I’m liking the setup of my SC Wiz (Nurnuf) except for its Karini. So every time a Karini drops I run it through an upgrade looking for perfect rolls. However, the Squirts it’s currently wearing is a crafted primal (perfect roll).
Here’s what it currently has.
Karini - Ancient - Int, CHD 40%, AD 19% (Mystic), 72% Damage Reduction.
Should I bother trying for the perfect Karini at all?
In other words, is the perfect Squirts and sub-perfect Karini better than a Perfect Karini and sub-perfect Squirts?
If the answer is “Yes” then I can stop here and I won’t worry.
If the answer is “No” or “Depends”…
Then here are the options I have for a Squirts replacement:
Option 1. Int, CHD, CHC
Option 2. Int, CHD, % Cold
Essentially, the question is which is better: CHC or % Cold? The affix values obviously play a role, so for now assume decent/good values.
+Crit Chance is more important than elemental damage boosts in season 28 because of the Altar of Rites node that gives you arcane power regeneration.
I would keep trying for a better Karini. Don’t accept one that doesn’t have +Crit Chance on it.
It’s much harder to get a good Karini than it is to get a good Squirt’s or Convention of Elements. If you can get a regular non-ancient trifecta with a good legendary number, great, you’ll keep that for a long time. If you can get a non-ancient 80% Karini with +Crit Chance and + Crit Damage, you’ll also probably keep that for a long time.
In an ideal world, you would of course have both a perfect Squirt and a perfect Karini.
If toughness is an issue for you, a perfect Karini is a bit more important, since a max roll there gives you nearly 17% extra mitigation. Squirts, of course, always rolls a consistent affix.
For damage, your current Squirt is perfect. Your current Karini could gain 10% CHD and swap Int—> 6% CHC. You probably have, what, about 25000 Int? So losing ~650 Int would be a loss of about 2.7% damage vs a gain from 6% CHC and 10% CHD of about 10.3% damage, so a net 7.4% gain.
For a Squirts, downgrading from 20% Cold to 1k Int will cost you nearly 11% damage. Or downgrading from 10% CHC to 1k Int would lose you almost exactly the same amount, around 11%.
Bottom line seems to be: for damage, you are better off sticking with the optimal Squirt and suboptimal Karini. But if you are having trouble with toughness, an optimal Karini will certainly help.
In that case, you actually gain 28.6% mitigation from a perfect Karini.
Principle is still the same, though: if you aren’t having toughness problems, then that missing affix is not really an issue. If you are dying, then getting a better Karini should help a lot.
Since it sounds like that’s not a problem, stick with your current setup and just target Karini for an eventual upgrade.
A non ancient would be better than what you’re using. Basically you want 78+ for the orange secondary. 2 damage mods & intel. From 72-80 is a lot more than an 8% loss.
I was worried it would be hard to get one but it took less than 300 bounty mats to get what i got (decent ancient with aforementioned stats).
Then again ive tried focus/restraint using zhields lol. Dodging damage & dealing damage dont often go together. Better to be able to facetank in a pinch.
You totally absolutely need a karini with better orange roll, even if you go down significantly in sheet damage. 72% means 40% extra damage taken (equivalent to 29% damage reduction above). You say you don’t die, but proc sometimes, which makes me think that you don’t have great squirts uptime. Squirts is a 2x damage multiplier, so if you can get better uptime on that multiplier, and allowing you to maintain squirts while tanking a couple mobs in the oculus/red/overlap ring, by dropping even 10% sheet damage for an 80% karini, then that’s a big effective damage upgrade. And it’s when it’s a bit hot and busy, that you need your damage the most.
So I’d swap into a crafted primal crit/crit/int karini, with the crit/crit/int squirts. (You can mouse-over your cold damage in the “details” part of your inventory, and see which is higher, but I expect a 10% crit-chance roll to (narrowly) beat a 20% cold damage roll here).
On another note, you have a lot of AD, but no attack speed rolls, which is fine for star pact. Increased attack speed is a very strong roll for comet though, straight up damage increase as you are not limited by resources, and you get more sustain from more deflection procs so more squirts uptime. And it just feels better to play with higher attack speed, much smoother to kite. So I’d roll the weapon and gloves to attack speed, and in general crit is more important than AD, so even if you keep your karini, I’d go with crit chance over AD. AD is great in big pulls, but even solo 150 is speed running/time attack for you now, so you’d only really want the AD if you play in group with star pact and have a zbarb/znec create density and AD value for you.
Other notes on gear:
dont think you need the RCR roll on your shoulders with comet? Right? The red frame is pretty, but you’re not infinite paragon yet, so a vit roll is worth a fair bit. Might be better off with an ancient int/vit/armour/AD roll, which will allow you to move some paragon from vit to int → more damage. Or keep the toughness for more squirts uptime.
I think you should be able to find a 6% crit chance helm fairly easily. This build is a bit starved on crit chance as it’s a 2h build, so every % is important. 6% roll more important than the int range.
your gloves arent great. Low range crit chance and crit damage, lots of damage missing. If you swap into crit/crit/ias/int, maybe you have better rolls in your stash? Would be big sheet dps increase.
As you have the luxury of not having to gamble boots the entire season (grats!), I’d gamble for higher range crit roll gloves first, then get a 6% helm.
I proc it rarely. The Squirts is up the vast majority of the time. It’s really just certain monster combinations that break my shields: anything that leaps at the character.
So, if there’s any combination of Lacunis, the little monsters whose bodies erupt in poison clouds, the tongue lashers, or essentially mobs that are constantly lunging no matter where I run/teleport, then I’ll quickly lose squirts and not be able to refresh the shields. That’s about it. Other than that, Squirts is up 99% of the rest of the time.
I do run around and gather up big groups. So far it’s been the AD that brings down elites with the pulled group. For example, I’m still building up my HC Wiz which isn’t optimized yet. Often the pack will die leaving ~75% hp elites that I have to fight solo for 3 mins. Is taking off all that AD really a good idea? (asking legitimately)
That was just what came on it. I could definitely just craft some new ones.
However, the way it’s setup now, a problem I’m having is if, by bad luck, I don’t have the resources shrine effect when fighting a RG, I run out of Arcane Power . A ways back someone said to put a Amethyst in my helm instead of the Topaz and I spent a lot of time out of AP. For that reason, I put the Topaz back in and left the RCR on the Shoulders.
Thanks for the tips on the helm and gloves. Those are on my radar, just secondary to the Karini for now.
Hey we have the same boots! Glad someone else got so lucky.
I have seen this said before but don’t understand why. Am I missing something obvious because it doesn’t have stacks or anything? Why is it such a big different per percentage for this ring?
Because you go from taking 28% of damage to 22% of damage. The inverse math makes a few% gain on the Karini affix more impactful than you might think.
Let’s say you take 1,000,000 damage before Karini.
With a 72% Karini, you now take 280,000 damage.
With an 80% Karini, you take 200,000 damage.
The difference between taking 280,000 damage and 200,000 damage is fairly large. The 80% Karini makes you take 200000/280000 = 0.72 or 28% less damage, i.e. bumping from 72% to 80% is equivalent to getting 28% DR from another source. 28% DR = 1.4x toughness. 1.4x toughness is quite substantial.
It’s even worse when you compare a min roll (like this otherwise great Karini I found once). The difference between a 60% Karini and an 80% Karini is equivalent to 50% DR, i.e. adding an entire Unity ring’s worth of toughness.
One more math explanation I usually give when people have problem understanding additions vs reductions.
Let’s imagine reduction numbers closer to 100%. Three values
Reduction of 98%, 99% and 100%.
Original damage 100
→ With 98% reduction, received damage is 2, with 99% reduction received damage is 1 which is 2x better situation for the target. But with 100% reduction received damage is 0, which is infinitely better than all the lower values.
→ Reductions always have bigger impact for each % when being nearer to 100%.
With additions it’s other way around, impact is always lower at higher numbers.
If original damage is 1, then 100% more damage makes it 2 (100% difference).
But on the higher end increasing bonus from 900% to 1000% is only 11/10 = 10% difference.
