How to maintain EK (no blood magic) with mara?

Anybody got an idee about this?

Basicly my hero is lvl 39 ore something atm, and EK cost's me 44 mana(and that is with only 1 link to it)

My mana pool is 370 atm with a lvl 5 mana regen aura and hatred, i end up with around 100 mana = 3 cast's and i have to idle for some seconds doing nothing.

I wont be using blood magic, but i wanna make EK work on a mana base. (my skill tree currently has 55% skill reduction cost when its finalized, i got -10% only atm)

So some people have any idee's?

this is the build i wanna try, its 120 points spend, so unrealistic but i thought id post it to give u an idee what i am attempting.

EK just isn't mana efficient until get to higher levels. Most use freeze pulse then change to EK later.

mana on kill items

seething flasks

The thing is when i play solo, everything die's in 2 hits = no problem

But then i join a group of 6, and because of the added hp this doesnt work anymore, so im just standing there o.O, pretty dul.

Atm i am just standing stil, wasting all my mana, and then using a mana potion and keep spamming EK so it drains faster then it heals, because i have 100 mana in reserve to use, i can do this. However if i move a little bit, my mana is full and im stuck to 3 EK's again.

Ive seem to always have this problem with melee starting points and melee based characters.
They lack mana/mana regen, and i dislike blood magic a lot. And with the recent patch blood magic has like a 40% effectivenes at best compared to before health patch, and all skill gems mana cost remained the same.

I really wonder how you are supose to keep EK up with a 6-link on a mana base.

If inteligence gives mana as a bonus

Str should give a % reduction mana cost
and dexterity should give a % mana regeneration imo to balance out the use of skills for everybody.

Atm inteligence based starting positions + inteligence increase allow for massive spamming of skills = increased dps(and usualy ranged)

While dex/str starting positions are left with constantly managing mana pots and cost's, and are more prone to be melee, it does not make sense to me. Ontop of that melee characters need certain skills to just survive going melee range (enduring cry/molten shell/immortal call/decoy totem / etc etc) and these skills cost enormous amounds of mana to cast.

Most end-game EK builds I've seen use Mana Leech. I do, and I never looked back. Faster, more reliable, and frees up the Mana you'd spend on Clarity for other Auras (Hatred :D)

Then again, I'm CI, and I have quite a bit of Mana / Mana Regen even without Leech.

Thx for the response cantripn, i wonder are you using a 6-link, and if you are could u tell me the links involved, the mana multiplier % and the eventual EK mana cost?

Im really interested how much a 6-linked EK would eventualy cost per cast, for my theorycrafting :)



Edit : just watched your tree xD, you have 322 base inteligence, that alone gives u a massive amount of base mana, not to mention regenration because of that. Ontop of that u have some % mana increase and % mana regeneration nodes :)

For a marauder, with life base this is not realistic.

Keep in mind that I only have ~700 Mana (the chest is -50% Mana), and most of that is reserved. I only have ~200 most of the time. My EK costs about 80 Mana per shot right now, but it's rare that it takes more than 1-4 normal hits (or 1 Crit :D) to kill anything. Don't forget that my armor eats up 50% from my mana nodes (so it's like I took 6 x 8% Nodes for no effect).

I only use 3L for DPS. 4-5 go for IIQ/IIR instead of Added Fire / Faster Casting.

Mana Leech is the most important gem, since it lets me use Cast Speed without running out of Mana. And without a high enough Mana Pool, you'll NEVER outregen or Leech enough, No matter how fast I shoot, so long as things are hit, I'm at Full Mana in a heartbeat, so I can use Curses, Totems and such without drying out. It's an expensive spell.

ok for a start you have res technique, which you dont need as a spell caster, so save yourself 2 points there and drop that.




Ive never tried to sustain ek with mana and succeeded, but then Ive never tried it endgame. You using mana leech hooked up to it? That would be the obvious choice for sustainability. Run clarity also I would think, backed up with % increased mana regen stats on gear.

My ek marauder runs blood magic gems, I have about the same life and life regen specced as your endgame build, so its an option. I just about scrape by as the skill is so expensive but Im running a 6 link so thats a lot of gems, its like 170 life per cast as Im well over 2 casts per second. With maybe a 4 or 5 link it would be cheaper. Also, I switched to EK in the 60s after levelling using melee.

i`m wondering too how to make it work

my idea is using mana reduction(or mana leech) and iron will
add projectile speed from the amulet and wands
clarity level 20 and rings with mana regeneration

"

ok for a start you have res technique, which you dont need as a spell caster, so save yourself 2 points there and drop that.

Thx for the reply snorkle_uk, but i took RT on purpose.

My final goal with this build is running righteus fire + EK, because of that i dont WANT to crit at all, because reflect + crit would kill me outright. So for that the "u can no longer crit" is a bonus(just like with a power charge discharge build)

Thx for the responses so far, i wil defenetly be looking at mana leech suport gem as a viable option.