🧙┃mage

[unreal blade]

reads like additive crit multi, not more crit multi, as in multiplying your crit multi. equipping 2 swords would give you 160 crit multi with 4 points.

[hasty geode]

Thanks for the clarification!

[quasi relic]

is the player supposed to either go with flame reave and fire OR shatter strike and cold?

[opaque tendon]

can anyone help me make sense of this plasma orb build https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/planner/x68350oi#1 im kinda confused on where the damage is supposed to come from

[unreal blade]

is this from a guide?

[opaque tendon]

yes

[unreal blade]

and the staff's special effect, primarily

you need to balance your stats to make sure the correct one is the lowest

it's a tricky build to put together, and you kinda need to have all the gear ready to assemble or it will feel underpowered.

assuming ward will be higher than 3130, this means dodge is giving you 313 flat spell damage

is this your first LE character?

[opaque tendon]

Yes and im starting to realize it was a terrible first character lol

[unreal blade]

yeah it's one of the more complex builds

[opaque tendon]

but looking through the build how would you get ward over 3k? i barely break 2k when stacking all the skills together?

[unreal blade]

it relies on a lot of things relying on others

looks like it's a 1.0 build updated to 1.1, when ward was nerfed quite a lot. not sure if it was updated with that in mind, but 3k ward is not too difficult to come up with. the twisted heart helps a lot with this, are you running this relic?

[opaque tendon]

im trying to get it but my MG isnt high enough level to buy it and i havent had it drop yet

[unreal blade]

if you are at 2k ward without twisted heart you should reach 3k np with it

the helm is also pretty important for your ward generation, do you have it?

[opaque tendon]

i dont, and facing the same problem as the relic. i hardly have any of the uniques i need drop

starting to regret choosing MG

[unreal blade]

keep at it and once you can buy all the uniques, it should come together decently. then you'll have to work on getting legendaries to make it smoother and more powerful.

[opaque tendon]

the reputation rank ups are brutal lol

[unreal blade]

MG is probably ideal for a build like this as your first character. otherwise it would be much more difficult to put together imo.

i'm not a fan of MG, but it does allow people with low experience to put together complex builds more easily.

[opaque tendon]

word ima keep at. would it be better to keep focusing on clearing my monolith quests until 100? or try to target farm some items?

[unreal blade]

as MG, you mostly don't farm your own gear. you want to try to find gear to sell so you can then buy your own gear. farming stuff for meta builds will get you the most gold, but generally you can find uniques for very low cost just to get the build operational. check uniques that have poorly aligned slams or have 1 LP if the non-LP unique is more expensive. a caster weapon with flat melee dmg for example is typically worthless, but you could use it to play the build at an entry level.

1LP items are also often low value since they can't be put in nemesis to try for 2,3 or 4LP.

right now i would focus on gaining reputation with MG, doing the highest experience content you can do smoothly.

[opaque tendon]

fersure right now im at last ruin content running the quest and ive been able to do 10+ lvls above me smoothly. so ill just keep at that until the lvl 100 content and see how it goes

[unreal blade]

i'm not a pro at MG, but i would guess aiming for gold monolith rewards is good practice, and trying to find a loot filter that's premade to show the more valuable items will help build gold.

[opaque tendon]

fersure, i like to believe i have a pretty good loot filter right now, i probably need to widen it for other good items but im still kinda a newb at that stuff so ill have to research more as i go on

[unreal blade]

just a quick google turned up this. i don't know if it's any good, but something like this could help. https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1dz8fj3/heavyz_casual_loot_filters_ready_for_11_including/

[opaque tendon]

oh i have that one, this is the new one im using

couldnt figure out a link my bad

[slate vigil]

Note that the spell you use has intelligence attribute scaling that gives 4% increased damage per point, combined with passive sources you're already getting >500% increased damage without a %increased spell damage affix

There might also be some other buffs i'm not aware off, increasing that number

In general % increased damage is your last choice in optimised builds

[gritty pagoda]

I know its not the best, but I always try to cram in the Vilatria's set if I'm doing lightning damage

[harsh abyss]

I love Vilatria's set, but giving up your helmet is sometimes pretty rough

WTB LP on set items

[gritty pagoda]

Yeah

The set time rework is gonna be fun

[quasi relic]

it's a shame sets are kinda garbo

[nimble shoal]

There are a few sets that are totally fine for all normal game content, but yeah the set rework is much anticipated

[candid rampart]

hello mage question : if Frost Claw is converted to another element, what does freeze multiplier on the skill tree convert to?

[candid rampart]

also does Frost Claw's [Rending Cascade] passive adds base crit chance or increased crit chance? It's not very clear :/

[candid shore]

"Increased" is not in the text, so it's base crit.

[candid rampart]

woaw dats crazy

if it's maxed 4/4 is it 5%+8% base crit? insane

[candid shore]

Ye

[candid rampart]

I can't tell if I'm proccing spark novas or not 😅

hahah

[umbral stone]

Frost Claw skill tree puts most other low cost spammable mage skills to shame 😞

Buffs to Runebolt as damage dealer when (best looking skill in the game)

[candid rampart]

haha truuue

but thing is I need it to be high cost for spark charge damage hahah

[nimble shoal]

None of the conversions affect freeze multi, they just remove the base freeze rate (which makes the skill incapable of freezing)

So that node that gives ward based on freeze rate multi still works normally if you convert

[stuck fable]

It's tells you I think... Lighting gets shock

And fire gets ignite conversion

Then you cheese with 2 tongue of aberrant and add poison stacks as well lol

[candid rampart]

lool I haven't tried that

but no, it tells u that frostbite turns into shock, but freeze doesn't convert as father toast as said

[molten flint]

Does anyone know how many "casts" of Lightning Blast you get per second when you convert it to a channeled skill? The node doesn't specify.

[rare snow]

Any advice for plasma orb runemaster

Soon asmi go to milestones 3 / 4

My damage disappears

And ward building feels bad too

[gritty pagoda]

What’s your dex

And are you keeping your dodge/armor/ward balanced

[rare snow]

Think my dex was 37ish

Which ward stat is it based on? The retention or decay threshold for ward?

It's just the guide is like "new milestone" transition to it

But I feel like you need every item from milestone 5 + very optimised stats before even equipping staff or chest

[candid shore]

The amount of ward you have

[rare snow]

I don't think I've seen it as a stat in the character sheet

Or I'm blind

[candid shore]

That's because it's not. It's literally the amount of ward you have shown on your health UI while playing. It wouldn't help since it's most likely moving rapidly.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/guide/section/ward

[rare snow]

Ah ok. So can't track as a flat stat. It's subjective then to keep ward even with dodge and armour

[gritty pagoda]

you get damage based on whichever one is lowest, so its really you can have as much ward as you want, just make sure the other two aren't like 50

[nimble shoal]

You can calculate your "steady state" ward based on however much ward you gain per second and your ward retention, but also your ward is going to vary since you can gain ward in combat from various sources and also any time you take damage it'll lower your ward

so really you'd probably want ward as high as you can get it

[gritty pagoda]

Yeah

Basically boost ward really high and try to get dodge up to where your armor is at

Then raise both armor and dodge up

[rare snow]

Thanks for the input guys. I will have a look at my dodge. Think it's likely the issue as running high armour implicits. If my ward was at 0 for 2 seconds would that mean the benefit from reowyns fortress for those 2 seconds is zero?

[candid shore]

Yes.

[vital olive]

played sorcerer and then played runemaster. approaching lvl 90 i ended up playing frost claw on both 😆

[umbral stone]

Top tier skill tree on frost claw, hope they give some of the other spammables some similar love

[harsh abyss]

I have a pretty unique lightning blast build that I'm planning to play in the next league if a couple bugs get fixed

[sterile void]

is frost claw better then glacier (aka tankier and zoomier)?

[rare snow]

I went torment warlock instead of sorc

I'll use it to gear glacier sorc

Rather than lose the will with no mana

[sudden tapir]

Kind of stuck with the Frostclaw/Static Orb build I'm playing. To scale my dps/mana up, I need to raise int/mana/movespeed. I'm mostly on LP1 equipment with about 2-3 items slammed with the stats I need. The rest of my items require me to beat t4 Julra which I haven't done successfully yet. Unsure how to remove the roadblock other than burn Sanctum keys until I learn to beat t4 consistently. Any ideas?

[rapid hinge]

are you sure you HAVE TO do t4 julra for the slams

from what i remember only the relics required t4

[sudden tapir]

t3 Does unique item level 75 and below, I have a few that are above that.

[rapid hinge]

how much mana do you have

[sudden tapir]

I had t4 close to dead a couple of times, but I made some mistakes and got one shot. I can facetank her up to t3, so I never really learned her patterns.

Close to 1200 mana

Mana/Int are my biggest needs right now

I have 69% movespeed boots, which I'd hate to trade out of, but I might have to temporarily, to get the mana and int up a bunch.

[rapid hinge]

are you doing slow fight or oneshotting julra?

[sudden tapir]

t1-3 mostly one shot, or close to one shot

[rapid hinge]

the FC+static orb route while very all rounded, are actually not super optimized for boss fight

[sudden tapir]

Yeah the guide said I might need to trade out some items for boss fights until mana/int get high enough. I think I just need to swap out before the t4 fight

[rapid hinge]

have you tried stuff like overlaod your mana with focus before the fight

[sudden tapir]

Not yet, just getting to the point now where I'm thinking to do things like that.

[rapid hinge]

well then there's still that

if you're already close to oneshotting her before

[sudden tapir]

yeah, I'll swap some items, and try that

[rapid hinge]

for sure you can now if you overload mana

[sudden tapir]

Thanks

[scenic sail]

One tip I recommend is to fight her on the light side, it's easier to see her attacks and I think she's weaker on that side. You just have to place the puddle away from the center area so it doesn't kill you.

[vital olive]

when you get the node that allows you to hit the same target its pretty good. i realize folks have had success with glacier but i never did. i tried using glacier to boost DOT with Rime and I tried using glacier for hit dmg (w/ crit) but it didnt feel as good as frost claw.

[scenic sail]

This is more of something that's up for debate, but FC is better at killing bosses and Glacier is better in every other category. You can cast it with infinite cast speed as long as you have about 1,800+ mana because it pays for itself, unlike FC, so it's certainly better at killing large amounts of enemies and it's better at sustaining mana, so you don't have to worry about using another skill to regain your mana like you do with FC.

My glacier + meteor mage has been at the top of the endless arena ladder for 4 months now, and I only did that to prove the point to others that Glacier is in fact better than Frostclaw, certainly at arena style monos it's way better.

[gritty pagoda]

I mostly use glacier to level, but this sounds interesting to try later

[nimble shoal]

She's the same on both sides, but you're only able to kill her lightning totems in the divine era.

[solar plover]

Thanks

[long yoke]

Can someone help me with mana cost with frost claw ? I should have not mana loss for my setup, but i still can't sustain it in the long run

I have 15mana cost of frost claw and 12.6 mana regen. Builds and calculators say i should be able to sustain but i higly doubt it (with the refund mana chance of FC node)

[long yoke]

I have the same mana regen and much less cast speed than build guides, but still fall short

[gritty pagoda]

Your not like forgetting a point in a -mana cost node or suppose to be using a wand right

[long yoke]

yeah i have the laddle with -3

even point mentionned in the calculator is existing and taken in my game

i even took a +2FC to try getting more mana effiency but still not enough

also have 2 idols +10/14% effiency

[nimble shoal]

If you can, post a link to your planner / character profile, makes it easier for us to see what's going on

[long yoke]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/Demokdawa/character/Magawazzz

The calc tell me that i should have 17 gain par second

I think (need confirmation), they nerfed the interactions with additionnal casts of frost claw, so now the gimmick with regen "Gift of Winter" will not work

[lime crane]

it looks like you're trying to play spark charge frostclaw/ele nova runemaster which got hard nerfed and no longer really functions

reowyn's frostguard got gutted so the build's defenses are nonexistant and you can no longer sustain mana with frostclaw recasts

[long yoke]

Yeah, sadly i started this build with plasma orb in mind, and then changed my mind because i didn't liked it and was going to FC runemaster

[lime crane]

i would recommend looking up FrozenSentinel's frostclaw/spark charge sorcerer build if you want something similar

[long yoke]

Then i saw all the people going sorcerer

[long yoke]

Problem is now i need to restart a char since i can't swap mastery xD

I found the corrected calc, and...

Yeah i'm at -26

make sense now

[long yoke]

If you have any build ideas for runemaster aside plasma orb xD

ty anyways

[molten frost]

currently hardcoring a SB and almost reaching empowered monos. is this enough to survive at least for 100 corruption while I try to farm up crit avoidance and resists? I can sustain about 1.5k ward consistently, up to 2k with flame ward https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/thewan2345/character/117SB

[unreal blade]

dragorath's claw spark charge spellblade is also excellent if you want something different, but similar. i really enjoy mine at 850-1k corruption. simple to play and tanky.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/niche/character/SparkFarmer

[desert widget]

I'm looking for some advice regarding my defenses. I am a Shatter Strike Spellblade. My build planner: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oN6W099o

I am currently working on the Blood, Frost, and Death Harbinger at 200c. I'm 0/2 on my attempts because I keep getting killed by the Cold (I think it is cold) Cloud the Harbinger sends out. I'm wondering if there is anything fundamental that I am missing from my defenses? The answer probably is I just need more Health/Ward to be able to tank the hit for enough time for me to react. However, I thought I would ask in case there is something I am missing. Thanks!

Edit: I beat it easily on my first attempt today by just making sure I didn't get hit. But I am still interested in ways to improve my defenses.

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 93

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (27) / Spellblade (67) / Runemaster (12)

General:

▸ Health: 1,905, Regen: 19.02/s
▸ Mana: 158.97, Regen: 11.44/s
▸ Ward Retention: 345%, Regen: 227/s
▸ Attributes: 0 Str / 63 Dex / 62 Int / 0 Att / 0 Vit
▸ Resistances: 81% / 85% / 81% / 78% / 114% / 210% / 76%
▸ EHP: 3,409 / 3,409 / 3,409 / 3,919 / 3,409 / 3,409 / 3,409

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 381
▸ Dodge Chance: 24% (754)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 33% (1,614)

Damage Types:

▸ Cold, Lightning / Melee, Spell

Buffs:

▸ Enchant Weapon (Passive)

Used skills:

• Shatter Strike (22)
• Mana Strike (21)
• Teleport (20)
• Enchant Weapon (20)
• Flame Ward (20)

Used unique items:

• Boneclamor Barbute
• The Kestrel
• Siphon of Anguish
• Oceareon
• Diothaen's Bloody Nib

[scenic sail]

One suggestion I would make is to try out the endurance suite of defensive mechanics, and the easiest way to do that is to change your blessings, in Spirits of fire there's a 30% enduarance blessing and in Age of winter there's an endurance threshold blessing, currently you have both of these in armor, but give endurance a try and see if you notice the damage reduction as being better than what you currently have.

Another suggestion would be to try one of the "ward gained as life lost" affixes on gloves or if you have an exsang you can wear or you can also try the last steps of the living boots, basically anything that makes you lose life and gives you ward as a result, since you have health leech that can be a powerful affix / attribute to have.

[unreal blade]

you don't want to mix leech and exanguinous effects, as the ward gain is dependent on you having as little life as possible.

[desert widget]

Awesome! Thanks for the response. I'll give the Endurance Blessings a shot.

[scenic sail]

Uhhh, no that's not correct at all, and you actively need some form life leech or large amounts of health regen with exanguinous and twisted heart (life lost) effects, because you need to actually have health to lose in order to gain ward. It's pretty clear when you wear these items that you need to be constantly generating some form of health, that's why leech is good to combine with them. It sounds to me like you have a misunderstanding of how those effects work.

[unreal blade]

read the text of the exanguinous effect again. it gives ward per missing life.

[scenic sail]

Yes, the amount of life that you are missing is gained as ward, so if you have no life, you lose no life and thus you gain no ward. I wear an exang on my rogue, and I have for the past month, and I wore exsang on a mage and necro before, I know how they work dude, read the text.

[unreal blade]

the less life you have, the more ward you get

[scenic sail]

You have to constantly keep GAINING life in order to gain ward from it

[unreal blade]

if you are missing 1000 life, you gain 200 ward with exanguinous.

[scenic sail]

Ahhh, so if what you're saying is correct, that is basically the opposite of twisted heart

which is "8% of Current Health converted to Ward when you directly cast a Necrotic Spell"

[unreal blade]

yes you don't want to run both at the same time except under certain circumstances

they operate differently so they don't always synergize

[scenic sail]

I think they work great together because they both generate ward from life lost and do require some form of life gain to stay above 0

[unreal blade]

you can run twisted heart and low life with mage basic tree passive reactive ward, since you technically take damage when you use a spell with twisted heart.

twisted heart you want to run leech that constantly tops you off. the more health you have, the more twisted heart takes and thus gives you ward in return.

[scenic sail]

Yes, and I've been using exsang forever thinking that was doing the exact same thing, the wording is every so slightly different, but I can see that it operates differently and I had no idea, but they "feel" the same in action

[unreal blade]

if you had 1000 health and cast a spell, this twisted heart would give you 70 ward.

if you were at half health, 500 health, it would give you 35 ward instead. so you want to be topped off as much as possible.

[scenic sail]

Yes, I thought exsang was identical but with a lower percentage, but it's effectively two different things entirely

[unreal blade]

both builds do want high character life total

since ward generation is a function of total life pool

[candid shore]

The only reason to run both is that you have health leech you cannot get rid off and you still want to play low life

[vestal thorn]

Hi Guys can someone please suggest me what to focus on and what to increase or change to my build

here is my current build: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/A6029LeB
i'm happy with it but sometimes my mana just runs out too quickly in boss fight.

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 89

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (61) / Runemaster (21)

General:

▸ Health: 1,030, Regen: 65.6/s
▸ Mana: 792.4, Regen: 18.96/s
▸ Ward Retention: 196%, Regen: 89/s
▸ Attributes: 6 Str / 6 Dex / 51 Int / 14 Att / 6 Vit
▸ Resistances: 69% / 103% / 110% / 56% / 24% / 41% / 79%
▸ EHP: 1,266 / 1,342 / 1,342 / 1,199 / 889 / 1,002 / 1,342

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 397
▸ Dodge Chance: 4% (101)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 17% (505)

Damage Types:

▸ Cold, Fire / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Glacier (21)
• Frost Wall (21)
• Ice Barrage (21)
• Arcane Ascendance (20)
• Teleport (20)

Used unique items:

• Peak of the Mountain
• Unstable Core
• Wrongwarp
• Scales of Eterra
• Transient Rest
• Phantom Grip
• Oceareon

[fading saffron]

running out of mana on boss fights?

that should not be a problem by looking at your build

just be more careful with the use of Arcane Ascendance i guess

[vestal thorn]

or maybe im just too abusive with Arcane Ascendance I always activate it whenever it cooldown haha.

[fading saffron]

btw your offhand is wrong, you are doing ice dmg but you are reducing your ice dmg by 80%

it needs to have fire and lightning infusion

not cold

[vestal thorn]

oh i did not see that i have another Scales of Eterra

[fading saffron]

if you dont have one with cold, just use a skull

crystal skull i think is called

[fading saffron]

is that the one that you are using?

the one in the build planner?

[vestal thorn]

yes this one in the build planner that's my current item but i have another scales of eterra im just not sure if i have the correct one

[fading saffron]

oh i see

just make sure it doesnt say cold infusion

[vestal thorn]

im gonna check it after my work. but anyhow i want to consider the crystal skull

[fading saffron]

you can get all of that from a crystall skull, you just lose some int

[vestal thorn]

is that better than the scales of eterra? or int more matters?

[fading saffron]

i see scales of eterra being the best in slot, but with some LP and having the right base

i see you dont have crit multi on your gear

youll be better off with a crystall skull with cast speed and crit multi

[vestal thorn]

there are 3 types of Scales of Eterra the two have cold infusion on it so this should be the right item?

[fading saffron]

correct

you need the one that doesnt have cold infusion

[vestal thorn]

that a big help thank you bro. but im still hoping that i got that one instead of the other cold infusions.

my options incase is to proceed to crystal skull

[vestal thorn]

any recommendation area to farm this crystal skull? i think i have 1 or 2 only of this in my stash

[fading saffron]

yeah, you were playing sorc in hardmode for some reason hahah

[fading saffron]

playing COF or MG?

is not too rare tho, just make sure your loot filter highlights it

even a rare one will do fine to start until you get a good exalted

[vestal thorn]

i do COF

[vestal thorn]

actually regarding the loot filet i did not make my own filter i just get it from maxroll glacier build i copy their loot filter

can a COF player trade an item as well?

[fading saffron]

If I'm not mistaken, that filter is auto generated so it is not perfect

You should add rules to it

[fading saffron]

No they can't

[vestal thorn]

ill check it later hahaha. my bad that i use it blindly and just keep grinding hahaha

[vestal thorn]

oh. sad that item cannot be traded. even with the same COF player?

[candid shore]

No, Trading is a MG benefit.

[harsh abyss]

The whole point of COF / MG is that MG is for trading with other players, COF boosts your drops for yourself.

[gritty pagoda]

can't COF use the resonator things to trade with your co-op buddy

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, gifting is unrelated to factions. Don't even need resonators to gift items that drop when you are actively playing with the other person.

[jaunty badger]

Any ideas for upping my ward generation as a spellblade?

I guess that could be worded as "What's the meta for defenses on a spellblade?"

[unreal blade]

low life is always an option unless you are running a unique chest you can't change.

[harsh abyss]

I've always liked Ward/sec as a defense, though I don't really like the low life builds

Int stacking ward/sec spellblade just seems good

Remember also that dodge pairs really well with ward/sec

[unreal blade]

low life is the strongest way i've found for my dragorath spark charge spellblade to build defenses. life based is just worse. i even tried a wall of nothing setup that was promising, but ended up worse. the main advantage of the low life is the recovery speed is so much faster ward generation than relying on wps/ward per attack only.

my build is a caster build using melee to proc spells so i stack higher int (183) and probably not as much dex (40) as a traditional spellblade so there is that helping my ward retention. i sit at 6200 stable not in combat, around 8500-9500 in combat with flame ward on auto cast. could reach 10-10.5k with a better exang.

[harsh abyss]

I feel like 2H Yrun's is also an option. That 15% reduced damage is pretty meaningful

I'm hoping the next update does something with sets, I'd love to do an int stacking spellblade with the Vilatria set

[jaunty badger]

Thanks!

[jaunty badger]

What affixes and items should I be looking for to get started on a low life build?

[unreal blade]

low life prioritizes health pool (flat health/%health), int, ward retention. you can choose to run just exanguinous, or also Last Steps of the Living boots (pretty optional these days), or also the experimental affix on gloves from exiled mages. I use Exang and the gloves, with blood of the exile for boots with t7 int slammed for extra int.

you need to make sure you have no form of health gain other than minimal life regen or it'll mess up everything. no leech, no health gain effects from spells or items.

[jaunty badger]

Thanks

hmm, bloody nib and exang don't play nice together

the damage on the nib build is so crazy

[unreal blade]

nib builds are pretty squishy

[jaunty badger]

i'm still killing most bosses in under 5 seconds

[unreal blade]

cyborg has this warning on his 1.1 guide

[jaunty badger]

the bleeds are honestly not that bad

even at 100 stacks

[unreal blade]

his guide if you are interested https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/bloody-nib-crit-shatter-strike-spellblade

[silk pewter]

Bloody Nib Crit Shatter Strike Spellblade Build Guide

Game Cycle / Version

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1

Class

Mage / Spellblade

Used skills

• Enchant Weapon
• Flame Ward
• Mana Strike
• Frost Claw
• Shatter Strike

Used unique items

• Boneclamor Barbute
• Shattered Chains
• Siphon of Anguish
• Mourningfrost
• Diothaen's Bloody Nib
• Nihilis
• Eye of Reen

Tags

Boss Killer / Melee

Created by cyborgwars · Feb 13, 2024, 9:59 PM

[jaunty badger]

yeah, he doesn't really build for any defenses though

i'm trying to find a balance

he's all in on damage

[unreal blade]

that's kind of the thing with that build. it's damage or nothing.

[gritty pagoda]

yo its cyborg's giga glass cannon shatter strike build

[jaunty badger]

dude it is legit though

[gritty pagoda]

the defense is everything dying before it hits you

[jaunty badger]

been running a non optimal nib crit build

[gritty pagoda]

unironically

[jaunty badger]

literally kill everything before it gets to attack

i'm just playing hardcore, so i'm playing chicken every time i go out and it is scary

[unreal blade]

def not the build i'd be doing on HC 😄

[gritty pagoda]

even attempting that build in HC is

[jaunty badger]

Made it to top 50 mages on the HC ladder

[gritty pagoda]

[stuck fable]

hmm start with fireball or glacier if going for a static orb/static?

[gritty pagoda]

I love glacier for leveling with its big damage

[harsh abyss]

I love fireball for leveling, getting the fireballs in a line kills campaign bosses SO fast

[stuck fable]

guess for the no lag game.. i have to play full offline

[vestal thorn]

hi guys, can you show me some your builds on glacier sorcerer. i just want to gather ideas on how this build can progress on the end game

[stuck fable]

lol found a bug.. when you kill the boss outside the cultist town too fast... the blocked bridge doesnt unblock lol

like 200 static charge discharge

[molten frost]

nib build has a very annoying problem. as it's a melee glass cannon, i get killed by ranged normal mobs so very often. at 300 corruption if i see ranged mobs, it's gg unless i reach them first

[gritty pagoda]

Yeah

You gotta rush everything down as with any glass cannon build

[fresh raft]

When planning builds with ward, do you typically focus on one way to build ward or many?

[harsh abyss]

Generally with all ARPG mechanics, hyperfocusing is a better plan so you can push it as far as possible. But while leveling it can be helpful to spread things out. Like I generally find some Ward/Sec is a huge QOL for all mage builds early on

[gritty pagoda]

depends on what source of ward your meaning

like if your doing low life ward, stacking health with all 3 gear slots is a good amount, still probably want some burst of ward when casting stuff to get back up to your stable ward quickly

just slapping on an opulent focus is good too

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, any source of a bit of ward/sec is really good. Just getting 5 points into Mana Shell in Sorcerer is a great source of early ward.

Low Life Ward is probably the style where it's MOST important to have a huge ward pool, since you're effectively eliminating life and endurance as a defensive layer

[gritty pagoda]

yea

[unreal blade]

it's pretty crazy how much defense you get just for equipping a ritual stone at level 12. it can nearly double your hp with good int/wps implicit.

[gritty pagoda]

Do that with a well rolled (implicts) opulent focus too

[harsh abyss]

Yep, Opulent focus is basically the highest upgrade of Ritual Stone

[gritty pagoda]

Love that thing

[harsh abyss]

I love the 1x3 idols that give like 10-20 ward/sec

[unreal blade]

yep if not a crit build. ritual stone is early enough it doesn't matter what your build is (unless it requires a staff). opulent focus is amazing but you're in the range where builds are actually online at that point.

[gritty pagoda]

I’d argue for late game, you can get enough crit chance elsewhere

[harsh abyss]

Kinda depends on the skill really.

[gritty pagoda]

Tho Crystal skull is nice for capping crit in the first place

Fair

[unreal blade]

replacing 5 or 6 flat crit is not really feasable by a lot of builds

[gritty pagoda]

Crystal skull + scorn scepter is what I ran on crit time wave vk

[harsh abyss]

My favorite ward source is the runemaster affix that is "Penetration per gon rune" because if you get tier 1 of it on chest and helm, it's like 100 ward/sec if you have 3 gon runes

I've always wanted to see what a T7 on both pieces feels like, but endgame is never engaging enough for me to farm that up

[gritty pagoda]

Answer; a lot

[harsh abyss]

133-159 ward/sec/rune, so assuming 3 gon runes, you're looking at a MINIMUM of 399 ward/sec, just from those sources

[cyan ice]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/ombYlEnA thoughts?

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 99

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (25) / Sorcerer (25) / Spellblade (5) / Runemaster (57)

General:

▸ Health: 1,083, Regen: 22.64/s
▸ Mana: 289, Regen: 10.96/s
▸ Ward Retention: 405%, Regen: 108/s
▸ Attributes: 4 Str / 15 Dex / 86 Int / 87 Att / 8 Vit
▸ Resistances: 78% / 78% / 78% / 92% / 83% / 215% / 89%
▸ EHP: 3,281 / 3,281 / 3,281 / 3,891 / 3,281 / 3,281 / 3,281

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 217
▸ Dodge Chance: 53% (2049)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 38% (2,087)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 78%

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Lightning, Cold / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Runebolt (20)
• Runic Invocation (28)
• Flame Rush (20)
• Flame Ward (20)
• Frost Wall (20)

Used unique items:

• Boneclamor Barbute
• Fundamental Criterion
• Reowyn's Fortress
• Hand of Judgement
• Ward Trail
• Box of Hydrae
• Throne of Ambition

[queen mason]

Can I ask how much corruption you stack now?

I guess this build can kill Abboerth easily

[cyan ice]

1000 corr

and no, i cant kill him(

[merry veldt]

If you can do 1k corr, Abby is just a matter of practice.

Perhaps YT can give a helping hand?!

[cyan ice]

abby sometimes just oneshots me through everything, and i think my dmg is too low

[queen mason]

then I bet your damage isn't the problem. If you will be slain easily by Abboerth, that's action skill issue.

More practice is fine :)

Rare to agree the same thing with Volin hhhh

[candid shore]

Then you either don't have enough DoT defense or one-shot ehp

[queen mason]

yeah you must give up bonus from your gloves if you want dot defense...

[merry veldt]

Still, if you can beat 1k corr, you have enough dps/defense.

Chars that can do 500c can usually do Abby very comfy

[queen mason]

yeah I can do 500+ corruption but I still can't kill pinnacle boss... Unfriendly for my bad action skills

[merry veldt]

The Abberoth fight is a visual mess first (to me). Practice is the key!
And as said, YT may help you guys

[zenith osprey]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QDlDEP9Q
could I get some advice on improving my shatter strike spellblade? Still fairly early grinding for the correct empowered blessings and trying to grab upgrades to my exalted items as I go (The base for the gloves and chest are wrong, kept them because of decent affixes). Maxroll recommends armor blessings from spirits of fire and age of winter, the former being my current goal
Are there any glaring mistakes I'm making or easy upgrades available? Second ring will change as soon as I get a usable exalted ring to slam

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 90

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (25) / Sorcerer (5) / Spellblade (57) / Runemaster (16)

General:

▸ Health: 1,046, Regen: 18.6/s
▸ Mana: 264.46, Regen: 10.8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 392%, Regen: 162/s
▸ Attributes: 13 Str / 28 Dex / 99 Int / 7 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 144% / 87% / 105% / 73% / 132% / 84% / 112%
▸ EHP: 1,706 / 1,706 / 1,706 / 1,976 / 1,706 / 1,706 / 1,706

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 42%, Threshold: 209
▸ Dodge Chance: 5% (112)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 38% (1,914)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning, Cold / Melee, Spell

Buffs:

▸ Enchant Weapon (Passive)

Used skills:

• Shatter Strike (20)
• Flame Ward (21)
• Enchant Weapon (20)
• Mana Strike (21)
• Teleport (20)

Used unique items:

• Boneclamor Barbute
• Dragorath's Claw
• Fragment of the Enigma
• Blood of the Exile
• Ring of the Third Eye
• The Invoker's Static Touch
• Soul Gambler's Fallacy
• Stormcarved Testament

[zenith osprey]

I should also mention the main issues the build is having are mana sustain when spamming shatter strike and cooldown reduction for enchant weapon/teleport

[harsh abyss]

Is there a big reason that you're using the gambler's fallacy? It's probably hurting your dps more than helping it

[harsh abyss]

That "50% less if you've crit recently" means that you're basically dropping your mana strike crit chance from 100% to 50% for most of the hits, which is reducing the mana you gain from it pretty significantly. Even worse because that counts if you've done ANY crit strikes recently, not just a crit with that specific ability.

You have a lot of flat bonus crit from the dagger and from Prodigy, if you instead got yourself an amulet with T6 or 7 crit chance, you'd have a better crit chance overall than using Gamblers. In any case, without it, you're probably going to be critting a LOT more. Looking at your character sheet, you've got 68% melee crit chance, and 113% spell crit chance. That means that with Gambler's, you're usually going to have 34% melee and 56% spell crits, which is not amazing.

You might also not need Critical Rejuvenation, since you've got so much other flat crit. Then your mana strike will do decent damage as well

[zenith osprey]

Unlike the ring(s) which are % chance to gain ward on trigger, the amulet is 15 ward on crit guaranteed so long as I can keep my spell crit above 200% to account for the debuff

I see what you mean about mana strike since it's a melee skill, but its damage is irrelevant since I only use it for fast mana regen so halved melee cc is whatever, especially considering it also gets +20% base crit chance from the skill tree

The second ring of the third eye will give 80% increased crit chance, so will +dex from any source (at astonishingly high returns apparently, due to defender of welryn) so ideally with the right item rolls I should have well over 200% spell crit and over 150% melee crit

only worth the effort because ward is my main defensive layer, most of which I generate on hit

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, 15 ward per crit doesn't seem that particularly valuable there, heh

[zenith osprey]

just comparing it to the other items in my build with similar affixes, though I am a dum dum and forgot to check how much the skill tree affects ward regen on hit too. Since items could be inconsequential compared to how much ward skills generate, at which point it would make sense to pivot and try out your advice

Though also important to consider, shatter strike hits a lot

After all, it autocasts several times per manual cast with overlapping attacks and has a pretty huge aoe

The passive trees amount to a whopping 28 ward on hit, 4 from the spellblade tree bonus and 24 from arcane warden. I reckon the sgf is worth it in this case, at least after I can manage ~180% or more spell crit chance

[harsh abyss]

Thats what I mean, the opportunity cost to get to that point might make it not really worth it.

[candid shore]

Your spell crit would have to be 200% BEFORE gamblers for the debuff to not hurt you which sounds, impossible.

Overinvesting crit that much just for 15 ward a crit is… kinda mid

[harsh abyss]

Exactly

You'd be better off getting a huge amount of dodge from your amulet or something.

[rapid hinge]

using soul gambler with big hitting skills like shatter strike is just a huge waste of item slot

very different story with things like frostclaw tho

[harsh abyss]

I dunno, the effort to hit 100% crit chance while accounting for that 50% less seems like way too much no matter how you slice it. You need 50% less overall investment into crit chance to reach 100% crit with any other amulet, which opens up a TON of opportunity space elsewhere to use your stats and stuff.

[rapid hinge]

im talking about

few thousands of ward generating per second

Hmm not that huge i exagerate alitt bit

I was stating on 15k stable ward in fight with my frostbite fc sorc

[spare pendant]

im so happy not many people have been using either Fonts or Static Touch's because theh have been great "get out of jail free" cards for when my build isn't working as well as I want it too

[harsh abyss]

Font of the erased with some good mods on it can be amazing.

[spare pendant]

its amazing how much it can carry when you lean into it

it is so strong sometimes you can even go low life with it and not run any other ward gen, like I have done with a few primalists

[harsh abyss]

Static Touch is also amazing, that +13 flat damage is kind of insane

[spare pendant]

yeah shush dont tell anybody how good it is though I need them to be relevant

double static touch was the only time I ever felt comfortable unspecializing flame ward on a mage at 1k+ corruption

[harsh abyss]

I'm hoping the next cycle adds whatever their planned upgrade to set bonuses is. I hate them not being able to be upgraded.

[quasi relic]

is whiteout good in the shatterstrike tree?

[harsh abyss]

If you can handle the mana cost, yes

[quasi relic]

does Frost Claw hit enemies it passes through, or just at the target

[nimble shoal]

Both

[quasi relic]

cool

[zenith osprey]

alright, I’m sold. I’ll dig a bit deeper into the recommendation from the guide I’m following but as I understand it you’re right; Unless I have a consistently OP source of crit chance that requires little investment, I’m wasting several item slots and passive/skill points to ultimately still fall below the 200% threshold for spell crit. You mentioned an alternative would be a t6 or t7 cc amulet - Any recommendations for uniques? Otherwise I’ll just throw an exalted amulet together

Only asking about uniques because I don’t know all the dedicated drops, I wanna try and figure out the skill and passive point swaps myself

[barren stratus]

This is what I've currently got
Really need a better belt lol

[gritty pagoda]

o.0

I

I'm more suprised that you still have avarice + tome of the elements equipped

[barren stratus]

I've been focusing on upgrading my weapons for the most part, so now I'll start seeing what I can do about relics

Haven't been able to drop the bee gloves

[gritty pagoda]

those aren't the bee gloves

those are the ele leech gloves from a quest in act 2

[barren stratus]

I mean the Keeper Gloves from the build

[gritty pagoda]

oooohh

[barren stratus]

I haven't dropped them yet lol

Even though they're common

[gritty pagoda]

dang those are common

unlucky

[barren stratus]

🥲

Pretty sure I have rarer Uniques than those already lol

[gritty pagoda]

thats how it bee sometimes

[barren stratus]

I'm already dealing crazy amounts of damage with unoptimised gear
I can't wait until I have everything I need 🤩

[gritty pagoda]

those are my favorite builds

[barren stratus]

Just joined Circle of Fortune, so hopefully they'll start dropping soon

[gritty pagoda]

ones you can play early on and you get to watch scale

[barren stratus]

Not sure what prophecies to get though
This didn't exist when I last played lol

[gritty pagoda]

pick the ones you want the loot from

some can be in campaign, some are in monos

[barren stratus]

So I guess Gloves and Relic?

Since I'm missing those

[gritty pagoda]

yea

just make sure its a condition you can complete

ie not like kill a dude at 200 corruption

[barren stratus]

Does this count?
Don't have enough points yet, sadly

[gritty pagoda]

oh thats go kill a dungeon boss

if you have keys for that dungeon you can go and smack him

[barren stratus]

Don't have any Gloves specific ones, unfortunately
I think I do have a key, but I don't have enough points to enable it
Do I just kill things to earn points?

[gritty pagoda]

• Just kill stuff to get more points
• unique armor should be any armor slot, I believe if it was just body armor it would say body armor

I mostly do Merchant's Guild so get more help for circle in here

https://discord.com/channels/368953963267096586/1207737339565047879

[barren stratus]

I think I found a typo lol

[gritty pagoda]

to the tooltip hunt channel!

https://discord.com/channels/368953963267096586/437309396230471680

[barren stratus]

Sent it there 👍

So satisfying hehe

[barren stratus]

@gritty pagoda this armour is crazy but it doesn't have +1 Mana Strike 🥲
Is there anything I could do to it? Rune of Removal is too risky

[gritty pagoda]

you can always try a glyph of despair to seal and affix

WARNING its a lower chance the higher the affix tier

but hey what could go wrong with a yolo rune of removal

[barren stratus]

🤩

Awesome

[gritty pagoda]

holy pancakes it actually worked

[barren stratus]

I'm very lucky haha

[nimble shoal]

Despair has 100% seal chance for T1 affixes on 4-affix exalted

[gritty pagoda]

wait really?

I coulda sworn I failed at that

[nimble shoal]

Yeah. You can fail if the exalted has less than 4 affixes, I've done that

Or on T2+

[gritty pagoda]

oooo

[nimble shoal]

It's a pretty high chance to succeed still, but not guaranteed 😔

[gritty pagoda]

next time I gotta remember to add the 4th affix then despair... so I don't despair at the result of the despair

[unreal blade]

what's the bee glove interaction? is this a spellblade?

[barren stratus]

I'm not sure since I don't have them yet but I'm assuming it procs with Mana Strike and the rest

Yeah, it's a Spellblade

[unreal blade]

Odd. Not sure why you'd want to proc a lot of bees with no minion support in the build.

This a guide you are following?

[barren stratus]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/zap-zap-zap-bees-mana-strike-spellblade

[silk pewter]

Zap Zap Zap Bees Mana Strike Spellblade Build Guide

Game Cycle / Version

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.4

Class

Mage / Spellblade

Used skills

• Mana Strike
• Frost Claw
• Enchant Weapon
• Lightning Blast
• Elemental Nova

Used unique items

• Unstable Core
• Dragorath's Claw
• Fragment of the Enigma
• Keeper's Gloves
• Strands of Souls
• Blood of the Exile
• Serpent's Milk
• Knowledge of an Erased Mage
• Vilatria's Storm Crown

Tags

Monolith Farmer / Melee / Ranged

Created by darklothar · Sep 14, 2024, 12:34 AM

[barren stratus]

Yeah, it's this

Very busted

[unreal blade]

LEtools is down for me or something. can't get it to load.

do the bee hits count for applying spark charges or something?

ok site finally loaded. checking out what they are saying.

[barren stratus]

This is what the author says

[nimble shoal]

I'd rather equip a good base exalted than a 4LP keeper's gloves

[barren stratus]

Yeah, that's fair
I'm just using +8 Intelligence gloves right now lol

Haven't found any good ones with Melee Attack Speed and Intelligence

[unreal blade]

ok so this is just a spark charge spellblade with bees that are fun but probably don't actually do anything. fun is fine, but this build is kind of misleading.

this mana strike tree is weird. Rune sap is huge %inc dmg, and he's going for Mana Drain when Critical Mana would generate much more I believe, and with less investment. frostclaw tree could be pathed more efficiently, and i don't think nova is worth it, but even with nova it could be done better.

he's buffing the melee damage in enchant weapon when the build doesn't really do anything but spell damage. when he could get icicles that do proc spark charges. Divergence does nothing when convergence is taken. and he could wrap around to pick up Positive Protection and Effluent Defense for more ward gen with spare points. The extra points in Front Loaded are basically useless since we're scaling spark charges, not the lightning blast damage itself, same with the extra point in base crit.

in passives, it looks reasonable enough but he's missing Burden of Knowledge, Prismatic Blade, and has too many points in Shattered Aegis, typically you put 1 point in there unless you have nothing else to grab. the points in crackling aura are sorta wasteful, but at least it gives a small amount of %inc dmg.

Besides the bee stuff, I disagree with a lot of the gearing, however his gear selections seem to be aimed more towards low investment, like an entry version of the build rather than a finished build. My own build goes low life with Exang/Exiled mage gloves, which I've found to be much better than staying hybrid life/ward, even tried Wall of Nothing.

here's my build if you are curious what a more finished version looks like.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/niche/character/SparkFarmer

I recently landed the frailty on weapon and got new gloves with shred, so my neck is outdated and by far my worst piece. i'm hunting a new one.

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, critical mana and bountiful victory are not affected by the 0.2x mana gain multiplier

[gritty pagoda]

🤔

[nimble shoal]

But all the other mana gain things are, unless I forgot a weird one

[barren stratus]

Yeah, I wasn't really putting points into the Mana nodes because I didn't think I needed them

I'm still reading the rest of what you wrote

Does teleporting strikes not count as Melee Damage still? I'm confused

[unreal blade]

sorry for the novel, just a lot of small things that add up to several hundred more corruption capability.

[unreal blade]

it does, but we're scaling spark charges, not melee attacks. it's a 99.9% spell build.

[barren stratus]

I like this build because it generates tons of ward and is low-risk
I'd like to improve it but not have it lose the low-risk factor lol

[barren stratus]

Ah, fair

[unreal blade]

my spark charges crit for like 250k and my mana strike hits for like 2k, for example.

i'd have to log in and check numbers for precision, but it's something like that.

[barren stratus]

I was running a glass cannon Sorcerer Build before and hated how fast I died
It's why I picked a build with lots of Ward for the Spellblade hah

[unreal blade]

it is very tanky. i face tank abberoth with it, and comfortably farm 1k corruption. it's low intensity and low risk. the only risk i take is not being crit bonus capped, cause even with only the runemaster reduction i rarely die to crits, and crits are pretty much the only way i can die with 9000-10000 ward while in combat.

[barren stratus]

I see
That sounds very nice then

Is that the same build you sent?

I might try to build into it

[unreal blade]

yes that is my character

it's highly invested but you can easily do abberoth and 300-500c with minimal slams.

i did level 100 without a legitimate death (only twice to game crashes during boss fights) with my first spark spellblade in the first part of this cycle.

[barren stratus]

I really wish we could respec skills without having to farm the levels again

I'm already 17+ on most skills

[unreal blade]

it goes quickly when you are in empowered timelines

[barren stratus]

Should I wait until I can do Monoliths then to switch?
I'm on Chapter 9

[unreal blade]

you can swap on the fly. the build is plenty strong to carry through temporary skill point reallocation.

[barren stratus]

I see

And Flame Ward is better than proccing Elemental Nova then?

[harsh abyss]

Flame Ward is the best oh-shit button in the entire game if you build it right

[unreal blade]

flame ward is defensive with a little bit of offense. elemental nova is full offense, however when i tried it, i found it didn't proc nearly as much as i expected, and it was annoying to see stuff with it covering the screen. also the build i'm playing has no issues with damage. it is quite strong as a 'fair' build (non falconer/mana sorc).

i use a keyboard macro to keep flame ward running on cd

[barren stratus]

Yeah, this is what I thought lol
I'm playing on controller so I don't know how viable it would be

[unreal blade]

you can use it defensively like Zerax said, or just press it when you think about it. it's a good ward generator, especially with some CDR gear and low life. if you aren't playing it low life yet, you can ignore the points in Desperate Defense, btw.

[zenith osprey]

This seems like a fairly tough item to approach, I want that t6 spark charge badly but the health is useless for me and the lightning blast is only good for the spell damage

Annulling seems like the wrong play, what would you guys do

[unreal blade]

nice item if lightning blast was in a better state

[zenith osprey]

The top affix is my target but +skill level with spell damage on top seems nice

[unreal blade]

if you are going for spark charges, you want t7 int as priority with spark charges being the secondary at t5+.

[barren stratus]

Just did the first Monoliths and now I'm trying to figure out how to go about the skills switch
Like, what to level first in each skill

[unreal blade]

unless this is an item where 1LP is the most you can really get i suppose.

[zenith osprey]

Boneclamor, I have a few 1lp lying around and my current one has a really lucky 20% spark charge affix on it

[unreal blade]

like a pathing?

[barren stratus]

Yeah
So the switch isn't painful to get through during the levelling process

[unreal blade]

i can make one for you, give me a moment.

[barren stratus]

I'd greatly appreciate it
Thank you!

[unreal blade]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/B4OJjV0Q slider at the bottom of each skill

for mana strike, you will probably need 2-3 points in critical mana initially, then as your gear improves and you finish your passives, you'll be able to drop to 1-2 points and can spend some in ward strike for some bonus ward gen that is not important at all.

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (5) / Spellblade (64) / Runemaster (24)

General:

▸ Health: 1,336, Regen: 27.6/s
▸ Mana: 212.51, Regen: 11.04/s
▸ Ward Retention: 772%, Regen: 271/s
▸ Attributes: 23 Str / 40 Dex / 183 Int / 17 Att / 11 Vit
▸ Resistances: 93% / 77% / 131% / 118% / 72% / 113% / 77%
▸ EHP: 2,829 / 2,829 / 2,829 / 3,537 / 2,747 / 2,829 / 2,829

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 267
▸ Dodge Chance: 10% (320)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 45% (2,719)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning / Spell, Melee

Buffs:

▸ Enchant Weapon (Passive)

Used skills:

• Lightning Blast (21)
• Frost Claw (21)
• Mana Strike (22)
• Flame Ward (21)
• Enchant Weapon (20)

Used unique items:

• Boneclamor Barbute
• Exsanguinous
• Dragorath's Claw
• Fragment of the Enigma
• Blood of the Exile
• Red Ring of Atlaria
• Red Ring of Atlaria
• Stormcarved Testament

[unreal blade]

that bot is annoying sometimes

[barren stratus]

Thank you! 🙏

[unreal blade]

if you want even more defenses, you can go for reactive ward at the top of the mage base tree and fill in all those points, then use a twisted heart with t7 int to proc it from flame ward and teleport casts, but you'll lose runeword cataclysm from runemaster passives, which is a solid more multiplier, particularly since it triggers before the final boss ward gate activates, so you actually get more uptime with it than you might think.

my first spellblade did that since it started in hardcore and it was nice, but my new one goes for more damage and i don't really notice the defense difference. at 10k ward, you are really fighting ward's natural degen so i don't think you'd actually get too much more avg ward from it.

[barren stratus]

Does Gift of Winter actually proc when using Mana Strike to cast Frost Claw?

[unreal blade]

yes

[barren stratus]

Huh, so it counts as directly casting it? How odd

[unreal blade]

not sure if it's intended, but even if it gets changed, all you'd have to do is move the 3 points in mana strike from ward gain to critical mana and you'd be fine again.

[barren stratus]

I see
I'm now following your skill tree progressions 😁

[unreal blade]

feel free to DM me if you have any questions

[barren stratus]

🥹

Thank you
I will hahah

Any tips for including Elemental Nova if I like the big blasts? 🤣
Or is it simply not worth it?

[unreal blade]

i didn't experiment with it for long, but his nova tree looks fine other than skipping fire/cold novas since you wouldn't be using the chest.

[barren stratus]

Understood
Thanks 👍

I need to keep the points going into Celestial Conflux then, right?
So it actually procs with Frost Claw?

Not sure what to swap for it

[harsh abyss]

I wish Frost Claw's Glamdring node inherited flat bonuses to damage from the melee attack that triggered it. That way you could do an awesome mana strike mana scaling build where you use it to proc Frost Claw and it does crazy damage

[unreal blade]

you'd have to give up mana cost/efficiency/ward somewhere.

you could take 1 point from shiver shell. it'll cost you some ward gen, but it's not critical.

and you could take points from cold and calculating, and rending cascade. both of those work with Reowyn's Veil to generate ward.

can take up to 2 out of gift of winter, but you'll have to offset it in mana strike

[quasi relic]

how do i offset the bleed of diothaen's bloody nib? the bleed stacks wreck me

[gritty pagoda]

get a lot of ward gen

[quasi relic]

would DoT mitigation help?

[gritty pagoda]

yeah bleed is a dot

[quasi relic]

is it worth all that effort though? i'd have to respec and get different gear

[gritty pagoda]

I'd just go for more ward

or go ask cyborg his advice given thats like his favorite build

[unreal blade]

that build has no defenses. kill or be killed.

[quasi relic]

yeah F that relic, jesus

i'm glad i respecced and got a lot more ward tho, my damage is fine as it is

[gritty pagoda]

it is a unique you gotta either fully embrace or not touch

[quasi relic]

makes sense

[gritty pagoda]

but like once your build can sustain like 200+ bleed stacks it gets funny

very funny

[barren stratus]

I'll look into it, thanks!

[quasi relic]

apogee of frozen light is funny because all of its modifiers are for minions except 1, but it does so much damage i'm using it anyway

[barren stratus]

Do you have a loot filter you could provide, by any chance?
I'm not sure build planner's is good

[unreal blade]

mine is extremely strict at this point. probably not useful to you.

[barren stratus]

Ah, that's fair

[unreal blade]

you can try generating a filter from that planner

i don't know how good those are

[barren stratus]

Yeah, I did

[past obsidian]

what i do for filter is i take over the raxx generic filter and select only the affixes i need

[merry veldt]

I can only recommend to engage yourself with the lootfilters.
A quick visit in poe2 proved me again: The only real good filter, is the one you made yourself.

It is not that hard, start by hiding some basic stuff you don't want to see and expand on that step by step.

[zenith osprey]

kinda late reply but this worked pretty well! Ward gen seems comparable and I crit on almost everything (melee cc isn't 100% and shatter + mana strike are both base melee skills)

For the time being, I'm using an okay bone amulet with t6 crit multi but I'll have to look for a specific base to add to my filter

[harsh abyss]

Yep, that extra mana you gain from those crits is probably pretty meaningful

[quasi relic]

is Ucenui's Sphere good for a shatterstrike build?

[scenic sail]

Ucenui's Sphere works best when attunement and int are the same number, which is very difficult if you want one but not the other

[abstract scaffold]

At most it gives you 360% increased cold damage. That's good for just one slot, but that takes 12 seconds to build up and means you also have to dump your int, losing you damage and ward retention anyway. It's bad conventionally, but it still works if you want to min-max damage. I have a shatterstrike frostbite build that uses it, but it's honestly just worse than a normal build. Spellblade is already on the squishier end, and having no ward retention from int doesn't help

[quasi relic]

thanks

[quasi relic]

is there any unique relic that's great for shatterstrike? i've looked through them multiple times and didn't see anything worth using, i'm still using a rare

[unreal blade]

Bloody Nib is big offense bad defense.

[quasi relic]

i tried that one and got wrecked

[gritty pagoda]

sustain 200 bleed stacks -> obliterate everything

[quasi relic]

i might try it again, i've gotten tougher i guess

[gritty pagoda]

its very much a entirely build around this or don't touch it thing

[quasi relic]

i have frost claw clearing ailments every now and then so that could keep it from getting too high

[gritty pagoda]

thats the thing tho

you want a giant pile of stacks

[quasi relic]

yeah. brutal

i don't see any other relics tho

[gritty pagoda]

this is cyborgwar's guide for it

https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/bloody-nib-crit-shatter-strike-spellblade

[silk pewter]

Bloody Nib Crit Shatter Strike Spellblade Build Guide

Game Cycle / Version

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1

Class

Mage / Spellblade

Used skills

• Enchant Weapon
• Flame Ward
• Mana Strike
• Frost Claw
• Shatter Strike

Used unique items

• Boneclamor Barbute
• Shattered Chains
• Siphon of Anguish
• Mourningfrost
• Diothaen's Bloody Nib
• Nihilis
• Eye of Reen

Tags

Boss Killer / Melee

Created by cyborgwars · Feb 13, 2024, 9:59 PM

[quasi relic]

lol that's the exact same set of skills i use, so that's good

[gritty pagoda]

this is more the important bit

[quasi relic]

i will try that. but it seems like if you stop leeching and gaining ward for 5 seconds you'd just die

[gritty pagoda]

yes

well actually only sorta

[harsh abyss]

If you're concerned about that you could aways get the belt affix that cleanses ailments on potion use

[quasi relic]

true

[nimble shoal]

If you stop hitting, you stop getting bleed stacks

[harsh abyss]

ughhhhh new league not until april, I was hoping for sooner 😝 I have a mage build that I want to try now that they're fixing my bug

[night cedar]

How well does the shatter strike build clear or would I have to respec back and forth from bossing to clearing monos

[quasi relic]

i've never even heard of respeccing to fight bosses

you dont need to do that

[night cedar]

Ok! The shatter strike build can clear well then?

[quasi relic]

if you build it right, yeah. it won't one shot bosses but you definitely dont need to respec to fight them

[quasi relic]

does whiteout effectively double your damage output? or triple it with two points

[zenith osprey]

Depends how you look at it I think. Whiteout does theoretically attack more times/second, which is more damage if you're trying to apply ailment stacks or spark charges on every hit, as shatter strike builds typically do

But the less attack speed and higher mana cost makes it probably less worth using for raw shatter strike damage, big maybe though. No clue the actual difference since I only use shatter strike to apply spark charges

[zenith osprey]

I did kinda speak too soon on the ward gen, the survivability still seems fine but I cap out at maybe 4-5k ward when I could hit 6-7k before

The mana is also an issue as always, shatter strike is a hog

[nimble shoal]

It is 80% more DPS with 1 point, 140% more with 2 points. If mana is a limiting factor for your build, you may just want one point in.

[queen mason]

#🎥┃video-shoutout message

I wonder how to build the defense if I want to use ward instead of health... Just stack intelligence instead of health?

oh his video remind me of why I feel runemaster always limited

[harsh abyss]

Intelligence is good for ward because of ward retention, but it doesn't compete with health for affix slots. Health is a suffix while intelligence is a prefix

Depending on the build, stacking health is still good for ward builds. If you use Twisted Heart, or a low life ward build (Exsanguinous, etc), having a huge health pool is still really good.

Ward/sec works really well paired with dodge, because the fewer hits you take, the easier it is for you to get back up to "stable" ward. Armor is good with all builds

If you're not doing the builds that utilize a high health pool, I'd say that instead of stacking health you should stack armor/dodge to maximize the 'value' of ward.

[queen mason]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzCswZgo

Question: Why this weapon is rare to be mentioned by players? Which shortness it have for lightning caster builds (socerer/runemaster)?

[harsh abyss]

Its a good item, but lots of builds rely on unique weapons for specific effects. Example: Dagorath's Claw with any build that uses frost claw

[queen mason]

Dagorath's Claw?

[harsh abyss]

Also, Rune Daggers in general are considered a top tier main hand weapon because the flat crit is really important boost to most builds

[queen mason]

Rune daggers?

[harsh abyss]

Its a base type for daggers, it gives spell damage and flat crit percent

Sorry, Dragorath's Claw

[queen mason]

ohhh that unique dragger, thanks

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

Culvinar's is good for any build that specifically wants a scepter and does lightning damage, but thats not a ton of builds

And even for those there might be better options

[queen mason]

Why I confused is Culnivar's Claim can increase 90% crit chance for lightning spells too. So its shortness is crit chance it's provided not flat one and it can't give extra crit multiplier?

🤔 Flat spell damage Culnivar's Claim give me even more than wrongwrap, that's amazing

[harsh abyss]

Increased crit is very different from flat crit.

[abstract scaffold]

It's only really useful for 1 build: Mana strike. It forces you into a high mana gen and lightning build, and that's pretty much just using mana strike and static combo. It's still pretty good though

[queen mason]

yeah they're different so I wonder how much flat crit chance I need to do the same effect with 90% increase crit chance

[harsh abyss]

+3% crit takes your base crit chance from 5% to 8%

90% increased crit takes your base crit from 5% to 9.5%

But flat crit scales with all other sources of increased crit, so it makes it a lot easier to get to high crit chances.

[queen mason]

Make sense, so the main reason is 90% increase crit chance just too poor

Not only flat crit chance on the implicits but also the flat crit chance can be improved by more lightning resistance, plus it can give more crit multiplier by more cold resistance
(Dragorath's Claw)

[unreal blade]

Most mage builds use wands (sorc/rm) or swords/daggers (SB). scepters are kind of weird cause we often rely on the -mana cost from wands or the flat crit from swords/daggers. Also Culnivar's is not great for mage typically because removing your entire mana bar frequently is hard to deal with, particularly on a sorcerer stacking a lot of mana.

[queen mason]

But then it flat spell damage is poor too... Flat spell damage is much more on Culnivar's Claim.

Then the question go to which one is more important, more flat spell damage or more flat crit chance and crit multiplier 🤔

[unreal blade]

There are some good scepter bases (like the new scorn base) but culnivar's is not a great base.

[queen mason]

hah yeah I need to test what's "100% of mana converted to ward when you reach full mana"

[unreal blade]

you lose all your mana and gain it as ward

[queen mason]

so I can't have mana?

[unreal blade]

you can have it briefly

[abstract scaffold]

Only when it reaches 100%

[queen mason]

yeah this is a weird tooltip for me 😂

[unreal blade]

lightning smite paladin often uses this scepter since they want their mana low for Devotion's (amulet) effects.

[abstract scaffold]

Not really. For devotion you want it permanently low, so you'll be draining it casting smite anyway, and you'll get no benefit from mana->ward. It also contests for a slot for both Palarus and Aurelis, and both of them are better for smite builds

[unreal blade]

yeah culnivar's has been power crept by the newer weapons, but it was in use for quite a while with that build.

about 1/3 of all LEtools builds using it are smite builds https://www.lastepochtools.com/builds/filter/language=en&item=UAzCswZgo

[abstract scaffold]

Surprised there isn't a static build there. I tried it out once and got much better results

[harsh abyss]

I do kinda wish there were more scaling methods for low mana stuff. Like bonus damage based on how much mana you're missing, or specifically just while on low mana or something

There's a solid build that uses Static + Surge, because the cast when you use surge doesn't cost any mana. So you use mana strike to stay high mana and build charges, then use Surge to cast static for free, even with the node that makes it cost a ton of mana.

Sometimes I'll slot static into any build and use the teleport refund to cast the huge damage Static. It's super good for big damage bursts

[nimble shoal]

It's commonly used on lightning bug, too, last I saw. Maybe devotion, also

[abstract scaffold]

Yeah I saw. Doesn't really take advantage of the mana->ward aspect though. Just using it as a stat stick for it's lightning modifiers. Which is fine, but there's better options imo

[nimble shoal]

The mana->ward can be looked at as a downside to using the sceptre, and being transformed disables that stat. Devotion somewhat makes use of it by benefitting from being low on mana.

[abstract scaffold]

I'd have to disagree. I used it on a manastrike/static build with just 200 max mana and could generate thousands of ward and spam static at the same time. The mana->ward option to me is effectively removing the cap on mana generation and turning it into ward, and thinking about it like that makes it seem a lot better. And I didn't even optimize it that much.

It was effectively this, but I didn't follow guide or anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpD-bv0k7PA&ab_channel=Dr3adful

[spare pendant]

god I need to replay that build

I played it so long ago

it was before all the power creep and everything

[abstract scaffold]

It's crazy how the 'big hitter' skill static became so niche simply because it's scaling fell off. Now 250% effectiveness is beans

[nimble shoal]

You're disagreeing that losing all your mana could ever be considered a downside? I'm not sure I follow

[abstract scaffold]

You're not just losing all your mana. You're converting all your mana into ward. If you have 200 max mana, and reach max mana 3 times every second, you're generating 600 ward per second. And since it's a direct conversion it's less affected by ward decay

[spare pendant]

I dont think its the damage that makes static niche, it hits hard

its just generating the charges is annoying

[abstract scaffold]

I guess

[spare pendant]

static just needs other ways of generating charges then just 50 billion crits

like every node outside of the 3 charges when you crit is just bad. The glyph node requires you to stand still????, the surge one is on a cooldown and only gives you 1/7th of a charge, the firebrand only gives you 5 when you use surge

the way in that video and using static orb are the only options that dont suck

[harsh abyss]

Thats why I like it as just an occasional burst damage

[queen mason]

Oh I see... My mana is go zero once mana is full

Then it means this build need strong mana regeneration to support

But my build need mana regeneration to support itself actually...

oh... I forget runebolt is EHG design for this question specially

😅 I need a bit time to remind how to play runemaster

[queen mason]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Qeg6DZPo

Do the issue of my build is flat spell damage is too poor so my spell damage is poor?
(Need almost 2 mins to kill the orobyss)

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 96

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (17) / Runemaster (72)

General:

▸ Health: 1,271, Regen: 19.44/s
▸ Mana: 349.39, Regen: 11.36/s
▸ Ward Retention: 553%, Regen: 152/s
▸ Attributes: 22 Str / 24 Dex / 140 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 90% / 78% / 58% / 77% / 77% / 121% / 87%
▸ EHP: 2,308 / 2,308 / 1,972 / 3,137 / 2,308 / 2,308 / 2,308

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 254
▸ Dodge Chance: 7% (182)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 54% (3,562)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning, Fire, Cold / Spell

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Runebolt (26)
• Flame Ward (22)
• Runic Invocation (27)
• Static Orb (25)
• Flame Rush (25)

Used unique items:

• Boneclamor Barbute
• Unstable Core
• Triboelectra
• Blood of the Exile
• Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros

[queen mason]

It's relevant to the question "which one can bring more damage, more skill level bonus or more crit chance and more lightning damage bonus"

[rapid hinge]

I tried going this route once

and the problem is you cant really scale it

[queen mason]

Miss T7 max roll crit multiplier only...

le not welcome me come back

[harsh abyss]

oof

I'm not sure why you'd want any of those affixes though

[queen mason]

yeah only T7 crit multiplier is useful

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, 3lp items are rare enough that I wouldn't slam an exalted item on it unless it has 4 affixes that are at least usable for my build

[queen mason]

2lp is 50% chance, 3 lp is 75% chance, so...

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, but if you slam 3 decent affixes on it, it's still REALLY good

Even if you miss the one you care about most, you at least get some that you care about a bit

[tawdry scarab]

I just had a nice Firestarter's Torch drop in the campaign, should I respec into a fire based levelling build instead of cold? My current weapon is not very good.

[harsh abyss]

Nah, just use it. You don't need to spec anything for it to carry you through most of the campaign

If you ARE fire related it's better, but there's no problem just slapping it on

[unreal blade]

it'll start falling off around level 20-30, but it's nice for very early with any build.

[tawdry scarab]

Cool - thank you - I am currently level 31 so will just keep it in my stash for now

[harsh abyss]

It'll be really good if you want to level any alts. Even non-mages

[zenith osprey]

Would this be a good enough settle helmet for a spark charge spellblade or should I hunt spark charge + t6/t7 int before moving on? Idk how crucial int would be

[unreal blade]

the entire build revolves around int, so it's definitely a priority, but that's a decent temporary helm. i'd use a t7 int helm over both of those stats though.

edit - looked up your character. you are doing a different build than mine. int is still probably pretty important, but you don't seem to be leaning into spark charges as much.

[zenith osprey]

I’m not leaning as much into spark charges? How? The best I can do would be like t7 spark charge chance which has thus far been impossible to drop

[unreal blade]

there are some skills that have spark charges in their skill tree, and the way to maximize spark charges is to proc as many of them as possible, so you want high hit count, and using as many skills at the same time also helps accomplishes this.

your dagger can proc lightning blast which has spark charges in the tree, and frostclaw, which can produce high quantities of hits, all while you are attacking with mana strike, which can also apply spark charges (you have 1 of 4 points in this). the passive tree can help proc one of these skills, too.

i'm being a little vague so i can point you in a good direction without backseat driving, but if you'd like something more direct, i can do that.

[tawdry scarab]

Is this out of date?

Because in game,. I go OOM immediately and Glacier costs more when I use Arcane Ascendance (53 vs 57)

Use
Arcane Ascendance to buff your damage and reduce
Glacier's mana cost.

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/sorcerer-leveling-guide

[unreal blade]

maybe they are referring to this

[tawdry scarab]

Ahhh yeah that makes a lot of sense

I just hit the level to be able to use it

[unreal blade]

if you have that and acuity, it won't drain mana, and will cut the cost of glacier.

[tawdry scarab]

Yeah I am missing those for now - need more levels

[zenith osprey]

I personally enjoy the playstyle of shatter strike but I’m going to reconsider my skill tree allocations to see if there’s more to be done for spark charge chance

The mana strike spark charge chance is a freebie if I can find some other points to drop

[unreal blade]

surge can also do spark charges if you are wanting to stick to more of a melee attack style

[zenith osprey]

I’m trying to maintain this current build then pivot to a bloody nib spellblade eventually

[zenith osprey]

Will check it out 🫡

[unreal blade]

but generally spark charges being a spell means it's going to be difficult to scale that and melee attacks at the same time.

spellblade is in a good position to do it though

[weary hamlet]

you have that node in static orb too, although I guess you've already played with that. TBH they need a casino rng charge refund node for the charges to support a WOW shaman playstyle

1. pray for procs
2. dont get procs
3. do shit damage

[spare pendant]

yeah ive played with both now

both feel fine

I dont like the static orb version as much but thats just because static orb has an insane mana cost

it would be better if you had actual gear

[weary hamlet]

I played that kind of build a few months ago but I dropped it due to outrageous mana costs on everything and shit mana regen on ranged sorc

like you can use focus once (although once is already one time too much) but then you dump it again in a couple seconds and sit empty with no damage

at least with mana strike spam and melee/crit charge gen you actually have the mana to sustain discharges

[spare pendant]

yeah and imagine how strong that could be when you actually have mana spent gained as ward gear like I did not have in the one video I posted about the mana strike static build @weary hamlet

[weary hamlet]

actually I planned to revisit that build some time soon, as I also started leveling up a char for that right after the sorb/static sorc I mentioned, but quit the game soon after the patch so it never went anywhere

I think you could realistically churn though 250-300 mana per second indefinitely, but maybe more as I havent calculated exactly

maybe less against single target though

[nimble crescent]

how's that supposed to work

[unreal blade]

#🧙┃mage message

[viral fox]

hi all, is there a build for socerer that uses meteor and black hole? ii cant find a good one

[scenic sail]

to my knowledge no one actually uses blackhole. I gave it a try a few times and the visual bugs with black hole turned me off from using it entirely. I don't know if they've been fixed but I know when v1.1 was newly released I gave it another try and it was still bugged.

[abstract scaffold]

Blackhole unfirtunately sucks. Despite being y'know... a blackhole...

[viral fox]

D:

[unreal blade]

Dr3adful has a black hole ignite build you can look up on youtube. It's... alright.

[spare pendant]

I would not play it

I'm pretty sure the whole video I exclaim at how bad it is

[harsh abyss]

Everyone wants black hole to be good, because it's definitely cool

[vital olive]

the dual black hole cold and hot node is alright, but ultimately a bit underwhelming compared to say frost walls DOT

[harsh abyss]

I've always wanted to see if you could do a quad-collapse black hole

And make it work

Use Scattered and Binary System to make 4 black holes per cast, and have them use Pulsar to each release a collapse every second

[nimble shoal]

Binary system doesn't actually make a second black hole

it's just a pretty visual and "100% more damage", nothing else, still fully fire damage

[harsh abyss]

oh yeah, I forgot that they confirmed that

Which is too bad

[nimble shoal]

yeah, although actually a rare win for black hole ignite, and it still manages to not be good

[weary hamlet]

taking one for the team

[weary hamlet]

been a while but last time I checked frost wall dot builds they kinda sucked, so if it's even worse than that..

[spare pendant]

I literally had to specialize flame reave pull just to make the clear not insufferable

the damage was whatever, the size of the aoe is so small lmao

[viral fox]

the problem with black hole is that has very low damage right?

[weary hamlet]

everything is a problem with black hole

meh damage, small aoe, long cooldown, half of the nodes are broken and/or nonsensical

[viral fox]

feels bad man

could be such a cool skill

[nimble shoal]

Also scaling it for ignite feels awkward to scale with any other skills for ignite, since it scales with fire res and not ignite on hit chance. It would be instantly better if it could just be used as a single target dps supplement to an ignite skill that works nice for clearing.

[weary hamlet]

I mean just compare black hole ignite to glyph of dominion ignite, that's just better in every conceivable way (while still being a mediocre build at best)

it also doesnt have the aforementioned scaling problem

[unreal blade]

i theorycrafted this thing, but didn't play it. https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Qb172G6A

it's good for 717k dps (before DR) on average over the course of The Dark Cold according to my spreadsheet. Not the highest dps for sure, but it's a fun interaction.

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (26) / Spellblade (59) / Runemaster (28)

General:

▸ Health: 1,039, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 153.51, Regen: 9.44/s
▸ Ward Retention: 369%, Regen: 109/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 6 Dex / 47 Int / 1 Att / 5 Vit
▸ Resistances: 76% / 263% / 76% / 78% / 92% / 71% / 99%
▸ EHP: 1,541 / 1,541 / 1,541 / 1,666 / 1,541 / 1,481 / 1,541

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 208
▸ Dodge Chance: 1% (24)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 21% (835)

Damage Types:

▸ Cold / Spell, Melee, DoT

Buffs:

▸ Arcane Shield (4/4), Rime, Enchant Weapon (Active)

Used skills:

• Glacier (20)
• Mana Strike (20)
• Enchant Weapon (20)
• Frost Wall (26)
• Teleport (20)

Used unique items:

• Yrun's Penance
• Frostbite Shackles
• Mourningfrost
• Oceareon
• Oceareon
• Snowblind
• Frozen Eyes of Formosus
• Frey's Retreat

[weary hamlet]

is this even better than just spamming glacier vortexes?

[unreal blade]

no idea 😄

this was originally an attempt at a perma freeze support build, then i noticed frost wall scaled damage with FRM and went down this rabbit hole.

[valid temple]

idk but smg fireball seems fun

[weary hamlet]

fireball is pretty good actually

like not a top tier build but Ive seen folks doing around 1k corruption with it and FFF invo

[valid temple]

i got a cindersong/calamity/liath's machinations. it gives me pretty decent damage for fireball

[merry veldt]

Don't consider cinder song if you are not going for dot dmg.

The base dmg is crap and is not a good choice for hit based fireball, even with 3 or 4 lp

[foggy linden]

hey guys! brand new to the game and chose mage for spellblade..... anything i need to know?

[foggy linden]

Wait is spellblade good?

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, there are plenty of solid spellblade builds

[keen nebula]

Is runemaster still top tier or better sorc?

[merry veldt]

With 1.1 sorcs took the lead, but in general every mastery is viable

[foggy linden]

Thanks.

[keen nebula]

Ty

[weary hamlet]

its reasonably good, there are no classes in the game that are unplayable. But SB does have a bit of an issue with build variety, given how it's a melee subclass on a mostly caster class

[small hedge]

Yea everytime I do spellblade, I always end up in my usual shatter strike build

[harsh abyss]

I want to make mana strike work, but I always run into the fact that it has zero 'more' modifiers.

The only way I can think of it is mana stacking so you end up with a ton of flat damage

[nimble shoal]

I think it can work as a skill you use to proc other stuff, but making it your main dps is definitely a challenge

[gritty pagoda]

It counts as melee right? Cap crit with flat melee crit chance, use it to proc the meteor belt?

[nimble shoal]

Yeah it's melee and can also have a spell component if you spec it (not counting other skills it can proc like spark charge)

capping crit is pretty trivial on it thanks to its spec, too

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, especially with mana stacking

[worthy coyote]

Can somebody tell me what’s wrong with my runemaster frost claw build

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oP1OdP6A

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 92

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (15) / Runemaster (69)

General:

▸ Health: 1,107, Regen: 92.42/s
▸ Mana: 308.47, Regen: 9.6/s
▸ Ward Retention: 376%, Regen: 0/s
▸ Attributes: 5 Str / 5 Dex / 90 Int / 5 Att / 5 Vit
▸ Resistances: 91% / 69% / 76% / 125% / 115% / 77% / 25%
▸ EHP: 1,379 / 1,301 / 1,379 / 1,477 / 1,379 / 1,379 / 920

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 285
▸ Dodge Chance: 1% (20)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 19% (624)
▸ Block Chance: 3%, Mitigation: 20% (218)

Damage Types:

▸ Cold, Fire, Lightning / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Frost Claw (20)
• Frost Wall (22)
• Flame Ward (20)
• Ice Barrage (20)
• Runic Invocation (20)

Used unique items:

• Mad Alchemist's Ladle
• Frey's Retreat
• Frostbite Shackles
• Snowdrift
• Throne of Ambition

[worthy coyote]

It’s not doing no damage it says 5k on frost claw but on the dummy it’s only hitting for 900 and I was trying to use this catalyst because I liked it

[nimble shoal]

You have basically no added spell damage - if you want to use mad alchemist's ladle, you need to have something that gives you a lot of flat damage to make up for what you aren't getting on your weapon

[worthy coyote]

So I should use mourning frost and stack dexterity ?

[nimble shoal]

That is an option, I'm not sure if it's the best one or not

[worthy coyote]

What’s would you do

[harsh abyss]

I'd pick up a high tier base wand with decent affixes and see how it changes your damage. See if the higher added spell damage boosts your dps compared to using ladle.

You probably have some decent exalted wands on good bases, just toss one of those on and see how it goes.

Ladle has a max of 16 damage, vs a dragonhorn wand with 60 damage. With a quick look at your build, you have zero other sources of flat damage, so a dragonhorn wand would effectively be a 300% MORE damage multiplier. compared to the max of 48% more damage from Ladle.

Flat spell damage is incredibly valuable because it only comes from a few sources. Ladle mainly good when scaling spells that have other sources of flat damage, such as spark charges using Enigma

[umbral stone]

Going staff is also a decent option until you get a good wand/catalyst combo. Frost Claw can be specced to also scale with flat melee which staves have, and the flat crit in its own skill tree lessens the need for a caralyst in offhand.

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, staffs are great for frost claw

[rapid hinge]

is that a botched frostbite FC build or are you actually using FC hit as the main DPS @worthy coyote

[harsh abyss]

I feel like FC can be decent hits, it's not insane or as good as the ailment application, but it's a nice simple build

[rapid hinge]

at some point i was going to try dualwield sword FC spellblade

with FC as the actual hitter

but never actually did it

[umbral stone]

Yeah I wanted to try that out too, but I think sadly the flat spell and melee damage from dual wielding is just flat out worse, and then on top you lose -mana cost from staff and get the damage taken penalty from dual wielding;(

[harsh abyss]

Maybe do lightning fc, use mana strike to keep your mana up and just boost attack speed to crazy amounts? There aren't a lot of good offhand swords for spell damage unfortunately, but you could maybe do something pretty crazy with dual wielding Pelarus' Sacred Light

[rapid hinge]

Transriber is pretty darn good

[harsh abyss]

Yeah. Looking at just the flat damage numbers, you'd probably be hard pressed to get the same amount of total flat damage as a staff, but you'd be able to get other benefits like rolling attack speed, or the inherent 1.2 attack speed, etc. You'd probably want a Dragorath's Claw as your main hand since the goal is to proc FC, which makes for easy LB proccing.

[tawdry scarab]

Can anyone recommend a Loot Filter for Mage for a late campaign / early portion for mage? Still learning and tweaking mine which was based off the levelling guide from Maxroll - but its super out of date and missing a fair bit.

[gritty pagoda]

theres always Heavyz' filter

its a good starter filter for hiding stuff

[tawdry scarab]

Heavy'z! Got it, I havent seen that one.

Thank you!

[harsh abyss]

I usually start simple and just add more lines to get more strict

If you find yourself not picking up certain things, filter them out

[tawdry scarab]

Any idea why Heavy'z Mager Filter isnt showing me the rule # when I open the filter menu? My old one shows it.

I want to hide the axe - but not sure (at a glance_) what rule it is wtih

[harsh abyss]

I usually have a "hide all rares" filter rule at the very bottom, so everything that isn't specifically shown by the filter is hidden.

IDK how those rules are set up, but you'll have to look through them and see why to be sure

[gritty pagoda]

in general for heavy'z you just add in the affixes you want in the slot that says to do it there

[dense juniper]

i didn't even know there is a guy that dedicate himself to making loot filter. Thank you for sharing Heavy'z

[merry veldt]

At that point one could already assemble a own lootfilter, which would be much more fitting to personal needs 🤭

[dense juniper]

nod nod*

especially for your own planned endgame build

[viral fox]

hi all, anyone can help me understanding a filter?

[gritty pagoda]

Yea

It’s just when someone asks for a loot filter I’m not gonna say git gud and learn how to make one

Then again adding 10 affixes to one rule doesn’t equal making a 70 rule filter yourself

[viral fox]

in a fire mage build with meteor / volcanic orb is better to go for fire damage or mana?

[craggy grove]

What is the current mage leveling build?

[weary hamlet]

does it really matter? you can level with more or less any damage skill just fine

but the easiest is probably just firestarters torch, that's it, that's the build. And if you use fireball and scale fire damage you can just transition from it into an endgame ignite build

[gritty pagoda]

I love leveling with glacier

Big damage kaboom

[tawdry scarab]

So I am finally hitting up Monoliths and getting myself sorted.

But does anyone have any advice on how to transition from Glacier and start getting gear for Frostclaw?

My build:
https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/Vociferate/character/MoistShart

My desire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_EPutPcHrs

[slim edge]

in that youtube vid, he gives a budget set https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QJga303B

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1

Class:

Mage (28) / Sorcerer (21) / Spellblade (8) / Runemaster (56)

General:

▸ Health: 1,139, Regen: 34/s
▸ Mana: 262, Regen: 11/s
▸ Ward Retention: 590%, Regen: 25/s
▸ Attributes: 16 Str / 3 Dex / 146 Int / 3 Att / 3 Vit
▸ Resistances: 86% / 67% / 86% / 60% / 61% / 65% / 63%
▸ EHP: 2,100 / 1,945 / 2,100 / 2,267 / 1,697 / 1,758 / 1,727

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 228
▸ Dodge Chance: 1% (36)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 54% (3,557)

Damage Types:

▸ Cold, Lightning, Fire / Spell

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Frost Claw (22)
• Elemental Nova (22)
• Flame Rush (21)
• Runic Invocation (22)
• Snap Freeze (21)

Used unique items:

• Fragment of the Enigma
• Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros
• Mad Alchemist's Ladle
• Prismatic Gaze
• Ferebor's Persistence

[tawdry scarab]

Awesome - I completely missed that.

Thank you!

Time for a fresh coffee - so it will do its coffee-ing

[dense juniper]

Good day, starting fresh in a new cycle (coming from a Offline mode)

I wanted to try Mage this time around... I already read about leveling guide and endgame build i want. BUT i want the veteran's opinion on this one....

Mad Alchemist's Ladle + Snowblind + Vial of Volatile Ice

VS

Firestarter's Torch + Calamity

Which is one better to use for leveling till like lvl 50-60 till i reach mono farming?

[harsh abyss]

Kinda depends on the build you're planning to go for. I'd personally go for Firestarter, just because multi-fireball line is a super easy way to kill bosses early on.

[dense juniper]

I see. Thank you.

I just thought the Mad Alchemist's DoT ailment stacking + spell dmg bonus on the said ailment is much better in general

but looks like Firestarter still good for leveling

[lime crane]

Ladle does not apply its damage multiplier to DoT damage, only to spells

the only exception being curses from Warlock which can also count as spell damage

[dense juniper]

OHHHH

yeah upon looking at the DoT of Laddle vs using a Fire starter with its Spreading Flames, look like FS best overall for mobs.

Thank you guys

[unreal blade]

it does if it's a dot spell, it only doesn't apply to ailments. some mage specific examples that do work: static orb's static ground dot, glyph of dominion's damage over time, frostwall's direct contact damage over time, glacier's ice vortex, disintegrate, revik's blizzard and other dot runic invocations.

[nimble shoal]

Just to be pedantic, there are some ailments that deal spell damage. Mostly these are curses.

[harsh abyss]

And then there's the frankenstein that spark charges are

[weary hamlet]

torch and its not even a contest, its extreme ezmode for leveling

[dense juniper]

even if im going for Glacial leveling? and i even have Frozen Ire now

[weary hamlet]

just level with fireball and respec once you hit normal monos or something, why would you level with a spell that leaves you oom after two casts

[dense juniper]

i see. Thanks.

[steel wigeon]

anyone know whats a good skill to pair with frostclaw?

[steel wigeon]

I’m using static orb

[zenith osprey]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/tsukinami/character/Tim_Blade

which upgrades should I be hunting soonest?

Focusing on boots atm since I feel like 2lp is achievable and I want movement speed + cooldown reduction for permanent enchant weapon uptime

Honestly though it's nightmarish trying to get the right attribute rolls so idk if maybe I should be hunting something else, maybe chestplate for t6 int with better base?

I also wanna know if it's better to use godroll idols with perfect spark charge chance but dead prefixes, or if I should use lower spark charge rolls so I can use good prefixes as well, like elemental skill area

[compact current]

know of a good guide for the fireball leveling?

i've spent basically 42 levels on glacier leveling it. its not bad, but like you said, i cast 3-4 times and i'm oom

[harsh abyss]

Try to a more applicable left ring. You have 150% crit chance with your spells, so you can stand to lose a lot of your current crit chance. If you can get an opal ring with T6 int and/or dex, you'll get overall better value than what the ring provides. Example, an opal ring with +2 stats and T5 Int and Dex is going to give you 80% increased damage (4% per int/dex) and 80% increased crit, which is more than the current item gives, without even being a legendary

In general, your gear is pretty good though.

[zenith osprey]

Ward on crit

I think for now you could be right, since I don't need the crit chance atm, but since this build stacks int heavily it will end up with insane cc anyways, once I get near 200% then I'm swapping to soul gambler's fallacy for even more ward on crit

But also the main thing is that I would lose a lot of my ward, like a lot

Several thousand from my cap

[harsh abyss]

Well I guess the part of your question you didn't propose is what are you looking to solve?

Is your survivaility bad? Do you need more damage?

What are you having problems with?

[zenith osprey]

Honestly finding more ways to fit intelligence into the build, wondering which gear upgrades to prioritize (since I do one type of gear prophecy at a time), uhh

[harsh abyss]

Getting a chestpiece with T7 int and slamming that onto a decent unique like Static Shell would probably be big.

[zenith osprey]

Btw despite my wording I still appreciate the advice

[weary hamlet]

1. pick a torch
2. spec fireball in the defualt spec
3. profit

In fact I was just leveling a mage alt today with this "build" and yeah it works, very easy and fast, not much to add

[zenith osprey]

Not too familiar with the specifics on build crafting so I don't ask a ton of amazing questions

lol

[compact current]

when you say pick a torch, you mean wand?

[zenith osprey]

Ultimately my goal, actually

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, firestarter's torch is basically free leveling for fireball.

[zenith osprey]

There are a few uniques like strands of souls, static shell, stormcarved testament that I want to slot into the build later on

[compact current]

oh perf

thank you!

[harsh abyss]

Go for Dancing Fire and Volatile flames

as far as fireball nodes, and you'll melt bosses and everything else

[compact current]

and where would i find a firestarters torch?

just gamble?

[harsh abyss]

It's a fairly common leveling unique, but yeah gambling is probably decent

[compact current]

don't think i've even seen one yet

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, for a spark charge build like this, int trumps everything because you get: increased Spell Crit, flat base crit, increased damage, flat damage, ward retention and ward per second. So even things like your boots, you can probably sacrifice the move speed slam for an additional int slam. You want as much int as possible, so T7 int on any piece you can get it is probably better than any other option.

[weary hamlet]

the Firestarter's Torch unique

[zenith osprey]

I would be happy with either int or cooldown reduction alongside movement speed on boots

honestly I dislike playing with a slow character

[weary hamlet]

you don't need to have it with LP but having some obviously helps speed up early leveling if you get a good slam like ele dot on it

[compact current]

what's a good path for fireball leveling?

[zenith osprey]

My helmet will get reworked once I finish some other uniques since %armour can be replaced with int

Would you say it's better to have t6/t7 int with t5 spark charge chance on a 2lp helm? or vice versa

I know spark charge chance does go over 100%

[harsh abyss]

#🧙┃mage message

Start by getting the projectiles in a line, and then go for Volatile Flames for quick explosions. You'll apply a ton of ignites and explosions will kill anything that doesn't die instantly.

[compact current]

gotcha

[harsh abyss]

Personally I think Int is more important, because it scales every explosion and gives you all those stats. You can get a lot of spark charge application from idols and passives and stuff so it's not a huge deal to lose a bit of the generation.

It's a significant shift in your build, but have you considered speccing ele nova to give spark charges and then getting the nodes in teleport that cast novas? With Enigma, you apply 4 spark charges as you teleport and it's great for clearing screens.

[weary hamlet]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/AV1gDD4o this is the core

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

None

General:

▸ Health: 906, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 152.51, Regen: 8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 16%, Regen: 0/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 1 Dex / 4 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 0% / 0% / 0% / 0% / 0% / 1% / 1%
▸ EHP: 544 / 544 / 544 / 544 / 544 / 548 / 548

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 181

Damage Types:

▸ Fire / Spell

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Fireball (20)

Used unique items:

None

[zenith osprey]

I’d have to rethink my ward generation since this build survives only due to the amount of ward it generates when continuously smacking enemies

[harsh abyss]

Remember that more int is also going to give you more ward retention and ward/sec, so you'll get to a higher default ward level. Also you can look into experimental affixes that give you "ward threshold", which boosts that stable ward level pretty meaningfully

[zenith osprey]

Also I'm kinda trying to stick out this build idea until I switch to bloody nib

[harsh abyss]

Fair

[unreal blade]

the bonus armor against shocked enemies doesn't work for the armor/dot experimental/eternal gauntlets so i'm pretty sour on static shell.

[nimble shoal]

What makes you say it doesn't work? Are you referring to dead enemies not being shocked or something else?

[abstract scaffold]

The more armour against shocked enemies doesn't actually increase your armour. It considers your armour higher when hit. So any bonus that relies on current armour will not take into account static shell's bonus

[nimble shoal]

It just gives you bonus armor against damage that meets the conditions, having your armor apply against DOT is not a bonus that relies on your armor, it just makes your armor apply to DOT.

As far as we know, it works just fine. Aside from the unfortunate side effect that dead enemies can't be shocked, so once you kill an enemy, static shell's effect can no longer protect you from that enemy even if it was shocked when it died (but this applies equally to DOT and hit damage, if there is a delayed hit of some sort).

[abstract scaffold]

No I mean your actual armour value will not increase. The more armour effect is only calculated when hit by a shocked enemy. And armour->dot calculates based on your armour, not the on hit armour. Since dot's are not a hit, they never interact

[nimble shoal]

Not sure why you think that, though. Effects dependent on enemy state do not snapshot and are unrelated to hits. Mike answered this exact question as well: #👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message

Testing for this effect is extremely difficult, but if anyone has tested and found that it does not work like the devs say, then someone should bug report it

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, seems super hard to test

[abstract scaffold]

I gues I just interpret it weird. Since 'more armour against shocked enemies' doesn't actually increase your armour, I thought the 'more armour' effect only triggered during the calculation when hit. It's all quite convoluted xD

It's why the more armour isn't calculated when you convert armour into ward as spriggan druid

[harsh abyss]

I wonder if it would work if YOU are shocked, because you are the source of the ward when you transform, heh

[nimble shoal]

It seems to just be calculated at the time the damage is dealt, so for DOT that happens multiple times per second (at whatever the tick rate of the DOT is)

[weary hamlet]

I'm actually surprised that the game doesn't use last known information about the mob in these cases, come on, the devs claimed to be mtg fans, they should know better

[weary hamlet]

should not be - find an echo with a dot tower like the wengari spire, stand in it while the tower is not shocked, repeat when the tower is shocked

the tower: 😮

[dense juniper]

Thank you for suggesting torch + fireball

made life so much easier, and i like seeing everything burn

will level a few more before finally swithing to frost claw

[nimble shoal]

This might not be too terrible of a strategy. I won't be doing it though lol

[queen mason]

emmmmmm get a few questions after checked out 4 guides for meteor sorcerer.

1. Do mana will more important than intelligence under over 500 corruption? Let's assume there's no condition for level bonus of meteor.
2. which one will be better for meteor builds includes mana strike, dragon staff with t7 crit multiplier and t5 mana and mana spent as ward or t7 mana and mana spent as ward and t5 crit multiplier?
3. If my meteor choose the left side as the screenshot show, which weapons are available to get the same damage with the result come from I chose the right side instead?

Long into short:

1. mana VS intelligence
2. which affix is #1 for slamming on weapon
3. Selection on meteor

My idea for meteor build is playing meteor + focus + static orb + glacier + flame ward or meteor + focus + static orb + mana strike + flame ward (I want my build can survive in 700+ corruption)

No teleport maybe... Current weapon is wrongwrap so I need to think which weapon should I change

[harsh abyss]

Well, you only want the Stardust node if you're scaling non-fire damage (usually using the Vilatria set), and in that case you want intelligence over everything else. It's still beneficial to get super high mana because then you can cast more meteors before going oom, but int is #1. If you're doing basically anything else, you don't want the stardust node at all.

Intelligence is still good because it's going to scale your damage and crit chance (with the Calculated Destruction node), but since you're a sorcerer you might put more value on mana because you can use "damage taken as mana before health" as a defensive node instead of other types of defenses.

If you're using Mana Strike, you might consider the Harbinger of the Stars belt to make crits proc meteors. Then you just focus on using mana strike and critting (easy to crit cap with certain mana strike nodes) and you'll trigger lots of meteors. Because you can cap out the crit chance of both meteor and mana strike, the crit multi is going to be your MOST valuable stat, especially on a staff where the affix can get so big.

[weary hamlet]

the last time I played meteor was before the meteor belt even existed so take it with a grain of salt

1. You need a healthy mana pool in any meteor based build, at least around 600-800. Above that you might not want to stack mana too much as it has no major benefit, other than perhaps hitting 1k for the belt and sorc passive
2. go by what your build needs in terms of survivability, pack as much damage as you can afford without dying too much
3. I still have no clue why you would want static orb in that build, but see again I havent played it in a while. But I'm really not sure why you pick non-fire damage nodes for fire meteor.

[harsh abyss]

One of the nice parts about meteor is that it does insane damage, so you can spend more of your points/affixes on defense.

The only reason you might want static orb would be to get easy Lightning Aegis, but that doesn't seem very worth it. In general, you want to focus on one big damage thing and use other things to pump that up. Like you don't need Static, Glacier, AND Meteor for damage. That's just overkill.

If you're using Glacier to regenerate mana, you probably won't need Focus or Mana Strike, and if you're using Focus or Mana Strike, you won't generally need the other one.

[queen mason]

good question, I don't know why I need static orb too 😅

[queen mason]

I should use dragon staff if I want to use mana strike or another weapons will better?

[harsh abyss]

That's one reason I don't like using guides, they often don't adequately describe WHY they do what they do

[weary hamlet]

also I'm pretty sure that mana strike is the only real way to build the belt and belt builds tend to be better than non belt

[harsh abyss]

Dragon staff is definitely good, especially if you have T7 crit multi AND mana stuff on it.

[queen mason]

Two-haned weapons means I must give up some intelligence, resistances and base crit chance/ crit multiplier

[weary hamlet]

not using a caster weapon with meteor is a nonstarter if thats what you mean

[harsh abyss]

I dunno, I've never been able to get the belt build to feel good. I always end up going back to just casting meteor because it's more controllable.

[weary hamlet]

if you can cap crit without it then go for a staff

wait right meteor has +8% in its tree you probably dont need a skull

[queen mason]

I still want to play mana stacker build so staff means less mana i own too

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, and Mana Strike is super easy to crit cap if you're stacking mana

Well, Staff can get an insane amount of mana

[weary hamlet]

you can just take flat 40% crit on mana strike as you dont care about its damage

easiest crit cap in the game

[queen mason]

ok which affixes I need on a staff? Dragon staff is the best staff base?

[harsh abyss]

If you're mana stacking then the 10% current mana as base crit is enough to get easy crit cap, don't even need the 40% one

Dragon staff is good, but if you're mana stacking, crystal staff is strongest I think. If you can do this it's incredible:

[queen mason]

oh give up crit multiplier is fine?

[harsh abyss]

Crit multi is still good if you have it

But that's just an example of how much mana you can get if you go all in

[weary hamlet]

both are 1 point though and the 40% works better at low mana

aka when you need mana the most

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, but no crit multi is sad 😝

[weary hamlet]

yeah no crit multi on mana strike big loss

[queen mason]

yeah, that's what I'm confusing.

Spell crit chance/ crit multiplier/ mana and spent as ward/ mana and mana regen

All of them are prefix so 2 in 4 only :(

Which 2 should I pick and which one should be t7? My current build is t7 crit multiplier only

[harsh abyss]

Don't worry about spell crit chance. If you're stacking a decent amount of intelligence, you'll have capped spell crit with meteor no problem

And you can get crit chance from things like rings where you can't get much mana

[queen mason]

oh then leave mana and spent as ward/ mana and mana regen and 1 in 2 now

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

[queen mason]

why you select mana and mana regen as your t7 prefix?

[harsh abyss]

Just because it was first in the list, no actual reason

I just wanted to give an example of how much mana you can get on staffs

Crit multi is still stronger than the others offensively, but if you use mana as a defensive layer, higher mana can be really good

[queen mason]

🤔 My current build (frost claw one) is focus on intelligence, no idea which one is better on defence, intelligence or mana for meteor build

[harsh abyss]

Depends on how you're building your defenses. If you're relying heavily on Ward as a defense, Intelligence is better. But if you're using a lot of "% Damage Taken as Mana Before Life", then mana will be stronger

Mana Shell is also going to give you some amount of Ward/sec, so both intelligence and mana will be good in general

[queen mason]

Suggested skill combo after our discussion is

Meteor + focus + flame ward + mana strike +... Wait which one is the last skill lol...

[harsh abyss]

Teleport would be my recommendation

You can spec teleport to make your next spell free, which you can use to cast meteor

[queen mason]

oh then wrongwrap still is one of weapon options lol

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, Wrongwarp is actually just really strong in general.

Especially if you can get a good boot with T7 movespeed on it

But also you don't HAVE to use wrongwarp for teleport to be good

[queen mason]

🫡 The pity is my wrongwrap only have T7 crit multiplier so bad for stacking mana... The boot... current one:

[harsh abyss]

That means wrongwarp is giving you like... at least 285% increased damage, which is pretty meaningful

+90% while you have haste, which is probably most of the time

[queen mason]

🤔 A crystal staff can better than t7 crit multiplier wrongwrap + t7 mana & t5 crit multiplier dragon eye when it have t7 mana and mana regen or mana and mana spent as ward + t5 crit multiplier?

Crit multiplier must loss a bit.

[queen mason]

the reason I ask #3 is both of them exist in guides, many of them select more crit chance and another people select more damage 🤔

[harsh abyss]

Probably depends on how they're scaling other things in their build. All guides tend to do things a little bit differently based on how the writer prefers or what they think is best.

One of the nice things about LE is that the game is forgiving enough that you don't HAVE to build one way to succeed. If you find that you need more ward defense, maybe use an Opulent focus, if you find that you need more crit chance, use a crystal skull, etc

[queen mason]

Relic is another question I want to ask too... Only Stormcarved Testament possible to give me double layers of mana which mean an exalted relic with T7 mana and T5 intelligence or T5 crit multiplier isn't good enough, so stormcarved testament is the only choice?

[harsh abyss]

It's generally regarded as the best because of just the really solid stats that it gives, but it's not the ONLY choice. If you have a really good exalted relic it's probably better than a non-legendary stormcarved, for example.

[queen mason]

T7 mana under max roll is 120, the min mana from stormcarved testament + t6 mana affix is 130

😂 My pity is I don't have a t7 mana stormcarved testament or even t7 mana + t5 intelligence

😅 then it's fine, I discovered I can get more dps when I go to the right side on meteor

I doubt my choice because his build is belong to left side

[harsh abyss]

What weapon is he using, is it the Vilatria staff?

[queen mason]

I guess they keep static orb for boss combats because they know it's the best skill for insane damage in a short time

His choice is unexpecting

He gained more damage by stacking more flat spell damage

[harsh abyss]

hmmm yeah that's a weird choice

Kinda makes sense though, for the stardust node

[queen mason]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/mana-stacking-elementalist-sorcerer-meteor-glacier-static-orb
This build have the same choice on meteor skill tree but lack of stardust node, include static orb too

To bo honest, static orb is alternative even in that famous build from Frozensentinel

I guess static orb will get nerf in 1.2

[harsh abyss]

Static orb has always been pretty strong, I wouldn't expect it to see significant nerfs/changes

[queen mason]

🤭 let me expect EHG's actions in the future more

[harsh abyss]

We just need more info about the next patch, for sure

[scenic sail]

I doubt static orb will be heavily nerfed in v1.2, mage is still the weakest class overall in both higher corruption and the arena ladder.

Glacier, meteor, static orb is a really forgiving set of skills. You can use just about any items you want and it can be good, easily at 1k+ corruption, the only required unique is a harbinger of stars belt if you’re doing the auto-cast meteors. Frostclaw by comparison is far more demanding of good gear and specific skills to regain mana.

[harsh abyss]

I think the thing people have trouble with is balancing their offense/defense. That build has a TON of offensive capability without much investment, but people like to keep pushing it forward further and further rather than spending their investment on defense at all

[compact current]

where is the maxroll glacier leveling build on a tier list in terms of viability in mono? the leveling guide i mean. how long can i run mono before i really should respec?

[harsh abyss]

Basically any build should be able to take you to empowered monos without too much trouble as long as you understand general gearing principles

[compact current]

ok cool

[queen mason]

I played frost claw too much so I want to change a build to play

then meteor is super impressive on aoe

but on the opposite, meteor is weak at single target... So it's the reason these guides suggest us to use static orb

frost claw still is the best spell for both of single target and aoe... I mean the balance, so I can see why it's so popular

[scenic sail]

Yes, static orb has always been the best boss killer for glacier + meteor, just like it is with frostclaw, but glacier + meteor has more direct synergy with static orb because you really want to stack mana for glacier + meteor as the meteors can use a TON of mana, so I have like 2,200 mana with my best gear. Here's a video of me doing an arena in 1k corruption with "0 LP gear", if you're interested in the build: https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1glz3ai/an_1132_corruption_arena_with_my_glacier_meteor/

[queen mason]

👀 0lp!?

[scenic sail]

Not the best for AOE, I guarantee you, glacier + meteor is easily twice as good as frostclaw at AOE, and that's most obvious in the arena, where I've been the #1 mage for 4 months now... by a long shot, no frost claw build is even close to me

Frostclaw is probably better for single target, but honestly it's pretty close, I can kill abberoth pretty good and it wouldn't take much for me to be as good if not better since both rely on static orb for bosses

[queen mason]

🤔 oh that's skill combo I want to try

why you specialize in focus but your skill slot is Arcane Ascendance

[scenic sail]

All you need is a Harbinger of Stars belt, you can wear basically anything else with it, I have a 2-handed setup with Celestial Doom that's nearly as good as Wrongwarp + crystl skull. But take a look at the skills and passives I've done and find a HoS and you're set: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oX5MmMwA

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (66) / Runemaster (27)

General:

▸ Health: 1,197, Regen: 29.8/s
▸ Mana: 1,613.16, Regen: 23.12/s
▸ Ward Retention: 498%, Regen: 171/s
▸ Attributes: 20 Str / 18 Dex / 118 Int / 24 Att / 13 Vit
▸ Resistances: 99% / 75% / 142% / 144% / 138% / 65% / 65%
▸ EHP: 2,851 / 3,079 / 3,079 / 3,401 / 2,851 / 2,592 / 2,799

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 46%, Threshold: 867
▸ Dodge Chance: 5% (153)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 26% (1,150)

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold, Lightning / Spell

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Glacier (20)
• Focus (20)
• Meteor (21)
• Static Orb (20)
• Flame Ward (20)

Used unique items:

• Seed of Ekkidrasil
• The Kestrel
• Wrongwarp
• Scales of Eterra
• Fingers of the Phantom Mire
• Harbinger of Stars
• Blood of the Exile
• Red Ring of Atlaria
• Red Ring of Atlaria
• The Confluence of Fate
• Stormcarved Testament

[scenic sail]

Arcane Ascendance is a skill I spec every so often, it's basically my bonus skill, either that or Flame Ward. Flame Ward I use strictly as a defensive buff with 100% mana regen being the main appeal. Arcane Ascendance can get you mana from off screen kills (happens a lot with shrapnel + multi-meteors), and a hell of a lot of extra cast speed. Focus is required to regain mana, but I use it on a quick cooldown and only need about 400 mana from it at any given time (read harbinger closely)

The build I posted there is my "speedy" gear, two red rings, fingers of the phantom mire, the kestrel and blood of exile boots, all speedy stuff, but my tanky gear is foot of the mountain, armor with T7 damage dealt to mana before health and usually different gloves. https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/Abominati0n/character/Ab0mination

[queen mason]

😂 ...You're too amazing

3 lv 100 sorcerers...

double wrongwraps even builds are different, lol more insterested in why dragon staff or crystal staff is weaker now

[harsh abyss]

I don't think it's weaker now, it's just that other things like Wrongwarp have come out that are just objectively stronger.

The amount of increased spell damage you can get from wrongwarp is insane compared to any other caster item

If anything gets nerfed it'll probably actually be wrongwarp

[queen mason]

the funny thing is wrongwrap have nerfed in 1.1 but players don't mind that at all xddddd

[scenic sail]

Aergon's Refuge is very powerful for Frostclaw or Fireball (FC would need to be converted to fire), it grants mana from fire spell cast, 20% of current mana which is a lot with high cast speed. It was for my fireball, glacier, meteor setup which was good before they buffed mana, now glacier + meteor is just superior and replaced it entirely

wrongwarp was more buffed than nerfed, the biggest downside to wrongwarp was the random location with teleport, making your only other traversal option as a mage flame rush, but they added Evade, which changed the game for wrongwarp because you can still dodge quickly even after a bad teleport location. It actually made wrongwarp way better

and if you don't use evade you now have access to an additional 20% move speed (swiftness), which also buffs wrongwarp, so it actually got buffed in v1.1

I was at 1,100 corruption with Fireball + meteor in v1.1, I could do about 1,200c-1,400 now with it I think

[queen mason]

😂 I wonder should I try to find a t7 mana and mana regen/mana and mana spent as ward + t5 crit multiplier crystal staff

I don't play fireball, meteor is the main damage

This skill combo can enjoy high damage buff bring by wrongwrap but the defence is super weak

(I can't get enough ward from skills, my realic is stormcarved testament)

The trouble is I must sacrifice teleport if I want more defence (flame ward)

[scenic sail]

Sounds like you don't have the 5/5 points in Lost knowledge? Your glaciers should be costing 40+ mana, which means any amount of mana 600+ should be granting you significant ward if you're casting glaciers. Meteor isn't meant to be directly cast in my build, I cast glaciers which cause critical strikes, those critical strike cast the meteors because I'm wearing a harbinger of stars belt. The harbinger attacks enemies with meteors from the stars

[harsh abyss]

There's an easier way, you can import your character into lastepochtools.com

Go to Build Planner, then there's an 'import' button on the top left

[queen mason]

it's offline character so... 👀

No accurate values

All of my questions started from how to deal with 40% poison and cold resistance lol... Anyways, the build link https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Qb1VqG6A

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Harbingers of Ruin / 1.1.7

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (64) / Runemaster (29)

General:

▸ Health: 1,243, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 1,714.41, Regen: 22.8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 536%, Regen: 219/s
▸ Attributes: 12 Str / 12 Dex / 140 Int / 9 Att / 3 Vit
▸ Resistances: 122% / 99% / 117% / 96% / 96% / 78% / 76%
▸ EHP: 1,760 / 1,760 / 1,760 / 2,045 / 1,760 / 1,760 / 1,760

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 249
▸ Dodge Chance: 2% (48)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 35% (1,841)

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold, Lightning / Spell

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Meteor (21)
• Glacier (21)
• Teleport (20)
• Focus (20)
• Static Orb (21)

Used unique items:

• Peak of the Mountain
• Unstable Core
• Wrongwarp
• Blood of the Exile
• Stormcarved Testament

[queen mason]

I have stacked my corruption to 759 so the base and current gears is no problem but add one more unique belt means it break the balance

then I think maybe my weapon can be changed as skill combo is different

meteor summoned by crit from glacier always deny a lot then enemy slain me