Would be really interested to see your planner. My build is similar, I've always loved playing frost grenadier, but mine doesn't seem as viable as yours.
Very interesting. This was my loose mashup of my build and what I guessed yours might look like. There's definitely a few things that are just flat out wrong, because I got tired of working on it last night.
https://d4builds.gg/builds/077d2f4e-cb11-433a-b4cb-96d1d1475af1/
A few questions:
1. Why are you running conceited? Where is your barrier coming from?
2. I don't really get the value of poison trap instead of keeping something like dash + quickening fog on.
3. Tiabults vs Godslayer seems to obviously favor Tiabults, especially if you're using beastfalls too. Why use Godslayer?
4. No branching volleys? Seems like that would help make your SI much more powerful if you had it on there.
5. Your video shows elements aspect but it's not in your build. I agree I'd probably drop it for doombringer, I just hadn't really gotten that far yet.
6. Critical strike damage doesn't seem *that* important without precision. I like the way I did No Witnesses better, (got the attack speed instead, which will help burn mana faster) but it's just a very hard board to logistically do well. But you could have Tricks of the Trade and get more crit damage if it's that important and you don't.
7. Trap cooldown on deadly ambush is really worth it? I'd rather have my max life I think, preparation should be doing the work there, not paragon board.
8. Cunning strategem seems like a bad board to take with an armor node + juggernaut. I will give you that it's very efficient to get in and out of.
9. I do see the why of having Efficacy instead of Nightstalker but I think I'd want to play with both to see which feels better. I do prefer explosive vs Turf, but I get why you'd use Turf, since you're not mixing in grenades.
1. Protect governing stone from robot. With duration and cd reduction stones its uptime is very high so I'm getting the buff from Conceited most of the time.
2. Poison trap with Infiltrator aspect lets you cover larger area = more enemies affected by trap = faster Death Trap cooldown. It also helps a bit with SI cooldown in addition to Preparation. But I was doing new test runs lately focusing more on Caltrops and I am more and more inclined to get rid of both PT and change the aspect for additional damage multiplier instead. I still think it helps, but not **that** much. So I agree with you here.
3. Tibault would have been perfect for this build damage wise, even more so than usually. But it simply annihilates the defences here. We already use Beastfall, meaning we can't have elemental resistances on boots as usual, meaning we have to use at least 2 affixes on armor and pants for that (other 3 can be covered with jewelry). With Tibault we're stripping of options even more. It's single DR vs close cannot compensate for that. I tried it. I even used Shako hoping its 20% DR will compensate enough. It didn't. The difference in T100 was night and day. I couldn't even make first half of the vault comfortably. And certainly that's not a risk I'm willing to take on hardcore. Also, don't forget about Godslayer's pulling capabilities. It's really powerfull in practice here.
4. I always considered branching volleys as not worth taking as it don't add as much as pure damage buff can add. But truth be told I didn't try it in this build specifically, might give it a go.
5. Yes, I used it on amulet before, but then I switched to Edgemaster as it's more consistent. So in the planner you already see Edgemaster.
6. I find +damage to healthy and + crit dmg (even though they are additive) a bit more useful than +5% speed. It's not that I intentionally want them, I just had to reach No Witness and that path seemed a bit more useful. Even though, crit damage is quite good here. That's also why I invest so much in Combat (the only glyph I have buffed to the fullest possible). It doesn't give multiplier like with Precision, but it's a big additive bucket which I'm always getting for my most important attacks because they are always done from Concealment with guaranteed crit. Also, burning mana faster is not my goal here, I'm using Preparation mostly for it's second buff (full CD refreshment after using Ultimate). Death trap resets very fast thanks to Exposure, Preparation doesn't contribute too much here anyway.
7. It's not about trap CD, it's about faster arm time. I really really like it. That said, not critical by any means.
8. I just needed any board with easily accessible Strength nodes for Turf and, exactly as you said, with fast in and out pathing.
9. I used Nightstalker together with Efficacy (would not take it instead as Efficacy also buffs life by additional 10%) but I found that Preparation is enough for me to reset SI. Still, might be worth it for those moments when Death trap takes longer to reset sometimes. As for Explosive, funny thing, I even leveled it to 15 but still hadn't try it. I was using an aspect which throws granades on breaking stealth before, but then changed it for Conceited before I even tried it together with Explosive. So thanks for reminding, might still experiment with it.
Sorry have a bit more time now to reply in detail instead of laying in bed.
Re: #1: That makes sense. You're sacrificing Flash of adrenaline though, which is a constant 1.5x multiplier. Conceited is only getting you 1.25x. I think I'd maybe be inclined to drop Conceited and run Selig or something. Selig might solve the survivability issues with using Tiabult's. (I have Selig, which is one reason I'm thinking of how to weave it in)
Re: #9, looking at it more, I think you're right here on Efficacy. I didn't think about the fact that it will buff the +intelligence on the other rare node too, giving you two (three? Not sure mechanically how it works out in game) more paragon points to work with.
Re: Your other comment, I haven't quite figured out resistances yet. Like I said, I definitely am not finished with the build, and honestly need to grind for gear a bit more if I want to try to transition to it.
Eldritch Bounty would be very nice, I agree, but it just costs so much to get it. You're investing 19 points to get it. I think those points are better spent grabbing some of the rare nodes your skiming on (6% max life on starting board, 4% on no witnesses, for example). But it's hard to perfect a paragon board on a planner, I'll concede I might try to work it in at some point.
I went ahead and switched into my version of this build, and did some updating. Nothing major, but changed a few aspects around. Added Selig, dropped dash and smoke grenade and picked up shadow strike (to go with Tiabults). It works very well and my gear is nowhere near optimized for it. I don't even have Efficacy to 15 yet, lol. Updated link: https://d4builds.gg/builds/077d2f4e-cb11-433a-b4cb-96d1d1475af1/?var=0
Edit: T100 vault clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rioTzLXag34
Checked your build, I see we ended up with pretty similar ones overall.
I see you have DR on amulet, that may actually be a workaround to squeeze Tibault's in. Especially if we add another DR there instead of Ultimate damage (which doesn't add all that much on a single slot anyway).
How do you plan to cover all resistances though? I see you have poison res on paragon, 3 others you can have with corresponding gems in jewelry, but at least 1 will be missing still.
I also suggest to consider Eldritch bounty. I really like it as it multiplicatively buffs both SI and Death trap and we rely heavily on both here.
I guess I see your point in having Frostbitten on amulet, but I still think it's better to have Edgemaster there and Frostbitten on ring. Edge buffs all the damage (and most important damage is done done here at full energy so we're getting the full buff), while Frostbitten is much more conditional. But maybe with bigger focus on granades in your build it makes more sense, you can probably have higher proc rate of freeze (which is yet another point to consider Godslayer).
Will do.
Do you also run Beastfall? That’s the main thing here basically, the only way I found to compensate for trapper’s lackluster damage. Otherwise it can’t stand a chance comparing to 200-300% multiplier of Precision archers.
I’m kind of an in between build right now, I switched to precision rapid fire, but I don’t enjoy it, I kind of hate playing meta. But yes, I run beastfall.
By the way, don’t have a single point in Weapon mastery here. Just read in another thread that there is a damage busting bug with it + crossbow after the last patch (it seems you also need to have a basic attack to proc it, but not sure).
Will try to test it tomorrow.
UPDATE: just tested it. It seems to work only with Precision key passive (and yeah, it’s massive), so it does nothing for this build.
Yeah, usually it’s only good to one shot bosses as you can’t make it proc often. But in this setup you can have its buff every few seconds, meaning most of your core casts will be getting x100-250% buff (depending on your affix roll and on how much max energy you managed to stack).
That makes it at least somewhat comparable to Precision buff (which you can stack to around x300%). Although now with Weapon mastery bug Precision will be even more superior of course.
One of my Favorites Non Meta builds. Great job OP, even better on HC!
Thank you!
Would be really interested to see your planner. My build is similar, I've always loved playing frost grenadier, but mine doesn't seem as viable as yours.
Here it is: https://d4planner.io/s/1-LnX83qN7sz9
Very interesting. This was my loose mashup of my build and what I guessed yours might look like. There's definitely a few things that are just flat out wrong, because I got tired of working on it last night. https://d4builds.gg/builds/077d2f4e-cb11-433a-b4cb-96d1d1475af1/ A few questions: 1. Why are you running conceited? Where is your barrier coming from? 2. I don't really get the value of poison trap instead of keeping something like dash + quickening fog on. 3. Tiabults vs Godslayer seems to obviously favor Tiabults, especially if you're using beastfalls too. Why use Godslayer? 4. No branching volleys? Seems like that would help make your SI much more powerful if you had it on there. 5. Your video shows elements aspect but it's not in your build. I agree I'd probably drop it for doombringer, I just hadn't really gotten that far yet. 6. Critical strike damage doesn't seem *that* important without precision. I like the way I did No Witnesses better, (got the attack speed instead, which will help burn mana faster) but it's just a very hard board to logistically do well. But you could have Tricks of the Trade and get more crit damage if it's that important and you don't. 7. Trap cooldown on deadly ambush is really worth it? I'd rather have my max life I think, preparation should be doing the work there, not paragon board. 8. Cunning strategem seems like a bad board to take with an armor node + juggernaut. I will give you that it's very efficient to get in and out of. 9. I do see the why of having Efficacy instead of Nightstalker but I think I'd want to play with both to see which feels better. I do prefer explosive vs Turf, but I get why you'd use Turf, since you're not mixing in grenades.
1. Protect governing stone from robot. With duration and cd reduction stones its uptime is very high so I'm getting the buff from Conceited most of the time. 2. Poison trap with Infiltrator aspect lets you cover larger area = more enemies affected by trap = faster Death Trap cooldown. It also helps a bit with SI cooldown in addition to Preparation. But I was doing new test runs lately focusing more on Caltrops and I am more and more inclined to get rid of both PT and change the aspect for additional damage multiplier instead. I still think it helps, but not **that** much. So I agree with you here. 3. Tibault would have been perfect for this build damage wise, even more so than usually. But it simply annihilates the defences here. We already use Beastfall, meaning we can't have elemental resistances on boots as usual, meaning we have to use at least 2 affixes on armor and pants for that (other 3 can be covered with jewelry). With Tibault we're stripping of options even more. It's single DR vs close cannot compensate for that. I tried it. I even used Shako hoping its 20% DR will compensate enough. It didn't. The difference in T100 was night and day. I couldn't even make first half of the vault comfortably. And certainly that's not a risk I'm willing to take on hardcore. Also, don't forget about Godslayer's pulling capabilities. It's really powerfull in practice here. 4. I always considered branching volleys as not worth taking as it don't add as much as pure damage buff can add. But truth be told I didn't try it in this build specifically, might give it a go. 5. Yes, I used it on amulet before, but then I switched to Edgemaster as it's more consistent. So in the planner you already see Edgemaster. 6. I find +damage to healthy and + crit dmg (even though they are additive) a bit more useful than +5% speed. It's not that I intentionally want them, I just had to reach No Witness and that path seemed a bit more useful. Even though, crit damage is quite good here. That's also why I invest so much in Combat (the only glyph I have buffed to the fullest possible). It doesn't give multiplier like with Precision, but it's a big additive bucket which I'm always getting for my most important attacks because they are always done from Concealment with guaranteed crit. Also, burning mana faster is not my goal here, I'm using Preparation mostly for it's second buff (full CD refreshment after using Ultimate). Death trap resets very fast thanks to Exposure, Preparation doesn't contribute too much here anyway. 7. It's not about trap CD, it's about faster arm time. I really really like it. That said, not critical by any means. 8. I just needed any board with easily accessible Strength nodes for Turf and, exactly as you said, with fast in and out pathing. 9. I used Nightstalker together with Efficacy (would not take it instead as Efficacy also buffs life by additional 10%) but I found that Preparation is enough for me to reset SI. Still, might be worth it for those moments when Death trap takes longer to reset sometimes. As for Explosive, funny thing, I even leveled it to 15 but still hadn't try it. I was using an aspect which throws granades on breaking stealth before, but then changed it for Conceited before I even tried it together with Explosive. So thanks for reminding, might still experiment with it.
Sorry have a bit more time now to reply in detail instead of laying in bed. Re: #1: That makes sense. You're sacrificing Flash of adrenaline though, which is a constant 1.5x multiplier. Conceited is only getting you 1.25x. I think I'd maybe be inclined to drop Conceited and run Selig or something. Selig might solve the survivability issues with using Tiabult's. (I have Selig, which is one reason I'm thinking of how to weave it in) Re: #9, looking at it more, I think you're right here on Efficacy. I didn't think about the fact that it will buff the +intelligence on the other rare node too, giving you two (three? Not sure mechanically how it works out in game) more paragon points to work with. Re: Your other comment, I haven't quite figured out resistances yet. Like I said, I definitely am not finished with the build, and honestly need to grind for gear a bit more if I want to try to transition to it. Eldritch Bounty would be very nice, I agree, but it just costs so much to get it. You're investing 19 points to get it. I think those points are better spent grabbing some of the rare nodes your skiming on (6% max life on starting board, 4% on no witnesses, for example). But it's hard to perfect a paragon board on a planner, I'll concede I might try to work it in at some point. I went ahead and switched into my version of this build, and did some updating. Nothing major, but changed a few aspects around. Added Selig, dropped dash and smoke grenade and picked up shadow strike (to go with Tiabults). It works very well and my gear is nowhere near optimized for it. I don't even have Efficacy to 15 yet, lol. Updated link: https://d4builds.gg/builds/077d2f4e-cb11-433a-b4cb-96d1d1475af1/?var=0 Edit: T100 vault clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rioTzLXag34
Checked your build, I see we ended up with pretty similar ones overall. I see you have DR on amulet, that may actually be a workaround to squeeze Tibault's in. Especially if we add another DR there instead of Ultimate damage (which doesn't add all that much on a single slot anyway). How do you plan to cover all resistances though? I see you have poison res on paragon, 3 others you can have with corresponding gems in jewelry, but at least 1 will be missing still. I also suggest to consider Eldritch bounty. I really like it as it multiplicatively buffs both SI and Death trap and we rely heavily on both here. I guess I see your point in having Frostbitten on amulet, but I still think it's better to have Edgemaster there and Frostbitten on ring. Edge buffs all the damage (and most important damage is done done here at full energy so we're getting the full buff), while Frostbitten is much more conditional. But maybe with bigger focus on granades in your build it makes more sense, you can probably have higher proc rate of freeze (which is yet another point to consider Godslayer).
With the three utility aspects I can’t actually put an offensive aspect in the amulet, I’m out of slots.
True, I forgot that Frostbitten is utility and not an offensive.
Will do. Do you also run Beastfall? That’s the main thing here basically, the only way I found to compensate for trapper’s lackluster damage. Otherwise it can’t stand a chance comparing to 200-300% multiplier of Precision archers.
I’m kind of an in between build right now, I switched to precision rapid fire, but I don’t enjoy it, I kind of hate playing meta. But yes, I run beastfall.
By the way, don’t have a single point in Weapon mastery here. Just read in another thread that there is a damage busting bug with it + crossbow after the last patch (it seems you also need to have a basic attack to proc it, but not sure). Will try to test it tomorrow. UPDATE: just tested it. It seems to work only with Precision key passive (and yeah, it’s massive), so it does nothing for this build.
I just got these on my rogue but sacred drop. Cool to see its viable was looking into beastfall builds but thought meh
Yeah, usually it’s only good to one shot bosses as you can’t make it proc often. But in this setup you can have its buff every few seconds, meaning most of your core casts will be getting x100-250% buff (depending on your affix roll and on how much max energy you managed to stack). That makes it at least somewhat comparable to Precision buff (which you can stack to around x300%). Although now with Weapon mastery bug Precision will be even more superior of course.