My thoughts about gearing in CoF fraction

First of all , my current characterf - https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/o3vaqEVB

As you see it is decently geared but I’m very frustrated by the fact how hard it is to get a good stat on the correct base you need for your build ! For example, I need Ancestral Crown based helm with at least ONE good stat to even have a chance to craft smth good (I’m not even talking about exalted one with t6+ Storm totem affix !).
To begin with - drop rate of Ancestral Crown is pretty low. I even set a rule to show ANY Ancestral Crown and only see 1 or 2 at best in 2-3 monos. Of course they have bad stats.

What pisses me off is that I can’t chose which item bases will drop. So I take all prophecies for helmets / exalted etc. And i get like hundreds of exalted helmets but all bad or not for my build. I would be happy if we at least could affect the chance for a certain item base drop more often via Lenses… I don’t even mention HOW f*ing rare STORM TOTEM affix is and getting it on a correct base… man that seems impossible.

On the other hand any MG player can easily buy a decent Ancestor Crown.

So my suggestion - add lenses to more precisely farm gear (bases or certain affixes).
Thanks!

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I think this is most definitely a common ask. It’s come up a number of times.

I ran CoF last cycle (it’s more akin to my normal playstyle) but choose to do MG this cycle. I can assure you, this isn’t even remotely true.

I also have a very specific helm on my character. Currently in MG there are 7 with the affix I need and the cheapest of those is going for 1x,000,000+ gold.

So while, yes, CoF obviously needs some tweaks and adjustments, the grass is most definitely not greener on the other side.

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The alternative is to take a non-optimal base with 2 good stats on it. Then it works as well.

Your base is basically the 5th affix there, entirely useless by itself and only good in conjunction with proper stats on it.

For example any piece with either hybrid health + summon totem on it is already better. As would be a double health one. A single T5 stat is superior to 2 T3 stats overall in terms of pure power-scaling.

Go for that, makes it a lot easier.

Shatter any base with that affix on it. Use a rune of removal on your wanted item, put it on yourself.
That’s how you handle rare affixes.

Can we? The last time I looked MG is rather broken and does barely offer wanted items in any affordable price-range, hence no chance to get such a item easily, CoF or MG doesn’t matter there.

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other base will give me less arrmor no endurance% and what is even worse Endurance threshold from life. I will lose too much EHP even with double HP I checked in tunklab calculator.
But also… why we need to be satisfied with smth mediocre? Then my current helmet is ok too. Why even chase upgrades? My whole post was NOT about that particular helmet but just an example.
Currently for me it is easier too find a good unique with 3LP and slam good stats on it than finding a correct base exalted item that I can craft on. :smiley:

There’s 13 helmets of “Ancestral Crown” type with “Cast Speed for Totems” affix on the Bazaar right now. Zero of them have Endurance as an affix.

This is probably your best shot at crafting something even close to your current helmet.

So yeah, MG can’t easily buy a decent Ancestor Crown :wink:


As a CoF player myself in 1.0, I had no issue finding the correct base for my Sorcerer, in fact I was swimming in them. But you know what I couldn’t find no matter what? +X to Lightning Blast affixes :slight_smile:
So ultimately I ended up using an inferior base with imperfect craft because it came with +2.

yes some affixes are for no obvious reason much rarer than even other rare affixes. I’ve found tons of + Thorn Totem or +Earthquake etc but only like 10 -15 since the start of this cycle ( I mean by shattering items of course)

maybe right now you can’t but I’ve been playing this build for a week or so. If I were in MG I’m sure I would’ve already found smth

It’s… fairly bad.
For level 94? Is really… really bad actually.

But yeah, I can agree there’s loads to handle still for that build overall, that might be a big part of what reduces your enjoyment.

So let me instead get into the build for a few tips overall:

First and foremost let’s get into some choices in your builds.
The Phantom grip seems like a good choice at first sight but it’s a really bad one. All it provides your build which is 1 minion skills and 3% crit chance for your minions. Everything else is secondary and you’re over-capped at phys res so that’s a completely dead stat on it anyway.

Switch it with a movement speed ring (more ways to survive through mobility) or a minion ring (more damage) instead.
Affixes should be health/res/endurance for prefix and minion damage/minion health/attunement for suffixes. That item alone can provide your minions with a vast increase in overall damage and hence less incoming damage for you while also giving you more EHP.
Your minions have 16% crit chance in your current build… you’re not a crit build, focus on scaling base damage instead.

Next up, to sustain better I recommend going more into increased health regeneration. Currently your build has good mitigation but no way to recover it outside of potions. Hence you’ll like flop down dead often, making sure to actually survive is important, your endurance is secondary there unless you get one-shot… which I expect you’re not since you got fairly decent amount of health with armor and endurance working together.
I imagine your deaths generally come from DoTs as well as fire or cold damage since those two aren’t even close to being capped.

Which brings me to the next part. The Ferebor Set. That’s not one which is generally used since it brings very few upsides a normal item can’t do. +2 to totem skills is great! But to be fair… your thorn totem needs more minion health to not die and hence you can simply ignore 4 points in ‘Venom Tipped Thorns’ since that doesn’t get converted with ‘Pillars of Heoroth’ anyway, making it a dead stat. The leftover 2 points you gain from removing 4 there can be put into ‘Winterwood’ which gives a scaling base damage, which is vastly stronger anyway.
Which leaves the painful thing of removing 2 points though… but alas luckily you only got to focus on your helmet again and there for the +2 storm totem, hence a T5. As for changes in that passive tree to make it viable as you still loose a point I recommend focusing on base crit chance and not multiplier since your base crit is low anyway. So removing the point in ‘Power Shunt’ and 1 from ‘Direct Current’ as you scale better with ‘Static Field’ since that provides base damage which then the crit can even multiply properly to cause hefty damage in the first place.

That leaves the free space for something else in the weapon/shield slot. Neither of your slots are really ‘good’ after all, Coral Aegis is purely reactive and mostly focused on lightning resistance which you have too much anyway. And there’s a few options since you go heavily into mana-usage. ‘Tempest Maw’ is decent for totem users as it gives a flat mana cost reduction on totems as well as attunement and causing you to cast storm sprites which align with your lightning focus.
As for shields then a prime defensive option always is ‘The slab’, but leaves you open for big hits.
To become a instant hybrid build you can go with ‘Grim Constitution’ as well, massive ward amounts since you scale so heavily into life. Which as downside comes with the notion that you won’t regain any ward unless you do 4 seconds basically nothing, your totems screw that over a little.
If you want to keep investing so heavily into endurance then ‘Face of the Mountain’ is also decent.

As for gloves… take the armor counting as Dot Mitigation one, you invest so heavily into armor that this one provides vastly more EHP then any endurance could ever grant you in that regard. 20% mitigation for Dot at your armor level already causes you to get a flat ~7% less damage taken from all sources for that, physical DoT even less… albeit I don’t know if there’s any physical DoT.

As for idols: Use them to cap your resistances! Get minion damage from gear, resistances and health from your idols. That’s the most important aspects there. With your 2 rings freed up you get up to 140% minion damage at T5, which is vastly vastly more then the little crit could ever do since even with your storm totem you ‘only’ have a baseline of 25% crit at 240% damage. You can double your base damage without much effort and make it a lot stronger then it is now.

If you get another ‘Omen of Thunder’ try to get Hybrid Health on it, more effect the %health since with the idol changes you’ll be able to stack tons of %health into it and hence scale your endurance higher, with the glove-base that scales into DoTs too for extremely increased EHP and with the fixing of resistances as well.

All in all those changes aren’t hard to make and immediately increase each point of your golden triforce of Sustain, EHP and Offense.

Hope that helps. The drops along the line will come gradually after.

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I think you mean this the other way around? Prefixes are the top two, suffixes are the bottom two.

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Yeah, bit of a brain-fart there.

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Well, the gist of it was in there and it’s some banger advice for the entire breakdown.

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The Ferebor weapon adds +1% base crit for totems per INT. He has 19 INT.
Spriggan aura adds another 8% base crit to allies. I never played totems, but afaik minions count as allies.
Upheaval totem has additional 2% base crit from passive.
Storm totem has additional 9% base crit from passive.

Base totem crit: (5 + 19 + 4 + 8) * (1 + 0.38 + 0.28 + 0.53) = 78% Crit Chance

So his crit chances should be:
Thorn Totem: 78%
Upheaval Totem: 83%
Storm Totem: 98%

Well, so much for that. Missed a few things there it seems.

I still don’t know if it’s worth it though for the crit given the low overall damage. Minion damage is mostly missing and the majority of damage coming from the skill-tree itself as well as pure Attunement.

I still think that raising the flat damage and providing more % damage would probably out-scale it, not to speak of the part that it after all would provide vastly more defensive measures with re-adjusting the idols and fixing the resistances.

Good EHP doesn’t help when you take nearly thrice the damage from some sources then needed.

Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it and read it all carefully. But I’d like to say my post was not about ‘help me with my build’. I clearly see what it lacks and I’ve been working on it. I just wanted to give a suggestion (feedback) and used my build as an example, no more.

With all that said I still would like to answer some of the points you made because that could be useful for someone else playing (or having plans to play) a similar build.

For Storm Totem +1 to skill is SUPER valuable. It 's a special skill in that regard. For example with 1 point I could invest in Intensity node (15% dmg MULTI) or Power Shunt (30% crit multi) which is much more than %minion damage I could get from another ring. Besides, +4% crit chance for totem is also important for this build as I need 100% crit chance for Storm Totem. %mana is good too because of Excited Bolts (Gathering Storm).
Later if I find good gloves that I can add INT (for crit chance) I could change the ring but not atm.

This build doesnt need other minions for damage. They are only for support. Spriggan can lie dead near the boss and still give me and Storm Totem the buffs. Thorn Totem is in build due to the Thunder Totem node (Storm Totem). So I summon 5 Thorn T. and then sacrifice them to give damage and all the buffs to my Storm Totem.
So I just use Pillars of Heorot to freeze small trash a bit nothing else and Venom Tipped Thorns poison chance is converted to Frostbite. There’s just nothing else useful for me in Thorn Totem tree.

No it doesnt give +spell to Fulgurite Core node (Storm Totem) only my own chance to shock or shock attackers work.

It is the CORE of this build. Just this shield alone gives tons of flat spell damage because of Fulgurite Core. You might 've missed ‘chance to shock attackers’ on that shield?

I know about the gloves. Working on finding a better pair. Still nothing

I’m capped at my resistances. all of them. Shaman has nice mastery bonus :smiley:

again thanks for your willing to help . Have nice time !

I’m afraid you offered more silly “advice”.

You told him to remove passive points from base crit and crit multi in Storm Totem, and put 1 point into +10% shock chance, which doesn’t really change the status quo, because ALL his totems (not just storm totem) already have +75% chance to shock from the relic.

You said his sustain is low and to focus on HP regen. But he’s already using HP regen at over 200 HP/sec, and that’s not counting the Spriggan’s healing aura and Rejuvenating Wind combo skill.

You said his Coral Aegis isn’t “good” but there’s a passive in Storm Totem that converts that 367% Chance to Shock Attackers from the shield into ~73 lightning spell damage on the totem.

Basically everything you said would make his build worse :smiley:

Ouch, are you quoting Star Wars?

:rofl:

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Guess I need to brush up on my movie references :rofl:

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In English we have a term “paraphrasing”. It’s used for when you want to get around plagiarism, copyright laws or pedantic people online…

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Well, and since I’ve made a clown of myself in here I’ll see myself out and stay with the stuff I’m good at.

Which is in-depth functionality and what development decisions are based on rather then builds.
I think that’s better for everyone since I’ve screwed that one up baaaaadly :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m going to be that person. Sorry, I thin it’s fair that this gets said. A bit of a background to what I’m about to say. I am a ARPG and Loot game player in general. 1000s of hours in D2, Borderlands. I love this stuff, and this is why I’m about to say something a lot of generally more hardcore players dislike.

NOT getting items is good. It’s good for you. It’s good for the game. It’s better. I wont say the name of the community, but currently, another ARPG community is having a big talk about its new crafting. Rerolling to be exact. They believe that a reroll limit is wrong, and shouldn’t be because bricking items is bad. I am one of the people who believe that the most important word in a ARPG is “Chase”. You play these games for a goal you set. Level every character. Monoliths stupidly too hard to do. The top of a ladder. Your goal matters to you, but the most important part of it is that it isn’t made easy, nor given to you too easily. There should be a trade off. You’re playing CoF. The whole point of this faction is to be a loot bomb every time. Huge amount of loot, but the point is it’s inncaruate. You can hone in. You can want a higher accuracy, but it’s important that it is never easy. If it’s easy…why would you play? Why chase that what is easy to get. And I’m sorry, the fact you’re pissed off should be the point. I…dislike that other community, not for the game, as I think the game is great and more casual focused, but because I believe ARPG fans have lost the want to have the chase. In Borderlands, we call it “The Hunt” and even have a charity event for it. You should want to get poor items, and know that it’s a goal you’re trying to get. Otherwise, it would get boring. If you know it was easier to get your item, say…40% if you stacked all the bonuses, it would be dull because you know once you hit that dice roll, you have it…you never need to try again. But the point of ARPGs like this. Like all the other big names in ARPG - The chase. You should be accepting that you aren’t getting getting you’re item, because you are chasing for it. More fun mentality. Yes, it’s can be frustrating if you only care about the item, not the fun as you play. You know? :slight_smile:

This isn’t an accessibility thing, nor is it a thing about “Not being fair to people with less time to play” which is often a very fair arguement, but in this genre, you need a chase. You need a goal. And if perfect items are your goal, even good rolls, should be given the status of the chase, and I do get it

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