Highest Sustained Damage Gem Combination

I had recently been discussing an interesting challenge with with a group of friends.

Currently, what is the highest sustained damage you can do, using only a 6-link gem combination?


The rules.

1.) You may not use any passive tree points.
2.) The only item you may use is Tabula Rasa.
3.) Sustained damage means you are not doing a sudden burst damage with a very long cooldown. You must be able to consistently use the skill(s) normally.

I feel like multiple totem support gem probably offers the biggest dps increase of any gem given you only have one totem to begin with. That support gem combined with lightning tendrils extra crit chance would make it hard to beat combo if your looking at no gear / passives and just gems linked for dps.

So anyhow that's my vote aka lightning tendrils + spell totem + multiple totem support and 3 other good supports.

With that said the more extra totems you get the worse multiple totems support is so this might not say anything about actual game play.

Vaal Ancestral Warchief - Awakened Multistrike - Multiple Totems - Awakened Added Chaos - Awakened Added Lightning - Culling Strike.

Cast in the right order and you have 3 normal totems plus 1 Vaal totem.

If the Vaal totem's duration isn't good, then sub normal Ancestral Warchief in that case.

I've PoB'd the suggestions in the previous comments, and a couple of my own. Even assuming Lightning Tendrils achieves a permanent max shock of 50%, it doesn't come close to self-cast Ice Spear.

Ice Spear, due to its supremely overpowered second form, can achieve 88,700 DPS with Ice Spear - Aw. GMP - Aw. Added Cold Damage - Aw. Elemental Focus - Aw. Spell Echo - Aw. Cold Penetration. https://pobb.in/f3EciFl_pl-V

If you have to contend with mana use though, it's gonna be a lot worse than that. Maybe totems will eke out an advantage.

Yeah I agree with you ice spear is a top contender I kind of forgot about how good spell echo is in this case also might be on par or better then totems I guess.

Anyhow I think it's interesting that in this case the best support gems for dps are probably added cold lightning and chaos gems as the more multiplier gems won't do as much as the flat added gems.

And yeah if you had no passives tree with no gear it would be hard to sustain any mana costs at all so that might be why totems are the right choice here.

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PurpleChakra wrote:

I've PoB'd the suggestions in the previous comments, and a couple of my own. Even assuming Lightning Tendrils achieves a permanent max shock of 50%, it doesn't come close to self-cast Ice Spear.

Ice Spear, due to its supremely overpowered second form, can achieve 88,700 DPS with Ice Spear - Aw. GMP - Aw. Added Cold Damage - Aw. Elemental Focus - Aw. Spell Echo - Aw. Cold Penetration. https://pobb.in/f3EciFl_pl-V

If you have to contend with mana use though, it's gonna be a lot worse than that. Maybe totems will eke out an advantage.

Haha well played!

Yes, mana costs are the toughest part of this challenge.

I agree that totems do seem to be the best option for easy sustain.
But if you throw in a "Mana Leech" it would help sustain. (Just hurt overall DPS).

Skill wise, I had been thinking something like "Fireball", since it has one of the highest damage effectiveness in the game. And since you can only scale off of other skills or supports, damage effectiveness is extremely important.