My dual claw/energy shield solo build

Sorry Victo, had kickbox training yesterday and couldn't check your stream :\
How was Vaal Pact? :p

Damn, that was some bad luck Torin :(
You mean you had only 1500 ES left or 1500 total?

Something cool would be linking curses to totems, specially mob damage reduction curses.
I would do it if I had an HC char ^^'

You can check the vod on my twitch-channel boneraiser :-).
I know, 1:16h is quite long but it is a bit hard to get everything shown, said and explained in a short time.
Please at least don't stop watching within the first 20 minutes, the first map I chose was as bad as it could have been.

Watched most of the stream, Victo, and it appears Vaal Pact is definitely bugged in some way, it looked to be doubling leech, that you'd get the whole instantly and then the whole again over time. Hopefully Chris will be able to get the team on that quickly so we can get a sense of how good Vaal Pact actually is, I still don't think that CI users should ever feel very restricted by the 20% cap, nor should they be putting themselves in situations where they are constantly taking that much damage.

Also, your lack of Discipline surprises me. You still have half your mana sitting around unused, and at the very least it's much more effective than Haste. A well-levelled Discipline would give you about 1000-1200 more ES, if you were to put that in terms of passive points, it's about 10-12 passives worth of ES compared to 3 passives worth of ias. For any CI user, especially one relying on leech, having a large ES pool is necessary, to give you the most time between "leech is useful" and "I'm low on ES". When you get below ~500 ES, you're in danger of being one-shot, so the safest move is to back out of combat to let your ES regenerate. If you increase max ES by 1000, then where you would before be at 500, you're now at 1500, and can continue fighting. This alone is an indirect dps boost, because when you have to run and hide, or run back to where you were after dying, you aren't doing any damage. Discipline grants as much ES as a decent chest, or a *very* good gloves/helm/boots, practically for free, and with a CI build it is definitely the best aura to use.

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Torin wrote:

No, my dps with one hand was 650, but I was using Dual Strike and you said the game does not know how to add both weapon damage into total DPS. I just didn't want to double it in my post because in one hand I had lvl 36 6% leech claws and in other lvl 52 3% leech claws.

The way to fix Dual Strike's calculation is quite literally to just double it, no matter what you have equipped. Dual Strike assumes you alternate weapons, left right left right, like the default attack (which is why a level 1 dual strike gem with no quality/supports shows the exact same dps as your default attack). If for example you have one weapon that does 600 damage and the other that does 200, the character info that you will be hitting 200, 600, 200, 600, showing an average damage of 400 each attack, when in reality it is 800, 800, 800, 800, exactly double what the character info shows.

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Aplier wrote:

Watched most of the stream, Victo, and it appears Vaal Pact is definitely bugged in some way, it looked to be doubling leech, that you'd get the whole instantly and then the whole again over time. Hopefully Chris will be able to get the team on that quickly so we can get a sense of how good Vaal Pact actually is, I still don't think that CI users should ever feel very restricted by the 20% cap, nor should they be putting themselves in situations where they are constantly taking that much damage.

Yes I agree that Vaal Pact is bugged in some way and I hope that I get some reply soon.
I think though that the 20% restriction is good as it is for the exact reason you name afterwards: players should not be able to survive through overly dangerous encounters (-> be able to break the game).

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Aplier wrote:

Also, your lack of Discipline surprises me. You still have half your mana sitting around unused, and at the very least it's much more effective than Haste. A well-levelled Discipline would give you about 1000-1200 more ES, if you were to put that in terms of passive points, it's about 10-12 passives worth of ES compared to 3 passives worth of ias.

You are completely right, I use it on my other CI characters but did not pick it up during leveling for mana reasons and did not look into it again.
The "excuse" I am stating in the video is not sufficent and I will pick it up again today. I am not sure if I will have to drop haste though, I have some good amount of mana left and with reduced mana support I may be able to run all 3 auras.

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Aplier wrote:

For any CI user, especially one relying on leech, having a large ES pool is necessary, to give you the most time between "leech is useful" and "I'm low on ES". When you get below ~500 ES, you're in danger of being one-shot, so the safest move is to back out of combat to let your ES regenerate.

With Vaal Pact I should be able to avoid that exact situation, thats why I wanted to test/pick it. That also is the result I got on my other shadow as I would like to say.

Well, that wasn't expected.
So, assuming that VP didn't consider ES regen and granted ES exclusively with life steal, what would be your opinion on it?

I can't watch the stream right now, still 3 hours before I go home from work...but I will definitely watch it after :)

Personally I like it, but I don't think it will be mandatory. I wouldn't judge the Keystone based on our current knowledge because it obviously comes from a bugged effect.

That's what I thought. Let's wait for Chris' feedback on VP.

Thanks for testing it for us mate!

Meanwhile I guess this is the build I'll be making.

Rory confirmed that Vaal Pact currently is bugged (in combination with GR), they are working on a fix.

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Rory wrote:

It currently seems that it doubles the effect, though we haven't had a chance to look over the code yet. It's not a high priority problem at the moment, so no ETA on when it'll be fixed.

Called it!

That was not a tough call to make to be fair :-P.

A small update from my side: Currently sitting at level 66, this is the current situation:

Skill Tree

Curent Gear:



Which puts me at roughly 4.500 ES and 6950 DPS (before doubling) without auras/charges.

Discipline Aura has been added to my skill set, no space on my skillbar left! ;-)
I think I will pick up the avoid chilled/frozen nodes next since I am lacking neither offense nor defense.
After that I will pick up one accuracy cluster and then the two +30 INT nodes I have access to (and probably switch them for mental acuity when I hit 74).
Also I stacked cold resistance for elemental weakness maps and in hindsight of the upcoming changes to resistances (they may not come before OB though) and got some additional base life, hoping that it will lower freeze-duration.