[2.3] Tri-Golem Crit Discharge Elementalist
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This build revolves around changes in 2.3 to the elementalist ascendancy that aided me in my quest to make tri-elemental builds that aren't completely trash tier. This is just a theorycraft at the moment, but I will update it as I attempt to make it work in the new league. The first change of note is to Liege of the Primordial which, in addition to it's existing bonuses, increases your maximum golem count by 1. This allows me, with the addition of one Clayshaper, to use a Fire, Ice and Lightning golem, all at the same time. These three golems provide significant bonuses. Due to Liege of the Primordial], the golems grant a 40% increase to fire, cold, and lightning damage, leading to buffing Discharge. The golems also grant passive bonuses that are doubled and all benefit a Discharge build. A level 30 ice golem grants 60% crit chance, a lvl 20 fire golem grants 40% increased damage and a lvl 20 lightning golem grants 18% increase cast speed (which is a slightly better haste). The other great thing about pathing for crit for Discharge is it passes within distance of minion nodes, which we can then take to buff our three golems and augment with support gems in our three 4-link items to be (hopefully) significant damage sources. And since Liege of the Primordial makes them elemental damage immune, we can skip all the minion life nodes. But to make a Discharge build work, you need charge generation, which we can get from several sources, primarily Vicatario's Charity and Necromantic Aegis. Since we can maintain three golems with one clayshaper, we are free to use this shield. This grants our golems a 5% chance on hit to provide a frenzy charge to us and the other golems and a 10% chance on kill to provide a power charge. Basically, this shield puts our golems on crack while constantly feeding us charges to fuel Discharge. The 5% frenzy charge on hit with golems supported with Multistrike and GMP will provide a constant flow of frenzy charges, but the shield grants no endurance charges and the power charges will stop once we start landing killing blows with Discharge. To compensate for this, we can use Blasphemy + Warlord's Mark + Assassin's Mark, so we begin generating endurance and power charges on our own while also making targets vulnerable to crits. Add in self cast enduring cry and we have a way to generate endurance charges for use in the first Discharge. The second change to the Ascendancy is the addition of 50% reflect damage reduction to Paragon of Calamity. This with the 8% damage reduction to each element means we can not kill ourselves on elemental reflect. In fact with Vaal Pact/Warlord's Mark and three sources of minion damage, I think reflect maps might be trivial. I might even clear them faster due to the 40% damage increase reflecting my own Discharges will grant me. Build
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Level 90 Mostly focusing on Life nodes, Area Damage and Radius, Increase Max Charge Limit, Crit Nodes, Minion Damage Nodes and the required Keystones. The Elementalist Ascendancy provides the bulk of the elemental damage to scale up your crits. Leveling Tree This takes you up toward the 40s where you can start using your Clayshaper and Victario's Charity after getting the Liege of Primordial Ascendancy. Until then, level with Firestorm and Fire Totem. At that point, you can respect the fire damage to get all the Necromantic Aegis keystone and Minion Damage nodes. Ascendancy Choices: Liege of the Primordial - Cornerstone of build Paragon of Calamity - The 50% reduced reflect damage and 8% elemental damage reduction that is received when hit by a reflected Discharge mitigate the issues with elemental reflect. With Vaal Pact, I think the issue will be neutralized. The 40% damage increase to Discharge when hit with a reflected Discharge actually makes getting reflected advantageous. Pendulum of Destruction - If you pool charges and wait for the buff to cycle, the addition of increased area radius means you can do a really big Discharge. Mastermind of Discord - Removes the need to take any damage penetration support gems with Discharge. Uniques
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Clayshaper for the third golem. Vicatario's Charity to put our golems on crack and grant us charges. Both of these cost me a chaos in the last league. I am hoping to get them cheap this time around. Nice to haves... Doedre's Elixir Flask provides one of each charge at the cost of life, which can be leeched back on the Discharge with Warlord's Mark. Heretic's Veil and Doedre's Damning to support a third mark and to free up gem slots. In my wet dreams, I will get a Voll's Devotion. Skill Gems
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6 Link - Discharge + Controlled Destruction + Elemental Focus + Increased Area of Effect + Critical Damage + Faster Casting 4 Link - Ice Golem + MultiStrike/Melee Splash + Melee Phyiscal Damage + Ice Penetration/Minion Damage 4 Link - Fire Golem + Controlled Destruction + Fire Penetration + Greater Multiple Projectile 4 Link - Lightning Golem + Controlled Destruction + Lightning Penetration + Greater Multiple Projectile 3 Link - Blasphemy + Assassin's Mark + Warlord's Mark 3 Link - Enduring Cry + Flame Dash + Flesh Offering Unset Ring - Descerate Heretic's Veil and Doedre's Damning Setup: 6 Link - Discharge + Controlled Destruction + Elemental Focus + Increased Area of Effect + Critical Damage + Faster Casting 4 Link - Ice Golem + MultiStrike/Melee Splash + Melee Phyiscal Damage + Ice Penetration/Minion Damage 4 Link - Fire Golem + Controlled Destruction + Lightning Golem + Greater Multiple Projectile 4 Link Heretic Veil - Assassin's Mark + Warlord's Mark + Poacher's Mark + Enlighten 3 Link - Flesh Offering + Increased Duration + Faster Casting 3 Link - Faster Casting + Flame Dash + Desecrate Unset Ring - Enduring Cry Since all the golems have to do is land hits to generate Frenzy Charges, I might go Enfeeble or Elemental Weakness for third curse instead of Poacher's Mark. Elemental Weakness boosts the damage of your golems and your Discharge.
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Last edited by MadRabbitPoE on May 30, 2016, 10:01:52 AM Last bumped on Jun 22, 2016, 1:32:08 AM
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Updated to add Ascendancy choice information, leveling tree and Nice to Have Uniques. Updated the skill gems to list an alternative setup with Heretic's Veil and Doedre's Damning.
Last edited by MadRabbitPoE on May 27, 2016, 11:49:26 PM
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Not sure if you'll have enought damage on discharge.
You will have to focus eighter on minions or on the discharge. Let us know how it ended. | |
" I'm kind of worried about that, but the elemental ascendancy provides a lot. With the fire golem, it's a total 120% increase, then 40% from Paragon of Calamity, 25% resistance penetration from Mastermind of Discord and 100% increase from Pendulum of Destruction on a short cycle. That's all than multiplied by Controlled Destruction and Elemental Focus. Even if you miss the crit, you still will hard with all that and have the golems to clean up. The main reason I don't want to go full Discharge is most of the charge generation is from on kill effects, so if your charges expire in between packs or you can't one shot the zone boss, you lose damage. The golems kind of make up for that weakness by providing charge generation while still doing (I believe) competitive DPS with the right support gems and Flesh Offering. But hey...it might blow up in my face, but I think worst case is I am able to do middle tier maps and not much more. I don't mind if that happens. I don't build much to be top tier, but rather based on some kind of interesting theme. In this case, I think a tri-elementalist with ice, fire and lightning golems, blowing shit up with Discharge is kind of cool. |
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I love the idea, but with testing similar things, I may have some info you might want.
Golems DO NOT grant you charges on kills. If a golem kills a cursed enemy, they roll the chance to gain the charges, not you. With this, you will find that your character currently has virtually no way of producing charges to supply your Discharge. You will want to find out something to give you a steady supply of charges to fuel your Discharge spell, because the golems will not grant you that, in fact, they will currently be fighting you for it. You're doing what I tried the first time I made my first Tri-Golem build. I tried putting my golem gems in 3 separate gear pieces. If you're going to do tri-golem, I would recommend even putting them in a single gear piece. I only had a 5 gear chest piece, but my 3 golems were being buffed by Minion Damage, and Minion Speed, which ended up working mostly find for everything I needed. If I were able to get a 6th, I probably would would have boosted their elemental damage, or increased their Cast Speed. EDIT: Basically, like stated above, you really have to decide where your character's damage is going to be coming from. It it going to be from your Discharge, or your Golems? You cannot have the best of both worlds, I've tried. Last edited by Tolbby on May 30, 2016, 2:03:47 AM
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" I'm sorry, but this is not correct. I tested this already on my scion summoner I built in Perandus with Victario's Charity and Necromantic Aegis on just golems and I tested it again this morning after reading your post. They generate charges just fine. It may seem like they don't if you did the test on golems not augmented with support gems. The ice golem needs Multistrike or Melee Splash and the fire/lightning golems need Greater Multiple Projectile to land enough hits to reliably proc the Frenzy Charges. They also need a multiplier gem to complement all the increased minion damage node (Melee Physical Damage for ice and Controlled Destruction for fire/lightning) so they can do enough damage to reliably land kills on their own to generate Power Charges. Frenzy charges are all that really matters; the power charges are a nice to have, but since you can self generate, you just need them to clear a few packs for your first Discharge. A single lightning, fire or ice golem augmented with the above gems will cap your frenzy and power charges every 3 packs. With three of them, the rate is much higher. So it works and I don't think you have to go one way or the other. Yeah, I can focus on full Discharge and drop the 12 points into minion nodes into pure elemental nodes, but I would be gaining about 100% increased elemental damage at the expense of 105% minion damage, 24% minion attack and cast speed and losing one golem, since I would most likely drop the clayshaper and victario's charity. Losing one golem would be a loss of 40% damage to one element and either 60% crit chance, 18% cast speed or 40% damage. I also have to contend with the issues of charge generation that hinder self cast Discharge builds. So it's not a net loss on paper to focus on golems while you path for crit for Discharge. The biggest con is giving up your weapon slots for the clayshaper and victario's charity. In reverse, if I went full golems and nothing else, the bonuses from the golems and the other Ascendancy points besides Liege of the Primordial would have no real benefit. You just end up with a shitty summoner. If you want to build for golems with the new Elemental Ascendancy, you have to work in a self cast elemental spell, otherwise, you are leaving a lot on the table as far as damage. I think the big point of contention is speculation that Discharge will be too weak by trying to balance out minion damage nodes, crit and enough defense to survive in softcore, but I think people might be underestimating just how much the bonuses from the golems and the Elementalist Ascendancy itself compensates for this. Last edited by MadRabbitPoE on May 30, 2016, 10:01:10 AM
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if it's not legit it will never be. The concept makes total sense to me.
1) How do golem behave in high tier maps? (do they get OS or not? are they reactive enough clearspeed wise?) A standard 21/20 golem gets rekt in higher maps from my personnal experience. 2) How discharge spam scales dmg wise? Anyway the 6L is disgustingly powerfull on paper, the fact that it doesn't need pen gems, stacks multiplier and allows u to use conc effect for wtf mobs is insane. Last edited by galuf on May 30, 2016, 12:38:44 PM
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" I rolled a Firestorm/Heraldist Elementalist in Perandus with a Fire Golem. With the elemental damage immunity and the fact that they stay at maxed range, he rarely died. The same applies to the Stone Golem and Ice Golem, but with a minion flask. I think I took that character to tier 12. I reroll a lot, so it's not very advantageous for me to do anything beyond that. As far as their behavior, most people complain a lot about their AI. I've been experimenting with that, too. It seems their biggest issue is they can take a long time to engage. But you kind of handle that issue with Discharge. You open up on a pack with Discharge and you either a roll a crit or you don't. If you roll a crit, you one shot. If you don't, the golems will have engaged and can clean them up and generate charges. At least, that is the theory. " At lvl 20, with a high roll, the base damage with the maximum charges in the build would be 2356 lightning, 993 fire and 1084 cold for 4613 total. For comparison, max roll on a hit from Arc is 886 and a hit from Storm Call is 633. You improve all that with... 238% increased damage (Fire golem buffs, Area Damage, Spell Damage and Elemental Ascendancy) 56% cast speed(Tree, Lightning Golem, 4 Frenzy Charges) 334% increased critical strike chance (Ice Golem, Assassin's Mark, Tree, 4 power charges, loss from Controlled Destruction) 183% increased critical multiplier (Assassin's Mark, Tree, Critical Damage) -64% tri-elemental resistance (Mastermind of Discord, Elemental Weakness) 100% increased damage on a short cycle (Pendulum of Destruction) 40% increased damage when reflected (Paragon of Calamity) 44% more damage (Controlled Destruction) 49% more damage (Elemental Focus) The damage is there on paper and supported golems can do some serious damage and can clean up stragglers. " Yeah, the 50% reflect damage reduction added to the Elementalist ascendancy means you can do stuff like this without being afraid of one shotting yourself. You can do a full self-cast Discharge build with this Ascendancy and just take every crit and defense node as you path to the Shadow starting point. If you can take Vaal Pact and Phase Acrobatics, you would be set. The gems and elemental ascendancy provide all the damage you need, so you don't need to take damage nodes. You would need like a Heretic's Veil and/or Voll Protector. Lightning Coil would be pretty crazy in that setup, because every time you get hit, you increase the Lightning Damage of Discharge by 40%. Or like a Flameblast prof build with Wands of Obileration would be pretty nuts, too. |
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My mistake from earlier, I didn't (for some reason) see the part where you allocate the Necrotic Aegis passive node.
I have been searching for a character like this, making a lot of flawed ones, and then there is this complicated jumbo of awesome. So I am making my own version, to also help test other things you might not have tried or thought of. I really prefer the more support character role, so I am running Haste as well as 2 curses. This sacrifices a little damage early on, but I will be improving that next. The main concern I currently have (at level 54), is the reliability of frenzy charge generation. Right now I have my golems on speed steroids, using minion speed, haste, faster attacks, and basically the rest you recommended in your build. Sometimes I run into a large pack of monsters, and the charges just don't exist for the whole thing. Have you been able to make this build yet and make any necessary changes to it? I will continue to use my support style variant of it and give you my results when I am finished. | |
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Level 66 now, might as well give an update on my version of this.
Still randomly having issues with charges. Sometimes I'll be waiting 10+ second while my golems attack, and still get no frenzy charges. Other times I'm constantly capped at 4 frenzy charges at all times. I'm getting a little worried about single target damage, namely for bosses. I really need more health in my experimental version. Too many close calls, but that's why everyone says having 1.7k health at this level might be stupid. I think it just takes more skill. Reflect is a thing. I finally learned for once why people fear it, since this is my first "real" character to do damage. Now my resistances are capped like they should have been in the first place. Don't know if relying on crits for Discharge as a damage source is that good. I have had way too many packs live due to lack of crits. I still haven't maxed my crits yet, but I'm getting there. Using Sunder for fortify Damage negation, plus a reliable way to give orders to my golems. I've killed many packs from the other rooms by Shift+Attacking towards the next pack, and letting my golems clean up the mess. Plus anything I hit gives me fortify. With max charges at level 66 right now, damage peaks around 9k. This will only continue to go up even more over time. I still don't have Acrobatics, so I don't have dodge chance(yet?). Starting to wonder if I should try making this a low life ES build, so I could also pick up Pain Attunement. Right now I'm lacking the ES nodes though, so I still think it's a bad idea, but I'll need more health and damage soon. Other then that, it's everything I've been searching for in a build! I hope you were able to reproduce your character as you had planned and got it working, I really would like to know how it turned out if you did. Last edited by Tolbby on Jun 22, 2016, 1:34:04 AM
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