Good Morning Folks. For a short week… it was one hell of a long week. I did not post yesterday because I was not really sure I had much of anything to say. I’ve shifted my focus over to leveling my now Elementalist that is attempting to retrace the steps that I made previously with my BelFreezyBoom character. That time I played it on a Trickster, and this time around I am leaning into Elementalist for the golem buffs and the ability to be shocking, igniting, and freezing everything with my ice damage. So far… I am still in the campaign but there is not a single fight that I have not instant phased. The sheer amount of damage that I am dealing seems crazy, and I think I am going to end up shifting up some of the build further because the golems are solving a lot of problems for me. In the previous incarnation I went Eldritch Battery, and I would really love not to have to do that here so that I could keep Energy Shield as a proper defensive layer. I also would really love to drop Clarity, so I have some mana fixing that needs to happen so that I can keep spamming traps without running empty.
One of the toys that I am specifically building around this time is the new Foulborn Berek’s Respite. Originally I had planned on using the cheap version of this that had explosion for ignited enemies, and then propagated shocks. However I pulled the 50 divine version of the ring that has both explosions on shocked or ignited mobs and I am running with this. That means that I need to make sure I am shocking and igniting with my cold damage. A big part of why I am playing Elementalist on top of the golem buffs, is the fact that Shaper of Flames and Shaper of Storms make it so that ALL damage that I deal regardless of element can Ignite and can Shock. While leveling I had been using some items to force lightning and fire damage, but in theory I can drop these going forward and just pour all of my effort into cold damage.
This is the current state of the build as exported this morning. I’ve completed three labs and picked up the golem node, and then shaper of storms, and shaper of flames, and then I am probably going to pick up the elemental bastion node as my final choice just for an additional defensive layer. After that I am mostly picking up all of the trap damage and cold damage nodes that are easy to get to, and then picking up energy shield, life, and evasion nodes. I’ve grabbed the entire spell suppression wheel and taken the spell suppression is lucky mastery. Since I am getting so much general problem fixing from the golems, I am hoping I can go way more tanky with the build as a whole. I got the last build to a pretty comfortable spot, but I am hoping that I can improve upon pretty much everything with this version.
For Uniques I am running Sunblast which is really the only thing that is absolutely required to make this work. It essentially makes it so that enemies do not trigger traps, but they trigger on their own quickly after laying them down. I spent a div on a corrupted version that gives me 10% increased Area of Effect scaling, because the goal of this build is to make really large traps. Previously I had been using a Carcass Jack to accomplish this, but in truth… the Fire Golem scaling seems to be enough that I might end up dropping the Jack in order to get a well rolled rare instead. New things that I am playing with is a Kongming’s Stratagem which blinds everything that gets hit by my traps, and I am slotting 3 of my 4 golems in it to get +2 levels, and then the 4th golem is being scaled by the other new unique which is a Foulborn Tulborn which gives +4 levels to cold gems.
This is what the AOE coverage of my traps looked like before throwing on a Carcass Jack, and I think this is MORE than enough for good clearing. So once I throw on a few more levels I will probably sell the Jack and pick up a really well rolled chest-piece with suppression and resists on it. The problem with playing with this many uniques is that I only have a handful of slots to fix my stats with. Essentially I will have gloves, boots, helm, and a ring if I use the Jack, so having another rare in that chest slot should really help spread things out a bit. I am going to need spell suppression on pretty much every slot I can get it, and I need to find good movement speed boots because at the moment I feel extremely sluggish. Once I get this geared enough I will probably start mapping on it, and then using the RF Chieftain almost exclusively for Delve. That said I remember having a pretty good time in Delve with the previous incarnation of this build.
The main reason why I am so focused on trying to build it tanky, is just that I have zero visual clarity while playing the character. The entire screen is white explosions, and there are not even any mtx that you can throw on that improve this. There is a single option but it looks just as much of a whiteout, potentially worse. It is a heck of a lot of fun though to watch everything essentially get wiped out by the traps. The big thing that I need to fix though is my mana, and in theory I probably need to incorporate minus mana cost on my one available rare ring. I might see what I can annoint on my Dragonfang Amulet to resolve my mana woes, since I think I have already picked up all of the trap and cold damage nodes. The only damage node that would make sense is Divine Judgement since I can’t path over to it.
The biggest challenge with this build is the fact that I am flying completely blind. I am having to exclusively lean on my knowledge of the game to solve the problems that it encounters. This is honestly pretty cool, and if nothing else I should earn a tiny bit of hipster cred if it works. If it fails miserably… then I already have one stable character this league that I can fall back on. A lot of the reason why I play Righteous Fire is that it is so predictable, and it can then in turn fund the bad ideas builds that I occasionally come up with. Today I should finish out the campaign and start mapping and we will see if this continues to roll along as smoothly as it does. If so… I might have come up with something really interesting here. If not… I can always fall back on mapping with my existing successful character. This is at least part of the fun for me, trying something different.
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