a 6 link I can run Poacher's Mark instead which reduces enemy evasion (very important!) and gives frenzy charges on kill as well as mana on hit (the life on hit does nothing due to CI) I could also run Assassin's Mark as it gives a huge damage boost and extra crits.
discussion
6 Link Voll's Protector , best in slot for this build - I got lucky crafting this one, after getting my first 5 link I bought crappy ilvl 50+ Voll's Protector s and 6 slotted/linked them until I hit either 5 or 6 link. The 5 links I sold to fund the 6 linking project - I had crafted four 5 link Voll's Protector s before getting a 6 link on the fith try. Total of about 600 fusings and a similar number of jewellers - normally it takes many more fusings to 6 link than jewellers to 6 slot though.
The gem loop is my main attack, Barrage + Greater Multiple Projectiles gives 8 hits per attack; Cast on Critical Strike gives those 8 hits the potential to cast spells; Firestorm or Ball Lightning is cast by Cast on Critical Strike and generate lots of power charges, even against single targets, to feed my Discharge (Ball Lightning vs Firestorm is debated later); Discharge does the vast majority of the damage, it's important to get a 20%q Discharge if you can for the Increased Area of Effect; Finally Life Leech keeps you alive - it does not need to be levelled or quality as both increase the rate of life leech or the max life leech per second, both of which are meaningless due to Vaal Pact.
discussion
These gloves are pretty amazing, relatively high ES roll with attack speed and an open suffix in which I master crafted resistance. Attack speed is really important on gloves - the most important things you are looking for are Attack Speed, ES and Accuracy. Perfect Gloves would be triple ES prefixes with Attack Speed and Accuracy with either Intelligence or an Elemental Resistance. I actually picked these gloves up pretty cheap, 10c or less.
The gem loop is my Cast when Damage Taken setup - this is primarily here for the Immortal Call which is fed endurance charges by the Voll's Devotion unique amulet. It's supported by Increased Duration and then the last slot has Tempest Shield for a little extra damage reduction. Tempest Shield can be replaced by Molten Shell, Vaal Discipline or your choice of warcry - Vaal Discipline and warcries have to be self cast but both benefit from the Increased Duration in the loop. Before you have a Voll's Devotion Immortal Call is a little useless as you won't have reliable endurance charges to power it.
discussion
Boots make you run fast! Speed is essential to HC survivability in pretty much all builds. I always make sure I buy boots with high move speed, at least 20%. These ones are pretty nice with the high ES roll, good move speed and double resists but a perfect pair would be ES% + flat ES + move speed as prefixes and then triple resist suffixes or double resist with intelligence. These boots cost me roughly 30c.
My boots are currently my 'odds and ends' gems; my 2 mana reservations Discipline and Arctic Armour with Flame Totem and Added Lightning Damage. The mana reservations will always be Discipline and Arctic Armour and in the future I may replace Flame Totem with Enlighten and Herald of Thunder or Empower. That being said my Flame Totem really should be supported by Blind and not Added Lightning Damage but I just spent 300 chromes trying to roll 2G 1R 1B and failed. Perhaps by the time you read this that will have changed but who knows! I should add that Flame Totem + Blind is incredibly useful, probably more useful than any Herald + Enlighten but perhaps not more useful than Empower - this one is a bit open ended depending on your play style but a blinding Flame Totem is really good.
discussion
All in all a pretty good shield +1 to cold gems is useful for reasons discussed a little later but + spell damage would be preferable. Otherwise it has great ES and good Spell Crit both of which are essential. A perfect shield would have ES% and flat ES with Spell Damage as prefixes and Spell Crit + 2 resistance rolls as suffixes. This shield cost me 10c or less.
The gem loop here is one of my favourites, despite being only a 3 link it is one of the greatest survival tools I have ever found for CI characters in PoE. Cast when Stunned - you are CI, you have no life, if you get hit you have a 50% chance to avoid stun due to ES being up but otherwise you are going to get stunned so pretty much if you are being hit much you are being stunned so Cast when Stunned is pretty reliable and it has no damage reduction, unlike Cast when Damage Taken. The issue with being stunned is it's going to get you killed unless you can stop it or get out, this is why the 'avoid stun while casting' passives were taken in combination with skills like Flame Dash as it gives you the chance to escape even while being stunned. However, this loop allows you to stop everything stunning you in their tracks - even bosses. The super high freeze chance of Cold Snap along with the high crit chance of the build mean you almost always freeze - when you add Elemental Proliferation in you freeze everything for as long as you freeze the weakest monster you hit. This means, for example, Brutus map boss summons his skeletons and then hits you, you lose 3,000 ES but also get stunned - the stun triggers Cold Snap which freezes a tiny weak skeleton next to Brutus and Elemental Proliferation means Brutus is also frozen... for 3 seconds. It's amazing and will save your life far more often than you think it would.
discussion
One of the most important parts of any build, the weapon, I'm pretty happy with this one though I wish it had a higher spell damage roll. Discharge is interesting in that it doesn't benefit overly much from flat elemental spell damage as even a high roll is a tiny fraction of Discharges potential damage. this makes Spell Damage far more useful in general for Discharge based builds. The caveat to that is the supporting spells, Ball Lightning or Firestorm, both benefit a lot more from flat elemental damage even though they only take 20% and 30% respectively they hit so often that it still makes a big difference. This also means that if you feel you want to swap Discharge out for some fights and use Cold Snap instead (this is a viable option) that you get a nice damage boost from flat elemental damage in this configuration. That being said a perfect wand for this build would be % Spell Damage, Hybrid Spell Damage/Mana and + flat elemental damage OR +2 cold gems (the +2 cold gems would be for the Cast when Stunned loop mentioned in the shield discussion) as prefixes with Critical Strike Chance, attack speed and Critical Strike Multiplier OR Spell Critical Strike chance as suffixes. This wand I believe cost me 20c.
The gem loop here is my default escape (Flame Dash or Lightning Warp) + Summon Ice Golem. Flame Dash has a quicker base cast than Lightning Warp and no duration giving it reliability in a pinch and meaning you can support it with just Faster Casting; that being said Flame Dash has only 3 charges and a very small range meaning you can often get stuck trying to escape up a cliff with Flame Dash in a panic and for some reason it won't work - this has killed me on level 74 and 78 characters in Tempest league with this build, both times it's because the Flame Dash max range fell exactly ontop of the cliff I was trying to escape up and hence it refused to cast - If anyone from GGG is reading this please make it so that Flame Dash will always cast if you tell it to but make you head-butt the cliff if it's in the way, it would save many lives. Lastly the Summon Ice Golem is the best golem by far for this build, the accuracy being the most important thing with the crit being nice. It will die a lot but its linked to Faster Casting so re-summoning is super quick/easy
discussion
Wooo! Voll's Devotion , best amulet ever! This build is completely viable before this amulet (as you will see in videos!) but Voll's Devotion really brings it together, effectively doubling your Discharge DPS. The best possible amulet you could get would be a Voll's Devotion corrupted for + 1 curse on enemies. I found one Brittle Emperor Card (farming from level 67-77 in Dried Lake) and I bought the other 7 for 1ex 10c each.
discussion
Rings! These are pretty self explanatory, Crit rings with more Crit and then some resistances. Perfect rings would probably be crafted with Elreon mods, you have some hard choices though. With Elreon you can craft % ES as a prefix so assuming 'can have multiple crafted mods' suffix the best ring would be flat ES, (Elreon) ES% and your choice of (Leo) faster start of ES recharge, Flat mana or Rarity. Suffixes would then be 'multiple crafted mods' attack speed and (Elreon) extra Critical Strike Chance.
For a non 'multiple crafted mods' ring prefixes would be flat ES, Mana, Rarity and suffixes would be Attack Speed, (Elreon) Critical Strike Chance and then your choice of resistances, accuracy, % Increased Lightning Damage or attributes (STR or INT or ALL) These rings cost me between 2 and 5c to buy and then 1 divine each for the Elreon Critical Strikes mod
discussion
Now for the belt! Now this belt is pretty good and the most important thing about it is +50 strength. This allows you to run your STR gems like Cast when Damage Taken and Immortal Call. The second most important thing about this belt is the resistances but depending on your other gear you may not need them. You'll notice it's corrupted - this is because to complete this build you will want a +1 endurance charge belt. To achieve this I buy every belt I can that has +50 strength and either good resistance suffixes or increased flask duration/reduced flask charges used or a mix. Generally each belt costs me between 1 and 5c and then a vaal orb to corrupt it. A word of warning, always make sure you have at least one extra functional belt or you might corrupt your +50 strength to nothing and then be unable to equip your gear!
The ideal belt for this build would have +1 endurance charge implicit with flat ES, flat Armour and (Tora) Move speed as prefixes with (min 50) strength, resistances and/or increased flask effect duration and/or reduced flask charges used
discussion
Lastly we have the flasks. One huge benefit of Crit builds is the Surgeon's prefix on flasks, this gives flasks an effective 100% uptime (no really). The major benefit then of CI is no need for life flasks and due to mana on hit from jewels/curses we need no mana flask either meaning we get to have all resistance flasks, one of each type. This flask setup is Best in Slot - maybe some uniques could be used but really you need each and every one of these flasks. If you want you can swap the curse immune and bleed immune around on the Quicksilver and Granite flasks but I prefer it this way. Also due to the fact that you have 100% uptime on flasks it doesn't matter which of the resistance flasks has which immunity as long as you get all 3. I literally just activate every flask every 4 seconds so I have permanent +10 to all max resists and immunity to all elemental effects its super effective =D
As a note, I crafted all these flasks myself with resources I saved up during the league - each flask cost 4 Glassblower's Baubles a Transmute orb and perhaps 50 alterations Last edited by Doombug5000 on Nov 11, 2015, 9:45:08 PM
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Levelling Part 1:
This section will be broken down into two main parts, first a gem progression overview with alternate choices and then a video record of this build progressing through the temporary Tempest hardcore league. Gem Progression and Quest Rewards: Here I am going to lay out a 'map' of gem progression - when and where you should purchase/acquire which gems and what loops they should be a part of; I will also include all quests and rewards with information as to whether they are worth doing or skipping. To keep things readable I'm going to use some shorthand:
Act 1:
Act 2:
Act 3:
Act 4:
From this point, all quest rewards are up to you, except the bandit quests; cruel you need to kill all and get the skill point and then in Merciless you need to help Oak for the Endurance Charge. To finish this section here are the endgame gem loops with options and method of acquisition: Primary Attack - 6 link
Cast when Damage Taken - 3 or 4 link
If you have a 4 link available for your Cast when Damage Taken loop you can consider these for the 4th spot:
Cast when Stunned - 3 or 4 link
If you have a 4 link available for your Cast when Stunned loop you can consider these for the 4th spot:
Mobility/Escape and Golem - 3 or 4 link
Curse on Hit - 4 link
Defence Loop - 3 or 4 link
Eventually Flame Totem and Blind can be swapped out for Enlighten and Purity of Lightning or Purity of Fire or Purity of Ice depending on what + max resistance you need most in any given situation. You could also use Empower in either a 3 or 4 link to boost the level of your mana reservations. Levelling Part 2: So levelling this build is pretty interesting, playing through in the Tempest League (HC) I recorded my progress at certain significant intervals, the videos will be listed here along with discussion of progress to that point and how I got there. Normal Difficulty:
Spoiler
Level 10, Brutus: https://youtu.be/_AOy8_QQ0xY
Spoiler
After getting to Lioneye's Watch I took Lightning Tendrils as my reward for killing Hillock - this is a great levelling spell as it benefits hugely from the increased AoE taken in this build.
The secondary ability used was Flame Totem, you get this as a reward for the 'Breaking some Eggs' quest in the Mud Flats though you have to buy it from Nessa. As you can see from the video I had allocated the starting ES nodes followed by the Increased Area of Effect nodes and then was heading through 'Chance to Avoid Stun while Casting' nodes, full tree here: Dr Strangelove's CoC AoE - Level 10 Level 13, Merveil: https://youtu.be/4m077w-wuqM
Spoiler
Not too much changed between Brutus and Merveil, however I did now have Flame Dash slotted as my movement spell (Brutus Reward). Lightning Warp is also good as it has no maximum range but you do need to support it with less duration as well as Faster Casting and its base cast speed is lower than Flame Dash. Still until GGG fix Flame Dash not casting when it 'lands' on a piece of inaccessible terrain (like a cliff or some boxes) Lightning Warp is probably safer.
As a note IMO Flame Dash should always cast but head-butt the inaccessible terrain if it would land on it, similar to whirling blades only capable of going over obstacles if they are within its range. Lastly, at the start of Merveil's Caverns you can pick up Firestorm from Nessa. You can either use this instead of Lightning Tendrils or level it up in an off weapon set as later you will either be using Firestorm or Ball Lightning to support your Cast on Critical Strike Discharge. Level 23, Vaal Oversoul: https://youtu.be/RE4hm5PyDVI
Spoiler
Okay so, my skill tree has grown significantly by this point, I've now gone as far as I'm going to go into the Templar area before Cast on Critical Strike and am heading back into Shadow territory. First stop will be the ES/Life hybrid nodes as they give some extra beef before Chaos Inoculation.
You will also notice everything is now supported by Faster Casting (Sharp and Cruel reward then sold by Yeena); Flame Dash, Flame Totem and Lightning Tendrils. I also have a stupid weapon which I crafted an extra 33% spell damage on. This is a bit silly as a first char wouldn't have access to that kind of gear but it was simply to speed things up as I had already lost a level 74 char with the same build (due to Flame Dash not casting as it would have landed on a cliff rather than either side of it - very upsetting, lost a 78 char of the same build the same way later in the league). The full build at this point can be found here: Dr Strangelove's CoC AoE - Level 23 Level 30, Kole: https://youtu.be/3zIA3cQUVuk Level 31, Piety: https://youtu.be/a13qQPSPvtY
Spoiler
You will notice I completely forgot to record the Piety fight, only afterward did I remember and then I thought 'Oh well lets just run through gear/passive tree' really this section should have been Piety only but I had recorded the Kole fight for some reason so I'm adding that in here.
I finally started to get Critical Strike Chance, got all that ES + Life wheel and then headed straight for Shadow Crit nodes. Notice the use of Flame Dash to increase DPS against Kole - this is a genuinely effective tactic while levelling, the burn damage is significant. More importantly you will notice I have switched from Lightning Tendrils to Ball Lightning - I could have also used Firestorm but I preferred the responsiveness and instant damage of Ball Lightning for levelling - Ball Lightning is supported by Added Lightning Damage, Faster Casting and Added Cold Damage. Full level 31 skill tree here: Dr Strangelove's CoC AoE - Level 31 Level 32, Dominus: https://youtu.be/q_RtdRGBMhQ
Spoiler
I really love this fight, especially the beginning; there is something incredibly satisfying about lining up your Ball Lightning shots and watching everything melt.
You will also get to see me picking up loads of blue trash at the end - I know this seems odd but this is how I ensure I have enough currency when I need it in HC, blues that are less than 4 high I pick up to sell for transmute shards and then I sell transmute shards for wisdom scrolls and identify all yellows and either keep them or sell them for alteration/alch shards. If I have an excess of either transmutes or wisdom scrolls I identify the blues also; rolling your pots when you hit Cast on Critical Strike/Chaos Inoculation will probably take an average of 200 alterations. Level 37, Kaom: https://youtu.be/vtpJ1vrYcpE level 38, Daresso: https://youtu.be/f6k4SjchU0w
Spoiler
By this point Defences are really starting to come together, the build now has more ES than it does Life and it's started to get crit. We've also taken the Summon Ice Golem as the Deshret's Banner reward in act 4 as the accuracy and crit are going to be super important when we go Cast on Critical Strike . If you wanted you could take a different golem and level the Summon Ice Golem in your off weapon set until Cast on Critical Strike .
Ball lightning is here supported by Faster Casting, Added Lightning Damage and Lightning Penetration. The Kaom fight is pretty tough for this build while levelling due to the high physical damage output of both Kaom and his Summon Raging Spirits (the floaty skulls). The Daresso fight on the other hand I find to be much easier as the majority of the damage is avoidable with good positioning. Full build at this point: Dr Strangelove's CoC AoE - Level 38 Level 39, Corrupted Piety: https://youtu.be/4b6FX5wrTp8
Spoiler
The big change at this point is that I am now using Spell Echo with Ball Lightning, replacing Added Lightning Damage. I took Spell Echo as a reward after helping Dialla blow a hole in the side of the beast - afterwards I purchased Cast when Damage Taken , Cast on Critical Strike , Cast when Stunned , Elemental Proliferation , Curse on Hit and Greater Multiple Projectiles from Petarus and Vanja.
I deliberately crafted a white 4 link Armour/Energy Shield hybrid helm to get an easy 3R 1B for Cast when Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Increased Duration + Tempest Shield /Vaal Discipline (Vaal Discipline would be self cast). At this point Cast when Damage Taken + Immortal Call works as I have also set up Herald of Thunder with Curse on Hit and Warlord's Mark auto curse and I am not using the Endurance Charges in any other way. I could, at this point, have also set up my Cast when Stunned loop with Cold Snap and Elemental Proliferation but I believe I ran out of Alchemy orbs and so couldn't afford the last couple of supports from Petarus and Vanja. The fight against Corrupted Piety herself is pretty straightforward, just attack her with everything you've got until she pauses, then get behind the direction she is facing and wait for the Corrupted Lightning Beam and then follow the beam around until it stops and repeat. Level 39, Doedre: https://youtu.be/tWIL00QY2Cg Level 40, Maligaro: https://youtu.be/Y7BLhJ_VZC0 Level 40, Shavronne: https://youtu.be/mXu292hNh_Y
Spoiler
Doedre: Relative easy fight, some high damage spikes if you sit in the Vulnerability Curse (red area). That being said it's a lot quicker to kill her if you do sit in the Vulnerability Curse as it's the only curse that doesn't nerf your DPS; one thing to note however is that curses don't affect totems, only the caster - this means you can hide behind a rock while in Vulnerability and cast your totem in the middle of all 3 curses and do maximum totem DPS while not getting hit. As you can see, I'm way too impatient to do that myself.
Maligaro: Before CI this is the hardest of the 3 minion fights - it's almost entirely chaos damage. Always place a portal before the fight just in case and make sure you don't sit in purple Desecrates he places as the chaos degen will quickly kill you. Obviously I ignored all that advice in this video and simply blasted him with no portal up while standing in a Desecrate. Then again this is normal difficulty so... eh who cares? Shavronne: This fight is probably the most hectic of the three, there is a lot going on. You do have to be careful of lightning thorns, especially as Ball Lightning will keep hitting her long after you have stopped casting. The best thing to do is to attack her until she drops all the Storm Call books around the place for the first time, then stop and wait for her to relocate - very shortly after this she will cast lightning thorns, wait that out and then start again. It is important to note that her spell cycle isn't in sync so lightning thorns will start to be cast later and later, looping around through the different phases. This means you sort of have to judge it for yourself, wait for lightning thorns to disappear and then blast her with everything you have for a few seconds. As a final note, after killing the last of Malachai's minions you can speed things up by portalling to town and taking the waypoint back to the Harvest which is right outside the entrance to Malachai's Lair. Level 40, Malachai: https://youtu.be/Ad2JQZiYkXY
Spoiler
Finally, Malachai himself! I've never actually died to Malachai in Hardcore - quite an enjoyable fight but can drag on a bit. The fight is split into two parts but the first is much quicker and is sort of an intro fight. I think it helps first-time Malachai fighters understand some of the core mechanics before things get super crazy.
The biggest thing to note about this fight is, when Malachai sinks into the ground - move... Other than that its pretty straightforward, even if it is difficult; there is some dodging of ranged AoE and projectiles but mostly its 'stay out of the fire' stuff, the only issue being by the end a very large proportion of the ground is covered in the 'fire' you need to stay out of and it's constantly changing. Cruel Difficulty:
Spoiler
Level 43, Cruel Merveil: https://youtu.be/g3s_2syhZDM
Spoiler
So now we are in Cruel! Resistances become a lot more important at this point, for Merveil cold should obviously be maxed. It's also a good idea to note the DPS of Ball Lightning and the health/ES levels on this character as they give a good indication of where you should be. If you find yourself falling behind at all it is worth spending a little time to make sure your gear is up to scratch. The passive tree for level 43 should look something like this: Dr Strangelove's CoC AoE - Level 43 Level 49, Cruel Kole: https://youtu.be/k5Gn_5yBMDM
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Cruel Kole with an Electrocuting Tempest of Intensity - pretty fun. I like to fight Kole, I know most people skip him but I always enjoy the fight. I realise that we've just skipped the whole of Cruel Act 2 and most of Act 3 but there isn't really much of significance that happens during this period. By this point the build has started to accumulate enough Critical Strike chance to actually feel it, also notice the aggressive use of Flame Dash again, even at this point and just supported by Faster Casting it is a genuinely useful and relatively safe source of extra DPS. The tree for level 49: Dr Strangelove's CoC AoE - Level 49 Level 55, Cruel Kaom: https://youtu.be/pRJ-NGKCu0s
Spoiler
So a little time has passed since Kole, 6 levels and 3 quest reward skill points. You'll also notice a big gear improvement as my Energy Shield has shot up from 1,600 to 2,600. This is mostly due to the new shield I am using which is pretty good, especially with that Spell Critical Strike Chance roll.
Another important change to note is the Ghost Reaver keystone has been allocated giving me life leech with Warlord's Mark to my Energy Shield. Kaom is probably the hardest fight at this point in the build, the Summon Raging Spirits he summons at the end don't quite die fast enough and as you can see I made good use of the portal I placed down at the start of the fight. If you are in hardcore folks, always place a portal! Interestingly I drop into the mines to re-summon my Summon Ice Golem before re-entering Kaom's area, this works for any summoned units. The passive tree for level 55 looks like this: Dr. Strangelove's CoC AoE - level 55 Level 57, Cruel Doedre: https://youtu.be/0Hpe3pPbA9Q Level 57, Cruel Maligaro: https://youtu.be/uUjg9puuu9U Level 57, Cruel Shavronne: https://youtu.be/Fw5isoI4gCQ
Spoiler
In general Malachai's Minions remain pretty easy to deal with, at this point though you definitely want to place portals at the start of each fight. You can always take sudden bursts of damage when curses switch against Doedre, Maligaro's chaos damage is very difficult to deal with due to the small life pool the build has at this point and Shavronne's Lightning Thorns can unexpectedly melt you to nothing. Maligaro is definitely the toughest of the 3 unless you've taken Chaos Inoculation already.
Last thing to note is, after the last minion has been killed you can portal to town and take the waypoint straight to Piety and the entrance to Malachai's Lair as you will see me do in the Shavronne video. Level 57, Cruel Malachai: https://youtu.be/MxOZ2l_ilCg
Spoiler
This is effectively the exact same fight as in Normal only stuff hurts a little more and it takes a little longer. Although you can go Chaos Inoculation before this point I prefer to keep the extra 1,100 health or so and the utility of health flasks until I am really ready. Even though this means putting up with Maligaro's chaos damage the extra buffer is a good thing to have against Malachai.
Merciless Difficulty:
Spoiler
Level 59, the CI/CoC Transformation: https://youtu.be/x7LMqEyzYao
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This is the big one, the biggest change to this build at any point. The requirements for this change are simple:
If you can satisfy those requirements you are good to go. Often I will re-adjust my passive points a little to satisfy this change, at level 59 and using Cast on Critical Strike and Chaos Inoculation the passive tree should look something like this: Dr. Strangelove's CoC AoE - level 59 Level 59, Merciless Brutus: https://youtu.be/tCkAce-RjAg
Spoiler
This is right after changing to Cast on Critical Strike and, despite what it may look like from this video, the transformation feels great. At this point you are effectively a newborn little baby in this build, like a brand new butterfly that will only become more devastatingly powerful with age.
Level 64, Merciless Kole: https://youtu.be/ljB0k5Vknh8
Spoiler
As I have previously said, I enjoy the Kole fight and it's significantly far from Brutus that I thought it was worth recording again. The most important thing that has happened since Act 1 was helping Oak, merciless is the only time this build helps a bandit and in this case it's Oak for the extra Endurance charge; if you get a lucky +1 endurance charge corruption on your belt this allows you to have 6 Power and Endurance charges which is perfect for Voll's Protector and Voll's Devotion interaction.
The passive tree at this point looks like: Dr. Strangelove's CoC AoE - level 64 Level 64, Merciless Piety: https://youtu.be/zlDN-r3eF_I
Spoiler
So... yeah... not sure what to say about this really. I had Sapphire Flask charges up with freeze immunity and I completely failed to use them.
Anyway that's a part of playing Hardcore! Deaths happen and when they do you just pick yourself back up and start again, which ultimately is exactly what I did. One thing I should point out is that my gear for this level was insanely good, normally when I reach Merciless Piety I only have about 3,500 Energy Shield with Discipline, here I have 4,500; do not be disheartened if you are less than this, my death here was extremely unusual for this build and due to player error. Endgame Maps: Okay so after the what happened in Merciless Piety I started again, and started my recordings again, trying to get some cleaner ones for those I wasn't terribly happy with but then I died to merciless Kole (stupidly) and gave up with the build guide idea for a while. That being said the character after the Kole one got to level 78 and only died, as previously discussed, due to Flame Dash not casting when it would land on an obstacle. Unfortunately this doesn't make any sense to me when I'm panicking so I sit there hitting Flame Dash and screaming 'MOVE YOU STUPID $&*£%&£)*&%' followed by 'WHY?' and then sitting on the sofa and staring into nothing for 3 hours. Anyway after that I quit playing until the 1 month flashback leagues and, due to the rewards being the same and being really cool, I decided to play the standard league to ensure I got them all. I also used it to experiment heavily with the build and although the passive tree ultimately remained the same I did come up with some tweaks and improvements to gem loops, gear choices and the order in which I allocate passives. Currently I have only one map clear video uploaded which is linked at the very start of this guide but as I get more (unfortunately my internet is terrible) I will post them here as examples. Hopefully I'll get something super impressive out and that will replace the video at the start also. I hope this has been useful! If you feel I have missed anything please let me know and I will add it in. Thanks for listening <3 Dr. Strange[LoVE] Last edited by Doombug5000 on Oct 27, 2015, 4:39:37 PM
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Reserved!
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Finally finished! I am just waiting for 1 more video to upload which I will add to the 'Creating the Build' section. Otherwise, yeah, feel free to actually use this otherwise completed build guide! Any questions you have I will update into the guide. Thanks for reading!
Last edited by Doombug5000 on Oct 24, 2015, 10:15:01 AM
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Wow, holy... This is a massive guide you got there, completely exhaustive, I'm really impressed !
I think any beginner reading this will love you forever ! Really, the build seems to be very powerful and it's weapon-flexible so that's a big pro for diversity :) Just one question : do you prefer using a wand over a dagger (for the classic Cyclone CoC Discharge) because of the much better single-target or do you have other reasons ? Also, one suggestion : although having a very complete guide will be extremely helpful to some, it will also make most people simply skip the guide as they'll find it too long to read. Not sure how you want to do this, but you should maybe have a Summary or different spoilers for each section or a quick breakdown of the build to make it easier to navigate. I'm sure it will be very helpful for this build to get the attention it deserves :) | |
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First of all beautifully formatted guide. IMO it could be more concise though. :)
Anyways, the meat of the guide for me is " I actually suggested someone try out a barrage coc discharge build to Terrornoid a while back, and he dismissed it because barrage doesn't handle packs as well as cyclone. But I agree you get higher proc rate for single targets in theory. The cost is that you're using 2 support gems (barrage+GMP) vs. just cyclone, you're giving up whirling blades, and your discharges aren't as effective since you're not standing in the middle of packs of monsters. Furthermore you have to get accuracy on gear. I feel like barrage could be better in the end, but if you're using discharge you may as well go moltenstrike+multistrike+gmp for the ultimate # procs/second while also using vagan dagger. About CI: you could probably have 2-3k more total HP if you went life+ES hybrid. This would also help with stun immunity, I don't think the practical application passives work with CoC. The issue is that getting gear with accuracy + chaos res would be insanely hard. All my builds /view-thread/1430399
T14 'real' clearspeed challenge /1642265 |
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" Hey, thanks for the comments; yeah there is a specific reason I prefer wand to Dagger, it's explained in great detail in the build. Ultimately it boils down to potential discharges per second - especially against tough single targets. Barrage can hit a single target many times per second and it is a far more reliable source of Critical Strikes than Cyclone is. Furthermore wands get higher implicit crit with higher attack speed so less investment is needed into the weapon to make it functional. Also you are completely correct, the build guide is both crazy long and intense, I tried to keep the most revealing bits, the core concepts and the minimum required gear etc. close to the beginning with the filler in spoilers but I guess that isn't enough xD Last edited by Doombug5000 on Oct 24, 2015, 2:04:53 PM
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" Hey friend, all the points you've made against the build are covered in the build guide - this is why it isn't concise! It's very counter-intuitive in general so there is a huge deal of explaining as to WHY I chose to do things this way. Cyclone is normally preferred because against packs you will always be hitting something and therefore getting procs but Barrage, with only small investment, will actually proc just as much and far more reliably - no matter the pack size. Also having both Barrage + GMP isn't really a negative, most melee CoC skills would need multistrike and that's worse. Cyclone doesn't need it because it hits twice for its attack speed and can't use it anyway (though you could use faster attacks) but barrage hits 8 times for its attack speed with GMP and without it it hits 4 times. Again its counter-intuitive, another point you make about not being in packs - that doesn't really apply, it's also why you scale AoE in the build. Positioning is up to you, the player, if you want to be 'in' a pack when you discharge, simply flame dash or walk into the pack. Just because you CAN trigger discharge from range doesn't mean you HAVE to trigger discharge from range, make sense? Again though, I realise the build guide is crazy long but it is worth actually reading as I answer all these questions and more. As for the Vagan dagger, molten strike comment - sadly this doesn't work as the molten lava balls all impact at the same time, triggering the 50 millisecond cooldown on Cast on Critical Strike (I discuss this in the build planning video). Also regarding barrage with accuracy on gear - I'd only take accuracy on my helmet and my gloves and it's a suffix both times and neither time is it going to replace something I need. The use of Poacher's Mark and Ice Golem is actually enough on its own without any accuracy on gear. As for CI vs Hybrid - CI gives me access to a 15% MORE Energy shield node, this is (with my current gear) over 900 Energy Shield that I wouldn't otherwise have - when I get better gear this will go up beyond 1000 and will match the life pool I lost getting it. Furthermore with CI I don't need to worry about my HP ever, I don't need to take life pots I can take all resistance pots rather than having to manage the regen of my ES and my HP at the same time. EDIT: Just thought of something that helps clear up the Barrage vs. Cyclone thing - quite simply the limiting factor of either skill setup is not clear speed. Packs of enemies die in one shot (effectively) with either even on the highest tier maps (if you have the gear). The issue, the bottleneck if you will, is single target and boss DPS, here barrage clearly comes out ahead with an order of magnitude more crits per second. To recap - in crowds there is effectively no difference, single target there is a huge difference. Last edited by Doombug5000 on Oct 24, 2015, 2:37:46 PM
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" 1) If you can post your screen tab for barrage accuracy, crit chance (without PCs), and APS we can determine the exact amount of CoCs per second. With cyclone I get about 2.85 procs/second/target. 2) Yeah I counted all of that when comparing CI vs hybrid for myself. Remember you get 1.5k life for free for leveling, which you're just throwing away by going CI. I only use 1 life pot, so it's not a big loss anyways. Also the ES on your gear isn't going to get much better if you also need spell dmg (shield) and acc+res (helmet). 3) In 6man parties and L80+ maps you won't 1shot packs. Furthermore dagger/cyclone allows you to use whirling blades, the third limiting factor (besides single/group dps) that you kind of forgot. About positioning: with cyclone you're almost always optimally positioned. With barrage you are if you choose to flame dash into a middle of a pack (flame dash cool down, no anti-stun like cyclone), which I doubt you do most of the time. As a result what you would kill with 1 well-position discharge takes you 2. Also lmk when you are able to do a plateau speedrun. Your run is obviously not trying to be fast nor do you have optimal gear yet, but I'm curious if you think you'll be able to beat 3:04. All my builds /view-thread/1430399
T14 'real' clearspeed challenge /1642265 |
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1) Accuracy is a rough estimate based on mobs of your level and doesn't take into account Poacher's Mark so actually a screen grab tells you very little. My attack speed is currently 1 attack every 0.44s giving barrage 18.18 attacks per second. Against packs remember that a barrage miss just falls to the target behind and hits that instead. Also telling me to ignore PCs is wrong because my build is made to keep my PCs up even right after a discharge (that is the whole point of A. the Voll's Protector and B. the supporting spell, be it firestorm or ball lightning).
What is probably more revealing is to simply watch my character attack, in PoE if you roll a crit on an attack group all the attacks in that group will crit. This means that every Barrage attack I place, if it crits I get 8 crits, if it doesn't I get 0. If you watch my character attacking it very rarely doesn't set off my CoC which means it very rarely doesn't crit. Sometimes I fail at pointing and clicking in the right place, which can be annoying but that is player error and shouldn't be counted against the build. The best example of this would be a boss fight as you can visibly see when 8 shots don't crit in a row. Another advantage of this setup with Barrage is that, even if during the 8 Barrage shots themselves there isn't the time to generate max power charges from the supporting spells, there is a break, a time gap, in between each attack group and this time is ALWAYS enough to re-generate full Power Charges meaning, in a prolonged fight with constant targets - this is any fight in which I am constantly attacking over a period of time, my Barrage always roll's its crit chance with max Power Charges active. YET ANOTHER reason Barrage kicks cyclones butt. Oh and this effectively gives my Barrage an 88.54% crit chance. EDIT: So I just decided to lay out the full calculation for you; 18.18 attacks per second, against a pack its effective 100% accuracy because missed shots simply fall to the target behind, 88.54% crit strike chance is 16 critical hits per second with a level 20 CoC gem thats 11.1 procs of Discharge per second. For a single target my level 87 chance to hit (based on the idea that monsters are also level 87) is 84%. I use Poacher's Mark which is level 18 and gives 47% Less evasion to affected enemies. This would mean a level 87 mob would evade 8.48% of attacks, even though there are no level 87 monsters I'm going to stick with this, this means that 16.64 of my 18.18 attacks per second land against single targets which means 14.73 crits per second against single targets. This is, again with only a level 20 CoC gem (69% chance) is 10.16 procs per second against a single target. Math is fun... even with my current non-optimal gear. 2)1.5K life I give away for free is replaced by 15% more that I gain (almost for free), the difference therefore is only 600 at the moment. My ES can get considerably higher, I lack good ES rolls on my rings, Accuracy and Res on helmet are both suffixes, all ES rolls are prefixes. The only thing that loses (a small amount) of ES potential is the shield as I could have %ES + flat ES + hybrid ES, I'd only lose the hybrid for spell damage. In one of my videos I make the comment that with gear that I could have purchased in this one month league I could have had over 8,000 ES. 3) I didn't forget whirling blades, my movespeed is good without it, I have a quicksilver up almost all the time and I don't need fortify, the build is tanky enough already. Not to mention range simply gives you a choice, I can choose to be far away if I want which has its own distinct advantages. Again anti-stun is useful but flame dash + avoid interruption while casting passives is easily enough. I do realise that whirling blades can still be faster movement but this build is more focused on being good at everything than it is about moving around maps quickly, that said with Lightning Warp instead of Flame Dash I could beat your Whirling Blades easy. 3.. again) It's a discharge build, a rapid fire discharge build, I'll get kicked from parties not invited to them. I blew up an EVGA Kingpin GTX 780 Ti with all standard clocks with this build on lowest graphics settings. That being said, if I do get into 6 man parties my pack DPS is currently over 300,000 which is probably enough - when I get assassin's mark up along with decent spell damage this will be more than doubled. Positioning... again) Yeah I get that about cyclone but my point is range gives you a choice, Cyclone doesn't give you a choice, you are better positioned because you HAVE to be or the skill doesn't work. With Barrage I can CHOOSE to be in that position or one that is further back, remember I play Hardcore I care about positioning from a safety and survivability standpoint, barrage gives me more options. Finally not only was that Plateau run not an attempt at a speed run in the slightest, its 1 month flashback with beyond active and there was a Zana map in the middle of it. That being said I just cleared a springs map (again without trying to make it fast) in the weekend part of the 1 month flashback (i.e. today) with ALL league mods (except tempest and rampage) active (rampage would have made it faster) and that took me 14 minutes while chatting aimlessly to the screen (it's going to be uploaded overnight and added to the guide). Also I'm going to switch out Flame Dash for Lightning Warp and then maybe I'll try to beat your 3:04 ;p EDIT: Super-fun thought, with Assassin's Mark and a 20% quality Cast on Critical Strikes I'll have over 100% critical strike chance... before my 5 other jewels which will also have global crit, likely another 50%. This build is so awesome it makes me smile =) Last edited by Doombug5000 on Oct 24, 2015, 4:42:24 PM
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