It takes level 8 to reach Inferno and level 9 to have some points in it. Before this I was levelling with Fireblast as it became available.
Inferno is much less punishing when it comes to damage vs energy cost. Same principle of why you should onepoint Phantasmal Blades and max the Heart-Seeker instead, but it’s less obvious in this case. Specifically because AoE is tied to the main skill, so this levelling method means you’re stuck with minimal AoE.
It still doesn’t mean that you won’t be running of energy, 1/16 CT and 12/12 Inferno is 44 energy cost baseline, which is close to the upper threshold of what I feel is manageable for a spam skill that early into the game.
Still making a rush to Mental Alacrity so that I could start bumping the main skill for more AoE and better quality of life.
But at least it’s good enough to be called viable and it’s quite neat in terms of how you do with skillpoints.
Ofc worse than Forcewave
Time to Warden clear is smth like 1:15, even though I pretty much planned everything in advance.
For HC mode , I always use Legion Head Guard , Legion Vestments and Legion Mantle. Gives me Aether and Chaos res for mid game (Level 50) and saves me alot of headache lol
In short, levelling with CT is a success. Not as fast as Forcewave, the time to Loghorrean was slightly above 4 hours and time to Theodin was yet again slightly above 6 hours (reminder that for Forcewave it was 4hr 38 minutes). There are two reasons for this:
Blitz comes quite late.
You have to play much more carefully with CT.
Mind that I didn’t bring up lower damage, I just think it’s good enough so shouldn’t be THAT much of a factor. Sometimes I even had an impression that it’s faster than what I could have had with Forcewave, but only sometimes.
As said above, a very major downside compared to Forcewave is that one has to play more carefully. It is because without levels CT is a very short ranged skill and Arcanist as a class has quite low health gain, to the point where I had to push mastery bars instead of picking up various goodies. For the most part of Veteran I was behind the recommended benchmark of 100 heath per level. Not quite a cakewalk but manageable.
The good thing is respec is much more fluent because you already have all the groundwork needed for CT, it’s simply a matter of sticking with Reckless Power (or Star Pact, if using Kymon’s medal) for a time until you’re able to get Menhir’s Bulwark.
Overall I like this levelling method more. Mostly because fuck Forcewave, I’ve levelled way to many builds with it.
I had smth like 50% on elite when I hit him on Elite this time, but I drank a potion to secure it further.
Yeah, I know, a slight miscalculation. But uploading GTs from modding folder is a bit of a headache due to extra steps, so I fixed it in game and left GT as is.
Interesting build. I’ve just finished leveling a similar one, but without the Krieg’s set - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWej9rN
Still not sure about RR from the Conduit of Warring Whispers. Maybe it’s better to go with Arcane Whispers and %RR on Olextra’s Flash Freeze… Need more testing.
