there may be a hybrid approach here, dropping points from seal to the bare minimum needed to park yourself in it on specific waves as it’s generally overkill but also a situational time saving when you can dump defenses and sit on otherwise troublesome enemies.
pardon my mistake I need to redo numbers, brain froze over and misremembered the exact conversion value ._.
edits:
last point of LA is worth 14 + 14 acid (avg 17.5 with shoulder conversion), though we also have the crit damage value on the gloves to consider and the fact that they’re craftable. Hagarrad may yield more flat with sufficient rolls on its conversion and there’s +3% RR from night’s chill included.
I am not playing it. Sorry I can’t find it in me to care enough for players who like playing broken overpowered sets. I just leave feedback based on my experience and I want this set to be balanced based on community feedback. Because believe me, Deathmarked nerfs were coming sooner or later, but it’s one thing to establish a communication with Zantai so he can gently nerf it and another thing pretend that Deathmarked is perfectly fine and then suddenly get a patch that would completely ruin it. Or worse, Crate could just nerf skills/devotions/classes that overperform in this set instead of set itself.
@Xervous Frost gloves are BiS. Hagarrad are redundant for DM. 40% of all autoattacks (AQC and WD) have 100% pierce converted. These two wps also happen to be the major source of pierce. Next to the all important LA hardcap, Frosts have better attack speed, flat DoTs, crit dmg, etc. EDIT: I mean Icescorn Talons. The word frost isn’t even there…
@mad_lee I’d still go my way on this as I think Ultos is pretty good and deserves max attention. But I might be prejudiced by my days and hours of minmaxing Venomblade, where SS is on 2.3s, NJE is at 8th rank for 1p, and Fervor is taken by Guardian’s Gaze.
When I played around your gt to max wps yesterday, I pulled from Shadow Dance, some from Dual Blades, some from Night’s Chill, and I forgot about the Seal. But you might be right. Isn’t the Seal redundant in crucible with this dps? Nothing can touch you with this clear speed anyway, just like with John’s Rimetongue N&O or my RoH Silver Sentinel N&O from 1.0.7.1
Side question: How is the power level if you had to replace Alkamos’ rings? Nowadays it’s quite easy to acquire full sets, so aside from the rings the build is not that hard to assemble. I know it only takes a lot of time and patience to farm them, but many people have little of both. Considering this the nerfs should probably be on the lighter side (as you’ve suggested).
Blue Alkamos are more than viable. Build still is top tier. Purple Alkamos do not bring so much to the table as we got dmg redux from Censure and 100% pierce to cold on 2 wps. And blue ones give 100-150 more oa. But purples got better ranks, better proc, and the conversion is still a massive boost to dmg. Purple Alakmoses are still BiS, ofc, but not by such a big margin as in case of Silver Sentinel RoH or tricksters.
As for the nerfs, who wanna talk about NERFS! RoH was slaughtered, N&O is gathering dust on a wall, Korba only works with crazy-ass greens, Harra has been seeing nothing but nerfs. Give cold what is due. Deathmarked is the last bastion of cold’s strict top-tierness.
@Ya1,speaking of cold,just to add how miserable is cold Drain Essence Apostate.So the cold hysteria in 1.0.7.1 continue to take new victims and they are nerfed.
It does raise the question of what is an acceptable crucible time for a relatively accessible build that lacks greens when it’s easier than ever to assemble most shake n bake builds.
Careful asking for nerfs. People whined about arcanist and it is basically a dead mastery right now. Why don’t we actually ask for sets to balance, because DM is only “strong” in regard to other, weaker sets that need buffs and reworks. It seems like this complaint revolves around Infiltrator builds. So why don’t we ask to tweak synergies in the mastery trees (Inquistor is too powerful right now). Single-mastery sets are meant to serve a number of builds. DM’s strength is the only thing keeping my Spellbreaker breathing right now. Maybe the issue lies with Inquisitor Seal. As far as the amulet being strong for cold/pierce, why WOULDN’T the end-game set for Nightblade be best-in-slot for…nightblade?
Tell that to spellbreakers, elementalists, battlemages or any mastery combo beyond necro/inquisitor primary builds. Basically, it is now a support mastery for a few builds.
Okay, it’s been defiler tier ever since vanilla. Add warlock to this mix, but it’s not because of Arcanist sucking. It’s because there’s no synergy between classes. Also these have been weak even during Arcanist peak.
Spellbinder builds are Arcanist first (CT/Devastation/AAR) then necro support (RR, Decay). Same with many mage hunter builds aside from Box Allagast (haven’t really seen this one tho).
A R C A N I S T I S D E A D
Not entirely false, but Occultist has been a support mastery for almost every build involving it ever since the death of DEE but no once complained.
Using big text doesn’t change the fact that elementalists have very little to play around with in the arcanist tree. Occultist is getting some new sets that should open up options and buffs to caster-centric stuff like Doom Bolt (i.e. Crate is aware of the problem). This patch shows they are also aware that Arcanist is no longer a stand-alone tree. Those buff aren’t enough. Just look at the use-rate of the arcanist set, Iskandra, even after the re-work. That should tell you how viable an arcanist build is. Mage hunter builds focus on Inquisitor with some support stuff from Arcanist. I have one and I am having to respec out of arc tree to get basic clear. Arcanist primaries are too weak. Buffs to CT might open up better Sorcerer builds with Agrivix…but still primary is Demo.
The word frost isn’t even there…
