That’s actually were the build began!
I legit started this with the afk gameplay in mind, and I’ve been doing a heap of testing over the past week for a concept ideas for a build. I’ll post my thoughts on culviner’s below. It’s definitely not as strong as other builds, but gimmicky to some extent. I quickly found that even though I was able to sustain around 3.5k+ ward, I still ran into the same issues of venom weavers not proc’ing hits (you need lightning aegis to use the %reflection adorned idols that go up to 100% each). Thats when I swapped over to protections and regen/healing and found the sustain was much better and could actually be a legit option for arena that would be strong but not overpowered.
I’m aware the dev’s are keen to weed out passive gameplay, but I can’t help wonder if thats the case, why are there so many retaliatory items and skills in the game?
Culviner's Focus Build idea
Culviner’s essentially converts mana regen into ward per second, except in discrete intervals. Given that you have a base 10 mana regen, you realise it’s actually pretty average as you’ll never able to get a huge amount of ward per second from it, for example the 300% increase from focus would only give you an extra 30 mana regen= ward/s.
The exception, is the desperate meditation node. This may be a bug, as the tooltip says conflicting things, but it works by giving you 4% increased mana regen per missing mana - which include negative mana. Abusing this to the max, I equipped enough items and passives for around 500 mana, and then spec into black hole for the 200 mana cost cast. When my culviner’s ticks over, I would cast black hole and then focus. This would give me around ~350 mana regen, and equivalently ward/s. Yuge.
With this in play, I looked at getting damage through 1 of the 3 adorned idol prefix’s. Cast Ele nova when hit, Cast lightning blast while you have lightning aegis when hit, and %reflect when you have lightning aegis. Each have their merits, but I found LB one to be the best as it deleted enemies easily and could proc lightning aegis itself. I also used the Gain Lightning Aegis when hit suffix on those idols.
Supporting the build I ran infinite arcane ascendance, with Acuity and Power Overload. This is definitely due a nerf, but I think it could be supplemented with arcane absorption (%spell damage when hit).
For lightning blast, you can’t run any additional mana cost, otherwise it can cancel your arcane ascendance.
Fire shield (yes, seriously) with all the retalition nodes and ele protection. Use Rahyeh’s shield and it will auto refresh without consuming a ‘cast’ from arcane ascendance.
Enchant weapon with Zap, free cost and auto recast as it wont consume a cast from arcane ascendance.
You can also run Static with all the Lightning Blast every second nodes and max charges, but it may trip out ascendance.
Liath’s signet for max GB.
Main issue, besides the venom weavers, is that every 15 levels in the arena, you will have to redo your black hole focus combo, as it doesn’t carry over from maps.
