You don’t have to apologize for critique, intended or not. It’s more than welcome.
I’m not so sure about Vire Might proccing power anymore. I bound it to Bat on another build hoping that Volcanic Stride ticks will carry the 61% initial proc chance. It seems they don’t. Bat only procs on initial attack and after that only sometimes, very rarely. Should proc every second like a clock. On Seekers, though, it’s still good cause Seekers proc 100% off any ticking skill.
Regen is a small part of it. You can’t depend on it. So I’m skeptical of giving up one mortar for just a little drop of it. Converted Ulzuin Wrath and Bat should do most of the job. But the real secret is kill them before they deal any real dmg.
Vire is for proccing and mobility. It’s dmg is negligible. As for melee, you need to keep your enemies stationary anyway for the Mortars so I see no reason not to take Fervor.
Isn’t Bat’s base proc chance of 20% simply multiplied by the number of simultaneously applied dmg sources (in this case x3, resulting in the shown ~60% proc rate)? That still leaves VM as superior to a ton of other skills in terms of its ability to proc devotions in my opinion… unless of course you have 5-6 simultaneously applied dmg sources as with mortars, obviously - so there are of course better options in some cases.
Why did you bind Eldtritch Fire to BWC instead of to Flashbang btw? Is it because of the higher AoE?
The regen scaling with that prefix is actually pretty amazing (for regen standards). As a tool of survival it might be a matter of personal preference, sure; but whilst other available defensive stats like flat absorption or %-based heals are much better in theory, the fact of the matter is that they are always just temporary on SB-builds. So if I want to be able to screw up my kiting on wave 169 (e.g. because I’m farming MIs whilst listening to podcasts and therefore quite as alert as necessary) but still survive 170 with Ascension on cooldown I need some form of constant healing. And since AdctH is no real option…
RF on the other hand is cool, strong, but also very deadly in the abovementioned circumstances (=varying degrees of sloppiness in piloting behaviour). Trust me. I tried. And died.
Whilst heroes can be facetanked either way, nemeses force youto kite most of the time anyways - but can actually be hit with mortars too during that time if you do it correctly (using pillars/walls, circling movements & blinking). Half their hitboxes are totally ginormous anyways
No, proc chance depends on the skill’s base cooldown (cdr don’t matter). No cooldown skills, pets or ticking skills got the lowest chance. Vire itself is not a ticking skill and happens to have 61% on Bat. Volcanic Stride, however, ticks per second. I thought those ticks carry the full 61% proc chance. They don’t. When I run people over with Vire, Bat only procs from the initial attack and then from Volcanic Stride ticks it procs rarely. I think those ticks have 20% proc chance like all ticks do even though the tooltip shows 61%
Flashbang on Eldrich Fire. Yeah. Many top builders do that. I don’t. Flashbang is too slow, it’s clunky, the throw animation is slow and then the flight animation is like gravity on the Moon. It doesn’t really hit once a second even if you spam it. And it’s only 27%. If it had 51% percent like most cooldown skills then yeah, sure.
I don’t know about “I can’t facetank” thing… You got 4 seconds to facetank anything on Blast Shield. You can facetank all 4 nemeses at 170 if you will. If you watch my video you will see that I facetank absolutely everything. Sometimes I blink or Vire behind an enemy if I get surrounded and charge at 'em again. They shouldn’t live long enough to surround me again. Mortars don’t work if you can’t keep them in one place so never ever kite. Oh, use pet attack on nemesis waves to make Mortars converge on the biggest threat. If you let them keep targeting random trash then, yeah, you’re gonna die.
As for sustain, Bat. You gotta put it on a thing that hits a lot of times per second. The only thing is Mortars.
Now that is something I wish I’d known before. Does this mean that to the game only the flat dmg sources of VM’s main skill are relevant in terms of devo proccing power? Or does it combine the flat and the DoT dmg (trauma, bleed) as one single instance of dmg able to proc devos? Because that should then still carry the initial proc chance over the duration of said DoTs, shouldn’t it?
Exactly. 4 seconds are all I’ve got. And because, as mentioned above, I mistrigger/am forced to misuse BS & Ascension by for example facetanking too much on 169 sometimes when I’m too distracted by music/podcasts, I prefer to just generally apply more kiting.
When talking about kiting as a viable alternative to facetanking, though, I was actually more refering to a kind of dodging/sidestepping movement as opposed to “running as far away as I can with my tail between my legs” (which happens sometimes, too, I admit – resulting in the odd 5:30 run every now and then). So I might have mislead you here too
Maybe this becomes clearer if I use the w.170 clear in your video as an example: instead of facetanking Grava & Reaper once in the middle and once at the bottom left stairway, I try to pile them up in/around the bottom left of the four middle pillars an then dodge them in a controlled circling movement that also keeps them in one place (whilst of course I try to focus-fire down one after the other with pet attack too). And regen feels really good against the occasional hit I take during such movements
Edit: I finally brought myself to creating a Youtube-Account, so I uploaded a video that should hopefulley show what I was talking about more clearly than any post I could write you here
The most interesting part of it is probably wave 170 (starting at ~2:32). Note: the video only contains waves 160ff (crappy upload speed) & was done a few days ago with my old 5 Mortar/Ultos setup. The full run took about 5:12 (not the best but about the average clear time of that particular setup).
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Dot ticks can not proc devos. The fire trail that VM gives on “Volcanic” stride is “ticking” skill just as Sigil of consumption, Bloody box, Strom Box etc. Each tick and each enemy affected has a chance (the chance listed by the devotion bind) to proc devotion.
“Volcanic stride" deals both fire and burn damage.
Try on the target dummies with damage numbers on to see individual numbers from the fire ticks and the burn dots
Well… yeah… I’m not sure how come but it seems it’s stronger than ever… I just gave up on those regen-Behemoth shenanigans and did what it’s supposed to do: pure dmg.
EDIT: Seal of might is arguably better here. I’m not sure how consistent the build is from that video
but adcth isn’t useful if you’re too dead to use it.
2nd EDIT: I’ve rewatched that video 5 times at 0.25 speed…I don’t understand how you got killed through resilience, blastshield, ascension, golemborn proc, AND ghoul. You weren’t even hit with HP reduction.
Much needed cc res. Hardcap to 2nd node of Mortars. OA scales great with this crit dmg. Besides, I don’t need points in oathkeeper, no need for Serenity.
Grey Magi are also there in my inventory of this toon. I did use them. I settled for Golems for the res mostly. I found this arrangement of gear, components and augments to be optimal.
It is. I had it before. But I settled of Blades. Adcth actually works in crowds even in minimal numbers. Vire heals me. That Korvaak nuke heals me (ok, honest, never used it but I’d would heal me if I did), Fiend and Stormfire also give some scraps of heal. All in all it’s x1000 better than whatever bullshit regen you can muster on Pyran. No ADCTH no GD for me.
That’s GD 1.1.4.2 for you. Equals GET SR SET OR SHIT LIKE THIS WILL HAPPEN. No, not often but it doesn’t change how hilarious this is. Next run I did 4:50 and fullfacetanked two Reapers and something. TOTAL RNG.
Zantai insists on this TOTAL RNG approach with 1-1,000,000,000 DMG RANGE ON EVERY HIT, STACKABLE DEBUFFS ON EVERY HERO AND MUTATORS ARE SACRED so shit like that happens on the weaker defensive synergy classes with sets that haven’t yet gotten 12% phys res on completion. Especially when mutators don’t align.
I’m not sure how come but it seems it’s stronger than ever… 
