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?

No such thing as an original idea

thread link


It's rather different from most of the RF builds in the guides written for it. It's also rather expensive, like wait why do you need to MF when you have a 6L shav, but other than that the gear requirement is actually really reasonable.

Every post-patch RF setup will be a bit different from how it's currently done (most of the time anyway), since snapshotting will be removed. Well, the above linked won't be, but that's out of my reach too.

I'll likely put Purity of Fire in a +2+1 wand with RM and Empower, to cheat it to 20 from 16. The classic spectre-summoner method of reducing resists applies, which is ele weakness + flammability + EE, and shockstacks on top of that. After all, I'll need all the damage boosts I can get.

The passive tree shouldn't change too much, but I'm holding off on that until post-patch because it might change again. (Grr. I get why they do it, but who likes change really?)

previous post link

Template for build (freeze lock)

courtesy of Lyralei

I don't always do that much math, but in the case of getting freeze chance sky-high and perma freezing, it makes sense to calculate cast speed, freeze duration, etc.

Everyone tries their hand at the coldsnap perma freeze build at one point or another. Sometimes it works. My attempt was nearly a year ago now, before Romira's, and it didn't. I haven't revisited the concept yet...actually IDEA. What ever did happen to coldsnap trapping? It'll probably work. I hope it will.

Thinking of a lazy MF build

Given that I've already played straight spectre summoner twice, that one's out.

For the new leagues after Ambush/Invasion, I want to make a MF farmer in the HC league. For once I'll actually have the time to put into playing, so a farm character and then some interesting other characters without being severely limited by finances.

After discussion with my theorycraft buddy, we settled on RF because why not. It's easy to level as SB, in theory. And doesn't really get lazier than RF. Maybe I'll do a CWS/CDT build in SC but I'm not sure it's entirely appropriate for HC.

RF - AoE/conc.e - IBD - IIR

Or something. I can usually afford a 1ex major item by level 60~ on a new character, so Phoenix is just about right. 

Molten Strike shotguns.

It is glorious. As in better than dualstrike for single target, better than reave for multi target.

Something else of note, increased AoE radius seems to affect the visual representation of offshoot projectiles not at all, but I think the hitboxing is still changed. AoE radius also affects the area in which they land. I'm playing MS with cascade on crit, and when it lands, whoa. I think I might try out EE with it too.

Full concept post another time, seeing as I made pretty much every decision for this character on a whim. Oh hey, there's a new skill I get as reward, let's see how this goes. Mmm, shiny. Ah, I have enough crit chance to go CoC, let's do that 20 levels earlier than planned with a different skill than planned. Etc.

Oh, and RIP my summoner. I know better than to stand around chatting in docks with mobs on screen not dead yet. Except apparently I don't. So I'll finish testing on SC. One good thing coming of it, I have a Torment on SC and it really does work much better with it.

For my next CoC build, I'm going Glacial Cascade

This one guy I met this weekend was using it, and it looks way cool. Double strike - splash - multi - CoC - cascade. Or maybe lose the multi and add LoH. Might spec my Aegis character to it because why not. Or something.

Mjolner: cast on crit, only without the crit!

Barrage chain is sufficient #hits to make a decent CoC setup...now try LS GMP LMP chain with the +1 chain in weapon. Probably multistrike too, and LoH. I should probably make that setup anyway. Kill nothing, but projectiles all over the screen ought to be quite amusing. That or I could go curse on hit...

To keep with the theme, obviously I'd use storm call! but practically speaking, arc/spark might be better use. For anti-reflect purposes, LL gem. Double up using two of these maces for maximum lulz.

My prediction is that Mjolner will end up in the 1-2ex range in any league which actually matters (read: not SC.) That's pretty much the going rate for an endgame unique gimmicky weapon. Isn't it interesting how certain prices always settle at certain rates? Looking at you, Dream Fragments. But in any case it'll be affordable enough by the time I reach that level. If I reach that level. Path of Rerolling FTL.

The proto-build in my phone memory (I use the skill tree planner app) is labeled THammer. Bit of a legacy from my Fire Emblem days, love those games. The build's short about 100 each of str/int directly from passives at 90 points. That means Astra, or more likely it means I'll hunt down a statball amulet. Statballs are hilarious in addition to being frequently useful. And why do templars always need to take a roundabout route out of their startzone?

Animate Guardian is the bomb.

Literally. I have minion instability.

The explosion tends to kill whatever it was getting mobbed by, but if it doesn't improve in survivability in the next 20~ levels, I'll have to drop the gem. It's a bit much work to keep it active, and it takes up valuable sockets in my gear.

The original plan was to stack uniques on it for a utility guardian:
- Ambu's Charge, Lightbane Raiment, Zahndethus' Cassock. Probably one of the latter two, because I was also planning on block.
- Asenath's Gentle Touch would be really cool, but curse override if I was running a curse. I'd totally go facebreakers if I thought it would accomplish anything. Maybe it will. Or Shackles of the Wretched, just for lulz. It keeps blowing up. >.>
- Leer Cast, obviously
- some shield with lots of block, so probably Crest of Perandus, but this one isn't set in stone. Or dual Ungils.

More I think about it, facebreakers seem like a better option. Eh. All this is worth nothing if the stupid guardian won't stay alive!

And finally. Reinventing the wheel, you heard it here first:

I don't have enough crit to matter, but static blows is shockingly good with an ele sword and Wrath. Also, damage auras are noticeable when you have a pile of weapons and skeletons with you. Or alone. None of this might be new, not even to me, but it's always gratifying to see exactly how much difference it makes. And I got 5 stash tabs last week and I still have only 2 in use, out of 9 total, and another 2.5 full of stone hammers. Yeah. 

Funny, I'd been thinking about a chaos build

Here's the thought process about as far as it went, at least on my side. I started by picking every chaos and DoT node, along with the witch AoE, starting from witch.

Honestly, at the beginning I wanted to do Aegis + Lightbane. Since that's all passive and flat damage anyway, I figured I'd supplement it with damage skill(s). And oh look there's desecrate. And obviously I'd use Vulnerability and shockstacking. Shockstacking, clearly, would be done by Tempest Shield, because Aegis. And all that.

Then, y'know, I actually went to look up Desecrate. Bugger. That's...not a whole lot of damage. Clearly, the obvious next move is to hop in and use either poison arrow or viper strike. Or both, only auras would cleared by the weapon swap, which is a problem. AoE radius would help both of them, but PA more so than VS. For reference-

Level 20 DPS:
PA: 383.1
VS: 289.5
Desecrate: 261.7

Level 25 DPS:
PA: 700
VS: 500
Desecrate: 465.3

These are base numbers. That is to say, VS takes a further penalty from splash. Further, the skill link would simply be VS splash empower, with a maximum of 3 links available in the 1h weapon. In contrast, PA can take gems such as conc.e, AoE, etc in addition to empower. And there are pretty well no generic damage nodes - physical weapon yes, generic weapon hardly. Projectile, on the other hand...yup, we're going PA for sure. Lightbane wasn't worth much damage anyway.

Shockstacking? Well, I can self cast arc/shocknova. Or I can try to make totems do it. It's been done before and often.

when suddenly

What do you know, no new ideas under the sun. This looks pretty cool and I wonder if I can't get some shockstacking thrown in. Probably by way of the zombies. Looks Invasion safe too, much better than viper strike, for bonus points.

Aura support build

I did/do a ton of high level mapping, as you can probably tell. Builds like this one are intriguing and I've kind of always wanted to make one. Fair warning, link's way out of date, but it's the thought that counts right?

The problem with that is, support characters don't do a whole lot solo. Nor in early levels, but then it's easy to run leveling builds. Perhaps in the end with lots of elemental damage from auras, but I'm not sure how that compares with other kinds of DPS builds...there have been characters built for it, to be sure, but I haven't played any.

But what if I had my own little army to buff?

It's been a while since summoning got an overhaul. I've always had rather the vested interest in it, since my first character was a summoner and all, and I wouldn't even be playing Path if I didn't get hooked on "lol I have zombie minions"...yeah I'm superficial, sue me.

The shape of a summoning tree should still roughly be the same, and it's in the general vicinity of all the aura nodes except the lol 5% at US, so the question becomes how many passive points do I have that I can play with after taking summoner and aura nodes. In addition, choice of minion is important now. When I started, it was skeleton, zombie, spectre and that was that. Now, there are quite a number of additional options.

Since it's an aura build with an army, I believe focusing on quantity over quality is important (more aura buff targets) and, if possible, increasing minions' attack speed taking priority over increasing damage (added elemental always swings it this way). 

Minion thoughts:
- CoC raging spirit is a Thing. Yes, really. It's a really cool Thing too. I might even do this separately as a whole different build. Limit 50 and the only way to get them out at any reasonable quantity, given their duration, is CoC. 50, if you didn't realise, is a pretty big number. I like. Totem summoning these is also not unviable.
- Skeletons. From prior experience, totem casting these is a lot more reasonable than self-casting, and frees up the player's actions too. Limit 15~ with all minion gear, 10~ otherwise.
- Zombies. Persistent and durable, so self-casting is OK as I expect not to have to use them often. 10~ limit after gear.
- Spectres are fragile and annoying and I don't think I'll have the sockets for it, but w/e.
- Dominating things is actually really, really awesome. As a note, it doesn't require killing the thing, but only applies a debuff - this means it'll work even with dual totems. 
- Animate weapon is a bit on the gimmicky side, but can consider. Animate guardian...probably with buff effects like Leer Cast. That'll be cool.
- Flesh offering for additional 40% ias. SO GOOD. Bone offering not so much, because nobody really cares if they block.
- Minion Instability, yes please. Only downside to this is spectres, and I'm not using spectres.
- Elemental Equilibrium no thank you, everything's dealing all 3 elements all the time pretty much.
- And yes, planning on quite possibly dual totems. I mean, why not?

Aura thoughts: refer to these threads.

Build to come, oh, this weekend or the next.

TIL: do not stand next to Vaal when he dies in an Immolation race

Also, if you make a witch in a no-projectiles race, plan to kill Hillock unarmed. Herp derp. Ditto ranger. Witch is popular though, because a lot of skills (firestorm) bypass the projectile thing. Without going too much into detail on our race strategy, I will say that party racing is a lot more fun than solo, and far more efficient as well.

Back to Searing Bond

Cyclone + CMK + SB + culling?

Or CMK anything really, using culling to get around the dual totems no-self-damage thing, but it'll only really work with casting a totem because otherwise the spell still deals no damage.

To no one's surprise, self casted RF deals no damage on a dual totem build. Burn animation still plays though. 

Aegis, Lightbane Raiment, and Viper Strike

got an idea from this thread

The question is whether desecrated ground is affected by DoT/chaos nodes? My guess is no. Pity. I mean, I've got a Rain and everything, but Rain + Aegis builds are so overdone, and X-on-block is a cool mechanic.

I'm thinking Abyssus, to offset using a 1h weapon for damage. Aegis should be good for the damage taken thing, not to mention it has a reasonable amount of armour. In addition, crit multiplier, which means I should go crit for even more damage.

I'll post a complete concept once I've shaved it down to 100 or so points and figured out Lightbane's ground effect.

Traps and totems, really?

So there's this friend of mine, he wanted to see if he could get around the "less" modifier on totems. And of course, he hit on the idea of trapping them.

I'd always figured that the summon time would be a bit too much, that throwing a trap which then threw up a totem only if it was hit and then totem cast speed...yeah, not going there. But then he mentioned Sunblast.

Oh snap.

Imagine the possibilities.

I asked, and he wasn't double dipping Reduced Duration (it was storm call totems) but I imagine that's definitely something one could do.

It does make me want to throw lightning warp totem traps now, too. 

What would you do with 6 green links?

There's a mirrored chest floating around SC, it's got HP tri-res and something like 2k evasion...and 6 green sockets. And it's mirrored. Regretfully, at the time I had the opportunity to buy it, I turned it down. More's the pity. Still, it's been in my mind for a while that I should really try to make a build which works with 6 green links.

List of green active skills that can realistically run as main AoE without red/blue supports. In other words, no melee splash, but xMP is allowed. No comment on how well they run, mind you, only that they can.

Animate weapon? Huh. That's...a thought. (spell)
Burning arrow, explosive arrow, ice shot, lightning arrow, poison arrow, rain of arrows, split arrow
Elemental hit, frenzy
Cyclone
Detonate dead (spell)
Ethereal knives (spell)
Fire trap
Puncture?
Reave, whirling blades
Spectral throw

That's a pretty cool list, actually. Green supports? I mean - relevant green supports?

Added cold (q20 gives chance to freeze, which is pretty cool)
Additional accuracy
Blind
Cast on crit
Chain
Chance to flee
Cold pen
Enhance
Faster attacks
Faster/slower projectiles
xMP
Trap, multitrap
Pierce
Point blank

That means...we're likely looking at a cast on crit build, or maybe an EK-trap build. Pity about not being able to run added fire with the EK. Firetrap's out because it doesn't have enough potential green supports.

Split - fork - CoC - EK - DD - q20 add accuracy for more crit, or anything else. I don't like planning 6Ls. Maybe instead of split, use Reave and a dagger, or WB and the same if you're feeling adventurous. Why not ST, because ST means xMP, and xMP doesn't play too nice with EK. I'd prefer to go with the bow, because fork supports split and does not support reave/WB.

EK - trap - multitrap - standard EK green supports, so faster projectiles and fork...and one more whatever.

Ele hit - xMP - chain - I don't know, does this look like a wand build to you? Maybe use Frenzy with it, because ele hit is just asking for WED and we can't add a WED. (Actually, a lot of things would go well with WED. Too bad.) Accuracy, because @#$% wander accuracy, and as a bonus it gives crit. Oh, I think Enhance would actually go crazy well with Frenzy. Must try that sometime. Should be able to get away with no LL/ML because it's mostly physical, or at least you can flipping well make it mostly physical.

I'll concept these separately. Another day. Yeah, more's the pity I didn't pick up that 6L when I had the chance. If someone knows the unlucky bugger who currently has it, mind pointing them my way?

What's the point of Essentia Sanguis?

It's a 130-170 pdps claw (total ~200dps after lightning and quality) which gives Ghost Reaver. But wait, GR is right over near CI and the claw leech nodes. Makes this claw seem almost redundant, yeah?

Well, what if that zone wasn't strictly necessary? Templar's got good ES, and there's a circle above scion, and sure that's pretty close to CI (if 6 or 7 points minimum can be "close") but GR's another 4+ points over. Meh.

So...low life or hybrid build? PA's all the way over there, but unless using crown of eyes that hardly matters. A case could be made for either. 10% additional block chance while dual wielding claws, though the other claw would have to be downright spectacular and you'd be using doublestrike. And half the dw block is over by shadow/ranger. Hybrid incinerate with Cybil's Paw, maybe. Or something. Not sure how well that'd work.

For low life, it'd be all the templar ES nodes, possibly the scion ES wheel too, VP and US on the bottom - we're not going to the GR side, anyway. For hybrid, we can simply ignore that section, and...ohsnap, what if we did neither? Essentia's got a pretty respectable 6.68% crit, for a claw, and...aw man, half the crit is over in shadow, including all the claw crit. Oh well. Next time. Cast on crit's probably out then. Cast on damage taken, however, is not particularly dependent on the weapon. That'd require an Aegis. (I've got one, luckily.)

Tricky tricky. Claw, why?

This makes me want to make a hybrid build. Not necessarily with Essentia, but using a combination of ES and HP. I'll list that in another post another day, I think. 

Searing Bond

Shock Nova totem (for shock value, obviously)

Lightning Warp totem (because why not)

whatsitsname that triple totem chest, with the appropriate hexproof flasks of course

Curse on Hit (ele weakness maybe, but this one's always fuzzy) (maybe)

But in terms of totem placement? Time spent placing totems is time spent not dealing damage. I mean, obviously you're going to get right up in their faces because of the way searing bond works, so melee (searing touch is still a staff) but the majority of damage is still going to come from assorted spells. (The rest is from traps. Ancestral Bond is a given.)

CDT + one or another of the totems, not sure which. Maybe arc totem. Depends how much crit I can get, or something.

3 totems + self = quadrilateral with a cross? I'd still like to see the exact numbers on 1.0.2 Searing Bond damage, but it's actually an option now...right? I'll be pretty annoyed if it only casts from the SB totems and not between my lightning totems, that'll change the strategy just a little. Or a lot. Bah.

Maybe I should have ele equilibrium. Throw down some coldsnap traps or something. Was thinking of CDT icenova, but that doesn't work with dual totems, does it?

Probably EB and double curse. Probably not crit. I doubt I'll reach IR anyway. HP return will be a problem, so...life on hit would probably be the best (only) way to handle that.

They need more unique staves.

Speed leveling builds

thread 1 Xequi challenging people to beat his 1-69 time of 10:34:11

thread 2 started by vombat911, the winner of the challenge with 10:16:34

One player did it with 2h spec-throw, and considering the original challenge was completed with a 2h axe equipped, I'm going to guess it was either spec-throw or cyclone and more likely the former. A lot of "leveling" uniques were used, along with Foxshade which has added movespeed (and anyone who's raced before knows how important MS is.)

Now here's the question. Is it possible to solo speed-level at this rate, or something approaching it, using a different skill combination? If so what, if not why not?

Firetrap/poison-arrow until LMP then switch to LA, maybe. Storm Cloud -> Death's Harp -> ??? It's a pity about the lack of leveling unique bows past that. Quillrain/EA/Tabula setup, never change gear ever? EA has the well-deserved reputation of being pretty much the most independent skill in the game. Not sure how it does on speed though.

A spellbuild of some sort? Given DoT changes, I imagine a firetrap build with Searing Touch would scale really well, especially if one had a leveled Empower. Now there's a thought, Searing Bond as a burn damage trapper. It's still a support skill, but...oh, I digress. I don't think there are any leveling uniques for other elemental builds. EK's got this stupid long cast time, it's out for sure. Ditto, well, pretty well everything else with spells. Oh dear.

Given DoT changes again, maybe Viper Strike could do something? Flicker, splash, cast vulnerability, move on? Possibly with PA on weapon swap? Someone who's run the Chaos Acolyte build would know more about this than I do. But I don't think that's the solution either. Depends how well it all scales, and multiple leveled Empowers would be necessary.

Yeah, keeps on coming back to easily available uniques and all that. So. Sweep, groundslam, cleave? The usual, basically. Good 2h uniques are freely available. Same applies to this challenge as to races, it's either dw or 2h because 1h/shield is just too slow. Therefore probably not cleave, not any more. I'm pretty sure ST is strictly superior to the other two, too. Bah.

Cyclone rather than ST, or just use an LA build? ST's damage scaling is...not the best, let us say. Cyclone is level 24 requirement though, so there's still something to be done for the earlier leveling. Ditto LA, which only gets good after LMP.

Reave? Of all the stupid things...but I did spend an afternoon (including trading, chatting and miscellaneous time-wasting) clearing 1-50~ using a couple of good rare claws on ST/LMP because I was bored of Reave. Reave is almost always faster, in my experience, but ST is safer by quite a long shot. Did swap to cyclone at level 43 and it's actually really fast given my weapons and I MIGHT BE BIASED HERE BUT CLAWS ARE AWESOME OKAY. If I was going to try this challenge, I'd get a pair of Last Resorts, buy a couple of Cat's Paws from the indexer, and go claw crazy with those + the ones I already have. Bonus points because Whirling Blades is a scary-good movement skill.

Now there's another thought, running using good rares instead of uniques. Ungil's Gauche, Mightflay, Al Dhih. Mortem Morsu is strictly inferior to Mightflay, too bad for it. No unique leveling claws/daggers above that, and 1h swords (Reave, remember?) only have Prismatic Eclipse and Rebuke of the Vaal. Yeah, definitely needs to be rares once you're past Mightflay. Shucks.

In my experience, flat added damage is one of the most powerful things one can get hold of, early game. That makes it a really good idea to run Ignomon, Sadima's, Meginord, and yes Foxshade. Berek's X (pick two) would be ideal after level 20 and until merciless, provided resist caps are met. It's not much by way of added HP, but you know what? I really don't care. Claws are broken and it's not like HP matters until cruel a3 or later. Bonus points, flat damage scales really well with LA, which is a safe (ranged) build too. Only it'd run into boss trouble, or I could just call in a guildie to save like an hour total on act bosses.

Might be that stacking bonus damage is more important to early speed-leveling than a specific skill is. Hm. And that would make weaponry more important to later speed-leveling than skill choice. No, that's wrong, skill choice is important for general area coverage, just that it has to be well supported by good damage availability, from flat +dmg earlygame to good weapons later.

I'm going to pick up a bunch of these things now. Not Meginord, too expensive for me, but I'm willing to spend a few chaos to make leveling any new characters easier.

Bringer of Rain + Anvil

...+ bow

= 25% block chance with a bow, the last time I checked. Hmm...