OOTB - Black Hole got a massive buff... must use skill now for some builds

Mage
1

Hey guys, I recently was messing around with some unorthodox setups and came across an EXTREMELY strong setup for Black Hole that went under the radar completely. I can’t even find the original patch notes where they changed it like this, it may have been a silent change.

You can now generate ~1,200 ward per cast of Black Hole with a new setup. The skill node ‘Infusion’ was reworked at some point to generate 18 ward per second, 90 with 5 points. Then, while taking all the duration increase skill points, you hit Scattered which produces two black holes, DOUBLING the ward per second. Without skill points you end up with roughly a 7 second black hole on a 5 second cooldown.

Even with a very low amount of 250 ward retention(crazy) this has me sitting at 1,700 constant ward. You can generate this 1,200 ward about every 5 seconds or so depending on your cooldown setup.

(Untested) If you were able to get a Tier 6 or 7 Black Hole skill roll, there is a possibility to generate around 1600+ ward per cast with an additional 10%-30% chance to cast another black hole

There are a ton of possibilities with this one. It provides much more shielding than Flame Ward so technically it can replace it in those builds, or be used alongside Flame Ward in other builds.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/volrr1kQ

3 Likes
2

problem is black hole costs a ton of mana, super long recast, horrible damage, and uptime is almost non existent. If you are using the ward generation then you have lost the only value of black hole and that was the pull so no CC either. With this you have also converted black hole to fire damage. Since the skill also has no uniques its just a complete trash skill and has no justifiable reason to ever be on someones hotbar

3

My main way to use black hole is via teleport. It makes the cast of black hole cost 0- so you can make meteor cost as much as you want and then teleport (use) then manually fire of meteor again.

Since meteor can refund its cost of mana partly and you have mana surge teleport (requires some commitment to cooldown reduction via boots experiment affix and the teleport boots).

But when set up well. You can be firing meteor almost every 3s without fail and black hole is your main dps

4

You mean Meteor is your main damage and black hole is only used as a proc,