Something else came up. Again.

I'm doing my best here, but a series of real life events is reaching its conclusion with a permanent international move. See you on the flip side whenever I get a gaming machine.

Vaal Pact, necessary or even recommended?

I made a 211pdps wand courtesy of Elreon's metamod. For the first time since game start, wanding is actually within my reach. Seeing as I'm in an old-fashioned phase at the moment, CI wander it is.

Since the change to VP went through, I've seen a marked decrease in the number of CI builds using it. That said, I'm way out of touch with CI in general.

build link

Because, well, why not. The alternative is to head down to Ondar's, for a similar point count and some more dex, as one of the CI guides does. A quick poke at the CI wander guides available show that none (out of 3) go to VP; of the HP wanders, two (out of 5) do. It definitely looks like VP isn't as essential to CI as it used to be.

If not for VP, the build would probably do better from shadow start. Guess we'll find out eventually.

Wand marauder

Random thought as I'm picking through the build lists to find wanders. Can you make one (okay fine you probably can) and how playable is it?

Bringing back the good old days

Okay, not really. But Tiurakh is now running an LS build, and LS has pretty much dropped off the map otherwise (Mjolner notwithstanding, and man did my predictions for that item ever turn out badly.) I don't believe LS is all that bad.

I don't have a link to the thread any more, but if you were around in beta you probably know about Invalesco's CI crit dagger build.

updated passive tree

Everything else maybe as listed, maybe not. LS LMP AFD WED would be the 4L, since the latter two affect both melee and ranged sides of the skill. DS, Vaal DS. Maybe possibly. I'd run Hatred and Discipline. Incandescent Heart maybe? Looks pretty good for CI, only the light radius thing, it's like the CI equivalent of Lightning Coil. In any case it's possible to force offcolours now so a good Vaal Regalia will also do fine.

/salute

Well, that didn't work out.

I specced my 67 marauder in SC to this planned build.

Didn't work, not enough DPS. No, not really. DPS was...not spectacular, could clear docks, didn't do as well in maps as I'd've liked but it was more a survivability issue than a damage one. Also the single target sucks.

See that post for skilltree. Links: flicker - multi - prolif - increased burning - WED. Got to about 10k armour with Grace, I think. Realised I rely a lot more on block than is actually visible, most of the time. Tooltip DPS is no good for burn builds, didn't count it.

I tested with splash (prolif gave higher clear speed and takes its place pretty well), never needed chance to ignite, got more straight damage from the combination of WED and increased burning than from fire pen in either of those slots. Tested without multistrike and it was unbearably slow. So much for that.

Vulnerability self cast is too much micromanagement - works fine for stationary type builds like poison arrow, but when you're flickering all over the place it's trigger gem or nothing. Not sure putting it on trigger would work either but it's gotta be worth a shot.

Used blood dance boots, because didn't have a fire leech anything handy. Didn't really matter because I was taking way too much damage. Two ways to solve that, and one might get me killed on reflect because I'm pretty sure the other already hit diminishing returns. In any case, I'm very map mod limited on this build, so it's not much fun there.

Really, the essential problem here seems to be that prolif builds are once and done, whereas a flicker build relies on constant motion. Therefore, I'd need disproportionate DPS to play flicker proliferate.

You know what? This was a non crit build and I can clear docks with it. Might be a crit version has enough damage to manage the other. Gotta plan that one to try. Might be I can put splash instead of prolif because damage is sufficient, and then I'd get the benefit of culling strike.

Finding that perfect balance

not quite my build, but close enough

There was a point in Cruel where I realised my DPS with cascade had dropped sharply. Pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen with absolutely no gear changes...but wait, there was a passive change, I'd taken another AoE node.

Conc.e fixed that real quick.

Character is currently 77, running EB+AA without MoM, no trouble holding his own in a map group. Links are GC - added lightning - conc.e - PCoC.

Oro's Sacrifice flicker multi for HC

What do you mean it won't work, not enough DPS? Try me.

Concept: flicker multi with Oro's Sacrifice. It's been done before, though there are no 1.2 updated builds.

skill tree

RM - Grace - Herald of Ash?
flicker - multi - splash? - prolif? - increased burning or WED, or both, or chance to ignite, or fire pen
CDT - the usual
Vulnerability, that leech curse, TC, enfeeble

- Current tree doesn't do AA, but we'll see, some way of getting around increased damage taken would be cool
-  Lots of HP nearby if this proves insufficient

- Ideally I want something with fire leech. If I can corrupt the sword to something useful, like fire leech, so much the better.

- Multistrike isn't nice, considering loss of damage, but it's probably a necessary sacrifice.
- I have no idea how to level this character up, but I bet it will be fun! Fire traps probably.
- 5L dropped for me in the right colours, so I'm planning for a 5L

Mostly I'm thinking about the links after flicker strike. If splash gives multiple frenzy charges with Oro's the way it does with power charges and Voll's, then sustainability is not an issue and multi is not necessary. Probably. At the cost of attack speed. There's 15% chance to ignite on the tree, 20% more from the sword, 10% from a q20 increased burning if I'm doing that, 40ish from chance to ignite but let's try not to go there.

Oh well we'll see.

Nothing is legacy any more. Almost nothing.

This has consistently been one of the most popular previous posts. I'm glad to say it's no longer relevant.

Most recently, with Forsaken Masters patch, Zana offers the chance to run maps as though you were in a previous league - including legacy drops from that league. Recently confirmed, though I've suspected something was up from day one of the patch when Shavronne's Revelation was updated in patch notes.

And hell, I'm glad they did something about it. I'd rather see my "investment" values dropping than not, because of what it represents. I don't know that people will consistently run anything but Onslaught and in 6-groups, considering Nemesis costs 2ex, but prices are easy to tweak, and even if they aren't tweaked, when headhunter prices go high enough people will start trying.

As usual, GGG has come up with a better solution than I could ever have thought of. Major props to them, and this is why I'm a player and not a dev. 

Oh, we're just winging it...

...the guys who actually planned their builds are over in room 7.

True story from guild voice chat. I decided on my skill of choice when looking at the quest reward selection. Mostly I did it because apparently FP got a buff and I already knew what the skill gems were. I finally sat down to make my plan at level 49, with 5 points to allocate and with a decent idea of how much %HP to aim for.

proposed skill tree

FP - GMP - LL - something something. It's been lovely so far.
IS - increased crit damage - PCoC - increased crit chance? Got ICD from act 1 normal reward at Merveil, found out it freeze-locked really well, never looked back. The others I don't know about. In particular, I hate having to deal with power charge generation by single target.
Herald of Ice has been awesome. Might run Clarity, might run Discipline, go for AA, the usual EB MoM thing.

I have a problem with the skill tree update.

If you're reading this, you probably got here from one of my two guides on the main forum. They've made it through multiple skill tree revisions more-or-less intact, though the original classes they were posted under are no longer the optimal ones for them (go figure). When I respecced characters for it, I went with the ones who were already geared up, so I knew the stats both before and after.

And now I have a problem. 

With the same gear, the former 220%~ HP and the new 160%~ bring me to roughly the same number, which is about 4.5k. I'm short 150-200HP from before. This is a bit distressing, considering I'm using a legacy Rain and some really good HP gear, but there's always that circle below Scion and there's DW block there too.

I specced my ranger with all the easily reachable HP nodes, and am down 600HP from before. (The difference was in the nodes below and in duelist, my builds are fairly similar otherwise.) Whoops, 3.5k, not going there. I guess there's still that circle below Scion, gonna take a bit of juggling to get there though.

"There's always that circle below Scion." Why do I have to go for that? This isn't a complaint post about having to change, because change can be good; it's a complaint that I now have to stretch further to meet the same requirement, so I lose flexibility in other areas. I've already taken all the HP-relevant nodes in the areas I pass by.

Oh, we're changing up how HP base and skilltree interact, so you should have less worries about taking HP in the skilltree, and can take damage. Turns out the exact opposite is true, isn't it? I have to reach more HP clusters to get to the same value of HP as I did before. Reaching more HP clusters takes travel points too. Before, I was able to more-or-less pick and choose which clusters to take and what my routes should be. Now, I have to take all of the reasonably reachable ones, and some unreasonable too, and work the rest of my build around them. (Which I'm aware is how most regular HCers always did things, yes. Those builds regularly made 300% HP. My point stands and you can use logic to work out why.)

What gives, GGG? Don't you have someone who can do math?