I wanted to make an elemental cadence battle mage but there are some mechanics that I am unsure of before committing to the build.
The soldier + arcanist both have a lot of options for armor reduction, physical resist reduction, offense % increase and defense rating decrease. This leads me to believe the two best ways to improve my cadence would be either through raw damage or a crit build.
Before I can decide however I need to know two things:
Does the final cadence hit get boosted by reduced armor / physical resist before converting to elemental?
Maxed out it looks like solider + arcanist can get -80% physical resist and 400+ reduced armor. If the cadence hit isn’t boosted by physical reduction before conversion it will probably be a waste though.
Is it possible to stack enough % OA and defense rating to crit bosses?
There looks to be a potential 25% crit damage, 10%+ OA boost, and 380+ defense rating reduction from the 2 talent trees. If I can’t build to crit everything though I probably won’t bother.
Here’s a armor reduction build and a crit based build I drafted. I’m still undecided on devotions.
I’m interested in trying a 2h elemental damage battlemage next go around. Most input i see regarding the battlemage tends to assume you use a shield or offhand. How do things change when you’re swinging around a big club? Should I consider Tremor instead of Cadence? Would that mean abilities like Fighting Spirit no longer work? Any random thoughts would be welcome.
I don’t like Forcewave/Tremor myself. I think its hits are too narrow to be efficient at clearing packs. I haven’t tried it since it was buffed in the last patch though so it may be a bit better now, but the question would be how much better in that case.
Fighting Spirit should work with all attacks since it isn’t a default attack replacer and it boosts all types of damage.
Survivability wise, if you’re gonna go 2H, you may probably need to use Maiven’s Sphere, which is great for survivability, but lowers your DPS somewhat. It was buffed recently though so it decreases damage less now than it used to. War Cry is also great for reducing damage.
I see no reason why 2H wouldn’t work, but if you’re gonna go proc based, make sure to get that attack speed up as much as you can.
With Oleron’s Rage and Inner Spirit you will have an easy time making it crit-based. Just make sure you get some decent amount of OA since these passives are %-based. It’s extra important because putting points into Spirit (which increases elemental damage) doesn’t give any extra OA.
The main problem facing elemental battlemages imo is that they lack elemental resist reductions, so getting that from devotions and items instead is important.
Finally, take notice that Deadly Momentum is rather useless for an elemental build. Since it’s a buff instead of being a baked-in passive for Cadence, it does nothing for elemental damage.
I assumed that deadly momentums physical damage can be converted via conversion! If that is not the case then it is completely useless to make a elemental battlemage.
The point of doing it is to get as much raw damage so that the lacking -% elemental reduction doesn’t hurt your dps too much.
Morover the physical reduction from flash freeze only affect targets that are not immune to the flash freeze…hence it does nothing against bosses if I got this right.
I believe that a witchblade works better than battlemage.
You wont have the high conversion but you can just go for both elemental and physical damage. And you get the perfect resistance reduction of physical, bleeding and elemental from Curse of Frailty.
deadly momentum is super strong and it doubles my screen dps as soon as it is active!
Can someone confirm that physical to x conversation does NOT affect deadly momentum?!?
Deadly momentum’s flat physical damage is effected by conversion from items and skills such as elemental exchange. However the % damage increases will not boost the converted damage nor will the Discord transmuter on cadence, so it’s basically at half effectiveness for an elemental damage build.
You mean that the converted flat damage will not be boosted by any % damage increase on equipment AT ALL?
Does someone know if I can activate the Elemental Imbalance self proc from Iskandras Relic (requires caster off-hand) and then weapon switch to dual wield and benefit from the proc until it wears off?
Just the % damage bonuses on Deadly momentum. The way conversion works is it will occur after % damage increases that are local to the skill, such as with cadence, but before % damage increases on gear, devotion, passives, etc. However since deadly momentum is applied to the character as a buff rather than as a part of the cadence skill, it’s % damage is instead applied after the conversion.
Haven’t tested that for elemental imbalance, but I would guess it would be canceled since that doesn’t work with similar abilities.
Can you elaborate on this? I understand that the transmuter doesn’t affect Deadly Momentum, but many people have mentioned that skill modifiers apply before conversion. From what I’ve read, if I managed to get 100% conversion without Discord, all physical modifiers in the Cadence line would apply to Deadly Momentum, which would then be converted to elemental, which would then be boosted by +elemental% damage. Is this not correct?
If you activate Elemental Imbalance and then switch to dual wield the buff will go away.
EDIT - You answered while I was typing this. Thanks. =)
Just to clarify something, I made a mistake. Discord will apply to the flat damage on deadly momentum.
Order basically works like this:
Flat/skill damage > % damage on skill > conversion on skill / transmuter > Conversion on equipment / buffs > % damage on equipment, buffs, passives, devotion, etc