H-Bomb by Harnor for Patch 2.7.0

Crusader
14

While your real results are impressive (Hardcore at that!), you do understand, that a history of past hero details and achievements - seasonal, hardcore, and otherwise - is actually available on line…and that you, shall we say, aren’t exactly honest with the actual figures (like, any of them, right down to your Paragon level). Also, you didn’t “close out” anything with LoN, nm Gr 146, which doesn’t register as being completed at all.

15

So as I understand it, this is a variation on LoD Bombs using BH to proc thorns?

Seems very nice to play. I think I want to try it… Impressive times on the clears!

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Hey Harnor, there might have been some confusion here. Please refer to the NA Seasonal 22 Hardcore boards for the LoN 146 clear details! No offense taken.

17

Hmmm, this is the link from the official source: Crusader: Overall (Hardcore) - Rankings - Diablo III

Not that it matters in the end, because your finish is amazing! I will be the first one to admit that my

statement has already found that someone. The fact that you are doing this Hardcore is mind-boggling. My internet connection dies so often that I would never clear paragon 1000 without dropping dead.

Importantly, in your build variant you demonstrate the innate power of AD (area damage). I am going to grind some paragons for a week or four and when I get tired, I’ll adjust my build a bit and give it a go using your method. My amulet and necklace will give me 40 more AD for a total of 152.

Question: I have Damage vs Elites on my shield, In your opinion, would you keep it or remove in favor of even more AD to get the 172?

Also…

That is not just a sentimental coincidence. At the time when Hammerdin played that way (and it was my favorite playstyle), LoN Bomb (a.k.a., my least favorite gamestyle) was unleashed. I liked the damage and the Bombardment mechanic on LoN bomb but nothing else. So…I blended the two together into what I then called HaLoN (and later on HaLoD, when LoD gem was introduced). With the new version of the Stone of Jordan and boosts to thorns damage into season 22, HaLoN/HaLoD was reborn as H-Bomb.

18

Here are some major options mathed out, I would say the Zodiac options are safest due to full time Akarat’s Champ and Iron Skin, requires 68-70% CDR.

My recommendation is to run the variant that you have the best gear and paragon to support.

1. LoN + CoE
Key Items: Bane of Trapped, Sun Keeper, Strongarms
1.93x to trash and 2.51x to elites

Fire: 1x
Holy: 4x
Lightning: 1x
Physical: 24x

Total: 57.9x to trash | 75.3x to elite

2. LoN + CoE + Rally
Key Items: Akkhan’s Addendum, Hellskull, Bane of Trapped, Strongarms,
1.74x to all

Fire: 1x
Holy: 1x
Lightning: 1x
Physical: 30x (rally every other CoE Cycle)

Total: 57.32x to all

3. LoN + CoE + Furnace
Key Items: The Furance, Hellskull, Bane of Trapped, Strongarms,
1.74x to trash | 2.61x to elites

Fire: 1x
Holy: 1x
Lightning: 1x
Physical: 24x

Total: 46.98x to trash | 70.34x to elites

4. LoN + Zodiac
Key Items: Bane of Trapped
1.6x to all

100% uptime of Iron Skin & Akarat’s Champ ~ 3.5-4 bombs per 16 seconds

Total: 48x to all

5. LoD + Zodiac
Key Items: CoE + SoJ
1.1x to trash and 1.3x to elites

Fire: 8x
Holy: 8x
Lightning: 6x (half cycle depending on blocks and zodiac attribution towards Bombardment)
Physical: 24x

Total: 50.6x to trash | 65.78x elites

6. LoD + Double SoJ
Key Items: CoE + Legacy SoJ + SoJ + Strongarms + Sun Keeper
1.44x to trash and 1.9x to elites

Fire: 1x
Holy: 4x
Lightning: 1x
Physical: 24x

Total: 43.2x to trash | 82.08x elites

7. LoD + Zodiac + Justice + Rally
Key Items: CoE

Fire: 8x
Holy: 8x
Lightning: 8x
Physical: 36x (rally every cycle for triple bombs)

Total: 60x to all

Run this with Provoke instead of Condemn AND Laws of Justice for insane toughness, one of the best builds for low paragon or hardcore players.

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19

Yea, that link points to ERA 13 for OFF season. Here is the correctly pointed link:

Thank you for the kind words. I will say that when I first jumped into a rift with H-Bomb in season 22, I did not see it coming close to A6I2.

However, in hardcore, where A6I2 must decide between the Hold Your Ground and Indestructible passives (the other 3 passives: Lord Commander, Heavenly Strength, and Iron Maiden being mandatory), LoD/LoN H-Bomb starts to close the gap. Choosing Hold Your Ground grants higher block chance for higher I2 stacks alongside justice lantern survivability but sacrifices the comfort of having an immunity cheat death. Knowing this and H-Bomb’s added survivability, access to pixel pulls and double duration pylons (pre follower buff + flavor worn), H-Bomb was in my opinion a better choice over A6I2 for hardcore. If I had pushed A6I2 that season, I do not believe I could have cleared as high as I did. As a bonus, the top season 22 A6I2 clears on NA softcore were also GR146.

As for your question on elite damage vs. area damage, I would go for the area damage roll easy. Area damage scaling is so overpowered on a build where you can manipulate density with pixel pulls and you already got plenty of elite damage from the SoJ.

_
I have watched all your clears to date and will point out that I play the build differently.

  • I only manual cast Bombardment at 8 PM into lightning CoE so that I am not killing too much of my trash and maximizing area damage. With Lord Commander, I can do 1 extra manual cast off cycle. Of course Channeling pylon is the exception here.

  • I only cast condemn when needed to so I can save more Zodiac procs for AC and Iron Skin so that I don’t skip out on Reflective Skin snapshots at 8PM lightning. I cast just enough condemns to maintain perma Strongarms uptime on the RG.

  • I potion snapshot my Belt of the Trove on every new floor and at the RG. I am super paranoid about it getting desynced so I make an effort to refresh it as much as I can.

  • I stop stutter stepping a lot to cover more distance and hit oculus rings more quickly.

I am very glad that you are going to continue pushing the build and believe that you can because I know I can. An option you do have over me is that you can probably sub out your Heart of Iron for Aquila, run Unstoppable Force if you need it to keep it up and then AC - Rally for double bombardment cast on cycle. There is also the option of running squirts for shield pylons and some uptime at the RG!

20

Try build #7, with 100% sheet block% you should be able to get manual bombs off on almost every cycle, sometimes 5 manual bombs per 16 seconds if you’re meleeing electrified or sitting in the middle of fire chains.

The build is the most safe to play by a margin – honestly, I’ve never played anything so lazy before. I can probably beat my GR141 record (variant #1) in one key, which was hella dangerous to play.

22

Can one of you explain how this works in more detail? Don’t you need to take damage first before you can take a potion. Exactly why/when do you sync? What does that have to do with the belt of the trove?

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Hey Etelen, Wudijo has a great video explanation of the mechanic:

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Thx amBASS.

cool, so if I understood correctly do a potion reset 5 seconds before coe (whatever the desired) cycle begins. And pay attention to zoning desync.

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Hola amBADASSador,

Amazingly, the key to all my problems lay in the following point which you brought up:

I had been doing this for so long that it seemed natural to stutter step. And there was a reason for this. In my semi-armorless variant of the build, the only way I could move without being instantly killed was by stutter-stepping at virtually all times. This led to missing on Oculus circles, neglect of cooldown pacing on Condemn…etc. Once you put it in print as an area of concern, I actually started to analyze the “why” of it…

Then I did some experimenting…then some more…

And once I equipped Aquila Cuirass in place of the Heart of Iron, all of a sudden I had all the time in the world to calmly consider my combat options, then make the sound tactical decisions.

And presto - results! I smashed my previous best on the first go. I mean literally - once I arrived at the current configuration of equipment, I did one test run. No more, no less. Festering Woods zone. Three pylons only: Power, Channeling, Speed, in that order. Perendi RG.

I am glad that you initially created confusion with a bit of controversy regarding your last season’s achievements. Without that bit of a stir, I would not have engaged in dialogue with you…and not have gained this new insight.

Thank you genuinely and sincerely.

–H

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That is indeed a nice clear! No conduit and a bad RG as well. I would not be surprised if you get close to GR150. I also happened to improve my personal best with a GR146 clear. Lacuni huntresses + exarchs on a Festering Woods with a speed + conduit pylon. Hit and ran through trash on floor 2 with a entry power pylon and finished on floor 3 with Perdition.

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Hey dmkt,

Thanks for coming up with the 7 variants. I experimented with them and then some additional tweaks of my own as well. My favorite combination is basically 5 which I used for my new best clear.

{edit: I previously thought that Andariel’s Visage may be bugged. I was just playing it a bit wrong it turns out (I’ll skip the fine details). Bottom line, I figured out the issue. Tested ok. It works fine now}

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Interesting, perhaps an isolated test is the way to confirm it?

Thorns damage is very easy to measure since it doesn’t vary much.

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Heart of iron is actually pretty garbage. Check it out on maxroll, it basically adds nothing to your damage by comparison. Perhaps more on the LoD version, but obviously Aquila’s is much more worth. The way I’ve always looked at it is, if you’re only sacrificing a little bit, maybe a bit more, it’s a lot better to survive then it is to do max damage. Especially with wiz. If you’re unable to live or sit there and focus damage, constantly running around, you’re going to lose more dps from that then just removing an item.

30

Heart of Iron tends to be ~8-10 more damage.

31

Let’s say I wanted to do speed runs, what build variant would you recommend?

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Those are push builds more than speed builds. There is a nice maxroll guide for speed LoN bomb that works pretty well. I have been using it and it does the job.
https://maxroll.gg/guides/lon-bombardment-crusader-guide check the speed gr build

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I use that build as well myself. Was wondering if there might be a more powerful version available.

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I do #1 LoN + CoE with In-Geom and Squirts,

#6 work as a base works quite well too.

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