Recently I tried to build something different than the Spirit Barrage Build. I looked at Icy Veins and pretty much copied the 2nd best build which is also considered “Top-Tier”. Here is what I ended up with: https://eu.diablo3.com/en/profile/Gamer-2115/hero/131302338 (I have RoRG in 3rd cube slot)
With my Spirit Barrage Build I can clear GR 80+. With this one I struggle with GR 65. It takes much longer and I die frequently.
Is Spirit Barrage that much better or am I missing something?
I’ve gathered gear for multiple build and did lots of testing to compare them. At the moment I was testing I was running at paragon 850 and had 0 augments on gear, also used lvl 100 legendary gems only and was using all ancient gear but keep in mind I could not find optimal rolls for all. The conclusion was as follows:
Mundunugu SB: gr 112
LOD SB: gr 108
Zuni DoD: gr 92
LOD DoD: gr 83
Zuni Garg: gr 77
LOD Garg: gr 74
So yeah the SB build is quite amount stronger. The interesting thing for me was that the LOD SB build came close, that being said the rift gaurdians become more problematic with each lvl since the bane of the stricken is missing. That means that the Mundunugu set has the potential to scale way higher. If I would have to guess at paragon 1600 and augments the mundunugu set would be able to do around 140 while the LOD set with perfect gear and augment would still stick at around 120 since we will struggle with the rift gaurdians. Still fun to build though and I might retest it with more optimal gear to see the full potential but I guess that might take some time.
Yes, SB is that much better since 2.6.8. But also, as I have been trying to tell people - don’t follow icyvein to the teeth. The website’s contents often aren’t thought through and can even be outdated despite their claim that their builds were verified for each season/patch.
The good thing about icyvein is that they explain their build choices which can be a good source of learning about the game, but again, don’t follow their build guides to the teeth.