Trying to push with frozen orb DMO. My highest so far is 125 (pretty crappy gear/gems). I’m wondering if anyone here has tips/advice for it?
Basically my strategy has been port around gathering stuff up, throw a big black hole during arcane rotation, refresh the triumvirate stacks just before cold rotation, then spam orbs (teleporting around as needed to avoid losing squirts stacks). Is there anything big I’m missing there?
Haven’t played it much myself, but as I understand, the big damage is in the middle of the final explosion, not in the traveling orb, and definitely not in the shards flying out. So it’s important to get your distance just right so that the orbs explode in the middle of the pack. Wudijo recently uploaded a clear with DMO orb I think, might be worth having a look at that just to get an idea of the playstyle.
I made some quick augments and played some hours with medium ok gear. Got 141 cleared, but seems I’m not getting much higher with current tactics.
When there’s enough mobs, I pull them to group and shoot - trying to dedicate cold cycle for shooting. Shooting distance so that explosion is in best spot.
When mob amount is not so high, I pull them and shoot at the same time constantly.
I could probably train a little more since now I used totally less than 10h for actually playing DMO, but GR 150 seems definitely out of reach if I don’t to any big changes. Reverse archon with empowered effect fishing might be a solution. Or then just keep trying and hitting my head to wall with the standard build - it’s possible since there are videos of people doing it 
This statement reeks of what under a bridge smells like.
If your gear/gems are crappy, that alone tells you what your problem is.
1/10 for effort
Yeah, the distance is critical.
After a while it becomes kind of second nature, but when you are just starting with the build that’s the most important thing to master.
It also makes RGs that like to stay stationary very good, and RGs that move around a lot kinda bad. If the RG moves right at the start of your cold cycle, you’re effed. The travel time of the orbs means that, as soon as they move, all the orbs you already had in the air are wasted. And then by the time you reposition and get more orbs in the air, your cold cycle is almost done. An RG that moves a decent distance at the wrong time can cost you 2-3 seconds of your cold cycle.
For GR150, you won’t kill elites very fast. I was like 5+ minutes for yellows at 3k without a pylon, blues will die sooner.
I generally just gather up the elites and slowly march them forward through the rift. Basically I’m always walking forwards with the elites strung out behind me slowly following. If you get a good open map (Fields/Festering/Battlefields etc.), you can slow march through the rift and gather up basically every elite on the map and bring them with you as you march forward. Pause periodically to kill some good trash, but always keep the elites moving forwards.
At some point you may have killed enough trash or blues to spawn a pylon, and if it’s a good pylon, then you win.
On my 150 clear I got my travelling pack up to something like 6 elites and 2 blues in a Festering, the blues died as I was going and I think I offed two of the earliest yellows too, spawned a Conduit right at the end of the map and killed the 4 remaining yellows + yellow from the pylon with the Conduit, and then I was way ahead.
Watch out for spinners off the pylons though. Spinners off a Conduit is okay, spinners off a power can kinda mess you up.
EDIT: Checked your profile HailFail. DUUUUUUDE. WTF IS THAT TRIUMVIRATE. GIMME!
Anyway, I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with your gear. Get your gem levels up (gems should be around the level of the GR tier you are trying to clear), get better jewelry, get more ancients. But no fundamental issues. Only thing is I’d run Topaz in helm instead of Diamond. The Diamond doesn’t give you very much damage from Crimson’s (especially once you get an Empowered Shrine), but the Topaz always gives good toughness, just because of the way DR scaling works.
E.g. with Crimson’s set, Empowered Shrine, and 10% CDR from paragon, you have 1-0.8*0.5*0.9 = 64% CDR without diamond, and 1 - 0.8*0.5*0.9*0.875 = 68.5% CDR with. This means the diamond is giving you 1.685/1.64 = +2.7% dps.
A Topaz gives you a straight 12.5% DR. E.g. with Crimson’s set, 10% RCR from paragon, you have 1-0.8*0.9 = 28% RCR without topaz, and 1-0.8*0.9*0.875 = 37% RCR with topaz. That takes you from a 1/(1-0.28) = 1.39x toughness multiplier to a 1/(1-0.37) = 1.59x toughness multiplier, i.e. a 1.59/1.39 = +14.3% toughness increase. (Because of the way RCR and DR scale, adding more RCR with Crimson’s always gives you toughness equivalent to adding that amount of DR from another source, i.e. adding 12.5% RCR gives you the same as adding 12.5% DR elsewhere, 1/(1-0.125) = +14.3% toughness).
Because of the way CDR and RCR scale, but also the way DR scales, adding more CDR with Crimson’s suffers heavy diminishing returns. But adding more RCR does not, and adding more RCR always gives a good toughness boost.
Personally, I’d take +14.3% with topaz over +2.7% dps with diamond any day.
The topaz also has utility for the RG fight, the extra RCR lets you get more orbs out. It doesn’t matter in big packs because APoC carries, but for single target situations the extra RCR from topaz is nice.
Topaz is always quite good, and diamond is a decent option normally (e.g. without Empowered Shrine diamond could be worth as much as +7% dps), but this season in particular with the Empowered Shrine this season makes diamond a poor optimization choice compared to topaz IMO.
EDIT2: Actually, at under 2k paragon, you should probably run Guardian’s.
Some update. I changed my mind and continued towards 150. Lots of RNG is involved but I already cleared 148 and could have cleared 150 if I just had selected higher lvl.
I have plenty of paragon (4.6k) for 150 clear, but just need skill and luck to actually pull it off.
Dropping Karini in favor of focus+restraint increased dmg a lot. But it involves also more fishing. Build is very squishy before getting most of the shrine effects and seems at the start it’s better to just to focus staying alive and pulling mobs to better places.
In really good map progress goes so fast (as long as there is trash available) that 150 could be cleared even without pylons. I have same basic tactic as Tinne described in previous post. Mostly I stop pulling and shooting only when there seems to be elites in such place where they receive plenty of area dmg, or when I get power potion (or fitting pylon). Sometimes power potion can get elite health down quite significantly even with low amount of trash. Just need lots of exact hits.
Problem is (in addition to bad playing skills) the RNG
Have to say DMO 150 isn’t for beginners. Stutter stepping skills seem almost mandatory and to save time need to know the conditions when to give up sooner than later.
In Tinne’s post there are good hints about taking RCR instead of CDR.
I tested some time with diamond and passive cooldown reduction skill, but noticed it’s much better to have topaz (12.5% DR) + blur (17% DR) over ~7% total dmg. This is better even for actual dmg since I can keep Squirts much better up this way and position better. I also tested taking dominion passive but it’s not good for me since I cannot get kills consistently enough at 150.
Some crazy good players could change all gems + skills to dmg ones, but then they will need more fishing or better playing skills than me.