Really surprised I couldn’t find a build that uses overload. Based on my reading, overload is gonna scale off weapon damage %, making blitz and cadence pretty attractive. So what I’m building now is a battlemage that’s gonna max overload, elemental balance, and pick up the rhowans crown and blind sage constellations.
I’m pretty newb, though, so I’m not really thinking about the end game. What items to watch out for?
Also, stacking DoTs typically doesn’t work, right? I’m assuming I can get away with that with overload, since it’s different damage types (potential ly) every time you attack, but if I’m wrong, the build is garbage.
While overload does offer an appealing amount of dot damage I think you’ll run headfirst into 2 problems with this:
Complete lack of resist reduction from mastery, that’s gonna sting on later difficulties/resistant bosses. God help you if the boss has a ‘prismatic’ item equipped. Chasing resist reduction in devotions will only get you so far here.
Many items that grant %elemental damage don’t actually grant the %(tri-ele dot damage) in the same way acid/poison are almost* always found together. This makes it troublesome to scale tri-elemental dots at the same time.
I wanted to do an overload build with a Mage Hunter when AoM was first released. It seemed like the obvious choice to me, but then the Mythical version of Arcanum Sigilis was revealed as complete garbage.
hmm. I could mix in extra emphasis on burn with magi and inferno. If you’re worried about resist reduction, flash freeze and more burn emphasis would help with that. although then that begs the question, “why not make a melee sorcerer instead?” Guess I’ll have to look into that.
Flash freeze doesn’t work against the exact enemies you’ll really really need resist reduction for. The -fire resist only lasts as long as the freeze and most bosses can’t be frozen at all.
Alright. lets flip this question around. How much resist reduction should I need? There’s some on Blessed Steel, which would work with any weapon I find. I think, stacking all the reductions I’ve found so far (blessed steel, Viper, Rhowan’s crown), I’m at 68%.
EDIT: Nevermind, I found a comprehensive source. blessed steal and rhowan’s crown won’t stack anyway.
Overload looks super strong on paper, and I’ve thought about trying to build around tri-elemental DoT, but there really just isn’t any gear support for it. I bet if you made an iskandra build based around blind sage you could get over 100k DoT ticks while still dealing solid elemental damage as well, though.
But I don’t think battlemage is the right way. Even though cadence looks tempting with its high weapon damage, and you could get a fearsome amount of internal trauma to convert into elemental DoT, the lack of resist reduction is killer.
Ultimately, druid is almost certainly the better choice. Savagery with feral hunger and upheaval will result in higher overall weapon damage for overload while you also get resist reduction from wind devils. But I couldn’t really figure out a way to get high enough OA and DA using iskandras set, or high enough damage to all your damage types without.
The prismatic eviscerator looks like the perfect weapon for this type of build except that first, it has tons of DoT damage, but doesn’t offer any % damage boosts to those types and second, it doesn’t have a mythical version. I hope we get a mythical prismatic eviscerator in Forgotten Gods.
My last word on the topic… according to grimcalc, AoM has lots of items that convert elemental damage to other things, and according to this page, elemental DoTs will also convert (to internal trauma). So prismatics are not insurmountable.
As to gear… well, there are specific unique or set gear items that boost burn, frostburn, and electrocute together, but they’re pretty rare in the database. It would be a real bitch to farm those. Im pretty sure i don’t have the patience. But it seems to me this build could be done.
Try Shadowstrike Spellbreaker with overload. It’s not tri-element but you should be able to keep SS frostburn applied all the time with -CD + star pact + frostburn duration increase.
Though I guess for initial levelling elemental awakening (and you get ele res) is better before overload because only 1/3 chance of getting the frostburn on SS.
That class combo has 3 sources of significant frostburn, star pact, ele awakening and overload. Plus big weapon damage of shadow strike. It should work quite well.
Don’t think anyone has mentioned using Overload with pets. Each pet should be capable of stacking it’s own source of Burn, Frostburn and Electrocute which should start getting crazy as you add more and more pets in.
Converting Overload’s DoTs to the same damage type is another idea, I can’t remember if they still stack but I imagine that they should.
I don’t see why they would stack if you converted them. Its just adding them to weapon damage…which means post-conversion it’ll just look like 3 differing ranges for your IT dot - and only the highest would take effect.
Isn’t it a 33% chance of each DoT separately? That means you want to get in as many high weapon damage hits as possible, especially since two of the types have a range, so if you get in a lot of hits you’re pushing closer to the top of the range.
Converting all of it to internal trauma with beronath reforged and using it with cadence might be a decent bet, but you’re still facing a lack of resist reduction.
By converting all of it the IT you only apply the highest IT roll so you miss out on the potential of having 3 separate overload dots ticking all the time. However elemental res is really hard to get to respectable levels on a build that also has frequent high weapon damage hits. This is probably why there are few/no builds that pick up overload.
