Is there any reason to level Bane of the Powerful past 25? Or at least anything much further than 25?
I always leave it at 25 unless I accidentally give it a few more but never more than 30. After all, all it does is increase the duration but at 25 it already lasts around 50 seconds and it is generally only used in speed farming, where you will never go for longer than that without killing an elite anyway so it just seems pointless.
I assumed everyone thought this way but I have seen a couple of times now how people have levelled it way higher and it made me wonder if I am missing something or if there is some weird fringe case where it is a good thing.
Leveling Powerful past rank 25 only increases the duration so it’s really not important. Especially when doing speedy content where you encounter an elite pack fairly often keeping up the buff is no issue.
But if there’s no other gem to level, might as well use the upgrades on the Powerful. As Kargon said, it’s better option than wasting upgrades on 0% chances.
Mine is at level 147. I use it for runs in the low to middle 140s with Tal Rasha. The 177 seconds are probably not needed but you never know if you get a poor rift with few elites and pylons and the RG spawns right before you get the duration refreshed - and you get one of the guardians that takes longer to kill because they keep moving or do other irritating stuff… like trying to kill you!
Mostly no. People just augment something with them to get the season journey. It is good for speedfarming and keyfarming, but usually overlooked because it requires you to kill the entirety of Rare Elites pack including its minions which is time consuming.
However at the current season, thanks to Altar nodes offering insane amount of increased damage against elites/bosses and granting an extra progress orb upon killing every monster in the elite pack, people considered shining their BotP gems. Now, more duration means, keeping it up into the Rift Guardian fight where no other Elite gonna spawn until you can spare the last Pylon for it.
Those are the builds with very high mobility for hunting elites and have very high paragon levels. For example; I remember seeing Raxx streaming Tal Wizard with BotP at 3k plvl and clearing GR150 in 4-players setup, just yesterday. You can go check his channel.
Why is it less valuable with more elite damage? It offers 20% damage increase for up to 2-3 minutes which is separate from elite damage multiplier to cover this. With Furnace and Aughild’s it’s still 10-11% boost against elites which is not too impacting on the benefit from BotP.
Additional 15% damage against elites may lose its impact but it’s not entirely worthless by 20% damage increase. At least, not after Altar incentivizing player to kill everything for extra progress orbs so that you ensure BotP triggers without losing too much time for the season.
In most situations this gem is inferior so I would say so. But there are a few other gems that have zero use that should be targeted first. My top 4 that should be looked at first are Invigorating, Mirinae, Boyarskys, and Moratorium.
Let it stack up to 5 or 10 times, so if you go wild with elites it really pays off. Would still be underpowered compared to stricken but for some builds could compete.
I’m currently testing my limits on a build where my character does no direct damage (pets only), so yes. I am unable to stack stricken with this build. Kinda want to see how far it can go like that, and what options I might have. A 127 so far, but that is with all the season bonuses.
Invigorating – CC Immunity is good utility, but they may want to look into this one increasing life per hit too. I
Mirinae – Perhaps the gem level should influence the chance to proc up to 100% and the secondary effect should allow two smites per enemy hit.
Boyarskys – this one is at least used, but… I never notice the taunt.
Moratorium – This one is just strange. Since it revolves around time – maybe revise the secondary to 10% chance on being hit to clear all damage and reduce your cooldowns by 4 seconds. Something like that would be huge for Crusaders, think AoV as a replacement for Esoteric Alteration.
Ahh I see, Judgement spam. It goes fairly high like that. Eventually you’ll be able to equip RoRG and cube Squirt’s amulet. One thing, Khassar’s helm won’t increase your damage, it just helps you recast Avatars faster. But if you have 67% CDR, you don’t need Khassar’s at all. So if you keep wanting to play this way:
Just running the Kassars until something decent drops. Been focusing my reforges and upgrades on getting a better weapon first. I have RoRG in cube slot, but since I suck at dodging (esp this season with a torn tendon in my mouse arm) I die wayyyy too fast with Squirts. I tried the guardians and it raised survival but my clear time went down for some weird reason. I just figured it was some odd interaction with the season stuff so gave up.
