I agree. Anything that helps your Shield will vastly improve your performance if a
GRift gets messy with lots of elite ground effects or too many ranged mobs. You can get by without MoC if you’re willing to fish for a better than average grift in the 136-138 range with around 2000 paragon but it does take fishing.
I might try MoC but I’ll have to rustle up the shoulders and cube them but that wouldn’t be too difficult.
Still attempting a 140 with Frostburn is starting to get frustrating with all the fishing that I’ve been doing. RNG is being far from kind in that regard. I know it can be done but getting all the stars to align is really difficult and I feel I would have a far easier time with perhaps MoC or CoE. Probably MoC, since, like others in the thread have said, I don’t particularly like waiting for the right cycle to come up on CoE to really kill things in a reasonable timeframe.
Then again, I don’t really want to give up on the personal challenge I’ve set for myself to complete a 140 with Frostburn but like I said, the extensive fishing is starting to get to me.
I can see that Javazon uses the Scoundrel and Idolis have both Scoundrel and Enchantress dressed up. I’ve mostly used Templar and Enchantress (haven’t pushed on my DH, only gotten to 130). Is the Scoundrel better than Enchantress damagewise? When I tried the Scoundrel it didn’t feel better compared to Enchantress.
And, by the way, looking briefly at the EU leaderboard the ones doing 140 are using the “classic” GoD set up, even players with just a bit more than 2000 paragons (haven’t checked them all)… with a lot of fishing of course.
I’d like to use the Scoundrel but I need the Enchantress for cooldown. The Scoundrel’s skills are a little better on account of the crit abilities but like I said. I personally have to use the enchantress or otherwise find cooldown on another piece of equipment which I can’t really afford.
I am also trying to wrestle with what’s better… 650 vit or 130 all-res. I try to keep my HP over 600k and using FB i went from running 117-118’s and procing often twice (not dying) to running 120-121 and dropping awareness passive… Not sure there is another good one, to be honest that’s worth it, but 2-3 gr’s and running faster due to squirts is huge.
I really need a better quiver… There is solid 6% dps gain there. I also found primal squirts last night and it rolled 1000dex vs cold. so my 17% cold, 96% cd, 10% cc vs 1000dex, 100% dex 20 Cold dam + anchient buff, I wonder which 1 is better…
Your first amulet is better if you need the crit chance. But say if you’re at 50-60 crit chance, I think you can afford to lose the crit chance. I run with 40% crit chance and do just fine.
The all res is better than 650 vit. But here’s something you could do. If you’ve got a 6% crit chance on your helm and had to roll it on, you could roll it off for 15% Life. The boost to your shield, in my opinion is better than the 6% crit chance and will make up the 650 vit you roll lose for 130 all res on another piece of equipment.
I did testing via d3 planner and original amulet is 3mil more dps and primal with 1000dex vs 10cc is 3mil more toughness…
dps 222mil vs 219 for basic example
dam is 2mil lower 23mil to 21
not sure if it’s reliable…
D3 planner doesn’t account for the 35% chance to freeze. Yes, your sheet damage will drop with less crit chance but the more freezes means you’re critting more often at the beginning of combat which is why using Frostburn is viable because of more reliable freezes.
That said, without Frostburn, you would probably need the crit chance since you’re not freezing enemies as reliably and thus you’re not getting free crits as often.
ah ok… anyway to account for that? i just did FB and same sheet dps as MoC but 25mil less toughness??
Might be the difference of the shoulders having a difference like one might not have Dex, Area Dam. All Res and Cooldown but only have three of the four with Vit replacing the 4th and a secondary of a single Resist.
That’s my guess anyway.
Edit: Or the gloves could have Vit on them and a single Resist while the other gloves might Crit chance, Crit dam, area dam. and Dex.
Nah, it’s the 25% damage reduction from Mantle. That’ll be what the toughness difference is from.
Maybe some of that other stuff too, but primarily the DR.
1 Like
I should detail a little of the build I’m using…
The skills I’m using are the normal Vengeance/Darkheart, Hungering Arrow/Devouring, and FoK/Bladed Armor, and Strafe/Rocket Storm. I’m also using the Wolf companion. But the big thing is I’m slotting in Polar Sentry for the ability to make use of BotT at range and to get more freezes in relatively large packs of mobs.
I’m also fluctuating between slotting in Sharpshooter when I change gloves to one with Dex, Vit, Crit Dam, Area Dam to slotting in Custom Engineering with a pair that has Dex, Vit, Crit Dam. Crit Chance.
That’s the basics, but the Polar Sentries stay because Zie’s messes with the freezes but I need BotT’s damage at range to reasonably keep Squirt’s up.
I really do appreciate you turning me onto this discussion.
It seems to be stuck in the same 3 way argument I had with myself over FB>CoE>MoC
I discarded MoC as unnecessary for me at this time and have been doing a straight GoD for most of the season because anything else hasn’t been needed yet other than an early push to 116? i think early on in the season just to get a buffer past 1600 shards for my sharding rotations.
It just seems to me that any which way you trade off one for the other, you’re dealing in a fuzzy grey 10%ish area of difference between (at the end of the day, not it raw numbers)
Is there anyway you can squeeze any more CHC on one piece of gear and drop sharpshooter for another?
My main problem with having a good enough crit chance is my Amulet. 18% Cold, Dex, 71% Crit dam. is the best I’ve got all season. Even my non ancients haven’t come with Crit chance. If I could get an amulet with the top affixes, it would solve my crit chance problems but so far there’s no dice in that department.
But yeah, the amulet is the biggest thing I need an upgrade in. But, I haven’t done many bounties so if I maybe took a couple of days to a week to run bounties, I might come way with the amulet I need and that might be my next step.
Edit:
I forgot that I had a primal Depth Diggers that I put on one of my crusaders followers. I also reforged a few Squirt’s and came away with one that has 9% less Crit Dam but has 13% Area Dam and was able to roll 20% Cold on to it. A little better than my old one. I’m pretty sure the extra Area Dam will make up for losing the mainstat and 2% more Cold Dam is just gravy.
The Depth Diggers allow me to switch between MoC and Frostburn. It appears to me that the Frostburn is better. Saves about a minute on 120’s and about 2 minutes on 130’s.
I also switched out Polar Sentry for Shadow Power and slotted in Thrill of the Hunt over Custom Engineering. It winds up being the same damage wise but offers more defense to take advantage of a good placed Occulus circle.
I’ll probably level another gem to 130/132 before attempting another 140 in hopes of finally finding an ancient NCS worth damn. The really bad thing is I’ve found 3 Primal NCS’s but all three rolled with crap stats. No crit chance, no Hungering Arrow Dam. Not even Vit or cooldown. There was nothing redeemable about any of them.
Edit #2:
No sooner did I remember my primal Depth Diggers than did I get a set of Primal Frostburn’s with Area Dam. Crit Chance and Dex. Rolled Crit Dam onto them. They even had Phys Res as a secondary. Frickin’ Awesome!
Area Damage is now up to 142%.
I am going to try Polar Sentry over Shadow Power for pushes. I run 120 speeds under 3 min and for tht it doesn’t matter. I will try to get 135/136 done this weekend. This week, just mindless 120’s to get to 2500+ P.
I know I can do 136+ but grind is just SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BORING
I can keep up with timer or close to it even in subpar maps. Still need decent mobs. Conduits put me ahead of the timer but still RNG is messing with me with too many illusionist, wallers, shielders, and missile dampeners.
Maybe a hundred more keys fishing for Battlefields or Festering with even halfway decent mobs should get me that 140. I mean, if all things are even and I windup with a grift without the mentioned affixes and a conduit or shielding in the right place.
I’ve been reading this entire thread out of curiosity and finally attempted the same GR with MoC and then Frostburns instead of COE and the results were meh. I faired much better with COE with similar GRs and Pylon layout. About 4-5 minute difference at GR125. My MoC is Primal and my Frostburns are excellent Ancients and neither of my regular GoD shoulders/gloves are augmented so the sheet damage was similar.
I guess I’ll be sticking with COE for the time being.
Yes, CoE is better. I completed a 139 in a little over 13 min about 400 paragon ago. If I was still running CoE, I’d probably be doing 140, 141, or 142 by now. Just from paragon alone not withstanding any new gear I’ve found.
This thread is really just documenting my efforts to prove that Frostburn can do 140+. In fact, I’ve said over and over again since the opening post that CoE is better. The question is, is it just a GR tier or two better.
CoE is worth ~3 tiers for most builds. A bit more for necro, a bit less for monk. A bit more for periodic nuke builds that can sync their nuke to CoE (e.g. FoK, Bazooka). A bit more for resource-limited builds that can time their resource dump to CoE (e.g. UE Multishot before Crimson’s).
Even without the freezes, the 20% cold from Frostburns is worth 0.8-0.85 GRs.
And the freezes are definitely still worth something. Not a crazy amount in higher tiers once you start regularly hitting CC immunity, but at least a little bit.
Frosties should be maybe 1-2 tiers behind. Compare 3 tiers for CoE vs. 0.8 for 20% cold + whatever the freezes are worth. 1.5 tiers difference maybe? The difference will be noticeable the higher you go (particularly vs. the RG), but it’s not THAT big.
1 Like
MATH! You got me again! I’ll get you next time and your little dog too!
(The math says it can be done, but no one’s doing it. I figured, I’d be the guy that gets within the top 150 with the build. As of a couple of hours ago, my 139 clear was something like rank 148 or 149. I just think it’d be cool to do something no one else has done. After the 140 is done, I might switch back to CoE or I might just goof around and try to push higher with Frostburn. Haven’t decided yet. It’s a weird sort of flex, I know, but it would be cool to ranks pretty high using a build most others aren’t.)
2 Likes
That’s one of the most annoying things with the leaderboards in this game. Everyone just copies the top builds. Even though there’s actually a bunch of other stuff that might be close to as good.
It’s pretty satisfying to push a non-standard build to a decent leaderboard spot. dmkt has done some pretty non-standard stuff in the past I’ve always enjoyed seeing. This season I’ve been really enjoying pushing Frozen Orb on the wizard boards, even though it’s really only the “best” build on 1 or 2 boards, it’s viable to push on 4/6 wizard sets/LoD.
It’s also fun to manipulate the leaderboards by popping out a top rank early with a weird build and seeing how many people you can get to copy your build. I’ve done that a few times on the wizard boards by putting up an early rank 1 and you see people popping up after with exact copies of your build, even if it isn’t quite optimal. It’s quite a bit easier now with the set-specific leaderboards since it’s easier to grab a rank 1 on those vs. the overall board. They just see you do it, think “that must be the best!”, and do it too. Haha, got 'em!
2 Likes