One of the potential build ideas that I’m interested in for the patch revolves around the new unique amulet that lets you move with focus and cast lightning blasts while doing so.
At the moment I have two general ideas for the build. In either case the goal is to make a very passive low button build, mostly just using focus and then occasionally using utility like Flame Ward or an unspecced Teleport.
I always need help with the finer details of how to balance out stats and stuff. So I could use suggestions/thoughts:
Variant 1: Auto Lightning Meteors: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BOGd62GB
We use the newly craft-able Vilatria set to convert meteors to lightning and gain lightning damage, pen, and shock chance from int stacking. We just run around in focus auto casting lightning blasts, and Static from Stack Shell to proc the meteors from Harbinger of the Stars.
Variant 2: Coral Aegis with more of a focus on the lighting blast/static: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QWJ549LA
Same idea with auto LB and static, but we run Coral Aegis to get more shock and get block chance from our shock. I’m not as sure about it, but Tribolectra gives us levels to our skills and a use of Static Orb on evade. Not sure how much I like that part of it since it’s not us just staying in focus, but it still only involves us doing an evade which we probably need to do sometimes anyway and we don’t have to actually press static orb. Plus it comes with some support for Lightning Blast with Fusion Blast for extra chains, Static Armor for Lightning Aegis which can get us more LB from the idol affix, and Charged Allies for more shock chance.
The biggest thing I’m never sure about with mage is specifically how to decide on defense. Ward vs Mana before Health, etc. I’d assume we want to lean more towards ward because of the amulet and because at least for the Vilatria version we’re gonna int stack anyway. But as a sorc mana stacking is always an option, especially if we’re gonna be casting some expensive spells.
That’s pretty much what I did, but Aftermath doesn’t recover mana from proc’d meteors, only directly cast ones. I also went with World Ender for automatic crits. I also went with 1 or 2 points in Blinding Light (Lightning Blast) to remove the need for any crit avoidance/reduced bonus damage from crits. I didn’t go with Stormchaser (Discharge) because it’s annoying having the charges decay and they never went “too low” while running around killing stuff.
Huh that’s confusing. The belt says “cast” and in other places they specify directly cast/used. If that’s how it works they should clear up the wording.
If you’re already building a lot of crit chance to make the meteors happen in the first place, is that still necessary?
Seems solid. I guess if I’m more focusing on Meteor I can take some points out of more damage in LB.
Gotcha. I guess it’ll just come down to feel. Are you saying you did this build this patch but without the focus thing? Maybe it’ll feel better if I can just keep moving around with focus. But idk if the charges stay up enough anyway maybe you’re right regardless.
Still not sure about some things and will likely go through some iterations after I can test in-game. This is a more basic version with things that should be easier to get early on. Idols are just kind of random, not sure on those yet either.
I’m curious about Arcane Ascendance. Can you run that while in focus? Do you think the amulet will let us move anyway or is it just for times you know you can plant your feet and need the extra damage?
I’m 99.9% sure the change in Arcane Ascendance is because of movement Focus. Sadly, it hurts other builds since you lose AA from using a movement skill which was the only way to reposition during AA.
I’ve also been theorycrafting Lightning blast (Runemaster and selfcast with Static+Frost Wall), IMO you really want Convergence for single target especially to maintain Static charges. My hope is that buffed double/quadruple cast, bugfixed spark nova and additional casts from Static+Frost wall can manage clear because swapping in and out of Convergence feels pretty awkward.
IMO they really should make Convergence a conditional effect with something like if you have cast Static orb recently. Or remove the nerf to Closed circuit which was the only way regular LB could somewhat compete with Convergence LB.
I’m not sure if it will work or not. I was playing with it and Flame Ward as options. The idea was that you would plant your feet and get some extra damage on a boss if needed. The amulet doesn’t say anything about giving focus the movement tag so I’m hoping it will just lock you in place and let you keep channeling focus.
That’s interesting. I haven’t really touched Runemaster at all because it just looks really complicated to me, but I might give that a go. I love builds where you can stack a lot of stats and defense and this looks pretty straightforward to play at least.
