When stormbolt is triggered exclusively by otherspells such as maelstrom and tornado, what kind of benefits does it inherent from gathering storm? Does it benefit from any melee damage? Are stomstacks even a thing? Got an idea to convert all 3 to physical and use swarmblade to generate tornado and maelstrom and just scale physical damage.
I believe, if the trigger says itâs a Stormbolt than any thing that affects a Gathering Storm stormbolt will apply. Like if you convert GS to cold any other stormbolt that is procced will be cold.
But, the trick with GS is knowing what affects GS only and what affects GS AND Stormbolts. For instance, the Tempest Weapon node that adds spell damage per melee is ONLY to GS it doesnât get added to Stormbolts. Seismic Crash only affects GS, not Stormbolts.
Iâm most curious about stacks? Do the stormbolts proc without generating storm stacks, if so that renders like more than 1/2 the tree pointless
So, take Whirlwind. Power of the Storm. It procs a Storm Bolt whether you have a Storm Stack or not because it isnât one of the requirements of the proc. However, keep in mind it gains no benefits from anything Storm STACKS add.
What parts do you think are pointless? Storm Stacks do extra stuff, like allowing you to proc multiple bolts at one time, it has itâs own perks. Minions can generate stacks for you as long as you have at least 1 - 15 stacks already so with Stacks you can multiple procs of the spell going all over the place. Itâs actually quite amazing to see. 
More than half the nodes are about either melee or storm stacks. There isnât much that specifically buffs the stormbolts themselves.
Correct because the skill is Gathering Storms. You would buff Storm Bolts like you would any other spell. The big benefit you get from GS is the sheer volume of Bolts you can get to go off using stacks. And there are other skills that can make use of stacks (ie Earthquake s one example).
If you look in your skill tree at anything labeled with Stormbolt and press âAltâ it will tell you about that stormbolt trigger, how much damage, etc⌠It also states in there that stormbolt is affected by gathering storm tree.
One way to âpassivelyâ generate storm stacks is with pets that have lightning skills, like the storm totem ⌠One storm totem can generate 15 stacks very quickly and keep them up at that level. You just need to take the node that activates this feature, in gathering storm.
Canât use storm totem on a druid and no room for pets in a spell build
Oh, I didnât see you mention that you were a druid pet build. I see now ⌠swarmblade.
I think you still have to generate at least 1 stack before this can activate though. If you donât use GS at all, just taking it to passively increase storm bolts for other procs it wonât work. At least I couldnât get it to work on my Druid in Spriggan form, which is why I dropped it and switched to cold.
Thats been my experience so far too. I need to take GS to transform stormbolts into physical so they scale with the rest of my build but there is hardly any 9ther nodes in the tree that benefit me. Lightning strikes twice helps a bit with bosses and excited bolts would add damage but mana is already an issue and jolting strikes adds armor shred but thats all that help. I literally spend 8 points in the gathering storm tree and there is nothing else i can use. 6 points to get to seismic crash then 2 points to get to Lightning strikes twice. That wastes 1 point because looming clouds does not benefit me but i have to take it. If i can fix my mana issues then excited bolts would add additional damage but thats 1 point and Iâm wasting 3 points to get to it as windfury blows , or does thunderous strikes apply to stormbolts too? Clouds on the horizon is the only other thing on the tree thats worth taking and that wastes a point on friends of the Tempest.
1 Like
People will do this with Wolves in order to get the +1 companions for other Companion skills, like getting more Storm Crows etc. This is kinda the âcostâ of using a skill off-the-beaten path of itâs intention. The whole point of that skill is Storm Stacks so Iâd be surprised if it had too many nodes that didnât utilize them.
I did this and spent 14 pts to get just about anything that was worthwhile. Clouds on the Horizon is nice because it can proc the bolts further away and since you arenât using GS the extra mana cost from Lagonian Diplomacy doesnât do anything.
And Iâd encourage you try to solve that mana issue because Excited Bolts can feel pretty darn potent when you can keep your mana about 75%. If you load up your character and pop it on here we might all be able to put our heads together and help solve the mana dilemma.
EDIT: Also it just occurred to me: are you using Crit at all? Because while it wonât be huge, if you fill everything out to the far left with the maelstrom nodes and itâs 1 pt crit node, even 2 or 3 generate maelstroms would increase your storm bolt base crits by 1-3%. Thatâs BASE crit.
This is currently my planned build, iâm sitting at level 28 at the moment.
1 Like
Well at lvl 28 I canât really say how itâs going to feel. Because thereâs still a lot of wiggle room.
But here are some thoughts.
Based on this it looks like youâre procâcing the crap out of Storm Bolts all over the place.
So here are three potential places to look at holding back, while youâre leveling up. Again, I donât know where your skill pts are currently allocated.
Maelstrom=>Energized and Tornado=Frequent Lightning are going to eat up a HUGE amount of mana give every single proc is 10 mana for Storm Bolt. So while youâre building Iâd play around with âhow frequentâ is âTOO frequent.â At least until you can get to higher levels where you start adding in Uniques that help with Rage. (like Legacy of the Quiet Forest).
It looks like you want to proc Tornado while in Swarmblade and then Maelstrom while in Spriggan form. Youâve got both spirt thorns and thorn shield set up to proc it. Iâd drop the proc from thorn shields. Itâll get you back 6 points and you can put 3 in Garden or Rage to get more Rage restore. The other three can then fill out other stuff like maybe Great Vine and a couple of points into Branch Storm to give your Spirit Thorns some pierce change.
These are just some things off the top. The great thing about leveling is you can spend time playing around with it incrementally to get a feel for it.
I hit 36 tonight and decided on this https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oymxwkYo
I didnât realize before that it would be so easy to stay shape shifted, so i dropped sprig form entirely. also excited bolts is the only thing I have costing mana with the bolts. with a 2handed axe this should be a killer build once i get enough attack speed. At my current level Iâm only getting 2 tornados but I can see that going up with attack speed. Going to need about 4 extra levels on maelstrom but the others arenât so stingy. If mana/rage isnât too bad iâll pull points out of calm.
1 Like