This is a Legacy of Dreams based build and the idea goes as follows:
Grab a Johanna’s Argument flail;
Equip Gabriel’s Vambraces for resource cost reduction;
Combine the Blessed Hammer attack with the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to generate cooldown reduction galore;
Now load a mountain-full of Thorns and Bombard the living snot out of the surrounding area.
Beyond that, the fine details are up to you. The video in the link below has my most comfortable variant, but that is a subjective preference. See my skills and equipment at the end of vid:
No Aquilas or defensive law? You are gangstah my friend!
I have an RGK, still with LoN rings, that uses Johanna’s for Stricken stacks.
What kind of uptime do you get on Reflect and Bombardment skills? It Iooks like 100%. I’m trying to figure out if it is more worth it than LoN + CoE + Trapped
Healing per hit and movement are keys. That build is entirely based on constant evasion and healing for survival purposes. Mr. Yan’s pants happen to support that, but the real choice for non-stop motion is defensive.
The aim is certainly to have 100% uptime on Reflect. If you notice, I am actually supplementing the Obsidian Ring with Akarat’s Awakening Shield. Besides the fact that I got stupidly lucky on the rolls, I think it is superior (from the 100% on Reflect perspective) over the flat 20% that the Lidless Wall would provide.
LoD beats LoN, hands down. While you drop Bane of the Trapped, you get SoJ and COE instead - a major power boost! Keep in mind, that you need the Obsidian Ring, so with LoN, you get only Zodiac. In S22, of course, you can get around that but, per your own math, LoD still tops LoN…and of course you can add a 4th Kanai item (such as the Furnace) to the LoD version, which would absolutely smack LoN on its knees.
Brute Force rune for the Hammer is a must here for two reasons:
The 35% chance to explode (+Gabriel’s Vambraces, of course) means that most hammers refund your resource fully. Even just without Mr. Yan’s pants, resource problems become apparent. Any other rune on the hammer and the resource balance is gone. You could Swap the LoH for LoV/Unstoppable but now you lost the illusory effect, which means you have to put on Illussory boots…which leads to the potential Stone Gauntlets I-can’t-move trap. It can be done (I have successfully tried it) but the game-play, for my taste, becomes a bit too stressful. Keep in mind, that LoH gives you 60% movement speed increase, which is critical, imo.
When Brute Force explosion happens, it stuns mobs. That, combined with the 20% Immobilize of Stone Gauntlets, gives you mob management capability. Without that (such as Fire Hammers), they would swarm you and make your survival even more of a challenge. Not impossible, but if you understand my entire movement pattern as a form of taunting/fleeing, then you will have a whole new appreciation for the term “near-death experience”
P.S. On a closing note, I re-watched my run a couple times to analyze what actually happened and there is definite improvement needed in being inside the Oculus circle during the Physical cycle of COE. I figure, a better player, with some fishing patience for the right map/mob/pylon combo, could definitely squeeze out additional GR levels out of this.
From what I saw, you had perma akkarat’s in good maps so stone gauntlets shouldn’t be an issue. You also get more attack speed which means you proc zodiac more often. But movement speed from the law is very good for dodging attacks, probably gives you a lot of toughness.
It’s an interesting take on that build. I kinda remember something like this being used unsuccessfully back in the S5 days, but with LoD it seems more convincing now. Anyway, I don’t see it beating A6I2 “unfortunately” so it won’t be played by more than like 5 players world wide, despite being stronger than most other crusader builds.
I think double Paragons probably was big culprit. Did you try Decaying Strength to sub in some more defense yet?
What would be sweet is if they had Brute Force explode dealing Thorns damage, then you could throw on Hammer Jammers, Jo’s Shield and maybe the belt, drop Condemn for Falling Sword. Doesn’t look like it would be enough damage to be meaningful now though.
My personal experience is that things work fine when they work fine…but once in a while either probabilities turn against me or I forget to refresh Akarat’s in time and then I am in trouble. So it does come down to preference. But all things being even, the speed from LoH plus not having to stress out about Stone Gauntlets issues, just makes for a fundamentally less complicated experience. And that is an intense playing style as it is.
That is why I am a big fan of balancing the game, not just for the H-Bomb build but for others as well. Rolands and Hammerdin, for example, received most mind boggling pseudo-improvements in 2.6.10. Who will play those builds? Makes no sense that Blizzard even bothered with those cosmetic buffs.
Yes, Decaying Strength is one of the variants, which I tried. It works.quite well, but you need to equip Illussory boots and your movement speed bonus from LoH is lost.
I actually suggested that as build-specific buff when I first posted on this topic, way back when (I called the build HaLoD at the time). Exact numbers would have to be worked out, but I suspect that each Brute Force explosion dumping give-or-take a 200% of Thorns (instead of a weapon damage multiplier) would add the necessary punch that this build needs to compete at the top tier.
GR 142. This is by far the most challenging and well played of the three runs so far. The slightly laggy Floor 1, plus a Juggernaut with Reflect Damage power, plus a sea of Arcane pretty much pushed me to the limit. It turns out that coffee (our sponsor for tonight) is a powerful way to get my senses straight, though.
[edit: this run also makes a strong argument for the use of Ice Climbers. I take some serious cold explosion damage throughout the run. That 10% cold damage reduction more than likely bailed me out of some embarrassing moments]
Indeed, I noticed if I modify your rolled increased attack speed values it drops below this value. Do you get significantly less healing at this point, or did you settle on it for both the Zodiac procs and Healing?
Short answer: there is no significance in 5APS in respect to the H-Bomb build. For a more comprehensive answer, please see below.
Attack speed in the H-Bomb buiild plays a two-fold primary role:
Healing assist. The more I hit the more I heal. That’s the obvious reason to invest in it. My decision to want more attack speed or not comes down to am I dying or surviving, rather than to a specific mathematical value. Floor 1 of the GR142 run put that to a thorough test and, as you can see, the build passed that test.
Cooldown reduction boost:
a) Iron Skin/Reflect rune triples my thorns damage, so coming as close as
possible to 100% uptime is vital;
b) Laws of Hope/Wings of Angels permit me to move unhindered, which is key
to the Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan giving me their bonus as opposed to nerfing both my damage and my resource costs. Also, with this build, if I stop for any period of time, I am basically dead, so LoH being up is a must.
When testing the H-Bomb I discovered that no matter how much attack speed I had and no matter how much the Zodiac ring helped, there was always room for improvement. So, I experimented with replacing the Lidless Wall shield with Akarat’s Addendum. I found that the 20% loss of elemental damage was well offset (and then some) by AA’s cooldown bonuses. Even at only 31% total block chance, AA proved superior in cleaning up density areas.
So, in a nutshell, my attack speed bonus choices come down to their effectiveness in satisfying the workings of items 1) and 2) of my explanation more-so than any specific APS value, as you put it. Unlike Invoker attack stacks, 5 here is just a number, without any special significance.
P.S. Thank you, Meteorblade, for clarification of the acronym. It’s been a while since I discussed attack speed stacks in writing…
Just wanted to say thanks for this setup. I started playing as a “Bombvoker” this season (I6CC2 with trove and mortal drama) but this is stronger and I’m having a good time with it. Cleared a 115 last night at around 1k paragon with plenty of time to spare, with only 2 augments and missing a lot of thorns rolls. So I expect to push a lot higher once I get the gear straightened out.
I’m currently using unity in place of SoJ, and also string of ears with trove cubed. I was having a heck of a time surviving without them.
Thank you for the kind words and I am glad that you are enjoying the new playstyle.
If I may make a suggestion. Since you obviously dropped the Strongarm bracers’ 30% damage bonus in favor of a defensive stance, I recommend that you ditch Condemn/Vacuum entirely and replace it with Consecration/Bed of Nails rune. The thorns damage bonus from the Bed of Nails will likely let you clear GR 116 without much trouble. And you get a perk in form of a healing boost from Consecration as well.
Yeah, unfortunately I haven’t found a decent ancient trove yet to swap out the SoE for strongarms.
I played around with Consecration last night but I ended up doing worse. It’s because I don’t have enough cooldown and attack speed stacked to keep everything up all the time. I was able to clear 117 by using LoV Decaying Strength and the last slot for Steed to charge in and out of my oculus rings. I missed 118 by about 20 seconds, so that’s definitely reachable with a better rift. I just need better gear at this point (and more para).
It’s too bad that Sweep Attack’s AS is tied to the Roland’s set instead of the Golden Flense, because I was thinking that might make a good alternative to using hammers for ORotZ procs. Oh well.
Oh yeah, the pony option works well too. Definitely a good aid for jumping into oculus circles. In fact, I just found an old video of my run from Sept 2017, where I used Steed Charge/Rejuvenation rune. As an amusing piece of trivia, watching the video, I noticed that I have not upgraded my Caldesann’s gems on pants and chest since. I am working now to change that.
Out of curiosity, what rune for Steed Charge do you use?
I’m using endurance. I tried draw & quarter for a bit but I found I like having endurance to move around the rift faster.
Just cleared 120 with 5 min remaining. Got a better amulet & boots, two more augs, 1100 para and 327k thorns. Going to stop pushing for awhile and just run speeds/work on more augs. This build is a lot of fun.
