Build idea/concept, feedback appreciated

Mage
1

Hi there,

Newer player here looking for some feedback on a build concept that i thought of. Since i’m fairly new i don’t even know if the concept will work, let alone be good so i thought i’d share and see what others think.

The idea revolves around the Gaspar’s set. Probably the highest lvl set out there and pretty hard to farm a well as since you’ll need time to farm for both the chest(1 in 7 drop) and helm(10% drop in lvl 100 zone) in one of the latest monoliths.

Each piece gives you a Decimate proc on use of respectively lightning/fire/cold spells with a 4 second cooldown. Decimate is a void spell cast in a cone in front of you, and the cooldown and aoe are improved by the Set bonuses.

This skill doesn’t sound that impressive since it’s gated behind a hefty cooldown, but i want to believe it’s damage is pretty good considering the difficulty of obtaining the full set and the large cooldown recovery.

So i was thinking how to incorporate this set into a build succesfully and came up with the only skill that make it viable: Elemental Nova. My thought process is that since elemental nova uses all elements, the internal cooldown of Decimate per different elemental skill use is best optimized. I assumed the cooldown is per separate element and not global. The 4 second cooldown is lowered to 3,25 by the set bonus. If my above assumption is correct, then Elemental Nova could theoretically proc Decimate each 1,0825 second if you use all elements within that 3,25 seconds. Realistically this will be slightly worse, since it will be impossible to proc each internal cooldown perfectly, but it’s still a huge difference from the initial 4 second cooldown.

My thought is that Elemental Nova is great for clearing, while the Decimate proc will help it kill bosses a lot faster.

For offensive passives and gear affixes i would focus on global spell damage increasers like intelligence, spell damage, spell crit, adaptive spell damage etc. to buff all elemental nova’s and the Decimate proc.

The defensive options is what i’m most unsure of. The set helm and chest give you full cover on void res and 35-45 cold/lightning respectively. This high amount of res is another good part of the set. Together with the elemental resitances from passives and a bone amulet for phys/necrotic, you will need very little suffixes on your remaining items to cover your resistances.

I could go for a ward type defensive setup with the ward boots, but not having the ward chest heavily impairs this i’d think? But the sorcerer passives and skills do support ward the most i’d say. The other option is to stack health/endurance/endurance threshold etc on the remaining items.

Sorry for the long write-up, but i hope you like my idea or can provide me with any helpful feedback!

2

Your best bet is to farm up the gear and give it a try. Unfortunately, I don’t see a lot of theorycrafting threads on these forums because we have so many actual build guides that are still being fleshed out, refined and implemented.

3

Mages don’t use Void, so you would find nothing in the trees to boost void damage. You could boost spell damage though. I guess you would lose a lot of potential damage if you use this set with a class that does not use Void.

4

Will do! If it doesn’t work, atleast i tried something of my own invention :slight_smile:

5

Yeah i realize void is not on the mage skill trees, which is why i would use all the generic nodes: spell damage /crit/crit multi/adaptive spell dmg etc. which is plentiful on the mage tree. And it will also buff Elemental Nova itself. I would try a Void Knight, but i think Elemental Nova is the only skill which can make full use of the full Gaspar set.

6

Decimate seems to deal very few damage. On my sceptre, it says 243 damage per second. It also has a 4 second cooldown, that will be lowered to 3 byt the two pieces bonus.
I don’t know how it really reflects in game, but this looks far too weak to take three slots on the player’s gear. I would rather use one only piece and try to find a good synergy with other builds.

7

boardman21 put together a Void Knight Decimator build (there’s also a Paladin variant). But, it primarily works off creating ignites and using Rive to convert those to physical damage, rather than maximizing the number of Decimate procs and relying on the void damage.

8

I’m doing about 10K crits on my lightning mage which i could probably get up to around 13-15K since my character is not optimized for this skill at all. I’m making the assumption that the proc cooldown is per element and not global. In that case Elemental Nova will be able to proc Decimate almost every second. If my assumption is wrong… well then this high level set is just straight up useless. I will give the build a try after farming the helmet and testing the cooldown since i was planning on doing a Nova build soon anyway. If it turns out well, i might make a guide about it or report back here.

9

Yeah i saw that one, but the Decimate proc is a very small part of those builds. As i mentioned above, i will just try it out as soon as i have the helmet and confirmed that the cooldown is indeed per element.

If it doesn’t work out, atleast i tried an idea of my own and i can just make it a regular Nova build. It would be sad to see that such a high level and hard to farm set has pretty much no use as a full set though. I haven’t seen any sets actually being used in any of the builds posted here , which i think is a shame.

If it does perform well, i might make a build post about it in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks for the input!

10

I am currently working on creating some “showcase” threads, to demonstrate some use-cases for specific uniques/set items, to give people some guidance or inspiration.

Those are not meant to be fully fleshed out build guides, but rather some ideas, since i am a pretty strong adversary for build guides.

The Gaspar Set was one of them.

I really do like the playstyle, altough i am using a completely different setup than the one you described. (I am using 3 different spell, each of one elemental type).

This is one of the most fun builds iplayed in a loooong time, eben though the Decimate is more a gimmick than anything else.

I hope the Decimate get’s buffed, since i tried scaling it with several different methods and it’s just a gimmick and not even killing white mobs.

But that doesn’t change the fact, that because of that set i re-discovered playing a mage that uses mroe than on “main” ability is suepr fun to play.

Having 5 skills and literally using all 5 of them constantly is really engaging gameplay.

1 Like
11

That’s what I feared by reading the description, you can’t fully boot it. At least, is it visually nice? I haven’t even tried it.

I love build guide when they come with explanations. The best build guide is not the one you follow blindly, it’s the one that will give you ideas for your own builds.

And I agree, just applying a guide may be a way to play, but it’s not a way to learn a game!

12

I wonder if a Void Knight could pull if off. For the Lightning element, you could use Smite with the conversion nodes on the right side of the tree (that also turn Ignite into Shock). For the Fire element, you could use Abyssal Echoes with Lightbringer node on the right side of the tree. Void Knight as a base would be an easy path to scaling the Void damage of Decimate. I’m not sure how you would replicate the Cold element or if it was even possible, but 2/3 might be something to work with? You would also have the option of running Devouring Orb to keep your Void procs going to feed the Sceptur’s ignite chain and eat them with Rive (the boardman concept) as an added bonus. It’s stretched more thin than the traditional Decimator build for VK, so your defense would be likely lacking (especially with the Gasper’s full set tying up slots), but it seems 2/3rd possible on paper.

13

Yes it is,. Especially with the 3 set piece bonus.
It’s basically a purple void-y harvest

Decimate Showcase

https://youtu.be/AoyiOBBAc9Y

Yep agreed.

VK of course could scale the void dmg better than a Mage, but i even tried scaling it with the Dark Shroud Of Cinders unique, which is the apex if void dmg scaling currently.

With that Unique Body Armour you only can use the Fire and Cold procs from the Helmet and Scepter Obviously.

Primalist and Mage are definitely the most obvious class chocies to use this set bonus to it’s fullest, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it with the other classes of course.

Another thing that makes this Decimate proc really hard to scale, is the limited tags, it literally is only tagged as Void and Spell, no attribute scalings.

Overall i tried to scale this with as much spell and void dmg + crit as possible and it just doesn’t do any considerble damage.
Using it to stack ignite is definitely the best usecase for it, but than it’s just a vehicle to deliver damage, which i don’t like.

I am pretty sure the devs are aware of this, especially since this is a endgame set and it would be a sahme, that this decimate proc is merely a gimmick.

Nonthe less this set made me discover one of my favorite Sorcerer playstyle, and even though the set bonus is not impactful atm, i will still try to push this mage as far as i possibly can and maybe, when the set bonus get’s some love, it will become a very good thing to build around.

1 Like
14

If it’s being held back by a lack of 4% increased damage per attribute on a build that would likely have >500% increased, it’s not in a bad place.

How much int/attunement would you normally have? 30? 40? That would be an extra 120-260% increased damage. Nothing to sniff at sure, but not world changing.

15

Adding attribute scaling will not make decimate god-tier, but certainly one more avenue to scale it.
If the devs add Attribut scaling I hope they at least add Int and Attunement, to not limit use-cases for specific classes too much.

But the skill probably will need a base dmg buff to become impactful.

16

In a lore point of view, it seems to fit with mage skills and void. So Mage and Void Knight seem to be the more obvious choices, lorewise. But I don’t feel this set has a “natural” place in the game, it really looks like too hybrid stuff, not bad but not optimal for anything.

17

Ok, so i did some testing and while the Elemental Nova can basically proc Decimate almost every second, the damage is indeed pretty poor, perhaps okay-ish with very high investment. For a set skill that is gated behind a pretty high level and requires you to farm one of the latest monoliths a long time(on average of course) AND has a cooldown, the damage is simply lackluster.

I hope they will look into this skill as it is simply not worth the time investment at the moment and personally i don’t see why they would make this such a high level set.

18

I remember they don’t want the sets to be game changing, so they may no change this. Unsure what max power they want the sets to deliver.

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