[Arena 484][0.8.2]Bear’s Arcane Elemental Blast - 3 elements, 7+ ailments, 5k+ ward, up to 500k+ DPS

Hmm? The node doesn’t make enemy hits do extra damage, they just make you lose 2 mana per hit, but also when you get hit you get increased spell damage and cast speed.

Experiment with it, you may find something that fits your play style and gearing. Key thing is to have fun and every build will have slight differences due to RNG.

Yah absolutely, was more curious if he had tried it. Not gonna matter at my level atm, as nothing is getting remotely close to me lol.

Ah okay, yea that is a question for him. I was giving general answer based on the nodes and have a different EN blast build with similar yet no way near as tanky as this. I cannot stand the channeling aspect.

We don’t go for arcane absorption because cast speed has no impact on channelling, it doesn’t increase the tick rate of attacks. Also, the increased spell damage when hit would be basically non existent. You might cast AA for as little as half a second up to a few seconds until you run out of mana. In the best case scenario you may be in AA for a few seconds, take a few hits that would increase spell damage a bit but you wouldn’t feel it at all.

In general, not even to do with this spell, increased damage as a damage stat has little impact until you start to hit decently high numbers like 100%+ increased damage. You’re often better to go for base +x damage like +20 cold, +15 void, those kinds of stats. So the % increased damage you would gain while in AA would be so little you wouldn’t feel it.

Other than that, you also lose -2 mana per hit taken which isn’t ideal.

2 Likes

Im only lvl 58 but I thought I would give this a try. How would you reccomend getting Stout Lagonian Idols. I’ve saved every Idol I’ve come across (through a lvl 75 blademaster) and this character and I don’t have a single one.

Also, is there a way I can farm for the other uniques? Would I do that just by going through monos? or replaying certain areas of the game?

Thank you

Sweet, hope you enjoy the build.

So, stout lagonian idols drop just like any other idol. The health affixes on them with good rolls can be relatively rare. It took me about 400 hours of play to get 8 of them with decent rolls. They’re a universal idol that works well just about any build (health is always an important stat) so I’d recommend picking them up on any character you play. If you don’t have those any other idol with ward retention or health will work. There’s 1x1 idols that drop commonly with ward + health.

Most of the uniques are random drops so you’ll get them through regular gameplay. Exceptions are Strands of Souls which is a 10% drop from empowered Abomination, and Last Steps of the Living which is a 14% drop from Frost Lich Formosus. Strands of Souls can be replaced by a regular belt with high health suffixes. Last Steps of the Living can be pretty easy to farm if you reset the boss (some googling will help you there).

1 Like

Thank you for the info

I respecced everything and it has been fun so far. A complete different playstyle than what I had before, which is what I wanted. Thank you for the build :slight_smile:

Ok so far everything is going well and I finally got my boots so I can wear them in a bit. The thing that confuses me is how come LB only shoots one small blast and then nothing. I watched the video and see it doing much more. Am I missing something ?

Need to make sure you have Insidious Conduction in LB so it’s a channelled ability. Then it’ll be constant when you use AA

Ah that explains it. Thanks I will get that right away now.

Had a question–you’d already answered it–missed it somehow.

Funny thing-- messed around with LB just because, Idk why :stuck_out_tongue:
i had killed some mobs
they dropped loot
while mousing over the loot I clicked lb
and then clicked elemental nova (one time, no hold) and for some reason it just locked on and blew through all my mana on EN. Repetable.
Has to do something with the loot on the ground where my pointer was over

This build is an absolute blast, and seems ridiculously strong. I’ve played quite a bit of builds in this game to around level 70 which is where it gets hard for me to keep going, just due to being a bit bored. This build is easily the strongest so far. It just absolutely obliterates everything. I killed Formusus with very weak gear in three “cycles” of using all mana. I found a ridiculous staff I’m using atm with like 300% lightning damage and 140% spell crit. Spell crit is 27%, EN of course is therefore at 33%.

What made me laugh though was I had completely and totally misunderstood what was doing the damages. I was looking through dps of skills just for fun. I’m level 70 atm. EN was sitting around 5k dps, other skills were similar, Meteor was around 8k. But then I scrolled over Lightning Blast. 47k dps, 63k with Arcane Ascendance on. LB appears to not just be a supplement to EN, its the main damage source for me atm lol.

Anyway, 12 Formusus runs later, I finally have the boots. Wanted to get that done before the patch because I thought they were gonna change it so you couldn’t just fail him on purpose after you saw what items dropped.

Going to push on now, thanks for this amazing build Bear.

2 Likes

I just started playing this build last night, and Im 62–and ofc Im not in perfect gear. It is a ton of fun.

Glad you’re having a blast :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Regarding the strength of EN vs LB, EN should really pick up once you have 25 points in it and grabbed the various damage nodes around the tree. The damage modifiers significantly increase its damage, especially when you’re able to stack ailments from the Invoker’s set. It also has some big damage nodes for crits so getting a high crit rate will help a lot.

Enjoy!

I tried disintegrate with channeled LB, it doesn’t work, I enjoyed the build for the 1 day I tried it, but i’m a bit worried it’ll get nerfed since the AA LB interaction doesn’t seem to be intended

It’s possible it’ll get nerfed and I could understand the reasons why (no channel cost, channelled ability to avoid the cooldown). At the same time the damage it outputs isn’t exaggeratedly overpowered and even after a nerf the build would still output decent damage.

would it be possible to post some screenshots from your tree and the skills?
I have trouble understanding which nodes would benefit the most.

E: nevermind, just found out that you can look at the skills in the planner too. Totally forgot that this is possible from Grim Dawn.

E: just killed lvl 100 logan with lvl 90. Tough fight, but only because the damage on my side was low. Build is really tanky. Still missing the amulet and the belt.

1 Like

Awesome! When you get the amulet your damage will skyrocket. 3 extra points for spending for damage nodes.

The build has been updated and it’s as powerful as ever. In fact, it’s been buffed with more tankiness and armor shred we didn’t have previously. I’ve added a change log section and will try to do an arena run when I have time.

  • 0.8.2 - The build is largely unaffected in 0.8.2. The following are buffs and nerfs:
  • Buffs:
  • Elemental Nova granted Melting Nova. We lose 1 point in Infernal Prism and Fiery Destruction but are given increased critical chance and armour shred. While unfortunate to lose some points in damage nodes, the build now has a way to do armour shred without using a suffix slot on the glove/amulet slot. This should more than make up for the misplaced points and increase the damage of the build further.
  • There are now 4 more slots for idols allowing us to increase the tankiness of the build further. There are 1x1 idols here that have ward retention + health, or ward retention + cold resistance you can put in here. On my build personally, this has lead to an extra 300 ward.
  • Nerfs:
    *Mana regen has taken a hit being reduced from 10 to 8 per second. When using the Focus bonus for 100% mana regeneration, this means it has been reduced from 20 to 16 per second. It’s a slight nerf but is hardly noticeable. Since we mostly use Focus for the burst of mana we’re generally in Focus for about two seconds at most.