I have swapped temporarily to Blizzard build for farming (and in preparation for S4 where I plan to do a bit of farming at the beginning), and Im wondering what is everyone’s tick damage in eternal realm for this build so that I know whether my build is on par. Its been a long time since I’ve used Blizzard build.
Im currently getting about 1.5M per tick against normal opponents and about 700K against boss (non staggered) with a Occy wand. With a Non-Occy wand, Im able to get about 2M per tick against normal opponents, and about 900K against a boss, non-staggered. Around 1.5M for boss while staggerred.
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Your lucky, as i’m fully decked out and don’t think i’ve seen higher that maybe 1.2 mill.
Ok. Im a max build with all glyphs maxed + starless and the Shako (though i believe godslayer will give much more damage in some circumstances). If you have the same, share your glyphs, paragon boards, uniques, and aspects and we can troubleshoot.
Note that i dont really care as much for this build because it is just temporary (speed farming). So with that said, i used maxroll’s build as a starting point (lazy i know). My paragon board is the ‘starter paragon board’ from maxroll (not the one for max dps unfortunately… didnt see that option in time), but is slightly different from a node usage perspective. I dont use Frozen Tundra because i question it’s usefulness; i have another damage multiplier in its place. I use devouring blaze on ammy as opposed to hoarfrost bc hoarfrost doesnt work on bosses; i wish i had Devouring Blaze + Glass cannon on ammy as GC on ammy would give me an extra 18% damage. I also dont use Raiment.
Not a blizzard sorc, but my testing (certainly not exhaustive) indicates that stacking base crit damage and extra points of dB remains one of the best ways to get good base damage for multipliers like conciet/starless, as long as you have solid crit chance and deal most damage as direct (non dot).
And as you say, hoarfrost doesn’t have an effect on bosses outside of staggered windows.
I bet you could get more dps with soulbrand tho.
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Soulbrand ? This is a defensive chest. I don´t see how it could increase the damage.
MacroNinja has done the testing on this extensively, and he has found the secret sauce that makes soulbrand an offensive juggernaut. I believe he has found some synergies between swapping razorplate with soulbrand, temerity pants, new sorc doombringer underwear in PTR, and imbiber glyph.
I am genuinely interested in understanding why imbiber glyph alone gives me 3M extra max tick damage on my firewall build, yet, the base damage doesnt change when on vs off.
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Doombringer: so many war crimes, so little coverage.
Imbiber likely gives that result because its additive to other stuff like dmg to burning and you have a few hefty multipliers like starless, but there may be more too it.
Wait no, its because soulbrand is an imbiber enjoyer and with soulbrand, well you know.
Yah, when doing a simple test of on vs off of imbiber for 2 or 3 Firewalls, there is no meaningful difference that imbiber adds. But after 30 or 40 seconds between having imbiber on vs off, the damage difference is very significant. So Imbiber increases the max damage but not the min damage. And we can rule out Starless as causing the spread.
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Ok that is interesting; ive noted an increase in things like xfal proc on the dummy after like 30 sec or so of hitting it. Wonder if theres a correlation here…
No imbiber tho. I had written this observation off as accumulation of conjuration mastery stacks but it seemed a bit off.
I was doing some tests in my sorc with temerity + Souldrand and the trick you get a barrier 100% of the time, Imbiber increases the barrier by 30% [ + ] and using both aspects %N [ x ] while you have a barrier and %N [ x ] to vulnerable while you have a barrier make the sorc killer. If you combine with the aspect gain %N [ x ] damage while not moving you get about %90 [ x ] damage at full power. Sum +45% [ x ] from Tal rasha ring and you get 135% [ x ] more damage.
PS. I dont remember the aspects names. In fact I dont think we need imbiber at all. Testing with Exploit or Winter you get even more damage. I avoid to use situational glyphs like control because it doesnt works in all cases. Bosses cannot be CC for example.
Really good aproach.
we were joking about the usefulness of soulbrand and Temerity… sort of a bad inside joke.
I use Protection now with Occy to get 100% barrier uptime which also means i get 100% uptime with Conceited and near 100% uptime with stormswell.
Still not completely sure what gives the extra 3 to 4m max damage with Imbiber. This has been a bug since s0. Some folks swear by Imbiber but im not one of them.
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But it works and very well… lol the guy you are trolling was not wrong at all. lol lol lol
Both are still defensive gear but they work very if you use the right aspects and also get a good layer of protection…
Yah, soulbrand and temerity dont do any incremental damage and that was the inside joke. As i already have 100 barrier uptime from Occy + Protection, i dont need anything from soulbrand
Imbiber is not multiplicative so I will not make too much difference. And it works only while you are healthy. It may cause the critical strikes to scale because CS works using the base damage in the calculations.
People, people, we’ve got to stay on message about Soulbrand. Don’t crack!
@XAVY, yes, Darth’s between the lines is probably closest to the truth. But you are also right, barrier bonuses. Other synergies, plus barrier fuels Ice Armor even more. Lucky hit chance with barrier is actually kind of nice with new Frozen orb meta coming.
The only think against Soulbrand when Frozen Orb takes over is that Iceheart Brias is actually way more fun to play with. (Not most powerful, but most fun). And the conversion too frost nova explosions much higher than anything requiring lucky hit.
@Darth, in PTR, I got to about 1M on regular dummies and 200k on boss dummy. Not having damage chill nodes work against boss was a real pain. After the initial surge of the test and checking the strategic supply of Zir blood, I’m tempted to say we just go straight to Frozen orb after the first amulet drops.
Continuing on this tangent, I noticed probably the best PvE sorc chose to use Frostbolt as an enchantment on this build. And actually that is probably the best choice after seeing it.
That seems low compared to my numbers… i am getting 960k now against test dummy boss in eternal and my build is not even optimal (less than ideal wand and no GC on ammy). You were using the ‘new discovery build’ from the seasonal players? Real bosses in t100 die in 4 seconds in eternal now after a few optimizations . I would expect the damage to go up in S4 (though inner calm and tibault nerf, im not so sure… maybe a wash now).
I feel your pain about not getting as much bonus damage with a blizz build due to inability to conistently apply cc / chill. A lot of our passive skills do not get applied.
That aside, if s4 is the season of the frozen orb / conjo build, i will try to stay open minded. Just not a big fan of spamming orbs that magically turn into conjurations. Seems too big a cheese build for me to think im doing anything of talent.
Well now i have something new to go mess with for a bit. Ty for the information, going to go imbibe.
Also sort of agree, the orb build is powerful but i cant find any happy in orb. All capabilities tied to one piece of gear that has seasonal gimick vibes is also tad off putting.
Edit: tested imbiber, i swapped flamefeeder out (both had near minimum stats for 53% primary effect, so good test). Not a positive change on my spec, but theres the passive next to dB that gives pyromancy skills a multiplier while healthy; id assume that a reasonable firewall spec would have 3 points here if possible. Maybe there is an interaction with imbiber and this passive; are there any other benefits from healthy that a firewall spec has? I cant think of any atm.
Just so we are comparing apples to apples, we saw thr spike on max tick damage on our firewall build instead of the blizzard build. Assuming you were testing with your firewall build, heres some things to reproduce the testing conditions: max soul fire and max inner flames, max firewall, max frigid fate legendary node. Starless + tal with full tal stacks, tibaults, conceited, stormswell, engulphing, inner calm, etc. Burning Instinct legendary node as high as you can get it. With a staff with optimal affixes, you should get up to 16 or 17m per tick with imbiber. It takes maybe 10 or seconds to rev up while firing all skills (tibault, TP, frozen orb) to reproduce max damage.
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Nice, good info 
i assumed you were referring to the firewall build; do you also see significant increase using imbiber on blizzard spikes?
Always got this. Need an excuse to grab the lucky hit node lul
If you replicate your test at any point, im curious to know what the occulus version of the same spec would hit; ive been attempting to get a general idea of the delta between occy/off and 2h, but def a messy comparison.
Only from memory which could be flawed, oculus gave me 6 to 7m per tick max. Dagger maybe gave me 9 or 10M. Two handed gave me 13 sans imbiber.
Just remember that 2h is slower, doesnt have lucky hit, and you lose the affixes from your focus. Most of the max damage comes from Engulphing bc you get 130% multiplicative at some point from that aspect alone.
I did not test out imbiber on blizzard build.
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