🧙┃mage

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

Lightning meteor is definitely the only way. I wonder how much of meteor being good is held back by the multi-meteor branch.

[weary hornet]

I love truesight glass on my vk. BIG bonks.

[proven haven]

It all comes back to opportunity cost. If you have a build that can trade crit multi affixes for other high value stuff efficiently, or has easy access to a lot of crit chance without as much multi, it can be a bigger benefit

in a vacuum a 500 multi build is getting like 20% more damage assuming no extra steps taken to get 40 crit overcap

or any DPS lost from neck slot, or T8 / primal lost

like a build that just has 140% crit for free and low access to multi, truesight could like double DPS or more

[weary hornet]

Maybe I'll tweak by the end of season for shits and giggles. Been wanting to swap to a reliquary nest since SW so ubiquitous. I'm trying to get away from the meta since I enjoy the math more.

@proven haven you ever play with frostbite stacking and dots? I think that may be able to scale super high as a boss killer with volcanic orb

[proven haven]

I did Brand of Deception in 1.2, did Uber with it. Haven't done Frostbite

[harsh abyss]

Ignite stacking is my currently planned league starter for next season

[elfin rapids]

Which primordial does Shatter Strike builds usually use? Because i can picture a Truesight Glass with it.

[harsh abyss]

Gavel seems like a potential choice

Though I guess losing 80% crit multi is kind of a bust

Frozen pointed out that the more crit multi you have the less good Truesight is

And if you're dual wielding swords, getting 160% crit multi on shatter strike seems like an obvious play, you'll be able to stack tons of multi

Butchers crown could unironically be good

Feels like you could sustain mana with shatter strike using that by stacking enough mana regen

[stone rapids]

velocyn's jaw is best by nature of the fact that every other potential slot is giving up too much and you can never have too many +levels with shatter strike

[abstract scaffold]

something like this would be arguably better than a 1lp wings of argentus. Though harder to get

[harsh abyss]

Only problem with velocyn's is its a dagger so you lose 80% crit multi

[strange needle]

Best weapons for shatter strike is the primordial sword that has ton of flat and attack speed and plus 2 to skills its a pain to farm though

[harsh abyss]

You mean the weaver one, Scissor of Atropos?

Yeah getting a good one of those is a pain.

[strange needle]

Yes that one i honestly had one with t7 cold flat and t3 atta k speed cause it rolled suffixes too much ,if we could force weaver items to roll only prefix they would become 100 times better

Even then its probably worth running

[harsh abyss]

Yeah. If Shatterstrike was a little less point hungry, maybe it would be worth using like... 2 katanas with good rolls or something

Interestingly, Naa's Tooth is probably almost as good as Scissor since you can slam it like normal

On well rolled, you lose 16% attack speed and like ~10 melee damage, but gain 35% crit multi and 10% move speed

[proven haven]

naw fams, all about the spear of harmony shatterstrike

🧠

[harsh abyss]

A corrupted spear of harmony might be absolutely insane

[harsh abyss]

But isn't it only 180% increased stats on a max rolled one? Is that really worth the opportunity cost of no other uniques/exalted/sets?

Has anyone tried anything using Architects of Astral Blood?

[halcyon sun]

I know spicorr uses it for his Acid Flask Blade Dancer build, dunno if any Mage builds use it though.

[harsh abyss]

Mage doesn't really have any low life support, so that makes sense.

[halcyon sun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izsS60qPTcI for reference

[harsh abyss]

lol, 8000 corruption, doesn't matter how much health you have at that point, I imagine

[halcyon sun]

it actually does, he only recommends going falconer at 10k+ because that's when it starts becoming impossible to survive hits

falconer gets a second source of silver shroud (100% dodge chance) which is better in scenarios where if you take damage you just die, lol

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, that makes sense

[halcyon sun]

not really any point in pushing corruption that high though, mostly just for bragging rights

[harsh abyss]

As someone who never really bothers pushing corruption past 300, yeah 😝

[strange needle]

This is straight up bonkers on low life builds and even if you ain't gives so much survivability Shame beast gear is so bad to farm

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, I hate when I want to do "Build A" but have to spend time doing "Build B" to farm up the items for it before Build A even functions.

[strange needle]

Bladedancer biggest buff this season is astral chest cause now basically you get 24% and like 80 crit multi when you doing low life which is insane

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, followed closely by Primalist, who gets 20% less damage taken and 75% more melee damage

[strange needle]

Yes insane nodes

[nimble shoal]

It will depend really largely on what corrupted affixes it will be able to roll. That said, getting a really spicy 2+ LP harmony is already a pain, much less getting one with a good corrupt

[nimble shoal]

Should be BiS for locust swarm nowadays

[proven haven]

Yep. Harmony basically needs to be 2T7 to have a chance at competing at all, unless it happens to boost a stat used for one or multiple X per Y stats that cant be acquired elsewhere.

Additionally, you also probably want 2T7 with no other affix exalts elsewhere, maybe a sealed target T1 which is really difficult to craft too.

You probably may also want 1 or 2 build defining uniques which may add more value than an extra 20% stats on the harmony base.

The whole argument for the weapon quickly falls apart at that point. I feel like it basically exists to wait for an unintended scaling abuse to eventually fly under the radar and make it through patch notes.

[nimble shoal]

Too true, it is just laying there waiting to activate a trap card when just the right thing comes out, and otherwise mega niche

[left hill]

did we get new info about how LE corruption will work?

[nimble shoal]

Other than some "examples" of corruptions, not really.
If you missed those, basically some of the good outcomes involve adding a bonus sealed affix, which could include regular affixes or affixes from an exclusive corruption affix pool.

[left hill]

mk. yeah, I saw the 2nd sealed affix one

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, I just mean a way of adding more affixes to Harmony means more stats for it to scale

[left hill]

for sure. just wasn't sure if we knew more about affix ranges with folks saying 180% above

[abstract scaffold]

It was my understanding that it's a levelling item, where you really only have access to magic and rares anyway

[proven haven]

That's incredibly boring imo... You won't be able to properly use it, even if you drop it on your first character (would you even be able to farm it before late game if you tried on a first char?)

And if you are using it for leveling alts you already have access to better gear anyway

What is even the use case here, someone who starts a season by spending 10 hours spamming rift beasts in level 30 zone?

Plus on first character you may not even have enough removals to properly use 2 affix items. I guess you would equip decent subtype magics that drop with any affix or chaos prayge, idk...

Even as a leveling item it's so incredibly niche 🤷‍♂️

[abstract scaffold]

Well, yeah, I agree

[halcyon sun]

IMO, EHG released Harmony of the First in a very overtuned state, and panic nerfed it once it became apparent that it was way too strong. It should probably always drop with minimum 1 LP, and have a slightly higher (like 18-22% instead of 16-20%) unique effect range.

As-is it's not strong enough to justify spending time and resources farming over literally any other Primordial.

[nimble shoal]

tbf you'd just use white items mostly and just shard on the 2 you want... but again, pretty useless for actual leveling

[nimble shoal]

imo just remove the range on the affix, make it constant 20% and that already makes it way easier to get a passable one

I like that it totally upends how you gear a character, but at the same time that makes it unusable because of how far away it is lol

[halcyon sun]

the "this item is finally usable" floor is definitely way off in terms of balance, basically the exact opposite problem from thicket of blinding light where it's usable literally the nanosecond you can equip the item

[pseudo verge]

Classic EHG balance

[harsh abyss]

I mean didnt they nerf it by like 60% because it was gonna be busted af?

[halcyon sun]

All stats on this item are increased by (30 to 35)% per equipped non-idol magic item
was nerfed to
All stats on this item are increased by (16 to 20)% per equipped non-idol magic item

and it went from "obviously the best primordial by a large margin" to "basically unusable unless you have a perfect one with optimal double t7 affixes, in which case it might be ok for some builds"

[proven haven]

white items get like 8 fp, don't they?

[proven haven]

I'm not sure about obviously best in the old state, I think situationally good. But that just depends on the builds that can use those stats and can make do with 2 affixes everywhere else. You wouldn't be able to just slap it on every S tier build and make it better.

I did some math / theory crafting different mage builds with Spear and even assuming 2T7 spear with 2T7 + seal exalts it still fell short in most situations, and that's a harder gear set to farm than a standard 2LP + 2T7 setup

It's one of those potentially toxic items that could end up dominating the meta, while being extremely gear dependent, unlike most other S-tier builds that start off decent then just slowly get better with better gear

Spear starts off trash, basically needs another build to farm it, then could become OPOP for only giga tryhards

[halcyon sun]

I vaguely remember Mike talking about white items being able to drop with super high forging potential, but can't remember if that was a joke or scrapped idea or real thing; would need to scour his old messages to find it

[proven haven]

Even take like an int stacker build, you get a lot of your int from uniques

[halcyon sun]

found it: https://old.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/17oimya/comment/k7z7bzj/

White items have a small chance to drop with an exceptional amount of forging potential. Otherwise it works exactly as everyone assumes it does.

[proven haven]

ah I guess I never have them on my filter

[halcyon sun]

by exceptional I'm pretty sure he means like 100+ FP

[proven haven]

So you need to;

1. Drop level appropriate white item (subtypes matter a lot in LE)
2. Be for a slot you need
3. Hit the "small chance" for giga FP proc
4. Have the shards you need to do the craft

and that's after you've farmed rifts on a season starter during campaign

Spear kinda feels more like PoE Adorned to me imo

[radiant vessel]

This is old, it's been changed iirc

Let me see if I can find confirmation

I asked Mike about it not too long ago

[halcyon sun]

I actually don't mind adorned in PoE, stacking magic jewels with synthesis implicits is an interesting option, and keeping it locked to high-budget works pretty well
harmony of the first is much more restrictive, in a bad way

[radiant vessel]

Seems like it might have changed a few times so I'm not actually sure what they ended up on lol
#👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message

Maybe it's still there. Was misremembering how the conversation went

[proven haven]

I think LE and PoE are very different when it comes to this type of chase item that requires very niche ways of building. In PoE you have a lot more paths to get from point A to point B with crafting, and if not you have full trade (and re-selling) of often really really hard to get / expensive items.

In LE you end up spending a lot of time making an extremely niche item that has no re-sale value and is only usable in a very very specific circumstance with probably less power than more meta and easier to craft "normal" items

[harsh abyss]

I wonder what it'd look like with T7 "All Attributes" on harmony, lol

[proven haven]

Kinda crap tbh, 28 all attributes isn't very good for the cost

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, fair

[proven haven]

even just a core + foot of the mountain unique affix together give 22

[harsh abyss]

Maybe the pre-nerf version would have been decent

[proven haven]

Its just a low value affix

unless there was specifically a build that scaled with all attributes

it needs to be a core damage scaling stat that scales with the T7s you can get on the rest of your gear

For example, I tried mana strike FC frostbite, with T7 Shred and T7 attack speed, then I could get ele dot on other affixes for damage, etc.

kinda worked, idk how many millions of DPS but could probably kill Uber

Tried Shatterstrike with T7 ASP and Multi + Nib for cold pen, T7 dex elsewhere, kinda okay ish - could definitely kill Uber

The first one I brought up when we saw the item was T7 shock + T7 pen or DoT for Brand of Deception.

That's 3500% more damage from 582 shock, and 112 pen. You could even do all attributes here tbh, wouldn't be awful. Benefit from Dex, Str, and Int

[nimble shoal]

More than that usually I think, I hit 2 T5 when leveling new chars decently often

[nimble shoal]

iirc they did eventually disable this

[tall cove]

heya, i'm following your lightning blast guide and it's been great! just wondering for the lightning blast skill tree what are the most important for leveling?

[proven haven]

You shouldn't level with LB, it will feel bad. I am pretty sure I talk about the progression steps in my initial video though, and my planner includes early empowered trees. I also uploaded my entire zero to uber league start as a playlist on my YouTube to skim through

[tall cove]

ah sure, thank you! Will look through the video.

[harsh abyss]

Level with lightning ele nova for clear and then LB for bosses

Go for the lightning nova and then 100% spark charge chance, then AOE and you'll melt everything OTHER than bosses

Also go for the teleport nodes that cast ele nova 3 times while teleporting

[tribal veldt]

I'm partial to volcanic orb leveling myself, though if they keep improving mob density it'll fall off a bit

[harsh abyss]

The way it feels when you teleport and drop spark charges on the entire screen and it all just explodes is second to none, IMO

However, the other option is that if you drop a Firestarter's Torch, just use that and the spreading flames will carry you through 80% of the campaign with zero investment

[spark vector]

Mans never tried to parry Simon in E33

Now that's a feeling

I love a bit of Fireball leveling, feels great

[strange needle]

I did 6 unstable core 2 lp slams miss all of them ,was like f quit game open d2r warlock to vent 🤣 man f this slamming system ,really wanted the int,lightning crit multi combo

[proven haven]

yep that's about where I was, core was really close to making me rage quit

Has anyone had much luck with Reowyn Fortress setup lately? I had a few tech ideas that work with Plasma Orb but it's kinda janky. Reliquary seems pretty decent for all the stats you can get from idols to fill the weird assortment of things you need

[harsh abyss]

Okay, how about Sea of Sparks with tons of increased area so you get lots of spark overlaps?

I've never really looked at 1-2 rune invocations for use with Reowyn's

I wonder if you could do something with it with Ball Lightning.
Hits 4 times per second, lasts for like 4 seconds. means ~16 hits per cast at 100% added damage?

[harsh abyss]

Igneous Rain might also be good, 150% effectiveness, maybe 10-15 hits or so?

Only problem is it might not be easy to force CFF for RI

Without putting a cooldown on it which kinda defeats the purpose

[proven haven]

I did try BL, it was one of the better ones I looked at - Triple L also good for Ward Gen, and dex is good for dodge.

Only issue with BL was generally small AoE and awkward targeting, otherwise solid

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, I'd only use it for boss/rare killing, but clear is easy by comparison

[proven haven]

Igneous was also one of the best ones I looked at, when it works, huge damage burst, like 1 cast popping Uber shield type stuff

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, same thing

[proven haven]

had better luck with it than Hydra for overall DPS, but the targeting is much worse

[proven haven]

I been playing with Runebolt + Unvar 1x4 idol

The alternative is basically my old T-pose setup forcing RI with Flame Rush every 2 seconds

can use immutable and bypass CD

[harsh abyss]

Yeah that makes sense

[proven haven]

Flame Rush also benefits from applying the dodge from Telfun to RI

which is a lot of dodge

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, I like Telfun a lot

[proven haven]

was able to get about 6000 ward / dodge / armour

so 600 flat added

[harsh abyss]

I mean, if you weren't able to make any of the invocations feel good with that level... there's no hope for it

[proven haven]

My standards for good are pretty high TBH

This was around 1:30 Uber without perfect play or much optimizing

[harsh abyss]

How does the targeting on RI work with flame rush casts? Does it feel decent?

[proven haven]

depends on the RI

For Hydra it is great

for Igneous you need to FR onto the boss

or whatever target

[harsh abyss]

yeah, gotta end on top of it

[proven haven]

its kinda fine, I don't mind that much

[harsh abyss]

Which isn't great

[proven haven]

you are tanky so whatever

[harsh abyss]

true

I wonder if flame rush igneous would be good.

[proven haven]

it seems decent

If you target well you should do more DPS than hydra

maybe with some inc AoE

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, Inc AOE seems super important with Igneous, so they all hit

And it would help flame rush too

I wonder if you could theoretically use Mark of the Forbidden Flame with that for some big damage. Get enough ignite duration so the Igneous ignites are still running when your next flame rush happens

[proven haven]

lmao I had the opposite thought

Ignite scaling

but yeah maybe

[harsh abyss]

Well Mark does the ignite damage instantly

Fire Eater (the one before it) consumes them without damage

And it gets More damage per 2 intelligence

[proven haven]

oh thats bad, it bricks your ward

which you need for damage

[harsh abyss]

ahh true

That'd just be a different build anyway, you wouldn't want to use Fortress

[proven haven]

Fire Eater alone is probably fine for getting extra ward

yea

I was actually thinking maybe you use Enchant Weapon

you can consume ignite for 3x damage

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, any ignite build kinda has to use that, right?

But also, I don't think it'd be worth with a Fortress build, since you aren't gonna be building into ignites anyway.

Better off eating the ignites for more ward

[harsh abyss]

Do you just use Mana Guide to make yourself giga tanky between flame rushes?

[proven haven]

I use it to generate ward

[harsh abyss]

ahh

[proven haven]

2s channel -> 20% armour as ward

it also fills up the runes

since I have no cast speed

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, that makes sense

[proven haven]

This is basically what Meteor should be

tbh

Sorc, "we have meteor at home: ..."

[harsh abyss]

If only there was a way to give meteor hundreds of flat damage 😝

[proven haven]

Increased area for area skills modifiers increases the size of the meteorites' impacts, but not the area in which they fall.```

neat

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

So more area means more hits

[proven haven]

The nice thing is you can swap between Hydra / Ign pretty effortlessly

for boss vs echo

[harsh abyss]

Maybe that's what they should do to meteor. Give it nodes that make increases to area also apply to more damage.

Bigger meteor, more damage

it makes sense

[proven haven]

Can also use the -cooldown on potion belt affix to spam out a bunch of hydras

[harsh abyss]

IDK why, I just don't like hydra

Too bad you can't use Reowyn's Fortress and Gordian Prism

That would be a rad combo

[proven haven]

hmm, is there a limit on Hydras?

seems like 3 or something

ah nvm

[elfin rapids]

I dream with the day this come. Meteor has a node that gives 125% increased area + Sorcerer has a 40% passive + amulet & gloves. It would be more than 200% more damage. They also could adjust ADE from 950% to 1000% just because aesthetics lol

[proven haven]

I like the idea but Meteor doesn't need MORE nodes imo, it already forces you to waste like 15 nodes just to mitigate the drawbacks and path to useful stuff. Eg. let me take 3 nodes of "fall speed" so I can get +1 meteor that also adds 70 to the mana cost.

IMO Meteor should consolidate some of the node effects

[elfin rapids]

I agree. What's even the difference between the node Rapid Descent and the node Rapid Impact? These two nodes cost 4 points to get to the maximum number of meteors, that's too much.

[tribal veldt]

meteor truly is a relic of a different time

so many (effectively) more damage nodes but it all doesn't quite get there

[harsh abyss]

Oh yeah, I think the entire "more meteors fall" branch should be reworked entirely

It holds back everything else because it's a theoretical 600% more damage multiplier

[strange needle]

Many skills in this game sadly need consolidation like I can speed 33 points in a skill and still not be satisfied with it at all

[harsh abyss]

Coughnovacough

[abstract scaffold]

gathering storm, tempest strike, maelstrom, upheaval, serpent strike, tornado, entangling roots, fireball, snap freeze, elemental nova, static, ice barrage, black hole, meteor, flame reave, fire brand, lunge, forge strike, flurry, cinder strike, dark quiver, detonating arrow (I know nothing about acolyte)

[pseudo verge]

100% agree, but on a fun note I managed to get to 500 corr with flame reave, absolute trash swords. It could absolutely push way more with better gear

[abstract scaffold]

nice

[harsh abyss]

I feel like many builds can get to 500 corruption, but killing aberroth and uberroth is a whole different ball game

[pseudo verge]

Probably, what was stopping me was farming scissor of atropos which made me want to pull my hair out. Also try to make it tankier which I was unsuccessful with.

WW items really sucks to farm

rng on top of rng is pretty crazy

[proven haven]

Tbh I think almost every skill that is actually intended to do damage currently can do 500c, at least for mage;

• LB, Fireball, Nova, Mana Strike, FC, Static, Glacier, Disintegrate, VO, Focus, Static Orb, IB (maybe?), Black Hole, Meteor, Flame Reave, Firebrand, Surge, Shatter Strike, Flame Rush, Frost Wall, Rune Bolt, Glyph of D, Runic Invo
  All can do 500c

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, getting to higher corruption isn't really the hard part

[strange needle]

Maybe like new players play at very low corruption ,nowdays most people play at 1k corruption if they likr their build, skills need to be better imo

Like let's change the 5 skill points so you get idk 25%more damage or like 40% ,by reducing skill points needed for nodes a skill that has scaling in somewhere else you couldn't get or max it becomes better

[harsh abyss]

I don't know that you can confidently say what "Most" players do, since most people probably don't talk about their play at all. I'm sure they have the metrics for it.

But they've said that 500 corruption is their "goal" for most builds to be able to hit in the past, with Uberroth being kind of a "Stretch" goal for good/optimized builds

I dunno if that's still something that holds true though

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, I don't know if anyone has asked yet for them to pull % of characters reaching 100, 300, 1k, etc. corruption milestones from their new tool

[proven haven]

they did on stream #200 iirc

I forget the number but it was actually a sizable chunk that reached 300 or whatever, iirc this was grouped by character though rather than account so grain of salt

[nimble shoal]

It has generally been 300c, they've said their expectations have risen a bit, but not sure if they've stated a new target, did they confirm 500c?

[proven haven]

think it was like 20% or something reached either empowered or 300c, id have to dig the clip

I haven't heard the 500c thing tbh

[nimble shoal]

Ooh nice, maybe I'll try to dredge it up. I almost never get to catch the streams

[harsh abyss]

I seem to remember 500c, but maybe 300c was the "Everyone" number because that's for Aberroth, and 500c is the "stretch" number

I'd be super interested to see the player numbers for how many get to 300 vs 500 vs 1000+, I'm in the camp of getting too bored grinding corruption to go for 500c and go after uberroth

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, I have approximately zero desire to push corruption personally

maybe it will be more efficient to just ask here than dig through a stream lol

I guess we should have a level cutoff

From 76 where you get level 20 skills? 80?

[halcyon sun]

"from: the_madd_hatter 500c" ->
#👨┃ask-the-devs-not-support-no-bugs message
"We've added content that will generally require players to get well above 300c now. In general I would say that a pretty good build is still around 300c but we do expect more builds to push higher than that now as certain things do unlock at 500c."

just goes to show how much the term "good build" is a personal definition, not a universal one; my benchmark for "good build" is something that can farm 1000c with zero issues; a great build is one that can do that and kill uberroth in <3min

[proven haven]

It's also really hard to draw a line at a certain corruption when the only difference between 300c and 1000c is just 3x or so monster health and damage. In an ARPG where power progression is the main genre defining characteristic that's a pretty tiny difference.

Even though gear isn't as impactful as build selection in LE, one player can easily say x build is "not 300c viable", and another player may be cruising past 1000c with that exact same build in less than a week.

What about optimization? I've seen a lot of LB planners this season and even though we would all agree this is a strong build various minor mistakes like wrong skill nodes, wrong passives, or wrong affix selection can easily amount to doing 20% or less of the damage they should be doing.

[strange needle]

I mean a 300 corruption player will come try game and probably leave after being bored meanwhile you have legacy players pushing for qol and changes that game needs if it wants to stay a float , you take feedback from both casual and seasoned players but any build even trash smelter wrath can do 300 corruption would i recommend that no

Realistically if you want to play something for more than a week you will push corr most likely for better results rewards when you play at 2k you dont really go down to 1k anymore

[strange needle]

Btw frozen some us are going to do your autobomber build its insane ,is laddle better than the one stacking strength with cleaver?

[proven haven]

Very different builds tbh, STR is pretty tanky, scales really hard with gear, can push pretty high if you want

LB is solid, probably more damage up front, less tanky, faster clear at moderate corruption

[abstract scaffold]

Still, I think there's qualitative differences between certain skills. Erasing Strike is a strong big bonk skill. Forge Strike is a weak big bonk skill that's half a minion skill that you don’t even need to directly use for said minions. Sure, it can take you to 500c, but in situations like that it's just objectively worse. You can get to 500c with Cinder Strike or even the basic Attack I'm sure, but at the end of the day it's still just weak.

[proven haven]

I wasn't saying that "none of these skills are bad because they can get to 500c", my point was that corruption is not a very precise measure of whether or not a skill is good

my definition of a 500c viable skill will be wildly different than someone elses

as an experienced sweaty tryhard if I find a skill is not 500c viable, the average player probably won't make it to empowered with it

[pseudo verge]

I think if you manage to get a skill to at least 500c it feels good enough no? Otherwise you would've swapped to something else in my mind.
Will always be exceptions of for example Smelters Wrath that does like 10 monos/h

[halcyon sun]

corruption is useful metric for comparing two or more builds for a single person / content creator / etc; it's not useful for comparing between two different people

[proven haven]

not really, there just isn't much difference between 100c and 500c

even giving the same person, if it takes me 15 hours to get to 500c for one build but another takes me 500 hours, is it still viable?

[abstract scaffold]

Ah I see

[halcyon sun]

I don't mean comparing viability, I mean comparing two builds based on the opinion of a single person

as in, if you released a video saying "this build is better than lightning blast runemaster" on your YouTube channel, I know roughly what to expect from that statement, since you put so much time into LB and I've played it myself before

[proven haven]

Sure yeah, I am just saying it doesn't really mean anything to say "a build is good if it can do 300 corruption" without providing some assumptions

[pseudo verge]

Might be, I basically do meme or weaker skill builds. Either got too low damage, survivability is too bad, skill feels too bad to use for 500c.
Or just skill issue lol

[halcyon sun]

a (mage) build is good if FrozenSentinel says it's good 👍

tried and true methodology

[proven haven]

Like can a new player take a build to 300c within 2 weeks while following a written guide, for example

is a bit more objective

[proven haven]

To be honest, my builds are only good because I just trash the video if it's not

I have many builds that never get published

[halcyon sun]

that's exactly my point, I've never seen a bad build from you

I've seen other youtubers post builds where they're technically at 1000+ corruption

but like, it's obvious that it took them ages for the build to function there

and even then it's rough

[proven haven]

Yea I get frustrated before then

My criteria is;

• Can clear monos at 1000c fairly quickly
• Can kill uber with T7T5 level gear after a few attempts at most

Meteor build failed that check sadly

was close

[halcyon sun]

damn shame, because meteor is amazing visually

[elfin rapids]

Now i'm curious lol

All mage builds or some other classes too?

[pseudo verge]

Personally as my example earlier with flame reave I've heard before how bad the skill was, I could take it to 500c comfortably with really good clear and it was a win in my book.
I guess context would be better than just numbers. I think doing 1000c is possible but would need more investments, such as RR etc.

If you were to play upheaval or other weak skills Kio mentioned I don't think they would be able to get to 500c, corruption isn't a precise measurement but it's telling something about certain skills.
If you can get to high corruption with just basic attack then you're either stubborn or it's not hard enough since 500 was EHGs ideal threshold for skills that kind of works

[abstract scaffold]

That one guy at 1k c with mirror images as damage:

[halcyon sun]

can mirror images even do damage? lol

[pseudo verge]

No

[halcyon sun]

hmm, looked it up

they do technically have a minion skill that is able to do damage

I don't think they use it, but it does exist

[pseudo verge]

They only taunt afaik

[halcyon sun]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/minions/mirror_image

[pseudo verge]

@proven haven Have you fiddled with Gordian Prism or know how the heck runes actually scale because Mike never replied

[harsh abyss]

They do damage, but they don't do GOOD damage. I'd love a mirror image rework where one casts fireball, one casts frost claw and one casts LB, using your stats

[harsh abyss]

What do you mean about runes scaling?

I did a Gordian Prism build last season

[pseudo verge]

They probably won't do anything for mirror image, they don't want mage to use minion stuff

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, they should just rework those nodes into something else

[proven haven]

Mostly Mage, explored a few other ideas but I like to optimize. A lot of my testing and theory crafting goes towards non build related stuff like imprints or end game mechanics

[pseudo verge]

Like how it interacts with Fundamental Criterion and the scaling of Gordian Prism.
Is it like the actual grand prism nova skill?
I also wonder if the more damage from the chest uses Gordian combo or the grand prism nova (Gon Rah Heo)

[proven haven]

I don't think Flame Reave is a "bad skill", it's just not LB. To be fair, there are certainly "bad skills" that are actually OP, but the tech just hasn't been found yet

[radiant vessel]

You can get flame reave to double digit million dps tbf

[proven haven]

Fundamental is basically mandatory to make a decent RI build from my experience, the way it works is you get 150 or so of a certain off-attribute, then you get 450% more damage

The challenge is that getting a lot of non-int attributes has a really high opportunity cost

[radiant vessel]

It's just that there's no real reason to go flame reave over shatter strike which does even more damage currently. But where it is better is for clear since you can make it hit the entire screen

[proven haven]

Flame Reave also has the reverse Frost Claw thing going on with Spell to Melee convert

theres a lot of potential there for weird stuff

[radiant vessel]

Yeah that stuff just needs a little more spice to pop off

There's not enough meat on the bone for hybrid currently imo

[proven haven]

yep, problem is a lot of things give eg. "more spell damage" which wouldn't apply

one thought I had was Vilatria + BBC dex stack, but it wasn't enough

[radiant vessel]

It's too bad you can't go triple prefix on uniques for flat melee, flat spell and attack speed

[proven haven]

you gotta corrupt

[radiant vessel]

Could go gavel tbf

[proven haven]

gavel then sword with flat spell..?

[radiant vessel]

Yeah

Flat spell flat melee and sealed attack speed or something

It's technically possible to get 3 T7 prefixes that way but good luck with the imprint

[proven haven]

3T7 prefix? how

[radiant vessel]

Warlords riches

[proven haven]

LMAO

"technically" carrying a lot of weight

[radiant vessel]

Yeah thats why I said good luck :P

[proven haven]

in that sentence

[radiant vessel]

Someone somewhere sometime might hit it lmao

[proven haven]

The big problem with imprints is that COF doesn't really boost your T7 chance

[radiant vessel]

Yep

[proven haven]

probably more likely to hit 3T7 prefix naturally from nemesis

[radiant vessel]

I honestly think they should add more CoF interaction to each seasonal mechanic

[proven haven]

You can do 778 prefix

realistically

but no gavel then

[radiant vessel]

Yeah but no gavel then

[proven haven]

I had a whole rant video about this being my biggest worry when weaver faction was first announced before 1.2 dropped

[radiant vessel]

I guess the T8 would kinda make up for it, you'd just lose the gavel stats

[proven haven]

I basically said these things will dilute COF if not done exactly right, with explicit care to interact

[radiant vessel]

Yeah I'm honestly surprised how little interactivity CoF has

Because MG doesn't need any. It's inherently interactive with everything that drops tradable items

[proven haven]

yep exactly

[radiant vessel]

But CoF isn't

[proven haven]

Half of COF is prophecies, the other half multiplies loot

If you buff general loot, the half of COF that multiplies gets better, but the other half gets nothing. 100% of the MG benefit applies

[radiant vessel]

CoF does have some global interactivity like with boss drops. But a lot of systems like nemesis should also have CoF bonuses outside of egg lp being affected imo

[proven haven]

to make it worse, the loot multiplier doesn't even interact with imprints

so that half does nothing

[radiant vessel]

Yea

They did say they'll be making CoF and MG improvements in season 5 so hopefully it'll be addressed then

[proven haven]

COF vs MG

input vs output

[proven haven]

I am skeptical, they said that "around 50%" of toons were COF at the start of S3, and closer to 70% now are COF

that would probably tell them the balance is reasonable

I think a lot of people pick COF even if it is worse though

[radiant vessel]

Mmm maybe. I do think they're somewhat aware though

[proven haven]

Remember when everyone always immediately went to "RED RING IS EASIER TO GET FOR COF PLAYERS" back in the day? Now you can realistically farm 2T7 RRs as MG

lmao

[stone rapids]

definitely, even players who are extremely tapped into the meta do this. I've been quite aware that cof has been worse than mg since factions release but have always gone cof as i hate trade.

[proven haven]

same

I don't even think COF is that bad in the mid game

but with imprints dominating super end game and COF not really getting a bonus there, it ends up just being like not having a faction

LP bonus works, I guess

but exalts are often bottleneck

[radiant vessel]

Honestly this was always the case. Mg has always been stronger. People were coping hard saying CoF would be better before they came out. There is obviously some nuance though, for people who are casual the difference narrows a bit since earning meaningful gold in MG can be hard for people who don't research what's valuable and grind high end content

I also mainly play CoF

[stone rapids]

and it creates weird things for mg, too. if you're the super lucky person who gets a red ring on mg in the first week of trade, you basically have a ticket to print money for the rest of the season via imprints

[radiant vessel]

My hot take is that imprints were a mistake

At least with how strong they currently are

[proven haven]

For super casuals, you can buy basic shit in MG for basically free just with gold you actually drop (or from vendoring uniques lel) to get a character started. COF players need to get this going themselves, that's a big difference.

For mid level I think they are closest in power. COF gets solid bonuses, and MG items are a bit pricier now so that you actually need to sell some items to buy items you want.

By late I think MG wins again.

[stone rapids]

idk if i'd go that far but there's a lot of bad consequences, and there needs to be significantly more tuning in several areas for them to be in a good spot. another thing that's super worth mentioning is that imprints have basically warped the choice for what maps to run entirely around them

[proven haven]

tbh I kinda agree

[radiant vessel]

Yeah the game revolves around them too much currently

I do think there is a world where they're healthy though

[proven haven]

I think imprints are a bit too strong, and also I don't think that much targetting should have been given to both factions equally

[radiant vessel]

Imprints could've been CoF only tbh

[proven haven]

yep

delete prophecy, give imprint

pog

[radiant vessel]

I wouldn't be mad if they removed prophecies entirely and expanded on imprints and made them CoF only lol

[stone rapids]

it also depends on how off-meta stuff you play. trying to get a warpath vk geared on mg sounds horrible but i mostly play selfcast smite, i reckon i could've had gear that took months in a week if i played trade

[radiant vessel]

Gearing shatter strike on MG in season 1 was hysterical

[proven haven]

I would argue that excessive targetting being given to MG made this issue worse

[radiant vessel]

I was getting 3lp 70lpl items for like 50k gold

[proven haven]

people have more control over specifically farming meta items that sell

Dude I was playing my Str T-pose shit in S2 mg and a lot of my items were shared with Sentinel

kinda sucked

[radiant vessel]

Lol rip

Some of my Dex gear was shared with falconer

[proven haven]

oh yeah my dex t-pose was shared with my falconer

[radiant vessel]

Was just exalts though

[proven haven]

and my str t-pose shared with my ES

xdd

oh and my mana t-pose shared with ES too

[stone rapids]

i wish there was a way to view market outside of the game, tbh. although if that were the case i might've switched over out of pure sadness by now

[proven haven]

overlap op

buy the game twice and leave one dude in bazaar

[radiant vessel]

Lmao

[proven haven]

I am on the fence there, on one hand PoE has the instant async thing now and it's cool, I like it, but also if you want good deals you basically need to be super fast to get the deal

like click within 0.5s

the difference is quite big in price

[radiant vessel]

Not people listing a bunch of copies of something super cheap and then having one be absurdly priced hoping someone just spams all of them

Classic

[proven haven]

its kinda the opposite

[radiant vessel]

Oh yeah? People are clicking that fast? Lmao

[proven haven]

you have like 10 of a given unique that are all listed for 100 div with similar mod, then if you have one specific roll on one of the mods its worth like 2000 div

but people price check the unique, see 100 div and list for 100 div

[ivory leaf]

hideout warriors and bots are

[proven haven]

it's gone in like 0.1s

[radiant vessel]

Yeah makes sense

That's why you gotta check rolls on your price check

[proven haven]

I wrote some jquery to paste into the site console that would insta click hideout for me on ping and sniped a few

[radiant vessel]

Especially on uniques with random mods

[proven haven]

made a few thousand div

it felt awful because it basically invalidated playing the game

[radiant vessel]

Yeah I've had a few Leagues where I was just a hideout degen ngl lol

Was usually crafting though

There's almost always some super simple low risk craft people pay absurd money for

[proven haven]

why do I want currency? To make a character stronger.

why do you want stronger character? To farm more currency

... but that breaks down when you get more currency by not playing the character. So then what am I farming the currency for?

[harsh abyss]

I mean, that's why I never play games for economy value

At a certain point it's more "efficient" but it ruins the fun

[proven haven]

I enjoy the min max

but when the economy is just there

[radiant vessel]

Tbf LE no resell kinda solved it

[proven haven]

yep

[radiant vessel]

One of the best decisions they've made honestly

[proven haven]

no resell also limits the ceiling of how chase items can realistically be though

[harsh abyss]

It's also too late for POE to do no resell. Their community would riot

[radiant vessel]

I don't think they want it anyway

Trading is a core part of the game

Some people play specifically to trade and craft

As in even if they had a button they could press to make it no resell without any hate or anything they still wouldn't press it

[proven haven]

I also feel like pricing items is much harder in LE than PoE. In PoE you aren't filtering for specific affixes that change day to day, you look for "bases" that are more objectively useful, or specific giga uniques

or things that drop from specific bits of uber content

[radiant vessel]

Yeah price checking in LE is one of the reasons I dislike mg

It's way too much hassle

[strange needle]

This gonna take another 7 months like we really need improvement ASAP not in like a year

[radiant vessel]

There's a lot the game needs asap tbh

[proven haven]

Like this 4x1 idol is worth 50 million IF it has exactly these two affixes, with at least this roll, otherwise it's with 0 gold

this 3x1 idol needs exactly these two, or this prefix and these X, Y, Z suffixes, or these X, Y, Z prefixes with this suffix, etc.

kinda think items dropping identified makes this problem worse too, or rather is a side effect of the loot being balanced around that fact

[strange needle]

Like 2 t7 red rings is so strong for me as a cof I need to farm heavily for a month to get that if the slam fails go farm more months meanwhile can buy 2 lp red rings anyway on mg podaj went through 11

[proven haven]

lmao

I don't try for 2T7 RRs tbh

[strange needle]

Either they ultra buff prophecies or idk do something farming boss gear is such a pain still

We have all gear and even still 3t7 slams are such a drag if you dont get slams

[proven haven]

The step beyond 2T7 gets really gross

I don't think the game needs to have those be realistic, to be fair

[strange needle]

I really liked the new poe 2 tab asyn market you can buy in game even if its flawed thats cool

[radiant vessel]

I miss the days of T7/5/5/5 on the right base being BIS

[ivory leaf]

I mean uber gear or rr shouldnt exist as 2-3 lp in the first place

[radiant vessel]

Someone would post it on the item showcase and people would be like wtfffff

[proven haven]

I don't mind 2LP RR existing as a like poe mirror type giga thing

[radiant vessel]

A fat katana with T7 flat damage or something sheeesh

[proven haven]

back in the day an extra T5 affix on a RR wasn't that game changing

but an extra T7 is a lot of stats

I think it was like 1.0 I managed to get a T7 + T6 INT + MS blood of exile as COF

[stone rapids]

2lp uber items i'm fine with, actually. regardless of how good your gear is, rolling for uber drops is going to take a minimum of 3ish mins (including normal abby for the woven echo). and it's something that anyone can realistically farm for with enough items, and they're locked behind the hardest content the game currently has so by the point where you can farm 2lp you've already "won" basically. with 2lp rr it's not something anyone can reasonably "farm" and you're relying on either a once in a lifetime drop or trade market, basically.

[proven haven]

before imprints or guaranteed slams

was so hype

normal abby is the main reason I don't go for 2LP Ubers

hate the intro thing

so slow

[stone rapids]

tell me about it lmao

[radiant vessel]

I remember getting a T7 shatterstrike T6 dex mystic plate and was popping off

[ivory leaf]

idk we have enough power creep

[radiant vessel]

back in like 0.9.2

[ivory leaf]

and they add more every season

[proven haven]

I think there needs to be a step beyond whats "achievable" as a potentially crazy "once in a season" type drop for you to feel excited to pull that loot slot machine

not expecting it to happen, but knowing its possible

[stone rapids]

but realistically uber items (much less 2lp) don't enable you to do any content you couldn't already do, they're essentially a way for sweats to hyper min-max

[proven haven]

1LP RR is pretty trivial now with Nemesis, Faction, Imprint, Guaranteed Slam, etc.

[stone rapids]

if you're at the point where you can farm 2lp uber items they realistically change very little, if anything, other than making number go up

[ivory leaf]

isnt most people in mg not at that point and just buy the item

[strange needle]

2 lp res ring with slams is absolutely bonkers same with iber gear

It changes a lot of stuff

[proven haven]

its bonkers yea but there isn't really any middle ground between 1LP and 2LP RR lol

[strange needle]

Clear is same but man farming uber and potential content is so much faster

[stone rapids]

i mean, maybe, i don't play mg, i have no idea what the trade market looks like

[proven haven]

you go from can be farmed in a couple hours to multi hundred hour item, no in between

corruption can hopefully change that

[stone rapids]

what content does 2lp uber items unlock for you that wasn't already available at that point (as cof)

[proven haven]

meme builds

[strange needle]

I really hope we get guarantee slams after you do a challenge or something this is what's killing my desire to make alts and play the game

[stone rapids]

even if it cuts your uber time in half you could already presumably kill uber fairly quickly anyways to be able to kill him 100+ times for a 2lp

[strange needle]

Yeah but people who aren't that good killing uber now they do it every time

So yeah 2 lp slams change everything on uber gear

Same when you access to 3 lp and you can slam health affix or something of the sorts changes the game a lot

[proven haven]

2LP Uber relic would probably be about 10% more damage for my LB

assuming I had an equally well rolled as my perfect 1LP

[stone rapids]

are you going to realistically farm 2lp uber if you're not able to consistently kill him?

sounds pretty masochistic honestly

[strange needle]

I had a buddy couldn't do uber well at all now it destroy him every time after his slams hit

I hate uber aberroth as a fight I hope in the future something better comes from ehg in the meantime just exploit group troves and go ham

[proven haven]

kinda wild that favor is shared

err.. amber

I mean

[strange needle]

Same buddy has lost 3t7 crab ring slams 8 times idk I feel like he deserves it after that much rng

For me group play is the way game is meant to be played likr holy f I am so done with last epoch rng on everything

[stone rapids]

i think uber is a well designed fight, honestly. doing it on every mastery and a bunch of weaker builds gave me a lot of appreciation for the fight

[strange needle]

Started 4 weeks ago max

[proven haven]

My previous suggestion on that was some new type of currency that allows you to "buy" guaranteed slams, with the price depending on the calculated rarity of the item, factoring LPL and RR chance or something.
With currency earned by destroying items of a given calculated rarity value

[strange needle]

Too much clutter on the screen can't see crap for me

[ivory leaf]

I like the fight too but at the pace the boss will be a joke in couple seasons

[proven haven]

I think Uber is too hasted vs regular tbh

[ivory leaf]

its already a joke for some builds

[strange needle]

Makes sense I think they should hire you like mr Llama helped with d2r expansion

[stone rapids]

screen clutter in uber is, imo, primarily determined by your ability to place lasers, and dodge/place orbs.

[proven haven]

You basically need really quick attack time and high movement speed (or giga DPS / immortal) for uber

It feels like the attacks come out a bit too quick to do a slow methodical fight with a non uber optimized build

[strange needle]

Well to each their own I have enjoyed more the monkey in poe 2 than uber aberroth

[proven haven]

If you don't have like 100% ms minimum you end up forced into bad positions when avoiding these

[strange needle]

Yep

Only thing that you are gonna see from i love that fight is basically the old get good its a clunky fight

Go kill him with 50 ms probably feels great or mediocre damage

[stone rapids]

sometimes? i mean it depends on your other movement tools as well. and your ability to do predicitve positioning

[proven haven]

I like the Abby fight itself, and I enjoy the fight on a really fast build, but I feel like Uber is just the same fight except scaled up and it doesn't necessarily translate well

[stone rapids]

i've literally done an 8 minute fight on shield bash where i had actual negative movement speed for most of the fight. that, to me, was one of my most fun and exciting uber kills. and no, i'm not just saying "git gud"

[proven haven]

like for example if you dont do enough DPS to pop uber phase before 2nd slam in the beginning, if you don't have him lined up to the correct laser placement before he makes the slam circle you are forced to put laser in a bad spot

[strange needle]

Go say the same thing to another person

If it takes me 8 min to kill a boss that I need to farm for very good gear the yeah I aint doing that

Not hard to understand

[proven haven]

I'm not complaining about the difficulty either, I just think the difficulty is not for the right reasons

[strange needle]

Yep

[stone rapids]

sure, that's fine. i never said everybody has to enjoy uber, i said i think he is a well designed fight. and of course i wouldn't farm uber on shield bash lol

[strange needle]

I look at normal aberroth fight and feels proper paced

[proven haven]

Abby is a well designed fight, the timings fit the ability durations and phases well

[strange needle]

Like its insane the jump

[proven haven]

But the timings go off when you just take speed * 1.5 or whatever

[strange needle]

Meanwhile uber is well either you kill fast or you are going to have a worse time

[proven haven]

its like if you stun the void bird during pizza then suddenly it starts using two abilities at the same time, that's not "difficulty", that's a technical problem

you can still win but its hard for the wrong reasons

[strange needle]

Yo sorry for banter 😅 for shield bash is it worth running the axe that gives insane block effectiveness or the mace from reign of dragons is way more damage?

[proven haven]

I will say Uber was a lot of fun on the T-pose LB build I did this league

[stone rapids]

all good! axe is probably ok for maps but event horizon is literally like 3x the damage or something stupid

[strange needle]

Cool ty good to know

[proven haven]

I'm getting 6M ignite ticks on dummy with RI lmao

still not good enough I reckon

[stone rapids]

12m dps is decent

[proven haven]

its okay yea

[stone rapids]

i'll happily play a 12m dps build but i seem to be more and more in the minority these days 😅

[strange needle]

Someone wanted to try plasma blast for ignite dot

[proven haven]

plasma blast..? I don't think it does enough ignites

[strange needle]

F he was so excited

[stone rapids]

i would love to see more RI builds next season, feels like it's almost always hydra, cfc, or occasionally plasma orb

[strange needle]

Idk man dot are in a really bad spot ,only time rot feels likr a proper holy strong dot build

[proven haven]

oh wait maybe...? it says applies 7 stacks of ignite is that just 1 hit?

so +100% ignite is just 8 stacks?

[strange needle]

if we had more generic damage instead of hit damage like many dot builds could be playable or strong enough

[proven haven]

I find it weird how multis are transferred to dots. Damage effectiveness doesn't matter at all, but the multis do

[stone rapids]

honestly i feel like this is more a problem with the skills. bleed and frostbite have really good itemization support

[strange needle]

Idk he was going to do the math he said it could be a ton of damage per ignite needs to test it realistically he has the gear to pull it off

[proven haven]

like, usually lower damage skills with less effectiveness compensate by having better multipliers

so better dots...?

[proven haven]

I'm using Igneous rain atm

[stone rapids]

i don't think 1:1 ade to dot dmg is a good idea bc of the outliers it would create but in general i and many others have been asking for dot effect to be a thing for forever now

[strange needle]

I know nothing about RI all I know is that I have a 4lp gordian prism that hopefully can be used someday

[stone rapids]

RI is something that really requires a lot of thought to build around as main damage

[strange needle]

There are many spells that look really cool

[proven haven]

Ri is insane yeah

[stone rapids]

like if i make a crit melee build i know what i'm gonna take and half my itemization is pre-determined

[proven haven]

here check this out, this is what I'm playing around with;
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oYE6OJD4

it has a lot of new tech I haven't seen

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (25) / Sorcerer (21) / Spellblade (15) / Runemaster (52)

General:

▸ Health: 1,723, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 496.51, Regen: 8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 304%, Regen: 69/s
▸ Attributes: 18 Str / 2 Dex / 83 Int / 146 Att / 2 Vit
▸ Resistances: 404% / 30% / 54% / 45% / 45% / 2% / 2%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 345
▸ Dodge Chance: 5% (151)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 31% (1,508)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 59%

Used skills:

Flame Rush / Runic Invocation / Enchant Weapon / Frost Wall / Runebolt

[stone rapids]

cold/fire scales?

[proven haven]

yep

they proc at the same time

but fire is "first"

so cold removes fire overload

[stone rapids]

interesting

i've always just used scales as a stat stick where i pick the one with the damage type i plan on ignoring

[proven haven]

I tried but I need 2 elements to proc

so I always at least nerf one

this is the lesser evil for a lot of stats

maybe not worth idk

I use like everything it gives

[stone rapids]

are 1x3s not potentially worth using here if you get a good enchant?

[proven haven]

this is what it looks like

[proven haven]

what was the enchant?

[stone rapids]

fire res + ignite duration

you have lots of both good prefix and suffix options on 1x3s too

[proven haven]

either way you lack room because using Unvar 1x4 and Throne 2x2

with 1.4 changes to idol slots it helps

[stone rapids]

you would probably drop the 1x2s and 1x1s in some spots to make room for 1x3s

[proven haven]

oh 1x3 talls?

yeah you could fit 3

[stone rapids]

yeah

they have pen or ignite chance as prefixes, and fire res or %inc fire damage suffixes

and then you can get fire res + ignite duration enchant

[proven haven]

tbh I just think it needs an entire extra multi or something

this is like 2T7 stuff minus the 80+ LPLs

thats not great damage

[stone rapids]

yeah that is a lot of gear for 12m dps lol

[proven haven]

hit based igneous slaps pretty hard compared

[stone rapids]

igneous is a fun skill

[proven haven]

hit based

thats respectable damage

That second volley did 210M damage

Maybe direct cast with Reowyns is the key 🤔 it's so hard to fit that into Reowyn's setup though

Another decent one is LLL

[strange needle]

Ok so the strength stacking build is a dot build and the lightning blast autobomber is a hit build

[proven haven]

Correct

[strange needle]

Okay I have been farming shock idols for net lightning rogue so I am gonna try streng stacker first🔥 ty for awesome builds

[proven haven]

Will have to let me know how it goes, haven't tried it since 1.2

I also never went full 77 with it

[strange needle]

Okay will work on that

[proven haven]

Dex stack is also an option, same basic build but you use plasma orb for giga AoE

damage is much higher at cost of defense

can potentially get some absurd numbers though

it can "one shot" 1k c bosses

with t7t5 gear*

[proven haven]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXoyZAtCCjQ here is that one

[strange needle]

Worth trying when they share idols

[proven haven]

Hmm LLL direct cast spam is actually kinda decent

[strange needle]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BgRJXqYR this is what I was able to get ready tonight a better cleaver I am gonna get and chest also shouldn't be too hard miss the slams have to try uber with it,flame rush applies the invocation and that invocation applies the brand deception if I understand that right

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 100

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (26) / Spellblade (14) / Runemaster (53)

General:

▸ Health: 2,150, Regen: 21.2/s
▸ Mana: 272.51, Regen: 15.04/s
▸ Ward Retention: 433%, Regen: 116/s
▸ Attributes: 164 Str / 9 Dex / 164 Int / 2 Att / 3 Vit
▸ Resistances: 115% / 79% / 116% / 100% / 104% / 43% / 46%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 430
▸ Dodge Chance: 1% (36)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 75% (8,422)
▸ Block Chance: 178%, Mitigation: 42% (1,404)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 35%

Used skills:

Runic Invocation / Frost Wall / Focus / Flame Ward / Flame Rush

[strange needle]

Btw vilatria set reforged t8 max it goes its like 1.5 shock per int idk why it says it can go to 2 per int even used glyph order while max rolls

[proven haven]

Idk I think some of the planners are wrong

[proven haven]

Honestly its a really complex build, worth going over some of my earlier videos in the start of 1.2 where I go over the math. I also have a spreadsheet for calc DPS

But yeah. Focus gives you Armour which gives you ward, you stack a bunch of pen and multis on invocation then use it to apply a massive brand

[versed hare]

Any ideas how to use this for mage?

[stone rapids]

i think to really get a good idea of the use case on any class we’re gonna need a better idea of what the alternate attributes do tbh

like what inherent property they each have

[versed hare]

so obviously this item shows that we are getting Area for AoE spells per Madness, and other than that i think they have mentioned before, that Madness is gona have a different effect from intelligence, so i would guess we dont have ward retention anymore, but we get something totally different.. im excited

[elfin rapids]

Evolution's End but swapping All Resistances for 3 times more All Attributes and bonus for Corrupted Attributes, if you can cap your resistances elsewhere it will probably be very nice.

Attunement = Apathy
Dexterity = Guile
Intelligence = Madness
Strenght = Brutality
Vitality = Rampancy

Now we need to know what each one does.

[versed hare]

yes we will have to wait until Hype week Mike said.. so thats like 4 weeks i guess?

[tame sun]

Orb enjoyers.... am I rite?

[left hill]

step 1: figure out how to get Madness 😅

[elfin rapids]

They kinda showed this already, you need to corrupt an item and pray for RNG to give you the exact attribute conversion you need.

[versed hare]

yes, and i think Mike just confirmed on stream that this corrupted conversion affix can only roll on amulets, at least thats how i understood it.

[proven haven]

I think there is some potential here for Runic Invocation that benefits from all attributes pretty heavily, you can benefit from Dodge from Dex, Armour from Str, Damage from Attune, Str, or Dex, and Generic Damage from INT, etc.

Currently it's hard to get a lot of non int attributes but this may make it easier to stack more without sacrificing as much

Or hybrid stack stuff like Mourningfrost Frost Claw

[versed hare]

are you having a specific invocation in mind? or just in general?

[proven haven]

It's not so much about specific invo's, more about the type of invo you want for your purpose. Like Plasma Orb doing Brand of Deception

A lot of them have the potential to be strong

[versed hare]

the first invocation thats come to my mind when i saw the area increase on the amulet was grand prism nova, also because of its great damage effectiveness

[proven haven]

I honestly don't get the appeal of grand prism tbh one hit at 600% effect is pretty weak

unless I am missing something

3 typed invo does give you access to the huge ward generator node in RI tree though

[harsh abyss]

The way I built it that was pretty fun was "Nova nova nova -> GPM" and it basically acted as a bigger, better nova.

And since it was tri-element, it gave me the big ward chunk, and GPM cast an extra 3 novas

so it's just novas for days

[proven haven]

It doesn't use the nova tree right?

[versed hare]

so there is this catalyst that might enable GPN to be casted more frequently like you spam runebolt and cast GPN constantly, idk just an idea

[harsh abyss]

No, but Elemental Starfield casts 3 ele novas when you cast a tri-element GPN

[proven haven]

yea for sure, theres a few ways to do it, but I just dont see where the damage scaling comes from

like, Igneous is ~1500% effectiveness with many hits

[versed hare]

youre probably right..

[proven haven]

I think LLL is around 1600

plasma orb probably 1000-2000

[harsh abyss]

I dunno, I think the strength comes from how often you cast it

But also 🤷‍♀️

[proven haven]

MAYBE with the giga ward gen you get you can focus on stacking dodge and armour

for a lot of reowyn flat

[harsh abyss]

I didn't try using Reowyn with it, tbh

oh wait

you can't because it's a catalyst

[proven haven]

oh right

[harsh abyss]

So Ladle is the obvious (only?) choice

[proven haven]

wait no

you dont need gordian

[versed hare]

ok?

[proven haven]

GPN is just LFC

you can just do LFC

[harsh abyss]

Oh, yeah, especially if you use the idol to lock the runes, it'd be easy enough

Gordian might actually be bad by comparison

[proven haven]

i think it is yeah

[harsh abyss]

Is LFC the default order for runes though?

[elfin rapids]

They could add an unique for that.

[harsh abyss]

They should add it to Gordian Prism to make it good.

[proven haven]

they could but then what is the point of gordian

idk gordian prevents reowyn

that kinda kills it from being top tier

well maybe

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, but it would make it so your RI would basically scale with 2 trees

[proven haven]

idk having nova tree would probably be enough

yeah fair

[harsh abyss]

Nova tree with a base scaling of 600% is probably good.

[proven haven]

it might be

[harsh abyss]

And you get some scaling from the RI tree too

[proven haven]

it needs a lot from nova tree

like 3 or 4x damage

maybe it does get that

[harsh abyss]

Well, you'd build Unstable + Crest of Unity for +13 levels to nova

I think with all the More multis in nova it ends up higher than Meteor's base

It's just one hit, which sucks

[proven haven]

and meteor is a low bar

[elfin rapids]

How would this interact with the node that adds cooldown to Elemental Nova or the node that makes it channeled? Would RI become channeled?

[harsh abyss]

It probably just wouldn't. If you add those it doesn't work

Maybe the cooldown would, but the channel wouldn't make sense

[proven haven]

triggers bypass cooldown, but it doesn't do anything in this case

[harsh abyss]

Plus, I'd bet anything that a channeled RI would break everything from a code perspective 😝

[proven haven]

that was the 1.0 meta play

they nerfed it

nova has such bad nodes damn

other than that one with 4 multis

[versed hare]

maybe spellblade is gona be new mage meta in S4...

[proven haven]

You also cant use unstable core with RI build

you need fundamental

otherwise zdps

[harsh abyss]

Fundamental doesn't work with normal LFC very well, you need to stack attunement to get damage?

[proven haven]

hm nova has like 11x damage from multis

kinda not bad

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

If you get ALL the multis

It also has 9% flat crit and decent crit multi

[proven haven]

Yeah attune, it's the hardest to stack but it's fine

hydra is also att

[harsh abyss]

The thing about the way I built it is: the RI isn't where most of your damage comes from. It comes from Nova mostly because:
-Teleport casts 3 novas
-Casting RI casts 3 novas
-You cast 3 novas to prep RI

So you get some okay damage from RI, but the real value comes from the extra novas you get

And obviously the like... 900-1200 ward you get every time you cast RI

[versed hare]

but wouldnt that only be good when you dont have a cooldown on RI?

how do you manage rune combination?

[harsh abyss]

Gordian prism gives zero fs about rune order, and Ele Nova is tri-element, so it does 3 different runes in the sequence.

So as long as you cast 3 novas, you get 3 different runes, which is what you care about

And if you accidentally cast 4, it rotates your runes by doing the first one again, but it doesn't matter because you always cast GPN

It's a very streamlined play style

[versed hare]

ok

[harsh abyss]

Here's the character I did it on: https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/sarthalas/character/cerryl

The gear is terrible, I think I was in the 200s or so for corruption. I stopped playing it mostly because I got distracted by a different build, which often happens.

There are MUCH better things to be used on it now

[proven haven]

I kinda like the Runebolt spam -> RI setup now that I've played with it a bit

Runebolt does a lot of stuff for RI

[wispy rune]

anyone got a flame reave build?

[graceful glen]

made a Bane of Winter build with the updated weapon. Doesn't show now but wiht all the chill chance converted to crit multi it is sitting at over 600% crit multi https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/owLRG8LN

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 96

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (28) / Sorcerer (25) / Spellblade (51) / Runemaster (8)

General:

▸ Health: 3,765, Regen: 0/s
▸ Mana: 116.49, Regen: 8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 294%, Regen: 75/s
▸ Attributes: 0 Str / 18 Dex / 75 Int / 0 Att / 0 Vit
▸ Resistances: 75% / 112% / 71% / 92% / 81% / 80% / 94%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 753
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (72)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 17% (535)

Used skills:

Mana Strike / Ice Barrage / Enchant Weapon / Flame Ward / Frost Claw

[proven haven]

I could be wrong, but I think the chill convert thing is still a bit of a bait. Eg. T7 perfect roll chill on wep is 208% -> 240% multi only for void bolt, T7 multi is already 160%, you could have both but diminishing returns and competitive affix slots on weapon, however the chill locks you out from your proccing hit doing much damage as a hybrid type build.
Maybe Oceareon ring though could be decent too here.

3LP Bane is also 1 in 19000, feels weird to include that but also have items with no T7s on them imo

I was thinking about this before though and maybe something like Mourningfrost + Dex stack could work. Voidwinter scales with dex (and not at all with int) plus the convert double dips, idk though

Also do we know if the BoW "multi per chance to chill with melee attacks" benefits from "chance to chill with cold skills"? I know this node didn't work with chance to shock with lightning skills

[graceful glen]

I mean definitely room for optimization but from what ive seen the base damage of void bolt is actually quite solid so with some base + crit multi + 8 proc every 2 second limit it should pump dps.

I think there is definitely room for a mourningfrost in there as well. Probably would be better with it tbh since you only have to worry about physical resistance with BoW.

I'm not sure about the chance to chill with cold skills works but I would hope so.

[proven haven]

oh I totally missed the proc rate being changed when I first saw it

thats a big difference

[graceful glen]

As far as the LP3 goes, you are right I would prob just drop the melee attack speed. Ocearon would work well but its actually likelyi you can get LP4 hollow fingers pretty easily which is really strong to cover missing resists/health

[proven haven]

I don't think you are getting 8 per 2 if you drop ASP tbh

[graceful glen]

its possible to get more AS elsewhere though. jade amuilet and different gloves would get most of that back

[proven haven]

if you had mourning you dont need flat on wep

[graceful glen]

thats true. mourningfrost would prob be better the more i think about it because of the crit scaling with dex in the passive tree

[proven haven]

yep free crit cap

bit of int for free gives some flat too if you need it

[graceful glen]

yea the main L there would be losing ward retention tho

dont think there is enough dodge to make up for that lol

[proven haven]

you stackin life though already

[graceful glen]

can never have enough

[proven haven]

could probably just skip out on ward altogether, maybe madness offers something

trade out ward ret

then leech or something

[nimble shoal]

I ran dex stacking bane SS way back in 1.1 and it was viable then, should be significantly better with all the buffs + primordials since (ofc my definition of viable is way lower than yours, so maybe the buffs could bring it up to viable for you)

[proven haven]

possible yea

also with dex stack you run bone clam

[nimble shoal]

It should not

[proven haven]

too bad flame reave doesn't really work here, could go full hybrid spell to melee, melee to spell convert

wait its proc on hit, not per attack

so multi hit maybe

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, and fair warning I didn't even use nib. Felt decently tanky this way and had decently smooth clear thanks to the VW bolts

[graceful glen]

i really like snowblind here because blind makes you crit immune and it gives solid defense + more chill

[proven haven]

blind imo with mana strike + VW will be pretty unreliable

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, when you hit a pack, it'll max out the procs immediately (usually, rng still)

[proven haven]

the chill on snowblind also doesn't work with Bane, as Father said

and there isn't much armour to get more of

[graceful glen]

i dont think so. you are also shitting out frostclaws and ice barage so plenty of hits to proc and keep it up

[proven haven]

hm that's fair

they are all kinda directional though

maybe fine for softcore I guess, I wouldn't rely on that in HC

[graceful glen]

also dont think this will be a huge issue because you will still get a decent amount of supplemental damage from ice barage and frost claw to cover killing any ranged/squishies that are still alive

[nimble shoal]

The blind will be fine on bosses, but not so much while clearing - especially sketchy for clearing unless you use ranged mana strike

[proven haven]

FC won't do any damage in this setup I reckon, even building around it the damage is fairly low, all this chill chance gives VW multi but nothing for FC

[nimble shoal]

It's not an issue at all, imo it's a good thing since it should wipe the screen more or less

and on a 2s cooldown

[graceful glen]

probably right that its not the best plan for HC but thats not really my vibe anyway

[proven haven]

Is it possible to get decent time rot chance?

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, just actually opened up the planner and they are using ranged mana strike, which does help blind out a good bit

[proven haven]

seems like a high opportunity cost

[strange needle]

Yo frozen are you supposed to use runic invocation directly for bossing or you just use flame rush and that procs RI while you focus in the meantime?

[nimble shoal]

You can get like.... 28% TR chance with the set amulet (or 56% on T8 lol)

and that's it

[proven haven]

Theres a combo setup where you can get a huge burst with direct if its a traversal

bunch of multis stacked

but generally just rush yea

If you want more damage you have to make good use of Frost Wall, 30% more damage on next RI per second it is up

[graceful glen]

Yea i dont think time rot is worth pursuing

[proven haven]

you cycle that you do over 2x damage

[strange needle]

Yeah I am missing realistically like 3 affixes and brand deception is doing like 15 million sometimes on dummies per tick

[proven haven]

15 mill with str?

[strange needle]

Yeah

[proven haven]

hmm that's more than I remember

[strange needle]

But direct cast seems to give me more damage

[proven haven]

yea it has the 1.45x on it iirc

but its cooldown

[strange needle]

Yeah thats the problem

[proven haven]

so you time that with your frost wall, just spam FR + Focus, then when FW about to time out

walk through and direct cast

its pretty mechanically intensive to do it optimally

since you need to rotate FWs

watch cooldowns and such

[strange needle]

I have enough shock that it has like 4530 more damage just need pen on chest with streng and double increase on cleaver or at least 1 with shock

Ok yeah I need that set up let me copy it, the lightning blast autobomber is a lot less mechanically demanding right

[proven haven]

yeah that you just hold it down and go brr

can do timing shit with Julra rings I guess but eh

[graceful glen]

futzed with it a bit and added mourningfrost. definitely better like this. maybe slightly less tanky though

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BOwP3XR2

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (25) / Spellblade (60) / Runemaster (8)

General:

▸ Health: 3,724, Regen: 0/s
▸ Mana: 118.51, Regen: 8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 144%, Regen: 0/s
▸ Attributes: 0 Str / 113 Dex / 45 Int / 0 Att / 0 Vit
▸ Resistances: 79% / 3% / 75% / 85% / 81% / 78% / 94%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 745
▸ Dodge Chance: 14% (452)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 16% (542)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 6%

Used skills:

Mana Strike / Ice Barrage / Enchant Weapon / Flame Ward / Frost Claw

[left hill]

iirc no, just generic chill chance and chill chance with melee

[graceful glen]

yea i didnt spec into that node anyway

[proven haven]

talking about the helm

[graceful glen]

oh yea huh. i guess the same applies to runemaster node then?

[proven haven]

ye

also looks like you aren't using a lot of the weaver affixes on idols

regular ele res instead of weaver ele res

[graceful glen]

yea im not. def room for more stuff

i was just rhowing shit in to see

prob get t7 health on the ammy too

[proven haven]

yea looks good could be interesting

[graceful glen]

we shall see!

[proven haven]

Would be nice to fit in a bit of DR, or armour or something

[graceful glen]

never gonna be as good as the good old frost claw ele nova shit but one can only hope

[graceful glen]

there is actually a decent amount of reduction from titan heart + runemaster passive + grasp of blood mage

[proven haven]

yea its fair

im just used to RR builds I guess xd

[graceful glen]

yea i mean definitely could be tankier

[proven haven]

oh yeah I realize with the dex stack, chill for multi, and not much int FC / IB would be pretty low damage

IB gives 60% more cold though

which is pretty good

[graceful glen]

yea not a lot of more anywhere else so its super valuable

i was thiniing about that new set amulet that auto casts volcanic orb too but I don't think that would give more damage than IB haha

[proven haven]

yea probably not, not getting much damage out of spells other than VWB in this setup, probably better to go for utility to boost that imo

[strange needle]

The autobomber squad is here, another guy in my legacy group is doing frozen lb autobomber build loving so far, was struggling following a meteor one he saw i said just follow frozen one and he is like its way more explained and better than any I checked before

[proven haven]

Not sure if this was the meteor one y'all were looking at, but it looked pretty cool too; #🧙┃mage message

probably does require a bit better gear to do Uber but its certainly a more unique build

[weary hornet]

Only works if you have the pack capybaras.

[harsh abyss]

Packybaras

[graceful glen]

I was thinking and a whole other aspect of this build would be what the new dex conversion will be for "Guile" or whatever. since we don't care about dodge rating from dex. the one source looks like every 10 dex = 1 % chance to take 0 damage which sounds better than dodge for our sakes

If you get a good corruption on one of the items that gives you the stat conversion

[proven haven]

120 dex is already 15% chance to take 0 damage xd from 480 dodge

if it gives something else too maybe yeah

surely there is more though yea

[harsh abyss]

Well, if you convert all your dex to guile, your passive that scales crit with dex wouldn't work, would it?

[proven haven]

it should, according to what they've said

[harsh abyss]

oh interesting

[graceful glen]

yea sounds like the only thing you lose is the inherent benefit of the stat like dodge, ward retention armour etc

[wispy rune]

any flame reave builds?

[pseudo verge]

I played it to 500c and stopped if that would help

[proven haven]

damn I thought I had a cool GoD tech but it seems like the Shock -> Ignite doesn't work :/

[harsh abyss]

...really? That's too bad

Int stacking with Vilatria helm T8?

[proven haven]

T7 with the fire res primal neck but yeah

[harsh abyss]

Ah, fair. Interesting idea for sure

[harsh abyss]

I can't even see what's going on there, lol

Is that... fire black hole with fire res stacking and wildfire?

[atomic creek]

Making a new build?

[proven haven]

black hole yes, no wildfire

[proven haven]

Just going through stuff to see whats interesting

that's after a really big damage ramp with ignite pop, still slower uber than LB

not that much slower though

[lavish apex]

I've wanted to play an ignite build other than Witchfire. Is it pretty much just Sorc that you'd run it on?

I tried homebrewing with flame reave ignite this season and stalled out around 200c

[proven haven]

Yea I think you could maybe do a viable ignite with Runic Invo or B-hole

[lavish apex]

Phrasing

[atomic creek]

Are the dmg numbers there shows after area lvl mitigation? Or is the raw dmg numbers?

[lavish apex]

Lol

[proven haven]

Thats on uber itself, thats after mitigation

[lavish apex]

Would it be Hydrahedron for the rapid applications?

[proven haven]

Igneous for ignite multis and more hits

[lavish apex]

Is that the fireball or one of the thousand others

[proven haven]

Its like PoE firestorm

[lavish apex]

Ah yeah

[proven haven]

But with fiery B-hole or Runic the idea is still to get as many multis as you can on base skill and transfer to the ailment

Pen, more multi, whatever

[lavish apex]

Yeah for sure

That's what I was trying with Flame reave using the Flamebrand nodes that boost your next non-flamebrand skill

[proven haven]

Some of these builds get an ass load of their damage from idols so if idols end up being strong there's some tech there

[lavish apex]

Clear was fine single target plateaued quick

[proven haven]

Yep ignite issue

[lavish apex]

I'm also just not very familiar with all of the options mage has so I probably missed some easy stuff somewhere

[proven haven]

You need like high hundreds or thousands of stacks with massive multis

To do any damage with ignite

[lavish apex]

The Enchant Weapon active pops are fun tho

[proven haven]

On sorc and rm too

[atomic creek]

60M hit after mitigation 😱

[proven haven]

Yea if you have a good ramp and timing, with obviously really good gear you can completely skip final phase. Like I said though it was still slower than my LB with similar gear, and harder to execute properly

This whole tech basically needs fire aura to be good

[atomic creek]

What’s you’re sheet dps on LB with your gear?

[proven haven]

I forget, its like 500 something k without any buffs, few million with

[atomic creek]

We really need a PoB for LE

[lavish apex]

there's a couple people working on one

I've just been using spreadsheets

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QkY2Edxd that was my flame reave build. maybe I'll try picking it up again in the future

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 85

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (24) / Spellblade (66) / Runemaster (8)

General:

▸ Health: 1,114, Regen: 75.35/s
▸ Mana: 149.93, Regen: 9.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 189%, Regen: 98/s
▸ Attributes: 2 Str / 7 Dex / 56 Int / 2 Att / 5 Vit
▸ Resistances: 110% / 104% / 35% / 60% / 62% / 5% / 67%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 31%, Threshold: 223
▸ Dodge Chance: 60% (2326)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 14% (348)
▸ Block Chance: 17%, Mitigation: 29% (521)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 22%

Used skills:

Firebrand / Flame Reave / Flame Ward / Enchant Weapon / Surge

[atomic creek]

Yeah. I’ve been using spreadsheets too

[nimble shoal]

Spreadsheets work well, but they do take some effort to setup if you want something close to PoB level of functionality

[proven haven]

You dont necessarily need to start from scratch though, some of my sheets are relative comparisons like LB. If I already know something is good enough to minmax I just need to find the best version of that thing, not necessarily know what the exact DPS number is

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, that's largely what I use mine for as well, though oftentimes a dps calc just kinda happens as a byproduct of doing that

[atomic creek]

I make actual proper dps calc.
Like seeing how much my char improves over time

[pseudo verge]

Sharing is caring

[nimble timber]

Sorry if this has been asked a million times but I just started a new character to tool around on until the new season drops/something to kill time. Are there any decent scaling spell blade builds that don't use shatter strike? I did really enjoy it the last time I played but wouldn't mind trying something else. Looking on maxroll/YouTube didn't shine too much light so I thought id come here

[harsh abyss]

I have a theorized one, but I never really tested how far it could go.

Mana Strike trigger build:
Vilatria helm + legends entwined for a lot of spell damage.
Dragoraths Claw + Enigma

Specialize in Mana Strike, Lightning Blast, Frost Claw

Mana strike keeps your mana up while you trigger LB and Frost Claw, plus the Mana Arc and Spark Charges that mana strike natrually triggers.

Stack attack speed and go nuts with triggers.

[nimble timber]

Sounds very interesting. Ill give it a closer look

[harsh abyss]

You can also add in Lightning converted fire aura, but that'll probably be better next season obviously.

[nimble timber]

I don't know any of the upcoming changes, just ironing out a league start path and seeing if I can hit ~500c or so. No plans to even take down Abby or anything. Just always liked spell blades thematically

[proven haven]

I've played around with Drago FC Mana Strike LB, its definitely viable, it plays very similarly to LB direct cast though since it's also ranged but does less damage because of the low proc rate

you could do 500c with it

shouldn't be that much of an issue

Uber would be a real challenge though

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, definitely can do 500 with it.

Its hard to match direct cast LB because of the additional chains and double/quad cast.

[proven haven]

One nice thing about Drago is it is one of the few sources of ward on crit without a limit

[harsh abyss]

The 50% chance to cast FC per hit probably makes up for a bit of it. And crit capping should be real easy.

[proven haven]

FC kinda flops unfortunately, most of your damage is in the sparks and the bounces don't work on indirect

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

[proven haven]

The LB itself works fairly well though

[harsh abyss]

Sucks that FC has so few More modifiers.

[nimble timber]

I've never even fought Uber so that's not on my radar either. I played a good bit in S2 and built up an erasing strike (insert class here).

Is there a build guide/link somewhere that sort of irons out the drago/lb/FC stuff or should I just toss some stuff together

[proven haven]

lol what are the chances, someone just posted one a couple days ago;
https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/terranisaurs-ssf-mana-strike-spellblade

[silk pewter]

Terranisaur's SSF Mana Strike Spellblade Build Guide

Game Cycle / Version

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class

Mage / Spellblade

Used skills

• Static Orb
• Frost Claw
• Mana Strike
• Flame Ward
• Lightning Blast

Used unique items

• Unstable Core
• Dragorath's Claw
• Fragment of the Enigma
• Blood of the Exile
• Legends Entwined

Tags

SSF

Created by Terranisaur · Feb 17, 2026, 12:14 AM

[proven haven]

this is not super optimal tbh... should be decent starting point though

[nimble timber]

Thank you very much! A starring point is plenty

[proven haven]

ugh, theres some pretty big mistakes in here actually, for one LB double / quad cast doesn't work with indirect, the chains round up and arcing power doesn't work with indirect, and you want spark nova in LB

they also stack life which doesn't really make sense without Twisted Heart working, only reactive ward does anything here

[harsh abyss]

I have one set up that is a bit funky but I like the setup. I'll link it when I get home.

[nimble timber]

🤣thanks guys much appreciated. I'll wait for that

[harsh abyss]

Just getting Drag and enigma going will take you pretty far, everything else can come later

[nimble timber]

Sounds great

[harsh abyss]

Okay, planner was a LOT rougher than I remember, but here you go: ~https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BgRJZwJk

The tech that I don't usually see used is:
-Stack dodge rating
-Foot of the mountain converts dodge to endurance threshold
-Wall of nothing adds endurance threshold as ward decay threshold

So while you're standing still blasting (while it's safe) you have tons of ward decay threshold, and while you're moving and trying to avoid getting hit, you have a good amount of dodge. With good rolls, you can have over 3k dodge, which translates to 2550 ward decay threshold on a good Wall of Nothing

There are a bunch of things in that other build that I don't agree with that are going to hurt it's mana efficiency and make it less strong in general. I agree with Frozen that it's a fine starting point, but it seems to not understand how some things work fundamentally.

[proven haven]

This is a better build for sure, I'm not sure how I feel about the dodge thing though, with int stacker you probably get more value out of just leaning into int and ward, with maybe a bit of armour you can get for free giving guaranteed DR

your skill tree is correct though, I like it

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, leaning into armor works too. I just find Dodge feels really good once you get to the 50%+ level

[proven haven]

It just feels weird to lean that much into endurance and such with such a low life pool

and like 7k+ armour

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, the endurance threshold is mostly for converting into ward decay threshold

[proven haven]

its like improving the 2nd buffer when you could just prevent yourself from ever reaching that buffer

[harsh abyss]

You could also use the same tech but invest more modestly into dodge and go for more armor, and get like 1000 ward decay threshold

[proven haven]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BZ3DLO71 I like your setup, just my spin on it

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (8) / Spellblade (62) / Runemaster (23)

General:

▸ Health: 1,308, Regen: 20/s
▸ Mana: 306.92, Regen: 8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 430%, Regen: 280/s
▸ Attributes: 24 Str / 29 Dex / 196 Int / 30 Att / 24 Vit
▸ Resistances: 90% / 66% / 130% / 85% / 83% / 69% / 69%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 42%, Threshold: 330
▸ Dodge Chance: 4% (116)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 42% (2,395)

Used skills:

Mana Strike / Lightning Blast / Frost Claw / Enchant Weapon / Flame Rush

[proven haven]

technically T7 LB belt is probably strong here

but pain to farm

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, that could be good for sure

Another thing you could do that might be good with the dodge version would be to use Scavenger's belt. With 9 LPL, you could very easily get 3-4 LP versions of it for strong super slams.

[versed hawk]

@proven haven you a mage expert? Just reading back up in the chat it seems like you've got some experience with build crafting it.

[proven haven]

I've dabbled in mage a bit you could say

[versed hawk]

Can I post a few build links and get some feedback if you've got time? Just curious if I'm thinking about some of these things correctly

[proven haven]

I can eyeball it

[versed hawk]

This is what I'm running now. Static Orb + Lightning Blast + spark charges

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Qdzz2V6y

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (65) / Spellblade (5) / Runemaster (23)

General:

▸ Health: 2,128, Regen: 54.76/s
▸ Mana: 1,308.98, Regen: 25.68/s
▸ Ward Retention: 384%, Regen: 166/s
▸ Attributes: 34 Str / 21 Dex / 198 Int / 21 Att / 29 Vit
▸ Resistances: 82% / 78% / 82% / 50% / 50% / 59% / 59%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 41%, Threshold: 426
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (84)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 46% (2,736)

Used skills:

Static Orb / Snap Freeze / Flame Ward / Teleport / Lightning Blast

[versed hawk]

Snap freeze in there because I couldn't really see any use for anything else

[proven haven]

whats the goal of this build?

[versed hawk]

That's my planner anyway. My current gear is a little less optimized than that. But I'm cruising through low corruption so far, enjoying it.

[versed hawk]

Basically the way I'm playing it is spam black hole until I'm out of mana which does decent damage, and then hold left click and right click and cast lightning blast and black hole when I get mana back. All the while doing extra damage with spark charges.

Sorry

Not black hole

Too many convos at once lol

Spam static orb*

Most of the damage comes from static orb at this point with the gear I've got

[proven haven]

My main thought with that is that Static Orb doesn't really do anything here that LB doesn't already do better

Static Orb doesn't have great spark charge synergy

This is kinda like split focus build, Static Orb isn't really adding anything to LB, and LB isn't really adding anything to Static Orb, but building to support both has you taking affixes that only benefit 1 of these at a time

You can use Static Orb as a utility for LB

Additional Chains, Shocked Ground, Aegis

but it wouldn't do any damage itself

Alternatively you can build into Static Orb itself

but probably ignore spark charges

[versed hawk]

Hmm. Do you have any ideas to build more into static orb and drop spark charges?

I didn't feel like I could get enough damage or mana regen on static orb by itself, that's why I tried to add LB with spark charges

[proven haven]

but you can't cast them both at the same time so they aren't adding to each others damage

1 sec I might have a planner

[versed hawk]

Yeah that makes sense. I guess I just didn't know how to get enough mana regen to sustain SO, so decided I might as well do a little damage during its downtime.

[proven haven]

I did focus recharge mana guide

for clear you get 40% of missing mana on tap instantly

on boss you just hold it for 2-3s and you are full mana

[versed hawk]

Oooh interesting. I started with focus but didn't run mana guide. I'll see if I can switch gears a bit

Would you still recommend vilatria's set bonus?

[proven haven]

yea, I have a character but import into planner not working hmm

[versed hawk]

Wack

[proven haven]

whatever I'll just throw one together real quick

[proven haven]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BM624e4N here try this. You can also swap Frost Wall for AA for mana efficiency and a 32% more multi, you can turn it on during focus while moving and ramp damage. It's huge DPS but more mechanical to play properly.

[silk pewter]

Sorcerer, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (61) / Spellblade (5) / Runemaster (27)

General:

▸ Health: 1,476, Regen: 23.6/s
▸ Mana: 1,045.48, Regen: 21.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 421%, Regen: 115/s
▸ Attributes: 31 Str / 18 Dex / 184 Int / 12 Att / 12 Vit
▸ Resistances: 80% / 56% / 111% / 76% / 82% / 94% / 50%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 295
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (85)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 51% (3,220)

Used skills:

Teleport / Flame Ward / Frost Wall / Focus / Static Orb

[proven haven]

With good gear should blow up uber in ~1 min

[versed hawk]

Aight bet. Thanks for the input, much appreciated

[austere jackal]

nice nice you still prepare

some mage build

spellblade rework

but still cannot exist static strike/shatter strike

[versed hawk]

Okay this is like 10x better than what I had. What increases my damage so much more? Is it just the spoon + taking the small orbs in the skill tree?

[proven haven]

yea mostly, just some extra more multis in tree, skills, etc. and spoon

you also didnt have shred iirc

which is a lot of damage

[versed hawk]

Lightning shred? I had in a blessing

Or armor shred?

[proven haven]

armor

[versed hawk]

Ahh. Yeah didn't have any armor shred, didn't think about that

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, armor shred is huge for any hit build

[rapid hinge]

armor shred is like the most broken thing in the game

😁

1 single suffix for 56% more damage

[harsh abyss]

Does anyone know how long surge takes to go its distance?

[tribal veldt]

this bit?

[harsh abyss]

Is that actually how long it lasts? It always feels longer for some reason

[radiant vessel]

That's how long the actual skill lasts for yes. But it has a cast time beforehand

Which is like 0.14 seconds

So in total you're "locked out" for around 0.34 seconds or so

That's why when you pick the skill that makes you take no damage while in surge it can feel like you can still sometimes get hit after pressing the button

Since you're not invulnerable while "casting" surge, only while "using" it

[harsh abyss]

That seems rather frustrating, lol

[radiant vessel]

Yep

[austere jackal]

some patch notes?

[south yoke]

maybe march 20

[harsh abyss]

Yeah usually we get them at the end of hype week, right?