^ 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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