ELE LIGHTNING STRIKE - ALL T16s, Shaper, Uber Atziri, HOGM, Chayula, Elder

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dessloc wrote:
Thanks for the feedback. I was planning to use Rathpith, that was my thinking with Void Barrier (and Shield Mastery due to its proximity to VB). If I went with the curse reflect shield, I'd definitely grab the 6 2% shield block nodes that I have directly in my path instead of VB. Also, as kind of a wild card idea, what do you think about grabbing the 3 life nodes right below Mental Acuity in the shadow start + Mental Acuity + Freeze? With the high APS of this build that 5% chance to freeze looks like it could have some good defensive synergy with this build.


No prob. I see, if you want to run with Rathpith then Void Barrier would be a great for that and you will have a really good chunk of energy shield. If you want to buff your ES even further I would unspec from the Dodge nodes by the Acro cluster as Acrobatics halves your ES. I am currently testing the build without Dodge - and so far so good; hardly notice any difference and I now have ~900 ES. I think with a well rolled Rathpith, Sin Trek and all the EV+ES nodes around Nullification and Void Barrier - your ES would be ~1K+.

Also - any shield node with +% increased Defences from shield will boost the ES from Rathpith.

About Mental Acuity and Freeze - I like to avoid crit so that Reflect and Double Reflect are non-issues. Freeze seems like a good idea with the high APS of the build - the 5% seems a bit low, but with ~9 hits per second - we should be splash freezing within ~2seconds of fight. I will need to check the mechanics of this node to see if there is any affect to freeze duration.

Another interesting concept you might want to try (if you have a lot of ES) would be to spec into Ghost Reaver which is extremely close to Void Barrier. Having a lot of ES is great because it gives an implicit 50% chance to avoid stun. If you keep your Life Gain on Hit, and then use Life Leech from Blood Rage/Gear - I think you can leech constantly to your ES shield AND have the LGOH go to your health - which would be awesome for keeping your ES up - however the leech is capped based on your max ES.

Maybe something like this for your Duelist:

I took out the Acro and Golem's Blood (we will substitute with regen from Heart of Oak) and put it in health nodes, Heart of Oak, and Freeze. I haven't run this through a calculator yet, but I think with a Duelist you may have less DPS, Accuracy, and Evasion (but more life) by starting Duelist instead of Ranger. You will also not be able to get the strong nodes such as Ondar's Guile and Heart of Oak as early as the Ranger.
Last edited by Ceryneian on Sep 14, 2013, 10:44:49 PM
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Ceryneian wrote:

No prob. I see, if you want to run with Rathpith then Void Barrier would be a great for that and you will have a really good chunk of energy shield. If you want to buff your ES even further I would unspec from the Dodge nodes by the Acro cluster as Acrobatics halves your ES. I am currently testing the build without Dodge - and so far so good; hardly notice any difference and I now have ~900 ES. I think with a well rolled Rathpith, Sin Trek and all the EV+ES nodes around Nullification and Void Barrier - your ES would be ~1K+.

Also - any shield node with +% increased Defences from shield will boost the ES from Rathpith.

About Mental Acuity and Freeze - I like to avoid crit so that Reflect and Double Reflect are non-issues. Freeze seems like a good idea with the high APS of the build - the 5% seems a bit low, but with ~9 hits per second - we should be splash freezing within ~2seconds of fight. I will need to check the mechanics of this node to see if there is any affect to freeze duration.

Another interesting concept you might want to try (if you have a lot of ES) would be to spec into Ghost Reaver which is extremely close to Void Barrier. Having a lot of ES is great because it gives an implicit 50% chance to avoid stun. If you keep your Life Gain on Hit, and then use Life Leech from Blood Rage/Gear - I think you can leech constantly to your ES shield AND have the LGOH go to your health - which would be awesome for keeping your ES up - however the leech is capped based on your max ES.

Maybe something like this for your Duelist:

I took out the Acro and Golem's Blood (we will substitute with regen from Heart of Oak) and put it in health nodes, Heart of Oak, and Freeze. I haven't run this through a calculator yet, but I think with a Duelist you may have less DPS, Accuracy, and Evasion (but more life) by starting Duelist instead of Ranger. You will also not be able to get the strong nodes such as Ondar's Guile and Heart of Oak as early as the Ranger.

Hmm, with your findings so far with no Dodge, I really like the revised skill tree you did. And the Ghost Reaver idea is quite intriguing. It absolutely should work, life gain on hit is not life leech and thus would not apply to ES via Ghost Reaver. At the very least I'll try it out, easy enough to refund it if it's not great in practice.

With respect to crit, absolutely see where you're coming from. I was actually really only focusing on the +20 Int, didn't really consider the crit portion of the notable haha. Still, it's only a 30% increased chance to the axe's base 5% crit chance, so an additional 1.5%. Also, there is no additional crit multiplier involved at least, which is a plus.

Ranger would definitely be a smoother start defensively but I'm up for the challenge :) I'd have to run them both through a skill calculator (RIP in peace ExilePro) to compare the duelist vs ranger but intuitively the differences you note make sense. Already started leveling my dualist so I'll provide an update once I make some progress.
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dessloc wrote:

Hmm, with your findings so far with no Dodge, I really like the revised skill tree you did. And the Ghost Reaver idea is quite intriguing. It absolutely should work, life gain on hit is not life leech and thus would not apply to ES via Ghost Reaver. At the very least I'll try it out, easy enough to refund it if it's not great in practice.

With respect to crit, absolutely see where you're coming from. I was actually really only focusing on the +20 Int, didn't really consider the crit portion of the notable haha. Still, it's only a 30% increased chance to the axe's base 5% crit chance, so an additional 1.5%. Also, there is no additional crit multiplier involved at least, which is a plus.

Ranger would definitely be a smoother start defensively but I'm up for the challenge :) I'd have to run them both through a skill calculator (RIP in peace ExilePro) to compare the duelist vs ranger but intuitively the differences you note make sense. Already started leveling my dualist so I'll provide an update once I make some progress.


I just actually ran Ghost Reaver on the build to try it out on my ~900 ES. Yes you can do LGOH and leech to your ES at the same time - unfortunately the leech is capped based on the max ES and I found this to be quite slow. There is a imbalance because my DPS is so high at 17K so with 8% leech from a qual. Blood Rage I should be leeching about 1360 ES/s, however due to the cap I can only leech at a rate of 20% x 900 ES = 180 ES/s. I am so used to LGOH that this 180 ES/s leech seemed very slow. On your build you will have much higher ES - so you can probably leech much more ES that it becomes worthwhile.

I also just tested the Chance to Freeze with Hatred (about 208 cold damage on my Double Strike per hit) - it works quite well on regular mobs, however I tried it on a unique boss Kole in Lunaris and I cannot freeze him, it is probably because my Cold Damage is not enough to get past the 300ms hurdle for freeze duration (based on Kole's maximum life) for it to proc a freeze. So unfortunately, it does not look like this node would benefit the build as regular mobs are no issue, and it is highly unlikely we would be able to freeze the high HP bosses.

Last edited by Ceryneian on Sep 15, 2013, 12:11:38 AM
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Ceryneian wrote:
Quick Update on Build:
- I am currently testing the Rathpith Globe shield (for max regular block + max spell block) instead of Atziri's Mirror shield + Rainbowstrides. Rathpith requires a lot of int - so I am using the cute Sin Trek boots and a ring with some int.
- Problem is that it is very hard to balance resistances (Atziri's + Rainbowstrides were giving a large amount of res. to all three: cold, fire, and light.) so I would recommend staying with the original build unless you can spend currency to help solve for res/int/life
- AOE DPS has slightly dropped as I cannot use Meginord's belt (need to use a new belt and new ring to help balance resistances and Int. requirements). AOE DPS unbuffed is still very high - 13K, and with Hatred + Haste - 17K
- I am also testing the build without Dodge (as it may be unnecessary given Blind/Eva/Max Block + Enfeeble). I have taken the 7 points from around the Acro cluster and put them all into life
- I currently have ~3.1K health and ~900 ES

Latest vid with new test build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7u40Xa-k5I


If you're going for max spell block Rathpith is just too good. The 10% life will negate the no life mod on it and the ES will be nice because of the shield nodes. As for the int and resists you can respec some points into int and diamond skin passives, how does your tree look now?

As for Acrobatics I think it might be one of the best clusters out there, for 6 points you get 30% dodge and 20% spell dodge. For me it's really hard to see how with 6 points you could get these benefits in block, life equiv, etc...Thing with dodge is you cannot see it on paper while life, block you can so it will always be based on experiences :)

GL!
My guides
HC melee ranger: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/507976
HC RF scion: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/666667
HC RF marauder: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/842382
RF resource guide: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/832331
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Ceryneian wrote:

I just actually ran Ghost Reaver on the build to try it out on my ~900 ES. Yes you can do LGOH and leech to your ES at the same time - unfortunately the leech is capped based on the max ES and I found this to be quite slow. There is a imbalance because my DPS is so high at 17K so with 8% leech from a qual. Blood Rage I should be leeching about 1360 ES/s, however due to the cap I can only leech at a rate of 20% x 900 ES = 180 ES/s. I am so used to LGOH that this 180 ES/s leech seemed very slow. On your build you will have much higher ES - so you can probably leech much more ES that it becomes worthwhile.

I also just tested the Chance to Freeze with Hatred (about 208 cold damage on my Double Strike per hit) - it works quite well on regular mobs, however I tried it on a unique boss Kole in Lunaris and I cannot freeze him, it is probably because my Cold Damage is not enough to get past the 300ms hurdle for freeze duration (based on Kole's maximum life) for it to proc a freeze. So unfortunately, it does not look like this node would benefit the build as regular mobs are no issue, and it is highly unlikely we would be able to freeze the high HP bosses.


That's great, thanks for testing GR + Freeze. A shame about the leech rate, if I can get more ES I'll give it a go as well. And you're right about Freeze vs map bosses, they have such crazy high HP that you'd need to do more Cold damage than is feasibly possible here. And you have Soul Taker, my humble rare axe doesn't stand a chance :) I pulled Freeze out of the projected build and grabbed life nodes instead. I'm up to level 36 so far, so far so good.
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Necropotence wrote:

If you're going for max spell block Rathpith is just too good. The 10% life will negate the no life mod on it and the ES will be nice because of the shield nodes. As for the int and resists you can respec some points into int and diamond skin passives, how does your tree look now?

As for Acrobatics I think it might be one of the best clusters out there, for 6 points you get 30% dodge and 20% spell dodge. For me it's really hard to see how with 6 points you could get these benefits in block, life equiv, etc...Thing with dodge is you cannot see it on paper while life, block you can so it will always be based on experiences :)

GL!

Necro thanks for the comment. I agree that Dodge is hard to judge - especially since it is a random chance, however the low chances of 30% and 20% to avoid attacks and spell damage are not as high as Block of 75% in this build. So even though Block is also random, the high chance of 75% makes it incredibly useful - the same cannot be said for Dodge. I ran a 76 Vulnerability map with high physical and spell damage, without Dodge, and had no issues. However I will keep testing and let you know how it works out.

This is the current passive tree I am testing:

I took the 6 points from Acro and the adjacent Dex node and put them into 6 life nodes (3 by Shadow, 3 on edge of Ranger, and I put one point into a 30+ Strength (for more life and physical damage). I've also removed a point from the Stun Recovery node above Heart of Oak and put that into the Avoid Stun node (8% Chance) by the Duelist.

Current gear:
Spoiler

These are my Defense and Offense stats with Grace, Hatred, and Haste.
- Resistances for Lightning and Fire are all overcapped at around 95%, however my cold is only 72%. As such I may run Purity on any elemental weakness maps to keep my cold res high.
- My regular Block and Spell Block are currently 73% and 74% and are maxed to 75% when I run with Tempest Shield (additional 4% block chance).
- I also have Stun Avoidance chance of 38%.




Last edited by Ceryneian on Sep 15, 2013, 1:37:39 PM
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Ceryneian wrote:
Added new video! Level 76 Precinct map with Vulnerability and 2x Stormflay. Goat men map - so a lot of high physical and high spell damage, but there were no problems encountered on the map. I took no damage from the 2 Lady Stormflay bosses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7u40Xa-k5I

I am testing the build without Dodge. I ran this map with 7 points removed from around Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics to test - I put those points all into life nodes, resulting in about 3.1K health and about 900 energy shield.




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Ceryneian wrote:
Quick Update on Build:
- I am currently testing the Rathpith Globe shield (for max regular block + max spell block) instead of Atziri's Mirror shield + Rainbowstrides. Rathpith requires a lot of int - so I am using the cute Sin Trek boots and a ring with some int.
- Problem is that it is very hard to balance resistances (Atziri's + Rainbowstrides were giving a large amount of res. to all three: cold, fire, and light.) so I would recommend staying with the original build unless you can spend currency to help solve for res/int/life
- AOE DPS has slightly dropped as I cannot use Meginord's belt (need to use a new belt and new ring to help balance resistances and Int. requirements). AOE DPS unbuffed is still very high - 13K, and with Hatred + Haste - 17K
- I am also testing the build without Dodge (as it may be unnecessary given Blind/Eva/Max Block + Enfeeble). I have taken the 7 points from around the Acro cluster and put them all into life
- I currently have ~3.1K health and ~900 ES

Latest vid with new test build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7u40Xa-k5I


4k life! Respect! Nice video!
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Ceryneian wrote:

Necro thanks for the comment. I agree that Dodge is hard to judge - especially since it is a random chance, however the low chances of 30% and 20% to avoid attacks and spell damage are not as high as Block of 75% in this build. So even though Block is also random, the high chance of 75% makes it incredibly useful - the same cannot be said for Dodge. I ran a 76 Vulnerability map with high physical and spell damage, without Dodge, and had no issues. However I will keep testing and let you know how it works out.


Thanks for the extensive answer :)

What I meant by Acro vs. block/life is that with 6 points you could get let's say 3 block nodes and 3 life nodes (or 6 block/6 life nodes) and compare that vs. 30% dodge/20% spell dodge. Thing about block is that it doesn't care about attacker's accuracy while dodge does. Hmm I'm thinking about making a graph as I'm also really interested in this.

With regards to stun, at the moment I'm playing a 40%eva/30dodge/75%block with no ES ranger with 0 stun recovery/evasion and I rarely get stunned or go into block motion, have you tried without stun recovery/evasion? You also have ES which means your chance to get stunned/block animation would be half of mine.

BTW I hope to get such juicy gear someday so I can drop purity :)

GL!

My guides
HC melee ranger: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/507976
HC RF scion: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/666667
HC RF marauder: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/842382
RF resource guide: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/832331
Your thoughts on Aegis Aurora?
How to make a build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/510084
Current guides: N/A
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Necropotence wrote:
Thanks for the extensive answer :)

What I meant by Acro vs. block/life is that with 6 points you could get let's say 3 block nodes and 3 life nodes (or 6 block/6 life nodes) and compare that vs. 30% dodge/20% spell dodge. Thing about block is that it doesn't care about attacker's accuracy while dodge does. Hmm I'm thinking about making a graph as I'm also really interested in this.

Necro thanks for the question. I've written a reply that has turned out to be quite long - TLDR is at the end.

I think I see how you are looking at Dodge. Are you seeing it as an effective increase to your health? Let me know if that is how you are thinking about it.

Here is an example (ignoring evasion, block, and damage mitigation) with only Dodge:
- 1000 HP
- With 30% Dodge this translates into ~1429 HP - which is a 43% effective increase to your health
- Rationale: 30% Dodge means you avoid 3/10 attacks, so on average you get hit for 7/10 attacks which you can match against your health pool of 1000HP. Thus your total effective health can take 1429 damage (i.e. effective HP is 1429) since 30% of that damage will miss and only 70% (= 1000 hit points) will get through.

However when you combine in Blind, Evasion, and max Block - damage avoidance will be very high (making our effective increase to our HP also very high) and thus the extra increase to avoidance that 30% Dodge can give will be very small. Here is how I am thinking of it:
- 1000 HP
- 50% chance to evade - implies enemy has Chance to Hit of 50%
- With Blind, Chance to Hit is reduced by 75% - so new Chance to Hit is 50% x 25% = 12.5%
- Now assume max Block of 75%
- Total Chance to Hit is now: Chance Not Evaded x Chance Not Blocked = 12.5% x (1-75%) = 3.1%
- If we incorporate Dodge as well the above formula will be:
Total Chance to Hit = Chance Not Evaded x Chance Not Dodged x Chance Not Blocked = 12.5% x (1-30%) x (1-75%) = 12.5% x 70% x 25% = 2.2%
- As you can see Dodge does not seem to be adding much to our damage avoidance as the difference between 3.1% and 2.2% is incredibly small and does not seem to justify 6 points.

Please keep in mind this is an approximate calculation - I have not factored in Ondar's Guile, Enfeeble and that the bosses typically have much much higher accuracy and chance to hit than regular mobs.

The same can be said for Phase Acrobatics (however to a lesser extent) - 20% spell dodge will not give that much increase to damage avoidance if you have 75% spell block. Here is my math reasoning:
- Max Spell Block only of 75% gives a 25% chance to avoid Spell Damage
- Max Spell Block with 20% Spell Dodge - gives a 25% x (1-20%) = 20% chance to avoid Spell Damage
The difference between 20% and 25% is a decent amount - but not that large. However it is still worthwhile for a 1 point investment - the downside is that you have to go through 5 points of Acrobatics to get to Phase Acrobatics.

The interesting thing is that Dodge would be worthwhile in early game for those who do not yet have max Block (or are playing ranged characters that do not need high block). However based on the above math, once you have max Block and high evasion - Dodge adds very little to our defense to justify 6 points - at least on paper.

Also - Dodge is just a random roll and does not take into account enemy accuracy like evasion. It probably works like this: random number generated between 1 and 100, if this is greater than 30 (your Dodge chance is 30%) - the hit is not Dodged.

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Necropotence wrote:
With regards to stun, at the moment I'm playing a 40%eva/30dodge/75%block with no ES ranger with 0 stun recovery/evasion and I rarely get stunned or go into block motion, have you tried without stun recovery/evasion? You also have ES which means your chance to get stunned/block animation would be half of mine.

Good question about the Block/Stun Recovery - with a high evasion/dodge/high block - you will hardly see stuns in regular gameplay. However - if you play on a Vulnerability map - you will see some stun/block recovery from physical damage. If you play against a high-end spell boss like Piety / Mageara - you will see a lot of stuns/block recovery from spells. This is when you will find stun avoidance really helpful from Heart of Oak/Energy Shield.

mvm pointed this out earlier - the problem with stacking stun/block recovery is that you do need a lot of it for it to become effective. In this case, on a high evasion build, because we avoid so many hits, it would be more important to avoid the stun when it gets through, rather than to have quick recovery (since consecutive stuns will happen rarely - and thus recovery is not that crucial).

[I actually need to rework the HC section of the guide to reflect my new findings].

Important note: Stuns from spells are more tricky to handle than stuns from physical damage because we do not have any evasion against spells - we rely only on Spell Block (and Spell Dodge). The problem with Block is that you will go through Block Recovery on a hit if it would have caused a stun - even if you blocked it, whereas Evasion and Dodge do not have to deal with this. Thus high spell damage bosses can cause you to undergo Block Recovery a lot - which can be annoying as you cannot attack/leech life when you are block/stun recovering.

As you point out - Energy Shield is great because it gives a 50% chance to avoid stun which combines with our 30% chance to avoid stun from Heart of Oak. (This is why I recommended Ghost Reaver to dessloc in his build a few posts back as a way for him to keep his ES up at all times)
Interestingly, Heart of Oak and ES are NOT additive - the total combined chance to avoid stun is 65% and not 80%. These are the mechanics:
- First regular stun avoidance is checked, and then if that fails - ES has a 50% chance to ignore stun if it was not avoided (Source: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/464831/page/47#p4108429)
- Chance to not avoid stun = Chance stun not avoided by 30% from Heart of Oak x Chance stun not ignored by Energy Shield after stun avoidance failed = (1-30%) x (1-50%) = 35%
- So our total chance to not get stunned is 1 - chance stun not avoided/ignored = 1-35% = 65%

Sorry for the long post, but I find all these mechanics very interesting.

TLDR:
- Dodge tapers off late game, but is very useful early to mid-game when you do not yet have high block as it gives a large boost to effective health
- Block/Stun recovery is usually a non-issue except for: Vulnerability maps and when facing high spell damage bosses such as Piety and Mageara
- Stun avoidance from Heart of Oak and Energy Shield are incredibly useful. However they do not stack additively, and combined give a total chance to ignore stuns of 65% for any hit that gets through all your defenses and has a stun attached to it
Last edited by Ceryneian on Sep 17, 2013, 12:00:19 AM

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