Several postings and videos list LON doc as the superior carnevil build. When looking for leaderboards it looks like everyone is using Zuni. Has something changed?
Not sure what you are on about…?
You make it sound like the entire leaderboard is Zuni, and it’s not. Checked the top 10 and few other random samples, and it’s about 50/50.
But to your point, the ones that are using Zuni, seem to be doing it with Aughild’s in all cases, so I guess they are going for the extra elite damage & reduction.
LON is tougher but the damage output is lower, even with Zuni using Unity.
With increasing Grift levels the monster health grows much faster than their damage output.
So initially in the season LON is popular because defense is a limiting factor, and as ppl get more paragon and augments (and a 3rd gem at higher level), Zuni will take over as damage output becomes limiting.
Right now Zuni gets me about 2 levels higher.
How to cope with the squishiness of Zuni ? I’ve dropped Soul Harvest for Horrify so I can keep at a distance all the time, and changed PTV (which is really only about 11% dps because of all the other DiBS) to Bad Medicine.
I keep seeing people saying this, and I can’t help but wonder what am I doing wrong. I’m nowhere near where damage output would be limiting (barely GR105) and I can generally kill the RG in 10 or 15 seconds, but event with the LoD setup, it’s one wrong move and I’m toast, making progress through GRs extremely slow. Lvl full of succubi? No point in even trying.
Even at T16, I can get easily killed by just about anything if I’m not being very careful, while if I switch to Jade Harvester, I can face-tank the whole floor’s worth of mobs without much trouble.
Do I just have to learn to live with the fact that Carnevil is glass cannon no matter what I do and adjust my gameply?
Both builds are glass cannons but LoD is tougher than Zuni.
Another factor - Zuni is far more forgiving on death since you can recast your army obtaining nice meat shields and near full damage. While LOD is painfully slow to build up to full speed starting from zero fetishes.
Yeah that’s a great point. Starting with awful density in a GR makes it terribly tough for LoD given lack of SH stacks. Otherwise it’s tanky and fun.
Same if you get killed by the RG - it’s next to impossible to get the SH stacks up before you get one-shot. Especially without having those 15 fetishes to act as meat shields…
Zuni replace soul harvest with Horrify and it’s even better versus RG. Armor always up and you never have to get close to harvest.
At the end of the day what matters is how high a GR you can achieve and for me with low paragon LoD has been more effective versus the stronger Zuni variant. I believe that’s due to the toughness of LoD combined with utilization of double pylon time.
Same issue here. Apart from being harder to gear for in season, even with full ancient items that have me about par DPS wise with my Zuni, I can’t go anywhere near as high. I have seen the leaderboards, watched videos on it, can’t understand what I’m doing wrong.
Even gave it a go in non season with almost godly gear and couldn’t get within 10 levels of my Zuni.
With the same DPS Zuni is roughly 2.5x damage of LoD. Multipliers roughly assuming both use Squirts and CoE :
Zuni 151 Zei 1.6 Aughilds 1.45 gives 350x
LOD 98.5 flav 1.4 gives 138x
Zuni you might use travs or FLav/Squirts+Unity/COE but it’s still dishing out way more.
Plus LOD has that huge death penalty which becomes very relevant on a push.
I dropped a lot of offensive stuff - Harvester instead of Echoing Fury, Horrify instead of Big Bad Voodoo, the Fetish Belt instead of Witching Hour, Rubies instead of Topazes, and it made me much tankier. Perdition will still one-shoot me at GR100 but at least I can now survive goats and succubbi, even if my damage output dropped significantly.
I cleared 106 on a reasonable rift (festering followed by sewers with a Conduit in the middle) with that setup and I can imagine doing 108 or perhaps 109 on a perfect rift, and when I have all augments perhaps 110 or 111. Still nothing compared to the people doing high 120’s but I really have no idea how one would achieve that.
Now, the massive death penalty is what’s really making me want to switch to a different build - dying while fighting RG effectively means insta-quit no matter how much time is left, since it is impossible to build up Harvest stacks and Fetishes and the RG will just one shot me as soon as I respawn.
I’ve been working on a LoD Carnevil build. Very tanky. After years of playing LoN as a Glass Cannon I am loving LoD. I’m sub 2000 para and I just completed a GR 114 solo. I am not using an SoJ. I am using Squirt’s (cube).
You might ask how does one keep up the 5 stack of Soul Harvest. Simple: Drop 'Nado on a group, Spirit Walk up to them, Harvest, Back off. I usually hit a lone Mob with Harvest as I run past on my way to the larger groups to keep the stacks perpetually at 5.