I see most of the top builds running Dominance over Astral Presence. Is this because they can afford to lose some DPS due to their high paragon in favour of another shield?
I’m at P2700 now and just tried switching over from AP to Dom and it felt nice as the tankiness was definitely noticed.
Any thoughts on which one would be best given my paragon?
I can’t really feel much difference in DPS loss by removing AP and the maxroll guides suggest to use AP.
Currently farming 150s around 9 - 10 min.
Cheers
Dominance to hold squirts. Broke 5 mins today dominance. I’m para 3180 3000 points in vit
Ah good point, didn’t think of this.
Holy crap 3000 points??? What is your life at? I put 700 points in to hit 1.13m life.
Also are you still running Stricken or swap over to Powerful?
Life is 1.2 milion. Used topaz in helm not life gem. Slightly more DPS but mabey life gem and less vit may work better haven’t done the maths. Never used stricken once this season on tals. Bop 15% damage reduction from elites more squirts in rift. Also about 37% elite damage when fist pack killed. I’ve had sub 10 second rg kills on occasions when power shrine Coe and red circle line up. Rarely over 1 Min. Stricken pointless. Had sub 10 sec kill on the fat poison slug rg on my 4 min 52 sec starpact clear. Huge hit box,empowered shrine and power potion . No red circle but he was like trash. I’m guessing Coe must have hit as he spawned didn’t look. My gear is good and all 750 augmented though. Went mad on public bounties. Played 8 hours one night non stop bounties
Something isn’t quite right here? I put all my paragons (save movement and arcane) into vitality and I had 2.2m life. If you put 3000 paragon into vitality then you would have like 3 million life or something!
I failed my first 150 by putting all paragon into vitality - couldn’t do enough damage in time. Then went back and put 900 paragon into vitality which put me at just over 1.2m life.
1.2m life feels good, but I don’t think you could have put 3000 paragon into it?
I meant 3000vit so 600 paragon. My bad didn’t word it well
Haha that makes a difference! 
What is your total vitality?
Astral Presence is only a DPS gain if you are regularly filling up to full AP.
If you’re throwing 75% AP Star Pacts, Astral Presence isn’t really worth anything. The passive AP gain doesn’t move the needle a ton, it’s the increase to max AP that matters.
Assuming max AP Star Pacts all the time, it’s worth something like 14% dps.
With Grand Vizier + 10% RCR from paragon, meteors cost 18 AP. Baseline max AP (no wand or source or wizard hat, 25 AP from paragon, no Energy Shield) is 125. With Astral Presence it’s 145.
So a full AP Star Pact is 740+20*(125-18) = 2880% weapon damage. And with Astral Presence, it’s 740+20*(145-18) =3280%. 3280/2880 ~ 14% gain.
Realistically, you aren’t going to get full AP Star Pacts all the time, so you could see little to no gain from Astral Presence. If you are using Astral Presence but cast a Star Pact with less than 125 AP, you got 0 damage gain from Astral Presence.
And if Dominance helps you keep Squirt’s up more consistently, that probably wins out for dps. Without Magic Weapon: Deflection, you are relying on not getting hit in order to refresh your Galvanizing Ward. But with Dominance, you have another set of shields to eat some smaller hits, which can help you reset your Galvanizing Ward easier. Galvanizing Ward synergizes really well with another source of shielding, as it makes it much easier to refresh the Galvanizing Ward shield. With Conduit instead of Deflection for Star Pact, having Dominance as another source of shielding to synergize with Galvanizing Ward sounds pretty effective. Assuming you are killing fast enough.
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I was looking at cold. Starpact I’m 6800, vitality and 1 million life. Might put life gem in helm but 1 mil feels quie tanky
Is there a recommended playstyle in terms of when and how much resource you should have before casting? I tend to just: move, cast, move cast constantly. I ignore my COE almost entirely.
That’s interesting. I wonder if Powerful is still better if you’re doing 10 - 12 minute runs (which most of my 150s are)? The RG takes 2-3 mins to kill without any pylons. Cold smokes them much faster but the rest of the rift takes longer.
I’ve been playing Comet, not Star Pact, but for Star Pact I think the optimal strategy is just to spam out Star Pacts most of the time regardless.
Which I think makes Astral Presence kinda mediocre in most situations, unless you have really high density and are refilling your full AP almost instantly.
I don’t have enough experience with the Star Pact variant to comment beyond that though.
Ok that sounds like what I’ve been doing anyway. I’m finding that Comet is not so good for trash but is amazing against RG where as Star Pact is the opposite - great against trash but not good vs RG.
Regardless, I’m clearing all 150s I open with both builds at P2700.