🧙┃mage

[weary hamlet]

yea the UI could use a lot of work like that where stuff could highlight connected or relevant nodes etc

maybe in another 5 years

[harsh abyss]

Hey at least they went through and fixed a ton of bugs this patch.

[weary hamlet]

at least convesions should always clearly list what they do and don't convert

[signal aurora]

is black hole still a meme with the buff or nah

[harsh abyss]

People have talked about a couple builds that will probably work

[dull cairn]

no changes on volcanic orb tho

[woven lark]

The playstyle didn't change. It can deal OK damage, but the playstyle sucks

[uncut zealot]

Mannn i hate season start cuz idk what to do lol

Are mages starting fc sorc?

[azure loom]

ss spellblade

[signal aurora]

the duration and cdr nodes buffs makes me hope the uptime would be considerably better. honestly I just want the skill to be good for cold dot build

[stuck kelp]

Can anyone help me understand how this talent works with pierce? If my fireball pierces multiple enemies, can it proc multiple flame bursts? Or is it just on the first target hit?

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, it basically just applies an ailment on every hit that procs flame burst when it hits the required stacks to proc

[stuck kelp]

Ok so it does work with pierce, ty

[tiny jasper]

what mage builds are going to be ok to start out with in cof?

[hallow sapphire]

Runemaster looks popular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzYu5s_zrTI

[teal trench]

Bait yourself and go black hole

[uncut zealot]

I don’t get how this is remotely first build eligible lol

That specific planner

[hallow sapphire]

it looks good even without red rings/vise

[uncut zealot]

And bastio

[near otter]

has anyone theorycrafted some mage builds with Grasp of the Blood Mage gloves?

Wondering if we can do some "vladimir"-style health stacking mage builds

[coarse ginkgo]

I have it in my lightning meteor auto-bomber for the crit chance but its not a primary focus for my build

[harsh abyss]

I think a lot of mages will slot it in because of the leech and flat crit, but it won't be a centerpoint because mages don't really have any physical/bleed support.

It'll probably be the main focus of a phys-convert gathering storm build for Primalist

[umbral perch]

Anyone know if the new Shattered Frost Claw skill MTX changes depending on elemental conversion? The preview I saw looked like it was only lightning.

[harsh abyss]

I don't think anyone knows

[mystic sierra]

Ok I am 100% not smart enough to make a real build that'll work and/or be feasible to get off it's feet, but I'm trying anyways. I'm wondering if any smart folks would take a look at this build concept and tell me how bad it is and maybe advise on suggestions to fix it that closely align with the vision of the build.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/olGeO6nB

Note: Gear shown is open to criticism, and is just me picking best stats I could think of and doesn't represent the gear I'd end up with..though unique helm/wep/catalyst are core to the build concept for defenses.

Concept:

• Black Hole is cast, it pulls mobs in, seeks out rares/bosses, and casts Meteor every second
• After casting Black Hole, your filler is Lightning Blast converted to Cold damage via Passive tree
• Excessive chaining enabled on Lightning Blast for huge clear
• Flame Ward for Haste/Ward/Mana Regen
• Fire Aura converted to Cold Aura with 80% chance per second while moving to cast
• Teleport with cooldown reduction, buffs after casting, and extended buff duration after casting
• Massive Necrotic Resistance stack to convert to Ward per Second via Boneclamor Barbute
• Frozen Ire for Cold Damage, Necrotic Res, and bonus Tundra Nova
• Twisted Heart is the obvious choice normally, but if super lucky can prolly replace with Shattered Worlds (good luck!)

Things I'm not sure about / open to change:

• Lightning Blast..I just wanted to try it out cuz it got buffed and I saw the cold conversion node so thought it'd be neat to try something with Black Hole (also got buffed). This skill isn't necessarily required though, but I'd like to keep it if possible.
• Cold Damage over Time (Frostbite)..I know this could add more damage, but wasn't sure if it made more sense to go for crit/crit multi for LB + Meteor as opposed to just stacking DoT/Frostbite. Thoughts?
• Passive tree has way too many good points and not enough points to spend on everything..I opted for Spellblade's Cold Aura passives cuz it sounded neat/thematic, but I am not sure how good this is in practice. If it's ass, lemme know and I can swap points elsewhere (where to?)
• I am not stacking any life on gear because I figured this would be hella high ward, but also ward got nerfed and life got buffed so maybe this is a misstep? Thoughts?

Anyways thanks to anyone that takes the time to read / look this over. I am hype as hell to get back into LE with this incoming update!

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (70) / Spellblade (23)

General:

▸ Health: 1,311, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 396.18, Regen: 13.84/s
▸ Ward Retention: 272%, Regen: 464/s
▸ Attributes: 14 Str / 11 Dex / 92 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 81% / 112% / 81% / 91% / 91% / 692% / 24%
▸ EHP: 1,624 / 1,624 / 1,624 / 1,744 / 1,624 / 1,624 / 1,076

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 262
▸ Dodge Chance: 2% (44)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 20% (735)

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Lightning Blast (26)
• Teleport (21)
• Flame Ward (22)
• Black Hole (26)
• Meteor (26)

Used unique items:

• Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros
• Frozen Ire
• Boneclamor Barbute
• Omnis
• Throne of Ambition

[slim furnace]

If I did a dot build using black hole (not sure about the rest) are things like frailty and armor break etc gonna matter? Or even pen

[nimble shoal]

Armor shred doesn't matter since it won't boost your DOT. Frailty and pen are both good still, frailty reduces the enemy's damage to you btw.

[idle shard]

What went wrong with Ice Barrage and why is it dead?

[unreal blade]

ice barrage is pretty good, but not really a main skill due to the cooldown and odd aiming. it has good utility for cold builds, particularly frostbite builds.

[slim furnace]

Yeah it's been a while since I played so I didn't remember names that's all. But gotcha

If I did a black hole fire dot build what 4 skills would yall suggest? I was considering the meteor black hole node but from what I saw meteor doesn't have a dot variant so probs looking for black hole teleport and then idk what

[tame sun]

frost claw/metoer shrapnel/glyph of dominion/fireball are your potential options to pair along side black hole

[slim furnace]

Hmmm okay. I'm not home to check really but how good/bad is mana stacking as well for dots build?

Since I'd be sorc

Also I can't have glyph and black hole at the same time really

Without dumping alot of points into it

[tame sun]

I was just suggesting to pair black hole with another ignite skill scaler

you're going to be leveling with fireball/frost claw anyways if that is your theme of choice

[slim furnace]

Hmkay

I don't see frost claw being that good for a fire dot build. I see fireball and black hole and tp being okay tho. Struggle to find the last 2. Might just have to run mana strike and flame ward but idk

Like I could go for disintegrate but then I'd channel that and not use fireball much. Tho ig I could use fireball black hole for maps and disintegrate black hole for bosses idk

[idle shard]

Is Sorc dead in S2

[weary hamlet]

did it need changes? It's pretty good these days

[weary hamlet]

you are gonna slot these gloves into every build, it's that kind of unique

the self-damage looks negligible at best in the majority of builds, and the upside is huge

[weary hamlet]

I'm pretty sure that the twitch drop for day 1 is a lightning blast MTX and LB has both conversions and a lot of mutators, so we can test it fairly easily

[weary hamlet]

why is it dead? Great question since nobody thinks that it's "dead"

[weary hamlet]

tbh I would suggest doing the same kind of dot build but with glyph of dominion, as ignite black hole has scaling issues

[idle shard]

because some streamer told me it got nerfed into the ground

[weary hamlet]

then your other skills would be RI, ward, enchant weapon and your choice of something like runebolt

[idle shard]

and that i should be playing Spell blade instead

[weary hamlet]

omegalul

[weary hamlet]

omegalul x2

yeah mate you should probably unsmash that like and subscribe button

if anything barrage got a small buff and bug fix for its synergy with FC this patch

but the point brought up above is also true, many builds choose to play it as a utility skill with the 60% more cold damage node

[inner oriole]

Either they said that specifically FrostClaw charges build is dead, cause that is, or its a good moment to unfollow that streamer
There are still plenty of sorc builds more than capable lol, even still a good different FrostClaw build

[slim furnace]

So skip the sorcerer thing entirely and go for the rune guy? I mean it is true id only use black hole and so far just mage skills but I haven't looked at passives. There's a fair bit of dot stuff on sorcerer.

[weary hamlet]

sorc has better ignite support in vacuum but ignite hole is not terribly good, and if you want a massive GTAOE skill that spams out ignites over time, that's glyph

and while it doesn't pull mobs in, that hardly matters when it covers the entire screen

[slim furnace]

I haven't tried glyph so idk what to expect. I was looking at dropping a black hole then channeling disintegrate to apply spreading flames etc then cancel it to shoot out 6 fireballs

With tp and mana strike (no clue if I'd need mana strike(

But I haven't touched any mage builds outside of spellblade so idk much

[weary hamlet]

tbh these synergies with disintegrate are also pretty weak, if you want to get spreading flames I'd rather suggest firestarter's torch

you need to channel disintegrate to tier 3 to have it apply spreading flames, that's what, 3 seconds of channeling even with the faster stage upgrade node

[slim furnace]

Hmmm ok

I'll look into a build with the rune dude

Tho I got no idea how runes work

[weary hamlet]

you dont even need runes for this build as it doesnt rely on RI

although you'd want to spec RI and use it as a teleport button cause it has synergy with glyph

but whatever invocation it uses is irrelevant in this build

[slim furnace]

Hm okok

[tame sun]

just look at maxroll for a guide line.

[slim furnace]

I got 40 points in sorcerer on rune guy and I don't have access to black hole I'm confused

[weary hamlet]

you can't get access to skills beyond the chain in other masteries regardless of points spent

gotta be a sorcerer to have black hole

[slim furnace]

Oh

But someone mentioned black hole and the glyph skill from rune

At same time

[weary hamlet]

no I meant that you should ditch black hole ignite and roll glyph ignite instead, obv you can't have both skills at the same time

[cobalt yacht]

ignite blackhole has better scaling from what ive been looking at, its just horrible to actually play since the aoe is nonexistent

[weary hamlet]

it doesn't have much more ignite application if it has more at all, and glyph has significantly better more modifiers, not to mention that you can overlap two glyphs at all times

while even one black hole doesn't have 100% uptime

also glyph base DOT damage is very significant while I'm not sold that black hole dot component is but I might be wrong on that part

[tame sun]

wow haven't seen a surge build posted on youtbe in over a year, interesting.

[cobalt yacht]

It's very similar but sorc has better ignite duration, and you can easily have more than 1 hole up after the changes

It was like 30 or 40% more damage as bh

And sorc gets meteor

[weary hamlet]

actually that's a good point when it comes to craterborn

I might need to actually check the black hole changes now

[weary hamlet]

link? What's new compared to old surge tech?

[tame sun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXOUhBwqrbc

that was before 1.0 even...

[cobalt yacht]

I was getting pretty big ignite dps but genuinely it's just so awful for anything but bosses

And because you're stacking fire res you don't naturally scale any clearing ability

[tame sun]

there' was also a spark charge version as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDgwPozQmro

very strange that none of these have been updated by anyone

[weary hamlet]

I'm sure that I've seen this one, was that the build where he had to concede using flame reave for trash cause surge has 0 aoe?

[weary hamlet]

yea this is my concern too since I actually played quite a bit of the glyph ignite build and the clear was hyper smooth

the aoe on glyphs is massive and you have two out for extra coverage since you dont need to overlap them to kill trash

but it sturggled with survivability as you had to either go low life or vessel or use that end threshold per ignite tech which was what I was trying to do at that time

maybe with new idols and everything health mage builds will actually have more support, or any support more like it ]

[tame sun]

yeah, pretty sure that's the case.

[weary hamlet]

also when it comes to new idols, mage got an ignite duration roll on long idols which further mitigates the disparity between ignite on sorc and ignite on rm

[cobalt yacht]

It helps but yeah it's still a lot to miss 40% that's basically free on tree

[slim furnace]

Have you made any sort of planner I could look at to inspire myself ?

I started one at home but wasn't finished

(Currently not home)

[balmy jacinth]

Does the node that gives Disintegrate 2 beams also double the ignite application?

[stark flame]

Hi all
Relative newbie to Sorcerer, pretty sure its not an original concept but I wanted some feedback on my "Doomsday" build
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/ApD4RWwA

The build is primarily "cast black hole then spam fireball to build up ignites and use Enchant weapon to consume and instantly deal all the ignite damage"

As far as I can tell since craterborn is not on direct cast it should be up permanently which as well as the hefty global fire pen buff will also let my high cast speed fire ball spam recover mana quite quickly after Black Hole + Meteor empties my bank account faster than bills on payday

Some fire res shredding tornadoes add to the apocalypse on screen, hopefully I can still actually see stuff on the floor I need to avoid 😄

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (56) / Spellblade (17) / Runemaster (20)

General:

▸ Health: 1,804, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 335.41, Regen: 15.84/s
▸ Ward Retention: 248%, Regen: 165/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 1 Dex / 78 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 341% / 94% / 78% / 91% / 103% / 87% / 85%
▸ EHP: 2,886 / 2,886 / 2,886 / 2,840 / 2,655 / 2,655 / 2,655

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 58%, Threshold: 361
▸ Armor Mitigation: 19% (676)

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ Enchant Weapon (Passive)

Used skills:

• Black Hole (28)
• Meteor (24)
• Fireball (26)
• Flame Ward (24)
• Enchant Weapon (22)

Used unique items:

• Aergon's Refuge
• Unstable Core
• Soulfire
• Fiery Dragon Shoes
• Prismatic Gaze
• Rule of the Simoon

[teal trench]

does meteor need to be directly casted to get the craterborn buff?

[stark flame]

The skill doesn't mention directly cast so I am hoping it does not

[coarse ginkgo]

@robust junco Do you have an updated Lightning meteor build planner? I believe it was you commenting on that forum post last night. I saw your 1k corruption video so I would be interested in seeing your plans if you have any. 😄

[robust junco]

Clearly wrong person ^^
Never done over 300C 😄
Also I play 99% Sentinel/Primalist

[coarse ginkgo]

Ah! okay. you posted a video from GoldenExperience and that was who commented on the post, myb!

[robust junco]

No worries ❤️

[teal trench]

hey me too but I also play warlock now

[robust junco]

I might try that Witchfire unique

[fervent ledge]

Seems too much theory and meme like. Everyone will probably be hearseeker, warlock, or whatever busted builds new sentinel has

[inner oriole]

Let them, we are #🧙┃mage here

[teal trench]

i've thought about baiting myself with lightning blast

or black hole but meh

gonna take the summon bear bait instead

[harsh abyss]

I'm doing channeled LB, so I'm sure I'll be able to tell everyone how bait it is.

[teal trench]

i was thinking to go lb/static

[harsh abyss]

Not a bad plan, for sure

[coarse ginkgo]

My current plan is lb/static with meteor + managuide for a lightning meteor auto-bomber. not sure how well itll work out but thats the plan.. xD

[mortal oxide]

I'll likely be your very niche spellblade enjoyer.

lol

[harsh abyss]

My only concern with that would be that you might not be hitting often enough to cast enough meteors for it to feel good

[coarse ginkgo]

Will have to wait and see but once the build is all said and done LB will have 100% crit and its being casted from Mana guide and static. Can also spec into shrapnel if needed as the shrapnel should also be able to proc the belt. lightning wave from focus channel is also another crit proc

[abstract magnet]

Coming back from a long break. What's the current state of spellblade

[slim furnace]

if im going for a dot build is mana stacking on sorc good or no

im struggling to decide what is good to get for passive tree

[coarse ginkgo]

Shatter Strike A tier according to maxroll.

[coarse ginkgo]

Does your build benefit from having more mana?

[slim furnace]

i mean

im mostly asking cuz of the passive

of sorc

oh im actually dumb

more dmg per mana cost

i read that as more dmg per mana

which skill should i use if im using meteor black hole

cuz im guessing im not gonna be able to spam it against every single mob

just fireball?

[coarse ginkgo]

Are you using the meteor belt to cast meteor or are you direct casting it?

You will likely want something that doesn't cost mana as meteor is a huge mana drain

[weary hamlet]

honestly I've not tested it extensively but from the oveall impression I got from playing a lot of disintegrate, no

[slim furnace]

havent looked at gear but probs just using the black hole meteor node to autocast them in the black hole

[weary hamlet]

you want to use the right side of static that was touched up in this patch?

[weary hamlet]

same as always - still has like three builds but those builds arent bad

[chilly valley]

God forbid they buff/fix spellblade to allow for more build diversity.

[slim furnace]

tho now that i see it ig id probs want to run it anyway cuz of the less dmg taken

[weary hamlet]

they need to rework either spellblade or the rest of their game from scratch to allow more build variety

cause the rest of mage is spells

with no melee conversions or anything

so they either need to do more of those or rework it to be more like enh shaman where you use your melee to buff up your spells and use those spells as "finishers"

which can also work but they are in no hurry to do either

[chilly valley]

I agree with that, but some simple numbers changes and buf fixed could allow for some more builds even if they arent top tier

[weary hamlet]

tbh it's a shame, just compare the number of void conversions on various sent skills and melee conversions on mage skills

the score is like 7-0 and not in favor of Charlie

[chilly valley]

Do not talk of such sinful ideas, you will play shatter strike and be content with it

[weary hamlet]

lol never I will stick to my flame reave

they even buffed it in 1.2

now its gonna be toooooootally fine

[chilly valley]

S tier material

[weary hamlet]

ass tier

no for real lightning proc builds go straight into the dumpster now since the unlimited ward procs was half of what kept them up

and the other half was thoughts and prayers

[slim furnace]

ima work more on my planner then link it here for some review if yall can help ❤️

[left hill]

yeah, I haven't read the maxroll write-up, but it seems like Shatter Strike partially dodges the worst part of the ward retention nerf since Diothaen's naturally curbs your ward growth anyway, and the idol enchanting and weaver idols are direct boosts. Eye of Reen is also a boost for most, since the 30 stack cap really only hits the very, very top end, but counting indirect uses is big.

[balmy jacinth]

Thank you for the reply 🙂

[weary hamlet]

SS wasnt hit by the worst of the nerfs since it just has a very low number of hits per second to truly leverage the rings

[left hill]

If you really push it you can get like 47 hits/s with Shatter Strike

(counting the overlap double hit and the recasts)

[slim furnace]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/A1Vyje5Q

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (93)

General:

▸ Health: 1,142, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 514.44, Regen: 14.56/s
▸ Ward Retention: 68%, Regen: 67/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 1 Dex / 34 Int / 1 Att / 7 Vit
▸ Resistances: 181% / 10% / 31% / 26% / 38% / 33% / 7%
▸ EHP: 1,374 / 832 / 954 / 982 / 1,003 / 967 / 818

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 228
▸ Armor Mitigation: 18% (623)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 23%

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Fireball (23)
• Black Hole (29)
• Meteor (24)
• Teleport (24)
• Flame Ward (23)

Used unique items:

• Cinder Song
• The Cuckoo
• Unstable Core
• Fiery Dragon Shoes
• Harbinger of Stars
• Rule of the Simoon
• Soulfire

[slim furnace]

no clue if i cooked or did complete crap but would be neat if someone could help me somewhat

[plain garnet]

Debating Titan Heart vs Exsanguinous when using Essence Weaver.

Exsanguinous represents a bunch more ward/sec from missing health as ward/sec and up to 30% increased attack speed, but Titan Heart is another ~700 armor, 700 more HP I can convert into missing health as ward/sec with the glove affix, and a flat 15% less damage taken mod. The no health regen also isn't a downside if I'm fully ward-based

[neat badge]

Is there a build revolving around this?

[novel heath]

Guys I need help with this. It says "Your shock chance for this scaling does not include more specific Shock Chance stats such "Chance to Sock with spells". So I understand shock chance you increase inside a skill tree doesnt count but, does the suffix on weapons increase this? Also, does de passive node Circle of Elements increase it? Is there a way to increase this to make worth putting so much points in this passives?

[mystic sierra]

I am looking into a similar build..I found this video which is pretty insightful. I'd recommend giving it a watch to compare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POw_FT7RA1g

[weary hamlet]

Not really, this thing is rather underpowered, but you can build a generic "random" invocations invo build and this will pop up from time to time. It's still on the weak side but at least its fun

[weary hamlet]

I mean 12% more damage is worth it already if you can maintain the uptime on brand (and you are in a dot build) but other than that yes, weapon affixes or generic shock chance passives will boost this

the threshold node that is

[slim furnace]

ill look thx

[neat badge]

I see, thanks! Whats the name of that skill?

[weary hamlet]

jeez mate now that's a question

[novel heath]

ok thx mate

[weary hamlet]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/runic_invocation49_tri_beam

[neat badge]

Thanks

[hot crag]

if I start with shatter strike spellblade in the next patch (because I really like the core concept of a melee mage), just exactly how bad am I holding myself back at the upper end? I'm not really interested in pushing the absolute highest possible, I just want to get to the point where I can see the summit and dabble a bit, and then decide how I want to proceed from there; I restarted with this build recently and it feels fun up to 70 at least, but I'm not even into empowered monos yet, which is where I stopped way back in early 1.0

[unreal blade]

circle of elements does not work. generic chance to shock (what you see in your character's "Other" panel) is what is used. can't have any qualifiers to it, like shock on lightning skill, etc.

[stark flame]

honest SS spellblade is pretty good anyway, its ward generation and very high attack speeds will keep it alive for most stuff

[novel heath]

So then "chance to shock on hit" that you get from suffix doesn't work either? Only chance to shock? Damn, I thought that was amazing but maybe not worth to invest on it. Ty mate

[slim furnace]

checked it out but unfortunately the guy isnt going for dot kind of setup

[mystic sierra]

ah fair didnt catch that you were doing dots

[slim furnace]

thats fine still appreciate it

[weary hamlet]

SS is fairly competitive, I guess you can already go over 1k corr with it but with the power creep sorry I mean positive changes of the next patch, that's gonna be even easier

[unreal blade]

shock on hit works, since that is generic

shock on spell hit or lightning hit, or anything like that would not.

[night cedar]

any chance of getting a vilatria CoC meteor build going? Either with the new mana guide auto bomber or coc with mana strike?

[unreal blade]

indirect meteor kinda got nuked this patch, and it's still mana expensive

[novel heath]

aah okok, ty and sry for making dumb questions hahah

[weary hamlet]

100%? Not sure what could stop you from doing it

[weary hamlet]

you can still pivot into shrapnel

not sure how much it helps on bosses but for clear it's probably even better

[hot crag]

cool, thanks guys!

[weary hamlet]

just in case, the nodes from multiple meteors branch no longer work on procs but shrapnel can still trigger more meteors since technically it's not meteor so it dodges the belt's restriction

[night cedar]

Huh that's neat didin't know that

[coarse ginkgo]

my build is by no means finished/completely optimized and there will likely be some item/stat changes but here is my untested version to use as a baseline. May need to spec into shrapnel if meteor isn't proccing enough but will need to test it in game to really see what need changes. May need a lot more mana regen/mana and might end up using exsang instead of unstable core. idols are just kind of whatever at the moment as well. https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oPpPb6mo

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (30) / Sorcerer (63) / Spellblade (5) / Runemaster (7)

General:

▸ Health: 1,476, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 600.4, Regen: 23.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 370%, Regen: 206/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 1 Dex / 142 Int / 7 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 111% / 87% / 182% / 105% / 65% / 79% / 66%
▸ EHP: 3,899 / 3,899 / 3,899 / 4,067 / 3,544 / 3,899 / 3,577

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 295
▸ Armor Mitigation: 13% (353)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning / Spell

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Arcane Ascendance (21)
• Static (21)
• Lightning Blast (21)
• Focus (21)
• Meteor (22)

Used unique items:

• Mana Guide
• Grasp of the Blood Mage
• Stormcarved Testament
• Last Steps of the Living
• Harbinger of Stars
• Liath's Signet
• Unstable Core

[night cedar]

I'll probably need to tweak or pivot eventually, but excited for this first pass

Hopefully enough to slay base abby

[weary hamlet]

given the sweeping power creep from the new items and mechanics, and nerfs to normal aby, I'd say that killing it will be pretty normal on most remotely coherent builds

even more than it already is that is

[narrow matrix]

Can multiple instances of Spark Charge be on 1 target?

[harsh abyss]

Yes

[nimble shoal]

Yes, it's a normal ailment with no stack limit

[narrow matrix]

God bless y'all

Trying to cook a Spellblade spark charge build

Going to go for Spark Charges on hit with melee & Lightning Blast skill tree nodes & hope for the best

[night cedar]

huge, then onward and upward to uberabby

[vital mist]

Hey guys. I’m trying to do some cooking with the shattered lance set now that we can put those affixes on any rare, and be more flexible with it. I wanted to ask: has anyone tried to make a build using just mana strike as the main damage? I get that shattered strike is the bigger thing people use, but mana strike seems pretty trivial to get to 100% crit chance and quite a bit of base damage through just having high max mana. And there’s a runemaster node that makes 15% of your health regen apply to ward too, which seems like it’d be absolutely busted with the shattered lance set if you really prioritize health regen.

Looking at the defenses it seems quite good, but I’m just afraid that my offense will be terrible with mana strike, because I just don’t see people using it. Is that something to really be worried about, or do you think it’d be viable with like 1000% increased damage and perma crits (with like ~400% multi)?

[harsh abyss]

Yep, I was looking at doing just that. My recommendation would be to not START with that for the season, because to make it work, you need both high mana and high health regen on gear. It's going to take some very specific drops/crafting to get going.

And you're likely going to be locked out of most uniques because you need multiple affixes on your items for the build to even function. So you're looking at a lot of 2-3 LP items with successful slams

[weary hamlet]

yea you can try stacking mana and scaling mana strike with that, but the problem with shattered lance set is that it's incompatible with vessel and SB survivability can be pretty iffy

the problem of mana strike is relative lack of more multipliers

and that it doesn't play into what more multipliers are found in SB tree

[fading snow]

what are some good secondary clear skills available to spellblade? I'm building a caster spellblade and looking for something to fire off and do some damage to most of the screen

[harsh abyss]

The idea is that you have enough increased damage and crit multi that it's still solid.

[fading snow]

is static orb a reasonable skill to kill the annoying tiny birds with?

[weary hamlet]

SO with orbit is a decent skill for clear yeah

used to be a staple of builds before the.. well..

frost claw

[harsh abyss]

Frost claw just too good compared to other spammable skills 😢

[vital mist]

That’s the trick in fact - I’d be going RM not SB. The RM node I want is “past the chain”. So that’s the part that I’m a bit weirded out by. This idea is gonna have me playing RM functionally for defense, and not using any of the skills. I’d be relying on the shattered lance set bonus, and from what my quick build I put together showed, that can get me to like 150 flat base damage and 1000% increased with 100% crit chance and 400% multi. But I’m just worried that might not be enough. It misses out on the more multipliers from shattered, sure, but that’s only ~100%, and I figured that the increased flat and increased was worth that trade off

[weary hamlet]

I wish you luck but tbh that sounds like not enough beyond like 200-300 corr

[fading snow]

shatter strike more multipliers are more than 100% with recasts

[weary hamlet]

recast alone is 300% more

and it has a bunch of other more multipliers on top of that

[uncut zealot]

What are you mages league starting??

[weary hamlet]

divine bolts paladin

it might even be good with multistrike

[harsh abyss]

I think the biggest problem with the mana strike build is the caliber of gear you need to have to make it work. You need a lot of specific T7 affixes for the nerfed shattered lance to be good

But then you also need T7 mana to mana stack your base damage to a meaningful level

I'll be doing channeled zero-mana lightning blast

[uncut zealot]

Ah not a mage? Lol

[weary hamlet]

I'm past playing meta on mage, meme builds it is

so far I have on my list, disintegrate x4 (different variations), channeled LB, focal blast LB, essence weaver proc SB, fire aura RM, glyph ignite RM, prism nova RM, ele nova something, CCC reowyn's, and a couple of variants of volcanic orb

but I probably won't start on any of these

which is not to say that divine bolts is a meta build or anything but I long wanted to play it and it might actually be good with multistrike shotgunning now

[harsh abyss]

Ele Nova + Prism Nova RM is something I'm going to try for sure

[weary hamlet]

and if it's not I can just pivot into any real paladin build like judgment or something

[plain garnet]

I'd love to see if I can get a functional 3-element nova build going with the buffs. Direct casting it got a sizeable buff this patch.

[quasi carbon]

how good is spellblade anyone knows`?

[plain garnet]

Plus, the idea of level 35 or whatever Elemental Nova is amusing to me

[weary hamlet]

its pretty good, its problem is low build variety, not that its builds are weak

[quasi carbon]

do u know how good shatter strike build is?

[plain garnet]

Shatter Strike should be fine this patch. No nerfs and some decent buffs if you have good freeze chance.

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, Tri-Element Nova + Gordian Prism is probably #2 on my list

[weary hamlet]

I dont see why it couldnt kill uber abby or do 1k+

[quasi carbon]

really

[weary hamlet]

its already capable of doing normal aby and 1k and everybody's getting power crept across the board, so I fail to see why not

[unreal blade]

if you'd like a cheat sheet, it's in the link below. don't click if you want to chef up your own dish tho 😉

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oNVPgp7o

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Spellblade (67) / Runemaster (26)

General:

▸ Health: 1,704, Regen: 27.2/s
▸ Mana: 160.51, Regen: 10.88/s
▸ Ward Retention: 498%, Regen: 489/s
▸ Attributes: 25 Str / 45 Dex / 214 Int / 15 Att / 15 Vit
▸ Resistances: 91% / 77% / 91% / 74% / 74% / 129% / 79%
▸ EHP: 6,647 / 6,647 / 6,647 / 8,266 / 6,581 / 6,647 / 6,647

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 341
▸ Dodge Chance: 8% (245)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 46% (2,771)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning / Spell, Melee

Buffs:

▸ Arcane Shield (4/4), Enchant Weapon (Active), Lightning Aegis

Used skills:

• Enchant Weapon (21)
• Flame Ward (22)
• Mana Strike (24)
• Lightning Blast (22)
• Frost Claw (22)

Used unique items:

• Dragorath's Claw
• Fragment of the Enigma
• Orian's Descent
• Exsanguinous
• Red Ring of Atlaria
• Shattered Worlds
• Red Ring of Atlaria
• Boneclamor Barbute
• Blood of the Exile

[plain garnet]

I haven't looked too much into Runemaster to understand how much value Gordian Prism would add, but I'm interested

[unreal blade]

oops forgot to ~ the link 😦

[plain garnet]

It feels so sad to me that the only good way of making spark charges work is with fragment of the enigma

[harsh abyss]

Basically, you can use Runic Invocation to cast Grand Prism Nova, which is like ele nova but better. So it's very on theme and since it's also a tri-element spell, it gets all the bonuses from the Invoker set and Unstable core and such.

[weary hamlet]

that's the bane of all skill-specific uniques, and this here isn't even a full skill

[plain garnet]

Also, how is that build getting a sealed T7 experimental affix on gloves?

[unreal blade]

hm forgot that needed to be updated - edit updated link. probably the best setup.. or swap seal to atk speed and keep t5 int.

[heady marsh]

guys is runemaster worth it next season?

[plain garnet]

If you make mana strike ranged, does that affect all of the sources of mana gain on the skill? Like, is there a difference between Arcanist's Blade and Critical Mana if you have 100% crit chance?

[unreal blade]

critical mana is not affected

[weary hamlet]

yea it's a perfectly fine class with a variety of builds

[plain garnet]

Interesting.

[fading snow]

OK got a draft of my int stacking LB semi-caster spellblade: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Bxb7ElmA
the idea is to self cast LB, then trigger it while it's juiced up with surge and static. Currently I've got static orb in as a supplemental clear skill, thought I could swap that out for frost wall for more single target damage if I don't end up needing it

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (19) / Spellblade (57) / Runemaster (13)

General:

▸ Health: 1,308, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 168.17, Regen: 10.72/s
▸ Ward Retention: 360%, Regen: 164/s
▸ Attributes: 3 Str / 3 Dex / 168 Int / 3 Att / 3 Vit
▸ Resistances: 42% / 58% / 42% / 0% / 0% / 3% / 43%
▸ EHP: 1,113 / 1,265 / 1,113 / 873 / 846 / 861 / 1,121

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 262
▸ Armor Mitigation: 10% (241)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning, Fire / Spell, Melee

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Lightning Blast (20)
• Static (22)
• Surge (20)
• Static Orb (20)
• Flame Ward (20)

Used unique items:

• Exsanguinous
• Last Steps of the Living
• Oceareon

[plain garnet]

Grand Prism Nova wouldn't pick up nodes from Elemental Nova's skill tree, though, would it?

[unreal blade]

also forgot to apply the extra +1 skill from new relic. doing so now

[weary hamlet]

no, it's a runic invocation

[harsh abyss]

Yeah it doesn't, but it's good on its own

[plain garnet]

Seems like it would be a whole lot more damage to just spam ele nova, then, if you've got like a level 35 one

[harsh abyss]

It's got 600% damage effectiveness, and if you're int stacking you can get like... 900 ward for casting it

And the RI tree has a lot of good bonuses too

[plain garnet]

Fair enough

[harsh abyss]

Here's a rough planner I put together for it ~https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BgYD5lLA

I didn't bother balancing defenses, idols, or blessings, mostly just wanted to save skill layouts and look at ideal items

[plain garnet]

ele nova has so many insane more multipliers in the tree

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, but even with the 120% base damage effectiveness, casting GPM once is the equivalent of casting 5 ele novas

And using the RI tree, we're going to trigger 4 ele novas when we cast GPM, as well

[plain garnet]

I mean, sure, in terms of damage effectiveness alone, but that ignores all the more multi

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot of value in casting GPM

[harsh abyss]

Sure, but 600% base damage also means that all the more multis for GPM are 6x as effective too

And there's a decent amount in the RI tree

Plus double cast

[weary hamlet]

ele nova has kinda shit scaling and I'm not sure if the minor buffs it got will do anything

[plain garnet]

Really? 120% instead of 100%, and the extra 40% more from Arcana Elementorum aren't enough to make it good?

A shame

[weary hamlet]

well it will make it somewhat better

but it's more of a case of 0*1,4 = 0

[plain garnet]

@unreal blade stupid question. You convert your FC to lightning, but you still take the nodes that add freeze rate multi. Can this still freeze even though it's been converted?

[unreal blade]

no, the freeze rate multi is for reowyn's veil for ward gen

[plain garnet]

But because it's lightning, it now has 0 freeze rate, right?

[unreal blade]

i'm not sure. typically that is what happens to cold skills when converted, but it doesn't explicitly say it, volley of glass just reduces the freeze rate.

[plain garnet]

I could be wrong about this, but it's my understanding that in order for it to have a base freeze rate to be able to multiply, it has to have the cold tag

Which gets removed when you convert it

[unreal blade]

yes so it can't freeze, but it still has freeze rate multi.

even if it still had some small amount of freeze rate, it likely wouldn't freeze anything notable. maybe a tiny trash mob.

[plain garnet]

Fair enough; I never considered that the skill could still have freeze multi if it was entirely incapable of freezing

[unreal blade]

it's like having a car with a full gas tank but no motor.

[plain garnet]

I guess you still have the multi, you just have no base chance to multiply with so it never freezes

[unreal blade]

precisely

[weary hamlet]

yes, if it has 0 base freeze rate then no amount of freeze rate multi will make it freeze stuff

[plain garnet]

Yeah, I got that, I just also assumed it removed any freeze multi the skill had, which doesn't appear to be the case

[mystic sierra]

Man I start working on a build idea then read this chat and see a bunch of other build ideas popping up that also sound fun haha..no idea where to begin for league start! 😂 I'm liking the sound of that Prism Nova RM build..how feasible is that to league start and then get off it's feet?

[harsh abyss]

It depends on if you get it 😝 I plan to level with Ele Nova like I usually do, and adapt to it if it drops. You wouldn't go for tri-element until you get Crest of Unity and Unstable Core (and the invoker set, but that should be easy), so you're probably either going to go lightning + spark charge (what I do), or Ice for the More multipliers until you can convert to tri-element.

[mystic sierra]

Oh I didn't realize Gordian Prism was a new unique, that's cool. I was cooking a Black Hole + Meteor Cold convert Lightning Blast build..it was destined to fail more than likely as I've not had experience working with Mage much, nor the mana costs of meteor before, but it sounded fun! I think I need to experience Mage more before I mess with my own build.

I've only really played 2 chars so far in LE, both in 1.0 pre-harbinger. Torment Warlock and a Lightning Nado Swarmblade Druid lol, both of which I followed guides for. Though I took that warlock to 96 and like idk 400 corruption or something.

[harsh abyss]

Making your own build is a good chunk of the fun

At least for me, it's fun to see the build come together and make adjustments as needed

[mystic sierra]

PTSD from other ARPGs making respec / regear hard makes me hesitant, but I know LE has made it exceptionally easy to respec and gear crafting isn't too bad so I might still experiment idk

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, especially with mastery respec as a thing now

[mystic sierra]

If you're bored and wanna take a peak here's what I was recently working on. The gear I keep floundering on as I was trying to take tech from torment warlock and make it work on Sorc..basically the Necrotic Res stack for Ward Regen w/ Boneclamor. I'm not married to that idea, but I'm interested how my skills/passives look? I guess the idea is you'd cast black hole which auto casts high damage meteors, and you fill with lightning blast..everything converted to cold for chill/freeze and cuz it sounded neat lol..1.6m meteor dps on the planner but idk how realistic any of this actually is lol. I know the 15 cost LB is prolly where it falls apart, but I'm hoping I have solid enough mana regen? Not sure.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oRWnMV2A

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (70) / Spellblade (23)

General:

▸ Health: 1,311, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 396.18, Regen: 13.84/s
▸ Ward Retention: 272%, Regen: 464/s
▸ Attributes: 14 Str / 11 Dex / 92 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 81% / 112% / 81% / 91% / 91% / 692% / 24%
▸ EHP: 1,624 / 1,624 / 1,624 / 1,744 / 1,624 / 1,624 / 1,076

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 262
▸ Dodge Chance: 2% (44)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 20% (735)

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Lightning Blast (26)
• Teleport (21)
• Flame Ward (22)
• Black Hole (26)
• Meteor (26)

Used unique items:

• Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros
• Frozen Ire
• Boneclamor Barbute
• Omnis
• Throne of Ambition

[mystic sierra]

oops edited the link, that one LE Tools posted is wrong

[harsh abyss]

At a glance, you're gonna need a way to restore your mana. Casting black hole once is gonna drain you to nothing in about 3 seconds and then it's gonna stop casting meteors

[jovial pine]

is this still usable for frost claw or frozen orb mage?

[mystic sierra]

Yeah that was the part I was trying to solve..I stacked up mana regen in a lot of spots, but I dunno how much mana regen is needed and also if there are other ways to gen mana

[harsh abyss]

Other ways include Mana Strike, Glacier, and Focus. As an example: use Focus and stack a ton of mana so when they run out they can restore like 40% of your max mana after channeling while at negative. Or make Glacier crit and restore mana every crit, etc.

[mystic sierra]

ah then I assume i'd need to pick something to despecialize in order to specialize in one of those skills for mana? I found this video which is similar, though he opts to go fire and spam zero mana cost fireballs to proc meteor whenever he's out of mana from black hole. I guess that makes sense since it's zero cost and still procs meteor with the belt, but I think people were saying that belt meteor proc got nerfed somehow? So not sure how feasible that is now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POw_FT7RA1g

[weary hamlet]

it depends on a build around unique so probably not a good way to start league, I mean, you can kinda build into it as is, but it's gonna be more clunky

[harsh abyss]

The meteor belt is nerfed because it only casts 1 meteor, even if you've specc'd meteor drop drop a bunch of them

So it's going to be a WAY weaker version of using meteor than self-casting it

[mystic sierra]

I see

[weary hamlet]

eh not so sure on that, if you spec into shrapnel it's still gonna be pretty good especially for clear

bossing might be more iffy as I'm pretty sure that shrapnel doesnt shotgun

[harsh abyss]

I'd probably go for a Vilatria build and just use mana strike + procs to get lots of crits (spark charge + mana arc + frost claw) and just lean into the 'one big meteor' version.

And just trigger tons of them that way

[mystic sierra]

Haha it's funny you said that cuz I was just typing that I wanna know a good league start that isn't yet another frost claw / static charge build that I can follow until a build defining unique drops 😂

[harsh abyss]

I'm 90% sure my league starter is gonna be good and require no uniques, but I don't want to recommend it to anyone until I'm sure the bug is fixed, heh

[mystic sierra]

makes sense

[fading snow]

What are some good sources of crit multi, cast speed, or lightning pen other than regular old affixes? I've got lots of slots that could be uniques with LP, if I can sneak in some of those stats it would be nice

[harsh abyss]

You mean uniques that give crit multi, specifically?

[fading snow]

ideally outside of helmet, weapon, body armor, or boots

yeah, uniques that give crit multi (or cast speed or pen)

[harsh abyss]

So... gloves, rings, relic and belts?

You'd probably have the easiest time just looking through the list of uniques on lastepochtools.com

[fading snow]

and amulet

[fading snow]

Have done so -- didn't find much. I guess I can run with twisted heart for the millionth time 😁

[harsh abyss]

Stormcarved Testament is also a common relic, it gives you penetration, which is another type of "more" damage, effectively

[fading snow]

apparently you can get crit multi on the new enchanted idol affixes. No idea how that works or how attainable that will be. I have one slot on my weapon for either cast speed or multi, and which is better depends on how much of those stats I can get elsewhere

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, you can get combo crit chance + crit multi on every class idol with the weaver's touch, it should be relatively available, but the amounts are pretty small.

[fading snow]

oh dang, you can seal set affixes. Huge!

[harsh abyss]

yeah, it's BIG

[surreal bloom]

any farther idea ?
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/B7ZqZZPQ

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (5) / Spellblade (69) / Runemaster (16)

General:

▸ Health: 1,885, Regen: 1,122/s
▸ Mana: 219.51, Regen: 15.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 76%, Regen: 32/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 34 Dex / 26 Int / 1 Att / 13 Vit
▸ Resistances: 73% / 61% / 73% / 59% / 54% / 35% / 69%
▸ EHP: 2,005 / 1,794 / 2,005 / 1,820 / 1,690 / 1,461 / 1,929

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 377
▸ Dodge Chance: 5% (136)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 10% (241)

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold, Lightning / Melee, Spell

Buffs:

▸ Enchant Weapon (Active)

Used skills:

• Mana Strike (20)
• Shatter Strike (24)
• Enchant Weapon (22)
• Teleport (20)
• Flame Ward (20)

Used unique items:

• Yrun's Wisdom
• Shard of the Shattered Lance
• Shard of the Shattered Lance
• Mourningfrost

[harsh abyss]

You need the relic from shattered lance otherwise you won't get the set bonus

oh mn, you have it

It just didn't show up in the tooltip

[surreal bloom]

Shatter set shard

[sour trellis]

What’s are your thoughts on mages for new season . Will static orb be able to kill uber aberoth after new season static orb nerf or should we look to other dmg skills

[harsh abyss]

I'd probably look to something else

The cap on the mana cost makes it significantly less strong

[sour trellis]

Anyone calculated static orb dmg for new season ? Last season was hitting around 2.5m dmg

[scenic sail]

Yea, I tried out my current build and my damage went from 1m to 150k, so static orb will be completely nerfed basically, if it'll be usable at all in the capacity that iwas being used for to kill bosses, it'll probably require lots of other support elsewhere. I still plan to use it, but I'll try using it with lots of tendrils and generating lots of crits for Harbinger of Stars, hopefully that'll make it worth speccing

[sour trellis]

What skill you all think will be the most dmg or best dmg for uber aberoth

[harsh abyss]

Well at least you'll be able to cast it 10-20 times before your mana pool runs out now, instead of 2-3 times

[sour trellis]

Interesting.

I haven’t looked at any patch notes yet . I’ll probably work my hero to lvl 90 casually then respec with whatever items I have

I deleted 3030 hrs of heros and starting clean for new season.

[harsh abyss]

TL:DR the mana cost caps at +100 now, instead of uncapped. So instead of pushing max mana to get the biggest chunks possible, pushing mana beyond the point where the added damage is capped (1000 mana) just lets you sustain more casts before running oom. It won't one-shot bosses any more, BUT the need to continually raise it's mana cost is lower, opening up some opportunity cost for other attributes instead of always more mana.

It still gets more damage based on your max mana, but doesn't double dip beyond 1000 mana (more damage from your max mana, AND more damage from higher mana cost which is determined by your max mana)

[junior coral]

can SB with shattered set be good in 1.2?

or too squishy

[feral birch]

Does anyone have advice on how to improve this build? https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QqZOkp0B

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (13) / Spellblade (56) / Runemaster (24)

General:

▸ Health: 1,279, Regen: 28.32/s
▸ Mana: 217.51, Regen: 10.16/s
▸ Ward Retention: 354%, Regen: 389/s
▸ Attributes: 5 Str / 5 Dex / 157 Int / 11 Att / 9 Vit
▸ Resistances: 73% / 81% / 113% / 86% / 84% / 93% / 75%
▸ EHP: 27,271 / 27,817 / 27,817 / 57,063 / 33,666 / 33,666 / 27,817

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 289
▸ Dodge Chance: 1% (24)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 78% (10,386)

Damage Types:

▸ Cold, Lightning / Melee, Spell

Buffs:

▸ Arcane Momentum (2/2), Arcane Shield (4/4), Runeword Cataclysm, Frenzy, Enchant Weapon (Active), Lightning Aegis

Used skills:

• Mana Strike (21)
• Lightning Blast (20)
• Frost Claw (20)
• Firebrand (21)
• Enchant Weapon (20)

Used unique items:

• Dragorath's Claw
• Fragment of the Enigma
• Decayed Skull
• Static Shell
• Stormcarved Testament
• Oceareon
• Red Ring of Atlaria

[junior coral]

is "brand of deception" RM Dot build good or just meme

[harsh abyss]

You don't use it as a primary source of damage for your character because you can't really build around it in a meaningful way. It can be solid, but it's mostly an applicator for you to be able to use the effects of Order's Imposition and/or Celestial Doom

[junior coral]

saw this build dunno if its good in 1.2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keAQ0aqaFA0&t=131s

[harsh abyss]

That's interesting. I don't think that build got any nerfs at all, so it should still work the same way

Other than maybe less ward because of the ward retention change

It's an interesting idea

[spare pendant]

so that one is pretty much untouched

going into 1.2

because they fixed the bug with it that was making it deal damage by just putting it in the game

😄

well

the ward will be nerfed a tad because of int nerf

but every build is suffering that

[proper hawk]

FrozenSentinel is doing a version of this that you might want to take a look at

[coarse ginkgo]

@spare pendant any plans to try out a meteor auto bomber with mana guide?

[spare pendant]

no they pre nerfed it

[unreal blade]

i posted mine earlier if you'd like to take a look. #🧙┃mage message

i see HC in your name, so let me also say I did this build to 100 in hardcore solo character found a few days ago, if you want some ideas of what worked. i don't have intention to play it further than hitting 100, so i won't be minmaxing the gear like i did with my softcore character. it had about 7500 avg ward in combat with flame ward on CD, and i ended the run just shy of 400 corruption.

~https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/niche/character/DeaderBlade

[feral birch]

thanks for the tips and perspective!

do you think having 3 defensive uniques is overkill? I see that you don't really have any (other than red rings)

[feral birch]

also also, i noticed you didn't use the health -> ward tech in HC, any reason?

[unreal blade]

i never got good ward gloves. chest alone is not enough imo, at least not on HC. last steps are bad for this setup, so i just leaned into ward generation with the relic prefix and freeze multi on belt/relic, as well as the ward blessing (instead of crit multi), since my damage was more than fine.

i was using a jade amulet for quite a long time then nemesis spawned with this aurora and it went crit multi so i decided to take the cheat death since it was fairly nice. the red rings were both gotten after i hit rank 12 CoF about 25% into 99, so they just kinda sealed the deal for hitting 100. I was using ferebors with good armor/int roll and an opal ring with useful stats.

[feral birch]

i never thought about the dex -> crit setup, i guess that's like a huge dmg boost for getting spark charges

do you think chains will work for lighting blast even if we aren't casting ourselves?

if so,that makes single target wayyy better with your setup

the wording of 'directly cast' worried me

[unreal blade]

your skill setup is more offensive than mine, skipping flame ward for a rotational firebrand buff. you're also going for mana arc, which i tested recently and found it wasn't worth it, since, due to mana issues without Critical Mana, you give up chain lightning convergence in LB for more spark charges from that skill. You also give up Rune Sap in mana strike which is actually a huge %inc dmg source with 5+ attacks per sec and a buff that lasts 4 sec.

I'm not sure why you are going for the cold conversion for higher damage on LB when LB does 1% of the damage on the build. By doing that you also remove some of your shock access, and since you didn't convert frostclaw you also don't have shock there. You are getting a small amount of shock from from Enchant Weapon, and most of it from the Ocearon which is fine, but while that ring is nice, I don't see why you wouldn't just double red ring since they are fairly easy to get once you hit rank 12 CoF (I got 3 of them in 3/4 of a level (99.25->100). Especially if this is for HC.

Decayed skull is totally fine. A defense option, but Barbute is half offense half defense with the ward gen, so I think it's fine, even for HC. Also DoTs will do significantly less damage in S2, so it is less valuable than before.

[unreal blade]

the dex crit is solely for mana strike melee crit, for critical mana node. It also helps in early game get your crit up for spells too, but eventually you are way over spell cap, but if you use critical mana, you need melee crit too and this is an easy source.

[unreal blade]

Chain Lighting does work for indirect casts. Arcing Power does not (and specifically says so).

[feral birch]

so for the "celestial precision" if mana is above 50 then we will have roughly 100% crit chance on mana strike

just with passives and helmet

[unreal blade]

10% mana = 1% MS crit, 50% mana = 5% MS crit, 100% mana = 10% MS crit (all crit figures are flat crit before %inc crit)

so you want to float high mana all the time. the lower your mana goes the more likely your mana will spiral into a problem.

[feral birch]

oh that makes way more sense, thanks for the explanation

is there any reason to use 'critical mana' over just 'arcanist blade'? same mana and can save us from a crit chance spiral

[unreal blade]

critical mana is not affected by the 80% reduction from teleporting strikes.

[feral birch]

that's what i figured, thanks for confirming!

[weary hamlet]

is it? That's the SO brand build right? Depending on the more damage node in SO which is getting nerfed?

also apparently it's based on yet another bug which is liable to get fixed at any moment pepega jpg

cause even from quick math the damage output isn't mathing

[weary hamlet]

lol forgot where I am for a moment, see you in 5 years when it's still not fixed

[tidal scarab]

It feels like Mage got shafted again with season 2.

[harsh abyss]

Well "any moment" includes a lot of moments into the future

Nah, mages are fine, the only build that really got nuked was the spark charge one

which is fair

[tidal scarab]

Atleast Spellblade (the worst single player mage class)

[weary hamlet]

sb didn't change much, hard to call that "shafted", the two builds you have are still kinda decent

[tidal scarab]

Sorc and Runemaster are getting full tree reworks. Spellblade which was arguably the worst of the 3 is getting a slight damage buff on 2 abilities...

That does feel like a shaft

[weary hamlet]

rm is not getting a "full tree rework" and never had

sb got a lot more tree updates than rm ever did

[tidal scarab]

Runemaster and Sorc are listed in the patch notes as getting updated trees

[weary hamlet]

sorc update was comparable in scope but arguably better in numbers although it's hard to say given how nearly all current sorc builds are based on one of two or three busted nodes/interactions

[tidal scarab]

I haven't played mage since first season, but I looked at the arena and level up leader boards, and mage is still very low as far as play is concerned

[weary hamlet]

mage doesnt have any of the key exploits to get far in arena like minion snapshotting

[tidal scarab]

Spellblade does decent in 4 player content, and sorc in 2 player, but noone solo above arena 40

[weary hamlet]

arena is not indicative of anything whatsoever, you are now dumber for having looked at the ladder

[harsh abyss]

Arena is a terrible judge of actually viability in the game though. All 3 of the mage masteries have builds that have no problem clearing the endgame content.

[tidal scarab]

There isn't another way to track how well a class is doing

[weary hamlet]

kinda true but arena ladder is worse than nothing

[tidal scarab]

Nothing is worse than something

nothing means there is no feedback

[weary hamlet]

not when "something" is actively misleading and not representative of the rest of the game even in a best case scenario

[harsh abyss]

Also, just because nothing else is shown to players doesn't mean that they aren't tracking a lot of data that we don't see. They probably have telemetry catching players as they push through corruption to see how far different builds go.

Stuff like that

"Can it kill the pinnacle boss" is a much better judge of how viable builds are than "is it high on the arena ladder"

[proper hawk]

yeah not doing well in arena doesn't really mean anything at all, it could mean the class has issues or it could just mean that it isn't well suited to that content while dominating everything else

[harsh abyss]

Also as Ashunava mentioned, there's broken stuff like minion snapshotting in arenas that allows certain builds to go crazy, and mage doesn't have those things.

[tidal scarab]

Yes, Mage is the only non-minion class. I don't quite know what snapshotting it, but I assume it is a bug of some form based on how you are talking about it.

[harsh abyss]

It's not a bug, but it's a technical situation that they intend to remove eventually.

TL:DR minions "snapshot" their stats when summoned. So if you equip a ton of minion-focused gear and then summon your minions, you can then swap gear sets to make yourself more powerful and your minions will keep all their power.

[tidal scarab]

Awe that equipment thing

[harsh abyss]

It effectively lets you equip 2 sets of gear while playing until you load a new zone, it's super broken.

[tidal scarab]

Yeah, I actually did sort of hear about that. It also is stupid that you can unequip minion skills after summoning them.

[harsh abyss]

And every other class can do it except mage, because mage has no minions.

Yeah, it sucks and is dumb, but it's in the game so people do it. It doesn't technically break anything, but it's bleh.

[civic crescent]

is meteor more of single target or aoe damage? is it a good boss killer?

[weary hamlet]

it's both in direct cast builds, for belt now I guess it's more relegated to clear but we'll see

[tidal scarab]

I would consider what minion masteries are doing as "exploits" which should land them as bugs.

It is an exploit in how the game loop is not "adjusting" variables when the player's state changes

[harsh abyss]

It's probably not fixed because it'll be a lot of work to fix corectly. They can't just have all your minions update constantly whenever the player state changes because that would be a TON of server calls that would probably represent a big hit to performance.

[tidal scarab]

Its a low risk exploit that only affects stats with no risk of damaging the overall culture of the game

[harsh abyss]

I'm sure they'll fix it eventually, but for now it is what it is

[rapid hinge]

you know what, there's a solution to that

[tidal scarab]

The changes would probably only be local. I doubt they have server calls every second for every update.

[rapid hinge]

nerf every single minion in the game, to the point that you HAVE TO snapshot to get their intended power

[harsh abyss]

lol

Someone's been reading GGG patch notes

[rapid hinge]

and then every minion player and their grandma will cry

😂

real fix to snapshot would prob take an enormous amount of resources at this point

if it's easy to do they've done it already and we wouldnt have it running rampant for 5 yerars

[tidal scarab]

You just need change listeners for minion stats tbh, so it wouldn't trigger unless your minion stat actually changed.

[harsh abyss]

The worst part is that it's probably embedded in their core system somewhere, so refactoring it is going to mean refactoring the way things work at a fundamental level

[rapid hinge]

then how do you know it it's changed or not?

you have to make polling call no?

[tidal scarab]

When your stat changes, it can place an event on the bus

The event bus should already be getting polled every iteration of the game loop

[harsh abyss]

I mean, that assumes that there's a system in place that allows that in the first place, particularly regarding minions.

It might just... not exist because it isn't needed elsewhere.

[tidal scarab]

There should be for player stats

[rapid hinge]

i'm actually not against minion snapshotting

[harsh abyss]

I am

[tidal scarab]

They atleast have it for resistances (due to enemies being able to shred resistances mid fight)

[rapid hinge]

but they have to make it so that snapshotting wont make it drastically more powerful

but i guess balancing everything around that kind of philosophy

will even be more headache than actually fixing the snapshot lol

[weary hamlet]

yea like that one time when blizzard decided to change the standard bag size in wow and their game would literally not launch after changing one line of code

spent a month trying to fix it and then just said fu ck it

[harsh abyss]

"It's just comments" - famous last words

[rapid hinge]

the technique was just not there at that time

[weary hamlet]

following this logic every exploit should be legalized

and that ain't great

[tidal scarab]

Minion Snapshotting is an exploit. Exploits are bad. This is just a non-urgent exploit, since, it doesn't affect other players (so long as you are not partying with them)

[rapid hinge]

arent every exploits legal already?

if they are illegal they would just be crime no?

[tidal scarab]

Legal, technically yes, but good, no.

Some are illegal

Such as exploits to access other peoples bank accounts

[rapid hinge]

in my mind exploit = things you do to take advantage of rule loophole, that is completely legal

[tidal scarab]

That is technically illegal, and the bank and bad actors are both held responsible.

[weary hamlet]

snapshotted your crows in a mono - got swatted

the american way

[tidal scarab]

I hate minion builds lol I tried necro and forge guard this patch, and didn't enjoy either of the classes.

Maybe I should try my Void Mage (knight) build again. It was fun in 1.0.

[hard orbit]

what are we building this patch lads?

[tidal scarab]

Prob gonna try Firebrand Spellblade again (1 of the 2 skills being buffed)
If I don't enjoy it, I'll either jump onto Warlock or Pali/Void (Pali as Lightning Banner | Void as Spellcaster)

(Excited that I don't have to feel isolated with a Mastery anymore)

[weary hamlet]

meme shit of course

[brisk hull]

Haven't played since 1.0 (where I managed to unlock empowered monoliths as sword summon forgeguard which was miracle)

From your experience and the new patch notes, Is it viable to run glacier sorc homebrew build and still be viable for empowered monoliths? Not super high corruption, but at least be able to complete them.

[weary hamlet]

pretty much anything is viable at lower levels of corruption

no reason why your glacier build won't, glacier is a fairly reasonable skill all things considered

[hard orbit]

man, I miss frostclaw-ing non stop like an idiot, what have they done to it... 😭

[weary hamlet]

nothing? they only significantly nerfed the spark charge version by removing the spark charges from it, but let's face it, that build was dumb

[hard orbit]

Isn't it unsustainable, mana-wise, to spam FC now?

[weary hamlet]

it had always been unsustainable without investment, and I don't remember anything changing in this regard

but I might have missed it

[tribal veldt]

Do we have any numbers for this ancient relic of a skill node

[idle shard]

Maybe they'll insert a midcycle patch to buff Meteor to be top-tier right

[weary hamlet]

what numbers do you mean here? It kinda says what it does

[half summit]

how viable would static orb be? does it require specific uniques to work, anyone played around with it?

[weary hamlet]

it just got nerfed (again) so the judgment is out, might still be somewhat viable

[half summit]

what was the nerf? i think i missed it in the patch notes

[tribal veldt]

"losing a large amount of mana" - how much? A flat amount or a percentage?
"your other skills cost more mana" - same question

[weary hamlet]

I don't remember offhand but iirc it sets you to -100% of your mana pool negative

[tribal veldt]

👀 that's... potentially useful

[fervent ledge]

They should put corruption leader boards

[radiant vessel]

They plan to iirc

not in season 2 though I don't think

tbh it would promote going above the corruption you realistically should so maybe it wouldn't be the best idea tbh

Like yea it'd be super cool for anyone trying to compete but it'd also make some people who normally wouldn't compete push higher than they maybe should. It's a protect the player from themselves type thing but honestly Imo it's worth putting in still

[fossil ibex]

The reason i kind of stopped playing after official release was because there was no point to go higher into corruption, leaderboard would make it fun

It'd also give people a reason to play "off meta", like I loved spellblade it was just inefficient, if htere was a leaderboard for it, it'd have made sense

[slim furnace]

i saw someone using the black hole doing more ignites the more fire res u got etc

and blowing it up with enchant wep

is that the only good way to play fire dots sorc?

[weary hamlet]

tbh I don't think that it's better than ignite via frost claw, volcanic orb, or even fireball. Also disintegrate is a fire dot spell although it's not an ailment build

[slim furnace]

hmkay, ive made a planner but im not sure how much i can believe in it lol

also feel like meteor black hole might be bait since theres no way to reduce the cost

[weary hamlet]

it's always been kinda bait

[slim furnace]

i was looking more at work considering maybe running fire surge instead of teleport to detonate the ignites but idk if that beats tp in general

[weary hamlet]

you can kinda reduce the cost by 20% with the sorc passive

[slim furnace]

im thinking like

it will suck to lose the craterborn stuff

and meteors stunning could be some defensive layer

but like

[weary hamlet]

also surge is SB exclusive just in case

[slim furnace]

idk

isnt it 5 pointer for sb

[weary hamlet]

its 40

5 is flame reave

[slim furnace]

ah mb

i meant

flame rush

idk tho doing a lot of flip flopping

i just saw black hole was buffed and i got interested

tho

i coulda done a cold version

just saw the node buffs and i was like oh i shud try 😮

[tough plaza]

Frozen orb when

[weary hamlet]

cold VO is a thing

[full bluff]

I am going for frozen orb this season, something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOCb3YT_ZA

[quasi carbon]

is shatter strike spellblade like one of the strongest mage builds?

[weary hamlet]

probably not the strongest but it's decently strong, without delving into the weeds, A tier

[quasi carbon]

which mage builds u think are stronger?

[weary hamlet]

idk havent been following mage meta for a while and the obvious top choices were all just nerfed

frostbite frost claw or something I guess

ask frozen sentinel he's your guy for meta

[quasi carbon]

okay, @proven haven what do u think about mage meta in 1.2? what build(s) gonna be performing best in ur opinion

[slim furnace]

how do you calculate ward retention

like if i got 100%

is it like double my life

or some other calc

[weary hamlet]

the ward decay formula should be listed in-game in the guide

https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/ward

[slim furnace]

hmkay

seems like with the unfinished planner (like no defensive suffixes) i get like 900 ward

like no lowering down

stable ward? not sure how to call it

how does the like X skill does more dmg against ignited/shocked etc ennemy work

for dots

do the ignites get the increase in dmg too?

also how does the nova skill work, is it purely fire if u go the fire route then if u pick a 2nd element it becomes mixed dmg or alternates between the 2?

[proven haven]

Idk the shatter strike thing looks good. I'm not in CT though so I can't say for certain.

There's a chance my autobomber build ends up being good but it's still a wildcard

[quasi carbon]

whats CT?

[weary hamlet]

closed/community test

that said I was sure that you are in Frozen

[slim furnace]

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

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (78) / Runemaster (15)

General:

▸ Health: 1,194, Regen: 24.8/s
▸ Mana: 374.7, Regen: 16.16/s
▸ Ward Retention: 136%, Regen: 65/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 1 Dex / 32 Int / 1 Att / 9 Vit
▸ Resistances: 165% / 0% / 15% / 26% / 38% / 35% / 9%
▸ EHP: 1,436 / 821 / 898 / 1,027 / 1,048 / 1,026 / 865

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 239
▸ Armor Mitigation: 18% (623)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 23%

Damage Types:

▸ Fire, Cold / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Fireball (22)
• Black Hole (27)
• Frost Wall (22)
• Flame Rush (22)
• Flame Ward (22)

Used unique items:

• Cinder Song
• The Cuckoo
• Unstable Core
• Fiery Dragon Shoes
• Strands of Souls
• Ashes of Mortality
• Rule of the Simoon
• Soulfire

[slim furnace]

i probs got too much mana regen for how much things will cost tho but eh

[unreal blade]

the spellblade passive tree is quite good, borderline fantastic. i would like to see all the fire aura stuff condensed so it doesn't take up the entire top lane though. spellblade also has a number of endgame builds, but yeah it's not ever going to be amazing at arena due to how its mechanics work.

[unreal blade]

for boss killing yes, nothing else is remotely close. it is a glass cannon though, so be ready to die a lot.

[novel heath]

any disintegrate enjoyer? Is ignivar's head a must?

[weary hamlet]

idk after the nerf, maybe at very good and specific gear

last time I played it it was a downgrade or a wash at my gear level

and it was a gear level that I killed aby with so not excessively low by any stretch of imagination

[tidal scarab]

Flame Reave/Spreading Flames are good for mobbing but bad at bossing
Firebrand is just a worst Shatterblade sadly for bossing.

Spellblade wants to do crit, but typically has to focus on DOT due to lack in damage.

DOT damage means you aren't killing things immediately which is why you can die easily as a glass cannon.

[unreal blade]

the best version of shatter strike is crit 🤔

[tidal scarab]

It use to be Frostbite

So that probably changed in one of the patches I didn't play in

Only crit build I ever saw work in 1.0 was the Lightning one

[unreal blade]

if it's been a while since you've played, you might want to refrain from declarative statements.

[tidal scarab]

My declarative statements might not be up to date, but I'm not forcing them. Crit was always a build path.

[plain garnet]

Firebrand is, imo, better used as a stacking buff you use for other skills, especially spells. 90 crit multi and 30 flat spell fire damage is pretty noteworthy

[unreal blade]

spell proc spark charge is a happy middle ground with good clear, solid single target, and great defenses.

[inner oriole]

Theres an incredible amount of melee damage, speed and crit on spellblade. It definitely doesnt rely on DoT only

[abstract scaffold]

Can confirm. Made an uber geared frostbite shatterstrike build and did a few mil per tick, then saw others doing 10x as much with crit

[tidal scarab]

That's nice. I should play my legacy blade a bit then to see if I can get something to work.

[plain garnet]

I am determined to make some jank proc-based spellblade work with Essence Weaver, even if it isn't "good"

[weary hamlet]

that's definitely not true, spellblade is a lot more geared toward hit damage than dot, I'm not even sure you can have a decent dot build on it

other than that meme disintegrate spellblade that some guy suggested a couple days ago

now that's sure S tier memeing but I doubt that it's actually a good build

[tidal scarab]

Does Warden passive still depend on Reactive Ward passive proccing?

[weary hamlet]

until they nerfed the (largely unintended) icicle shotgunning

[weary hamlet]

never had

[weary hamlet]

SS is built for crit, surge is built for crit, flame reave is built for crit, meme as it is, any proc build is built for crit

[novel heath]

yep, so maybe better to play aroung lightning and proc lightning blast for more damage? btw i' ve done a build trying to use ignivar but maybe it consumes too much mana
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BaKJLWzA

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (33) / Sorcerer (14) / Runemaster (66)

General:

▸ Health: 1,537, Regen: 99.52/s
▸ Mana: 412.37, Regen: 22/s
▸ Ward Retention: 194%, Regen: 80/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 1 Dex / 76 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 15% / 12% / 15% / 82% / 82% / 83% / 83%
▸ EHP: 1,244 / 1,221 / 1,244 / 2,211 / 1,991 / 1,991 / 1,991

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 307
▸ Armor Mitigation: 27% (1,230)

Damage Types:

▸ Lightning, Fire / Spell, DoT

Buffs:

▸ None

Used skills:

• Disintegrate (27)
• Glyph of Dominion (25)
• Static Orb (23)
• Flame Ward (23)
• Focus (23)

Used unique items:

• Triboelectra
• Ignivar's Head
• Knowledge of an Erased Mage
• Apex of Thought
• Liath's Signet

[weary hamlet]

idk I still see no point in all these proc nodes in disintegrate, if you are scaling the main skill you are stacking dot damage and none of those skills are dot based, if you try to maximize those procs then its just way too few spells

[weary hamlet]

lightning must be a lot more viable now that its buffed by functionally 50% but I'm more interested in the buffed glass cannon

also your disintegrate tree isnt terrible but not converting to either element looks like an obvious mistake

the problem here is that a lot of synergies want you to build lightning on rm, mainly for ward gen/defenses, but then you will be hard pressed to stack enough mana pool for it not to turbo suck on damage

[harsh abyss]

I could see proccing lightning blast to get free lightning aegis, if nothing else

[kind blade]

Anyone knows why volatile ice almost doubles the tooltip of shatter strike? Level 40 atm. It doesnt' seem to add too much damage when reading the item.

[weary hamlet]

fire misses out on many of those and you are better off playing it on sorc I feel, but at least its damage output is reasonable below like 2-3k mana

[weary hamlet]

vial of volatile ice?

[kind blade]

ye

[weary hamlet]

must be the frostbite chance, tooltips are generally very inaccurate

unless you are trying to build the old frostbite SS which is pretty bad now after the bug fix, not playing dual wield is a mistake

[kind blade]

Yeah but with such a huge increase, it is just frostbite?

[weary hamlet]

dont trust the tooltip

it probably thinks, hmm, what is the reasonable number of targets you can hit with shatter strike? let's count that at 200 and sum up all those frostbites

or something

[kind blade]

Yeah I know tooltips are quite inaccurate but looks weird that it would scale it that much

That could explain it

Just doing some test runs before next patch, to get the feel of some skills

[weary hamlet]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm acktchually I think I found the only reason for existence of the static orb node in disintegrate

jeez this is gonna be the disintegrate meta guys

after ZI BUFFS

now we just need to find a good way to stack 2k mana on runemaster without compromising any other stat

and a use for said mana since our disintegrate costs nothing

it's also based on a bug

[harsh abyss]

Make LB expensive to make it apply brand of deception?

[weary hamlet]

no just use static orb

cause I just checked and it seems that the imposition of order bug is still not fixed

there you go 100% more damage for free

[harsh abyss]

How so?

[weary hamlet]

lb but expensive for brand of deception is its own build

it doesnt need to use disintegrate

wait no I misread it, it wont give you 100% more to disintegrate, sadge

[plain garnet]

Damage taken as mana before health?

[weary hamlet]

still adds unreasonable amounts of more to brand itself

[weary hamlet]

yea but what do we drop to pick it up

[plain garnet]

No idea.

[weary hamlet]

possibly nothing, just use the helm, weaver relic and two idols

that's gonna be over 50% at high rolls

and we get all the free ward from gon runes

actually that makes me think of rolling it to check

the only problem is that lightning disintegrate is even more points starved than fire

[feral birch]

am i understanding penetration correctly, does 25pen equate to double damage (ignoring everything else)?

[harsh abyss]

No

[unreal blade]

it would be 25% "more" damage if there are no other sources of pen or resistance shred

[weary hamlet]

1% pen = 1% more damage as a rule of thumb

[unreal blade]

can you collect your thoughts on this and restate? not really following. something about disintegrate, static orb and brand of deception?

[harsh abyss]

TL:DR Static Orb has a ton of "More" damage, which translates to subskills like Brand of Deception. That makes the brand end up doing a crazy amount of damage

[unreal blade]

sure but static orb's more multiplier based on mana got nerfed in S2

also it's quite a bit less than what runic invocation can do

[feral birch]

so if i do 100 damage and mobs have 75 res, then 25% pen does not reduce their res to 50% but instead does something else

[harsh abyss]

Mobs have default 0 res

[unreal blade]

mobs rarely have resistance in LE

it'll say in the rare affixes below their name

[feral birch]

oh, even bosses?

[unreal blade]

no bosses have resistance as far as i know

[weary hamlet]

sure but we are building disintegrate, not RI. Obviously RI right now has one of the highest multipliers available, that's not the point

[feral birch]

oh , okay thanks. that expalins why i way over valued pen lol

[unreal blade]

they are adding some high resist mobs in the tombs/cemeteries i believe

[weary hamlet]

if you just want to abuse brand of deception, there is hardly any reason to go disintegrate at all, tons of other skills work much better for it

[unreal blade]

well you were kinda doing a stream of consciousness thing up there. i couldn't really follow 😄

are you talking about a disintegrate build with high mana and no channel cost, triggering static orbs every 3 sec to apply brand of deception?

[feral birch]

does high mean like 20?

[unreal blade]

probably much higher

but we don't know the details

[feral birch]

so pen will be very useful for those

almost mandatory

[weary hamlet]

don't worry, neither could I!

[weary hamlet]

well basically back in 1.1 you needed to have a really outrageous mana pool to overcome the base less damage modifier on the lightning conversion branch, now that it was slashed from 60% less to 40% less, you are handicapping yourself a lot less. Although since your main damage skill still has no mana cost, it's not clear what to do with that amount of mana that you will be stacking for it

which is a shame because a lot of synergies in the RM tree really push you to play it in lightning, mainly the still not nerfed ward per second per gon rune affixes, and a few others

fire disintegrate is very lacking in RM for instance

and the non-dot skill procs in disintegrate tree which we were discussing earlier don't really do anything at all in fire builds, but in lightning it can be used to proc brand of deception, which is still currently bugged to high heavens, which must have been the developers' original intent when they designed the tree

which is really hilarious since it seriously does nothing in fire

[unreal blade]

mana stack disintegrate static orb trigger BoD sounds pretty neat. instead of relying solely on BoD, you get disintegrate scaling along side. only issue is the 3 sec delay to actually trigger the SO hit to get BoD active.

[weary hamlet]

although the above point still stands that there is no reason to go disintegrate if your goal is just to abuse the bug on brand of deception, I'm pretty sure that you can push it to like 150-200k ticks with good gear against real mobs

which I guess is not game breaking to any real degree but it's still hilarious

[weary hamlet]

sure that's still an issue

but I guess that it's better than playing fire in sorc and scraping the bottom of the barrel for survivability

[jaunty osprey]

Is mage still good or reroll for sentinel?

[feral birch]

mage is still awesome

[weary hamlet]

mage is still good but sent just got reworked, why wouldn't you reroll to it

also the sent rework has way too many things that are way too obviously dumb, play it before it's nerfed

[scenic sail]

In v1.2 I would not be surprised if mage is the weakest overall class. They’ve nerfed int, static orb, glacier and frost claw. It was already one of the weaker classes, now it’s most likely the weakest.

[weary hamlet]

thats only cause warlock is on aco, without it aco is class 404 not found

necro and lich stonks not stonking

[plain garnet]

Mage definitely weakest class in 1.2, but should still be fine

[mystic sierra]

When y'all say weakest, give me a comparison. Like can it still complete all endgame/pinnacle content? Is it going to feel like a struggle beyond a certain point (if so what point)? Or is it like "not at the absolute top so it's at the bottom" sorta deal?

[weary hamlet]

I'm pretty sure that the better mage builds will still be able to do uberroth, and ole normal aby is getting nerfed too

for these guys anything that doesn't clear 2-5k corruption without a monitor is a bad build

[tidal scarab]

This is prob my baseline for what I'd aim for with Firebrand in 1.2, currently
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QkVKmL3A

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Tombs of the Erased / 1.2

Class:

Mage (32) / Spellblade (81)

General:

▸ Health: 1,256, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 110.71, Regen: 8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 172%, Regen: 179/s
▸ Attributes: 1 Str / 73 Dex / 30 Int / 1 Att / 1 Vit
▸ Resistances: 152% / 87% / 86% / 87% / 78% / 93% / 79%
▸ EHP: 4,106 / 4,106 / 4,106 / 4,285 / 4,106 / 4,106 / 4,106

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 251
▸ Dodge Chance: 68% (3413)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 13% (357)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 186%

Damage Types:

▸ Fire / Melee, Spell

Buffs:

▸ Enchant Weapon (Passive)

Used skills:

• Firebrand (22)
• Frost Claw (20)
• Flame Ward (20)
• Enchant Weapon (20)
• Surge (20)

Used unique items:

None

[plain garnet]

Mage builds, if well constructed, will 100% be able to do all endgame content, they'll just require a much higher gear investment to do so versus other good class builds.

[tidal scarab]

That is my "realistically what should I target early on" during season 2. How does it look?

Fire still has the least support sadly passive-wise and itemization wise after looking through the options in 1.2 on Tools.

But I still want to see if I can get it to work compared to what I did in Season 1.0

[plain garnet]

Could always convert Firebrand to lightning for shock and other item support

[junior coral]

well i hope at least one Runemister build is very good in launch

[tidal scarab]

If I went for lightning, it would make it difficult to get the Kindling and Inflame upgrades without a T7 Firebrand Level Increase

Which the build still needs, even with Fire being the focus

[plain garnet]

Sure, I suppose. Your gear above is easily achievable, and there are a ton of uniques that could get you to higher levels (or T7 firebrand, as mentioned)

[tidal scarab]

Yeah, that is just a baseline build. Not my final

I don't even have seals on the items in it. They are just Rare with T5 passives.

[plain garnet]

One thing you may want to consider is Clotho's Needle. Feels like it might play very nicely with Firebrand.

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

[tidal scarab]

That would be a good item. My only complaint is I'd have to waste the guaranteed T7 on Attack Speed xD

[plain garnet]

Can't even force attack speed, it's a weaver's will item

[tidal scarab]

Ah

[plain garnet]

But if you find a good one and it ends up with a solid aspd roll, could be fun

[tidal scarab]

Thought it was a regular unique.

Thank you for the recommendation

That would remove the need for taking Dual Wield Passive

[plain garnet]

Having block converted to parry is also a really interesting defensive option

[tidal scarab]

I know Dex affects Dodge (my current planned main), but does it also affect Parry?

[plain garnet]

Nah, just dodge.

That said, I don't know how possible it is to get good block chance on a mage without a shield on

[harsh abyss]

I was thinking of using it with a Sentinel for exactly that reason

you lose out on the distance mostly, but like... 85% parry chance? Don't mind if I do

[plain garnet]

Parry is also perfect damage avoidance, unlike block

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

[tidal scarab]

I don't think its possible to get good block without a shield at all. Block is only on rings outside of a shield

There looks like a new passive on gloves

[plain garnet]

Seems not worth on mage. Sentinel, though

[tidal scarab]

Specifically Forge Guard

Able to carry two-handed with shield now

[harsh abyss]

though that item wouldn't work with a shield, so... 🤷‍♀️

Probably not FG

[tidal scarab]

Item is a 2 handed, so I think FG would be the only Sentinal that could closely maximize its potential

[next horizon]

Any lightning blast self cast enjoyer ? Is it playable ?

[plain garnet]

The other fun item to consider with Clotho's is Titan Heart, if you can find a solid 2LP one. Flat 15% less damage taken is no joke

[harsh abyss]

I'll be doing channeled LB to start. It should be good, but I'm not gonna recommend it until I make sure the bug is fixed and it feels good

[harsh abyss]

Vilatria Reforged stonks

[next horizon]

I wanna selfcast it with double & quadruple cast

seems fun but idk how it scales

vs boss etc

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, that build has always been amazing vs bosses if you use convergence for single target

then you can use static orb or something else to clear packs

[next horizon]

but then u have no clear xd

[harsh abyss]

Yep, you gotta make the choice there

[weary hamlet]

we were smoking the channeled lightning blast yesterday in this channel, it's gonna be mid but it was completely unplayable before

[harsh abyss]

Clear is generally a lot easier to get than single target

[weary hamlet]

if you just build self cast direct damage lb you can spec convergence and use static orb with orbit for clear

[harsh abyss]

For mages at least

[next horizon]

nice but I wanna rly self cast it non channeled

like arc in poe

but idk if it can be viable

[next horizon]

whats the usual plan to scale that ,

mana ?

[weary hamlet]

if you go with lb, then cast speed, crit stats, increased lightning, etc

[next horizon]

sorcerer ?

[weary hamlet]

SO builds usually stacked mana (before the s2 nerf) but that's not very relevant for you in that type of build that mostly leans on LB since LB has no mana scaling

sure

should be better than RM for this kind of a generic build

[next horizon]

RM too complicated for me anw aha

Ok thanks !

for HC its still ward meta ?

[weary hamlet]

RM is not complicated unless you try to do something really unusual with your invocations, most RM builds are very similar to any other build of any other class

no idea I dont play HC cause I don't fancy getting butthurt over dying to random lag

[next horizon]

its very hard to plan which thing gonna perform best

@weary hamlet Ive just seen battlemage's endeavour seems a cool way to play lightning blast

[weary hamlet]

idk it's consistently been bad and will likely stay that way

if you want a melee build triggering LB take a look at Dagorath's (sp?) claw, that one is actually used in some SB builds and it's good

but I think I'll be playing spellblade on my paladin in the next patch, the proc build looks kinda decent

[next horizon]

spellblade on paladin I miss something

[harsh abyss]

Well endeavor did get buffed, 75% chance isnt nothing. Plus, it doesnt have a per second cap like dragoraths

[next horizon]

thats why

and spellblade passives are rly good

tankiness & dmg wise

u can proc it with mana strike from distance

seems rly good

[harsh abyss]

Slap t7 AS on it and go for a focal blast LB build for max More damage. Might be something there

[next horizon]

what is focal blast ?

ooooh seems nice

that or convergence idk

its so small focal blast tho @harsh abyss

[turbid carbon]

I normally play a fireball DoT sorc build. Any think it will still be decent during Season 2?

[warped umbra]

do I need to cast frost claw dirrectly or can it works if frostclaw is created with firebrand?

[harsh abyss]

Convergence womt be as good because you arent direct casting LB for additional chains

[harsh abyss]

Nope

Dont need to direct cast, works on any FC crit

[warped umbra]

thanks man !

[clever hawk]

With brand of deception, does the lightning skill I apply it with scale it the same way any other ailment is scaleD?

like with the attribute scaling/more damage nodes?

[harsh abyss]

Yep, thats why people have always used Static Orb for it, because it had ALL the More modifiers

[clever hawk]

would that also include the penetration from a skill tree? i'd assume so

[harsh abyss]

Your guess is as good as mine, but I assume so too

[wary goblet]

With Static, are automated LB casts from Overload considered "discharges"?

[harsh abyss]

I don't think so, "discharge" refers to when you activate the skill to discharge all the charges

[wary goblet]

That's what I assumed but couldn't find any clarifications anywhere

[harsh abyss]

#👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message Mana Arc should convert to cold with Mana Strike. Add that to the list for funzies with cold convert mana strike builds.

[wild nymph]

sorry for double post guys

if im using a melee fire attack and have 100% increased melee dmg and 100% increased fire dmg, will it result in 200% increased dmg for that attack dmg calculation? (not taking attribute scaling into account ofc)

[tight bloom]

Is there a way to make a good build with black hole as a main skill?

[wild nymph]

anything can be good with enough investment

[harsh abyss]

Correct all sources of Increased damage are additive

[wild nymph]

#🔪┃rogue message

This shouldnt be legal, according to character sheet every dmg type gets increased

Unless im interpreting it wrong

[scenic sail]

Black Hole is getting double the damage effectiveness and a few bug fixes iirc, so we have to see how that plays out with the new patch. No one knows yet.

[wild nymph]

Its funny how there are "no one knows yet" people and "ima do a heart seeker build in build planner and show everyone" people
ppHop

[tight bloom]

I saw some ignite black hole builds, but more interested in collapse version which I didn't find any builds with

[harsh abyss]

It will increase all damage types, but only once. It wont double dip for a melee fire skill.

[harsh abyss]

Some quick maths: Battlemage's Endeavor will be better than Dragorath's Claw (on average) once you pass 4 attacks per second. That's when you'll be proccing more than 3 lightning blasts per second on average, so the lack of limit.

To get there using Mana Strike, you'll have to get around 165% increased attack speed, which will be easily doable without having attack speed on items other than BE. If you have T7 attack speed on it with a decent roll (90%+), all the attack speed from the mage and spellblade passive trees (30%) as well as Enchant Weapon (50%), you'll already be at or above it.

Interestingly, you don't really need to be a spellblade for it. The main bonus of Spellblade is that you can dual wield, but since you're using a 2H weapon, you could go Sorcerer or RM, which could provide interesting/good bonuses that Spellblade can't.

[clever hawk]

Manacharged grants 2% of maximum mana as additional mana cost per point (from 4%). It can now only grant up to 100 additional mana cost from this effect (from no limit).
Overcharged Detonation grants 1% more orb hit damage per mana cost (from 2%).

So the overcharged detonation is a nerf obviously, but the manacharged change is a buff right? they didn't decrease the scaling for damage?

[harsh abyss]

No, it's also a nerf becasue they capped the extra mana cost at 100

Stacking up crazy mana cost was part of the thing that made it do absurd damage

[clever hawk]

i'm unsure as to how? the sorcerer mastery node caps out? what let you scale mana cost to damage?

unless it's specifically overcharged detonation?

[harsh abyss]

Manacharged used to have no limit on max mana

and you paired it with overcharged detonation

[clever hawk]

is it still playable? or was that the bulk of the damage?

[harsh abyss]

It won't be as much of a "one shot the boss" mechanic, but it should still be functional.

Instead of casting it 2-3 times per entire mana bar, you can cast it like 10-20 times

But it'll obviously do way less damage

[clever hawk]

i was gonna do a brand of deception build, I was tryna find the best damage spell to apply it

I thought ele nova was the best but i'm pretty sure the penetration node doesn't work on ailments

[harsh abyss]

Static orb is still probably the best applicator

even after all the nerfs

[tidal scarab]

In Spellblade tree, it has a node that says "Fire Pen for Ignite" so I think that is correct** @clever hawk

[clever hawk]

well the ele nova says "elemental nova hits pen resistance" the "hits" part being what makes me sad.

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, probably doesn't work with DoTs

Ele nova isn't great for dots in general

You might be able to find a good Invocation for it though for Runic Invocation

[tidal scarab]

Yeah, looked at the node. That is just elemental pen

You casting nova ignore a percentage of enemy resistance essentially

[clever hawk]

the only reason i was looking at it was because brand doesn't stack anyway

so it just matters how hard i hit and the aoe being large, rather than applying lots of stacks

[harsh abyss]

yeah, ele nova is more of a spam spell though

[tidal scarab]

You could always test it on an arena dummy @clever hawk

[clever hawk]

I got interested because the set crown that gives shock chance for int can now be put on a normal not trash helmet lol

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, I'd say Vilatria meteor could be a good applicator, but you can't spec into it as a RM unfortunately.

And the base damage effectiveness doesn't matter for DoTs

[clever hawk]

well i was just looking for the most % more damage mods lol

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, even the nerfed static orb is probably your best bet

[clever hawk]

i think the pen from ele nova works...

which means you get 70% ele pen..

it certainly looks like it works

[harsh abyss]

That's not bad, but it's effectively 70% More damage

A lot of the ele nova "more" modifiers won't work, like Shatter Nova

[harsh abyss]

Someone was saying earlier that some things are coded as "part" of the main skill instead of being hit-related so they work even though the wording doesn't match if they shouldn't

But it's very hit or miss what those things are. It might be that penetration is one of those things that always works even when it specifies "hit"

[unreal blade]

runic invocation has the strongest modifiers as far as i've found.

[clever hawk]

this game certainly has a few wording hangups lol

[clever hawk]

which invocation is best?

[harsh abyss]

It's still a LOT better than it has been in the past, heh

[unreal blade]

for single target, covenant arc

[harsh abyss]

The best invocation is the one that you get naturally when you're doing whatever else the build is attempting to do

For me, it's Ball Lightning because I'm all lightning all the time

[unreal blade]

here's Frozen's video on it if you are curious https://youtu.be/pzYu5s_zrTI?si=p2uyXYbeFtlvNDsd

[brave perch]

I love playing mage / sorc builds. What's gonna be a build I won't regret playing. My first time playing LE and I want to do all the content before feeling like I need to reroll. Will mage/sorc cover it all. Can you respect your mastery?

[harsh abyss]

In S2 you can respec mastery, so no worries there

Honestly, just play skills that sound cool. As long as you undersand basic gearing/building principles (flat damage, increased damage, more damage, etc), you'll be able to figure it out. Basically all skills that seem like they should be able to be built around can.

LE is the best ARPG to experiment with stuff and play what you like, because EHG believes that all skills should be viable.

[brave perch]

Alright cool, that's reaffirming. I haven't played LE yet. This is first time. Hence, not really wanting to feel underpowered and struggle through end game. I want to be able to blast.

[twilit gyro]

I started LE recently. Had no clue, no guide. Just hopped in. Never felt "underpowered" as long as I read what my skills did and optimised my gear a bit and synergized affixes that I found throughout the campaign. Don't worry too much, enjoy the loot and hopefully you'll find a nice skill that you like 🙂

[harsh abyss]

Yep, messing around and trying stuff out will work until you get to the endgame stuff.

That gives you plenty of time to figure stuff out

As long as you understand stuff like "Spell damage makes spells do more damage", you'll be able to figure out most of the game 😝

IMO it's actually best to go in without guides, because then you're expecting to figure stuff out instead of be told how to do things. The different frame of mind makes it so it's fun to learn about the game. And even if you aren't optimizing perfectly, the early game is easy enough that you won't feel like it's a huge slog.

[fervent ledge]

How nerfed is brand of deception RM build

[unreal blade]

not nerfed

[fervent ledge]

Spark nerf don't lower DMG?

[unreal blade]

do you mean static orb?

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, static orb nerf nerfs the damage, but not to a point where it'll be bad

[fading snow]

does the life drain from low life cause lightning aegis to pop? and does it interact with ward at all?

[nimble shoal]

I don't think life drain affects lightning aegis. Yeah, ward is no different from health for the purposes of aegis.

[weary hamlet]

100% its not discharges, only activating the main static spell and expending charges counts as a "discharge"

[next horizon]

Surge ?

[weary hamlet]

yea pretty sure that stacking more modifiers for RI is gonna be the play for brand builds now

[weary hamlet]

every class will have builds capable of that

[empty hawk]

Hydra runemaster dead?

[weary hamlet]

it does but the core bug in imposition of order is not fixed

you can now replace orb with another spell with a ton of more modifiers i.e. RI

[harsh abyss]

Surge is good, but you're not really making use of bladeweaving, because even if you make surge cast LB, it doesn't get the bonuses there bcause it's just your focus blasts 🤷‍♀️. I'm not saying you can't go spellblade, but you don't have to if you want to try out options that are different

[next horizon]

Anw dead build for me

I like the chain thing and focal blast doesnt appeal me

[harsh abyss]

Fair

[next horizon]

Time to switch on chakram falconer

Thanks a lot for ur inputs tho

[empty hawk]

Any idea how i can scale area for my shatterstrike spellblade? Despite passives

[brave perch]

Alright that's good to know.

[frosty fox]

does runemaster basiclaly just have one spell that everyone uses? the hydrahedron?

[brave perch]

I have like, fear of picking a shit build and getting stuck like you do in poe easily, but a lot of people have mentioned LE isn't like that now, so that's good 🙂

[empty hawk]

Le has way more viable builds

[frosty fox]

definitely not like that, theres always gonna be builds that are better than others but you wont just get stuck

[brave perch]

Yeh, I understand there will always be that busted ass build. But as long as whatever I got with from the start, doesn't get me hardstuck that's good.

[brave perch]

Question, like PoE2. If I pick a class get to end game and want to swap, does it work the same. Where I can just choose my char and my end game stays?

[frosty fox]

im not sure what you mean by that

someone else might be better off answering that lol

[brave perch]

So in PoE I have like multiple characters. They all have equal access to the end game. I can map on any of them and progress endgame all the same. is LE like that?

[frosty fox]

i havent played since last season but not as far as i know. i think they are adding something in this next patch on the 17th that lets you progress towards the endgame a lot faster though

on your alts

[brave perch]

Right okay.

[frosty fox]

that must just be a poe2 thing, cause in poe1 which is what i played, that definitely wasnt a thing lol

[brave perch]

Pretty sure it's a poe thing in general. Maybe you're not understanding what I am meaning, all good.

[weary hamlet]

increased area/increased melee area affixes

[weary hamlet]

nah there are a few other invos that are widely used, not every invo build just spams hydra especially after hydra was (deservedly) nerfed

[weary hamlet]

you can respec easily in LE and gear is not nearly as narrow most of the time

[brave perch]

What about end game. If I play mage/sorc. But decide I want to play a new class/mastery entirely, how long to get it up to end game and does endgame span across different chars same as poe?

[weary hamlet]

more or less yes, they added further catch up to functionally skip normal monos in 1.2, the weaver progress is league wide, etc

[brave perch]

Cool, cause I looked up some other builds. There is two I wanted to play, but one is on mage and one is on WL and I can't decide lol

[weary hamlet]

see above, if you know what you are doing it's 4-5 hours to do the part of the campaign you need to, then you can go straight to one of the last normal monos, finish it and get to empowered, where you can use one of the new woven echoes to catch up on corruption if you wish

although you probably don't while your alt is still underleveled/undergeared

[empty hawk]

What body part supports that?

[weary hamlet]

uh amulet? gloves? I think?

[empty hawk]

Thanks

If i finish campaign i get straight sent to the last 3 normal monos u saying?

[weary hamlet]

that's a catch up mechanic for alts, if your main had unlocked empowered you can do that

on your first character gotta raw dog it the old way

[empty hawk]

Ah but at release we all have to unlock it righz?

Yea

Whats the fastest way to get to empowered?

Right side?

[weary hamlet]

yea left side monos dont do anything, they have the useless drop blessings

[finite cobalt]

No doubt plenty of builds will be enough for "regular endgame" (300 corruption > normal Abberroth), but the question is, will Mage have reasonable builds to attempt uber aberroth ? From what we've heard, he's extremely hard so it will probably require a busted build

[next horizon]

take anything that goes 15k ward

and u have ur build

ward busted in this game 😦

[ember tiger]

my dude, ward is nerfed

highly doubt youll have insane amounts of ward now just by existing as mage

[fervent ledge]

I saw brand RM doing that and apparently wasn't nerfed too much, but its unclear tbh.

Depend on the math tomarrow but it's not looking optimistic for mage imo. I'll go primalist the lightning bear and storm crow BM like OP still

[weary hamlet]

depends on where the goalposts will be with the sent rework, ole good tornado bear might drop down to underpowered

[fervent ledge]

True

But then we're does that leave mage 🥺

[final haven]

Played acolyte last season and now I want to give mage a run. However it feels really hard to choose a mastery. I mean, isn't runemaster a better sorcerer ?

[full bluff]

Runemaster is a confused sorcerer that can't focus on anything well 🙂

[sour trellis]

Choose any and if you don’t like you can always change later with season 2 patch

[final haven]

Is there a magic school more enjoyed by one over the other ?

[fervent ledge]

Gotta wait till patch I think people are unsure what is good on mage now

[half pollen]

Runemaster will still be very strong imo

[fervent ledge]

What build? Brand?

I'm hoping so

[umbral stone]

Not really. Sorcerer mainly excels as a mana stacker, while Runemaster is a bit more generic of a caster, with the added utility/options of invocations

[empty hawk]

Yea lightning usually superior

[weary hamlet]

rm used to be sorc but strictly better when it released, now its almost sorc but strictly worse

tbh right now 80% of the reasons to play RM is building around RM-exclusive skills

[weary hamlet]

brand right now deals 6 times more damage than intended, when they bugfix it it's gonna fall off the radar completely

[fervent ledge]

Oh ok. I'll do lich or Primalist then. I already got burned by Sorc on poe2

[empty hawk]

You played sorc on new league ?

[minor sky]

from patch notes

[fervent ledge]

Yah it sucks

[empty hawk]

Ur probably part of the 0.001% lmao

[fervent ledge]

Lol

[empty hawk]

I played amazon had the time of my life

[fervent ledge]

Yah I don't wanna make that mistake again

[minor sky]

wouldn't they have said something about changing it again or lowering the damage if they were going to nerf it

[empty hawk]

But i also sorc main in first league 😦

Rip spark

[fervent ledge]

Here is maxroll tier list they played the closed test of this patch since jan. I'm hoping they just suck or something barely any mage builds https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/tierlists/corruption-tier-list

[empty hawk]

Think we just need passionate mage theorycrafters

There is just generally less builds than other classes

[fervent ledge]

They don't have storm bolt bear which was not nerfed and is god tier, so I'm guessing they just didn't explore a lot of possible OP builds

[weary hamlet]

you won't guess it but apparently there is another bug with this node too where it scales per stack of shock on target

folks had tested it on ct and they are not exactly hush hush about it

[fervent ledge]

Oof.

Guess I'll start watching some druid or lich guides

[minor sky]

damn that's a shame, guess starting with that sort of build is going to be pretty risky

[fervent ledge]

I'm not getting burnt again after poe2 sorc

[empty hawk]

Donolo

[weary hamlet]

yea I wouldnt play a brand of deception build right now

[empty hawk]

Dont leave us and dont be a meta slave

[weary hamlet]

yea man come over to the meme side

roll CCC invo or something

[fervent ledge]

Yeah but I'm already memeing in another game so dunno if I can handle double. But it would be fun to try and find a new potential OP.build

Maybe something with black hole

[full bluff]

In the previous patches, the best mage builds were not known upfront, even with people playing CT. So there could be something great to be made. Just have to explore and test the next weeks 🙂

[fervent ledge]

True

[full bluff]

(another way of saying we need to look for the next bug to abuse)

Maybe perma stun/freeze for bosses comes back

[weary hamlet]

not after they nerfed snap freeze and freeze multi on frostbite

[empty hawk]

Tbf memeing in Le is viable

[full bluff]

Trying to find a reason to play ignite over frostbite ailment, but can't figure it. Anyone got some suggestions for ignite advantages?

[empty hawk]

Looks cool? 🤣

[full bluff]

Yes, thats actually a big reason I want to play ignite, for the fire effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5KOY53-IpM how it looks now

but need something more than looks 🙂

[weary hamlet]

better gear support?

ignite duration idols and passives in sorc?

[full bluff]

What I got so far is firestarter torch (30% more fire damage), craterborn 75% pen