To Lightning Coil or Not?

I find Immortal Call to be very difficult to use effectively. I don't have the gem slots to equip it to a second, high level CwDT / Increased Duration setup, so I could only do it by replacing Decoy Totem in my low level CwDT. With that it seems like it's almost just a waste of Endurance Charges since the IC lasts so little time.

And hand-casting is also pretty inconvenient. It would be a bit more reliable in that I could cast when I have 5-6 end charges, but then I have to interrupt my attack which interrupts leech, not to mention remembering to do it.... just seems hard to pull off.

Are there any good tricks to using it effectively?

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tinko92 wrote:

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Sheriff_K wrote:

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tinko92 wrote:

Too bad there's IC gem.

Too bad Immortal Call doesn't protect you from a one-shot. :P

What?

Unless you're talking about a build that has 15-18 second manually cast Immortal Call thus trivializing most Physical Bosses, a generic CwDT+Immortal Call combo which was what I was referring to, would not save you.

Since you need to be hit first, to trigger the IC, so if you were one-shot by the triggering hit, you're screwed.. :P
(The only thing CwDT+IC doing in that case, is preventing back to back one-shots in quick succession, which is quite rare.)

So the most important thing is to be able to survive the one-shot scenario, which is where Lightning Coil shines.

@Above, there are mainly 4 ways people use Immortal Call:
1) CwDT (Level 1) + EC + Immortal + Inc Dur
2) CwDT (Level 1) + EC + Inc Dur/Curse AND a separate CwDT (Level 7) + EC + Immortal (higher Level) + Inc Dur
3) High level CwDT + high level Immortal
4) Manually casted Immortal Call with a build that grabs Buff/Skill Duration increasing Passives to get Endurance Charges to last until you need to use Immortal Call, and making your Immortal Call last 15-18 seconds. (though with some mechanics abuse, getting 30-37 seconds is possible, but not recommended :P)

And with Vaal Immortal Call making you immune to ALL Damage (including Elemental and Chaos), that could be really useful in a manual Immortal Call casting build.

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Sheriff_K wrote:

Unless you're talking about a build that has 15-18 second manually cast Immortal Call thus trivializing most Physical Bosses, a generic CwDT+Immortal Call combo which was what I was referring to, would not save you.

Since you need to be hit first, to trigger the IC, so if you were one-shot by the triggering hit, you're screwed.. :P
(The only thing CwDT+IC doing in that case, is preventing back to back one-shots in quick succession, which is quite rare.)

So the most important thing is to be able to survive the one-shot scenario, which is where Lightning Coil shines.

I've said IC gem, no CWDT or whatsoever.
I agree on the CWDT setup though.

10+ seconds of self-cast IC isn't too hard at all.
And physical damage will never triumph over elemental as long as IC (like it is now) exists. In fact, elemental damage is by far more dangerous than physical just because of IC.

Lightning Coil + active endurance-charges is far better than IC, since it has this incredible uptime of... always. While it is basically impossible with just EC to maintain IC forever against a single boss.

The only reason why Lightning Coil isn't that expensive is that it is more common and not really necessary since it only provides incredible defense against physical damage and physical damage is rarely a thread except for Evasion-chars where Lightning Coil really shines.

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Emphasy wrote:

Lightning Coil + active endurance-charges is far better than IC, since it has this incredible uptime of... always. While it is basically impossible with just EC to maintain IC forever against a single boss.

That doesn't mean it's far better than IC, it means it's better in longer period of time.

Why would one maintain IC forever against a single boss anyway? It's there to prevent one shots or to be active until the boss dies.

To maintain it forever, the only build that comes to my mind is that "godmode build" which basically has no evasion nor armour.

This is my piece of gear to use with coil, its not hard to max lightning even with coils - and without purity

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Emphasy wrote:

The only reason why Lightning Coil isn't that expensive is that it is more common and not really necessary since it only provides incredible defense against physical damage and physical damage is rarely a thread except for Evasion-chars where Lightning Coil really shines.

I disagree. I feel that Lightning Coil is mandatory, especially if you want to play on Hardcore. The most dangerous damage type IS Physical, if for no other reason than the fact that no matter how much Armor you stack, it does nothing against a one-shot.

Yeah, Lightning Damage with certain Mod combinations can be riskier, *cough* Powerful Crits, but at least you can mitigate 75-84% of that Damage from your Resists. Physical Damage the only way to [passively] mitigate it, is with a higher "Life" pool (Kaom's/MoM) or Lightning Coil.

Alrighty. I am going to try to Lightning Coil with Hatred/PoL no Grace and see how that goes.

Although it just struck me that perhaps my plan of using Eye of Chayula instead of getting Unwavering Stance, so that I can use Blind on my ST, is not quite as useful if I'm using LC to mitigate physical dmg... hmm.

This is an interesting discussion, the same as the item itself. I don't think there is a straigth yes/no answer but it is build based. As far as I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong) lightning coil doesn't reduce any damage, it transforms 40% of the physical damage taken to lightning damage before any damage mitigation takes place, you still take the same amount of damage.
Disregarding big physical hits, if you have more physical damage mitigation than lightning damage mitigation you will always take more damage and viceversa. Advantage of lightning resistance is that it is linear and easier to cap than physical, however the cap is lower unless the build is specific lightning resistance oriented.

The question comes with big physical hits and one hitters as they skew armour and make it very uneffective thus making a flat mitigation way better.
My impression is that lightning coil best use is with a high armour and high lightning resistance build which main purpose would be to mitigate those big hitters to a manageable amount.

As for evasion characters it is the only option to reduce physical damage besides endurance charges (which eva chars don't really use) and IC but you should be evading that kind of damage anyways so why use this armour?. The problem comes with unavoidable physical damage like traps and EK for which this chest is the only type of mitigation which is probably not going to be enough alone and would have to be combined with some spell block and/or IC.

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Sheriff_K wrote:

I disagree. I feel that Lightning Coil is mandatory, especially if you want to play on Hardcore. The most dangerous damage type IS Physical, if for no other reason than the fact that no matter how much Armor you stack, it does nothing against a one-shot.

Yeah, Lightning Damage with certain Mod combinations can be riskier, *cough* Powerful Crits, but at least you can mitigate 75-84% of that Damage from your Resists. Physical Damage the only way to [passively] mitigate it, is with a higher "Life" pool (Kaom's/MoM) or Lightning Coil.

Physical damage isn't the most dangerous, not even close. Elemental damage is the king, and one thing that goes well in hand with that is the IC gem, and as long as we don't get something that powerful for elemental damage, physical will be below elemental.

And that's not true about armour doing nothing against one shots. Because that depends on how big the hit is, if it's a non-buffed Vaal smash in Maze, then armour alone is fine to make you 100% safe from one shots.
Yes, it matters a lot how much armour you stack.
Generally, high armour builds tend to have much more life than others.

However, if we're going to get some extra crispy on our map mods regarding damage, setting up some endurance charges, Molten Shell and AA, it's effectiveness is amazing, the synergy between them.

And, Lightning Coil can be very dangerous in some situations, you can get shocked with physical hits.