[3.13] Archmage Blade Vortex Hierophant | 20k EHP 40m DPS | Depth 2000 Delve Tank

Yes, I watched it extensively for a good half hour. I do not understand it either if it works for you guys.

My mana cost for BV is 1038. After I cast BV it goes to 3567.

That number does not change no matter what I'm casting, tried a bunch of different very cheap spells.

However, the mana cost simply does not reset during the normal 4 second Indigon window.

The mana cost isn't changing at all, it's just that my next BV is casting for 3567. It's as if any mana expenditure is refreshing the "spent recently" window of Indigon.

With 100% reproducibility, casting any of the tested spells linked to blood magic resulted in never breaking the cycle.

Even with my budget gear (and a 5-link, hence my low mana cost), abusing spell echo (not even divergent) + plume is making me obliterate everything in juiced up red maps, so I can't complain. Just curious as to what's going wrong. Losing a link for Vortex is a bit annoying for sure.

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koticgood wrote:

However, the mana cost simply does not reset during the normal 4 second Indigon window.

The mana cost isn't changing at all, it's just that my next BV is casting for 3567. It's as if any mana expenditure is refreshing the "spent recently" window of Indigon.

That makes no sense. The mana cost should go down after 4 secs of casting previous BV. No matter what cheap spells you cast in the meantime. Are you saying your manacost is stuck at 3600 for minutes even though you did not cast BV for minutes? Are you using some weird macro thats auto triggering spells?

I've a feeling you're doing something dumb. Can you repeat the experiment with your cheap spells linked to blood magic, and watch the manacost as a sanity check?

Some more thoughts:

1. Running basic(no commander cluster notable, no vanilla supreme ego) wrath in essence worm may be less dps than not running it at all, since you're giving up a mana slot and may knock you down a breakpoint. It'll also obviously make gearing for resists harder. So check with a ring with mana mod. Not pob-checked fact, going by tooltip here.

2. Healthy mind jewel gives a ton of increased mana on witch jewel slot, converting all life and hybrid life+mana slots to mana at 2x value.
It costs a lot of life obviously, but it alone might bring you to next indigon breakpoint if ever you feel like damage is what you're lacking.

3. Sigil of power can be used for 10% additional increased skill costs.
It may tip you over to next breakpoint, e.g. for me it pushes mana cost from 1652 to 1791 which is easily tipped over by any instant spell not on blood magic to 1800 breakpoint (i suggest phase run not vortex, since you won't be needing to recast it anyway).
This ends up with 8901 mana cost out of 8968 for me. This is basically reaching final indigon breakpoint with 4x 5c rares and no cluster setup, granted life pool ends up at 2400 :D

Is not instant so not really usable for general mapping.

You can even pre-charge it for some boss for 20% less dmg from it as we have huge AOE and duration for it. Less dmg part is unfortunately specifically worded against builds that don't constantly self-cast spam, otherwise it would be very good defensively.

Can be linked with second wind for additional use / repositioning or inc duration for ~30s duration.

4. You can use all of vortex, phase run and withering step on self-cast as they're independent CD instant skills for padding mana to next breakpoint. Just make sure you _can_ actually support the cost of next breakpoint first (which is easily done by using some other skill with a bit less supports).

5. Withering step can be used on cwdt. Normally it would be trash since it grants enhanced elusive, but the kind that's cancelled by any use of skills. So it can't be used for phase run if you cast it yourself. But CWDT triggering it won't break your phase run so you'll get some very nice movespeed stacking on clear.

It's mostly candidate for replacing useless precision, unless you're running some wacther's eye with it (another candidate is vaal grace for general mapping / rituals, but it's no good for bosses).

6. If you don't need sigil of power for mana cost or don't like it you can use frost shield as one other semi-usable thing.

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RudyBaby wrote:

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koticgood wrote:

However, the mana cost simply does not reset during the normal 4 second Indigon window.

The mana cost isn't changing at all, it's just that my next BV is casting for 3567. It's as if any mana expenditure is refreshing the "spent recently" window of Indigon.

That makes no sense. The mana cost should go down after 4 secs of casting previous BV. No matter what cheap spells you cast in the meantime. Are you saying your manacost is stuck at 3600 for minutes even though you did not cast BV for minutes? Are you using some weird macro thats auto triggering spells?

I've a feeling you're doing something dumb. Can you repeat the experiment with your cheap spells linked to blood magic, and watch the manacost as a sanity check?

Well, finally figured it out after another half-hour of testing.

Spending mana does increase the duration of the Indigon window, much to my surprise. It's just by a tiny amount.

Not by much though. All I needed to do was adjust the Lutbot weakura type timer to 4.3sec instead of 4sec.

Must have something to do with the expenditure of mana forcing a recalculation of the mana spent during the window, which for some reason adds a tiny amount of time to the window.

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RudyBaby wrote:

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WrongBlight wrote:

Divergent spell echo is definitely only for setup, you then replace it with unleash.

It's definitely granting AOE from 1 more repeat, it's very visible and it stays. Whether it's granting it's 60% more when swapped out we likely won't be able to test.

If I had to guess, it should provide its 60% more damage when swapped out, without the -30% penalty since generic modifiers dont seem to snapshotted.

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WrongBlight wrote:

Btw what about Elusive option on boots?
It's should be a bit less consistent 10% ehp than permanent 8% dodge, in same vein as algor, needing you to hit something, but lots of movespeed on top which is a great qol.

Elusive is a prefix though, so you'd have to give up on either life or mana os MS. Tailwind suffix is viable and is nice QoL, I just preferred the defense.

I tried swapping Divergent Spell echo for setup then swap out, and the DPS suffered a ton! My guess is that Divergent Spell remember to give more DPS at the 3th repeat, when we swap out we only have 2 repeat so both the crit and the more dps won't work. I tested with Sirius, with divergent at setup, I can't instaphase like before.

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I tried swapping Divergent Spell echo for setup then swap out, and the DPS suffered a ton! My guess is that Divergent Spell remember to give more DPS at the 3th repeat, when we swap out we only have 2 repeat so both the crit and the more dps won't work. I tested with Sirius, with divergent at setup, I can't instaphase like before.

Thats very interesting. I guess I can somewhat see the logic behind it? But either way this is some spaghetti coding. Thanks again for your efforts to test these out :)

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when we swap out we only have 2 repeat so both the crit and the more dps won't work

No, the crit definitely works. Equip a call of the brotherhood ring and you'll see _every_ single mob is still shattered after swap...

Regarding _damage_ from a gem, i'd imagine we get extra damage and AOE from extra repeat from pledge itself, that one is kept, but 60% more from divergent spell echo - we don't... As no gems keep their effects when taken out.


Still, then it can be used for hard bosses only. For clear you'll still swap it out to unleash.

Would be interesting to know if it can be dynamically swapped in / out without resetup, i suspect it would work.

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WrongBlight wrote:

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when we swap out we only have 2 repeat so both the crit and the more dps won't work

No, the crit definitely works. Equip a call of the brotherhood ring and you'll see _every_ single mob is still shattered after swap...

Regarding _damage_ from a gem, i'd imagine we get extra damage and AOE from extra repeat from pledge itself, that one is kept, but 60% more from divergent spell echo - we don't... As no gems keep their effects when taken out.


Still, then it can be used for hard bosses only. For clear you'll still swap it out to unleash.

Would be interesting to know if it can be dynamically swapped in / out without resetup, i suspect it would work.

So the crit does work but the dps still suffered a lot when I swapped in/out for some unknown reasons.

I have a big problem, I couldn’t do Uber Atzir because of the reflect, so I couldn’t do Maven invitation either. Do we have a way to overcome this ?

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I have a big problem, I couldn’t do Uber Atzir because of the reflect, so I couldn’t do Maven invitation either. Do we have a way to overcome this ?

I'd guess you'll have to wear dyadian dawn belt for "Deal no Physical Damage".
Don't think we'll be able to go with low-level bv gem since it'll have very low base mana cost.

Alternatively you can just spec avatar of fire if you can do her at 50% dps, which should also work.

For ele part it's super easy - the usual sybil's lament on left ring slot instead of essence worm + Yugul pantheon for 100% reflect immune.