Block is OP and should be capped as armor and other mechanics. Some shields providing too easy sort of 100% block
Why is it OP? The DR in it has a cap, much like armor does. So even with 100% block chance, you’re still taking damage. It’s just another layer of defense.
Plus, you need to stock up on block effectiveness to reach the cap, so it’s not like it’s a free stat.
After playing a bunch of builds (with red ring and other things) I’m trying FG with shield, w/o titan heart, red ring and etc. And ~90% block overcomes all of them. With crappy 3.3k hp and 2% hp leech
And I’m not using Bastion or Mountain shields which may provide 100% w/o any +% items. So you can max BE with them
Yes, but there are two stats that are relevant for block, which is chance and effectiveness.
Block chance without effectiveness does (almost) nothing. You block 100% of the time but you barely reduce any damage.
Block in LE isn’t like in other games. When you block, you reduce the damage based on your total block effectiveness. And this stat is capped, like armor is. And to reach the cap you actually have to invest into a lot of block effectiveness sources, so it’s not free.
So even with 100% block chance, you will never take 0 damage.
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You cannot always faceroll Orobyss - but with your helath you should be.
See, as I said before, this is just demoralizing. I’m stuck apologizing for not having multi-t7 gear drop for me.
2291% character sheet freeze rate multiplier, before +600 from the Teleport buff, is a lot.
Weapon: 294
Offhand: 478
Gloves: 494
Belt: 151
Ring One: 344 (Font, by the way)
Ring Two: 330 (Font, by the way)
My uniques are low LP, and even then, I decided to use the merge to give them freeze rate above anything else, and I’m STILL told that I lack in the stat. Do you see the issue? It’s never good enough. I’m measured against perfect gear. That doesn’t make me want to grind it out to GET perfect gear, it makes me say, “This road is just obnoxious, and I’m being told that I am personally not doing a good enough job in the meantime.”
And while I’m STRUGGLING to TUNNEL VISION to have “good enough” freeze rate (which I’m always being told is way too low), WHERE, exactly, do you propose that I get more Health and Armor???
This whole situation is a total mess. Maybe everyone else is playing League + Merchant’s and can just buy perfect gear for 10k gold a pop?? But I’m playing Legacy because I don’t want my character to reset, lol. And because I’m playing Legacy, everything costs tens of millions of gold, so Merchant’s isn’t really a viable option. I’ve been Fortune for the bulk of leveling up, then I switched to Merchant to test the waters. It did nothing for me and seemed unapproachable (nothing I ever found was worth anything, while everything I wanted was giga expensive), so I went back to Fortune.
Fortune has given me everything I have, and yet, it’s still not good enough.
But whatever. Been down this road before. I probably just need to find a new game, because whenever a person suggests improvements to something, the community always collapses on them like a bunch of white blood cells.
I hate to tell you this, but “perfect gear” in the market is more like several million (not 10K). You can get decent, usable gear for 10K or less, but it definitely not perfect.
But I feel you, I’m also getting 1 shot by Oro. The only thing I can suggest is - don’t get hit. Evade a lot. Heal. But yea, it takes a miracle to get through a long fight and not get hit.
If you have really tried everything with your current build, the only option left is to change it and keep farming at higher corruption. Once you find the upgrades you need for your original build, you can always respec back to it.
Also - keep in mind that 400 corruption really isn’t that bad. Apparently if your build makes it into 300+ range, it’s considered OK. Sure, there are stronger builds that can farm 750-1000 but you don’t need to feel bad if your build isn’t one of those.
Personally, I’m determined to keep experimenting with different synergies with my paladin. He’s stuck at 650 but maybe there is a way I can get past it without getting the perfect gear. Think carefully about your passives & skills.
That’s because you don’t heed the suggestions given to you already.
Once again:
‘Gain % Ward for missing health’ Affix. Either chest or Gloves (Gloves are Experimental Affix). Strongest Ward generation possible with Health stacking. Otherwise why stack health in the first place as a Mage?
Crit Reduction is key! 24% is absolutely unreliable and far too little. You’re using a Catalyst, so use ‘Mental Catalysis’ in your Runemaster tree. Gives another 36%.
Are you focusing crit or not? Depending on that ‘Inscribed Instruments’ is a reliable option. If not then go for Scepters and get the extra War retention, 72% is nothing to scoff at.
Add ‘Spell Slinger’, it gives generic ‘Spell damage’ and hence applies to Cold, Lightning and Fire. Triple reward for a point with elemental Nova.
Add the last 3 points into ‘Sphere of Protection’, 3% DR is 3% DR, massive, always. DR is the most important method of defense since it works against everything.
Total needed points hence: 20.
Since you now have not enough point the following can be removed (give you go into the ward for missing health affix): ‘Transcendence’… kinda useless. ‘Chill to the Bone’, if you go into ward for missing health leech is a death-sentence, the penetration is not that important comparatively. ‘Arcane Insight’, at 100 Int it’s 500 threshold… which is basically nothing. Not worth it. 500 Threshold gives you… 500 more stable Ward, higher Health for more generation does a lot better. ‘Freezing Point’ gives you what? 200% freeze rate? That’s nothing, remove that, absolutely not worth it. 7 Points.
That opens up 26 Points.
6 points more then needed. Use those 6 for ‘Elemental Affinity’ in the Spellblade tree, that’s 18% ele res, you’re lacking fire and lightning res anyway. Also 55% ele damage, which once more… works triple since you use elemental nova.
Now to elemental Nova directly:
Are you direct casting or triggering through Frost Claw? I imagine triggering, so direct cast is useless for you, you always wanna do Ice Claw attacks hence. Focus on that hence.
If you actually wanna go into crit then use ‘Charged Destruction’. You can imagine crit-chance without crit multi as a 2% more damage multiplier beyond the ‘more’ multiplier since it’s multiplicative with that one. Far better then pure ‘more’ multipliers. That means each point is a 6% more multiplier at least.
So that means you need ‘Fiery Destruction’ too, giving 1,4% more per base crit. So each % crit is a 3,4% more damage then through that alone. Those 7 points provide at least 38% damage. (5 base + 1 from lightning nova + 9 from the extra base.). To get those 7 points remove ‘Spark Charges’ (5) and 3 in ‘Melting Nova’ since converting the shred chance is actually detrimental. Leaves you 1 extra point so you can put it into ‘Elemental Expanse’ to actually reach ‘Charged Destruction’.
Next up, Ice Barrage. You’re using that as a support skill with cooldown anyway. It’s not a permanent thing, it’s something to boost you hence. Means ‘Biting Cold’ is not really good. You can either put it into ‘Frigid Doom’ for more small freezing hits which causes enemies to do less damage through chill… or even better remove ‘Intensifying Cold’ too. 4 points free, 2 into ‘Frigid Barrage’ and 2 into ‘Subthermal Velocity’ for more supporting action.
Frostclaw: Remove ‘A Crack in the Ice’ to reduce mana cost a bit, instead go into ‘Brightfrost’ since you wanna cast it often for Nova. ‘Kolheim Ballista’ is also not really good since your Barrage is a support… you don’t wanna support Barrage but supported by it. Hence that point can go into ‘Rending Cascade’ for a bit of extra chance to actually chill.
Teleport: Your core damage skill is Elemental Nova, Teleport focuses in a branch specifically on using that. Also Mana tunnel is really detrimental for mobility, hence removing all those points there (10) can be used to go into ‘Resonant Plasma’ to ‘Elemental Affinity’ and further into the 3 Nova points. Minimum cost is 8. The last 2 can be used for ‘Flicker’.
If you wanna optimize it a bit further then remove ‘Time Dilation’ and instead go into ‘Flicker’ fully followed by ‘Wormhole’ to allow Teleport to be up even faster again, also it helps with barrage a bit to keep it up a bit more reliably.
I don’t quite know why you’re going into DoT damage as a focus given you’ve got elemental Nova as your core skill rather then direct damage. Already your Nova has a DPS potential of over 100k… mind you, Frostbite does 50 per stack and scales from there, the only multiplier you have is global Cold which does give it 60%, hence 80 base damage per stack. 15 stacks max means 1200 base at max potential and from there the % inc scales.
It’s really low actually.
Your build would do much more damage if focused on direct nova damage or a full built into ice barrage by removing the ice shield. Whichever you prefer. In that case you would use Glacier though for the Ice Vortex chance to create those and scale DoT off them.
You kinda got a weird mish-mash of half-working stuff.
So you gotta decide if that specific build with Frost nova should be your focus… or actual DoT focus with Glacier and Ice barrage for defense and ongoing damage. The mix is mediocre at best.
If you switch to direct damage then obviously the ‘Frostbite shackles’ can go, if not then at least focus on getting the experimental Affix on them rather then freeze multi.
Overall if you go direct damage you can fix up your defenses massively. Transient Rest for using your mana better to get some extra Ward, Eternal Gauntlets for more Armor and better DoT defenses. And since you can switch out your catalyst then you can actually put crit multi and ele damage on it, potentially fixing your res and saving up some points in the passive tree and even get more damage on your wand instead of the current setup.
If you wanna go freeze then switch from elemental Nova to Glacier and use ‘Age of Vengeance’ in your frost claw tree to enhance that. Glacier for scaling DoT damage, freeze rate multi, getting ice vortexes, ‘Perma Frost’ for more freeze and even moving into ‘Frost Blink’ potentially for a secondary movement skill making you basically a flickering mage which is always away from danger.
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^ damn that is an answer. All I could come up with is “think carefully about your passives & skills” 
Because of Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros. Sadly, it’s the only source of converting current health into ward (on spell cast) that I can find, so maybe the idea in itself is to be benched until the game has more items with the same affix?? But as I explained earlier, the build concept is to have high Health and enough leech to maintain max Health so that my “current health” is always the highest value possible, generating as much ward as possible. But I just can’t get enough global stats to make the build work. I need ward retention, I need armor, I need health, I need mana, I need skill points, I need freeze rate, I need frostbite chance, I need resistances of course… It’s just too much.
I guess I’m gonna ditch the Uhkeiros idea. Sad times.
I think I did much better as Exsanguinous. The only awkward thing about that is that Snowdrift is a LOT of damage, but Last Step is a good chunk of ward generation, so… I’m not sure which one is more important. I suppose I can still get frostbite pen on chest and helm, but at that point, I have to ask myself, do I still stack freeze rate if I don’t have Snowdrift??? Yet, if I use Snowdrift, am I just gimping my survival by missing a WHOLE item slot with missing-health-to-ward???
Aaaaaaaaah!!!
A good takeaway is that perhaps I myself am measuring myself against top tier stuff, and I don’t even REALLY know the context. I just kind of “know that people play at 1k corruption.” Maybe playing at mid 400’s isn’t actually terrible in the grand scheme, as you say? I’m still new, and the road TO that point felt easy enough, so to get walled by the Shade seems kinda random and out of nowhere. But I guess I’m also changing up my build a lot, experimenting with things, so that could hinder me as well.
Crap, sorry for the triple, I thought I was only doing a double :S
Yeah, I know I need crit immunity, but I am struggling to find good gear combinations to use for it. It feels like if I achieve one thing, it comes at the cost of something else, whether resists, crit immunity, freeze rate, mana, health… armor… sigh… et cetera, et cetera…
You’re right about Mental Catalyst, though. I was using it before, took it out cuz I was playing Staff Meteor for a bit, then forgot all about it when I went back to frostbite.
Nah, no reason to get crit. I’m completely focusing on my DoT. That scepter bonus is nice, but Crystal Wand is pretty insane value for me. Scepter can get -5 cost affix, but it comes with spell damage, which doesn’t affect my DoT, so meh.
Same here; flat spell damage doesn’t add to my DoT. At the same time, I have Archmage and maintain at least 1k max mana, but that’s more for 100% refund chance, which is pretty crucial, unfortunately… (But saying it out loud, I wonder if I could be okay with 70% chance, and ease up on my mana affixes??? Hmm…)
Perhaps. I definitely have to look over my skill points, but I know each thing feels hard to replace. I don’t think I have ANY throwaway stuff in there.
I have to sit on the bench for a bit, I think. Thanks for the things to think about!
(Oh, and the Ele Nova is there because it’s just a lot of extra frostbite procs.)
Experimental Affix… on Gloves… as mentioned.
For the chest the available one is ‘Exsanguinous’. The same one I told you in your post about the meteor build.
Also… why would you drop your best item? Ukheiros does still give you 20% health, Cast speed, a level to elemental skills and your +4 to Frost Claw… It still works superior to basically every other available item for you.
Also it gives you strength for some extra % armor.
If you go direct damage you don’t need freeze rate, you don’t need frostbite chance. Instead your offensive Affixes (which are Suffixes) can be more directed. And your defenses don’t even collide with your offenses… because defenses are commonly in the Prefixes.
You also don’t need any extra skill points beyond those you already have, I’ve specifically put that into consideration in my post above and you got a boatload of nodes in there which work just as fine if a single point is missing… and loads of potential upwards beyond when you get more points.
With it? Yes, absolutely.
If you don’t put focus into DoT when that’s the weakest aspect your build can produce but instead into direct damage then you won’t even realize the difference in a major way. If your defenses still lack despite fitting Gloves (Eternal gloves with the mentioned experimental Affix) then you use Transient Rest. If not… you keep using Snowdrift.
No, you don’t, and why are you stacking it in the first place, solely for the penetration? You’re giving up % inc damage instead. What’s better… at most (for the mobs with the absolutely possible highest resistances, which are… 1 or 2 existing I think?) 6 times more damage… or… 10 offensive Affixes instead? (Mind you, the majority of enemies have 0% res, meaning a 75% increase at most) Because that’s your investment. 10 Affixes which can be ‘Elemental damage’ which works triple on Elemental Nova, or anything else offensively. So if you put crit chance and elemental damage on those slots you get a boatload of extra damage.
As mentioned, already without any investment outside the tree you get at least a 38% multiplier on your damage which is multiplicative with your ‘more’ damage and your ‘increased’ damage as it’s another layer.
A single T7 crit chance with 100% on it (max roll) provides a double of that, so it turns into a 76% multiplier.
Most enemies have relatively little resistances, so instead use ‘Armor Shred’ and that should suffice as it’s doing the same as penetration, just universally for damage.
Helmet, Chest, Boots, Gloves and Belt have that Affix.
With the node you can go for 2 T6 to max it out. Primary importance to get at least close to 100%
As it’s supposed to, yes.
Balance is key. Overly leaning into one thing is leading to a sub-par build.
Your DoT is the weakest form of damage you do. Cold DoT scaling is in-built with Glacier for the Sorcerer, the Elemental Nova does a rather bad job at it, leaving it very very low. Generally DoT scaling in LE is a bit… iffy. Works in some cases but they’re rather narrow.
Yes, you don’t use a meteor build.
Also uptime doesn’t need to be 100%, it just needs to be enough to deal with hard fights quickly and then recover shortly to be viable, eases up on things substantially.
Obviously as you progress you want to get 100% uptime if possible.
Actually tons of them, quite a lot.
All the cooldown reduction stuff for example is very much useless for your focus, wasted potential better used elsewhere.
If you want to go with DoT then as mentioned… Glacier. It produces vortexes, those vortexes cause DoT and apply freeze and hence frostburn, also they stay for a decent while.
That removes the need for Elemental Nova which is hogging your mana after all since it’s doing massive direct damage but literally nothing for DoT.
So when you do that you can instead remove the cooldown for Icicle Barrage and go into a Frost Claw trigger, this way you alternate between Frost claw and Glacier. Glacier to trigger vortexes and hefty AoE, Frost Claw to trigger Barrage while applying direct freeze for cheap.
Puts an end to mana issues and also scales substantially higher for Frostburn.
The total chances with investment at 20 points are:
3 Explosions from a single cast.
Each explosion has a 100% chance to cause a vortex with full investment.
Each cast you get the ‘Rime’ buff which has 6 seconds duration with investment and provides 150% inc DoT and 150% freeze multi.
19 points.
The last point goes into freeze rate and stun since you can move into massive freeze rate from there when going towards 24 points. At 24 points you get another 600% freeze rate from that at the cost of 60% direct damage.
As for penetration… you got that in-built with the Glacier setup. The Frost Claw nodes towards that includes ‘Ice Spirals’. Per second not using Frozen Claws you gain a stack, up to a max of 6 stacks. When you cast it it throws out ice spirals which last a few seconds. During their activation time you get with full investment:
12 Ice Spirals after 6 seconds waiting time.
120% cold pen for all of them together.
Double base damage of each spiral.
144 cold pen with Glacier
96% AoE with Glacier.
Kinda massive hence.
Imagine a mechanic which provides rings of ice projectiles which can hit every 0,3 seconds… that’s Ice Spirals. Combine it with Ice Vortex which hits in DoT tick-rate and you got more potential options to freeze and apply frostburn then you can even think of.
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I don’t think you’re listening to what I’m saying. My build was to use Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, and I’m saying that its ward generation was too weak, largely because it’s the only item with that affix in the game, and it’s only 8%.
That’s not an experimental mod. It’s kind of like the opposite, and doesn’t work with those mods at all.
Do you think that Season MG is cheaper than Legacy MG? 
oh noo nonono. It is much much better in legacy. Seasonal MG is x10 in prices if you want something that smells like good item. Back to the core. So if you are not going to spend dozens of million on current build of yours - what’s a point of playing in MG? (For me it is 30-80kk per build w/o min max)
Yes, some old overlooted unpopular items cost 0 gold, but new ones are expensive. Example. Fractal Tree spear 2lp and Phalanx 2lp. 0 gold and millions of gold.
And more likely your set-up in legacy MG will be a mix of cheap and expensive items
This is something I’ve noticed lately: the synchronization between the client and server is absolutely terrible, and you can 1000% take damage BEFORE your game even shows the attack’s animation anywhere near you.
Last observed it while playing my necromancer and letting my minions whomp an exiled mage. Was browsing some loot from some other unfortunate soul when I suddenly took a pile of damage out of nowhere.
Then almost a second later I watch his swirling cold-beam attack sweep through me, doing nothing.
I’d like to point out that it was at least 2 hot-topic-shoppers-with-bad-posture lengths away at the time, so it’s doubly bizarre that the game would even think I should’ve been hit.
Other times, possessed enemies will obliterate my health because the client hasn’t synced to display the necrotic beam or some other nonsense, but I’m already taking damage from it on the server.
Be sure to check my thread The infinite scaling is the bane of modern ARPGs
Since what you’re experiencing is the effect of infinitely scaling difficulty.
Since both HP and damage is enemies scale, you will eventually end up in a situation where your defences can’t keep up. And from there, the only way up is through more dps.
This is why those games always devolve into 20 billion dps metas where you either one shot stuff or get one shot in return.
Infinitely scaling diff SUCKS.
In a static difficulty setup, defensive approach is usually possible, sometimes even recommended. So you can go glass cannon or tank and expect both to be efficient.
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Yes, and those bits of Twistes Heart can be simply ignored. It’s still BiS outside of Shattered worlds or a ridiculously rolled weaver Relic.
%Health, with a hybrid a important layer under Ward, with low-life direct generation.
Strength gives armor.
Cast speed is obvious.
+1 ele skills too.
The at best 8% conversion are useless comparatively.
Kulze knows what he’s talking about. I can’t find a character build anywhere, but using elemental Nova for frostbite doesn’t work. Or if it does, you’re probably not optimizing the passives, skills, and items. LE makes you feel like you can play any build you cook up. Then you try a decent build and wonder why you ever cooked what you cooked. Any build that makes proper sense can take you to 500 corruption at a minimum.
Well I abandoned my frostbite build and went on-hit damage. I’m currently at ~550 corruption and can definitely go further.
But the idea with frostbite and Ele Nova wasn’t to apply frostbite exclusively with Ele Nova. It was with Frost Claw, talented to proc Ele Nova on a 45% chance. (And Ice Barrage hits as well.) And Ele Nova itself has armor shred chance, which gets converted into frostbite chance with the Mage talent. That build was doing about 2 mil DPS at whatever stage I abandoned it at. I might revisit it with some tweaks, but the damage wasn’t my issue with the build.