Here is my current build, incomplete and probably wont change much. Im kitted for survival in hardcore. I discovered lightning (usually never use it) then found a YouTuber who mentioned the manald heal, but he seems to not have fully tested it. So I have and will give my conclusions.
So the YouTuber focuses solely on chain lightning and he has teleport (useless) and a few other things I think useless.
First off, he gets the proc behavior wrong and chocks it up to randomness. It’s not random, its based on “each use” of a spell.
Primary chain lightning is considered a channelling spell. As long as it is channeling it is only considered one instance of the spell.
I have proven this repeatedly where you can sit for days and cast chain lightning and get nothing. But as soon as you start casting other lightning spells you get the proc of Paralysis.
Chain lightning can also proc.
So what did I do? Well Im new to GRs so I dont know if this will become unsurvivable but lets start with why teleport is a waste.
First, everything dies at GR20+ still even with my suboptimal gear and no cubed items etc.
I dont mean everything maybe dies. I mean Rift bosses die when they are spawning in, and every mob melts.
So you dont need teleport, you can literally walk the rift in 3 minutes.
You dont need attack speed either, thats a waste. Because the number of times you hit isnt what makes proc work. Its the number of instances of hits.
So what I use is lightning hydra with helm that does frost aura.
I use arcane orb with lightning because it hits up to 15 enemies a shot.
I use diamond skin with added absorb because theres really only two threats you will have.
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you will get locked down in a dying mob’s nukes.
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you will get teleported into a dying mob’s nukes.
I use Rimeheart and I use the boots that set the ground on fire and I use the poison legendary gem. Why?
More hits.
I also have emanating from follower things like “crowd control time lengthened by 21%”
The reason should now be obvious.
You lay down a frost nova lightning hydra and fire an orb.
Everything gets frozen and stunned.
You hit with chain lightning and everything takes 10000% dmg from rimeheart, and 13000% damage from Manald’s heal.
Every second everything on fire and poisoned take another hit.
And thats why attack speed is unimportant.
Every hit to frozen and paralyzed creatures is 23,000%.
And poison = a hit every second.
If you have a weapon with attackspeed of 1.00, then adding another attack of 1.00 = 100%+ attack speed.
Youre better off increasing critical hit chance and crit dmg.
Any creasures near you are taking fire dmg 1 per second.
So thats another hit per tick.
Your arcane orb is in the sky hitting for a few seconds. So that’s another hit per tick.
Your chain lightning is hitting.
Your hydra is hitting with lightning and 1 frost nova per 2 seconds.
If we assume all but the nova are 1 second hits, then you have 450% attack speed boost by the numbers of times you’re hitting.
There’s some legendary ability that causes frenzy or maybe its the gem, i forget.
Or I forgot two other abilities.
The legendary gem that causes you to shoot lighting. That thing is like a GR conduit and hits just as fast. So say 2x per second. Thats 650% boost to attack speed.
Then anything feared when dying blows up for 800% dmg for good insult to injury.
And lastly that haunt amulent creates two followers who shoot fast and their orbs go through crowds.
Needless to say, when the hydra is down and the orb is in the air everything dies.
Then when youre shooting lightning from the legendary gym, you just run around and everything dies.
Your only slowdown is the time delay casting spells.
When caught in a mob you activate diamond skin at the right time.
Ive done this when being pulled by a nuclear bomb mob (8+ elites die at once and one manages to pull you just before it pops.
Just hit that thing in mid air.
Ive worked out the damages for my current build level. With the bracers that make my shields more effective. As long as Im attacking Im adding a good 100,000hp shield.
But on torment 7 a nuke ( that exploding circle when an elite dies) does about 1/3rd damage to my shield.
I like it that way because clearing GR in 4-5 minutes means youll rarely have more than 6 dying overlapping mobs.
I dont want to be riskier in hard core.
But because the build vaporizes the rift boss usually the first second they are spawned in (the first server tick really)…
The damage out put of this build absurdly exceeds the survivability.
Dmg frequently is 100-200million per hit. Not the billion or trillion of the best builds. But again Ive only just begun and can find better dmg stackers for offhand and some other spots.
Better version drops of the legendaries.
Cube some things. Etc.
Tl;dr -
- focus on numbers of hits not attacks per second.
- use hydra then orb then chain lightning to maximize skill based numbers of hits.
- rely on legendaries to increase number of hits more.
- use frost nova; lightning hydras from helm to maximize use of Rimeheart for a whopping total of 23,000% alpha damage to a paralyzed/frozen mob. Not including your crit hit dmg, your corpse explosion damage from the blood ring, your 333% per hit fire damage from boots, and your 280% poison dmg per hit from another legendary that is low level gem.
Basically, your damage output is insane, im not sure yet how I want to improve survivability at expense of damage.
But if I brought down the rift boss lasting to more than 1-second, that sacrifice in damage out put would give a lot of flexibility in survival.
- focus on armor and resistances because shields are more important than life per hit and shields benefit most from damage reduction.