Last time I made a physical caster, so naturally this time I had to make a pierce caster. Runebinder has more elemental damage than pierce, but thankfully conversions are a lot easier for pierce while only having to worry about one damage type rather than two. Special thanks to @mad_lee and @Valinov for helping me fine tune the build.
As usual try to high roll the conversion as much as possible to get 100%. Maximum possible rolls reach 102% so you need to get pretty lucky. The build is very fragile and inconsistent but thankfully the fragility is easily remedied by putting more points into physique and taking points out of Chillsurge and putting them into Inquisitor Seal. I like to play glass cannons so I play it squishy.
Character sheet with permanent buffs and Word of Renewal/Pneumatic Burst.
Performance
A very lucky 5:05 run. Average time is around 5:45.
Video of SR76. I went to 9/12 Chillsurge to max Inquisitor Seal. I didn’t have it in the video but putting a point in Blade Barrier would also be a good idea for SR.
It is kind of sad that pierce performs better than elemental but I don’t know how Zantai could buff them without pushing this build too far. It’s certainly not a consistent build though, so it’s not as powerful as it looks. The burn/frostburn could easily be buffed without affecting this build’s power much I guess.
Why pierce is better for runes than elemental? I think pierce is good damage type, usually is balanced around enemies have low resistances and you have low RR. Infiltrator have dual RR source and also gloves provide flat RR without the need for sacrificing offensive devotions. So totally dope.
Unlike this build where ele to pierce is already given, it’s hard to obtain that on runic bolts since double bladetwister sucks and makes you miss the opportunity to go jaxxons. It’s probably doable but I won’t like it.
I once tried to theorycraft that on an infiltrator and it just doesn’t look great on paper.
It was good in AoM and can compete with top fire strike builds, but got nerfed as collateral damage from all the dying god, flame torrent nerfs etc. I kinda revived it on 1.1.2.0 but as a hybrid with box and we know how box carries builds hard.
@thejabrixone still has problems with stuff like attack speed and hp cause runebinder lacks those. Even tactician had it hard on hp on the elemental version.
Solid Pierce build, and you can definitely beef it up if you give up one projectile from RoH and some points from stuff like Conviction and Anatomy. By the way, one thing I forgot to ask you when you were working on it: have you tried maybe focusing one one rune and Ring of Steel?
A very early version of the build had all three maxed with 2 less projectiles on RoH and probably some other sacrifices. The damage was great but I ended up deciding the ring of steel points were the least important. I never tried just focusing on one rune and RoS. There’s a few things I really wish I could have more points in and RoS is definitely one of them. It might be worth pursuing to at least softcap
Elemental got shitty conversions. Even pure cold runebinder (best conversions) is crap (sub 6-ish, mega squish). Besides, pierce is now way ahead of cold on nightblade. Courtesy of Murder of Anatomy. Cunning dump is king, and infiltrators need oa.
Before the preats elbow their way through to report these times to Z, pls keep in mind it’s what’s called a max dmg setup. Big cunning dump, no da, needs crazy piloting to pull this off.
@Plasmodermic how much does Chillsurge really help you? I always thought it’s an independent “hooked-up” cast like Nightfall, and those projectiles don’t carry the base skill’s direct cold/pierce only its own frostburn…
Awesome build and sick results! I’ll also point out that based on the buff timer it’s in fact a 4.57 min run!
My first build was also pierce with Nadaan’s, but a Tactician, and i ended up with Runebinder as well, and with RoH too. No crazy times but it was immortal, just about right for the first build.
May i suggest different devotion bindings? You have RoH cooldown exactly matched with BoW. I noticed spirits aren’t procing the blades consistently. But RoH will, and with a special trait - the blades will have 100% hit of the targeted enemy. The single target dmg is absolutely insane (i killed Ravager with it in leveling gear).
Chillspikes can be bound to the Mark for immediate RR and the spirits will proc the sands very well.