200FCR Nova low damage

Hi,
Recently I tried two set up of Nova sorc. One is self wielding Infinity with 105fcr . And the second is 200fcr with Monarch and hoto. Sure the second one looks faster to Teleport, but I was quite disappointed by the killing speed.

Is there anyone playing the 200fcr Nova? What’s the upside of this build? Is there any tip to increase the damage output?

The merc is using Insight in both cases

Jakouilles wrote: 1 year ago

...but I was quite disappointed by the killing speed.

Probably that is the problem

Jakouilles wrote: 1 year ago

The merc is using Insight in both cases

Have you tried 200 FCR with Infinity of Merc?

self wielding Infinity gives you about -50 monster lit res, plus Conviction aura

1 frame better fcr is nothing by comparison

krathkor wrote: 1 year ago

self wielding Infinity gives you about -50 monster lit res, plus Conviction aura

1 frame better fcr is nothing by comparison

yep,
but...
(considering additional 15 pierce from Griffon's Eye)

with 200 fcr and Merc with Insight you go from ~150/82 pierce to just 15 pierce
while with 200 fcr Merc with Infinity, you go from ~150/82 pierce to 100/32 pierce which probably make a considerable difference on the clear speed (but yes, will still be slower than self use...)

200 fcr should probably be with perfect Eschuta's Temper, 3 total perfect facets and max +skill among items?

AFAIK 200FCR Nova sorc is a meme build. Self-wield Infinity is stronger anyway you look at it.
Consider Obsession in a gg base?
I'm assuming you're rocking a light sunder and an inventory full of light skillers?

200 over 105 FCR is a theoretical increase of just over 14% DPS. Assuming you make perfect use of it and never "over- Nova" due to stuff dying faster than you can react anyways. Which is unlikely. And even if you do, you save 1 frame per " Nova to kill" on each pack. Since stuff tends to die fairly quickly (esp on lower player counts) that difference doesn't have much time to build up so any gain you may have won't really be noticeable as you're talking about a handful of frames total and by extension a fraction of a second. By contrast, a raw dmg-per-hit increase - even if it takes longer to kill overall due to slower hits - tends to be more noticeable and give the illusion of being better because you tend to see a difference in the chunk taken from the life bar each hit.

Except in this case it isn't even an illusion. In order to get from 105 to 200 FCR, you're giving up a fair chunk of performance in the form of skill points and/or -res, be that via self-wield Infinity or a JMoD variant. In either case, the gain from the FCR increase tends to not even be close to offsetting what you lose elsewhere.

There's really only 2 variants/times in which 200FCR is better in terms of dmg output:
1) Compared to a full-skill alternative using neither self-wield infi nor a JMoD nor otherwise focusing on facets/-res in any ways (i.e. a more defense-focus build). Though even then the difference is quite small.
2) When combining it with Infinity on your merc and going against little-to-no-light-res targets. At that point, any -res on alternative builds doesn't matter as your target is at -100 either way, meaning speed wins out. Though even ignoring all targets with any significant light res, running a 200FCR Nova sorc without any form of Insight tends to be just painful for obvious reasons.

In theory, you do gain just over 14% faster Teleport as well which can very well make you clear faster overall even though the killing is slower but you would need a fairly solid connection to the game servers to do so without the occasional desync which would reliably cost you a good chunk of the time you'd otherwise save, if not make you actually be slower overall.