This season I wanted to try out the grenades instead for HA. I must admit that I was pleasently surprised and love the way it plays.
I have tested to run with Dawn and the K"mar (not sure if I nailed the name) the x bow that gives the drifting shadow rune. I had Fortress Ballista in cube. The chosen rune for Strafe was the grenade variant.
Unfortunately those two weren’t ancient and as soon as I found an ancient replacement I swapped.
Now I have equipped one FBallista and a Wallas, I changed cube to Dawn and the rune of strafe to drifting shadow.
What I haven’t been able to discern is whether or not I get more grenades from the set proc or not.
In theory if the piercing Strafe projectile hits another enemy while GoD 4p cooldown is still up, it should proc any primary skill. So it should proc more Grenades.
Can’t verify myself as I’ve never played GoD Grenades as I dislike the Grenade behaviour.
If I remember correctly, back when UE Grenades was a thing, Buriza caused the grenades to bounce two more times. Not sure if it’s the case with GoD. I don’t think it is, but if it does, it might be worth using.
I’d be interested to what a Buriza equipped with a quiver like HPS would do. Much better base damage/variance that way, and cc/att/ele%/skill% as well. Cube the dawn, or echoing fury, or in-geom and rock.
For the GoD Grenades build, your best weapons setup is Buriza in cube and then choose two of: Dawn if you want perma-Vengeance, Fortress Ballista to help with Squirt’s uptime, or Vallas for potentially more God4 proccs.
Buriza is not for the GoD set, it’s for the Hellcat belt. It makes it so that your grenades are able to bounce more. This is important because more bounces means more damage.
Use the Rocket Storm rune for Strafe for more GoD 4 procs. The rockets will sometimes hit right when GoD4 comes off ICD but Strafe is on not. With this rune, Vallas is slightly less valuable. The Buriza effect does affect Strafe but not enough that you would use it if you aren’t using the Hellcat belt. Take Drifting Shadow only when doing speed runs.
The challenge of GoD grenades is the grenades kind of just go anywhere. You want to have as much mob density and area damage as possible and try to stay in the middle of the group. Side note: the more density you have, the more valuable Valla’s becomes.
The other pain of GoD grenades is you want more armor slots. With RoRG you can wear Depth Diggers and HellCat and cube Hunter’s Wrath, but you can’t take Elusive or CoE unless you give up F/R.
Indeed, yet I felt squishy as heck even with Ballista.
But I am still on low paragon and in a gearing up fase so I can easily try to swap them out. ATM I don’t have Squirts equipped because I haven’t found one good enough.
Thanks for the advice, will definitely keep my eyes out for replacements.
Lastly was I wrong about rockets and grenades do they really benefit from the piercing mechanics th Walla and Buri offer?
Valla’s piercing effect is for Strafe projectiles only. It doesn’t affect the rockets or any other ability.
Buriza piercing affects both grenades and Strafe projectiles.
As with anything, feel free to try it out in game. For UE grenades, Buriza is a big damage boost. For GoD, it may not contribute as much due to different game mechanics, but if Hellcat belt works, I don’t know of any reason why Buriza wouldn’t work. More bounces is more damage.
I am well aware of that. You suggested the use of strafe with the rune that fires rockets instead of projectiles, the last strafe rune shoots out grenades.
Since both explode on impact I didn’t imagine they would be able to pierce.
That is absolutely and I will because you indeed triggered my curiosity
I think you misunderstand. GoD4 has an unfortunate ICD that forces you to settle into a specific AS breakpoint. It’s so janky that if you increase your attack speed sometimes you can significantly reduce your overall damage. It’s a horrible design but we’re stuck with it.
To compensate for this, people discovered that you can use Valla’s (and technically Buriza) or the Strafe Rocket Storm rune to help cover the ICD gap. The Rocket Storm rune fires both rockets and projectiles and the rockets can proc God4 just the same as the projectiles. Valla’s allows for the Strafe projectiles to pierce and possibly hit multiple targets (depending on mob density), also to help cover the ICD gap.
You should always use Rocket Storm rune when pushing.
Only use Buriza if you choose the Cluster Grenade rune, with GoD6, i think you’ll want Grenade Cache. I am pretty sure I could take GoD6 Grenade up to GR135-136 on non-season. And with some extreme fishing, UE6 Grenades up to 139. I am unsure how this translates in S28.
I go for grenade cache. So the weapons are locked.
135 you say… I will try to reach that in season…
Oh by the way I definitely will try to give UE grenades a spin before HA. I kind of lament myself for not trying them out earlier… I just fell in love with the style. Een, I hope that doesn’t sound weird though.
