[1.1.5.0] Saving COLD DMG from oblivion - ranty thread/meta discussion

[banana_peel]

Final March boots look better perhaps. Also Iskandra relic, maybe?

This combination gives more dmg but less tankiness. And Nightblade skills are more important and Nidalla seems stronger anyway.

But build looks good and time is very nice!

Thanks!

Not sure what holds Infiltrator’s time back. Probably the seal and overall poor stat support. My first build was Tactician and since then i don’t think i ever touched Inquisitor again. Uninspiring to me. Lots of buttons to press, the seal is too strong not to take and the whole skill set is hindered by the power of two generic skills. I wish it had some melee autoattack skill to go ham on and not care about spells… Well, you know me!

[ya1]

That build looks very good… ok… I guess it’s time for RANT-CHANGE!!! Non-arcanist builds SUCK!

[sephelutis]

@Maya

Pet builds says hi, various EOR, vit casters, various range fire strikes.

Most builds generally do really well these days except probably Arcanist + Oathkeeper or Arcanist + Soldier.

[Maya]

@Maya

Pet builds says hi

Not exactly. Winter king builds are subpar to going Elemental or pure lightning

[sephelutis]

Isnt elemental birbs rely on blizzard anyway?

Winterking in general sucks anyway.

[ya1]

Winterking is pretty strong (for a cold build). Or was. I tweaked and ran one for Nandi in 1.1.3.0. Not having to spend points in any spam skill made him quite formidable. I don’t remember if it was before or after the nightblade nerfs, though. Anyway, it sure beats cold Forcewave (not fire Forcewave ofc but who’d even bother comparing cold to fire as if there was a point to prove…)

Not sure what holds Infiltrator’s time back.

Not enough people RANTED about infiltrator so he never got to score overbuffs like arcanist. Seriously, though, I got so stuck in my ways that for some reason I never even thought that arcanist oupiedness applies not only to casters. Spellbreakers can actually not just match but beat infiltraitors, it seems. Apparently, mega oa and crit dmg with 100% uptime allows you to drop DG and go for more %dmg more procs with devos. That plus +200-300%dmg from spirit (or more if you choose so). It stacks so good that it eventually more than makes up for Censure’s rr.

I just don’t fucking like Kubacabra…

[afanasenkov26]

Winterking in general sucks anyway.

6:22 Korba with Winterking suddenly comes out

[Maya]

Isnt elemental birbs rely on blizzard anyway?

Nope, that was never the case. It was just for extra AoE for better Crucible times

[sir_spanksalot]

@Maya

Pet builds says hi

Not exactly. Winter king builds are subpar to going Elemental or pure lightning

Yeah. I can attest to this

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2M97D02

This is the GT I tested in naked crucible. It took me 3 minutes to beat 160. And I mean just 160 itself. Not 151 - 160.

@Zantai: Is it possible to check if winterking is indeed working as intended for pets? It feels tremendously weak.

@Maya: Do you reckon there could be a bug with the phys/cold conversion for pets?

[x1x1x1x2]

But haven’t been nerfed to any meaningful extent

Dark One heals the entirety of his health in less than 1.5s (from Totems only, in total maybe close to 0.5s)

I agree with this. AAR nerfs were tame and that vit offhand is bonkers, but this has nothing to do with the state of cold damage. Cold isn’t that great right now but I wanna say I don’t want chillwhisper to be the next AAR. Ranting only results in two things - ridiculous nerfs, or ridiculous buffs. I’m against the rant, not the reason behind the rant.

Belgo’s back to 4:30

With a ton of greens and incredible minmaxing by fluff. Greens received a general buff so this is expected. The purple version tho, it’s just a product of pure hardwork on fluff’s part.

world record in Crucible was beaten just now,

Which, considering AAR got nerfed though barely, I would attribute to Roman being luckier than he was in the previous patch, and the fact that there’s also a lot of thought put into the build - as evidenced by your conversations on the thread.

here are many other such revelations whose authors asked not to reveal.

I don’t really believe those hidden OP builds. If there’s something OP it should’ve been discovered already by the majority. I’m sure those people had a different metric of what OP is cause nothing will ever be in the same level as AAR or belgo or pre nerf PB or Valdun without you guys discovering it.

And Z is like “no 10chars” every time someone mentions breaking the RoH shackle.

Yeah I really want rune buffed again.

[Maya]

@Maya: Do you reckon there could be a bug with the phys/cold conversion for pets?

No idea. For some reason it feels like the dmg that should be there is simply missing somehow. One could argue that it might be in part due to monster res vs cold, but it feels the same against everything and not just the likes of Kuba.

Maybe something is bugged, maybe cold itemization for pets need a buff, maybe it is working as intended, idk.

Fire pets are lacking too, so it is not purely cold. And the only saving grace of Physical pets is that both Briar and Kitty does bleed dmg as well.

[sir_spanksalot]

Yeah. It took AGES to bring down reaper, and he only has 18% cold res

[mad_lee]

Amazing advice, @Xervous, to “widen horizons” and to use greens, like elite builders haven’t tried it or like it will suddenly give birth to a top-tier cold builds noone has figured out yet. If you can only solve the problem by gdstashing double rare mi-s, well, it means you haven’t solved it. Builds that rely on double rare mi’s are nothing but showcases of what could’ve been had a player hit a 1 in a million jackpot. Those are not real builds that people can follow, just like prototype cars are not real road cars.

On the other hand, I think @ya1 is exagerrating a bit, cold does have some very solid builds, just look at my hybrid Trickster or Harra’s Infiltrator or at @thejabrixone trap master. The problem is that Cold became really average as the damage type. And I think it can be partly solved by adding Beastial racial damage to key Cold items like Farath’s cube or Deathmarked set or Korba set.

Nerfs to Silver Sentinel were absolutely unwarranted. It’s a glassy set that I, for example, never use in my builds, because it’s way too unreliable. And @Zantai’s little trolling example of SS building doing 5:40 in Crucible is just irrelevant. It’s one of the best runs recorded by a great pilot on a build that has 8k hp (lol) and like less than 50% consistency in the hand of an average player.

[Xervous]

At what point did I say double rares? This is a strawman of your own construction that warrants no debate. If alkamos rings are on the table with their abysmal drop rate what reasoning leads to the exclusion of single rare MIs? I don’t subscribe to this theory that the elitist builder community is infallible and hasn’t missed a puzzle piece yet. There’s a clear pattern in some aspects of the common approach and if that doesn’t yield builds up to their standards that’s how we get these threads. There’s a demand that the game be reworked to fit their ideals without space given for questioning if that definition is too narrow for the game as things currently stand.

[mad_lee]

At what point did I say double rares?

Well, single rares with reasonable second affix are also pretty hard to get. And if you mean any rares, care to give an example of a cold build that becomes top-tier with a simple addition of m.i. with half-relevant affixes?

If alkamos rings are on the table with their abysmal drop rate what reasoning leads to the exclusion of single rare MIs?

Agree about Alkamos rings. They are hard to get, not as impossible as double rare mi-s but still hard. Got my legit ones thru trading, actually.

I don’t subscribe to this theory that the elitist builder community is infallible and hasn’t missed a puzzle piece yet.

A lot of missed puzzle pieces, but we can see the whole picture most of the time and have decent understanding of what works and what doesn’t. There is a closed chat where top builders share and discuss their builds and ideas before posting it. That gives every individual top builder a much better understanding of current meta.

There’s a demand that the game be reworked to fit their ideals without space given for questioning if that definition is too narrow for the game as things currently stand.

That is not entirely true. First of all, there is a false misconception that top builders only want their builds to be op op. It’s not like that. Every one of us made more than dozen of builds (I personally made more than 30 top-tier builds), so we are not as personally invested as some think we are. 99% of the time when we ask for something is because we have enough knowledge and experience to understand what’s better for endgame than most of the players have. Second of all, most of the changes proposed by top builders that made it into the game are actually loved and appreciated by most of the playerbase, you included.

[Xervous]

That is not entirely true.

My apologies, I should have emphasized that this is the prevailing perception of the trend of responses that have arisen in reply to various changes.

And if you mean any rares, care to give an example of a cold build that becomes top-tier with a simple addition of m.i. with half-relevant affixes?

Could you clarify top-tier just so we’ve got obvious yes/no benchmarks for it to make?

[mad_lee]

Could you clarify top-tier just so we’ve got obvious yes/no benchmarks for it to make?

like below 7 minute Crucible CONSISTENT builds without energy problems that can also easily farm 65-66.

[sir_spanksalot]

I feel like top tier for DPS specs is a reliable ~7:30, with 6min and below being the tippy top of the tippy top.

[mad_lee]

7:30 is fine as long as you never go above this number. Because if build does ocasionally does like 8 minutes with bad mutators there is a risk that you wouldn’t be able to squeeze in 3 runs in one blessings duration (you gotta open chests, that takes about 15-30 seconds).

[sir_spanksalot]

Right, I suppose I’m taking the average here. Because you can also go >30s below the average clear speed