First Impressions: Masquerade of Burning Carnival

First off, I love the feel!
Something in it really reminds me of Diablo 2.

  1. It’s useless without the amulet of eternal Simulacra.
  2. It takes up some learning to control the Simulacra - they aim at where you aim (At whom the mouse points)
  3. From my short experience, Shatter felt most effective.
  4. Scythe generates essence for Simulacra attacks as well - it fills up essence for Bonespear rather quick.
  5. I prefer to use Scythe for the curse (Trag’oul’s Scythe), which also procs the belt & ring for defense and offense boost.
  6. It felt like I was searching for more skills to use - I chose Bone Armor for the DR, Blood Rush for mobility & LotD for the freeze every now and then.

Let me know if you want me to try other ideas.
For now, I’ve had fun with it and would love to feel building it up in season.

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I tried and it doesn’t

Will try again - it’s harder to aim, because the Simulacra have to hit and you.have to miss, to check this.

Edit:
I just tried Iron Rose - the Simulacra produced Bona Nova per what I had ready in skills, each time a Blood Nova was auto-cast from my Siphon.
Proof:
https_drive.google.com/file/d/156XJDQWrEKUOYXzIvZpcax9WgqENl8B_/view?usp=sharing

Also, I just tried it again, and saw Essence refilling.
You can see where I & Simulacra stood when this happened:
https_drive.google.com/file/d/1s1nXJFs6FhqW8C14ei0-CRxwznaEUKGc/view?usp=sharing

Edit 2:
I can also see there’s an issue with positioning the Simulacra.
Also, it seems monsters attack them (And they can’t die, so good damage blockers)
It’s a shame they stands in line with us, and not in front.

  • I’m not allowed to include links, so they can’t be presented here properly.
    I replaced https:// with https_

An important question regarding what the simulacrums cast is if the targets they hit are simply treated as if you hit them. So, for Grim Scythe, if they hit an enemy that you didn’t, that would be treated differently than if you hit the same enemy that they did. As far as I can tell, against a single enemy, you and your simulacrum hitting it at the same time still only gives 12 essence, but in a crowded environment, they give you increased coverage, so they might significantly improve your results. The same goes for the Blighted Marrow rune of Bone Spear, that does extra damage based on how many targets it hits. Multiple hits on the same target won’t matter, but hits on extra targets will significantly increase damage output. I struggle too much with lag to test this effectively, but I’m sure there is someone out there who can test it out.

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I thought it’d work per Bone Spear.
But if my spear can increase the damage of the two others, it can be more significant.

The bigger question is - how effective will it be?

I liked the Shatter, but think it’s worth testing with other runes (Crystallization for instance)

When using Grim Scythe (Frost Scythe) that increases speed per hit, I’m pretty sure it raised the counter per hit - with multiple hits (So it grows by 3 if all of them hit)

I tried teeth which was a very lazy way to clear T16, was fast enough and the damage loss wasnt as bad. Felt like a real ghetto UE DH, but it worked so I didn’t really complain.

I tried using “Lost Time” offhand along with the cold rune and honestly it was nice. A very long ranged way to proc first tier of Krysbin and the extra movespeed made it a desirable item for speedruns. I didn’t do much gr100+, but not being able to recover essence as fast really hurts the build. If the Simulacrums generated essence for you using grim scythe it might be a different story though.

2 Likes

They did, but only if they hit the enemy.
The problem is they are not actively going to your front.

The issue with my builds was dying a lot. Even though, I was able to bit GR85 rather faster (7 min on first run?) with the equipment I had, and around ~1700 bonus vit. (Rest of paragons are maxed out)

I watched Filthy Casual’s video and his build looks good:

Worth testing!

Im testing this set and with 1300 paragon im having issues clearing a gr 75. Grim scythe is absolutely worthless and will not kill anything above gr 50 in my experience. Im using Bone spear Teeth and its fine for the most part but if I run out of mana on the RG its a pain in the rear…

skills - grim scythe - cursed strike, bone spear - teeth, simulacrum, blood rush- potency, bone armor - dislocation, devour - cannibalize (num locked)

zeis 40, stricken 45, trapped 42
Full Masqurerade set, haunted vision amulet, ancient parthan bracers, cord of the sherma belt, lornelles and coe rings, lost time and trags fang - with petrified spike, dayntees, krysbins in the cube…

edit - replaced Devouring aura with Aura of Fraility instead of counting on cursed scythe to proc a curse and it feels much better…

Were you trying to kill stuff with Grim Scythe with this set? Of course it doesn’t do anything. It is doing tens of thousands of times less damage than Bone Spear does. The addition of Grim Scythe to Haunted Visions is not meant for this set at all. Switch out your fang for a SotC, a manually cast curse instead of the aura (you are using Zei’s, so you shouldn’t be that close to what you are shooting at), Brigg’s Wrath for Lornelle’s, and Blighted Marrow for the Teeth rune. May take a minute to get used to the changes, but you should see a substantial improvement in the damage department.

I realise Grim Scythe is only for leaching and not killing but its really weak atm. I can stand in a GR 80 and hit things 20 times and it doesn’t even dent them. I was able to clear a GR 80 just changing out the Devouring for Fraility. Ill give that Sotc thing a try too. ANd I play HC only so removing Lornells for a pull ring might not be the safest option…

You should be using SotC and Maltorius’ Spike for this build.
You should have Devour up numlocked, I choose the rune that reduces resource costs by 2% for each corpse devoured - this fixes a lot of the resource issues you’ll have with the build (because you won’t have a generator).
Take of Grim Scythe and put on Leech with the first rune, so that whenever a mob dies the curse jumps to another mob. All 3 curses will get applied when you apply leech, but only the leech will jump.
Replace lornelles with Krysbins, this will increase your damage and you don’t need that healing.
Equip Dayntee’s binding, this will give you up to 50% DR whenever something is cursed.
APD is fine, but unless you’re using lotd or bone spikes, chances are nothing is getting stunned, so i’d stick to nemesis for the additional elite packs.
You basically curse a pack, throw a spear through it, then run to pick up the corpses, and repeat. It works really well and will get you through GR95+ without an issue.

The only problem comes with you face the RG. Unless it’s spawning lot of adds (like the rat boss), you will find yourself with a lot of downtime when you run out of essence.

There are ways to fix that too. Either run out of essence, sacrifice yourself, resurrect, pop sims, curse, wait for CoE to get to Physical again and then spam bone spear.

Or, use blood rush molting, just keep devour corpses until you have a bunch of essence, then attack.

Make sure you’re using Bone Armor and are keeping your stacks up, for the 400% dmg bonus from SotC. You don’t need to worry about anything killing you, you’ll be virtually indestructible.

You can put squirts in the cube for more damage, but the buff isn’t up much and it just causes you to take more damage most of the time, so i’d recommend either unity of Wisdom of Kalan.

He is playing HC, so among other things, sacrificing himself is not an option. Also, you will notice that he says he has Krysbin’s and Dayntee’s in the cube.

As far as rings, Lornelle’s is generally less protective than Unity, but having Brigg’s Wrath should significantly improve your ability to kill things, when combined with Blighted Marrow, which does more damage for each enemy it hits. And killing faster should hopefully help you stay alive, because obviously they can’t hit you if they are dead.

Thanks for the replys - Bone armor dislocation applies stun for APD bracers …
The Aura of Frailty is a easy option to always have the curse active on mobs and makes Bone Spear a stand back and fire option. As long as u have a good gold pickup radius it hits all the mobs and Zeis works fine and if they get close I bloodrush away and gain distance. The set is performing OK atm, I feel the skills that are tied to it could use some work. I was able to clear a GR 80 and my gems are only in the 40s so Im guessing with lvl 100 and full augments it might be fine for running 120 gr or so… Its not going to be the top ladder performer I don’t think, but honestly I don’t care a whole lot about that. As long as I can have fun and enjoy the build Im good…

Further testing this last night resulted in a DEEDS in a gr 85. Wasn’t totally unexpected. So I changed some things up and I think I have found the best way to play this build for my liking. For me the less buttons needed the better and IM in HC so take that as a reference as to where Im coming from.

So now I changed a few things up.
FUll Masquerade set - APD bracers, Dayntees belt, Haunted visions, Krysbins, Lornells, Bone RInger, Jesseths scythe(only unique I had - ideally Id use SOTC and cube Maltorius Spike).

cube - sotc, requiem cereplate, unity

Skills - Bone Armor - Dislocation, Bone Spear - Blighted(best rune IMO), Simulacrum, Blood Rush-potency, fraility - aura of frailty, Devour -cannabalize

Dark Reaping, Spreading Malediction, Final Service, Serration…
Lvl 15 trapped, Lvl 57 Molten Gizzard, Lvl 25 Stricken,

So far Ive completed a lvl 75 GR with this set up currently leveling my gems up into the 50s before I proceed…

ur analysis is week u ignore all the weekesess of this set.

The set is very tanky, so taking lornelles is likely to be working against you, because you’re either at full health, or you’re dead. The hp regen is essentially useless because it only increases at low health, and you should never be at low health. The sims will heal you to full, and simulacrum should never be on cooldown when they pop (i’ve literally only recast them twice in GR95+).

I would strongly recommend changing out lornelles for CoE, this will give you an extra 200% damage bonus for your Spear.

Once you get Maltorius’ Spike and SotC for your mh, you’ll do a ton more damage, so I think that’s what is holding you back at the moment.

Aside from that, your gearing looks good, and your cube is fine.

I would strongly recommend switching Final Service out for Stand Alone.
The 100% armor gives you so much survivability with this set, and Final Service does not work properly with this set, it causes your sims to randomly die, which is a death sentence. If you get rid of that trait, you’ll find your sims never die, unless you do something really stupid, or AFK (which is highly unlikely given you’re playing HC).

If you’re using stand-alone, then you don’t need potency, but i understand why you are using that. I would recommend molting, just because the extra corpse = extra essence, and you will need that as you push higher GRs.

Aura of frailty means you need to be close to curse stuff, if you use a casted curse you can likely keep more targets cursed, which will increase your dmg and survivability, but this is all personal preference and having to keep the curse up all the time can be annoying, so i get it.

Dark Reaping is probably not a great choice here either. Life from Death would be better for health globes, which pairs fairly well with Reaper’s Wraps instead of APD, but given that they’ve been nerfed, their usefulness is limited.

Everything else looks good, I think you should be able to easily push 90-95 without worrying about losing your toon once you get your weapons.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to go any higher, because the build lack damage.
You can’t even swap out some survivability for extra damage, because we don’t have the items to be able to do that, and once you get to the point that you’re running out of essence, you either teleport out and spam molting+devour until you get full essence again, or you change your build to use Grim Scythe (but this doesn’t feel good and makes you seem squishy). You can’t use the ‘die and refill’ tactic in HC, so you’re going to hit a wall fairly soon.

Point taken and I did change a few things up… actually I did all the following except Im going with Havest of Anguish and Lost time now along with Reapers Wraps. The cold snare is decent and noticeable in 80+ GR… Molten was also addded to emergency out of mana…Main hand Im using SoTC and Spike in the cube - huge difference. I also switched my passives - stand alone, life from death, spreading mal, and grisly tribute (not sure if sims proc that or not ??) Feeling pretty good into the 80s, gems are still not over 50 yet but working on them…

And opinions are like - you know what… Its fine to criticize but at least make a valid point as JorMox and Bumblebee are…

I’d consider swapping out Dark Reaping for Bone Prison (for the extra chance to proc Krysbin’s Sentence, at least for higher GRs where you aren’t killing as quickly), and if that is triggering enough, you could swap your Bone Armor to the Thy Flesh Sustained rune, which will double your LPS, and consequently double the shield you get from Molten Gizzard. It will be a LOT of extra toughness, and hopefully about the same amount of stun.

Some things to consider in terms of your curse: Decrepify - Dizzying Curse, for a flat 10% chance to stun can be nice, and the Enfeeblement rune actually gives a root for the first second, which can be useful if you follow it up quickly with a spear, as that counts for the extra Krysbin’s damage. Leech - Cursed Ground can also be a life saver if positioned properly. With a good pack standing in it, you heal huge chunks of your life every second. I’m still trying to come up with a speed build that leverages Leech - Blood Flask, just to be able to hit potions like mad… but probably not a brilliant plan just yet. :wink:

Honestly, if something isn’t done about the poor targeting and pathing of the sims maps like Corvis and Keeps are amazingly frustrating bosses to deal with.

That alone hurts the set so badly that regardless of the effectiveness of your build, you’re very reliant on RNG for good map types.

Having to key fish at GR 90 is just plan silly if anyone were to ask me.