I’m using the Vyr Archon build. I’m supposed to use the Chantodo weapons.
But I dropped an ancient Mang Song’s Lesson staff, that gives me… +550% damage.
Clearly, using it over Chantodo would be beneficial, even if not the standard build… Right?
It’s still not better than Chantodo’s, if that’s what you’re asking. 4x more damage to Archon skills still ends up being quite a bit less damage than what Chantodo’s does.
It’ll work, but Chantodo’s does about 55x more damage than the Archon abilities. Taking away 55x damage to add 4x damage isn’t a great idea, you’ll still only be doing 1/10 of the damage as you would with Chantodo’s. The regular Archon abilities do benefit from area damage, so that will help a bit, but Chantodo’s has a lot more AoE. You just aren’t going to make up that huge gap between Chantodo’s damage and the Archon ability damage with a Mang Song’s setup, unfortunately.
Another thing to consider is the much lower attack speed on the staff. The low base attack speed means you’ll get fewer stacks from the Vyr’s 6p bonus, so you’ll have a lower average stack count and do a bit less damage from that too. It won’t be much of an issue for speed runs where you get lots of kill stacks to keep you capped close to 5 APS anyway, but for pushing it will start to become very noticeable.
If you want to try something different with Vyr’s and ethereals, I’d actually recommend reverse Archon Vyr’s Frozen Orb or Twisters. Those builds actually have higher potential than Chantodo Vyr’s this season (the rank 1 Vyr’s clears on EU and NA are both Vyr’s Frozen Orb). They are challenging builds to play, and have very high gear requirements, but it’s the best way to use ethereals with Vyr’s. You’ll need either Wizardspike or The Oculus though since you need a source with both of those builds.
Another option to use an ethereal with Vyr’s is lightning Archon w/ Manald Heal, although I think that will come out behind Chantodo Vyr’s still. I intend to give that a test run at some point just to mess around, but I’ve got a few other things I want to try out first so it might not be until the weekend that I get to it. My tentative ranking right now would be:
- Vyr’s Orbs/Twisters Reverse Archon w/ Wizardspike/Oculus
- Chantodo Vyr’s
- Vyr’s Manald Heal Reverse Archon (+ Deathwish) w/ Wizardspike
- Vyr’s regular attacks w/ Mang Song’s Lesson
Just as a quick update, I checked in my simulator and it’s looking like with the low attack speed on the staff you only end up with about 60-70% of the dps compared to a higher APS weapon. Just looking at the attack speed here I mean, not factoring in the ethereal multipliers, Chantodo’s DPS etc.
You only seem to lose about 20 on-hit stacks per rotation on average, but because of the lower attack speed you also need more stacks to cap your APS. So you have fewer stacks but need more stacks. Not ideal. You gain a chunk of that back from the higher damage range on the weapon, of course, but you also lose 10 CHC.
So while you’re gaining a 300% bonus from the staff, you’re losing some DPS from the low base attack speed. And then losing Chantodo’s on top of that. My initial estimate was Chantodo’s still doing 10x the DPS of a Mang Song’s setup, but factoring in the stack counts it’s looking like Chantodo’s is more like 15x the DPS. You’ll gain some back with area damage (which you would want to stack heavily for a Mang Song’s setup w/ regular Archon attacks), but Mang Song’s should still be maybe 15 GRs behind Chantodo’s.
And Chantodo’s is at least 5+ GRs behind Vyr’s Frozen Orb.
So yeah, from a “pushing to the limit” perspective, Vyr’s with Mang Song isn’t very good. It could be something fun to try, but understand it’ll be a good ways behind Vyr’s w/ Chantodo’s, Frozen Orb, or Twisters.
I may give Mang Song’s Vyr’s a go here on the weekend. I have some pretty good AD Vyr’s gear I collected for using with Frozen Orb, so I could make use of that. I think I’ll need to find a Mang Song’s to use with it though, I don’t think I kept any with a good power to use for this.
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I gave Mang Song’s a quick try, it’s definitely 10-15 GRs behind Chantodo’s. One problem I didn’t anticipate was that, because you don’t have a source, you don’t have APoC. It was manageable without it, but you’d want to have a bit more CDR than you normally would to compensate (less time out of Archon means you don’t need as much AP). And definitely want points in max AP. Astral Presence may also be a decent choice as a fifth passive.
I also briefly tried Vyr’s reverse Archon Manald Heal w/ Deathwish. That felt like it would fall somewhere between Mang Song’s regular Archon attack and Chantodo Vyr’s in terms of power.
And Vyr’s Frozen Orb is definitely the strongest Vyr’s option this season.
So the ranking should be something like this:
- Vyr’s Orbs/Twisters Reverse Archon w/ Wizardspike/Oculus
- Chantodo Vyr’s
- Vyr’s Manald Heal Reverse Archon (+ Deathwish) w/ Wizardspike
- Vyr’s regular attacks w/ Mang Song’s Lesson