Can I have a bit of help with my scion? Thanks!

So my spark scion (toon named Temporalis on my profile) is focused more on life leech with doryani's belt, vessel of vinktar, berserker ascendency and vaal pact. With that and mind over matter, I could take quite a beating before my only 4.5K hp hero was brought down. With the change coming to Berserker, I am thinking of removing "extra lightning damage" or "lightning penetration" from my 6L armor and instead using a life leech gem. From there I plan on switching to Elementalist ascendancy to patch up the dps I lose by switching away from (presumably) the added lightning damage. Note that I do use Deadeye already.

I also use a totem with conductivity and herald of lightning as my only passive, so I tend to do a fair amount of lightning res penetration once things are up.

My weapons are two wands, both with increased projectile speed. after the change to deadeye, I might be able to get away without using the pierce gem on spark as well, but I'll have to wait and see how things play out with ascendancy changing etc. Need that 100% pierce!

I guess my main question is if it is worthwhile to be doing this leech on spark concept. Right now the only thing that is bringing me down is random ele reflect (sometimes, though I have been known to out-leech the reflect) or something that hits me hard enough to drain my mana entirely, though my regen is really good and I do rock a mana flask for such an occasion. As with just about any build, the occasional boss can bring me down too because some of them are just nasty.

With this build I can wreck merc lab boss without any trouble, so something is working.
Opinions? Options? Thoughts?
Thanks so much :)

The change to the deadeye node is just a nerf. It used to give 50% pierce, soon it will give 30% pierce.

Reroll as another class. New league coming anyway, not much point playing on standard. It will be more dead than the 2000 people in 9/11.

All scion ascendancy classes were either nerfed or stayed the same, whereas every other class was buffed/stayed the same. It is now the most underpowered class.

Plus with the change to voltaxic, reflect will become a threat again. The witchs elementalist counters this nicely, and will be equally as defensive against reflect as the voltaxic.

Basically your ascendancy class is worthless compared to others, unless you make use of the alternate start passives which I have yet to see a build that can efficiently use those. I'm sure its possible, but all the other ascendancy classes look so much more appealing.

okay, not really helpful you guys but thanks anyways.

The scion had a few buffs but overall is really a jack of all trades but master of none.

I'd like someone who isn't just going to shit on it and actually talk about what I have tried to build here (I was double wand the entire voltaxic "era", fuck i love that proj movespeed which was nerfed T_T)

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Pen_Island wrote:

okay, not really helpful you guys but thanks anyways.

The scion had a few buffs but overall is really a jack of all trades but master of none.

I'd like someone who isn't just going to shit on it and actually talk about what I have tried to build here (I was double wand the entire voltaxic "era", fuck i love that proj movespeed which was nerfed T_T)

The next league, they are going to up monster difficulty, as you can see, monsters will gain skills and well, you can pretty much guess it is probably going to hurt. So you are going to have a harder time if you are doing just okay right now.

There is nothing impressive I can see from the Scion's Ascendancy sub classes, but yeah, go Elementalist sub class and try it out. See how it goes, you do get a bit of pen.

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Pen_Island wrote:

Right now the only thing that is bringing me down is random ele reflect

I did tell you a way to mitigate reflect so I guess I helped.

Truth is, there are better alternative ascendancy classes if you are looking to maximise your builds' potential. Sure you can run as a scion, but don't expect it to be anything amazing compared to other builds, it will be decent as best. Scion is still viable of course.

Can you explain why with mechanics? I am pretty terrible at this game and I like feedback!

Why is leech with spark bad or non viable?

(shamefully, I also have a an ice spear witch...and the others are either just having fun or my girlfriends as we share an account. I suspect her pathfinder might be pretty damn good if she can learn to press buttons lol)

It has nothing to do with leech, its just the raw stats that other ascendancy classes provide outweigh anything a scion can give.

People generally think that the berserker ascendancy for the scion was nerfed so badly it is simply not worth the ascendancy points. And the berserker ascendancy class was 90% the reason anyone went a scion. I hate the 'recently' word and it is attached to the life leech, I'm assuming thats why most people dislike it. It just isn't as reliable as you need to constantly be killing things. If you are versing a boss that takes longer than 4 seconds to kill, you now have no life leech. (daresso for example)

Deadeye is pretty much the same but pierce was nerfed to 30% meaning you need a pierce gem/passives in tree to reach 100%, which is pretty important for a sparker. The reason deadeye was strong was because you can reach 100% pierce with deadeye and either a pierce gem or the pierce passives. But that combination only gives 80% (still viable but its not the same as 100%).

Its just these small nerfs together that nerfed the scion sparker pretty largely. It is still viable, just need a life leech gem on spark, or reliably use a warlords mark. Also need to reach 100% pierce, probably from pierce gem and passives, or settle for 80%.