Nova sorc questions

...or you can go totally badass on top of everything and roll with double Dream as well and be an absolute shocker! xd

Also call me completely bonkers but I would rather have Obsession in a decent staff (and probably give up the idea of 105 bp even tho it's still possible to get) and roll with Infinity merc than any other combo, especially self Infinity. But hey, that's just me...

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Do people nowadays really build Smiters? Like with 20 Points into

Smite and Stuff? This was a running gag in the Forum i was active back in the Days but i would have never imagined people are dense enough to invest 20 Points into

Smite

I'm that dense I typically make a pure smiter on ladder (and do my farming with another character) so there's plenty of skill points to go around. His only job is to kill dclone and ubers, nothing else

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

Also call me completely bonkers but I would rather have Obsession in a decent staff (and probably give up the idea of 105 bp even tho it's still possible to get) and roll with Infinity merc than any other combo, especially self Infinity. But hey, that's just me...

I really like the idea of Obsession in theory but there's no question that a setup with more -X% to Enemy Lightning Resistance is more efficient, especially vs sundered enemies. So that means using either self wield Infinity or Crescent Moon. One bonus of self wielding Infinity is that your merc can use Insight which means you're nigh unkillable thanks to the high mana regen - you just need a way to deal with poison and the blood mana curse. You could have a row in your

Belt dedicated to Antidotes, you could reallocate your attributes so that your life is always 1pt higher than your mana (completely negates the curse), you can have a merc with Cure of course, and I've seen some people have a Plague on swap, but as long as you pay attention you should be fine

The row of antidotes was my Cure until the real Cure came.

Never looked back after 3-in-1 Dessert combo

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 months ago

...but there's no question that a setup with more -X% to Enemy Lightning Resistance is more efficient, especially vs sundered enemies. So that means using either self wield Infinity or Crescent Moon.

A question since you are all far more experienced with min maxing those kind of meta builds than me (like I said in some of the other posts, before D2R I only and exclusively played single player offline for a decent chunk but that was some time ago, spent most of my time on v1.09 and one of the earlier before exp rebalancing):
How strong would it be to wield an Obsession with an armor that has 4 perfect 5/5 light facets in it instead of CoH (since, in that case, you would probably get close to same +skills and res) but with a bit of -X% enemy res and +Y% dmg?

I am also apologizing to op for asking all this questions on their thread, but I do wonder 'bout those things as well (since I'm gonna start doing that build sometimes in the future).


P.S. A tiny bit of math:
Infinity case: lvl 12

Conviction = -85 res => for sundered enemies it's -17, right? So -17 and -55 (light) which is max roll on Infinity = -72 as a max roll (avg. -67);
Crescent Moon + 4x 5/5 light facets shield case: for sundered enemies -35 and -20 = -55 and +20% light dmg
which one is stronger in your opinions?

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

How strong would it be to wield an Obsession with an armor that has 4 perfect 5/5 light facets in it instead of CoH (since, in that case, you would probably get close to same +skills and res) but with a bit of -X% enemy res and +Y% dmg?

It should be decent enough, while not as good as Infinity / Crescent Moon. I mean, you'd have no problem at all with it, especially on lower player counts. I ran some quick numbers at maxroll and the DPS vs a sundered enemy would be ~10k with Obsession + 4 faceted armor (including a

Griffon's Eye with a facet in it too), while an Infinity or Crescent Moon setup would be sitting at around 14k (using

Skin of the Vipermagi instead). Assuming 105% FCR in both cases. I did this real quickly though so take the numbers with a grain of salt.

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

P.S. A tiny bit of math:
Infinity case: lvl 12

Conviction = -85 res => for sundered enemies it's -17, right? So -17 and -55 (light) which is max roll on Infinity = -72 as a max roll (avg. -67);
Crescent Moon + 4x 5/5 light facets shield case: for sundered enemies -35 and -20 = -55 and +20% light dmg
which one is stronger in your opinions?

Ignoring the merc, then the self wield Infinity is the stronger of the two because of more -res. If your merc has Infinity then they are very close, Crescent Moon with the faceted shield coming up slightly on top thanks to those +20% damage.

You have to keep in mind that the +% elemental damage on gear works additively with

Lightning Mastery, which is already giving you quite a boost, so the extra 20% is not making that much of a difference (a level 30

Lightning Mastery gives you +398% damage already, and the bonus from gear is added to that, making it +418%). +% damage is much more effective for cold builds because

Cold Mastery doesn't add damage so you don't have any +% by default as a cold sorc.

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

I would rather have Obsession in a decent staff (and probably give up the idea of 105 bp even tho it's still possible to get)

Why would you ever give up on the 105bp for that? Obsession is literally built to hit that bp (among other things), even more so as a light sorc. Griff + arach = instant 105+. For any non-light sorc, add

Magefist or

Ormus or whathaveyou to arach and you're also at 105+. There's really no valid reason not to go for 105 with Obsession.

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 months ago

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

How strong would it be to wield an Obsession with an armor that has 4 perfect 5/5 light facets in it instead of CoH (since, in that case, you would probably get close to same +skills and res) but with a bit of -X% enemy res and +Y% dmg?

It should be decent enough, while not as good as Infinity / Crescent Moon. I mean, you'd have no problem at all with it, especially on lower player counts. I ran some quick numbers at maxroll and the DPS vs a sundered enemy would be ~10k with Obsession + 4 faceted armor (including a

Griffon's Eye with a facet in it too), while an Infinity or Crescent Moon setup would be sitting at around 14k (using

Skin of the Vipermagi instead). Assuming 105% FCR in both cases. I did this real quickly though so take the numbers with a grain of salt.

4/4 facets is a less direct comparison imo. CoH (as the "not -res" choice) is going up against

Ormus as an alternative (a comparison that CoH will typically lose, especially with Obsession since you don't need it for your own resistances really).

So at the end of the day, you're really looking at Obsession +

Ormus vs. Obsession + quad-facets vs. self-wield Infinity.
(yes, I'm intentionally ignoring the Crescent Moon variant )

The thing that pushes Obsession to the top where it does is the fact that the +skill difference is absolutely massive. Between the inherent +4 and a solid base, you could get a whole 'nother 7 skill points that you wouldn't get with Infinity. That's a fairly significant chunk of dmg. Add another skill point from a 2nd SoJ because you don't need an FCR ring for 105 with Obsession and so on and so forth.

If you look at the actual expected final performance, self-wield Infinity is kind of terrible, both in terms of damage and in terms of your own stats (res harder to get, less fhr, ...). This is simply due to the fact that -res is capped at -100 and Infinity on a merc already tacks on a solid -85, making it not that hard to drop targets significantly, even without Infinity (or crescent) on yourself.
The obvious exception to this is immunes where Infinity naturally shines but in all other cases, it is eclipsed, largely by a fairly massive margin.

Ultimately, looking at balanced but highly dmg oriented setups (all @105bp), you end up with something similar to the following (plus or minus a bit of dmg/penetration in each case, depending on the exact setup you roll with) in terms of average actual

Nova dmg (the color coded part) vs. various resistance targets (target resistance noted on the left, anything >100 would be the same as 100 thanks to an assumed sunder): (Obsession obv. assumes you have Infinity on your merc)

Also keep in mind that many (albeit not all) actual light immunes tend to be lower life mob types to begin with so the gain from Infinity on those is a bit less visible as compared to the non-Infinity gain on the non-immune tanky mobs next to them.

All that having been said, the real reason for self-wield Infinity (in my opinion) isn't even the added -res, it is the simple fact that wielding Infinity yourself allows you to slap an Insight onto your merc.

Nova sorcs are one of the single worst mana-hogs in the game and getting enough mana regen to actually keep spamming and never stop for full speed-clear games without Insight is close to impossible. Even more so if you run an

Energy Shield version of it. Never having to slow down inherently makes up for a lot of potential time lost due to somewhat lower damage.

Very good additions there, as always
I obviously only compared the setups vs immunes (sundered enemies) in particular, and the numbers seem to be in the same ballpark relative to each other in your table as the ones I came up with, so at least I wasn't too far off with my low effort number crunch

Nevertheless, I agree 100% that freeing up your merc to use Insight instead of Infinity is one of the main benefits of self wielding. The utility and extra safety from that alone makes it worth it IMO.

Some other points in Obsession's favor though: allows you to use

Frostburn (instead of gloves with FCR) to further boost your maximum mana, and you should be able to reach level 40 ES from the Obsession alone (not needing a Memory staff on swap, which is a common tactic to reach 40 ES) freeing you up to use a CtA on swap if you want, boosting your mana into further ridicolous levels You'd still be without Insight though (assuming Infinity on the merc).

Schnorki wrote: 7 months ago

All that having been said, the real reason for self-wield Infinity (in my opinion) isn't even the added -res, it is the simple fact that wielding Infinity yourself allows you to slap an Insight onto your merc.

Nova sorcs are one of the single worst mana-hogs in the game and getting enough mana regen to actually keep spamming and never stop for full speed-clear games without Insight is close to impossible. Even more so if you run an

Energy Shield version of it. Never having to slow down inherently makes up for a lot of potential time lost due to somewhat lower damage.

YASSS.
THIS.

Schnorki wrote: 7 months ago

All that having been said, the real reason for self-wield Infinity (in my opinion) isn't even the added -res, it is the simple fact that wielding Infinity yourself allows you to slap an Insight onto your merc.

Nova sorcs are one of the single worst mana-hogs in the game and getting enough mana regen to actually keep spamming and never stop for full speed-clear games without Insight is close to impossible. Even more so if you run an

Energy Shield version of it. Never having to slow down inherently makes up for a lot of potential time lost due to somewhat lower damage.

Not until recently I saw people running around with self Infinity is what made me feel weird and just raised all those questions of simply "why?" and "can I use something else that gives same if not more raw dmg but it's fun and different?" and that's how I got a little bit deeper into idea of Obsession and all that. Definitely didn't see players run it or even ask about it, I feel like at all. I do tend to go off the beaten path in games and make things work especially if they utilize some less/rarely used stuff... But again, that's just me.

Guess my mind can't grasp this like yours does and doesn't take it as a must have since my play style differs much from the usual one. For me, slowing down and going back to town, re-buying potions and all of that is equal part of the game (I'm used to drinking mana pots). I also don't do grind runs, like lemme do 100 Trav runs or 1000 Andi runs and so on... Hate pure farming (even in TZs). Essentially concept of "time losing" is so foreign to me (this especially goes for gaming in general).
But for the Insight part, yeah; on some builds, where they heavily rely on quick mana spending, I realized how valuable Insight is even tho it's such a cheap item to get. Anyways, all that being said don't want to sound ungrateful, your explanation and the time you put in to clarify things for me was epic and I thank you deeply for it! Definitely cleared some dilemmas for me.

P.S. About 105 bp, I don't have Griffons yet, and they are too expensive for me to buy. For non-light builds it took me a lot time to finally roll a single 35% FCR Spirit, and it was pain in the backside. Also with Obsession you still lose 10% FCR, riiiight? Right? o_O

P.P.S. Sorry if all this is considered as a spam. I'll stop now

Btw, if you want to stack up on facets in your armor and/or shield, you can focus on the -res part of them and pretty much ignore the +damage, for reasons explained earlier about how it works in conjunction with

Lightning Mastery. I.e., using -5/+4 or even -5/+3 facets is good enough as a light sorc. Much cheaper to trade for too. The extra few % on +damage from using -5/+5 facets won't make a noticeable difference in the end.

Depends on what you're trying to achieve with your build. It's not even much of a

Leap if you follow the line of thought:

If your goal is to spam

Nova you'll need Insight (that's a given)
So the next thing would be getting

Conviction from anywhere but your merc

And like Sherlock Holmes said

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

Fits spot on here (Backwards problem solving)

The only way to get

Conviction while the Merc has Insight is carrying Infinity yourself

Then it's just a number game or some tinkering / testing if the build is viable even with the obvious downsides

The magic happens when you try to make the build work within those limits that are present (no Spirit) and still succeed either by conventional or out of the box thinking

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

Also with Obsession you still lose 10% FCR, riiiight? Right? o_O

Obsession gives you 65 fcr. That's all you need from your weapon slots.
Most sorcs will want to use

Arachnid Mesh for the extra skill anyways, giving you another 20 fcr -> 85 total.
After that, all you're short for 105 is 20 more measly fcr which is easily obtained by using

Magefist (which most sorcs would also use anyways) or given sufficient budget and being a light sorc, griffon's for 25 more instead (which means you don't even need

Magefist at that point).

No need for any silly FCR rings/necks.

Schnorki wrote: 7 months ago

Obsession gives you 65 fcr. That's all you need from your weapon slots.
Most sorcs will want to use

Arachnid Mesh for the extra skill anyways, giving you another 20 fcr -> 85 total.
After that, all you're short for 105 is 20 more measly fcr which is easily obtained by using

Magefist (which most sorcs would also use anyways) or given sufficient budget and being a light sorc, griffon's for 25 more instead (which means you don't even need

Magefist at that point).

No need for any silly FCR rings/necks.

IMHO the biggest lost on other things you can achieve is if you need a silly FCR amu and you can't hit a jackpot with 2/20 or at least 2/10, rings as well as you already said because of SoJ alternative.
Yeah, you have a point. I didn't do the actual math, my bad! I do hit 105 all the time with Sorcs but I don't always use magefists unfortunately xd (plus I heard people having problems get 105 bp so that's also why I said that, just in case).

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 months ago

Btw, if you want to stack up on facets in your armor and/or shield, you can focus on the -res part of them and pretty much ignore the +damage, for reasons explained earlier about how it works in conjunction with

Lightning Mastery. I.e., using -5/+4 or even -5/+3 facets is good enough as a light sorc. Much cheaper to trade for too. The extra few % on +damage from using -5/+5 facets won't make a noticeable difference in the end.

Also true and good point there as well! Thanks mate

Another question tho... Would lvl 35-40

Warmth be sufficient enough to keep you somewhat less worrying about mana even tho it's not good as from

Meditation? That's 440-500% mana regen in comparison to ~650% for avg. Insight. Just as an alternative. I'll definitely go with Obsession one day and test all those things out, I just gotta know

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

(plus I heard people having problems get 105 bp so that's also why I said that, just in case).

Yeah, that's probably from people using Infinity - that's one of the downsides of it, it basically locks you into having FCR on most of the rest of your gear, which definitely does limit gear selection. Obsession has FCR solved almost on its own lol.

Skaijuice wrote: 7 months ago

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Skaijuice wrote: 7 months ago

If you are going mana shield, magic / dmg reduce is much more desired than resists.

could you please elaborate on this? Does ES have funky Interactions with elemental damage?

Get ES to 90-95%
5-10% goes past ES.
MDR / DR kicks in, negates the rest of that 5-10% depending on how much stacking you have on gear.

Sol /

Mal runes helps.

MDR - Magic dmg reduction ( Gerkes...GBane..Dworfstar..works very good in synery - 18+13+15 = perfect offset grand total of 46 ELEMENTAL dmg points.

A Desert mercenary with

Prayer+ Perfect Insight + Cure Hat = 3-in-1 instant coffee AKA Never look back after this combo.

Also..shameless self plug - LF one myself..

Edit: Pair that with more physical dmg reduced i.e amulet of life everlasting for max 25 PDR..yummy! Google "immortal sorc"

image.png

Can you run

Prayer + Insight+ Cure on merc? I though Mercs maxed at 2 aura's before the 3rd is cancelled out?

Blindfire187 wrote: 7 months ago

Can you run

Prayer + Insight+ Cure on merc? I though Mercs maxed at 2 aura's before the 3rd is cancelled out?

You absolutely can! I've been running it on Hardcore and started calling it "Saint Vikhyat." It's incredible how much healing you get from it really.

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

Another question tho... Would lvl 35-40

Warmth be sufficient enough to keep you somewhat less worrying about mana even tho it's not good as from

Meditation? That's 440-500% mana regen in comparison to ~650% for avg. Insight. Just as an alternative. I'll definitely go with Obsession one day and test all those things out, I just gotta know

Mana / s is also dependant on the size of the manapool (hence the reason

Frostburn was thrown around in this thread somewhere)

You can throw your build into the charplaner at max roll. There you can see how much mana you regenerate / s if you hover over the mana regeneration stat

Should give you good estimate

Welp... I definitely didn't expect that kind of result from Maxroll (I thought it was the other site that was really buggy for me and I couldn't put everything together as I wanted to so I never tried it, whooops). Anyway, I used the absolute min. rolls on everything except Insight (which is max) and ofc I didn't put in the attributes, skillers and other staff.

Now I'm kinda eager to try it out. xd

The results (TA-DA): https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/1l01soxw

At level 80; with 105 bp (even in both cases) you can essentially cast 3 times / second which leads to your total mana cost being:
Self-Infinity: 132 (in this "plain case") with ~125 Mana regen/s (apart from needed str, every stat into energy), 1500 total mana
Budget Obsession: 144 (in this "plain case") with ~50 Mana regen/s (apart from needed str, 100 to energy and everything else vitality), 960 total mana

That means, practically, in first place you would never run out of mana and in second you can cast for about 10s before you run out of it. Interesting (I still think that can work)!

Winterkill wrote: 7 months ago

Blindfire187 wrote: 7 months ago

Can you run

Prayer + Insight+ Cure on merc? I though Mercs maxed at 2 aura's before the 3rd is cancelled out?

You absolutely can! I've been running it on Hardcore and started calling it "Saint Vikhyat." It's incredible how much healing you get from it really.

^ This.

Sorts mana regen.
Sorts hp regen.
Sorts curse duration.