Hyaon's Fury - Make it work!

This is part guide, part general thoughts, part "help me"

General Thoughts about this sword


1. Lightning vs. physical damage
This sword potentally does a huge amount of lightning damage (even my low-roll does like 300something elemental DpS without frenzy charges), but little to no physical.

a) Life leech and mana leech only "work" on gems, not on gear.
I don't exactly want these gems in my setup, but keep this in mind.

b) The damage is super-spiky.
Playing with mostly lightning damage is like playing with some weird crit build. Sometimes you oneshoot people, sometimes you literally do nothing to them.
My damage per hit jumps between 50 and 3000.

c) The damage is not as good as it sounds.
It is sufficient, but it is not "WTF crazy". Even with 6-7 frenzy charges and some %elemental, %lightning and %WED on tree and gear, this is not half as great as using physical damage, as there's more multipliers and more percentage sources for physical damage.

2. The drawback(s)
...is insane (keep in mind it says "damage", not "physical damage" like Abyssus).

It is so brutal that I think it is a valid idea to say "fuck it, I don't use frenzy charges with that thing, I just use some elemental passives".

I'd say they were designed for a build with "Dodge+Block+Evasion+Lightning Coil". But even such a build gets hit from time to time.

There's also a little hidden drawback in the fact that the weapon base is not ideal for elemental damage, you'd usually prefer a faster sword.

3. How to get your frenzy charges?

I'd say, there's three ways:

a) Frenzy: in a 6Link, this easily costs 150-200+ mana per hit. And you can't really manaleech, so you need to do this with blood magic or mana regen.
For Blood Magic, you need life regen, and the frenzy charges are not in the area of the tree where you find sufficient amounts of this.
b) Blood Rage: Similar problem with the health regen. Or go CI?
c) Blood Dance Unique Boots: Greatest problem here is "no life, no resists".

b) and c) also do not work in Boss fights.
Which you can consider a good thing, because then you don't take additional damage. ;)

None of these ways is ideal...

---

So I sat down and tried to figure out a build with this sword...

Hyaon's Witch

Basic ideas:

a) Use Aegis Aurora + some Energy shield to overcome the drawback.
b) Yolo! I go for Frenzy charges (atm: Blood Dance, I hope I can actually run Frenzy on Mana in the End)
c) A Witch, because it doesn't matter too much what you take. You'll dodge all the usual melee nodes anyways.
d) I want quite a bit of Auras, so I need a ton of Aura nodes.

Lvl 90 tree (67 atm):
Poebuilder-Link
Some life, some block, some attackspeed, the aura nodes, Frenzy charges (6 with Merciless Bandits, the duelist charge is right around the corner, but I dare not take it), and only the lightning nodes that "shock".

Issues:
*Block not maxed
*No %armor, so Aegis doesn't work perfectly
*So many nice nodes I had to skip (more lightning damage, more block, more life...)
*need a bit of accuracy on gear
*no resist in the tree

---

Main Skill:
Reave (built-in AoE, saves a gem slot)
+Multistrike (never play melee without autoaim)
+Lightning Penetration (100% required)
+Weapon Elemental Damage (hooray!)
+Added Lightning (when, if not now?)
+Life leech (Hyaon's life gain on kill is not enough)

Auras:
Grace, Tempest Shield (works nice with AA and the %lightning damage), Wrath (when, if not now?), Clarity with Bloodmagic Gem on life

---

Does it work?
Hmmm... at least I can now play Lunaris Merciless without getting oneshot by white mobs. ;)
The damage output is nowhere near I thought it would be, and once you have Frenzy charges up, you get hit pretty brutally.

So:
How do I improve this?
Is there a chance to make this work in Endgame maps?
(Atm I don't see this)

Very interesting conundrum you have there... In for the think-tank's response.

Life gain on kill is a useless mod.
The increased damage taken per frenzy charge is hilarious downside.

In the end, you would do better with a 2+ APS sword with double elemental damage mods (which is a very cheap item), the effectiveness of auras and the flat elemental damage mods on other pieces of gear is a lot higher.

Slow elemental damage weapons are just funny.

The key would be in the frenzy charges to increase the APS, but you get increased DPS by the weapons mod, and you can use frenzy charges on 2+ APS weapons and again, outperform the Hyaon's.

Going crit with that 5% crit base is just... awful.
The leech is also an issue...

Maybe some Spectral Throw build, where you could afford the increased damage taken. Get the frenzy charges through Blood Rage and a Frenzy on it's own when needed.
With some nasty map mods just don't use frenzy charges, will be a severe DPS loss but...

I don't know, it's just not worth the hassle, get a 2+ APS elemental damage weapon and enjoy the better performance.

Eh.

Reave - Mana Leech - Life Leech - WED - Multistrike. 6th link would be Light pen or Faster Attacks. I vote for the former.

the Leeches, though you don't want them, are what I see as a prerequisite for this sword because of the high amount of survivability you'll need.

BloodRage and Blood Dance will always work in tandem with each other, and while you won't benefit from the LL of BR, having constant Frenzies will always help your dps.

Why not try Lightning Strike and go the Static Blows route with it? You'd be running it on Blood Magic for something like this in a 6L:

Lightning Strike > Multistrike > LMP > Added Lightning Damage > Lightning Pen > BM

**EDIT**

Could take out the ALD and swap in Weapon Elemental, of course.

A very, VERY rough idea for a level 90 build that focuses more on shield block using this skill and also grabbing charges to use Discharge with manually. Again, haven't thought all the gear out other than the sword and a shield, but might give you or others some ideas:



Again, nothing definitive, but food for thought and discussion.

@Tanakeah

Lightning Strike: "50% of Physical Damage Converted to Lightning Damage"
...not so interesting with this weapon.

@tinko92

I want to make best use of this sword.
The alternative can't be "take another one". ;)

@enveratise

Reave - Mana Leech - Life Leech - WED - Multistrike - lightning pen

That's a 6-Link with only half of the gems that doing anything for the DpS.
Reave does nothing but utility (AoE), the two leeches obviously don't do damage, and lightning pen is unfortunatly no "paper DpS".

If I can support my attack with mana regen, I won't use Mana Leech, for that reason.

My clarity is 16 atm and is enough to support 6L Reave.

Current Gear:

ZenocideGenius was making a Flicker build with Blood Dance and the damage was great. I was trying to build it too (on HC, he was building it on Ambush), but the damage you take is enough to make you stop playing with Hyaon's. In reality Flicker allows you to avoid a lot of damage simply because you're physically moving around so much, but desync will get you sooner or later.

Like Tinko said, maybe a Spectral Throw build. I can't see melee being viable in the long run with Hyaon's, you're going to experience a lot of nasty situations. Reave could be a choice, but personally I dislike losing stacks after only 2 seconds.

Why would you ever care about "paper" dps? it doesn't matter unless you like big numbers on your statsheet... which is pretty silly. yes, half of the gems are DPS, but half of them are chosen for survivability.

Also, that clarity of yours would serve an AA gem better than your main attack, if you can't get max block.

Remember, I'm trying to maximize survivability here instead of damage, as I maintain a stance of building this defensively. It says something about the weapon if you feel that the damage lacks while leaving you vulnerable in your defenses.

Alas if you don't want to run AA, and want to count on your auras, I suggest you get increased AoE on your Reave. I've been able to make stacks faster using it.

Do something like

Thunderfists with alph's howl and two of the swords using grace/wrath/clarity cleave/weaponelemental/fasterattacks/lifeleech(multistrike if you can get lightning leech on rings)/lightning pen/added lightning(better high quality one).

Also get all the lightning dmg on rings and ammy you can get.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

Do something like

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYABH4FtQzyDkgRlhOeFSAV8BmKGdcajxrbIcAj9iQ8JpUnqSmlLIUs6S9vNJM2PTZ7Olg-z0d-STtJUUp9TipQQlFHUzVVS1b6WhpaSFptW69fqmHiYqxjcGOnZU1noGwWbWxte25pcLtz4X11f8aD24TZhxmHdofbiGuMNo19jb-P-pP8m7WdqqIupJGly6dcqn-quK7Psw60OLSjtUi2Qb3mvqfOcdN-1p3ZE90N3UbjhOUZ647sGO4O73rv4-_w9tr3iPlj-wn79fxL_E78xf66_5M=

Thunderfists with alph's howl and two of the swords using grace/wrath/clarity cleave/weaponelemental/fasterattacks/lifeleech(multistrike if you can get lightning leech on rings)/lightning pen/added lightning(better high quality one).

Also get all the lightning dmg on rings and ammy you can get.

Ignore this guy, he wants you to die every time you step into a zone.