[1.1.4.2] Ulzuin's Barrelsmith - Skyfire grenadier reborn (6min buffed/bannered clear; 9min naked)

Agreed. Cold damage is absolutely terribad now (except maybe for a few outliers I’m unaware of).

Harra’s set is garbage outside of PB, and rimetongue set cannot hope to compete with the new ulzuin set.

  • Regarding SJ harra: Biggest problem is that there’s no good weapon if you’re looking to focus on stun jacks. I tried making a build which was similar to OP by going hagarrad gloves + crescent moon, hoping to do a big jacks + grenado spam. However, lack of relevant %damage from demo class hits hard as hell. Only other class which can give relevant %damage is… (i) NB - but as you said, LA has been hit hard + is pita to use, (ii) Shaman - but elementalist is still weak, (iii) Sorc - but lack of dual RR + %cold damage from both classes is very tangible.

  • Regarding CT Harra: lol…set is clearly designed to go for a CT spam, but CT is a shite skill in the late game, unless you go for transmuted CT + inferno. But it’s also impossible to hardcap inferno using the set, and unlike vanquisher which has a %total damage modifier to CT, harra doesn’t provide sufficient buffs to CT.

  • Rimetongue: Outdated set which needs looking into imo. For a cold damage set designed for the demo, fire --> pierce conversion hits it hard. This was fine pre FG because we didn’t have enough fire/cold conversion anyway, but that isn’t the case anymore.

  • OA/DA for cold builds: Same story as acid damage. M. chains of night fire SHOULD give OA/DA imo. That alone hinders the cold demo significantly. And I don’t see why it shouldn’t be given OA/DA. Many other belts with 50% conversion have it…

Then there are other non-set based cold builds like cold PRM…but they kinda fall short because it’s quite hard to stack cold RR, and many annoying nems have high cold RR.

regarding chaos damage…

  • I’m by no means insinuating that it’s now a top tier damage type. But looking at where it was before, it’s gotten MANY buffs. It’s even possible to get >110% RR on a dual mastery without any innate RR (i.e. warlock).

  • Biggest problem with chaos damage is the lack of skills IMO. You have exceptions like darkblaze FS, and fluff’s DB spam, but really…you’ve got nothing else. Even with my 2H, 98% WD tainted flame deceiver ([1.1.1.2] Supah Hot Fiah - 98% WD 2H tainted flames deceiver (75+, Naked cruci, 276k dps)) damage is mediocre at best. And this can be explained by 3 things - i. shit medals + boots for chaos damage, ii. clunkiness of FoI, iii. and low base fire damage on FoI skill itself.

2 Likes

I did a cold spam CT harra set sorc. It’s absolutely terrible and the worst build I have ever done. Even fire skeletons defiler is better than that. Harra needs BIG buffs outside of PB imo. Spam CT in general probably need some buffs aswell, but idk how good aether and chaos spam CT are exactly.

Best CT build was probably old school agrivix made by x1x2. But it relied mostly on perfect aether conversion and procs from devotions/items to wreck face.

Now agrivix set is in a weird spot. My suggestion is actually to flip the conversion on the amulet to aether --> fire conversion. Make it a predominant vindictive flame set.

We should probably make a proper CT feedbacl thread to get Zentai’s attention and to convince him that spam is currently in a similar spot to spam Blade Arc (before the last couple of buffs) and it needs a similar treatment imo.

You didn’t know binder is back, huh

It was always shit and was only used in old N&O builds (not even full set) because there wasn’t any better alternative. Nowadays bonemonger outclasses it completely.

Cold was never really great as a damage type. Nightblade doesn’t have an exclusive. one class with cold exclusive doesn’t have RR, and the other one is fully lightning focused. It’s advantage was that their strongest sets and skills were OP. Once they were nerfed we get here now


^jedi_d made a rimetongue purifier which could take farm pre-FG 170 without any greens IIRC.

I guess the TL;DR takeaway of my very subjective opinion is…

  1. IF 1 or 2 cold sets are indeed overperforming, then sure. Nerf them. But by and large, cold damage needs some lovin’. Rimetongue and Harra comes to mind.

  2. Chaos damage needs better skills. I messed around with voidsoul aegis, and it was garbage.

Just watched your binder video…where is the single target DPS coming from?

Cool build!

What about new Blood Pact+Stormfire? Or is your explosives spam downtime too small to make it worth it here

Um… Kuba legguards+Inscribed bracers? :stuck_out_tongue:

But yeah, the results suck pretty bad. I tried a few versions of Harra’s CT a while ago; best one for me was an Inferno+SJ frostburn focused one with Chillspikes spam I believe…

That’s exactly what I was wondering when trying CT spam Harra :laughing:

^Totally unaware of this, so I can’t comment. Also, you may not need stormfire what with blazing eruption and about 50% WPS coming from barrelsmith.

Ahh, how good will it be if bonemonger got innate Pierce or vitality > elemental conversion

BTW spanks, Interesting build! Though I am not sure about korvaak Devo as your weapon damage is not that good. I would like also to suggest bane relic for even safer setup and high OA.

How does he supermax explosives+Ulzuin’s chosen with that, though? :confused:

Edit:

Edit: yeah, nevermind, CS is pretty terrible, here, anyways :smiley:

^What alternative would you suggest? I took it mostly for the DA/OA shred, and the huge OA on it. Also eldritch sun hits a single target like 10 times very quickly, allowing you to lifesteal back to full under ghoul

I might try this. It has more relevant %damage too. But +1 to demo goes a looooong way in this build. Slow/trap res on korvaak’s deception, and the ability to hardcap high impact without using green pants makes me reluctant to give it up.

EDIT: Korvaak’s deception also has more or less the same amount of OA as compared to bane, and high DA. It also gives another nuke which gets converted to lightning. That’s my rationale at least

%WD from procs

I hava a harra Sabo that can do approx 6:30 iirc. Using PB and SJ.

Imo CD PB needs some love

Probably squishy as hell though, right?

Yeah. Valinov was suggesting big jacks and PB spam to me a few months back.

Is the damage coming mostly from PB in your case? Because if so, it still warrants some buffs to SJ imo.

What does your empirical knowledge say

Very likely, yeah. At least in my version of the build it pretty much just felt like mad_lee’s cold PB spellbreaker – just with terrible demo defensive options (I’m sure that fluffs build is much more polished than mine, though).

I’m still voting for adding %AdctH to SJ on Harra’s.

Viable cold Flip Jacks would just be so friggin’ cool

I did both PB CD with SJ spam and vice versa. Spam PB was easier simple because of Sustain. CD SJ would burst pretty well.

But it’s not supposed to be Spam PB. you have Frigus and speaker mods that reduce CD. That’s the part that needs improving. It’s all twisted

Visually, it’s very cool (pun not intended)

Exactly! :stuck_out_tongue:

And I believe dmg would be pretty decent, too, if only we could gear a little more towards offense (thus the life leech mod suggestion).

Ok, it might need a better weapon option than Crescent Moon, too (maybe add %cold to Rune of Elgoloth?)

Frigus works well here as you can go for CB + big jacks spam. In fact, I think giving +points to ulzuin’s chosen on this set would be very nice.

As for the offhand, unless you’re doing PB nuke like fluff, I think tome of arcane waste is BiS, as you have resolved your need for flat RR.

With arcane frigus, you can get both levithian and attak seru in your devotions. The latter is especially powerful if you can fit in fire/cold conversion as well.

Good point. Maybe going more for a CT/PB hybrid might be better here for overall dps…

Fire>Cold conversion shouldn’t really be an issue with the new demo belt, after all.

But this still doesn’t solve the issue of the terrible sabo sustain/defense we have to deal with here :confused: