This is only theory-crafting, don’t know if I’ll ever have the items but I need to have a goal. Not really trying to squeeze in every possible % of damage to improve the Crucible time, as a noob I’d prefer to be more tanky and a good all-rounder. I had to reach the absolute limits of my mental capabilities to get the resistances, movement speed and Nidalla’s Justifiable Ends to appropriate levels at the same time. If energy regen is a problem I will try not using Heart of the Winter King, putting more points into Mogdrogen’s Pact and Spirit or ditching Ring of Steel I guess.
Would anyone be so kind to check it for possible improvements?
Hey there, that is a really nice theorycrafted build!
I took a look at your grim tools and came up with some changes and trade-offs: a slightly different devotion map, swapped around the components, and augments on the weapons/rings & amulet and came up with this variant of your build
It has these changes/trade-offs:
Nearly identical OA/DA
300% more Cold & Frostburn damage, 200% more Vitality + Decay damage
Different, though arguably better flat RR devotion (Rhowan’s Crown vs Revenant)
An additional damage devotion proc in Tsunami
More armor/armor absorption (3256 at 95% vs 3155 at 92%)
Less Health (12.3k vs 13.8k) and less lifesteal (13% vs 19%)
Similar resistances (you will have to shuffle around the resist augments and aim for a different prefix on the belt, I didn’t change your resist augments in the grim tools link)
edit: fixed link, accidentally linked OP’s grimtools as my altered grim tools LOL
The link is the same (hope you haven’t lost it). Btw 300% Cold/Frostburn is a lot so probably worth a trade.
Also I like how Elemental Storm and Tsunami look. Thanks, I’ll have a look
I don’t like how you lost of OA and a little flat Cold damage (I have 50% conversion from Vit to Cold though so it’s not a biggie), Viper from devotions and replaced it with better augments to get those Tsunami and Elemental Storm. Also loosing quite a lot %attack speed, %cast speed from Revenant and Spider. Also +10% damage to Undead and -10% damage from Undead.
Also I have already Ultos, Blizzard, Rumor and Raise the Dead that I need to proc reliably and I don’t think the 4th skill is going to be procced reliably (I haven’t looked into it carefully though).
Also some of OA you lost from Devotion you regain by changing 2 Skulls (Sanctified Bone) to Living Armor but this way we loose a whooping +24% Damage to Undead and Chthonics.
To sum up, too many losses I think:
tons of OA (If we assume I changed the 3 jewellery augments to yours)
34% to Undead, 24% to Chthonics, -10% from Undead
6% ADCtH
9% attack speed and cast speed from Spider and Revenant
Movement Speed loss (I sacrificed 1 Devo point to get MS from Ulzuin)
However I totally agree with your change in those 3 augments and I merge our builds and this is finally what I like the most https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZRk3mxN
(I gained 270 OA and lost 170 DA)
I think I’ll benefit from this OA because I have about +120% Crit Damage to Shadow Strike (on top of standard +% Crit Damage from OA)
I’ll change the build in OP so that it has your augments.
And now I’ll try to get those few % of MS somewhere so that I don’t have to use Devo for it.
And maybe get more Chaos Res so I don’t have to use free Ultos node for it and then I could get full Blizzard for more %Cold and %Frostburn
Sounds great! It’s true about the trade-offs you mentioned - it might not be worth it.
Also good call on the OA/DA trade-offs. One of the small pet peeves I had initially when looking at your build initially is that I thought 3k OA was a little on the low side when using % chance on crit devotions but I didn’t want to change too much - I think the route you’re going is great, normally I’d go for either high OA + crit devotions and lower dmg% OR go higher dmg % and no crit devotions/shuffle the OA for stuff like DA.
I feel like there could be many ways to build around these two item sets (Morgoneth and Winter King) and similar skills; there could be another really solid build if we move away from Ultos and Amatok and focus on other devotions
You are right, I often feel like people too often automatically skip all Purple devotions and go for boring Ultos only Blue constellations but you can build very interesting setups with them (Harp/Crab/Empty Throne maybe even Typhos)
Also Tsunami is insane while levelling (100% chance to proc on Shadow Strike lol)
%Elemental Damage from Purple Devotions really adds up. And E. Storm has beautiful FX
I have been playing with this myself and I will say that (as usual) tsunami is not worth it over other blue options here.
That’s generally true, but in this build you don’t have to choose between Tsunami and another Proc devotion - it’s just an add-on.
For example, he has maxed Lethal Assualt from ABB but ABB doesn’t have any devotion bound to it - I’m assuming he can attach Tsunami to it since he’s gonna consistantly re-use ABB to get the Lethal Assualt buff and that’s just extra damage when he does use it.
Good point about ABB, I forget about it, it’s a really good proccer.
Damn, if I had one more Devo point, I could take Tsunami + 4 nodes of Dying God
(btw ditching Hawk for Scholar to get this 1 missing point is not an option by the way since it’s already much less OA even with Hawk if you go for 15 Blue and Dying God)
It sucks there’s no Chaos + Bleeding augment.
Getting Chaos and MS would be easier if I was Inquisitor but I’d like to stay Shaman and Winter King.
Hey @tqFan since this is a theorycrafted build - I really gotta ask, what sort of playstyle do you think you will have in-game?
I feel like ADCTH (and by extension attack speed) is more of an auto attack-based stat and more valuable in a Savagery-based build but currently we only have 1 level invested in it and I don’t think it’s good by itself just for Tenacity of the Boar - a 2s charge time is not a lot, if we want to keep Tenacity of the Boar up, we will still have to spam Savagery so I think if you value ADCTH and attack-speed then you’re going to have to invest more levels in Savagery.
Likewise, I think SS is currently the main focus of the build and has a lot of damage on the DoT side (large amounts of poison, vitality, and frostburn) and DoT does not benefit from ADCTH. I mean some ADCTH is nice since SS is 500% WD on a single target, every 2s but it’s not consistent and amazing ( one might argue the damage you save by kiting can be equal to the health you gain from ADCTH in some situations).
I feel like if we de-value ADCTH and attack speed, then we can go for more interesting devotion maps (by skipping Revenant and Ghoul) and tailor the in-game playstyle to be a more cooldown-based, burst & kite w/ DoTs build. For that kind of playstyle we can go sutff like Blind Sage and Leviathan, for example a possible devotion map can be: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZo7kXvZ
edit: updated link LOL - my bad
edit 2: on second thought I am not a big fan of Leviathan/Blind Sage - I think a Savagery based playstyle will be stronger - one that de-emphasizes other skills and puts 16 levels in Savagery. But my point still stands, I think we should invest more points into Savagery in that case and move points away from some other skills.
edit 3: Low-key, have you thought of making this build more a face-tanky 2H Savagery build that occaisionally uses Shadow Strike as burst and goes all in on the ADCTH and sustain aspect (like invest levels in stuff like Blood Pact)?
Btw remember that I’ll be spamming various attacks constantly Amarasta, Savagery (which benefits from Amarasta), possibly Ring of Steel etc they all hape WD And I really appreciate 100 OA/100 DA, Slow Res, and 8% Physical Res
I also use AutoHotkey and I really mean it when I say I’ll be spamming these attacks no piano
but I’ll gladly look at your devo and setup
When I was testing it I had 6 Stack of Savagery without problems but this was with a little bit simpler setup so I would certainly have to retest it and only final setup would tell. I’m now only level 40 in Crucible not even in Shaman Mastery (I’ll spend a little bit more time there, then I’ll level quickly in Ulimate) but maybe I’ll test it with GD Defiler on my Test Char
Sick devo! I’ve used Chariot with Empty Throne before but not with Whirlpool and Seeker! I’ll certainly look into it but maybe tommorow because I’m now kinda tired
And also Whirlpool + Elemental Storm would look sick together and this is an important factor for me.
I’m bored with skellies not gonna lie.
Rest up and have a good one then @tqFan . I still think your original devotion map is better suited to your build than the thing I linked though, but there is potential there if you every decide to change your core build up!
Totally debatable, plus Tsunami is 5 points - you’re comparing 8 points (viper + sailor) worth of benefits to 5 points - so it’s obviously not a good comparison, a better comparison would be Sailor’s guide (4 points) vs Tsunami (5 points) and I bet in many cases (especially piano builds) Tsunami will be worth it.
In the purple devotion map linked above, I didn’t even consider Tsunami and did indeed go for stuff like Quill. NGL @jawa, it seems like you didn’t even take the effort to check it before commenting …
I like the idea of Shadow Strike Trickster. The weapon is very good, but it’s missing key stat for SS build - Cooldown reduction. SS shines when you can get it under 1.5 sec or so. Here will be umm, 3.3 seconds.
You can always do it or try hybrid SS+Savagery or PS. Primal Strike is interesting idea with Morgo set and SS support and Winter King have nice weapon damage and attack speed. For pure SS maybe Soulrend is option?
If you stick with SS and Winter King, you can focus on doing frostburn damage and you have multiple sources - Wind Devils but more importantly Nightfall and Amatok. But for that I suggest Leviathan.
The cooldown for SS in this build is 1.5s not 3.3s, no cdr needed for that.
I don’t like the loss of 365 OA and I have about 120% Crit Damage for Shadow Strike (not counting standard Crit damage from OA)
and Hand of Ultos + Blizzard to proc.
Loss of OA, can be compensated with more points in cunning. Frostburn is more important than crit damage for SS build, Leviathan and more importantly full Amatok decotion binded to Amatok skill.
You mean maximizing %Frostburn damage? You lost 120% from Ultos by the way
(maybe I can try getting full Amatok and Murmur and Ultos and don’t go for Leviathan)
Btw Leviathan only gives you 100% Frostburn. We cannot take Whirlpool flat Frostburn damage into account because it’s not in any way connected to the Shadow Strike Frostburn damage. What I’m saying is it gives you the same value in any cold build (where people probably normally take Ultos + Blizzard I suppose)
However I can try maximizing Frostburnr from Murmur, Amatok and Ultos
I mean Blizzard and Ultos are still insane no matter if the build is Shadow Strike or not because I proc them reliably with high OA just as well as any other Cold build would. And Ultos has even higher %Frostburn as Leviathan and allows me to keep high OA probably
The only argument for Whirlpool I see is that I only get 50% value of flat damage of Hand of Ultos because I have only 50% Lightning to Cold conversion.
