Glyphs: Exploit vs Control

Sorcerer
1

So, both these Glyphs are related to Dexterity and have similar bonuses. Exploit for damage against Vulnerable and Control for damage against CC.

I’m trying to decide which one would be better.
I have 100% uptime of Vulnerable, so all the bonus from Exploit are “permanent”.
On the other hand Control has stronger bonuses but the mobs have Unstoppable and Bosses spend most of the time NOT staggered.

I imagine that for T4 content Control is better because I will kill the mobs before they get Unstoppable.
And for Pit pushing Exploit will be better in the lengthy battles.

Am I right with this logic?

What do you prefer?

2

What is your build? That would a small but a very important info. Also, do you play the season or eternal?
Control offers higher bonus damage vs crowd controlled and even more if they are frozen. In pits it means you clear all the regular mobs and elites faster but the extra bonus only appears vs bosses when you stagger them. Exploit offers lower overall bonus damage but is very consistent in the sense that keeping enemies/pit bosses vulnerable is rather easy for a sorc. I prefer tactician to both. You skill both ice armor and flame shield but keep only one of them on your skill bar. For ice armor, you choose the option for cooldown lower by 1 seconds for each 50 mana spent, so it is always available. By casting cold armor, you activate all the damage bonuses for 4 seconds for the cold armor and another 4 seconds for the flame shield => permanent x20 more damage against all targets. Destruction is the other one. Getting a sorc crit capped is rather easy. You get a nice x20 boost and higher crit damage pool overall.

2 Likes
3

Which glyphs are you running for the other 4 choices? Also spec details if you feel like it pls lol

I tend to make alot of build choices around consistancy/uptime; if im looking at the choice presented here, i’d always go exploit, but most specs ive thought of for sort of preliminary checking have ‘better’ selections to work with. Example: the spec im using is CL/LS/Hydra, on eternal server.
Glyphs: [board used on]

Elementalist [enchant master]
Tactician [frigid fate]
Destruction [crackling energy board]
Flamefeeder/Conjuration [start board]

[still testing that last one; pit 75 went really smooth but i just got my gear adjusted enough to start pit climbing for this patch; flamefeeder seems better for overall dmg on paper but more testing needed]

Unleash [other shock board, lol]

[based on results of above tests, this may see scrutiny but unlikely to be replaced, this spec goes through mana at an insane rate and boosting all damage and regen seems too efficient.]

Edit: formatting

4

I am big fan of eliminator for the last one.

5

Its a consideration for sure; i like the elementalist/tact/unleash to boost nonphysical and crit due to enlightenment and splintering sort of double dipping those stats; need destruction, and leaves one last for me. Ill stick it on the test list with flamefeeder/conjurer later this weekend :+1:

Edit: you might be on to something with that glyph; i did a couple 80’s in pit and those bosses’ hp seems quite high compared to pit clear speed, more so than last couple seasons anyway. Idk need more time in there.

6

I’m trying to do a Okun’s Ball Lighting build. At the moment, the playstyle is generate as much Crackling Orbs as possible to proc Esadora.
Almost half my damage comes from Esadora, the rest are BL, CL, LS and Unstable Currents.
The Enchantments are CL and LS.

As for paragon, I’m testing many things, right now it is like this:

  • Base (Exploit)
  • Fundamental Release (Tactician)
  • Enchantment Master (Unleash)
  • Static Surge (Defender, making some tests here)
  • Ceaseless Conduit (Destruction)

I have 100% Crit chance, 200% Attack speed, 100% uptime of Vulnerable and more CC than necessary (I’m on Eternal and my Hands of Fate is the legacy one with random CC chance).

Also, I’m trying to avoid the META, not using Mythics, Enlightenment or LS (as damage dealer). To be fair, this build is so off META that the Mythics end up hurting the playstyle and Enlightenment is as good as Vyr’s.
Changing the Aspects from Conceited to Splintering Energy did increased my clear speed by almost 2 minutes though.

I never tested this, but I don’t think you need to pick a Defense Skill and leave it out the bar to increase the Tactician timer. Don’t know… just assumed it was not necessary.

Yeah, I’m using this one, my Ice Armor refresh every 4 seconds, more or less.

Me too, I prefer consistency. I always go for Exploit, but this time I started to wonder if Control could be better.

I imagine that Eliminator will be good at higher levels of Glyphs and Paragon, but right now I’m coming short of Paragon points and my Glyphs are only level 60.

I like Flamefeeder, but I don’t have a source for Burning effects…

1 Like
7

How about winter, anyone using that? I’m using it in my ice shards build, but am not sure if I should swap to something else. Feels like it fits

8

I tested winter a month ago or so and it doesn’t build stacks against bosses/cc immune targets (may need testing again, blizz changes alot from patch to patch and will occasionally miss sticking a change in the notes) its a strong gylph but i didnt care for the conditional uptime tbh

I love vyr’s as a concept; im waiting for the day that it and occulus arent so much of a dmg loss, sadge lol :confused:
Off meta is a good thing, planning out your own spec is easily more fun than just copy pasting.

Nice; seems like good pairings. Whats defender? Srry im terrible with some of the names. Do you have access to fire/ice dmg passively? Elementalist is really strong too if so but not worth changing a preferred spec just to work in.

I ended up with conjuration over flamefeeder atm with current gear; my crit chance feels too low to lose it. Mebbe with some GA’s on right spots ill revisit.

1 Like
9

Defender gives bonus to Rare Nodes, 15% Damage Reduction with Shield and general damage up to 10%.
I’m using it just for the Rare Node bonus, I don’t really need the extra Damage Reduction.

No, my damage is purely Shock.
Maybe I can make some adjustments to add Cold damage, then I could get a weapon with tempering for luck hit Fire damage. :thinking: This could work.

10

If it isnt too cumbersome; might be worth. Eli Surge tempers hit quite hard too; check out azurath and frostburn as additional options along that thought (not necessarily advocating for use, but just as a ‘awareness of all sources for thing x’ thought)

Ty!

1 Like
11

I put winter in the spot where maxroll recommended flame feeder, only for the 10% bonus. Because of where it is though, winter is giving me 24% to non physical and 30% to vuln via the bonus to rare or magical (I forget which). The only thing I thought about subbing it with was exploit. Not sure though.

1 Like
12

I such a dumb*ss…

Because I’m using Esadora, and it’s explosion scales with Int, I also picked up Verglas for its Int% and Attack Speed stats. And just now I noticed that the buff from Verglas applies to everything, not just Ice Shards…
I’m here breaking my head trying to find better damage and there was a 100%x multiplier sitting on it the entire time.

I will replace Defender for Elementalist. Now with Ice Shard in the mix, I just needed a Temper in Fire Damage.

By the way, the buff from Elementalist shows somewhere or do I just trust that it is working?
Same for Verglas… can’t find an indication of how many stacks I have.

1 Like
13

Probably worth it if you are using enlightenment then; boost non phys everywhere you can. Im not a huge fan of enlightenment thematically but its silly strong. You can also build stacks in boss fights by chilling adds so its better uptime than i may have given it credit for.

Yeah its strong; i want to give it a srs attempt because my old s1-3 timeframe build was a hydra/ice shards spec; shards is just a fun main spam skill. Next patch maybe for me because im still getting my currunt soec up to par and mw rerolls are eating me lol

Gotta trust lol im not 100% sure but a general trend i think is any debuffs applied to opponents like the fundamental release node, elementalist glyph and destruction glyph (ie, enemies take multiplicative additional dmg) dont have any communication to the pkayer.

14

Warding is better at abusing enlightment than winter. There are no conditions attached to the non elemental bonus.

15

Late reply but i did get some play over the weekend. You and Xavey (i think in another thread) were right; flamefeeder is strong with enlightenment, i eventually got enough crit chance to replace Conjurer and it was def the right move. Thanks for the recommendation!

16

You honestly think it’s worth switching? I realize the damage to chilled does nothing to bosses…but essentially I would be getting the non physical bump every level above 45

Would reinforced give me the same bonus with enlightenment even though it’s just a damage bonus and not non physical

17

If anything, stalagmite could be regarded as the only alternative. You can directly increase ice spike damage by selecting every int field in the frigid board, can make your crit chance without hatred power to squeeze in harbringer’s passive power. Blizzard sorc does way more vulnerable damage than critical damage. I don’t know whether you play ice shard or blizzard sorc. For blizzard sorc, vulnerable dmg from glyphs and socketed (perfect blue jewels instead of emerald) result in much more damage.

18

Ice Shards
Don’t use ice spikes

19

After playing around with glyphs and paragon boards a bit, exploit is extremely strong if you play seasonal. Sorceress starter board is pretty much a dex/int heaven. Eliminator with all int investment or exploit with harbringer’s power are very strong contenders. You can reach over 3k% damage to vulnerable added to the damage pool bracket.
In case of Eliminator, not only do you get overall damage increase from more Int but also your boss power like Beast in The Ice or Gregoire’s Lightning scales a lot higher with it.

1 Like
20

interesting. Even though Maxroll suggests flamefeeder, Im not using it. I think there are much better choices.
I removed Eliminator for Warding for a couple reasons: the initial bonus of 20% to normal nodes stinks. The bonus to rare is so much better, which Warding has. Warding also lets you take advantage of non-phys damage.

I switched out Winter (was using it because of the Rare node bonus and because it kinda fit with my build) to Reinforced for extra damage reduction and because it fit with the rare node bonus, plus the damage bonus at legendary. They are quite good in the right slots. I’d like to fit Exploit in there somewhere but I just dont know where. My other glyphs are Elementalist, Tactician, and Destruction. I would likely have to dump reinforced or warding. Im not sure what would give me more damage.

I actually prefer Reinforced over Warding, with a starless sky ring I dont think the additional bonus adds much value. But Warding has the non-physical bonus vs a damage bonus for Reinforced which doesnt work as well with Enlightenment I think?