Aurelis is good but it could be great

First off, thank you to the devs for listening to feedback about the multistrike-smite builds that sprang up during 0.8.3. I tried both paladin lightning smite and void knight void smite with multistrike last patch and experienced the same contrast as others - a smooth, enjoyable playstyle when clearing large packs and a complete headache against single enemies, especially rares and bosses.

The 100% Chance to cast Smite after you use Multistrike and hit a Boss or Rare enemy affix on Aurelis addresses part of this issue and in my opinion shifts the build from unplayable to playable. I am having fun with the lightning version now but unfortunately the frustrating moments still occur frequently enough that I cannot play for long stretches. The problem is that one normal enemy or a tight cluster of enemies will not trigger any smites. I have hit up to four enemies grouped together and not triggered smite because the ā€œinitialā€ multistrike hit touched all of them. At that point the options are to either take a few steps away and ā€œwhiffā€ so that multistrike misses everyone and smite can trigger, or more often just keep on moving to the next pack.

My ideal solution would be to change the Aurelis affix to 100% Chance to cast Smite when you hit an enemy with Multistrike. If that is too powerful then I would suggest 100% Chance to cast Smite when you hit an enemy with Multistrike and do not trigger additional swords. Really any change that allows me to trigger smite on that lone normal enemy or a tightly packed group of enemies would transform this into probably the most fun build I have played in Last Epoch.

3 Likes

Iā€™m playing this right now and have the same issue. Itā€™s a little odd to purposefully move away from single/small pack white/blue mobs to proc smites from multistrike to deal more damage then MS itself in those situations (white/blue patrols and Spires are the biggest annoyance). Maybe having Aurelis convert MSā€™s physical ā†’ lightning could be something to test for scaling? MS has a lot of more dmg in the tree, so maybe that conversion will be all it needs to carry forward. Or the, ā€œ100% Chance to cast Smite when you hit an enemy with Multistrike and do not trigger additional swordsā€. suggestion you have would do it.

Itā€™s one of my favorite builds right now by far. A lot of fun filling my screen with golden fury.

On a side note:

If you dont do it already:

  1. add the Vengeful node in Multistrike while using Aurelisā€¦
  2. add Hallowed Arsenal in Multistrike too.

With a high enough block chance (Bastion of Honour) and converting the extra swords to Smiteā€¦ you literally rain down hellfire on half the screen.

Brings my system to its knees when there are plenty of mobs, but it is glorious watching Smite just melt the screenā€¦

Add Javelin with its own smite proc and its a like Zeus is playing on your sideā€¦

psā€¦ Smite has to be on zero mana cost else it dont workā€¦ :wink:

Pro Tip: aim at empty space and spam Multistrike.

1 Like

Really? With a 3s cooldown on the Hallowed Arsenal proc?

Yipā€¦ Even with the cooldownsā€¦ There are so many different things procā€™ing smite that you hardly notice itā€¦

Aurelis 100% Smite on Boss/rare
Multistrike Smite per stack of Armament + the extra at 0.
Vengeful Smite on Block 45% every 3 seconds.
Smite itself with the 36% chance to double cast each time it procsā€¦
Javelin Smite procsā€¦

There really are times when there are lots of mobs on the screen where its literally raining Smite.

Been there, done that.

1 Like

So ive been playing with this item for maybe my last 15~ hours of playtime and just now starting to farm empowered.

I personally would really like to see the item get SOME love somehow. its almost there im really glad the devs decided to support this playstyle, but getting ā€œkill 3 profane fleshā€ echos is killing me, I have to do the ā€œAir multistrikeā€ dance against them, or any of the echos that are failed with all ā€œbigā€ monsters that are never rare and are just mega tanky normal monsters. These echos suck and tarnish what could be a pretty nice build.

is proccing a single smite off a multistrike cast too much? I dont think so but im curious how the devs feel now that people have gotten to play with the item a bit.

Multistrike is a clear/aoe skill, itā€™s always going to have issues with single target though you can take the axe node (I think, the one that hits twice) to help with that a bit.

Thats my problem, I dont actually have single target problems. its not good, but if im tanky enough that I can just stand infront of the boss and hold down multistrike then its fine.

My problem arises when a profane flesh is harder then empowered abom because I cant actually get my smite AND my multistrike. The item incentives you to build both, and says ā€œI help on strong single targets!ā€

But its like the devs forgot that there is large powerful single targets that are not rare or unique.

2 Likes

On such monsters I directly cast Smite, it deals more damage.

1 Like

There are some regular mobs that have a high base health - Profanes are one of them - and this, especially with map or mob modifiers active, can make these mobs take much longer to kill than even bossesā€¦ I dont think they are harder (in terms of their damage ability), they just have so much health they soak up everythingā€¦ It think its simply a factor of the math: huge base health X increased health modifier = higher health than a bossā€¦

They probably need to restrict this in some way to keep things balanced - but I expect thats something that will come when the devs do the whole game difficulty balancing they said they would do closer to launchā€¦

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When I was doing 300+ corruption on my FG and I got a zone with ā€˜kill the patrolling xxā€™ I would just instantly leave and restart and dying was faster than TPing out as it would take you back to the End of Time

I didnt care about the stability loss as I was just looking for Orobyss, was level 100 so received no XP and killed little mobs so drops were bad.

It was exactly the same as pushing a high rank in Diablo 3 - open greater rift and see bad layout and mob type and know you most likely couldnt beat the timer immediately so you just left and made a new game.

Thats a strategy I think many people employ at the momentā€¦ for various reasons not just farming efficiencyā€¦ Dont think that anything the devs do will stop this or a variation on this approachā€¦ its just a way of playingā€¦ everyone is going to find shortcuts/ways to do something that suit themā€¦

I just farmed this sword and was very happy that i would finally get to see my build lift-off (first char on ssf, so no pre-gear yet), only to encounter the same issue most people in this thread are having.

Big tanky normal mobs just hard stonewalling what is otherwise a fun build to grind with.
That or spires not being labbeled unique, so also just forcing you to go back to ā€œair-hittingā€.

The whole point of this sword should be to improve the player-experience away from
ā€œair-hittingā€ MS to proq smite and provide a fluid play-style that embraces the concept behind the synergy of both skills in my opinion. (and my personal opinion, making the synergy feel ā€œmeleeā€)

My suggestion would be to make the proq 75% but against everything that your MS hits. So we take a 25dps hit for the functionally of working on everything the game has to offer currently and in the future.

It should provide the required damage to go melee vs those hard white mobs, the MS passive tree allows the clearing of packs and the sword would provide the relevant dps against single target(irrelevant of its type).

I dont think this is an unreasonable suggestion, considering you can bassicaly just self-cast smite already and probably be better off considering this opens up more focused gearing and results in higher damage already.(playing a non-melee variant)

As an alternative route to address this problem, MS itself could get another passive tree node behind the current smite one which allows the proqqing of smite on single target but with less power then the sword provides vs rares and uniqueā€™s.
As an example
ā€œHeavens arsenal = Every third melee-hit castā€™s smite on the targetā€

This would both fascilitate the play-style prior to finding the sword and shore up one of its downsides.(if a node like this would be implemented the sword would still require a 75% proq rate imo, since this node would cover that dps loss every third hit)

Thanks for making this thread, saved me some time to write up a full new one :slight_smile:
Hope this gets adressed because i think this sword and the playstyle fit perfectly both in the paladin holy knight theme as-well as the void knight calling down punishment from the heavens with a grit and melee flavored play-style.

Peace,

-Itheryel-

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rebuke full charge, release rebuke, multistrike, volatile reversal, lunge, rebuke, repeat.

with proper timing and practice, the attackspeed, movespeed buff, from rebuke plus vr will negate most of those issues, but they obviously still exist.

that has been my method to deal =)

I kinda hope thereā€™s a node in Multistrike that will grant similiar effect to Aurelisā€™s unique effect. What if I donā€™t want to use one hand swords?

Well thereā€™s one that gives you additional swords at 0 stacks (Flanking Strikes, top left), so you can multistrike away at the air & as long as youā€™re within normal multistrike range of the boss itā€™ll proc a Multistrike sword (or Smite/Axe/etc if youā€™ve converted them).

I want something that converts Multistrike to Void damage to go along with the Smite Void conversion in the passive tree.

Itā€™s a melee skill, just adding a load of flat void damage will make it scale with % void damage. Itā€™s base damage is 2 physical.