[1.1.4.2] Ultos and Ulzuin's Chosen: Hybrid Lightning Bomber Elementalist, 8min Crucible 170, SR76+

Introduction

With the update to Ulzuin’s Avatar set in 1.1.2, we revisit this set and set Cairn ablaze…with lightning! Using items, skills and devotions from Ulzuin and Ultos, we unify all of our damage into lightning. With double the deities, we double the destruction.

[1.1.4.1] <<GRIMTOOLS>>
[1.1.4.0] <<GRIMTOOLS>>
[1.1.2.4] <<GRIMTOOLS>>

Stats
All perm buffs and savagery up

8min cruci win


If you’re a better player than me and play Crucible of the Dead, I’m pretty sure you can get 7mins or less with this build.

Gear
Barrelsmith and Ulzuin set pieces are core. The rest are flexible.

Significant alternative choices:
Amulet: Shard of the Eternal Flame
Changing this slot has the biggest effect on how the build plays. The amulet reduces canister bomb CD to a very low 1.3s instead of 2.5s but now our CB pierce conversion is at 50% lightning and 50% fire instead of 100% lightning.

Also, losing Heart of Ulzuin means losing the Blast Shield skill mod and the extra skill points from the set bonus. The loss of +30% health regen is bigger than it appears at first glance. You lose 120hp/s with only Savagery up and 200hp/s with Savagery and Giant’s Blood up.

You can think of this choice as a transmuter that allows you to spam MOAR bombs for MOAR total damage in exchange for lower damage per bomb and less survivability.

Boots: Mythical Stormtitan Treads
Stormbearer was taken to reach the breakpoint on Maelstrom. If you don’t mind the slight loss of AoE (and this build already has massive aoe), take this for some extra stun res.

Gloves: Mythical Wyrmbone Handguards
Gives a boost to our BWC as well as extra cast speed and physique from the crafting bonus. If your fire to lightning conversion is at 100%, this is a nice alternative to take instead. Granted skill being 100% lightning is not too shabby either. (credit to mad_lee for the suggestion)

Medal, belt, pants, and relic you can mix and match how you like it.

Skills
Canister Bomb, Wind Devil and all the passive buffs are core. Aside from the massive front-loaded damage this build deals, its also quite comfortable kiting with 120K DoTs at its peak. And check out that electrocute duration. The shock from 1 blast of canister bomb can last for as long as 20s. However, there is plenty of room to tweak this build to your liking.

Since we are not a Purifier, I take BWC for the OA debuff and the -18 phys dmg redux. Extra bonus in that this skill deals 100% lightning dmg. Savagery is taken for the massive 100% health regen on Tenacity of the Boar as well as the added OA/DA. It is also is used to gun down survivors/focus-fire hard targets while our skills are on CD and it helps that our set gives us 45% WPS.

You can get rid of BWC and Savagery if you want some other skills to play with. Overcapped Vindictive Flames can also be trimmed down to 11/16 since this skill was taken mostly for the HP regen. Thermite mines and storm totems are excellent alternatives if it is to your liking. Personally, I feel adding these skills makes the build too clunky as you already open each engagement with wind devil, flashbang, BWC and canister bomb.

Imaginary Q&A
Q: Why not Purifier?
A: You can certainly play as a Purifier. However there are significant factors that I feel pushes Elementalist above Purifier and I believe this class combo is the best for this build. I will outline my reasons for why I feel elementalist is the superior choice.

Survivability
This build is a caster first (80%) and a gunner second (20%). As such I rely on health regen instead adcth for my sustain. For a kiting build, regen is a better sustain than Bat adcth (and I f(k!ng hate Bat on caster builds). You get +30% health regen from 10/10 Heart of the Wild and a massive +100% health regen from Tenacity of the Boar. Normal health regen is at 570hp/s, 800hp/s with Savagery and a very chunky 2200hp/s with Giant’s Blood and Savagery. This won’t come close to weapon damage-focused builds with high life leech but combined with 50% uptime on Blast Shield, this build can survive most of the pain that comes your way while standing your ground.

You do lose out on the awesome Word of Renewal line of skills as well as Censure’s -16 reduced enemy damage but thats why this build takes the transmuted BWC to compensate.

Damage
Stormcaller’s Pact has permanent +40% crit dmg as well as +33% chance of +394% lightning damage. Wind Devil has higher RR than Aura of Censure with the added bonus of Maelstrom at the 17/12 breakpoint. If cast on CD, you’ll have 2 WD out most of the time dealing their Maelstrom damage on a wider range of mobs. This is more than Deadly Aim and Censure combined can ever give you.

You could also factor in the Purifier’s WPS in its favor but this build is better if a lightning purifier gunner is more to your liking.

Q: Can this build do SR75+?
A: Yes!


If I could change the thread title I would.

Q: Why is there burn damage on the Canister Bomb?
A: This is unfortunately an artifact of the helmet’s CB phys to fire conversion. This now puts the conversion of internal trauma of Improved Casing at 50% fire and 50% lightning. The helmet is too important to be replaced. Since the build relies more on the initial damage of CB as opposed to the DoT, I am willing to make this trade off.

Attachment: SR80 Pass Elementalist Ulzuin.jpg

EDIT: In 1.1.4.0, The conversion on Ulzuin’s helm was moved to the gun. This is a big buff to the build as now, Canister Bomb is 100% lightning. Grimtools is updated to reflect the augment changes from 1.1.3.0 as well as the (undeserved) nerf to Maelstrom.

2 Likes

Reserved coz why not. Every build thread seems to do it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey, Adam. Bombastic build!

Glad to see people breathing some life into semi-dead class. I like and understand the logic behind most of the gear/devoton/skill choices. Couple of questions tho:

  • Did you consider using agonizing flames and letting Elemental Storm go? You are converting all of it into lightning after all, and RR from it will be instant unlike Elemental Storm that you have to proc first

  • Wyrmborne gloves? Some lightning damage to bwc as well as BWC boost. Also some casting speed which will make gameplay a bit more smooth. And a crafting bonus on top

  • How does build sustain itself in terms of mana?

Thanks for the comments. Replies below.

Adam Bomb,you lived to your name with that build,nicely done.
Also is Elementalist,so double hurrah!

no green thing? pog.

SR 76 cleared!


As an added bonus, I finally got “A Done Deal” achievement. Its a slog climbing 11 shards in one go. If only I could change the thread title to reflect its SR76+ status.

Elementalist doing all that stuff, damn. How consistent it would be in sr 75-76 farming? Any boss combination that can’t be done by it?

Its actually my first time climbing this far in SR so I can’t comment on hard boss combos yet. I’ve always stopped at 66 using the waystone shortcut.

From my experience, it was mostly smooth sailing getting to 76. Big targets like Kaisan and Reaper die really fast to some well-placed canister bombs. Its mostly Valdaran that almost gets me killed with his teleport swap.

I tried out the build your build, great build btw, and I agree valdaran is really a pain. When you trying to kite he’ll teleport you right back into the mess you trying to run away from lol. Also, having a hard time with fast bosses and nems where they can rush you down guess it’s a fact for all caster builds.

So cleared SR 80…Boy that was rough haha.

Required tons of kiting and died a lot actually post SR77. The damage is up there for sure…sometimes 300k Dots. Overall great build. Can do SR75-76 but higher needs insane kiting and piloting.

As per game guide it seems you’re wrong. Skill modifier conversion goes before transmuter conversion, and you cannot chain convert. So 100% of IT on Improved Casing should be converted to burn via skill mod on helmet. After that any transmuter or global conversion is irrelevant for IT part of improved casing, so it will remain fully converted to burn.

Also, is there a reason you completely skip grenado? I’d try something like this - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV9kjoxN (disregard the pants, anything you have could be here)
Check the devotion setup as well. There’s also a devotion option with Chariot instead of Phoenix.

Hmmm… I tested this a bit just now and I’m somewhat certain that the skill mod on the helmet is on the same tier of conversion as the transmuter.

Test control:

  • All of our internal trauma comes from Improved Casing.
    0 points in Concussive Bomb
    Burn: 10058
    Electrocute: 16636

1 point in Concussive Bomb
Burn: 7563
Electrocute: 19723

2 points in Concussive Bomb
Burn: 6059
Electrocute: 21582

3 points in Concussive Bomb
Burn: 5029
Electrocute: 22857

If the skill mod on the helmet went first, then the burn damage from 1 or 3 points in Concussive Bomb should be the same. Actual testing shows burn damage decreasing as the conversion on Concussive Bomb takes a bigger piece of the conversion pie.

I see you took out BWC and dropped Maelstrom to 1 pt in your remake. I took BWC for this reason.

Maelstrom you can play with. I personally just max it since I’m already taking Wind Devil for the -RR%. The extra damage is gravy. If you want to play as a pure bomber, you can slot in Grenado if you like.

Chariot is nice if you can fit it. No Elemental Storm is workable since we got 18 flat RR on Canister Bomb. I’m not a big fan of Phoenix even in full aether or fire conversion builds.

Thanks a lot! Good to see this can reach SR80. Maybe I should finally slap in Bat and put in more defensive constellations if this build is to go higher.

I am still quite new to the game but would Bat be worth it? Twin Fangs has pierce and vitality damage but our skills scale with lightning and fire damage. Eventhough its 45% adcth but damage of the Proc will be low? I see many caster builds use this devotion actually.

Also what defensive constellation set up would you proposed? will it be worth it to spec for tree of life as well at the cost of damage?

We are mostly dependent on the weapon damage of Bat to carry it. Bat can actually heal for a lot IF you are fighting a big horde. That 100% pass through will hit a lot of mobs. Of course not so useful against bosses and nemesis with their massive life leech resist but a couple hundred hp every 0.6s helps no matter how small.

ps. Still hate forcing Bat in casters… :mad:

This is the defensive setup I have in mind

Added Aeon with Time Dilation and swapped boots and gloves. The way this works is that when Blast Shield and Giant’s Blood are active, throw the Grenado to cool them down giving you potential 8s of continuous Blast Shield protection. It also increases the uptime of Giant’s Blood from 50% to 70%.

Regeneration also increased to 800hp/s and 2400hp/s with Savagery and Savage/Blood respectively. Total hp increased from 13.5K to 17K. Most of the CC resists are very high.

Our OA and total RR dropped a ton with all the changes. This variant is reliant on the DA shred of Flashbang.

Hey man thanks for the suggestion! Will definitely try it out :smiley:

Cool build. I’ve been playing something similar with barrelsmith’s but I was going with 4 pc Ultos instead of Ulzins. I only have the helmet right now and I would just transfer from GDstash but I copied this character and it won’t show up in GDstash. I’ve been using storm totem but I’m going to respec that to BWC, that probably works way better. Also don’t have Ulzin’s chosen which would give great damage boost but I feel like I need wendigo totem and I don’t know where I’d get the rest of the points to get that to a good level. Also using shard of beronath instead of savagery. I still play classic so I am working with 30 less skill points.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2glPKYV

I can farm bosses no problem and can do chaos and steps rogue dungeons but cannot even get into valbury - getting rekted at the gates

Small update to the build.

High God Z, the deity above even Ch’thon, has seen the plight of Ulzuin’s lightning followers having to split their DoT damage with fire. By his decree, the conversion on the helm was moved to the gun and Canister Bomb’s overall damage was lowered.

Having full lightning conversion on Canister Bomb is a net gain for this build despite the nerf. Ulzuin’s lightning followers rejoice and weep tears of joy.

Hey!
I dont have the purple items, so can you help with rep items or easily gear? please T^T