[3.23] [Leaguestarter] Exsanguinate Ascendant - a great all-rounder
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I'm of Fenris' mind on this. With the chaining issue solved by the Transfigured, we can pivot to concerning ourselves with the DPS.
We'd need to see how FAR the chaining goes, but Exsanguinate has a pretty large range by default for it, so we won't need to do anything to extend the range of the chain. That's Def putting Swift Affliction into my mind for a replacement for Chaining, which will also reduce the cost of the build by a good chunk for being a starter. My math may be flawed, but DoT for the gem going from 2.5 sec up to 3.5 sec seems to be a damage threshold cap increase of 70%. So, lessee.... 55% of 100 damage = 55 damage 70% of 55 damage = about 38.5 damage 55 + 38.5 = 93.5 So, in exchange for the increase in chaining, we lose about 6% of our total damage threshold, and frees up a Gem spot for us to work with. With Swift Affliction, we see an increase in DoT damage to Lv 20 of 39%, and 25% faster infliction of damage. So, 25% faster infliction of 3.5 seconds is 2.625 seconds. Now, I'm starting to feel this head cold that's coming on so I'm unable to continue the calculations, but it's looking like we're doing similar . We have REAP for bosses, so mapping is going to be mapping so much faster that it's gonna be crazy. 39% of 55 = 21.45 55 + 21.45 = 71.45 So my train of thought is getting fuzzy, but as I understand it the DoT of the primary Gem is a flat per second and the Swift Affliction does not concentrate the DoT, it just gives a bonus damage to the DoT while cutting it short. So with Swift Affliction we may be doing about 30% less damage, but it would be piled on quickly. So, are we gonna be looking for faster attacks, or more straight damage per attack? I'm gonna go put on a sweater and blow my nose, I'm fading fast. Grats, you can see the trend of a disease influencing a mind in real time reading this post. Do I have any DayQuil...? |
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" Hey there! The damage effectiveness only matter for the hit portion of the skill. For us, it is a small chunk of our damage, so we don't need to stress about it too much. However, this means that Cruelty Support is most likely a no-go for us. We'll have to see. |
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" I believe it has been stated that the quality of the gem doesn't change now between variants. Don't quote me on that though. In that case it would seem that the Transfigured version has 2s base duration, which is increased to 3.5s thanks to the quality. Again, low added damage is a very small loss, since it doesn't influence the DoT portion whatsoever. |
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" Hey there! Regarding the Transfigured gems, I don't think it has been explicitly stated that every gem gets a Transfigured version, let alone two. As of now (it is 8th December, early morning in Europe) the 5th and the last batch of gems has been released. Therefore, we get only one Transfigured Gem for now. About the new Wildwood Ascendancies: the way I see it: Warden of the Maji - solid buffs early game and a defensive Buff/Aura is nice. Tinctures are most likely useless for us, so is the Mark point. Warlock of the Mists - the Blood Magic stuff doesn't work with us - we need mana to reserve our auras, flat phys to spells doesn't scale our DoT, Crimson Power forces us to go for worse bases to scale life instead of defenses. The Pacify curse and the next node would be decent, the other two - no clue. To me, there's little here that interests us. Wildwood Primalist - the Warcry loot node actually matters to us, because we use Enduring Cry. The character size/inventory space can be useful for like juiced portal-heavy rippy content, but otherwise it's whatever. The next three, obviously, customizable, therefore good when you have something to socket there. Tl;dr: Maji good early, Warlock is a trap for us, Primalist obvious late game. |
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" The way I see it is - +2 to gem levels will grant us ~25-30% more damage. Most of our supports grant more. Also, gem level scaling slows substantially after level 30, and we aim to get +6 from dual-wielding Cold Iron Points. The chestpiece is also quite weak otherwise. To me, it is a bait. |
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" Hey, don't stress it, ask away. Yes, I thought about alternative weapon sets. I thought about not only minion wands, but also rare Staves, dual-wielding rare Daggers, Cane of Kulemak and some others. You can get the best damage from the well-crafted rare staff iirc. Going for e.g. +2 all, +3 physical, essence spell damage and some DoT multi on suffix yields the best results. You can also get some cast speed on top. You also get another 6-link if you need it. The downside is - you're losing Whirling Blades as a movement skill, which (if you are not scaling attack speed) is the fastest, followed closely by Shield Charge. Yes, you can use Leap Slam with Staves, but these Leap Slams are slow. The same applies to Cane of Kulemak, which can be a great weapon, but again, it is slow. Inb4 you can just have one movement skill, say - Flame Dash: yes, if you want, you can just cut the other one, but I like to have both, and advise that to others. The same logic applies to dual-wielding wands - you don't have access to any attack movement ability, You can bypass it by using a Wand+Shield combo, but that will compromise your damage and improve your defenses. Coming back to the minion wands - I think these are a bit overcomplicated, because you can go with regular wands with %spell damage implicit and essence prefix, and get the same results. This is the case thanks to the line on Exsanguinate gem that reads "modifiers to spell damage also apply to this skull's DoT". Therefore, regular wands should be just superior to minion wands with Spiritual Aid. There's another alternative in a form of Rune Daggers. You can dual wield these, retain the Whirling Blades, have an easier time crafting (these are actually a bit easier to craft) at the cost of the useless implicit. There's also a price tag discussion - out of all of these the clear budget winner is Cold Iron Point. These usually start from 30-50c day1 and drop to ~10c day3. You can get one with a damage corruption for ~1div. These are only slightly worse than all those crafted weapons, but are much cheaper and easier to acquire. That's my logic there, and that's the reasoning why I strongly advise sticking with Cold Iron Points. Feel free to check other options though. After all, the guide is just the template, customize it away to your liking if you know what you're doing. |
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" Hey there! My thoughts exactly. The only think I would add is - I am not sure that 1 tendril +21 chains will actually clear better than 9-10 tendrils +2 chains. We'll have to see. |
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" To clarify some things: Swift Affliction indeed increases the DoT damage while decreasing its duration. In theory, this decrease can result in a damage loss, because you have to apply the debuff frequently enough. In practice, keep in mind that Exsanguinate has a debuff cap of 3. Therefore, if you are able to cast three times in the time equal to your duration, you are fine with single-target. Now, the increase of base duration helps there a ton, effectively increasing the damage uptime while decreasing the frequency at which we'll have to cast to maintain stacks. Funnily enough, I don't believe this all will matter while clearing maps. I reckon all of the normal and magic monsters just die from one cast and one stack of damage before it expires. The change starts to matter on Map Bosses and even more on Pinnacle Bosses. There, the duration starts to matter, as explained above. Also, I'd have to crunch some numbers, but I think Exsanguinate might be now on par with Reap for single target, because remember, Reap lost the +1 blood charges enchant. |
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If you use exsanguinate as the boss gem standard exsanguinate with gem switch(chain -> swift affl) may still be better as you can savely use cruelty which outperforms swift afflication or efficacy easily. which makes the regular gem stronger again xD
Current Build: Penance Brand
God build?! https://pobb.in/bO32dZtLjji5 |
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I can attest, Ex has been massively buffed by the longer uptime. I skipped the Duration Increase nodes in the Passive Tree, and I'm clearing the game and the bosses really fast. The strength is being able to dodge attacks while the DoT is still up, and it remains up while keeping myself alive. I'm actually having an easier time of things than any other build I've run before, including the previous League's build.
I'm looking forward to tooling around with the Trans, but the regular feels pretty fantastic already. |
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