To coc or not to coc - that is the question

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Bars wrote:

The other reasonable option is selling your vaal regalia and buying a 6-link Atziri's splendor or evasion/es base. You can go for five green there. It's actually what I would do if I had to play CI.

Yup, a buddy and I burned a bunch chromes on his Shawl in Prophecy trying to get 4G2B and nothing, there were quite a few 4off but it's a whole other layer of chance to get them all green.

If you ask me the whole thing is bull, if there's a needlessly restricting random mechanic in this game it's chroming. It's almost telling us that playing gems of wrong color for your archetype is somehow inherently advantageous.

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raics wrote:

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Bars wrote:

The other reasonable option is selling your vaal regalia and buying a 6-link Atziri's splendor or evasion/es base. You can go for five green there. It's actually what I would do if I had to play CI.

Yup, a buddy and I burned a bunch chromes on his Shawl in Prophecy trying to get 4G2B and nothing, there were quite a few 4off but it's a whole other layer of chance to get them all green.

If you ask me the whole thing is bull, if there's a needlessly restricting random mechanic in this game it's chroming. It's almost telling us that playing gems of wrong color for your archetype is somehow inherently advantageous.

Well, I don't know. I have to admit I kinda like it, it adds an additional layer of challenge/complexity to build creation and that's what I enjoy probably the most. A fine example is Lioneye's chest - it would've been best in slot for all life-based pierce builds... but wait, coloring it is a bitch. You either come up with some creative gem setups or you invest multiple exalts for chromatics.

I guess it's a bit like the labyrinth, you either hate it or love it :D

hehehe funny you mention lionseye chest Bars :)

i actually use it on my burning arrow witch.
took me a fair bit of chromas to colour it, oddly i got more other off colors then what i wanted :P


but end result its pretty op with RoTC

but i can agree with you, playing edgy builds that dont fit the arch-type of the character is fun

Kinda liked it before too, but I gradually grew less fond of it. Sure, there's the economic factor with off color items commanding a higher price and also the customization factor. But, you know, gotta ask yourself what is it about evasion gear that doesn't mix with a standard red-blooded melee setup, because evasion melee certainly isn't lording it over armor melee, and projectile spells aren't exactly busting the chops off AoE spells. I know common sense is a shaky ground to stand on in games, but still, I can understand gems being attuned to a certain stat and I can also grasp the connection between gear and stat requirements while having no clue why for the doughnut hole is there a connection between gear and gems. I mean, you paid the stat requirement twice already, there's no need for a confirmation roll.

I understand that, say, linking more gems should be costly because it directly translates to more power, but different colors means just different gems which may carry more power, less power or just that you have to use a defensively less compatible chest. To make the long story short, you're having a lower ES pool just because you want to use Spark instead of Firestorm, and that doesn't have to mean Spark is any stronger.

A minor issue there is also the difficulty of altering your setup for whatever reason, if you use an exotic color scheme you need to use another chest or weapon to test it because you're afraid of messing it up and it may also alter the feel of your build unless it's the same item, which sometimes isn't possible. And there's the corrupting and mirroring issue, I imagine owners of such items were fairly pissed when Lightning Strike changed color to green.

Of course, I'm not suggesting to do away with the whole thing, there's too much of the game tied onto it, just to make it a bit less restrictive. One thing I like to push now and then are dual color gems, we have gems with multiple requirement that could have two colors and be socketed in either. They could have just made LS an RG gem and not screw over all those people.

Yeah, I guess the system isn't always perfect. Actually, vaal regalia are a fine example, a lot of CI dex/str gem builds are royally screwed over which makes no sense since ES is obviously meant to be played with attack-based builds from the concept stage, not caster-only.

About testing, you have tabula for that. It's indispensible, especially if you play a CoC build which typically means you want to try a ton of different setups.

@Miazga: lol you have a 5 offcolour Lioneye's, I guess that's why you aren't that scared of attempting a 5 off vaal regalia... I still wouldn't recommend it unless you have a ton of spare exalts and better patience than most :)

Sorry, it's my pet peeve, one of those things that make me go 'why am I still playing this'. I suppose everyone has a a small list of those.

^I had some issue's with chroming when i was playing my ice storm trapper. Whispering ice and trap support gems, yeah those where fun times.

Ended up settling for just 2 greens and slotting in all the blue deeps gems i could muster.

Worked fine, but i wanted to experiment with some cool combo's honestly.

The CI issue is a lot better to depict the chroming issue though, for a pure CI you simply cannot afford to go "well fuck 300 base ES" for "easier colors".

Peace,

-Boem-

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raics wrote:

Sorry, it's my pet peeve, one of those things that make me go 'why am I still playing this'. I suppose everyone has a a small list of those.

Well, my list is called 'why I'm not currently playing this'.

- lab and uber lab
- bad performance since Prophecy league
- too much repetition when releveling
- xp penalty
- generally bored

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Bars wrote:

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raics wrote:

Sorry, it's my pet peeve, one of those things that make me go 'why am I still playing this'. I suppose everyone has a a small list of those.

Well, my list is called 'why I'm not currently playing this'.

- lab and uber lab
- bad performance since Prophecy league
- too much repetition when releveling
- xp penalty
- generally bored

well if I would put up a list it would be:

-lab
-uber lab
-xp penalty
-boredom after lvl 85(ish)

On a main subject tho, I ended up doing a crit char after all in this league. Nothing crazy tho. Currently level 72 and doing OK'ish. Things starting to slow down on progress now and there are still so many points i need to take :/
Anyhow here is where i stand atm:


@ Bars - maybe you can give me some tips :)

CoC is barely functional at 70-ish, it starts getting really strong after 80. Apart from that, I already wrote a wall of text about a coc CI barrage wand build and I see you've ignored most of it, what should I do, copy/paste it again? At least get some accuracy gear. Crits calculate accuracy twice.

1. You attack > accuracy roll to determine if your hit will land > crit roll to determine if it's a crit > if it's a crit, you have ANOTHER accuracy roll and if it's a miss, you get a normal hit instead of a crit.

So, if you have 95% crit chance and 80% chance to hit, your actual crit chance factoring accuracy will be 0.8*0.95*0.8 = 0,6. If you have 90% chance to hit, it will be 0.9*0.95*0.9 = 0,77.

It's not as bad as it sounds as your tooltip chance to hit is against a mob of your level and at 80+ you outlevel everything, usually by about 10 levels or so, but it's still important to get accuracy.

Also, your shield should be at least 300 ES and helmet at least 250 ES + 250 accuracy. Spell crit and damage on the shield are nice but having some ES is more important.