TL; DR
Allagast’s Masterpiece is a solid concept, but there is room for significant improvements.
The main issues with the set are:
- Modest defenses and lack of sustained healing, resulting in punishing gameplay, along with modest damage in return.
- Awkward conversion on TSS, with loss of DoTs and lack of relevant items supporting an aether/lightning damage profile.
- Lackluster skill support for the Arcanist mastery, to the point that the set works better without it. Allagast is having an identity crisis.
:P
(In other words: the Arcanist half of the set doesn’t work nearly as well as the Inquisitor half, and on the whole, we find much glass and little cannon.)
Underlying my feedback here is a desire to bring Allagast up to speed in endgame content while strengthening its identity as an aether/lightning set based on Storm Box and Trozan’s Sky Shard. Accordingly and in no particular order, my minimum recommended changes are:
- Increase point bonuses to the TSS skill line
- Increase flat aether damage on TSS
- Add flat electrocute to TSS (and change the global conversion from cold to lightning, preferably)
- Replace Arcane Will bonuses with effective defensive options such as Mirror or Maiven’s
- Grant 8-12% CDR as set bonus, not as modifier to Deadly Aim (but moving modifiers from DA to Maiven’s would be nicer)
- Add some form of sustained healing or improve existing ones (a leeching tether as set proc would be lovely)
More comprehensive feedback can be found throughout the post. For convenience, I include here a summary of actionable recommendations and the reasoning behind them. A mod implementing most of these changes is also available for testing, and preliminary results are encouraging.
TSS (tested ✓)
The star of Allagast’s Masterpiece doesn’t shine. Change the conversion to retain DoTs, which are important to a kiting caster. Adding flat RR improves damage and moves a buff to Arcanist.
- Retain 100% cold to aether in TSS, but make the global conversion from cold to lightning.
- Add 200-450 flat electrocute.
- Grant a few points to Frozen Core.
- Increase flat aether damage bonus.
- Add 15-20 flat RR for 3-4 seconds. Remove Deadly Aim modifiers.
Note: this indirectly improves survivability by making Tree of Life more appealing in comparison to Elemental Storm and Ultos. Consider granting flat RR to scepter and damage as set bonus to avoid excessive stacking by dual-wielding (although that didn’t seem to be a problem during testing).
Global damage (tested ✓)
Kiting casters cherish DoTs for both damage and survivability, and DoTs are meant to be stacked. A global conversion to lightning retains some of Frozen Core’s damage, and makes cold devotions and skills more palatable. We should also bolster aether damage, since TSS items outside Allagast only support lightning.
- Convert 66-75% of cold to lightning; optionally, convert the remaining to aether.
- Add +100-200% aether damage as set bonus or to a Maiven’s modifier.
- Add +30-100% longer electrocute duration as set bonus or to a Maiven’s modifier.
Defense (tested, save for health regeneration as an alternative)
We are overreliant on a yet-insufficient Bat for sustained healing and on delicate Aeon/WoR/Mirror control for burst healing and survival. Low armor and physical resistance are a bad match for AoM/FG content. Arcane Will is plainly ineffective. We should improve passive defenses to make Allagast less punishing compared to builds of similar if not far superior firepower, aiming for the following set attributes:
- Remove Arcane Will bonuses. Grant 2-5 points to Maiven’s Sphere.
- Add 8-16% physical resistance. Consider removing chaos resistance, which can easily be found in supporting items as well as Steel Resolve.
- Grant 8-12% CDR.
- Add a small healing proc with low CD (cf. new Clairvoyant’s Wand, Bonemonger’s set).
My preference would be to have a set proc that grants one or two additional tethers with lifesteal but lower damage, which would fit the set thematically. The tethers can be casted through summons. - Alternatively, add meaningful health regeneration bonuses (but this would be a better fit for Trozan’s Skybreach, which could also use better defenses).
I believe physical resistance should be offered as set bonus, while CDR and regeneration (if using) can be divided between set bonuses and new modifiers for Maiven’s, leaning towards Maiven’s. See the Defense sections for details.
Replace Deadly Aim with Maiven’s Sphere (tested ✓)
Allagast supports Inquisitor very well, but at the expense of Arcanist. To even things out, we should scrap Deadly Aim modifiers and shift them to Maiven’s Sphere, a fundamental Arcanist skill with barely any modifier support. Grant two or more of the following to Maiven’s Sphere:
- 12% CDR
- +30-100% electrocute duration
- +100-200% aether damage
- High health regeneration (if using).
See the Maiven’s Sphere section for details.
Inquisitor primacy and identity crisis
The Inquisitor side of Allagast is dominant in all regards; the set works better without Arcanist. Consider:
- John_Smith’s Allagast apostate
- thejabrixone’s Allagast vindicator
- Jury-rigged Allagast purifier (6:45 Crucible)
Testing suggests that these combined recommendations would suffice to make Mage Hunter competitive:
- Improve TSS damage.
- Add flat RR to TSS to compensate for Arcanist’s lack of RR.
- Scrap Deadly Aim modifiers, which only serve to make combinations other than Mage Hunter all the more effective.
- Move CDR and +x% damage bonuses to Maiven’s.
Item support
TSS can only be hard-capped with cold/lightning items. A few simple updates would help bolster the aether component of Allagast’s TSS as well as the Storm Box transmuter, which is otherwise a damage loss.
- Sprinkle +x% aether damage on TSS items.
- Sprinkle +TSS bonuses on aether and aether/lightning items.
- Adjust Allagast bonuses accordingly.
You can skim this post for list items to get a closer look at these suggestions and others. For a more thorough commentary, read on.
Build report
With minor variations, the Allagast build that I played in AoM (campaign, roguelike dungeons, crucible) and FG (crucible only) can be found here: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkKl0qN
As you can see, it deliberately focusses on the main Allagast skill lines and is not specifically optimized for clearing Crucible. There are a fair few item and devotion variations which I didn’t have the chance to test – most notably the new Tree of Life – but I submit that mine is a thematically consistent take that should give a reasonable representation of Allagast’s capabilities. So, feedback given in this OP is primarily but not entirely based on my experience with this specific build.
I’ll start by saying that, after a few teething troubles, my experience with Allagast was remarkably less negative than elsewhere reported on this forum. The build is fun and satisfying to play, damage isn’t all that bad, and the introduction of mobility runes greatly improved survivability, as expected.
Survivability, however, remains the most glaring issue: sustained healing is the eternal plague of non-WD casters, and Allagast is no exception. Bat feels required: without Bat, even fights against plain hero mobs can be awkward and clunky. Allagast is the nth non-WD caster I play that turns out to be an obligate Bat parasite. :P (And an envious parasite at that, as Bat is far more effective in builds with high WD or good pierce/vitality damage or conversion.)
In all challenging content, gameplay requires rather more care than most builds, as it relies heavily on Aeon, Mirror, WoR, and nullification, which is to say user-controlled, time-sensitive active defenses.
This weakness is most noticeable in the Crucible, where damage is passable but survivability is subpar: in my test runs with 4 blessings + Vanguard, clearing rates depended heavily on which nemeses spawned, ranging from deaths on waves 160 and 170 against fast physical hitters or the odd trap/nuke combo, to good runs that hovered around 8:00 minutes of smooth or not-so-smooth kiting. I haven’t kept a test diary, but I seem to recall 5 failures out of two dozens or so runs since FG was released; not a terrible result, but not too good either, considering that many tanks can clear Crucible faster by reliably face-tanking most anything.
To expand on these results a bit, I’ll say that Allagast fares well when dispatching mobs or bosses, but becomes unreliable against physical damage parties with high movement speed or charge skills (i.e. pretty much the entirety of the AoM/FG nemesis lineup :P). Whenever these charming fellows come along you’ll generally find yourself traipsing and dancing until you mistime the Hourglass reset, or the casting queue eats it, or choose the wrong moment to cast an arpeggio of debuffs, at which point you are unceremoniously trampled. There’s precious little room for error.
In this regard, Allagast feels like so many other non-WD casters without lifesteal: much glass and little cannon, too often finding himself at low health with every defense offline and nothing to do but wait for the heavy hitters - and they do hit heavily, with caster armor and little physical resistance - to swat you.
I haven’t played SR yet and won’t be able to try it before a few weeks, but if map and battle design are akin to that Crucible when it comes to bosses and nemeses, there should be little reason to believe Allagast will fare better.
What works, concisely
To start with, here is what Allagast already gets right:
- Gameplay is delightful. (It’s my favorite caster bar none.)
- Storm Box just works. Perfect CD reduction, wonderful proc/devotion trigger, good damage and RR modifiers, abundant external item support.
- 2 extra projectiles for TSS. Sweet grapes of wrath.
- Good resistance coverage, both for damage and CC (stun, slow, trap).
- Solid OA/DA.
In the “not wrong, but not right either” camp, we have:
- Deadly Aim modifiers. While unexciting, the damage and duration modifiers don’t particularly cry out for revision. (The CDR bonus, on the other hand, is positively yowling for 100% uptime.) Even so, all global effects (RR and buffs) granted by Allagast fall on the Inquisitor side, a mastery that already has little trouble playing well with others. I strongly recommend scrapping Deadly Aim modifiers altogether and replacing them with support for TSS and Maiven’s.
- Good RR, if a teensy bit skewed towards lightning due to the mandatory Censure pick and devotions like Elemental Storm and Ultos.
- Some casting speed wouldn’t be amiss. I understand that the tether scales with it, and we have a fairly busy casting schedule besides.
- Energy regeneration isn’t ideal for prolonged combat. Soft-capped Mental Alacrity would help, but it’s hard to find the points for it. Tree of Life would also work, but skipping Ultos has a noticeable impact.
What doesn’t work, verbosely
Now then, for advice actual, let’s pore over Allagast’s woes.
Awkward support for Arcanist skills
Allagast’s Masterpiece on its own grants precious few points to TSS. Quoting an image previously posted on this board:
Well, that looks more like a sketch than a masterpiece. :P The TSS skill line receives 2-0-4 points from Allagast’s, compared with 6-3-3 from Trozan’s set (including +1 to Arcanist) and 7-6-6 from the upcoming Iskandra’s (including +2 to Arcanist).
The obvious recommendations here would be:
- Increase +TSS bonuses to at least 4-0-4, or 3-2-4 if adopting a cold to lightning conversion. (More on that in the Damage profile sections.)
- Remove Arcane Will, offering points in Mirror or Maiven’s instead. (More on that in the Defense sections.)
Damage profile: lightning bias from supporting items
To hard-cap the relevant TSS nodes, it’s currently necessary to seek out skill bonuses from extra-Allagast items that support only cold/lightning, leading to a strong bias towards lightning damage. Accounting for higher and more reliable elemental RR, the damage distribution is skewed in favor of lightning by a factor of (ballpark) 3 or 4 to 1 in TSS alone – including Storm Box would significantly increase it.
I would personally favor a more even damage distribution between lightning and aether, depending on Storm Box transmutation and devotion choices. To accomplish this, I’d start by introducing a +x% aether damage bonus:
- Add +100-200% aether damage as set bonus and/or as a modifier to Maiven’s
Beyond Allagast, consideration should be given to the absence of items that support both TSS and aether damage: TSS support is mostly tied down in cold/lightning sets, which doesn’t leave many compatible items worth mentioning. Introducing new items requires considerable work, and so we have two avenues for immediate improvement:
- Add +x% aether damage to some TSS items. Notable candidates:
- Rolderathis’ tome (a perfect fit for Allagast)
- the Eastern Promise set
- rings and amulets: Coven’s Sky Seal (also an excellent fit), Starfire, Starfury Emerald
- Add TSS bonuses to some aether or aether/lightning items. Notable candidates:
- rings and amulets: Glyph of the Storm Witch, Eternal Haunt, Screams of the Aether, the Aetherstorm set
- pants: Arcane Currents, Wraithborne, perhaps Aleksander’s Legguards (he is, after all, Mr. Aether Meteor)
- Wraithwalkers boots
Ideally, we should be able to hard-cap both TSS and Storm Box without acrobatics while retaining an aether damage bonus of around +2000%.
Damage profile: TSS, RR and Inquisitor primacy
To improve the damage profile of TSS specifically, I invite you to consider a straightforward buff that’s been applied to many other skills:
- Introduce 10-20 flat RR for 3-4 seconds to TSS (c.f. Doom Bolt and Reap Spirit modifiers) on set completion.
- Remove Deadly Aim modifiers.
Our aether damage would benefit from flat RR more than lightning, both directly and by making Elemental Storm less attractive. Having flat RR without Elemental Storm would also allow us to pursue Tree of Life without unpalatable sacrifices, improving survability.
To compensate for the additional RR, I would strongly recommend removing the hefty but lightning-specific Deadly Aim modifiers. (In fact, I recommend scrapping the Deadly Aim modifiers altogether, as previously mentioned.) Shifting some damage boosters away from Inquisitor and compensating for Arcanist’s lack of native RR makes Allagast stand more clearly as a dual-mastery set rather than yet another stormbox proc-all, thus strengthening its identity. As an example of this problem, consider things like John_Smith’s BoxMan or thejabrixone’s Allagast vindicator, or a simple jury-rigged Allagast purifier, which are currently more effective than by-the-book Allagast, and distressingly so. (I don’t mention these builds because I’m out for blood or crying nerf, but to make the point that the set is not working out as intended. Flexibility is good, but for Allagast to live up to its promise, the mage hunter version should at least meet a baseline of performance that approaches that of other masteries.)
Damage profile: lopsided conversion and loss of DoTs
The foremost offensive deficiency of Allagast is the decision to convert cold to aether without addressing the loss of DoTs.
I must emphasize the importance of DoTs in a fragile kiting build with little to no lifesteal. Storm Box – while hitting over time by itself – is the only source of electrocute in Allagast, and most such electrocute is applied by the tether, a secondary effect that can be hard to target and control in the chaotic conditions of endgame content.
Adding a second source of electrocute for stacking would be highly desirable, and TSS is the ideal choice. It would suffice to introduce a simple electrocute modifier and shift our focus to the global conversion.
As it stands, it should be easy to see that changing 45% of cold into aether, while thematically appropriate, is of dubious benefit; moreover, there are no items or skills to increase its value (the only existing one, Dreeg Veilweaver Tome, is not up to par). What skills would work at half conversion and without DoTs? None of the Mage Hunter’s. What devotions? Amatok’s Blizzard would hardly be worth 4 devotion points, Tsunami is a tough sell compared to Sailor’s Guide or Eel, and Attack Seru is a bit of a reach given the necessity for Aeon’s Hourglass or Tree of Life.
The immediate remedy would be to globally convert cold to lightning, which leads us to a more comprehensive solution:
- In TSS, retain the 100% cold to aether conversion.
- Add 200-450 electrocute damage to TSS, depending on global conversion values.
- Globally, convert 50-100% of cold to lightning; optionally, convert the remaining to aether as a cherry on top. These conversions can be divided between set pieces and set bonuses.
- Grant a few points to Frozen Core.
- Adjust conversion values and flat damage modifiers according to the desired aether/lightning/electrocute distribution.
Defense, or lack thereof: Arcane Will? Arcane Will.
Now, this here is the most egregious offender and then some. Of all defensive skills in the Mage Hunter tree, Allagast goes and grants a staggering +7 to Arcane Will. Just so.
Well.
… Well, let’s take a look at the results. Raising Arcane Will from a typical 3-4 one-pointer to 10-11 grants an extra 100 DA, +100% to all damage, and 7 energy/second. Arcane Will can reach 100% uptime, provided you remain below 70% health, which is about 7-8k for most Mage Hunters.
Well, yeesh. I know of no other set or group of items that pushes a circuit breaker – to use the term generously :P – so hard to so little effect. It’s whimsy, especially in a fragile caster set. Let’s just clean this up and forget about it, shall we?
- Purge Arcane Will. Redistribute points among more qualified candidates: Censure, Mirror, Maiven’s/Conversion, WoR/Vigor. Anything really.
:P
Jokes aside, I understand the desire to try something different. However, Allagast is missing the basics, and those need to be covered first. Players who wish to invest in Arcane Will can always do so, and Arcane Will could perhaps find support in an item or a set with better baseline defenses. Allagast just isn’t that set.
Defense: sustained healing
Even kiting casters need more than spaced-out bursts of healing, especially in an endgame where auras, area effects and bullet storms abound. Lifesteal has long dominated this space, but Allagast has no weapon damage and no leeching skill. Moreover, healing skills often restore modest amounts of health. Consider a Mage Hunter with WoR: even though 30% health restored every 10 seconds may sound like enough, the results come in at 3-4k hp. Respectable, but there’s more than a few enemies that deal that much damage in a single hit.
That leaves us with Bat, an ever-present fallback that works wonderfully against mobs. Unfortunately, low weapon damage renders Bat marginal against low numbers of powerful enemies with high leech resistance, where Allagast needs it most. I am very much against buffing Bat, or adding pierce/vitality conversions to improve its yield. Regardless, it is good stick to measure by: any adopted solution should yield an amount of healing that either compounds Bat or, in the interest of moving beyond its dominance, subsume it.
The purpose of the following proposals is not to guarantee survivability on their own, but to provide a baseline amount of healing that can be complemented by devotions and items – currently, we have no option but to take defensive devotion routes on a build that already lacks damage. I submit two options for set completion, starting with my first choice: a small on-attack healing proc with low CD.
What I would personally love to see is a set proc based on the Lightning Tether template: a “corrupted tether” with lower damage and lifesteal. It would be fun to have lifesteal that rewards positional gameplay and movement rather than the usual “be a good leech and stick to your enemy” approach. :P
Unfortunately, I understand that tethers can’t be granted as item skills. In that case, the tethers could be casted by a summon instead. For example (beware, napkin math ahead):
- 20% chance to summon wisp on attack, maximum of 2, 8 seconds duration. Each wisp casts one corrupted tether:
- 60 aether damage, 40 lightning damage
- 8% lifesteal
I’d roughly aim to offer half the healing provided by the Bonemonger’s “Wake of Bones” skill – or more, if we want to go beyond Bat. The extra damage wouldn’t come amiss, either. (These values assume that tethers scale with casting speed, ranging from 3 ticks/second at 100% speed to 6 at 200%.)
Defense: overall fragility, resistances, and CDR
Allagast offers solid resistance coverage, with clear attention given to traditional Arcanist weaknesses such as pierce, poison, and bleeding. My only reprieve here is that the 3-piece chaos resisistance bonus feels unnecessary: not only is it given natively by Steel Resolve, but it can also be found in a number of obvious item pairings (notably Trozan’s hat, the Aetherbolt amulet, the Arcanoweave belt, and the Gildam Arcanum medal).
That 3-piece resistance bonus could be put to better use in the one area where Allagast, like many other casters, is found wanting: armor and physical resistance. For the latter, I feel that the new Iskandra – which gives out 15% – has the right idea: there’s no need to be stingy. All low-armor builds greatly benefit from physical resistance, so just give some.
I might be wrong here, but AoM and FG brought a significant increase in enemies that deal heavy or very heavy physical damage, and the buffs to armor values for casters weren’t enough to compensate for it. Of course, non-channelling casters like Allagast don’t need to stand in melee range, but consider that the very same enemies who can run them down in three hits also boast charging skills or unmatched movement speed (a remarkable change from vanilla); much endgame content is also tied to small arenas where multiple such opponents fight you at once, applying CC or constant damage on top of their nukes. Kiting consistently in such conditions is hard, and you will be hit, often for a third of your health or more.
Ultimately, gameplay feels a bit too unforgiving when compared to sturdier builds, which often end up dealing more damage as well. This leads us to CDR and the necessity of sustained healing.
Currently, a precious 10% CDR is granted only as modifer to Deadly Aim, an on-attack skill with uptime around 60%, provided that you are consistently landing crits. Even though Storm Box is an excellent trigger for it, Deadly Aim works better for offensive bonuses that let us mount our advantage, rather than for defensive ones that are needed to survive: those call for consistency. Consider that when things go south, something as fragile as Allagast must be able to run without losing on defense: it can’t always afford to kite or sneak in a spell here and there, because there’s a high chance a fast enemy will swoop in and wallop him for 5k of damage.
So, when it comes to life-savers, I’d recommend keeping things simple:
- Grant 10% CDR plainly as a 3 or 4-piece set bonus.
- Add 8-15% physical resistance.
Alternatively, I’d recommend moving either or both of these bonuses to something with 100% uptime (in line with Star Pact), which brings us to another major proposal.
Maiven’s Sphere and Inquisitor primacy
Inquisitor doesn’t need Allagast for modifiers. Inquisitor already features a grand variety of buffs and debuffs and enjoys great item support for them. With Allagast, we should instead take the opportunity to give some much-needed attention to the Arcanist side of Mage Hunter; without Arcanist modifiers, the set works better for vindicators, apostate, and purifiers.
Maiven’s Sphere of Protection is an Arcanist skill that has seen few to no modifiers despite being a pillar of the mastery: for all we dislike the hefty damage loss, high damage absorption is pretty much a must-have when you can only gain a total of 900hp from the mastery itself, and CC resistance is similarly needed.
So then, I warmly recommend the removal of Deadly Aim and the addition of Maiven’s Sphere from the set completion bonus of Allagast’s Masterpiece. I’d consider keeping physical resistance as a set bonus, and bestowing some powerful boons upon Maiven’s:
- 10-12% CDR, compensating for the loss of Star Pact.
- +150% aether damage, mitigating the need for aether TSS support outside Allagast (although some would still be warranted).
- +150% electrocute damage.
- +30-75% electrocute duration.
On a different note, I’ll add that an empowered Maiven’s Sphere would also be more thematically appropriate than the rather uninspired boost to Deadly Aim: here stands Allagast, master of the arcane, his breath and touch imbued with runic powers that mortal men shouldn’t wot of; the very air blazes as lightning coils around him and the skies are cloven asunder by his emerald wrath. Or some such. :P
