Phoenix Shield on swap

Short answer : the main target of

Lightning Fury is taking more damage , but the other 30+ monster hit by the

Bolts are taking less damage

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

Short answer : the main target of

Lightning Fury is taking more damage , but the other 30+ monster hit by the

Bolts are taking less damage

I see that a little differently. The point of

Lightning Fury is mob control which works especially well when pushing forward. For instance, in TZ

Halls of Pain it's not uncommon to get mobbed by more than one group of Night Lords counting a dozen or more at the same time that can quickly take down a smiter paly. You can choose to take them down by spamming them with

Lightning Fury, which in my view is an unnecessary reduction of your stack when

Charged Strike has proven more effective in close quarters. When you run Chaos you don't take down Diablo with

Lightning Fury, you use

Charged Strike. The initial throw in

Lightning Fury includes both physical and lightning damage while the 36

Bolts that split off are all lightning. With

Pierce the physical damage of the initial throw will continue damaging everything along its path. With

Charged Strike you're dealing both lightning and physical damage with each strike and both matter because damage is damage, and even more so if you don't have a Phoenix shield because you need physical for mana and LL. As someone earlier mentioned

Lightning Strike is better than

Lightning Fury when running cows or any large disorganized group, but I find it gives slower forward movement than a Fury-

Charged Strike combo in most areas including Chaos and Worldstone Keep. The only purpose of upping an

Eth Titan's is to increase its physical damage.

The point is that the increase in physical damage (597-1138.28 | 867.64 avg) is not enough to compensate the lightning damage decrease...

Single bolt damage:

Charged Strike: 5906.5 avg -> 5199.5 avg, so reduced by 707 (~80% of the physical increase on each bolt... more total damage only if just 1 bolt hit)

Lightning Fury: 2428.5 avg -> 2150.5 avg, so reduced by 278 (~32% of the the physical increase on each bolt... more total damage only if up to 3 bolt hit on each explosion)

Lightning Strike: 4760 avg -> 4143.5 avg, so reduced by 616.5 (~71% of the physical increase on each bolt...more total damage only if just 1 bolt hit)

The only problem with Phoenix on Javazon is that I don't see it's purpose. I've been using Insight Merc and mana regen is not a problem and about life can't remember when was the last time I used pots in need (usually just use full rejuv when another full rejuv drops and I have like 5-10% less hp). I'd personally rather have more res and total mana on shield than having annoyance of pre-buffing with Treachery and whatnot.
I can see it being used on other builds as a main thing, yes, but on Javazon it's definitely far from needed (just waste of runes).

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

The only problem with Phoenix on Javazon is that I don't see it's purpose. I've been using Insight Merc and mana regen is not a problem and about life can't remember when was the last time I used pots in need (usually just use full rejuv when another full rejuv drops and I have like 5-10% less hp). I'd personally rather have more res and total mana on shield than having annoyance of pre-buffing with Treachery and whatnot.
I can see it being used on other builds as a main thing, yes, but on Javazon it's definitely far from needed (just waste of runes).

I use Phoenix because my merc uses Infinity, not Insight

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

The only problem with Phoenix on Javazon is that I don't see it's purpose. I've been using Insight Merc and mana regen is not a problem and about life can't remember when was the last time I used pots in need (usually just use full rejuv when another full rejuv drops and I have like 5-10% less hp). I'd personally rather have more res and total mana on shield than having annoyance of pre-buffing with Treachery and whatnot.
I can see it being used on other builds as a main thing, yes, but on Javazon it's definitely far from needed (just waste of runes).

I use Infinity on merc, so sometimes needed mana potions with Spirit shield (even with

Silkweave).
and I don't need to pre-buff Treachery with Phoenix (but had to replace a skiller charm ...)

Beside the lower damage (-3 skill), for now I'm sticking with the smooth play of the Phoenix setup.

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

The point is that the increase in physical damage (597-1138.28 | 867.64 avg) is not enough to compensate the lightning damage decrease...

Single bolt damage:

Charged Strike: 5906.5 avg -> 5199.5 avg, so reduced by 707 (~80% of the physical increase on each bolt... more total damage only if just 1 bolt hit)

Lightning Fury: 2428.5 avg -> 2150.5 avg, so reduced by 278 (~32% of the the physical increase on each bolt... more total damage only if up to 3 bolt hit on each explosion)

Lightning Strike: 4760 avg -> 4143.5 avg, so reduced by 616.5 (~71% of the physical increase on each bolt...more total damage only if just 1 bolt hit)

I’ve never said there isn’t a difference in damage when you replace a Spirit with Phoenix, but what I am saying is the realized difference isn’t that significant.

Charged Strike is a melee attack, a blend of lightning and physical per strike, and all hits are 1 hit. It does give off an electrical field that will kill some things in its proximity, but nothing you can rely on. Using your numbers the difference in

Charged Strike damage is about 12%,

Lightning Fury 11.5%, and

Lightning Strike 13%. So the drop in damage with a Phoenix is somewhere around 12.16%, but what you gain in survivability far outweighs what you lose in damage. I have an

Eth upped Titan's with Phoenix on Weapons 1, and an

Eth upped Titan's with a Spirit on swap. So I always have both.

When I run Chaos or Worldstone Keep, I can do it much faster using a Phoenix because it makes the build virtually indestructible and it requires little use of potions. I did a quick video to demonstrate the two shields while clearing

Baal's waves and taking down

Baal. In the run I never used a single potion with the Phoenix but used 5 with the Spirit. The first run is with a Phoenix and the second with a Spirit.

Edit: How are you losing +3 skills when a Spirit only gives 2?

mhlg wrote: 6 months ago

Charged Strike is a melee attack, a blend of lightning and physical per strike, and all hits are 1 hit. It does give off an electrical field that will kill some things in its proximity, but nothing you can rely on.

Charged Strike

Bolts are way far from "nothing you can rely on"
Beside being a melee attack most damage comes from the

Bolts.

Charged Strike may shotgun, like

Charged Bolt: many

Bolts can hit the same target (all of them in the correct angle against large monster) and is your boss/single target skill.
Against boss you can do something like 150 - 200K per second (kill Diablo in with few swings)
With my Javazon, while the "stab" deal ~ 7393.5 avg , the stab release 33

Bolts of 5199.5 avg each where all can hit the main target and is very common to half of then hit the target (situation where the stab damage is like 8% of the full damage)

But even with reduced damage still can farm same places with no problem, and prefer the "quality of life increase" from Phoenix.

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

mhlg wrote: 6 months ago

Charged Strike is a melee attack, a blend of lightning and physical per strike, and all hits are 1 hit. It does give off an electrical field that will kill some things in its proximity, but nothing you can rely on.

Charged Strike

Bolts are way far from "nothing you can rely on"
Beside being a melee attack most damage comes from the

Bolts.

Charged Strike may shotgun, like

Charged Bolt: many

Bolts can hit the same target (all of them in the correct angle against large monster) and is your boss/single target skill.
Against boss you can do something like 150 - 200K per second (kill Diablo in with few swings)
With my Javazon, while the "stab" deal ~ 7393.5 avg , the stab release 33

Bolts of 5199.5 avg each where all can hit the main target and is very common to half of then hit the target (situation where the stab damage is like 8% of the full damage)

But even with reduced damage still can farm same places with no problem, and prefer the "quality of life increase" from Phoenix.

Beside being a melee attack most damage comes from the

Bolts.

Each hit from a

Charge Strike Melee attack includes both lightning and Physical. The

Bolts that emanate from the attack can take down an enemy but it misses as much as it hits. Notice that lightning damage is an average between 1 and some larger number say 7000, so your odds of hitting with a damage of 1 is as good as hitting with a damage of 7000. A subtle benefit of physical damage is that it has a much more limited range between minimum and maximum damage say 320-3000, meaning it will never do less than 320 damage. So if we take the lightning damage of 1-7000, divide it by 2 for its mean, we get 3500 which means nearly half of its damage will fall within the physical damage range. I think we're both essentially reasoning more or less the same point with only our interpretations being different. Question: How does using the Phoenix cost you +3 skill points?

mhlg wrote: 6 months ago

Question: How does using the Phoenix cost you +3 skill points?

-2 from the Spirit
-1 from a skiller charm (replace for a 15@ to keep fr/cr/lr at max 85/74/80 with Phoenix)

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

mhlg wrote: 6 months ago

Question: How does using the Phoenix cost you +3 skill points?

-2 from the Spirit
-1 from a skiller charm (replace for a 15@ to keep fr/cr/lr at max 85/74/80 with Phoenix)

I think with the Phoenix you'll find that max resistance isn't all that important. I was playing around with an Enigma and Cat's Eye yesterday which dropped all resistances to around 50 or less and I ran Chaos with no issue whatsoever. The build with a Phoenix is nearly unkillable.