Vyr's mastery vs overflowing energy for arc lash build

is anyone using overflowing for CDR? It seems pretty weak in conjunction to vyr’s mastery providing damage and damage reduction?

Yes i am and its great it keeps unstable up almost 100% of the time.

For context have my build:

Im level 63 full crackling lightning

Spark(5/5) speced towards crit chance raise
Chain lightning(8/5) speced toward crackling on crit -also enchanted
Lightning lance(8/5) speced towards increse damage when picking up crackling -also enchanted
Teleport 1/5 speced towards crackling
Frost nova 4/5 mainly from gear will be specing towards the vulnerable with my final SP
Nothing in mastery except the lightning passives
Unstable currents ultimate
The non vyrs keystone basically it gives cdr per crackling hit .1 per normal mobs and .25 for elites. It also gives 2 extra hits with crackling.
All lightning passives except movement speed
1 point in elemantal resistance
1 point into each second not hit by a elite increase damage red to 40%
3 points into barrier for ever 100 mana spent(this will proc fairly consistently with crackling since you will be spending mana quickly and getting it quickly.

The keystone combined with the tele means you are hitting 5 mobs per second might be 6.
That said large enough group with elites and you will have the ultimate on cooldown.

For paragons well obviosly im running crackling node and crackling second board. On my second board i am current running the electricution stone im thinking of swapping it to unleashed(this gives damage reduction with lower mana since we will have no mana most of the time its up value should be good)

As to gems i run:

rubies in my armor - hp is just good i debated topaz however i feel more comfortable with the extra hp.

Skulls in jewelry - the one thing sorc is lacking orher than hp is armour the skulls give you that bonus and help you survive if you want elemental resistance place a skill point in the elemental passive

Diamonds in weapons - because the unstable currents uptime is around 80% the boost to ultimate damage pays off in dividends.

As to aspects i run:
Ring 1 - Mana back on self bounces CL
Pants - Frost nova vhance to proc if target frozen
Helmet - Hitting elite gives barrier
Armor z AA gives damage reduction
Wand - Distant enemies stunned and damage boost to stunned
Amulet - Unstable can double cast other lightning spells
Boots - Crackling gives movement speed(honestly this kind of sucks and i dont feel it at all am looking to change it)
Gloves - Lightning lance has chance to double cast.
Focus - Standing still increases damge up to 30%

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That’s very detailed, I’m also currently using overflowing, I’d try to take vyr’s mastery to test out which 1 actually fares better with my playstyle

Overflowing Energies is by far the better of the two Shock capstone passives in the Sorcerer tree. One of the worst mistakes I’ve made so far was listen to guides on the major websites like Maxroll, Wowhead, and Icy Veins calling Crackling Energy useless. I don’t know if maybe that was the case in Beta and the guides were simply never updated but it’s terrible advice and completely wrong.

That said, if you’re looking to use an Arc Lash build in particular, although I don’t know why you would given how badly it was nerfed, Vyr’s Mastery might be slightly better if you’re always in melee range to spam AL. Overflowing Energies pairs much better with Spark. Spark also has phenomenal synergy with Unstable Currents and if you’re using a Rapid Aspect and a wand you will fire it off like a gatling gun and proc UC much more often than you would with AL.

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If you’re running any kind of Crackling Energy build you should be using Ball Lightning (talented for Wizard’s BL) in one of your enchantment slots. When it procs, which is quite often, it not only does great damage but generates half a dozen CE orbs easily. Lightning Spear in the enchantment slot is currently bugged and you only seem to be able to have 1 up at a time. I’ve had entire screens full of CE orbs and cannot spawn more than one which is a statistical improbability at a 10% chance.

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I consistently have 6-10 lances up from orbs all the time its lower during boss fights simple because u end up with less orbs however its heavy damage as it ignores collision and just flies through entire mobs

I want to like Crackling Energy, particularly because it’s Lightning’s gimmick (like how Fire mostly features Burning, Cold mostly features Chill/Freeze) and I just think it’s neat.

But it feels really bad to me, at the moment. The damage is awful, which I realize isn’t the point of Overflowing Energy, but it would be awesome if it actually did any damage. Additionally, I just do not like anything about picking up orbs. I’d really love if they could change Crackling Energy to just be something you gain when you proc it, rather than needing to walk over and grab an orb. It just doesn’t feel very good to me. Hell, keep the orbs if you must, give me something like Teleport sucks up all Crackling Energy within a radius, etc. Anything, really.

That’s my personal peeve with it and why I’ve been running Vyr’s. That being said, I think another reason why it’s seen as less favourable is just Crackling Energy generation kind of isn’t great. You have a small chance when casting Spark, if you give up the 8% crit chance. You have a chance when Chain Lightning crits, but losing the 8% crit from Spark makes that feel worse without better gear and +crit. Ball Lightning is the only reliable method for getting Crackling Energy, but Ball Lightning feels bad in my experience. Just awful. I was actually excited to use it with Arc Lash and the Aspect that makes Ball Lightning orbit the player, but it seemed like it wasn’t hitting things half the time (this is an issue with BL in general, not just that Aspect, it seems to have a very weird hitbox) and the orbs have collision. They’ll just disappear if you get too close to a wall, pillar, random rock that happens to have a hitbox out in the middle of nowhere, etc.

Sorry for the block of text. Anyway, maybe my issue is a lack of appropriate gear to support Crackling Energy at the moment, though. I’d rather use Chain Lightning regardless, just because I like the spell.

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I kind of wish that they would buff overflowing to automatically absorb crackling energies in range instead of having to run towards them to manually collect it. It’s really very clunky gameplay atm…

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I’ve leaned into the crackling energy and made it the focus of the build and I am melting packs at level 55.

It provides solid damage and decent enough mana regen that I can spam my core skill more often than my basic.

It also forces you to move PoE style which isn’t a bad thing cause the best defense is to not get hit.

Pretty much teleport, nova, spam core and maybe basic, explosion, teleport again, rinse, repeat.

Fun.

Ok the reason u take the crit rate is 2 fold.

Crackling can crit.

Chain lightbing crits grnerate orbs.

So the more crit you have the more orbs and subsequently more damage.

Today at level 65 now my crackling was criting for 1800 damage and CL was hit 2600.

As to orb generation its not an issue pop your ult its gonna only have like a 20 sec cd due to the crackling keystone.

Yes its somewhat gear however looking at my aspects only 3 go towards crackling and the rest are generic. My suggestion is be full legendary past level 25 you dhould be fully orange anyways. Spend obols and buy pieces and repkaxe aspects as needed.

Dont be afraid to uograde gear. I upgrade every piece to 1 before max mean 4/5 on sacreds and 3/4 on regulars unless getting the 5th upgrade gives me a boost case in loint my +3 frostnova, chain lightning and lance.

It may not seem like a lot of damage however with the FN vulnerable you tear through mobs fairly quick and in pvp you can solo any of the classes berween the freeze and stuns.

speaking of gears upgrading, I haven’t upgraded a single one yet and I’m level 58… I was afraid that you would waste some resources since it’s not end game gears yet…

They come in so quickly i dont even notice. The reason i dont hit the last upgrade though is one of the mats is harder to get needs world boss/event

Oh I absolutely agree, there are lots of problems with crackling energy. For starters the orbs should track to the player, picking them up is incredibly annoying although you kinda already have to do it anyway for the health potion orbs. The real draw for me is the mana regeneration and CDR which are HUGE problem areas for Sorcs especially in the early game which most of us are in rn. I don’t even want to play a shock spec because the lightning visuals are puny little sparks but atm it’s either this or the mindless Ice Shard/Fire Wall spam which I dislike even more. Build diversity is practically non existent atm.

What I really want to play is a proper channeling build with Incinerate and Fire Ball and Meteor in the enchantment slots so that things blow up and fire rains on them as I turn my weapon into a flamethrower. Sadly that’s impossible right because of the terrible balancing is. I will try a Meteor build once I get a Shattered Stars aspect but that hasn’t happened yet. Or maybe a Fire Ball build if/when I get the Unique Staff that shoots out 3 of them.

Just upgrade thing to lvl 2, it costs almost no gold are basic mats. Only thing you have to worry about wasting are the shards from rare (yellow) gear.

I hear you. I don’t like Firewall at all. I don’t really want to play Incinerate either, though. I’ve never enjoyed Channeled spells.

I’d like to use Fire Bolt, Meteor, and Hydra. Possibly Fire Ball in place of one. I just want to light things on fire, though, without the mobs needing to stand still.

I do have Shattered Stars. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. I think it’s probably solid, but I need a newer one. The values on the impact and burn are both a bit low. If Mana weren’t such an issue, this might not be a problem however. But Fire has the worst Mana support from what I can tell, short of some legendary specific to Fire that I’m unaware of.

Agreed. I would actually love to have the orbs not haphazardly laying around. The potions I get why they are dropped they way they are, but definitely a high preference to running around picking up orbs, while you’re still in the thick of it.

It’s not that big of a time suck, but I do think it would be a much more efficient way of utilizing the orbs.

If Devastation had a 500% increase, I’d love it more for mana regeneration and find it more viable than it’s current standing.

I have literally never seen more than one Lightning Spear up at the same time with the enchantment aside from during Unstable Currents which obviously isn’t related to the enchantment.

Also if you’re using Ball Lightning as one of your enchantments you will never run low on orbs during a boss fight because when BL spawns under a boss it produces half a dozen orbs in seconds.

How can you ever run low on orbs… there are 1000s. Let me be clear i think orb is trash and so wont use it. Its way to inconsistent as a damage option oh its flying welp the mobs ran away rip. Also lance is a cooldown so it pairs with barrier on cd usage. Meaning i can proc barrier on every skill on my bar.

I prefer surviving over a inconsistent piece of damage.

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Exactly why you have to make builds and theory craft without some kid that pays for bots to sub his account for fake views.

Lot of cool endgame applications of shatter when you start to see the ways to boost the damage spooling once enemies have higher health.

Pro tip: stack gear that increases CC time to extend freeze, thereby increasing the damage to apply with shatter.

I had near identical runs of the same dungeon with a build that basically allowed a direct swap from avalanche to shatter. The speed of clear difference is insane with shatter versus avalanche.

i agree, makes the play style chunky, im using teleport to just collect orbs i proc’d

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