Chaos Inoculation and the Incandescent Heart.

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Do_odle wrote:

Spoiler

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cgexile wrote:

I think the OP wants the best of both worlds and that's now how this game works. You can't have everything. Pick either great resist/no CI and max out your chaos resist, or pick CI along with great resist but give up all of the other stuff the OP mentioned.

I have a 94 CI Shadow that own everything including Atziri. Chaos damage does nothing to me. That is a really, really big perk of CI. CI's problem is that to make it work it's actually a really expensive build, so it's not for everyone.

I also have this Marauder I'm working on that is not CI but is max chaos resist to see and so far he's working out great.

My experience with Inc Heart is that I sold it, because like all uniques in this game do not surpass great crafted gear no matter what. This includes all the garbage that uber Atziri drops (minus the gauntlets that may have some use if you want to give up other stuff you can have on gloves).

People forget that uniques in this game are not like uniques from other games. Their purpose is to do what a rare can't do and that typically comes with some sort of a trade off. But at the end of the day, they are inferior to crafted rares which makes sense because you should be able to craft something awesome given how rare some of that top tier crafting currency is.

The only reason why people make some of these builds work for them such as using a shaves, is because of snapshotting which GGG really needs to fix. Once they do, even shaves will be yet another unique that's not for end-game ownage.

Snapshotting lets users run around with 500k - 2 mil DPS. I don't think GGG ever intended for this: 1 or 2 shotting end-game bosses. Really? This has to be priority #1 for them to fix no matter the difficulty of whatever it is that they have to overcome to fix aura mechanics.

My $0.02c

Well, first...
Snap-shotting isn't the problem. Look up Fyndel, he explains it all, he's a low-lifer that farms Uber Atziri without it.. and still manages to clear the three bosses room in a matter of seconds. He really does make it clear as to why the snap-shotting fix barely changes anything to his build.

Secondly, I just did a lot of math that proves GGG knows what absolute balance means...
:/ I was wrong.

When you're dech-out on mirror gear ( every single slot except acuity, coe and shav), including the best roll weapon in the game, mechanics do not matter.
I'm not sided on anything here, just pointing out that taking Fyndel as example is terrible.

The most confusing unique, so lets take a look at it:



25% elemental conversion to chaos damage. Sounds terrific for CI builds! Then you have..Light radius is based on energy shield.. ok? Meant for lowlife builds.. and then it has a +86 life mod. Now I'm utterly confused. 219 ES? Forget CI builds or any ES based build.

If it's meant for a hybrid build then why make light radius based on energy shield? If lowlife why would it give life at all? If CI then the low ES and the other two stated mods completely conflict with that.

There is no build that would make use of all its stats. The best build I can think of is a melee EB build with capped chaos resists. The only thing they'd be getting out of it is the lifeleech over the standard armor unique. CI would be the best candidate if it at least had double the amount of ES.

^Ci with discipline to make up for the armor's ES?

Pretty sure you can still get a decent amount of ES with that armor, and if the spells "reduction" justify's the loss of ES then it could be worthwhile.


edit : something that would make this armor truly "special" and unique, would be a mod
"+10% to max chaos resistance", this would put the max at 85% justifying the elemental mod, and enabling low-life builds, while still having a hefty cost
(85% chaos resist on gear in merciless is no pick-nick on "low-life" gear)

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Snap-shotting isn't the problem.

I only bring up snapshotting as it relates to this topic of unique items still worth keeping compared to mainstream uniques that are intentionally inferior to crafted items. The same would be true for shaves if snappshotting was fixed.

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When you're dech-out on mirror gear ( every single slot except acuity, coe and shav), including the best roll weapon in the game, mechanics do not matter.

Exactly, but mirrored gear alone is not the issue. If you can afford it, good for you, but what takes it over the top is that players stack 7 auras that give you insane dps by casting penelty-free blood magic and then taking that gear off. All of this on top of gg crafted (mirrored or not mirrored) gear. That's not right.

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^Ci with discipline to make up for the armor's ES?

Pretty sure you can still get a decent amount of ES with that armor, and if the spells "reduction" justify's the loss of ES then it could be worthwhile.

All CI builds should be running disc eitherway. It's an OK CI unique but just has so much lost potential and conflicting stats.

I have a voll's CI build with 8k ES so yes you can reach high ES.. but you can reach much higher without it. Unlike voll's this is meant to make your character tankier. I believe more base ES/int will make your character far tankier than this unique.

It's still okay and can have its uses. Switching this in for purely elemental bosses might be good.

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kasub wrote:

There is no build that would make use of all its stats. The best build I can think of is a melee EB build with capped chaos resists. The only thing they'd be getting out of it is the lifeleech over the standard armor unique. CI would be the best candidate if it at least had double the amount of ES.

I don't see this being a good choice for life+EB.
As a life build, you can pretty much ignore chaos resist (or get it to like 10% and never be troubled), so this Unique would make you actually take MORE damage, with the only benefit being the 5% life leech.
I would never even consider using this Unique instead of a "+100 health + some resists" armor piece.

For CI, it seems ok.
The life stat is wasted, the life leech is only semi useful (it saves a slot for Blood Rage, or gives you even more life leech if you iE want to run Vaal Pact), but it is ~5% to your max resists.
So if you can still get to your ~5-6k ES, this could well be worth it.

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I guess it was originally designed for Life/ES hybrids, but those builds are not too efficient, and getting max resists (including chaos) is not that easy.

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For CI, it seems ok.
The life stat is wasted, the life leech is only semi useful (it saves a slot for Blood Rage, or gives you even more life leech if you iE want to run Vaal Pact), but it is ~5% to your max resists.
So if you can still get to your ~5-6k ES, this could well be worth it.

The bolded part is wrong.

In reality the higher your max resistances are with this armor, the less potential it has.

(assuming CI for 100% chaos resistance)

Peace,

-Boem-

75% resists -> 25% * 25% = + 6.25% max resist
80% resists -> 25% * 20% = + 5% max resist
85% resists -> 25% * 15% = + 3.75% max resist
More than 85% - why the fuck would I bother to use this Unique?

"The bolded part is wrong"
To me, a span of 3.75 to 6.25 is "~5".

The "less potential" part is also not really true.
It removes a flat 25% of elemental damage, no matter how high your resists are.
If something would kill you with your current resists but not with an additional 25% reduced damage, Incandescant Heart saves your butt.
If it wouldn't kill you, it doesn't matter anyways.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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cgexile wrote:

I think the OP wants the best of both worlds and that's now how this game works. You can't have everything. Pick either great resist/no CI and max out your chaos resist, or pick CI along with great resist but give up all of the other stuff the OP mentioned.

How about a build like this for Incandescant Heart?

90 points, still a lot of room to pick up damage, block or whatever you want.

252% ES, +4 max resist, 125% Damage, Ghost Reaver, Unwavering Stance.
Picked Marauder because he is close to US and has the +2 max resist "at home".

Uh... I guess it could work, melee with 252% ES 125% dmg and a 300ES chest :D I'm pretty sure you would remain frozen forever even with auxium :D All jokes aside :D ...

I know exactly what Incandescent Heart is for....

It's for Veil of the Night + Immortal Flesh.

See, to capitalize on the 25% ele to chaos conversion what you HAVE to do is get your resists to 0% only when at 0% does the chest even reduce the total elemental damage you take by 25%.
Veil of the Night will make sure that Incandescent Heart is absolutely effective. Immortal Flesh is just there to be a bro. Lol...


Of course Incandescent Heart would probably just be better for low life builds that stack a great deal of chaos resist for it to negligible with a flask. It's very geared towards Low-Life Templars as opposed to shadows, even the flavor text implies it...

"Only light may banish the shadows from this land
And the black lies wrapped around your heart"

but how does one even begin to go about doing such a thing... If you're taking elemental damage straight to your life...

WELL This is where it gets really interesting, because before I Was thinking of full life and how when you have 75% max resists the item only benefits chaos inoculation by taking 6%. That's just the number you have before it gets converted to chaos resistance..

Lets say you have 75% Chaos Resistance. only 25% of 6% which is 1.5% would make it through your resistance to life... this item effectively double dips your elemental resists (for 25% of dmg taken).

You literally convert 25% elemental damage into 1.5% elemental damage to chaos. It's not 0% but it's very frigging close O_o

Now, correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't low lifers completely capable of stacking on the auras? I think so! So that 1.5% of damage taken directly to life gets even smaller with max res increase.

.... I get the flavor text now..


Incandescent Heart is an amazing unique!

It represents a holy crusade against COOKIE CUTTER LOW-LIFE BUILDS.

The majority of low-life builds are Shadow or "shadows"...

Shavronne's Wrappings are 'black' and "wrapped" around your "heart"

The "lie" is that you can't do a strong Low-Life build without it.

and the "light"....

Yeah..
This could definitely work, even with blood rage...Yeah...

!! THE BUILD!!!
Low-Life Incandescent Aegis Aurora Templar!!!

No Zealots Oath,

No Ghost Reaver,

Life Regen & Life Leech to moderate Life Pool to sustain chaos damage.

Get Armor/ES Passives + a few block nodes to sustain yourself through Aegis...

Get even more ES Because All we have to worry about now is taking eventual big physical hits..

Lori's Lantern Aka the "Light" can also be used for the chaos res and the unlucky lowlife mod that causes damage rolls to roll twice and lower values are taken.

Another synergy with this build is Blood Dance boots, it would provide enough% regen on it's own to totally disregard the constant stream of 1% ele->chaos dmg along side the 1% chaos degen of blood rage, plus it has a 6% increased dmg against enemies frenzy charge on low life mod that compliments.

Everything is absolutely up in the air at this point, this changes everything, doesn't it? O_0

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WELL This is where it gets really interesting, because before I Was thinking of full life and how when you have 75% max resists the item only benefits chaos inoculation by taking 6%. That's just the number you have before it gets converted to chaos resistance..

Lets say you have 75% Chaos Resistance. only 25% of 6% which is 1.5% would make it through your resistance to life... this item effectively double dips your elemental resists (for 25% of dmg taken).

You literally convert 25% elemental damage into 1.5% elemental damage to chaos. It's not 0% but it's very frigging close O_o

Now, correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't low lifers completely capable of stacking on the auras? I think so! So that 1.5% of damage taken directly to life gets even smaller with max res increase.

it took me writing and deleting a whole response to see what you were saying. I was initially thinking that this conversion was only beneficial if you had at least as much chaos resist as you have elemental, but in reality as long as you have positive Chaos resist, you are indeed mitigating part of the damage even more with your chaos resist. Even without CI, having 75% chaos resist does effectively turn 75% elemental resist into 80%. While it does get less effective the higher your max goes (79% elem res effectively becomes 82% (maybe 83% with rounding), it still can be equivalent to running some purity auras. Of course, getting 75% chaos resist along with max elemental resist seems like a difficult task, especially while still getting a decent life pool.