[3.24] 💥💫 The (Arch)Blade Blast Unloader 🗡️🔪🔫 - Screenwide 30m-55m Pinnacle DPS? Say yes to FUN!

Haha glad to hear y'all are holding the faith. Having done some vibe checking with a clean start char running to ~50, then swapping back and forth between Arma Brand recall and BBoU mukliple times and repeating tests, I can safely say early BBoU Archmage will feel REALLY OVERTUNED, and WAY smoother than I thought (relative to a zoomy Arma Brand Recaller)

Here's why.

Damage:

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Unlike every other spell which needs to scale cast speed for more hits, or AoE or hit certain uniques, unlocking BBoU instantly gives you access to the 11 hit combo. This is VERY frontloaded power that will TRUCK anything in the campaign. This is 2750% damage effectiveness every x seconds, where X tends to 1 in lategame. This is with massive AoE that doesn't require aiming.

Even without Archmage it's 2 shotting Act bosses HP (and that's with me investing points into Mana, regen, Fire pen etc, but not even having access to the 3.24 Archmage yet, just Immolation).

In Live Patch, with Archmage and Arcane Cloak, you will insta phase bosses.

QoL:

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NGL, levelling BBoU under 40 feels horseshit. It only gets better around 50. You dont have quite enough cast speed or attack speed to make the cast1-shieldCharge-cast2 feel smooth. You haven't gotten enough Brand Duration so your ABs will run out.

HOWEVER: Live Patch delivers the godsend that will make this build feel much more awesome to play early: AUTOMATION. This means, again, you only need to press Arcanist Brand (spell Echo'd) ONCE every 7-8 seconds, as opposed to like 2-3 seconds before, to maintain 8 stacks of BV.

OLD: Recall x 5 Brands = 5 BV, x 2 = 10 stacks.

NEW: Recall Recall x 2 Brands = 4 BV, x2 = 8 stacks.

Maintaining 2 Brands is way easier than maintaining 4 to 5, I can tell you that.

Now the big question is now: Is it going to feel better THAN Arma Brand Recalling out of the campaign? And the answer is: No. Because, first of all, BBoU is going to be rare, and heavily camped. Even if you made your own at 35, it's going to feel bad until 50. You literally have to press one more button than Arma Brand, in what world is that good? Only in very dense maps and at high attack speed does BBoU take over by a mile.

Secondly, unless you're someone who likes a challenge or is a league start purist, probably you're better served by just Arma Branding into yellow or white maps at least. Heck, even if you went BBoU, a 4 link Arma Brand is still usable for clear if you have the space.

All this post is saying is - if you can get around the early slowness of BBoU and want to delete bosses and flex the early Archmage, it is going to be way better than I thought due to the ludicrous damage and Automation. I just had to test it for myself before telling you guys; I owe it to you to base it on research. I'll upload a vid comparing 3.23 BBoU and Arma Recall (non-Archmage) to show you the work.

Then tomorrow I'll finalise the levelling trees and final advice going into League Start, plus a flowchart of which versions of the build end up where!

Thanks for your faith.

P.S. I hope you have MTX points to spend because the audio for the baseline BV + BBoU is absolute aids. Tell you what, I'll put this in the videos too.

Here's how BBoU will fare vs Arma Brand on Act bosses, with 0 gear (Tabula I only use 4 links, so in fact, it's a self-nerf).

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAM90Op_y5M

BBoU outdoing Arma Brand Recaller slightly on bossing (partially because the Recall aiming is so funky and this boss can "dodge").

HOWEVER: Arma Brand = Optimised, Heart of Fire, full fire damage.

BboU = Only like 60% of the damage is fire, rest is Phys. I'm using a Flammability curse and Combustion, etc. And it's missing RUNEBINDER which is a massive Single Target boost for BBoU (much more so than Arma Brand).

If we add Archmage to this equation it should be ridiculous with BBoU killing a boss in 3-4 pulses.

That said, Arma Recalling is so much smoother to run through the campaign with and that's like 95% of the time getting to maps.

Just Arma Recall and swap to BBoU at 75 / when prices come down. Nothing has changed, guys.

Here's a level 50 Arma Recaller Tree that can be hotswapped to BBoU Archmage very easily.

https://pobb.in/pSxINapui1bI

Ty für the Arma Brand tree. Will this get updated before leaguestart and will you add all of the new information to the first Page?

i'm fkn blind. There is no BBoU Archmage Tree.

Will you do a PoB with leveling Armabrand and Transition or Archmage BboU?
Just asking because it makes it easier for a noobie like me

Thank you for posting vid about the comparison. I agree that Arma brand would feel better during the campaign but will still go with archmage bbou ASAP. I think with new archmage gem change, the campaign will be very comfortable.

will you update this build for 3.24? i really want to play it looks fun :D

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heungheng wrote:

Thank you for posting vid about the comparison. I agree that Arma brand would feel better during the campaign but will still go with archmage bbou ASAP. I think with new archmage gem change, the campaign will be very comfortable.

The campaign will be hilarious, but you WILL press about 2-2.5x the buttons (actually, Automation may lower that.) However I sense someone like you knows exactly what they're in for and I'm glad you're down for it! Keep us updated. :)

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DnLx3 wrote:

Ty für the Arma Brand tree. Will this get updated before leaguestart and will you add all of the new information to the first Page?

i'm fkn blind. There is no BBoU Archmage Tree.

Will you do a PoB with leveling Armabrand and Transition or Archmage BboU?
Just asking because it makes it easier for a noobie like me

I am actually doing that tonight! I couldn't figure it out yesterday. Check back in about 3 hours. I'm going to start BBoU Archmage at 60, I think that's the bare, bare minimum for it to not feel like total ass. And I'll try to do a level 80 tree as well.

90 and above really starts to branch out according to budget. I've learned my lesson from the past - I'll build a more defensive build as a baseline as the best players among us will know how to dial this back up to 1bn+ damage anyway.

EDIT:

Holy crap, trying to fold everything into a single PoB is aids. I managed to do passive trees, and item sets, but SKILL SETS has to be manually redone, and finally, configuration is totally lost.

Sorry man, I tried. Config really matters because Arma Brand Recaller is fire-based, so your WoC for e.g. targets fire instead of Lightning (which is the main element when you Archmage.) I will release 3 separate PoBs instead.

This is the most reasonable, early league BBoU Archmage I have right now. The damage looks low, but that's because:

1) I ripped out Wrath, and put in Grace since we have strong recovery.
2) I ripped out Arcane Sigil because screw inflating PoB with stuff I don't have sockets for, or need a lot of uptime on.
3) It's also EO with items that are T2 mana or worse I believe - I don't believe all players know how to scale crit on Day 1 - those items are expensive. If you know, you know, scale this to the moon.
4) I use an honest PoB config for the BBoU - most people would set it to Blade Hits per CAST - which is basically how much a single cast does. That's dishonest, because you can only Unload a full 10-stack BV (11 stage BB) every 1. second or so.
4a) If I wanted to lie to you and show you 12m DPS instead, I'd show you Damage per CAST. I show you Damage per SEC which assumes 1 cast per second. This appears inflated since even with Empower/Enhance, Recall CD is 1.1s or so. But in reality due to Brands attaching and Runebinder, we generate more of ~18-22 stacks per second. This should THEORETICALLY more than double our reported damage but until I run frame-by-frames, I'm not lying to you about that. I'll settle for Damage Per Sec.


https://pobb.in/o9SOUqJMgCJz

Here you go! Dogshit tier gear, day 1! (Cast speed barely affects the actual DPS, if anything, I recommend stacking AS.)

Attack speed "QOL version" with 10% lower DPS / eHP but will feel 40% better:

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primaeva wrote:

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DnLx3 wrote:

Ty für the Arma Brand tree. Will this get updated before leaguestart and will you add all of the new information to the first Page?

i'm fkn blind. There is no BBoU Archmage Tree.

Will you do a PoB with leveling Armabrand and Transition or Archmage BboU?
Just asking because it makes it easier for a noobie like me

I am actually doing that tonight! I couldn't figure it out yesterday. Check back in about 3 hours. I'm going to start BBoU Archmage at 60, I think that's the bare, bare minimum for it to not feel like total ass. And I'll try to do a level 80 tree as well.

90 and above really starts to branch out according to budget. I've learned my lesson from the past - I'll build a more defensive build as a baseline as the best players among us will know how to dial this back up to 1bn+ damage anyway.

EDIT:

Holy crap, trying to fold everything into a single PoB is aids. I managed to do passive trees, and item sets, but SKILL SETS has to be manually redone, and finally, configuration is totally lost.

Sorry man, I tried. Config really matters because Arma Brand Recaller is fire-based, so your WoC for e.g. targets fire instead of Lightning (which is the main element when you Archmage.) I will release 3 separate PoBs instead.

Thank you for trying though

you could always use a level / Arma Brand PoB

and then a seperate one for the transition to BBoU i guess. with transition tree, midgame etc.

Hey, whats the most reasonable MTX to use for the build? and do you need the MTX for blade blast, blade vortex or both? Awesome build btw, looks super fun