Trag'oul death nova build questions

Necromancer
1

So, at the moment, the build feels really really squishy. I have just watched wudijo’s build video and realised that I am playing it wrong. I have been manually casting DN (intermittently with weaving in siphon blood). I also think I have the wrong simulcram rune.

What would be a realistic GR level with a properly levelled ethereal weapon, at p950, no augments, gear rolls un-optimised and lgems at rank 25? Provided I’m playing the build right of course.

edit: holy hell! Just did a GR126 in 9 minutes with terrible maps (barracks was my first map) and a RG with no add ons. Using bane of the powerful atm rather than stricken. I also let NG go, so had to build that back up again, losing a bunch of dmg. And I think I lost a simacrulm as well mid GR (could be wrong). I can see why it’s the build of choice this season. It’s ridiculously OP as hell and tanky too. Kind of makes a complete mockery of any build balancing in this game.

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I’m just amazed you’re trying something other than Shadow/Impale for a change. :slight_smile:

Took a quick look through my screenshots for a clearance around the same paragon…

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I do play other builds - I play some UE MS alongside shadow impale every season. Occasionally I play HT garg. I was playing the popular wizard build with mirror image (sorry, can’t remember which set) several seasons ago before it got nerfed).

OK! I managed a GR128 in 10 minutes yesterday. But, I did pull my powerful and trapped lgems off my DH for the run.

I’ve now figured out the build and not having any issues with squishyness. Currently levelling up a stricken gem as that will be more beneficial than the powerful gem imho (I don’t really need the DR from powerful and the stacking of stricken should give me slightly more DPS than powerful too).

I am very tempted to go all out on the build and get ancients for it and augments too, but the drop rate of petrified screams has been truly horrid this season. 8 so far at p1050 (with 2 effectively sacrificed for the altar). At a drop rate of 1 in 10, it’s nowhere near that for me. More like 1 in 50 or even higher. This is the RNG consistency that I have consistently harped on about over the past few years. I get that it’s “random” but it shouldn’t consistently be so BAD over an extended period of time. Because of this, I am hesitant to fully push the necro build, as the shadow impale build is my main interest in the game.

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It’s nowhere near that for anyone, it’s 1 in 20. 5%.

But yeah, feels lower. By the D3 forum RNG complaint rules, your next five GR’s will drop 'em.

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that is never what I have seen it quoted as before…

but yeah, even at 1/20, that’s 260 GRs for 13 of them…I have 5 in the stash and used 2 for the altar, so that’s 7…near 50% of that 1/20 drop rate over probably 350 GRs…

edit: I’m seeing a fair few armour pieces on the console LBs with AR over armour…maxroll suggests armour and it’s typically better by ~7% for int classes vs AR in terms of outright toughness. I have had a primal chest piece drop, but it’s int/AR with the 3rd primary stat being able to be rolled off for vit. Am I better off salvaging it and waiting for a chest piece with int/vit/AC to drop? Looking at the build, the secondary stats don’t seem to matter (with my s6 impale build, I’d typically want reduced dmg from range/melee + LPK). Am I correct in my assumption?

6

Yes.

The reason why INT-based heroes want armour is because that’s the source of mitigation they naturally have the least of and therefore gain the biggest benefit from gaining more of. They naturally get All Resist from their INT (INT/10 = All Resist) but they have almost no STR or DEX (1 STR = 1 Armour, 1 DEX = 1 Armour). This is also why at some point you’ll put Rubies or Emeralds in your Chest / Legs (for the mitigation) rather than Topazes (for main stat / damage).

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Thanks. I’ve gotten used to the build now and really enjoying it. The downsides to this build are limited mobility (vs my beloved DH) and you really do need to get those mobs near the elite pack before nuking them. I’m finding this hard to do as mobs just don’t want to follow me. I’m using the bone armour to tickle them and encourage them to come at me LOL. I presume this is the right method?

The build is also highly map and RG dependent.

I’m still running powerbul, but have levelled up my stricken to rank 111 and will switch out when I get it to 116.

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Absolutely. At higher GR levels, it struggles a lot with single-target bosses. You absolutely want to keep a pylon ready (with the follower having Nemesis bracers on to spawn a pack when you click it, so you have some adds) and/or get a boss that spawns lots of adds, e.g. Hamelin.

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I’d add that if you’re fighting a single-target boss you should stack Stricken for a bit before pinging the pylon, too. Better to melt the boss a bit faster towards the end than risk losing those adds and have a horrible slog when you need the multipliers most! I like to wait until the RG is down to 75-80% health before pulling. Maybe slightly sooner if Power. YMMV.

Also, the best elite affix for adds is Illusionist (Horde isn’t bad either). The worst… WORMHOLE. Haha, grinding my teeth just typing that out.

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Yeah, I figured that out. Eventually, LOL. Condi pylon isn’t our friend either with this build.

Have managed a GR133 in just under 8 minutes last night. VERY happy with this. No RG with spawns and no pylon on the map to click when he spawned. My first 3 Yellow elites were Juggers too. I’m still undergeared but RNG was bloody beautiful to me last night - perfect primal gloves and helmet. Stoked.

Yes, makes perfect sense.

My ADHD self finds it hard to have the patience to NOT melt mobs and instead, herd them around elites. It’s a different play style to my s6 impale.

How much weaker is this without the ethereal? I presume around 10GRs?

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More like 4-5 only, as the Ethereal has a 100% multi.

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oh wow! Thanks for letting me know.

Well, have managed a GR135 in just under 7 and a half minutes. Comparing to the PC LBs, that puts me in rank 46 (solo seasonal; US; SC). I note that rank 45 has 10 augments, but similar paragon to myself. Rank 44 has also cleared a GR135, just a fraction faster than me, and has nearly p3000 and has 6 augments! I’m at p1198 and zero augments. Ranks 43 and 42 have completed a GR136 but have 5-6 augments each, although both are a bit lower paragon than myself at just over p1000.

I’m not sure how high I’ll be able to push “as is” with current gear and zero augments, but I’m hoping to hit around GR137 hopefully.

One more question - do I need to hit 2 APS? Is that beneficial? My AS is currently 1.86 APS, so I think I’d need IAS on the gloves at 7% (my Krysbin’s only has 6% IAS but a perfect 6% CHC and I rolled 50% CHD, and 97% bonus damage - so as close to being a primal as possible, without being a primal). As far as I understand, with an APS of 1.86, I am still only doing 1 attack per second. I’ve never really tried to understand the inner game mechanics (I wasn’t interested in such things in my paper and pen D&D days back in the early 90s either).

edit: maxroll.gg says to have no rune selected for siphon blood. I have the “power shift” rune selected (does dmg as poison), which seems to be what everyone in the top 10 on the ps4 LBs is using. Since my main dmg is done by siphon blood proccing death nova/blood nova rune which is physical, and my elemental dmg on my gear is set to physical and not poison, what does this do to the character’s DPS?

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This was just under three weeks ago.
GR135 at Paragon 1099…

Feel free to inspect the hero - DeathNova

I don’t have ancients in all slots, and I don’t have augments on all the ancients. I haven’t really done anything with her for about three weeks (hence why she’s only 20 or so Paragon higher than at the time of the screenshot) so she’s pretty much in the same state as when she did the GR clear.

In a previous season where there was a good theme, and I got to over 2000 paragon, I think I managed a GR144 or GR145 with this build. So, a GR137 should absolutely achievable by you.

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Blizzard’s LB website mustn’t be updating then, as I checked it making my last post. s32, SSF, necromancer. maxroll.gg’s LBs for necro, SSF, s32 would place me in the top 250. Crikey Blizzard, fix your website. I guess I’m doing OK considering my low paragon and lack of any augments so far and being new to the build. Now that I’ve found another build that I enjoy, no doubt Blizzard will nerf the hell out of it next season patch. You watch. They did it to me with D2. And then D4. And of course, D3 with the firebirds disintegrate/mirror image wizard (finally remembered the name). My all time best clear is a GR137 with my s6 impale DH back in the original season for the prime evil gems (~p2300 or so which is another best for me in a season). I did manage a GR132 with the firebirds build without any augments (around 10 minutes clear time from memory) so would almost certainly have went higher with it than GR137 if I’d bothered to augment it etc. I hope I can break into the 140s for a PB. I’m probably missing at least a GR in damage from some of my gear that’s not ideally rolled and with a GR135 in 7.5 minutes, I think I could probably manage a GR137 or 138 “as is” without that optimised gear. So, hopefully a GR140 is doable.

I’ll do what everyone else does - use this build to farm paragon so that I can better push with my s6 impale build. Would have liked to have finished top 10 DH SSF SC on PS4, but it ain’t gonna happen since shadows is the weakest of all the DH sets in s32. I think I’m currently around rank 140 globally overall DH, so not too bad considering. Give me that 15 GR dps buff that god ha has this season and I’d be right up there in the top 10.

This is why I have been so brutally critical of Blizzard for so many years. Ranking on the overall character LBs shouldn’t be influence by differences in set build performances, or paragon levels, but instead, by player skill. Farming paragons is NOT skill. All I want is a level playing field. I would rather Blizzard change the paragon mechanic to increase the drop rate for ancients & primals than buff damage. That would make for a far BETTER system.

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Did a GR136 today ending up at Paragon 1131 after it…

Leaderboards didn’t update though, due to problems on EU.

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NIce work. I cracked the GR137 mark last night, albeit by a single second on the clock. Only 2 pylons (channel and lightning) and terrible maps (bone sewers, barracks and cathedral) with the worst mob density I think I have ever seen in a GR in all my years of playing.

I am also noticing a large amount of juggernauts in every GR - much higher than I have ever seen with any other build. It’s like the game is stacking them…

I’m still trying to figure out what follower & potion are best to use with the build.

I am still unsure whether IAS and getting my APS to 2 will make a difference or not. It seems that I need 7% IAS on both the gloves and krysbin’s in order to do so.

I am getting so MANY barracks maps it isn’t funny. It’s almost like this map is the preferred map in the RNG rotation…

Anyway, still grinding away paragon, up to nearly p1300 now. Enjoying the build immensely. I’ve slipped to rank 3 for s6 impale - 2 people have cleared GR125s in 5-6 minutes (I did mine in 10 minutes but at p900 and no augments - both have 6 and 5 augments respectively).

Also, with the trag’ouls build, it seems that it is unlikely a good choice for petrified scream runs given the large amount of molten and poison pools in these events. The downtime on blood rush is annoying the hell out of me LOL - I’ve been spoilt by DH vault for too many years.

Also, consoles don’t seem to have a counter for BN hits, so I can’t see when it hits 300 and therefore my simucralms may be lacking toughness. Blizzard really needs to fix these console bugs with a massive QOL patch imho. They’ve given ZERO love to the console platform since 2014.

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I’m using the Enchantress for the extra attack speed, and the potion that gives increased life per hit for a few seconds after using it.

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Got it. Many thanks - will try both options out.

edit:

mmm, so swapped out my trusty templar for the enchantress for the increase to attack speed and elemental damage bonuses. Lost 20% AD in the process (swapped out my gloves), but went from 1.96 to 2.08 attacks per second, at least, according to the sheet information. So, is that sheet information actually accurate with regards to APS? At least as far as I understand, at 1.96 APS, I was only doing 1 attack per second with siphon blood/blood nova. With 2.08 APS, I should be doing 2 attacks per second, and thus double my prior damage, good enough for an improvement of ~1GR. Given the elemental damage bonuses from the enchantess being another GR, I should be capable of pushing around 2GRs higher than my prior variant.

Did 3 lots of GR135s and all felt like I was doing less damage and my times were all slower too. Granted, the first GR, I had ALL juggernauts nearly and very poor mob density. 2nd GR, was better elites, but probably still 40% juggers and again, bad mob density. 3rd GR, I somehow lost my simalcrums and didn’t realise it until at 90% progress and was struggling to clear trash mobs and had multiple horde/waller/arcane mobs sigh. Maps were bad too (1st level mud tunnels, 2nd map mud tunnels, 3rd map barracks). No pylon spawns near RG spawn in any of the 3 GRs. All 3 RGs were without adds too, so single targets.

Am I right in my APS understanding, or am I missing something? Enchantress is using guardians set and has int at 25k, so all skills are at maximum. Templar had dex on all gear as I hadn’t re-rolled, and so was minimum on all skills.

Using the enchantress felt squishier too. Looking at the templar’s skills, he doesn’t really add that much life regen, at least, imho, not enough to make characters feel tougher.

I really do feel like the RNG is using AI to realise what build I’m playing and spawning the worst possible elites consistently, with really poor mob density and to rub salt into the wounds, poor maps. I would say that I am getting at LEAST 40% of all GR maps as barracks. 40%. Something is seriously wrong with the map weighting in the game. I mean, perhaps I am being really unlucky, but persistent consistent bad luck?

As it stands, Blizzard really does need to fix the simalcrum bug that Wudijo mentions vs the single target dmg, because, unless it has been patched, they buffed your single target dmg but not the simalcrums, meaning only a 1/3 of your dmg output has a tiny single target dmg buff…