🧙┃mage

[versed hawk]

just let me dream of being a ball of lightning screaming around the map blowing everything up 😭

[proven haven]

You may like the plasma orb thing then

Basically what zero is talking about

[half pollen]

If you think its not worth it I would love some tips on my runemaster build that uses it:

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BM6LJv4r

it does damage with lightning lightning lightning invocation and triggers mana strikes with every cast to get enough mana for statics which again fuels RIs runic energy. In between you move around with focus

[silk pewter]

Runemaster, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (13) / Spellblade (31) / Runemaster (49)

General:

▸ Health: 1,515, Regen: 27.2/s
▸ Mana: 315.51, Regen: 23.36/s
▸ Ward Retention: 146%, Regen: 152/s
▸ Attributes: 32 Str / 108 Dex / 48 Int / 13 Att / 13 Vit
▸ Resistances: 91% / 67% / 122% / 52% / 52% / 65% / 65%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 303
▸ Dodge Chance: 65% (3067)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 45% (2,710)
▸ Crit Avoidance: 93%

Used skills:

Static / Runic Invocation / Focus / Mana Strike / Flame Rush

[versed hawk]

oh?

is that ^ the planner for it? what is plasma orb?

[half pollen]

No thats a planner for a janky build of mine. Not recommended for blind following

[proven haven]

Sure, get telfun boots and trigger runic with flame rush. The dodge during channel transfers to runic. Combo let's you get like 6000 armour, dodge, and ward for 600 flat

[half pollen]

Arcane shielding sadly doesnt work anymore for triggered melee attacks, so those points are kinda outdated

[proven haven]

Don't even bother with runic energy imo. Whatever you get is free damage but its too high maintenance

[half pollen]

Its free though. With static you get a double cast every time, which is like every 1.5 seconds on a dummy

And without RE you dont trigger mana strikes from RI

[proven haven]

Sure but you could instead have Frost Wall and Flame Ward giving permanent 14% more damage for free without any maintenance, allowing you to stay in focus between casts

And defense and more ward

[versed hawk]

btw i saw voidwinter bolts getting a proc rate buff. seems like it has good synergy with mourningfrost and dex stacking. has that been tried before?

[proven haven]

Yeah that was the idea I mentioned too, seems possible

Good synergy

Not sure if enough DPS, havent done the math

[versed hawk]

basically negates half the downside of mourningfrost with cold damage converted to physical

pretty nice

[proven haven]

Yep, some triggers would be nice

Kinda goes well with Frost claw trigger too

[versed hawk]

mhmm

my brain wants to cook but my bed calls to me

I wonder what the best melee skill to proc that would be?

Mana strike I guess?

[proven haven]

That or shatterstrike maybe idk, probably too annoying to do mana with SS

Need a lot of attack speed with mana strike to max procs iirc

[half pollen]

You are probably right about that number wise, but im just too in love with the gameplay and seeing my mana jump from full to empty and back to full every other second

[versed hawk]

Maybe both, just hold down left/right click and you don't have to worry about mana

[proven haven]

Also you can take never late + nimbus walk in RM tree for free crit cap on plasma

[proven haven]

Yep true, not sure if worth 2 skill slots for that though

[versed hawk]

Yeah, also at that point you're kinda just running SS anyway.

Not sure if the bolts would even get to do anything

[proven haven]

Yea idk, also puts you into melee range

[nimble shoal]

Yes, I ran dex stack bane of winter SS in 1.1 when the spear was first released. It was viable then, should be better now with the buffs and primordials since.

I used cooldown mana strike for mana while bossing, didn't/rarely need to use mana strike while clearing

Back then there was no possible way to make VW bolts into your main damage, so using mana strike to proc wasn't an option, SS was most of your damage and VW bolts just helped with clearing

[proven haven]

I think issue is probably single target, 1.2 on needs a lot more than 1.1 did

Even 3m dps was plenty then

[nimble shoal]

Why is that? Aside from uber coming out, I don't remember too much changing

[versed hawk]

Interesting. I'm excited to try a purely proc based build without SS. Would be super fun to just be launching VW bolts and maybe FC at everything constantly. I imagine single target will be the issue though.

[nimble shoal]

fwiw, SS does have the icicle proc built in (which also gets some innate flat melee as spell damage) and a global more cold damage multi

you wouldn't want to use the SS repeats node since it seems like you can't hit an enemy with more than one icicle per total use

mana arc does allegedly convert to cold with mana strike though, so if you want to go the mana strike route, that's what I would recommend

[versed hawk]

So there's not really any way to take advantage of the more VW bolts multi that's on the spear I'm realizing

At least as a mage

[pale cedar]

Yeah, unfortunately you cant get the 75% aspd either with 2 hander. Im pretty sure the triple cast is just worth it regardless

[versed hawk]

Time rot basically only exists for sentinels

[pale cedar]

Unless you can somehow sustain shattered strike without a mana gen but with autocast procs, it's pretty unlikely even with foot of the mountain at full stack

i think i also looked at time rot items and only sent item/affixes had it. A little disappointing

[versed hawk]

Doesn't seem like stacking chill chance for the crit multi bonus is worth it either... seems like just getting generic crit multi on your gear is gonna give you a higher number

Unless you can get crazy gear and do both

[pale cedar]

you can probably get some chill through passive tree, but unsure if its worth. Since its chill on melee you can get atleast 25% (5 pts enchant weapon), 100% (10 pts sb tree), 35% (5 pts sorc tree), But crit multi is a lot easier to get than more damage. Not sure if its worth all that investment.

I think part of the reason why SS can get such high dps is because of the cold pen from the relic as well. If you keep trying to optimize im pretty sure it ends up just cutting out the staff sadly

[proven haven]

probably not since chances are you will also have your melee attack and maybe FC / other sources of residual damage with only void bolts scaling with chill

[nimble shoal]

Nah, if you're focusing on SS as a spell proc skill, you don't want repeats at all. The less attack speed just means less spell procs, and the mana cost hurts.

[nimble shoal]

Not even VKs currently are able to stack much at all, at least of the kind that contributes to VW bolts

[versed hawk]

Sad

[nimble shoal]

Yes, by far nib is the best SS damage item, but we want to cover the screen with spell procs, not play actual SS

[versed hawk]

So we probably want a bunch of Sorc gear then? Not necessarily SB gear?

[nimble shoal]

The way I'm planning on doing it (probably won't be my starter, but we'll see) is dex stack and will focus on melee attack speed a lot, not really sorc kinda gear

There's also the VO orbit rings which could be interesting for a mana strike setup, not sure if worthwhile though

[versed hawk]

Hmmm. Mourningfrost probably very necessary for any kind of damage with the procs

[pale cedar]

It kind of sounds like mana strike would just be better for that then. you can proc so much with that + frost claw with either ice barrage or ele nova random procs

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, that said you'll have some okay flat just from bane, SB passive, and the melee to spell conversions on some spells like FC and SS icicle

[nimble shoal]

Eh, idk. SS grants global more cold damage and has a spell proc that scales with your flat melee damage

not to mention that SS itself will deal a lot more damage than mana strike, which might be really nice on bosses on top of its double hit

[pale cedar]

i generally assume enchant weapons will be 1 slot. If you're playing on hit, probably frost claw so thats 2. Mana strike 3, shatter strike 4. Last one is usually flame ward or tp, but you could potentially get ice barrage and just use flameward tp with no specialization i guess?

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, alternatively there might be a chance you could get away without speccing mana strike, but seems unlikely

and then you'd use flame ward, IB, SS, FC

and enchant weapon ofc

[versed hawk]

Why the IB spec? What procs that?

Oh Frost Claw... that works without direct cast?

i've never done a build with FC or IB. this is the planner i threw together... @nimble shoal is this the general idea or am I missing something big?

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oN2X9pRR

[silk pewter]

Spellblade, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Mage (20) / Sorcerer (25) / Spellblade (66) / Runemaster (2)

General:

▸ Health: 1,927, Regen: 0/s
▸ Mana: 171.2, Regen: 12.08/s
▸ Ward Retention: 153%, Regen: 129/s
▸ Attributes: 18 Str / 142 Dex / 46 Int / 10 Att / 18 Vit
▸ Resistances: 65% / -101% / 75% / 57% / 79% / 109% / 59%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 36%, Threshold: 385
▸ Dodge Chance: 23% (772)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 35% (1,880)

Used skills:

Shatter Strike / Frost Claw / Ice Barrage / Enchant Weapon / Mana Strike

[nimble shoal]

The main reason for IB is that left side of the tree perk that grants a big global more cold damage buff (Frost Armor). I'm not 100% sure if that works when proccing it or if you need to direct cast it, though. If it works on proc, that would be a good argument for using mana strike instead of SS since IB is mana hungry.
For SS, I'd grab some more of the damage nodes since those do apply to its icicles (and it'll probably do decent damage incidentally to help single target).
On FC, I'd grab some ice spirals personally for more spell procs, if you can spare the points, but not super important

[versed hawk]

Nice. So SS melee hits proc VW, FC which procs spirals and IB, and icicles which benefit from more damage on SS

[pale cedar]

it does, though im not sure how much aspd youd need to get it to proc consistently. I only tried it on a character without LP statted items

the 60% global more cold is huge on each autoproc but itll destroy the mana pool

[pale cedar]

Works when proccing it off of frostclaws, that part i tested. I used to run it in 1.0 with a full autocast frostclaw / ele nova / icebarrage build

the autoproc is a nice way to bypass the cooldown that gets added

but it is pretty inconsistent, and the annoying part is if it procs twice in a row it eats the mana with very little benefit since ice barrage lasts for a while

[versed hawk]

Hmm so probably need mana strike then. Seems like it would play very similar to current SS where you just hold down MS and SS and empty and refill your mana, except instead of damage from SS it's damage from procs

Unless you drop IB to make mana drain less intense

[pale cedar]

yeah you could but id still worry about frost claw draining mana too quick. I think its feasible to make SS sustainable with 50% reduction and without the triple SS, but unless you also made frostclaw take close to 0, the procs would still chip your mana without Manastrike

[nimble shoal]

That said, ice shield which gives you the big buff only lasts 4s, and I suppose you could spec IB to be short/no duration

[pale cedar]

Yeah i was too lazy to level the skills but it should be possible to get the bonus damage icicle thats short while still getting ice shield

thats probably a better solution than trying to go it without mana gen, unless you could somehow get SS low enough where it's +mana per hit

[versed hawk]

All this to say... VW bolts likely are not enough by themselves because there's not enough scaling options sadly. A very cool concept but they'd need a lot more help to be a build by themselves.

Hopefully will still be a cool build though.

[nimble shoal]

Hmm... yeah, without foot of the mountain, lowest we can go is 7 mana cost per SS

[pale cedar]

for now we pray they just have another sb change or unique that might support it 🙏

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, I mean SS should work fine without IB and mana strike should work fine with IB

so there's options

[nimble shoal]

Yeah, definitely wouldn't try to build around them solely, but they happen for free on top of whatever other stuff you use, so just playing a build that scales similarly should benefit from them quite a bit

[radiant vessel]

I was actually really close to using IB on my shatter strike build because the buff is so strong but manually casting it just wasn't worth it since I have no cast speed. Making it barely a sustain DPS boost as well as making the build feel way worse

[short spoke]

The black hole fixes look sweet. I use black hole/motor and will take anything I can get

Meteor lol

[left hill]

ooh, what did they preview for Black Hole?

nevermind, found a reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1rt15ts/last_epoch_dev_stream_season_4_teasers_hype_week/

[weary hornet]

Last night while fooling around with my vo spellblade, I had gotten over 10k stacks of frostbite applied to Uber. It's extraordinary dps at the cost of speed and survivability. Hopefully I can figure out a comfortable mix of the two without 4 minute fights.

Mana strike and Volcanic Orb are best supported with Ice Barrage (1.6x more cold dam). I like Glacier as a teleport and specced into Rime. Easy uptime when using the evade helmet (dominance of tundra). I just don't know that it gives a lot of real value.

Having a hard time determining what 4th or 5th skills give best value. Snap freeze has utility and some respectable defensive passives. Also easily fits into rotation.

Enchant weapon is pretty meh and frost wall seems bugged. Uber never wants to freeze when I have frost wall.

Think imma try surge again (I like the invuln) but with some LB support. Curious how useful that may be.

[cosmic dove]

I need to see more of the new tree. It's not clear to me if there are more options or things will collapse (kek) to single BH converted to fire again

[harsh abyss]

The second teaser is the one that I though they'd already done but couldn't find

IDK where I must have seen it

[balmy flame]

Frost wall itself states that enemies that reach the wall at least 0.2 seconds after it has existed will be frozen for up to 2 seconds. The catch is the next line: "Bosses cannot be frozen this way".
It should only mean that the wall itself does not instantly freeze a boss, but is it perchance also blocking other freeze sources?

[nimble shoal]

You mean like from other skills? No, it doesn't prevent you from freezing bosses

Just frost wall won't freeze them

[robust junco]

Frost Wall is so sad

[harsh abyss]

I hate that Frost Wall is basically just used as a generic More multipler that can be added to any build and you're wrong for not using it.

[robust junco]

And it snapshot

[tribal veldt]

"wrong for not using it" is a strong term I'd say, mage has a lot of skills in a similar bracket and they're competing with each other for skill slots

I do believe chilled touch shouldn't exist though

[proven haven]

Mage doesnt really have much for really strong somewhat situational utilities. The Mage stats would tell you that 98% flame ward usage makes it one of the most busted skills in the game but I don't even care that much whether I have it or not. Its just what else do you take in util slot?

Do I have room for 14% more damage from Frost Wall? Sure.

Do I have room for TP buffs? No? Okay guess I use Flame Rush then for runic invocation elements to line up.

Let me take snap freeze for a whopping 250 armour

[austere jackal]

its 16

where is patch notes

and where is COF

i love COF

COF forever MG to banned

[robust junco]

Patch note Friday

[austere jackal]

ty for info

[short spoke]

I don't know ow about busted.

Try surviving without it

As sorcerer, anyway

I use black hole just for bosses, not exactly situational, but kinda

[proven haven]

I do, all the time. I'm one of the 2% I guess

[lavish apex]

you're definitely part of the 2% lol. it's like the first thing I notice when I check a mage guide is that it'll include flame ward

[abstract scaffold]

It's just easy to get strong survivability. Most people barely understand how to generate ward, so every new player ever is going to feel like the tank skill is needed to survive any amount of hits.

I think the guaranteed freeze/stun skills like snap freeze are underrated for survivability tho 💪

[plain garnet]

I wouldn't say it's easy to get strong survivability; you have to devote a sizeable chunk of your gearing/passives to it, but it's definitely possible to make a tanky mage without relying on Flame Ward. Most people opt to just lean into more damage and use Flame Ward to shore up defenses.

[abstract scaffold]

No I mean Flame Ward is easy to get and strong survivability

[hollow bolt]

any spellblade enjoyers for the new season?

[plain garnet]

Ah, true. I think a lot of mages over rely on it; if it is your only defensive layer, you're super tanky when it's up, but made of glass when it's on cooldown

[harsh abyss]

Very possibly but we gotta see them patch notes

[short spoke]

That doesn't really work when meteor is my main skill

[harsh abyss]

Snap Freeze could be decent defense for Meteor. If there's anything you can't kill in 3 seconds of casting, you're probably fighting Aberroth

[cosmic dove]

do you think black hole with rumored stronger vacuum pull could be defense comparable with snap freeze?

[harsh abyss]

Nah, Snap Freeze is complete inability to act for 3 seconds (When specc'd properly). There isn't really anything like that. But the cooldown is long enough that you're only going to use it occasionally.

Black Hole is a totally different sort of skill, you don't really use it for the crowd control aspects

The things that it'll pull around are things that will die instantly to any clearing skill

[cosmic dove]

I thought the rumor was it was increased in strength to pull everything but a boss
but I may have heard / read that wrong

[harsh abyss]

Sure but like... does anything on the screen other than a boss exist for long enough for the pull to matter?

[rapid hinge]

i mean if you need to use snap freeze to survive vs normal mobs

instead of just insta kill them

the the problem is likely your damage more than your survive

[harsh abyss]

^

[cosmic dove]

yeah that's what I was asking.
if you dont need defenses at all then it is a different story

(also making Flame Ward less useful outside of bosses I guess)

[rapid hinge]

think of them as safety measure instead of constant defensive layer

[harsh abyss]

If you're at the point w here you need to use flame ward outside of bosses, you're probably in the 1000c+ range anyway

Or you know you're doing something like teleporting into a big group of mobs that WILL hit you

[rapid hinge]

^ this

[harsh abyss]

Meteor does tend to have worse defenses than other builds, but that's just because of the way you have to build it

And the absolute neutering of Lost Knowledge

[weary hornet]

Black hole is great for champions colosseum and nem farming cuz it roots those. I really like playing with.

Snap freeze is okay for some additional armor while it's on cool down. Think you get 200 flat armor? It's not bad for utility and mapping, but I don't feel it gives enough value against uber.

[proven haven]

it cancels slam last minute

gives better dps uptime and makes last phase easy

[uneven ember]

do we think the black hole buffs are gonna make it worth playing

[cosmic dove]

cant really say until we see the patch notes
I'm jaded and skeptical but we'll see

[proven haven]

depends what else they change

With just the supermassive fix + the extra charge I'd call it playable. You get less total cooldown now vs before with full CDR setup though, so if they don't add more CDR somewhere else that could feel bad.

[balmy flame]

Reading up on this, one distinction that comes to my mind between snap freeze and black hole is that freeze is more defensive, but black hole is more a skill to literally pull mobs in and group them for some limited area skill that hits hard, like maybe meteor?
I would not use a pull effect as a defensive layer in general, more as a minor defensive helper to a very offense-oriented mechanic.
I've done this in Diablo 4, when I naively gave it a chance with necromancer and never relied on that skill that pulls mobs in a circle around it for more than the act of having the mobs in a group to hit them with one or two skill casts instead of having them interspersed on the screen.

Now, to be fair, this is the way I've experienced it and the way I understand it. If someone actually knows of a cool, creative way to use a pull mechanic, I'm all ears.
Oh, before I forget: the pull in mechanic doesn't make all that much sense if the build has good ability to clear screens on the regular.

[radiant vessel]

Black hole is kinda too bad at pulling mobs to be used for something like that imo

Even at max pull strength some fast enough enemies can escape it entirely

It's just in a rough place in general currently

Also LE isn't slow enough for a utility skill like that to be viable even if the pull was really strong. You'd need it to be something snappy like D3 cyclone strike

Since instead of spending time casting black hole you can just cast another aoe, clear the same amount without having to manage black hole CD as well as saving the spec slot

[frozen dirge]

Do we know patch release date ? I wanna see how volcanic orb will go, looks interesting

[radiant vessel]

The patch notes come out this Friday, the patch itself comes out
<t:1774540800:f>

[frozen dirge]

Thanks 💪

[proven haven]

Why you need b-hole CC when you can just kill enemy, dead is best form of CC

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, that's the problem. The "CC" provided by black hole doesn't matter because clearing out little mobs isn't something that any build actually struggles with

[versed hare]

Madness is looking juicy with a crit avoidance set up

[balmy flame]

Wasn't crit avoidance changed to not appear on just any gear piece? Or am I misremembering?

[dapper flare]

it's on most gear pieces

[balmy flame]

But... can mage get the crit avoidance stat on helm or gloves?

Boots belt and rings are not class specific items.

[dapper flare]

yes, they have implicit crit avoid

[balmy flame]

Let me rephrase: as an affix, not an implicit.

[dapper flare]

sorry yes AND they have implicit

you can near cap with just helm

[versed hare]

i got crit avoid on my gloves and 1 ring and i'm capped

[balmy flame]

Yeah, was looking up. Technically one T7 and one T5 are enough to 100%. At least the ranges permit it.

[versed hare]

and if youre missing like 1 or 2 percent then there are still weaver idols for that i guess?

[balmy flame]

Well, unless the patch notes have a hidden... gem... I'm thinking Madness is hands down the best of the attirubte swaps from corruption.

[versed hare]

i agree

look at apathy

thats ridiculous i think

[balmy flame]

Hmm... apathy is weird and rather build-dependent. You lose the +2 mana per point which is non-negligible if mana stacking for something like archmage or such effects. Mana regen is decent I guess, but you'll be making use of leech to circumvent the life loss on skill cast.

Rampancy sounds powerful too. For those builds that area already zhp-capable :p

[versed hare]

well apathy is probably intended to be for sentinels or primalists whoever scales with attunement.. idk

[balmy flame]

primalist is the only class that actively uses it.

[versed hare]

okay

[balmy flame]

But with effects such as + to all attributes involving attunement, I would rather not have apathy at all in most mage builds I can think of.

[versed hare]

absolutely

[balmy flame]

That is not to say the patch notes don't come with something that better enables this notion.

[proven haven]

Also the blessing but RIP 20 all res

Well back to blind I guess lmao

[strange needle]

Right now mage and vitality builds for me are the op ones from reveal so let's go for you guys and void knight

[spark vector]

Vitality looks great

Honestly Int is looking good too

[strange needle]

Actually vita its kinda bad in a way you loose a lot of flat

So yeah mages can't complain since their downside its literally so easy to fix

[spark vector]

If you care about the flat it’s not great defensively yeah

[strange needle]

You always care about the flat

Only like rive is winning right now big

[plain garnet]

There are also other reasons to convert attributes, like uniques that scale off the new stats potentially being very strong

[strange needle]

Its 6 hp and you get like 100 for melee builds which is 600 flat hp lost and caster vk looses 900 or more flat so its pretty big

[spark vector]

Mages generally weren’t Vit stacking anyway so it’s not really likely you’re losing flat you would have had otherwise.

[strange needle]

Mages dont care but vk does

[spark vector]

Oh VK does yeah

[strange needle]

Mages downside its nothing

[plain garnet]

New mage relic corrupted base is interesting. %max hp gained as ward decay threshhold is an incredibly strong stat only found on one primordial chest and a completely unusable shield for mages

[proven haven]

Its potentially fine to lose ward retention if you have a lot of decay threshold

For madness tech

Even with ward retention the ward formula is pretty harsh

[prisma pike]

Haha 225 increased bonus dmg from crits woot! Gonnna have to catch me first!

Time to farm 40 EE’s not just 4!! 😃

[balmy flame]

Kind of has to be, considering how some builds build ward on hit or cast, hit and cast fast and other shenanigans and I'm fairly sure I've seen 3-4k ward regularly with spark charge mage.

Which also, keeps regenerating as one attacks.

[grim storm]

is there a good source with all spoiled spell blade tree nodes for season 4? Having a hard time going back through. I know I can just wait for patch notes but the hype week has me so excited I want t otheory craft now lol

[radiant vessel]

Source of?

[grim storm]

I remember in one of Mikes friday streams he said spellblade was getting some reworked passive nodes. I was trying to find that video, or if someone here may have compiled in like a google drive or something all the confirmed spell balde changes for S4

[nimble shoal]

All I've seen are the fire aura changes, unknown improvements to fire aura proc sources, and the new passive of 40% weapon melee damage gained as spell damage

This is most afaik
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/looking-ahead-in-last-epoch/80230#spellblade-updates-14

[radiant vessel]

Oh sorry I misunderstood what you meant lmao

[grim storm]

thank you so much

[lavish apex]

hopefully spellblade is tomorrow's preview

[dapper flare]

I think it will be all class adjustments based on today's post

"Tomorrow, we’ll showcase the new Rogue skills and skill adjustments for other classes."

[proven haven]

B hole time

[cosmic dove]

phrasing!

[tribal veldt]

I'm ready

[left hill]

subtype could be altered
possible corruption outcome actually sounds spicy. like getting a legendary to swap its base subtype giving new implicits (and attack speed change for spellblades)

[lavish apex]

it seems unlikely that uniques would swap base types. I thought the implication was that normal rares could do that

[left hill]

mm, if you're right that's way less fun, but maybe

[nimble shoal]

Confirmed that uniques cannot swap base type

[left hill]

Sadge

[prisma pike]

Wait? Lana are we NOT still doing phrasing?? 😂

[harsh abyss]

@proven haven Looks like Ladle is un-nerfed, so are we guessing that it's Enigma that's getting nerfed?

Obviously the hope is that nothing mage gets nerfed, but... 🤷‍♀️

[proven haven]

I dont even think enigma is that crazy, Enigma doesn't result in S-tier builds with almost every other build using it

Enigma Ele nova? poo
Enigma Melee Dragorath? poo
Enigma Surge or whatever applies it? poo

Enigma Static Orb? poo

[harsh abyss]

lol

Yeah I mean nothing in mage should be nerfed if we're using Sentinel as a guide for how strong things should be. Fingers crossed they bring a bunch of stuff up to the level of the LB build.

[full bluff]

They could go back and look at all the mage builds that got nerfed and bring them back to life again. Get some more build variations and nostalgic feeling of "old time" 🙂

[proven haven]

A lot of Mage builds didn't even get nerfed, they just didn't scale with the harder content added

It's just old skills

old passives

[plain garnet]

How much leech do you realistically get out of Yrun's penance if you're doing mostly frostbite scaling? 4% seems like a ton.

[nimble shoal]

I'd say 2-4%

That should probably be plenty of leech for sustain assuming you deal enough damage

[left hill]

<@&1161418687471956101> got a spammer & scammer here #🧙┃mage message

[cosmic dove]

that was not the amount of black hole changes I was hoping for 🙁

[tribal veldt]

no news on the fire aura front just yet alas

blade conduit is really spicy though

[cosmic dove]

this is old news then?

[tribal veldt]

yes

[flat hedge]

I was hoping they'd condense the Black Hole nodes a bit. It's wildly point hungry as it is

[tribal veldt]

we also know the original 5p bonus (1 spell damage per 2 int, doubled next patch to 1/1) is inherent to fire aura now so nothing lost there

[cosmic dove]

I thought I saw a dev comment about black hole absorbing frost bite as an option but don't see that anywhere

[hollow bolt]

Shatter strike spellblade with glacier sounds fun

[tribal veldt]

seems great for clear yea, 20% proc rate on a single target is unfortunately not so stellar

[hollow bolt]

i mean shatter strike already have insane single target dps. clear is what was needed

[proven haven]

Would glacier really do much if you aren't really building around it?

Maybe its enough for trash actually with the melee flat to spell

[harsh abyss]

Hear me out: Fire resist stacking incinerating aura + black hole build.

Just wander around and delete most of the screen with IA and cast black hole when needed

[tribal veldt]

oh god do I finally have to read what black hole does

[proven haven]

I'll be honest, this is where I was going with my plan

[harsh abyss]

It seems like it'd be really good

[flat hedge]

The Black Hole node triggers ignites from the fire res. So you'd need to scale spells and ailments?

[proven haven]

You scale ele dot and fire res

The int is kinda awkward, bhole doesn't care so much

And ignite duration whatever, but I think its fine. You can build more single target focused or more AoE

[abstract scaffold]

Is this better or worse? You're missing out on throne... And I guess the freeze requirements are easier to get

[flat hedge]

I know Black Hole can do a lot of damage with the fire res scaling, but I'm not convinced that Fire Aura will have enough flat to scale... then again, you can stack fire auras

[harsh abyss]

The moderate amount of spell damage / int that you get should be enough for incinerating aura to clear trash, and then you focus more on the BH for enemies that matter

[proven haven]

You only need to kill trash with fire aura though

[harsh abyss]

The "More" multi from fire resist should do a fair amount of work when you're at 500% resist or some shit

[flat hedge]

Shock gives -lightning res. I think this has potential.

[proven haven]

Probably 1000+ tbh

[tribal veldt]

didn't their initial post say they're adding "various ways to generate fire aura" or something to that effect, haven't really seen that yet

[harsh abyss]

Yeha I'm just being conservative

[proven haven]

My messing around I was looking at 1400 fire res lol

Anyone who wants to go for 3T7 minmax will be happy

[next frost]

reliquary nest shenanigans?

• new idols stuff

[weary hornet]

I wonder where heat flux is going to sit on meteor's tree. Additional hits more meteors. Chain reaction destroys the final timeline. World ended.

[proven haven]

1400 was before new idol stuff

But yea nest

[proven haven]

15 hits * 9% yeah?

[tribal veldt]

mana cost/s: yes

[proven haven]

Who cares about mana cost, you just go mana dump recharge

1 meteor per full mana cost might suck though

[harsh abyss]

I'm adding another triggered skill to my "trigger everything mana strike" build. 3 static orbs per 2 seconds on top of everything else could be nice.

[flat hedge]

Any potential for Bluefeather Band with Flame Drinker?

[tame sun]

Meteor gonna be a disco show with procs, and mana strike to proc more procs

[weary hornet]

Map clearing would be even more insane with spirals.

[tame sun]

Lucky filthy mages!

[weary hornet]

And more hits there too

[harsh abyss]

Yo dawg I herd you liked procs so I proc'd your procs while you proc your procs?

[weary hornet]

That's how I proc.

By procsies

[flat hedge]

Is FCF invocation any good? It gives 4 stacks of Fire Aura apparently.

[next frost]

better than just 4 stacks of fire aura

[flat hedge]

Yeah, was mostly thinking about how it could be used with the new Fire Aura stuff. Like Flame Drinker could be interesting

[harsh abyss]

Maybe use Flame Rush to cast RI and just flame rush around

[versed hare]

how would you manage mana then?

[left hill]

right now (pre-patch) manastacked Glyph can generate the most Fire Aura stacks. we'll see what the new/improved ways to generate stacks are

[hollow bolt]

if the rest of the spell blade tree provides enough mana regen then you could drop mana strike and spec glacier as well but with the amount of added flat melee you can get it probably can clear trash without spec

[flat hedge]

Interesting. Maybe there's a melee Runemaster build or maybe it just uses Flame Aura as a mana battery?

[harsh abyss]

The Blade Conduit node seems... interesting. That 120% mana regen per stack is a decent amount, but IDK if it'll be enough

[hollow bolt]

there is also another node where you can get mana regen via fire aura stacks. so that generator spender style can get automated

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, we'll have to see how things look with all the notes

[hollow bolt]

i assume there will be more mana regen in the passive tree

[harsh abyss]

Spellblade over here with better mana regen than Sorcerer, the mana focused Mastery 😝

[flat hedge]

Could pair nicely with the Butcher's Crown too.

[hollow bolt]

well it makes sense because if they want a cast on hit then you're gonna need mana regen somehow in the tree

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, for sure

That's like 20 mana/sec just from that one node

[robust junco]

Morning Frost + Bane of Winter spell procc Spellblade looks really cool with all the new proccs

[flat hedge]

Guile affects Evade right? Any Tribolectra shenanigans? or maybe Surge could be interesting?

[dapper flare]

yes it does

[harsh abyss]

The amount of ICRS that is granted by guile feels like it might not be worth it. With 200 guile (probably high) you're getting 60% ICRS

You can probably get Surge under a 2 second cooldown though

[left hill]

might be worth it on Focus with the traversal (gives it movement tag) and Null Profusion/Infusion nodes as a tap-to-restore-mana thing. But losing a bunch of % armor on top isn't great. Guile definitely looks at a glance like it's not that impressive

[harsh abyss]

The rogue channel is on fire with how lackluster the numbers are. Losing 1% armor AND 4 dodge per guile is a lot to lose

[left hill]

ya, maybe at 0.5% per it'd be something... idk. but losing both for just 0.3%/pt is rough

[harsh abyss]

yeah

And the conversion isn't trivial to get, either

[plain garnet]

It seems to me that a lot of the attribute conversion won't be worth it unless there are new uniques we haven't seen that play off rampancy/guile/brutality/madness/apathy and use them to scale something else.

Madness is, I think, the easiest to work with for mage builds that don't rely on int for ward retention

[abstract scaffold]

Everyone dunking on Guile, then when it releases there's going to be a busted combo that they forgot to patch out

Like infinite Wrongwarp immunity or something

[plain garnet]

Yeah there's bound to be some absolute nonsense someone can put together with 150 guile

[flat hedge]

Can get that Summon Crab cooldown real low

[tribal veldt]

crowstorm goes brrrrrr

[plain garnet]

Take the teleport node that makes your next spell free but +6 sec cooldown, could still get the cd down to like 2 sec, spam free meteors?

[next frost]

when you already have 100% icrs, another 50% isnt as impactful as if that stat didnt exist

[plain garnet]

Yeah like I was saying earlier, the most likely thing is that there are new uniques that scale off the new converted stats and will make those matter more.

[tribal veldt]

reduced armor is just really rough compared to the other downsides

[plain garnet]

Just means you ignore armor if you're doing guile stuff I guess?

[harsh abyss]

With maximum acquirable ICRS, the shortest you can get Shift cooldown is 1.14 second, and that's if you have EVERYTHING. And I think shift has the most available ICRS unless you somehow manage to stack 150+ int AND 200+ guile on Runemaster

[left hill]

I think you'd have to naturally pair with the traversal flat CDR on potion use somehow to make it worthwhile. but it's a lot of pieces for a very unclear payoff

[frozen dirge]

do you guys think that volcanic build will be good with new rings and the changes? i know its quite a vague question, i also have no idea wich spec i should play for this spell

[abstract scaffold]

You forgot the new unique that gives 1 trillion ICRS

[little pagoda]

what are the meta mage builds, ive never actually played one? I have no idea about the class haha

[harsh abyss]

The most meta one is probably @proven haven's Lightning Blast build. Like most of the game you can use any skill to get reasonably far into it the game but mage has been struggling for a while to have strong endgame builds

[little pagoda]

yeah that was the situation last time I played

the dmg just wasnt there for mage

think ive watched a video on lightning blast, seems decent but the dmg on it seems low, is it uber aber viable?

[plain garnet]

The damage on lightning blast runemaster is absolutely not low by any means. It's capable of sub-1 minute uber aber

[proven haven]

50s uber https://youtu.be/yGyaT2d7ajU

people have done faster

[plain garnet]

The problem is that there are, comparatively, very few mage builds that are that strong

[harsh abyss]

Int stacking too stronk

[plain garnet]

It's not that int stacking is too strong, it's that other mage builds are too weak

[little pagoda]

hmm is it tricky to play or is it chill? Like will I be ok farming mono's for like 4 hours or get a headache because I need to do combo's or rotation order

[plain garnet]

I mean, watch the video and see

[little pagoda]

damn put in some work with this guide

good job

[harsh abyss]

My thought is that int stacking is too strong, so if they buff anything to be a reasonable level, it will go out of control if you add int stacking to it

[plain garnet]

It's extremely heavily carried by mad alchemist's ladle and fragment of the enigma. Spoon almost doubles your bonus cast speed, on top of providing 48% more damage

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, spoon is insane

[little pagoda]

the bis weapon being a spoon is honestly hilarious

[harsh abyss]

Maybe I'll actually make a doom pulse buld since it got buffed by 100%

[plain garnet]

I actually don't know if I agree? To properly int stack you need to devote pretty hard to it at the expense of other things. The solution is to buff other ways of scaling that require you to not stack int (or to have really good gear that does both, I guess?)

This build in particular is only terrifying because of how much damage you get out of enigma + spoon

[harsh abyss]

Enigma and spoon are also both int stacking tools though.

[sharp mantle]

spoon is so far ahead of the alternatives I was really shocked to see wrongwarp get nerfed going into 1.3

[harsh abyss]

My point is that if anything that Mage has is strong by itself,people are GOING to int stack with it. And Vilatra + Ladle + Enigma tech is just too strong to not slap on anything it functions with.

[sharp mantle]

which also 'forces' mage to use one particular primordial

[harsh abyss]

Exactly

But when int gives you:
-Increased damage
-Increased crit chance
-Ward Decay Threshold
-Ward Retention (or CRIT MULTI)
-Cast Speed
-Flat Damage
-More Ward Decay Threshold OR Ward/sec OR Increased Cooldown Reduction Speed (Based on mastery)

How can you not do it?

[plain garnet]

Right, sure. Int stacking is good for this build, specifically, because it gives that many scaling vectors. It doesn't for a lot of builds, though.

[harsh abyss]

I just mean it's hard to balance other builds to be suitably strong because if they can get some of those scaling vectors from int stacking, they're going to drift towards it because the opportunity cost of it is too strong. Unless there is a very specific combo that prevents int stacking from working with it.

[plain garnet]

If you are a lightning damage based spellcaster going for a crit build you absolutely cannot beat spoon + enigma + vilatra nonsense

[harsh abyss]

If you're any other casting build, you drop Vilatria and it's still the best though. Cast speed is good on every build, even ailments.
The closest I can think of that isn't in stacking is the Brand build, but oops, it's still int stacking because of the vilatria helm.

[plain garnet]

I think it's totally fine to slightly nerf those three offenders a bit and bring everything else up as a baseline

[harsh abyss]

You maybe wouldn't int stack on a Static Orb build because it competes for affixes and mana stacking is better, but you'd still want as much as you can get.

[plain garnet]

I tried some wacky essence weaver build last patch that still did int stack as a spellblade even without spoon/enigma/vilatra because of ward retention + crit chance

[harsh abyss]

I've seen some dex stacking spellblade builds too, but I don't think any of them come close to the level of the LB build

[plain garnet]

Even the strongest shatter strike build can't really compete with LB

[harsh abyss]

I just hope mage doesn't see nerfs to anything, as strong as LB is, it still isn't as strong as some Sentinel or Primalist builds

[plain garnet]

I'm hoping to see buffs to less-played skills more than nerfs.

[gloomy vector]

How about flame reave? Would love some buffs there to take down uber.
I find the build a fast mapper but lacks power to take down pinnacle.
Any thoughts?

[strange needle]

Its not you literally have to int stack while also mana stacking so you get all that sweet flat you want with static orb thats how it kills uber in like 50 sec

[harsh abyss]

Yeah

[strange needle]

Int stacking with all due respect to the other guy is way stronger than the alternative the other stats get since 1.3

Which is fine itself since mage is the big winner from this conversion stuff so gz

[harsh abyss]

Here's something I'm thinking about:
Battlemage's Endeavor Build
-BE buffed so it adds 2 chains to LB
-Mana Strike can cast static orb
-Indirect static orb casts can still get the 2 extra chains from Fusionblast

BE is pretty low LPL so geting 2-3 LP version of it is pretty decent. If you add attack speed and melee flat lightning damage, it'll add a solid amount of that bonus to your triggered spells.

[strange needle]

The limitations on mana cost of static orb for me makes me wonder what it could have done with the new scaling flat

That 2 handed has some play now

[harsh abyss]

I'm still not sure it's better than Dragorath's because of the crit multi and all resist and stuff it gives

And getting above 3 LB triggers per second (The Dragorath limit) with Battlemage is super tough.

[plain garnet]

I think there could be a very strong flame reave build this league with the change to the spellblade passive. We'll see what patch notes bring.

[gloomy vector]

You mean the one providing more damage, i believe flame drinker?

[harsh abyss]

Bets on if the Frozen Sparks node in Enchant Weapon gets updated?

Possibly the worst node ever

[gloomy vector]

It needs better scaling and a fire effect too🙏

[robust junco]

Good old day where weapons where always phys

https://tenor.com/view/pepperidge-pepperidge-farm-remembers-remember-gif-15527169458174144495

[harsh abyss]

I think they should change it to be a buff towards the new spellblade passive. Give it a 20% spell damage from flat melee damage

Yeah, I remember those days too

I'm just amazed it's survived so long. Like you'd think you would have one person go through each class every season and look at the skill nodes to see which ones are the worst.

[plain garnet]

No, I mean the actual change to the passive for the spellblade class. It's losing the ward per mana spent and going to this:

[robust junco]

Did someone asked devs if this is for direct cast only ?

[plain garnet]

Flame Reave gets 1 melee damage per added spell damage, so you double dip that a bit here

[gloomy vector]

And this combined with this is already a noticeable buff to flame reave i guess.
Add up the 18% more damage from investing 6 points in the node above, which is also an improvement.
Hoping for more improvements with patch notes.

[ionic bear]

Guys, based on what we have so far, is it possible to create good synergy between Shatter Strike and Fire (Cold) Aura?

[robust junco]

We havent see a good way to trigger Fire Auras with Shatter Strike

[harsh abyss]

Other than 3/sec for crits, you mean?

[robust junco]

Yup

Scaling Crit chance to get Fire Aura and then scaling dot to do dmg

Meh

[little pagoda]

wait isnt this good

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, that's what we want for sure

[queen basin]

how cooked would mana stacking with mana strike + static orb be? feels like there's probably not enough mana to go around

[flat hedge]

Bluefeather Band or Butcher's Crown might be good for managing the mana.

[candid crescent]

bluefeather has massive synergy with mana strike, I'm pretty sure you can get away with a whole lot if you use them together

[queen basin]

but then it goes against the whole mana stacking principle right?

48% less mana

[candid crescent]

oh true I missed the mana stacking part of your previous message, sorry

[flat hedge]

If it's mana stacking then maybe Blade Conduit + Butcher's Crown for the mana sustain? Might still need more than that.

[queen basin]

yeah have to see how good blade conduit is

[harsh abyss]

I've considered it in the past, the 15% current mana as flat melee seems good BUT mana strike has never really had any More modifiers, so it has never been very good.

The couple more mods they added wont change that too much but it could help.

[little pagoda]

melee on a mage feels wrong

[harsh abyss]

World Splitter is a LOT of mana, so using it to.proc static orbs could be decent.

And you could get to a good 2k+ mana, which means your mana strike would get a lot of crit multi

[little pagoda]

I cant avoid mana stacking on any arpg

[queen basin]

That's kind of why I'm thinking about new static orb proc on mana strike so I can double dip on the mana stacking a bit

[harsh abyss]

Yeah its not a bad idea

A well rolled world splitter also gives ~60 spell damage with the new spellblade passive too

Though it'll probably suffer from the usual problem I have with spellblade builds: its probably better to just go all in and cast the spell directly.

[robust junco]

But what if by going melee you trigger 3 different spells

[tribal veldt]

just 50 more magma shard buffs and it'll be worth using trust

[harsh abyss]

Well, none of the other things you can trigger scale with mana, so they miss out of most of your investment.

50% mana increase from World Splitter would be fun to utilize though

[little pagoda]

dunno how I feel about madness

[harsh abyss]

Madness is probably the strongest of the altered attributes.

[proven haven]

now that we know 100 Brutality is giving 100% more damage? idk

[next frost]

*using melee attacks

[harsh abyss]

Isnt brutality capped at 20%?

[proven haven]

nop https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1rwamho/comment/ob3v77e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[harsh abyss]

Oh damn

Thats way more complex than I thought it would be.

But still 100 madness is 100% crit multi

[proven haven]

which is like ~20% more damage

crit multi shares spot with affixes, more damage doesn't really

so opportunity cost is different

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, but maybe you can use the opportunity space to replace affixes with more defense or other offense

[proven haven]

some weird stuff scales with multi and doesn't care about crit

Like SO shocked ground

mana stackers also kinda compete multi and mana on the same slots mostly

[dapper flare]

will SO ground work on spell crit?

[proven haven]

So madness could further play into mana stacker niche, which also doesn't need ward

oh spell crit right

no

I dont think so

[graceful glen]

i feel like im constantly disappointed by the "X casts per Y seconds" constraint put on a lot of uniques. Feels like a cheap attempt at balancing that actively prevents many of the procs from really being built around

[dapper flare]

the biggest thing about the brutality is it affects sub skills and ailments

[dapper flare]

I mean yes but it's less constrained than the alternative we dealt with for years which was flat icd

I imagine as something becomes more performant and less of a balance worry they ease the proc rates

[graceful glen]

the constraint shouldn't exist at all. the damage can be balanced around how many times could someone theoretically proc it in best case scenario

[flat hedge]

I assume they do it for the sake of the servers, but its a bit heavy handed usually

[dapper flare]

but it's easier to balance across skills that may not be able to hit the proc rate

[proven haven]

yeah ideally every piece of the puzzle would naturally fit nicely

and not need caps and so on

[graceful glen]

For things like butchers crown its especially bad because you can trigger all procs on one pack and then not be able to proc until time runs out which feels extra terrible

[dapper flare]

There are bad instances for sure but good ones, like smite on throw hit

[graceful glen]

like if you are going to add a proc skill at least make it viable to play around. no one cares about or wants to use some proc skill that adds random extra bullshit that might increase damage by 5%

[tribal veldt]

I get arbitrary trigger limits, but if it's "this many every 3/5/10/however many seconds" it does make for a weird gameplay loop I agree

[dapper flare]

throw skills with high hit rate technically don't proc as much but the change allowed skills that didn't hit much still be able to proc effectively

[graceful glen]

chance to trigger on hit is a great limitation and easy to adjust for balance

[proven haven]

a lot of spell procs are already neutered by direct cast only stuff

[graceful glen]

i really worry about spellblade becuase they have added a bunch of "random bullshit GO" trigger procs to skills that all scale off spell damage which you don't really scale with spellblade. I'm not sure that the new 40% conversion from the passive is enough

triggering a bunhc of glaciers with shatterstrike sounds legit sick

[dapper flare]

spell damage is pretty accessible, should be fine

[graceful glen]

but if every build requires mourningfrost its meh

[tribal veldt]

spellblade is pretty agnostic on scaling spell damage itself, it has a bit of support already and will have more next week

[dapper flare]

I wouldn't run mourningfrost

[tribal veldt]

I despise gearing with mourningfrost personally even if it's "correct"

and I'm definitely not playing ZHP on the melee class

[graceful glen]

yea i think everyone is sick of mourning frost since its basically been the only way to effectively scale builds to uber bossing damage levels

[dapper flare]

I just mean via passives, things like firebrand, spell damage on swords, skill nodes, etc. Even implicit scaling from attr now

[graceful glen]

you either dex stack or int stack or u don't do ubers

[dapper flare]

do SB builds run mounringfrost to be uber viable?

idek know of many SB builds that are uber viable lmaoooo

[proven haven]

i didnt think SS needed it?

[graceful glen]

shatterstrike loves mourning frost but it isn't strictly necessary if you have perfect gear

I'm just venting complaints at this point lol but I also hate the spender generator style and have been dying for a way to play shatterstrike without needing manastrike. hopefully the new passives will help but butchers crown was such a huge dissapointment in that regard

[dapper flare]

SB the worst class for hating gen spend 😛

[graceful glen]

which sucls because it has the coolest skills

but like why would anyone ever want to play gen spend style

its just awkward

[dapper flare]

I mean it's nice if you actually have burst

[minor monolith]

depends on the build imo, I enjoyed playing Tempest Strike - EQ back in the day which is sorta gen/spend

it can feel good if the spends are impactful enough

[proven haven]

yea, too bad 1 LB cast does similar damage to 1 Meteor cast at like 2% the mana cost

[minor monolith]

when the spends don't feel good >.< thats the problem, not the gen/spend style itself

[plain garnet]

I could see spellblade mana strike going really hard proccing both frost claw and static orb with the new passive. You could get a lot of flat spell damage from like, harmony of the first with double T7 flat added damage rolls on it

[lavish apex]

I like it sometimes

[plain garnet]

Especially because frost claw also gets 1-1 conversion of added melee damage into spell damage

[proven haven]

Why not just get attack speed then and proc more FC

Harmony gets giga AS

[lavish apex]

you just have to be able to build in a reasonable amount of time. if I have to spend like 10 seconds building for 20 seconds of spending that feels miserable

[plain garnet]

Sure, do T7 AS, and convert 40% of the massively boosted added melee damage of the staff into spell damage

[proven haven]

staff?

[plain garnet]

spear* sorry

[proven haven]

o

yea I looked at this

I think I ended up going with T7 Multi or T7 Cold Pen + T7 Attack speed

then mourning frost and T7 dex everywhere or something

[plain garnet]

I'd imagine this is a pretty direct boost to the damage of that build

[proven haven]

40% kinda smol when FC already gets 100

[plain garnet]

Hard to say if it will be competitive, though.

[proven haven]

anything FC couldn't do with 100% probably can't do with 140%

[plain garnet]

Sure, but remember mana strike now also casts static orb now too, so it isn't just FC

[proven haven]

but its supplemental low cast rate spell that scales off different stuff than FC

For FC proc you want max attack speed

for SO proc you are limited

for SO you want mana to scale

For FC you need recovery

which I guess mana strike

FC converts a lot of melee, you get benefit from flat melee, SO doesn't

I want FC to work but its such a weird spell

[plain garnet]

I dunno if it's low cast rate; you'd be pretty consistently topped on mana, so it's 30% per hit, as opposed to FC's combined 50%

True that FC converts melee pretty well, but you do get 40% of your added melee damage > spell damage.

Could also convert static orb to cold

[proven haven]

SO still limited to 1.5 per second, no?

[plain garnet]

Ah, damn. I missed that line.

Alright, back to the drawing board

[graceful glen]

It would feel better if the generator felt good and had at least some impactful amount of damage but it sucks that the skill just feels like useless downtime

[graceful glen]

this whole breakdown really highlights the "random bullshit go" issue with all the proc skills

[weary hornet]

Lb stronk. But I like not having meteor or lb on my skills bar :p

The current lb meta gives what per cast? Four bolts, each offering single-target chaining 4 to 6 additional times?

[proven haven]

its about 7.5 LB hits per, plus another 7.5 spark nova

Do we know how 120% cost works? I forget

it that applied as a cost multiplier or to the base

cost multi, yea?

[weary hornet]

Oh yah, fragment and lb node for 200% more spark charge damage

[robust junco]

It should be after all mana cost calc in the tree

[proven haven]

nice

[weary hornet]

I assumed it's like more

[proven haven]

so 0 mana cost FC

is still 0

[weary hornet]

5 I could see dreads fireball blue feather meteor build doing something very interesting here

[robust junco]

So you press black hole, that trigger Meteor, that triggers FrostClaw, that triggers Ele Nova

Did I miss smth ?

[weary hornet]

That's one way, but my fun mage is man a guided with meteor belt

[robust junco]

I wish Ele nova would procc Glacier

And Big Glacier collapse into a black hole

[weary hornet]

You're a madman

[robust junco]

https://tenor.com/view/ecosofy-organic-cycle-gif-11575656

[left hill]

toss in some Frozen Ire Tundra Nova procs for good measure 😂

[charred furnace]

Does the mage have a chain lightning build?

[pale cedar]

Just double checking, does cold pen on shatterstrike from Diothaen's Bloody Nib pass onto frostbite generated by shatter strike?

[robust junco]

It should yeah

[pale cedar]

Thanks!

[proven haven]

So 1 Meteor cast can create 90 Frost Claw hits, or 134.4 total hits with Spark Nova

187.32 total hits if using Ele Nova

and... 209 with enigma, but actually more because those sparks can also chain to spark nova

and another 33 spark charge from ele nova

[elfin rapids]

wat

[proven haven]

Which would generate another 22 spark novas from those spark charges

so what, like... 250 ish hits per meteor cast? Am I doing this right?

to be fair, all the hits do like 0 damage

but still might be funny

[ivory leaf]

yeah I dont think I have the pc for that

[proven haven]

Wait no

I math wrong

its not nova per FC hit, nova per FC

RIP that

[elfin rapids]

You are considering each meteor (6 in total) can cast FC right? And not only 3 FC when you cast meteor. The writing makes it seems like what you are saying, but i don't know man.

Let's say it works like this. Then does shrapnels from meteors also inherit the ability of each meteor to cast frost claws?

[proven haven]

It says "Meteors" cast 3 FC

[elfin rapids]

If shrapnels can also cast FC then lmao

[halcyon sun]

probably safe to assume it does the thing that does not result in the servers melting

[proven haven]

I assume no

idk, sometimes we melt servers

[elfin rapids]

I'm pretty sure that Shrapnels can at least inherit the guaranteed crit from "above 400 mana" node.

That's why i'm assuming it could inherit FC casts too.

[nimble shoal]

Crit chance is a stat, so it can be inherited; casting FC is not a stat

[elfin rapids]

Makes sense.

[weary hornet]

Shrapnel is meteor's special sauce. Btw, thanks for your work on the imprint simulations. Eye opening with the sealed affixes.

[dapper flare]

The only potential pitfalls I see in this are, if the node reads as you expect, the node follows a limitation to meteors per cast or the frostclaw casts are limited to 1 per enemy

[proven haven]

ask devs says it works that way

🤷‍♂️

[dapper flare]

yeah I meant if they said it works per meteor

[proven haven]

Naming is jank here, the meteor skill casts meteors

meatiest meteor

[frozen dirge]

yes and its very strong

[charred furnace]

Thanks I'll look into it eventually

[dapper flare]

if you can cast 6 meteors each proccing, I'm gonna be upset

[weary hornet]

MEATIEST

[dapper flare]

Not because it isn't cool, but because I'm jealous

[proven haven]

why? it probably still sucks

[dapper flare]

because Necro never gets anything cool

[proven haven]

if you define cool as PC melting while doing zdps

then that's fair

it might be okay though tbh

[dapper flare]

it will melt their servers first hopefully

that's what happened with ghostflame at least

[ivory leaf]

@ehg dont put me in the server frozen is in

[weary hornet]

Nahh, Meteor isn't THAT bad. Regardless, alone and on paper, it looks like shit, but plays well with the rest of the build. At 5k corruption with it now.

[proven haven]

I wish we had more sources of flat -mana

[weary hornet]

Snapshotting staff :P

[proven haven]

what is this for?

[dapper flare]

we can snapshot staves now too?

[weary hornet]

Snapshotting into mana guided focus when I want to cheat uber.

[proven haven]

but mana spent doesn't work on triggers, no?

[weary hornet]

3600 mana, deplete, focus, desperate meditation does the rest.

[proven haven]

oh

right for the mana regen

gotcha

[weary hornet]

Can beat him without doing that nonsense, but it's a whole lot cooler with it.

[dapper flare]

see snapshotting is cool we have that on Necro

[umbral perch]

Necro has entirely too much snapshotting lol

[dapper flare]

yeah but we could get that and meteors that proc a bunch of spells (not really but the equivalent)

[proven haven]

Is there any useful feedback loop stuff with the meteor belt -> meteor -> fc -> meteor

its kinda not mana efficient

but it could eat mana really fast

[weary hornet]

Not yet.

[proven haven]

I mean with the new node

you get 15 FC hits per meteor ball

[dapper flare]

idk all these changes are the only time I've been really been interested in mage interactions

[proven haven]

which is >1 meteor with belt

1 meteor becomes 1.5 becomes 2.3 or whatever, etc.

until you oom

[weary hornet]

Lotta neat stuff in FC I use on my spellblade. I think it may be very impressive with spirals. Can also spec to add a few more hits to FC.

[proven haven]

cant with indirect though

[weary hornet]

If the potions drop, you never run out of mana.

I can go from 1800 to 200 mana in seconds ... Pop three potions and full again

Not sure how the math works on it, but the results are nice.

[dapper flare]

ooo and you can go chance to not consume potion idol enchant with new idol altars

[proven haven]

I guess... you just need to have casted 5 for it to refund itself

can you get potions fast enough?

[weary hornet]

Mapping, yes. Uber, no.

[graceful glen]

could maybe make that work with a dot built by adding a bunch of ignite chance to everything

[weary hornet]

I have to drop in and out of focus a lot to trigger the 1 second burst that restores mana quickly

[proven haven]

chance to not consume a potion is up to 10%

for 1x4

can't get on omen idols

but you could have 4x 1x4s

and boost with the purple shit maybe...? and nest

[weary hornet]

Hell, I am streaming now on twitch if you want to see this in action

baalzevuv77

[dapper flare]

yeah and I think at least 3 can get effect, then yeah nest

[proven haven]

I don't think you can get 100%

but probably 70%?

[cosmic dove]

random question. I'm not saying it would be good but hypothetically how many concurrent black holes could you get now?
does Scattered node proc when Cascade Fracture procs?
what can the CD be brought down to vs duration plus the extra charge?

[proven haven]

alright fam

lets see the pots

[proven haven]

currently 2 full uptime, just the tip of 3

[cosmic dove]

does that include Scattered?

[proven haven]

no

scattered sucks iirc

[cosmic dove]

(not saying a BH 10m away is useful just thinking outloud)

[proven haven]

I THINK you can kinda exploit scattered by casting into a wall

but I dont think it was even good

[cosmic dove]

I need to see the full updated tree. copium but maybe they tweaked more nodes than they have revealed

[harsh abyss]

I'm sure they did, but how many who knows

[proven haven]

they did say "such as..."

then listed a couple

[cosmic dove]

yeah

[proven haven]

if it was an exhaustive list they would have probably just said those nodes

but maybe I am being too literal on wording

[dapper flare]

ahhh friday can't come soon enough

[cosmic dove]

I swear they mentioned in some interview something about BH "consuming frostbite" but I cant find the reference

[proven haven]

I want a frac crown madness build

just say bye to ward

hello 800 multi or whatever

what about mana focus frac crown madness

can't do mana guide with exulis though

so no AoE

[weary hornet]

That's what my build is.

[proven haven]

oh

lol

[proven haven]

oh you do damage with focus itself?

haven't seen that in a while

[weary hornet]

Most of my damage is the meteor. Focus is great for trash tho

[proven haven]

if you are into the snapshot stuff why not do the void glove

and just pop uber

[weary hornet]

I'm NOT into snapshotting :P Just saying a lot of flat mana in a staff :P

[proven haven]

yea focus damage effectiveness on added flat is weird

its like multiplied

[weary hornet]

And it's effective with desperate meditation

But takes too goddamned long to drain 3600

[proven haven]

iirc I did sub 1 min uber with void gloves focus

[proven haven]

ah yeah

[weary hornet]

Not int stacking as much as LB. Better gains with flat damage for chanelling.

Meteor is magnificent at stunning too.

[proven haven]

if you already have flat from vilatria, passives, and potentially idols, is it really worth on body / chest?

[weary hornet]

Tried A LOT of different combos.

Have five perfectly useful Static Shells and two more Cores.

This worked out the best, hits the hardest.

Initially, wanted to stack mana, but the dps wasn't there.

2800 mana without snapshotting bullshit is nice ... But no traction to boss.

[proven haven]

yea, I did all the math on that ages ago, hold on

[weary hornet]

Another recent surprise is how much benefit I get out of Vaion's Chariot. And the pair I have is bricked.

Awful awful LP odds on those, tho. Have only been able to eek two more LP2s out of nem. Both bricked.

[proven haven]

#🧙┃mage message here, this is how focus works

TLDR

That means that each added flat is worth 8 added damage, and is equivalent to 13.3 mana. 3000 mana on focus adds the same damage as 225 flat spell.

[ivory leaf]

I would say those are even more annoying than normal to get

[weary hornet]

Honestly wish I would have read that back in November. Would have saved me some headache, I think :P You even mention Vaion below that

[ivory leaf]

its 65% reroll chance

and you want t7s

[proven haven]

I DM'd you the uber kill I did with Focus + Void Glove

its pretty cracked

literally stun lock uber

[weary hornet]

And while focus output is impressive, it's only 1 cast per second.

Yeah, I saw that! I could have switched, but since 1.2, I wanted to make lightning meteor work.

And no one is using Fractured Crown right now, so I guess ... I JUST GOTTA BE ME.

[proven haven]

its like 1.6 per second tho

HEY

My LB uses frac crown

lmao

[weary hornet]

Yah, with that node! It's not bad, but chaining meteor en masse is awesome.

It does!? I thought your LB build required entwined / vilatria helm for the int --> flat spell dam.

[proven haven]

my autobomber LB

uses frac

#🎥┃video-shoutout message this was way back in Sep last year, killed Uber with Frac LB

[weary hornet]

lol Awesome I missed that detail. I remember seeing spoon :P

[proven haven]

I also have a pretty cracked 2t7 frac

[weary hornet]

End of last season, I decided to try making one since they were used a lot (in 1.1 I think?) ... My first craft was an LP3 :P

[proven haven]

there we go

[weary hornet]

130% multi make brain go brr

[proven haven]

Anyway maybe the potion thing can be cheesed to shit

get the full chance to not use pot, jungle queen

then just kick off the chain and let it ramp

[weary hornet]

Mine only has 120%. Got another one I am waiting to slam. Crit multi a tad lower, but has like 27% increased mana and 46% dam to mana before health.

[proven haven]

yeah big

idk maybe I just do legacy and make cracked characters

still torn

[weary hornet]

Lord knows I have the gear.

[proven haven]

thats legacy you're on now?

[weary hornet]

Today I figured out how to make Static useful as more than a trigger for LB

No, season

[proven haven]

oh?

[weary hornet]

It's a reliable stun

[proven haven]

is it? 🤔 why?

oh

thats a lot

jesus

2000% stun

[weary hornet]

YEP LOL

Like I don't think it's missed on uber with full static yet?

[proven haven]

can you stun lock then?

or the weird cooldown thing prevents

[lavish apex]

good lord

[weary hornet]

That's a bit of a variable, but the chaining with meteor and single target lb chaining gets a lot of hits / crits to replenish charges quickly.

Thinking of moving flame ward off my skills bar and switching to freeze snap.

Two means of direct cc vs. uber then.

[proven haven]

direct cast LB can full 200 charges in <1 second

so if it is a real tech

there you go

[harsh abyss]

Dang

[proven haven]

I'll try it actually

gotta find my gears

[harsh abyss]

New mage tech before the new season? Most exciting thing to happen to Frozen in months!

[proven haven]

I've found several new mage techs

in the last few months

I just don't share the good ones

not until after patch anyway

[weary hornet]

I have fun. I like sharing.

[proven haven]

oh for sure, same

but not in the weeks before patch

that's just asking for nerf

[harsh abyss]

Fair

[weary hornet]

Gonna be sad when they take the nerf stick to Warpath and my ES becomes a casualty.

[proven haven]

I'm sure it'll be fine

if not, I am sure there will be an uber oneshotting mage tech to play with

[harsh abyss]

I've always liked using power surge to do big kabooms with static

[weary hornet]

I used it last season for that (did it get nerfed? Feels like shit anymore) ... Can't fit it into my current build because it's too exhausting on mana.

[harsh abyss]

Oh I usually use it in conjunction with Teleport's free spell

[proven haven]

isn't it still kinda low damage?

[weary hornet]

Yep. I can tell when I hit uber with it, but it's not worth the mana cost or the skill points.

[harsh abyss]

Oh yeah, it's definitely not a high dps situation

I just like it because big kachunk early 🤷‍♀️

[proven haven]

ah my character is all messed up

doing some dumb shit

[weary hornet]

t's okay. Everyone wakes up at 3 in the morning after some fever dream of LE math to fk up their characters while not fully awake.

[cosmic dove]

I took a year-ish off LE and coming back for S4 hype has reminded me how very bad most of the mage skill trees are

[weary hornet]

See if I can do champion's colosseum at 5k corruption

[cosmic dove]

like, I hate almost all of them

[weary hornet]

Eh, I don't think mage is in a bad place at all (sans spellblade).

And even the first half of spellblade ain't terrible. And dual wield is chef's kiss. Too bad that's it.

[proven haven]

yea mage is kinda okay ish

its not sentinel, and it doesn't really perform really well at anything specific

[cosmic dove]

I just feel like if I were to ask how to spec into any skill tree there is either one answer or zero (dont use that skill)

but I am a year behind so /shrug

[proven haven]

true for most classes and skills

[weary hornet]

Synergies. Corporations use that word too.

[proven haven]

ah found my stuff

pog

[weary hornet]

Colosseum of Champions is awful at high corruption

[harsh abyss]

I think this is the thing. Mage is okay when you compare it to the content. Mage is bad when you compare it to the recently reworked classes 🤷‍♀️

[cosmic dove]

I'll wait to see what the patch notes say
but if BH, for example, has one weak ass way to play and lightning blast is just 10x more effective I guess I'll wait for S6 😂

[proven haven]

Damn I have no ubers

sadge

[weary hornet]

I have three uber nodes between my guys right now. Almost 3k aberroth kills this season. I think I'm good if I don't kill him again until next season.

heh bear vs. shade at 49k corruption

[proven haven]

oh rip me with 298 mana

[weary hornet]

You level 12? :P

[proven haven]

Cold LB has some weird animations

weird problem to have

but its hard to tell if I stunlock

I do too much damage

[weary hornet]

vs uber?

[proven haven]

yea

pretty sure I do though

[weary hornet]

What did you trade out for static?

holy hell

[proven haven]

flame ward

cold lb

[weary hornet]

I just realized, at the rate you're getting crits, you must be able to basically spam static between lb

[proven haven]

yea

its like 1 per sec or more

at 200 charge

[weary hornet]

Aye

[proven haven]

pretty much stunlock

[weary hornet]

Well, you broke uber.

Quick, delete everything you said today.

Won't even need to be insanely geared.

Still got harbs tho

Unless your critting enough damage to skip phases.

[proven haven]

the static doesn't do much

just stun mostly

[weary hornet]

With LB, you don't need anything more :P

[proven haven]

Yea mana is kinda annoying

but otherwise it works

[lavish apex]

why cold LB?

is the damage still primarily lightning from stacking vilatria's?

[proven haven]

yeah it is but you need cold to keep CFC runic

[weary hornet]

jesus christ

[proven haven]

I throttled my LB clicks to slow down DPS a bit

otherwise it just phases

but it is stunning

With focus though, you could just interrupt any attack you don't like

zoom around tap it

guess I could too

[weary hornet]

With that that stun modifier, you could beat uber with shit gear.

[lavish apex]

it's spark charges yeah?

[proven haven]

sorc gets even more crits with spark nova

[weary hornet]

Will make early game easy for bossing.

[proven haven]

1.4x crits

well more, since it chains off itself with spark charge

[weary hornet]

Ain't it spark charge the desireable proc? It has that 200% more dam modifier on the LB tree.

Oohhh fragment tho

nm

[proven haven]

pretty funny

I wonder if you could do this in a party?

just have a stunbot

[lavish apex]

damage is post-mitigation right?

[proven haven]

think so?

[lavish apex]

it would make sense

I've seen whipperlock stun uberoth with no increased stun chance

it just slapped super hard

[weary hornet]

Add +4 level of static to relic, then you can get +30 flat damage to static to really help out.

With empower node

[lavish apex]

does that really help if you're already stacking vilatria's

[weary hornet]

Thinking early game.

[lavish apex]

ah

[weary hornet]

With shit ger.

[left hill]

not counting Scattered/Binary System, but counting new idol altars allowing 4 1x4 idols for extra CSR, and using Reliquary Nest, I mathed it to a little over 6 on average (with the 30% recast spec'd) earlier. i don't remember the exact # it came to

we still need some cool Black Hole idol affixes 😞

[cosmic dove]

I'll hold out some hope until Fri/patch notes

but that's good to know

[prisma pike]

Oh no I missed the mage-a-thon!!!! 🙌

[weary hornet]

Yah, gotta talk to you about somethin'

lol

[prisma pike]

Oh??

[weary hornet]

Solved your early season bossing concern :P

[prisma pike]

Hit me up lol you know this 😊

[weary hornet]

Look at FrozenSentinel's video above

[prisma pike]

Yeah I was reading hahah

Saw

[weary hornet]

Yah, LB not only does more DPS than everyone but WP, but is blessed with the ability to perma stun :P

Bear don't count. Bear is cheat. Stronk cheat.

Starting a trove train, btw.

Just threw down two lines

[prisma pike]

Ugh I’m already at 16

All this is so tempting for more planning!!! Ahhhh

[frigid crescent]

im personally interested in a flame reave fire aura build but im concerned it won't be powerful enough

[little pagoda]

oh no, so mage is bad? Lb doesnt look bad

[balmy flame]

You think simply stunning uber abby is broken? That fancy mana flay lich build of this last season had a fear component and would frequently fear him and keep him feared all the way to the first harby spawn. And also stun in-between...

I may have burst out laughing when I realized that.

[robust junco]

The problem of flame reave fire Aura imo, is you don't get enough benefits

It's easier to play, you spam flame reave and that gives you FA

But that's it

Firebrand gives you flat spell, %More Dmg

But no FA

So you have to combine it with Surge

[balmy flame]

But back onto the subject of mage, I am somewhat curious if sorcereor will make a comeback. Spellblade is nice, good that it's viable, runemaster is funky but typically viable, but I'd like to go archamge sorc more often and to good effect.

[frigid crescent]

to be fair with the new fire res stacking node its possible you dont need your actual skill to do that much damage

so firebrand on bosses and flame surge for clear might be fine

[robust junco]

Firebrand doesn't deal dmg, but empower fire Aura quite a bit

[frigid crescent]

it doesnt seem like this patch is super concerned with sorc as a class

[robust junco]

You stack Firebrand, then surge consume stacks to create Firae Aura

[balmy flame]

Well, not as a highlight. Patch notes tomorrow will confirm ultimately.

[frigid crescent]

ahh okay

[robust junco]

None of the melee attack deals significant dmg

[frigid crescent]

well if firebrand best supports fire aura then i might just play that

[nimble shoal]

Well, you don't need to consume brand stacks, to be clear, it's surge's own stacks

but the idea is that the brand stacks boost all your fire aura stacks

[dapper flare]

I forget exactly but I think the best fire aura gen involves Glyph of Dominion

[spare glen]

or surge

2 best ways

surge should give +10 but i need to test that, glyph gives 6 per 2~ seconds iirc more with 2 glyphs

[dapper flare]

Pretty sure surge build up is far worse than Glyph

[harsh abyss]

Someone was mentioning you can stack up to like 100 stacks using glyph

[dapper flare]

Yeah it’s extremely cancer to do I believe

But it is the highest stack amount

[harsh abyss]

Yeah, surge is probably the best "normal" way to do it (and actually enjoy playing)

[dapper flare]

You have to stack mana and mana dump to get expansion speed and such

[robust junco]

@tribal veldt

[tribal veldt]

how'd you know I was lurking

[robust junco]

I saw fire Aura Glyph mentioned

[tribal veldt]

fair

[robust junco]

It's the best way to summon you

That's why I never talk a out it at home

[tribal veldt]

yeah if you're super committed to just being a fire aura build it's glyph of dominion mana runemaster

if you're not hung up about that I imagine fire res stack double dip with blackhole is gonna feel best

this season I gotta really push the build to what it can actually do instead of quitting early lol (that or a new better build arises which would be welcome as well)

[harsh abyss]

I might try and tackle uber for once

[robust junco]

With fire Aura?

[harsh abyss]

With Fire Aura + Black Hole + Fireball + Meteor, yeah

[robust junco]

Oo

[harsh abyss]

Wildfire Embers build

[robust junco]

Ah

[pale cedar]

Anyone have any thoughts about the shattered strike conversion to lightning? Im a little skeptical because 2 of the main connecting nodes (getting triple cast, and 20% crit multi per sword) require nodes with increase cold penetration won't convert. Bloody nib also won't work, so it seems like you kind of have to waste skill points for no reason to get anything good

[dapper flare]

if they keep adding conversion and not converting tree nodes I'm gonna actually cry

[spare glen]

ha ha

do u think for example runemaster chest will work with new converted attributes

or shield bash dmg per strength?

[dapper flare]

yes

[spare glen]

KEKW

i dont

[dapper flare]

it says in the post

[spare glen]

ye it always says

like in bug fixes that supposed to fix

but they dont

😅

[lusty cargo]

Any cookers on shatter strike ?

[dapper flare]

The only shatter strike enjoyer is in CT and won't talk about it probs

[spare glen]

i dont think anything gonna change for ss

you lose throne if u go lightning

[dapper flare]

I am thinking bugs will be better this time around

[spare glen]

and glacier procs are a meme

[dapper flare]

I mean we have the power of Krafton now, surely

[spare glen]

[dapper flare]

😛

[spare glen]

1 week later zeckar raging that all minions bugged

😭 🥺

[dapper flare]

truuuuu

they gonna bug fix all my necro "interactions" finally

[ivory leaf]

there are no bugs in le sing se

[dapper flare]

and I'm just gonna lose 80% of my dps on all builds

[spare glen]

and the best part...youll never figure out why

xdd

my experience last league hopping on hail of arrows: equipping better op bow...lose 30% dps

xdd

[dapper flare]

I just have to test rogue, surely it's fine with just 1 rogue

[dapper flare]

I was so upset when I made my planner with the HS helm and I come back from vacation to you showcasing the better build of what I just made to play I was like my one chance to play rogue and make a build

[spare glen]

lnfao

why not still play it

who cares

its actual gigagchad build

[dapper flare]

because I couldn't make a vid on it and yours was better so it'd be pointless

also I ended up not liking the playstyle later

[spare glen]

nah i have like 10 viewers and offline clips 🤷‍♀️

[dapper flare]

yeah but you are a fellow maxroll whisperer

[spare glen]

lol

[ivory leaf]

sometimes they buff a skill and input the wrong number

so you will never know

[spare glen]

im thinking making zhp orb mage this time, offscreen everything with orbs

also wonder how new set gonna work with void convert orb

cause if set overrides then you get 3 orbs instead of 2 orbitting

and if not you are fcked

[dapper flare]

true, the ghostflame build was funny af

[harsh abyss]

Oh, Vorb, I was considering a Sorb build and was very confused for a sec

[dapper flare]

whoops we allowed you to give yourself 300% of your ignite chance infinitely

[ivory leaf]

they buffed chakram node from 30% more to 100% more