Is GR70 possible without sets and/or Archon?

Wizard
1

Hi!

Mostly a lurker here and rarely look at build guides. I actually put the game down for over a year and just recently picked it back up last month.

After getting up to level 70 on my new wiz (NightWish), I took her into the GR. SOLO - not group. The first gem that dropped was a Legacy of Dreams. Cool! I had not seen that one yet and set out to see how high I could go with equipping nothing but legendary items - no set pieces.

Also, I did not want to incorporate Archon.

I pushed her hard last night to see what she would do. GR65 on a map that was lousy - all the elites simply vanished. Very frustrating…

Check out NightWish in my profile.

Basically running a lightning build with Manald and Paralysis while utilizing nothing but Legendary items and LoD.

I would like to say I’m having quite a bit of fun with this build… but my end goal is to ultimately see a Primal drop at some point. To do so … GR70 needed.

I look forward to thoughts and suggestions!

2

Yes.

A number of LoD builds will clear GR70 no problem.

Basically any of our builds with big item boosts should be able to accomplish that. The two best examples would be Meteor Shower and Frozen Orb. Some other builds that would be decent options, albeit not quite as strong as the first two, would be Twisters, Explosive Blast, or Manald Heal.

I have LoD Meteor Shower and Frozen Orb builds that can do GR100 no problem.

It shouldn’t be too much of a struggle with LoD Manald Heal, but maybe with some tweaks. I’ll give you some tweaks you might want to try a little later once I have some time to look at your current setup.

3

Thanks!

One thing on my “to do” list is cube a different weapon and utilize Illusionist with Teleport/Wormhole.

Perhaps test Bane of the Trapped over Taeguk as well.

4

Instead of replacing your cube’d weapon you should replace that Deathwish you have equipped first. It’s outdated… and trust me, even a really horrible normal new Deathwish will be three times better than your current one. Same for that Etched Sigil, it’s an old one without damage buff. Just replacing those two items with new versions should roughly boost your damage while channeling at least by a factor somewhere between 6 and 7 (assuming bad normal tier items)

As an example of how a LoD Meteor Shower build could look (I think I cleared 115+ with her):
https://eu.diablo3.com/en/profile/Lexa-2365/hero/93635690

EDIT: GR 115 was obviously not with AW in the cube :wink:

2 Likes
5

Thank you, Lexa.

I snagged those out of old, saved inventory. Will keep farming for good drops!

6

I’d recommend just switching to a Meteor Shower build like Lexa suggested. It’s exactly the same playstyle as your current build, just stronger.

But if you want to stick with Manald Heal, here’s some changes you could consider:

First off, get a new Deathwish and Etched Sigil like Lexa suggested.

Second, Lightning skills that come off of Etched Sigil procs won’t trigger Manald Heal. So I’d ditch Blizzard: Lightning Storm and Energy Twister: Storm Chaser. Swap to Black Hole: Supermassive for a pull to bring stuff together for you to channel into and Magic Weapon: Deflection for toughness.

Right now you are using Blood Bracers but you don’t have any shields! So swap in Magic Weapon: Deflection as I suggested above and also drop Astral Presence for Galvanizing Ward for another shield to synergized with your Blood Bracers. This will make a massive difference for your survivability.

If you find you don’t have enough Arcane Power after dropping Astral Presence, pick up Arcane Power on Crit on your source. You might not need this if you drop Aether Walker though, as Hergbrash’s belt should have you covered for arcane power.

I would just straight up get a different amulet, but even with that one, roll the lightning damage to crit damage. Manald Heal is bugged and doesn’t benefit from lightning % on gear, so you are much better off with crit damage. Lightning % will still buff your lightning meteors, but crit damage will buff both skills, so crit damage will be better for you. You need both crit chance and crit damage on every amulet. You can just roll your current one for now, but be on the lookout for a Squirt’s Necklace with int/crit chance/crit damage socket. Your shields from Magic Weapon: Deflection and Galvanizing Ward with Blood Bracers will keep the damage bonus up. It’ll be a big damage boost for you.

If you find you still need more damage, consider picking up some attack speed. More attack speed = more Manald Heal procs. A very easy way to do this would be to swap Aether Walker to Echoing Fury in the cube. Echoing Fury gives you a big boost to attack speed when you kill stuff. Then you can run Illusionist like you mentioned.

If you find an ancient pair of Nilfur’s boots, you could wear those, which will free up your cube slot for something different. Dunno what you’d put in there really, could do Ice Climbers + Stone Gauntlets, but it’ll be hard to find a good ancient pair of Stone Gauntlets if you don’t have a barb or sader. Note that Ice Climbers nullify the Stone Guantlets attack speed and movement speed debuff, so it’s a nice pair of items to get some free toughness. Could just do Nemesis Bracers too.

And if you can survive without it, I would drop Esoteric Alteration for Bane of the Trapped.

Then obviously try to get ancient versions of your non-ancient items.

Something like this: https://www.d3planner.com/935102254

7

Wow! Thank you for all those details, TinneOnnMuin.

I always play solo and rarely look up build and strategy guides. I had no idea that MH didn’t benefit from lightning %, nor did it get triggered by the skills that Etched procs.

Easy adjustments there. I’ll keep on the grind for gear and swap around skills for the shields.

For the short term, I’m going to use Manald Heal … Only because I like the way Lightning looks :slight_smile:

8

I was curious how far a pure Manald Heal build could go, so I tried it out last night. Managed to clear GR100 in about 7 minutes with something similar to this build: https://www.d3planner.com/423992726

(the version I ran was a little different based on what I had available, but I think that’s the build I would aim for)

I have better gear and more paragon than you, so that’s not a realistic representation of where you could get it to right now, but it at least shows the potential for a pure Manald Heal build.

Your current Manald Heal + Lightning Meteor hybrid is probably stronger with the supplemental damage from the meteors, but I really just wanted to get an idea of how strong Manald Heal was on it’s own.

There’s a few mechanics that might not be obvious, so I’ll leave some notes on the build I ran:

  1. Like I mentioned, Manald Heal doesn’t benefit from lightning damage, so you are better off just stacking other stats in those slots.
  2. Etched Sigil only buffs arcane power spenders. So it doesn’t buff Manald Heal. In your current build it’s good because it buffs your meteors, but in a pure Manald Heal build, it doesn’t do anything. So I went with Orb of Infinite Depth for the massive toughness boost. If you go with Orb of Infinite Depth, Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction is the best rune because it gets you multiple stacks from the Orb bonus per cast. The other runes will only get you a single stack per cast, so Chain Reaction is the way to go. It works pretty well in a channelling build too because casting Explosive Blast doesn’t interrupt your channelling animation, so you can just keep channelling Arcane Torrent while simultaneously casting Explosive Blast.
  3. Attack speed is amazing for Manald Heal. It does nothing in an Etched Sigil build (Etched Sigil casts your arcane power spenders once per second regardless of how much attack speed you have), but it’s amazing for Manald Heal. More attack speed means more chances for Manald Heal to trigger, and then on top of that it also means more Manald Heal damage instances once it does trigger. Attack speed is a very strong stat for a pure Manald Heal build. So you’ll notice in the build I linked above, I have Echoing Fury in the cube for more attack speed along with some attack speed rolls on gear.
  4. Stone Gauntlets are a solid toughness boost, but ONLY in combination with Ice Climbers (or some other way to negate the Stone Guantlets debuff). Don’t run Stone Gauntlets unless you also include Ice Climbers! You could just sub in something else here that seems useful instead, e.g. Illusory Boots + Witching Hour (with Hergbrash’s in the cube).

It was actually really fun playing Manald Heal with Echoing Fury. You start off a bit slow but once you kill a few enemies in a pack to get Echoing Fury up, your attack speed goes through the roof and Manald Heal starts triggering like crazy and the rest of the pack just melts. It was a fun playstyle.

2 Likes
9

More good stuff - I appreciate it!

I made changes yesterday evening but only had a short, limited time to really try it out. I made a couple quick runs and found vast improvements already! Guess now I’ll be on the hunt for gear and paragon!

10

This is good information for me as well. I have been experimenting with Manald Heal (LoD) and this explains some things. As I understand, It works like this …

Manald Heal is triggered by Paralysis. Paralysis is triggered by lightning spells, not by lightning damage. So, lightning damage from items, such as Fulminator and Etched Sigil, and passives like Storm Armor and Magic Weapon, do NOT trigger Paralysis. And, lightning spells that are cast, like Arcane Torrent, Lightning Meteor, Explosive Blast, and Electrocute DO trigger Paralysis, which triggers Manald Heal (15% chance).

Does this accurately describe the mechanics of Manald Heal?

11

Yep, pretty much.

There’s one more tricky mechanic with Manald Heal though. There’s also something interesting that happens with lightning channel skills. So basically, Static Discharge and the Archon beam with lightning element Archon.

For most skills, Manald Heal has a flat 15% chance to trigger a single damage instance per cast.

With channel skills, each tick of the channel skill has a chance to open a Manald Heal damage window. The window duration used to be 1.5 seconds, but now it’s 1.125 seconds. And then each tick of the channel skill that lands in the damage window deals a Manald Heal damage instance.

This makes channel skills FAR superior for Manald Heal. Particularly at high attack speeds.

With non-channel skills, increasing your attack speed increases the chance of dealing a single Manald Heal damage instance. With channel skills, increasing your attack speed both increases the chances of opening a window AND increases the number of damage instances you land within the 1.125 second window. This means that channel-based Manald Heal builds scale VERY well with attack speed, because increasing your attack speed both increases the likelihood of getting a Manald proc AND increases the damage you deal per successful proc.

12

Interesting. Is there a threshold I should be trying for, for attack speed and/or attacks per second? I am currently at +24% with 1.86 attacks per second. By my calculation that puts me “in the window” for multiple attacks.

13

You’d want to check out the Arcane Torrent breakpoints.

Basically, since attacks occur over a discrete number of frames, you can’t have an attack rendered over a partial frame. So there’s breakpoints where your attack speed crosses over and you see a reduction in the number of frames for a channeling tick to occur. Attack speed changes that don’t reduce the number of frames for a channeling tick don’t really do anything.

The Arcane Torrent breakpoints:

Min APS FPT TPS
1.053 18 3.33
1.111 17 3.53
1.176 16 3.75
1.250 15 4.00
1.333 14 4.29
1.429 13 4.62
1.538 12 5.00
1.667 11 5.45
1.818 10 6.00
2.000 9 6.67
2.222 8 7.50
2.500 7 8.57
2.857 6 10.00
3.333 5 12.00
4.000 4 15.00

FPT = frames per tick
TPS = ticks per second

The way to read this table is that you want to be just over the min APS for a breakpoint. Increasing your APS above the min APS for a breakpoint but below the min APS for the next breakpoint does absolutely nothing for the tick rate of Arcane Torrent, and therefore your chance of proccing Manald Heal or your number of procs per window.

1.86 is pretty decent since it puts you just above the 10 FPT / 6 TPS breakpoint. There isn’t much point increasing your attack speed further unless you are able to get up over 2.00 APS to hit the floor of the next breakpoint.

D3planner also has a breakpoint tool so you can import/input your build/gear there and it’ll tell you how much attack speed you would need to add to hit the next breakpoint.

14

Thank you VERY much, :smiley: