[3.0] 7k HP 9+ Mill DPS ForgeStrike TheoryCraft with NEW Supports - By Unchained

Hello Friends,

This build revolves around using viper strike with the starforge sword. This is a first draft of the guide and thus will have minimal information, this guide will be updated with further testing/changes. Below you will find a pastebin link that you can import into your Path of Building to view the theorycrafted build. You will also find a quick summary of the current gear, which will be updated depending on new items that are released for 3.0. I will add more information later. You can also check out the stream if you have any questions, or would simply like to watch live/past broadcasts.

It is important to understand the mechanics of the game, and how Path of Building calculates the different aspects of the build. If you have any questions or perhaps see an improvement then feel free to comment below.

Path Of Building Pastebin-Link: https://pastebin.com/AUCGTXma

Twitch Stream: www.twitch.tv/unchainedlive


Summary of Skills:
Main Skill: Viper Strike - Melee Physical Damage - Vile Toxins - Deadly Ailments - Unbound Ailments - Multistrike

Totem: Spell Totem - Wither - Increased Duration - Faster Casting

Curse: Vulnerability

Auras: Haste, Vaal Haste

Golem: Summon Ice Golem

Travel Skill: Leap Slam - Faster Attacks


Summary of Gear:
Starforge (unique sword: gives us life, physical damage, shock, AoE (for mapping with melee splash))
Kaom's Heart (unique armor: BiS for life (non-legacy or legacy))
Redblade Tramplers (unique boots: these can be changed if necessary)
Le Heup Of All (unique ring)
Doryani's Invitation (unique belt)
Gloves (rare or unique depending on the other stats and what's available in beta/3.0)
Amulet (rare: physical damage to attacks, Life, crit chance, crit multi)
Ring (rare: one rare ring to compensate for necessary stats)


Summary of Jewels:
These are place-holder jewels that can be changed. At this time, the following state are recommended on each.

Attack Speed
Increased Attack Speed with Two Handed Melee Weapons
Melee Critical Strike Multiplier
Increased Maximum Life

Summary of Flasks:
Flasks should be used as needed and can be swapped out with other flasks depending on circumstances.

Atziri's Promise
Sin's Rebirth
Witchfire Brew
Silver Flask (for onslaught effect)
Diamond Flask (for Lucky Strike)



Credits:
Build is inspired by DeathBlowPro
Twitch Stream:
www.twitch.tv/mindscoped
Last edited by unchainedlive on Aug 5, 2017, 7:16:16 PM
Last bumped on Aug 29, 2017, 10:52:38 AM
Woooooooo, First!


This started mainly a theory craft and is subject to changes before the final launch in 3.0
Last edited by iSo1iD on Jun 17, 2017, 10:42:55 AM
I was theorycrafting a very similar thing in the past days.

I would add some thoughts:


1. Viper strike's poison is still affected by duration nodes because the poison is the skill effect. So, spending 3 points to take the whole exceptional performance mini cluster is an insane DPS gain in this kind of build. I'd sacrifice the whole growth & decay cluster to get exceptional performance + a single point in path of the warrior.

2. In a poison-related scenario, usually temporal chains is far superior when compared to vulnerability, and has the huge advantage of adding a strong defensive component to the character. I'd replace Witchfire brew with a properly rolled Silver flask probably.

3. Path of building numbers seem pretty impressive when you look at them, but there is to consider that Viper Strike has a slower ramp up when compared to the old blade flurry / vortex. The maximum potential damage is achieved in 13.3+ seconds of constant VS spamming on a target, with 20 wither totem stacks (which are impossible to reach if the secondary debuff doesn't last at least 3.44 seconds, which requires a duration cluster from the passive tree) and with the shock on the enemy, which is pretty unrealistic especially in endgame fights like Shaper (who is shock immune unless GGG removes ailment immunities from endgame bosses) or guardians, where wither totem has a very hard time staying alive.


Cheers!

"
djnat wrote:
I was theorycrafting a very similar thing in the past days.

I would add some thoughts:


1. Viper strike's poison is still affected by duration nodes because the poison is the skill effect. So, spending 3 points to take the whole exceptional performance mini cluster is an insane DPS gain in this kind of build. I'd sacrifice the whole growth & decay cluster to get exceptional performance + a single point in path of the warrior.

2. In a poison-related scenario, usually temporal chains is far superior when compared to vulnerability, and has the huge advantage of adding a strong defensive component to the character. I'd replace Witchfire brew with a properly rolled Silver flask probably.

3. Path of building numbers seem pretty impressive when you look at them, but there is to consider that Viper Strike has a slower ramp up when compared to the old blade flurry / vortex. The maximum potential damage is achieved in 13.3+ seconds of constant VS spamming on a target, with 20 wither totem stacks (which are impossible to reach if the secondary debuff doesn't last at least 3.44 seconds, which requires a duration cluster from the passive tree) and with the shock on the enemy, which is pretty unrealistic especially in endgame fights like Shaper (who is shock immune unless GGG removes ailment immunities from endgame bosses) or guardians, where wither totem has a very hard time staying alive.


Cheers!



#3 makes some exceptional points, what do you think realistic dps would be in most fights?
"
djnat wrote:
I was theorycrafting a very similar thing in the past days.

I would add some thoughts:


1. Viper strike's poison is still affected by duration nodes because the poison is the skill effect. So, spending 3 points to take the whole exceptional performance mini cluster is an insane DPS gain in this kind of build. I'd sacrifice the whole growth & decay cluster to get exceptional performance + a single point in path of the warrior.

2. In a poison-related scenario, usually temporal chains is far superior when compared to vulnerability, and has the huge advantage of adding a strong defensive component to the character. I'd replace Witchfire brew with a properly rolled Silver flask probably.

3. Path of building numbers seem pretty impressive when you look at them, but there is to consider that Viper Strike has a slower ramp up when compared to the old blade flurry / vortex. The maximum potential damage is achieved in 13.3+ seconds of constant VS spamming on a target, with 20 wither totem stacks (which are impossible to reach if the secondary debuff doesn't last at least 3.44 seconds, which requires a duration cluster from the passive tree) and with the shock on the enemy, which is pretty unrealistic especially in endgame fights like Shaper (who is shock immune unless GGG removes ailment immunities from endgame bosses) or guardians, where wither totem has a very hard time staying alive.


Cheers!




Hello there, in regard to your comments:

1. Context matters a lot when dealing with PoB/PoE, so let me give some perspective as to why skill duration nodes are a waste. Viper Strike applies poison with a base duration of 8 seconds, with this much damage everything will die in less than 8 seconds (i.e. I can kill Shaper in less than 1 second). Thus, adding any sort of duration nodes will be a waste of points, it only inflates the number in PoB due to the way the DPS is calculated. You can instead use these skill points on more front-end damage, or perhaps to get more defenses (i.e. life/utility).

2. I would argue that Vulnerability is much better due to the front-end damage that is provided. Also, for the same reason as mentioned above, poison already lasts 8 seconds there is no need to increase its duration. You will actually do MORE damage within that 8 seconds without increased duration nodes/temporal chain, because you are increasing your front-end damage (skill points + vulnerability). Temporal chains does offer the slow on enemies, which is good, on that point it would be a matter of preference.

3. Per the path of building link provided, if you import it you'll see that your numbers are off here a bit. The secondary debuff actually lasts 4 seconds. With a cast rate of 5.32, the wither totem will reach 20 stacks in 3.76 seconds (see image below). The totem is also very easy to re-summon if it dies, in shaper fights I always place the totem behind the boss and it stays alive the entire fight (which usually lasts a second).


Twitch Stream:
www.twitch.tv/mindscoped
Last edited by unchainedlive on Jun 17, 2017, 1:51:18 PM
"
Furor_Dei wrote:
#3 makes some exceptional points, what do you think realistic dps would be in most fights?

For example, a build like the current HoWA blade flurry (or spectral throw) iteration has the full DPS potential since the fight starts because it has no ramp up and doesn't even have to move in situations where other builds have to (shaper beam, shaper smash for example).

So what you see on PoB is quite near to the realistic DPS potential of the character in that case.

Poison builds are pretty different.

They reach the max potential a bit after (and it depends on the duration of the poison), so the "realistic" DPS is much more difficult to evaluate.


*********************


As to Wither stacks, I completely forgot to consider into my calculations the quality gem bonus which gives increased duration of the debuff, so I was wrong with my previous number!

The fact I wanted to point out is that the millions of DPS provided by stacking poison with Viper Strike are reached, in their max value, for example after seven seconds of full spamming against Shaper. If you are able to spam for two seconds only and then you have to move for a smash, your poison DPS is cut to 2/7 of its PoB "full" value.

The "old" double dipping method allowed skills like Blade Flurry or Blade Vortex to reach their full potential DPS in a lot less time when compared to Viper Strike.

For example, you have a blade flurry scourge build (which I personally love) on the forums which reach its full damage potential after 2 seconds only (or 2.6 seconds if you have killed a maimed enemy recently).

If we don't take Wither into account, that means ONE second (1.3 if you have killed a maimed enemy recently) to reach the full damage potential on Shaper / Guardians who cut the poison duration by 50%. And that's why you obliterate Shaper and non immune guardians: not only the DPS is considerably higher than Viper Strike, but the ramp up to reach that max DPS is a lot shorter (7 times shorter, which is a big difference imho).

It's some sort of comparison between burst damage and sustained damage. 2.6 BF produces a poison which lasts 2 seconds (1 second against T16 non immune bosses / Shaper), 3.0 VS produces a poison which lasts 14 seconds (7 seconds against T16 non immune bosses / Shaper).

So BF / BV prior to 3.0 have an insane burst damage which translates into endgame bosses' deletion.

VS is a lot weaker in that sense, in my opinion.

Let me know what you think about this matter.
Last edited by djnat on Jun 17, 2017, 2:57:26 PM
I did some more tweaking/improvements to the build and managed to squeeze a bit more damage out. I've updated the pastebin link in the original post for anyone who wishes to import it into their Path of Building.

I'll be answering questions as soon as I have more time.
Twitch Stream:
www.twitch.tv/mindscoped
Last edited by unchainedlive on Jun 18, 2017, 6:49:40 PM
dont want to be a jerk, but 150% life w abyssus and full melee skill is basically a rip every minute, despite dps numbers
Great PoB math tho
Glacial Hammer now has 3-5% Chance to Poison on the character select screen.
Last edited by HQuality on Jun 18, 2017, 10:07:25 PM
"
HQuality wrote:
dont want to be a jerk, but 150% life w abyssus and full melee skill is basically a rip every minute, despite dps numbers
Great PoB math tho


This build uses Kaom's Heart though, so it has quite a decent life pool, despite only having 150% increased life from passives. 6.5k life (8k with legacy Kaoms) is quite a comfortable amount to have at the right side of the tree, and you can always drop some damage nodes to path for a bit more life, or even get more life on boots. Vaal Pact's instant leech is good for sustaining health pools, and you can always pop in a CwdT + Immortal Call (replace the movement skill) to help mitigate some of the physical damage. Of course play style is also very important, as you wont survive huge slam attacks from bosses and need to know how to maneuver as a melee character.
Last edited by iSo1iD on Jun 19, 2017, 12:15:29 AM
"
djnat wrote:
"
Furor_Dei wrote:
#3 makes some exceptional points, what do you think realistic dps would be in most fights?

For example, a build like the current HoWA blade flurry (or spectral throw) iteration has the full DPS potential since the fight starts because it has no ramp up and doesn't even have to move in situations where other builds have to (shaper beam, shaper smash for example).

So what you see on PoB is quite near to the realistic DPS potential of the character in that case.

Poison builds are pretty different.

They reach the max potential a bit after (and it depends on the duration of the poison), so the "realistic" DPS is much more difficult to evaluate.


*********************


As to Wither stacks, I completely forgot to consider into my calculations the quality gem bonus which gives increased duration of the debuff, so I was wrong with my previous number!

The fact I wanted to point out is that the millions of DPS provided by stacking poison with Viper Strike are reached, in their max value, for example after seven seconds of full spamming against Shaper. If you are able to spam for two seconds only and then you have to move for a smash, your poison DPS is cut to 2/7 of its PoB "full" value.

The "old" double dipping method allowed skills like Blade Flurry or Blade Vortex to reach their full potential DPS in a lot less time when compared to Viper Strike.

For example, you have a blade flurry scourge build (which I personally love) on the forums which reach its full damage potential after 2 seconds only (or 2.6 seconds if you have killed a maimed enemy recently).

If we don't take Wither into account, that means ONE second (1.3 if you have killed a maimed enemy recently) to reach the full damage potential on Shaper / Guardians who cut the poison duration by 50%. And that's why you obliterate Shaper and non immune guardians: not only the DPS is considerably higher than Viper Strike, but the ramp up to reach that max DPS is a lot shorter (7 times shorter, which is a big difference imho).

It's some sort of comparison between burst damage and sustained damage. 2.6 BF produces a poison which lasts 2 seconds (1 second against T16 non immune bosses / Shaper), 3.0 VS produces a poison which lasts 14 seconds (7 seconds against T16 non immune bosses / Shaper).

So BF / BV prior to 3.0 have an insane burst damage which translates into endgame bosses' deletion.

VS is a lot weaker in that sense, in my opinion.

Let me know what you think about this matter.


I appreciate the analysis and comparison you provided, thank you. As to my BF build I have not been end game with it due to very low hp still grinding for currency to buy better gear.

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