Both Tal Rasha and archon are very strong builds. However, when you try to get the best from the two worlds, they both become sub-optimal.
You want Tal Rasha proc 4 elements, but all +all arcane damage for archon build.
You wantRCR for Tal build butCDR for archon build.
You have to give up Aughild set and Captain Crimson set which are excellent for archon build.
I have all the pieces for the two builds and I decidednot to have a merge.
While I do agree that the two should probably not be mixed, I disagree with several of your points. Running 4-piece Tal Rasha, you only stack one element, exactly as with archon, and it might as well be arcane. There's absolutely no reason to mix elemental damage ever. Also why on earth would you have to give up aughild to run Tal Rasha and archon? That makes absolutely no sense. Tal Rasha doesn't even have shoulders or bracers and neither does Vyr and you might as well not use Tal head if you have other pieces to get 4-set bonus. Even with Born set andCaptain Crimson, you still don't need to drop Aughild set. But you can of course not have 4-piece Tal Rasha, 4-piece Vyr, Born and Captain crimson. But drop either the Vyr or Captain Crimson/born, and you can have both,
Is it optimal? Probably not, I haven't tried it. But assuming CDR on some gear, you could quite easily go without 10% CDR from Born for instance.
Even though you have the ring, you probably cannot fit Captain Crimson set with Tal set and Vyr set with optimal stats. CDR is the most important stat for achon build and if you're not optimized with it, why care to play archon with Vyr set? Not to mention how to optimize skills/elements for Tal meteors.
First of all I quite obviously are advising against mixing, so I frankly don't understand what exactly you're questioning about my post.
But to answer your main question, which is about CDR, about 60% cooldown vs about 56-57% cooldown isn't much of a difference. 10% loss in cooldown when stacking it everywhere else is, as I said, not going to make much of a difference. If you can use Captain crimson, Tal, Vyr and Aughild (which you can), you can of course get "optimal" stats on them. Why wouldn't you be able to? It makes absolutely no sense.
But as I said, mixning Tal rasha and archon build is probably suboptimal
I´ve been tumbling with the same thoughts - combining Archon + Tal meteor. And I came to the same conclusion as above.
The trick might be for you - incoorporate the 4 schools to proc Tal Rash - meteor, But in the same time in your case focus on Arcane Damg.
It's complicated to keep the same amount of DPS, if you are mixing all school, but a few pointers that I took into consideration.
Thunderfury - procs Lightning meteor (safe you a slot)
Familir - proc cold or fire (choose what ever you fancy)
Blackhole - a must ability in every build, can proc arcane, fire, cold and lightning (Cold isen¨t the best choice, sin it only increase your cold damg for x. sec.)
Ice Armor / storm armor.
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The more buffs that you don't need to control etc, armor, familiar, TF the more you can focus on your main ability, and think about the Tal Ras set as X-tra damg.
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I´ve made this spec with MM and Mirrorball - I can spam MM all day long, casting Blackhole and Meteor in the meantime - and I don't miss the indirect Cooldown from Tal Ras on 8 sec = Maximizing your DPS
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People might say otherwise - so find your own playstyle, don copycat builds and stuff - but do what you think is best I hope these advise will help you in the future, if you have any question, I'll gladely assist.
Blitzher
The problem with running without a signature spell is that on T5+, you pretty much are going to need arcane dynamo to do enough damage, at least while not in archon form. Using Ice familiar also makes you lose 10% damage that the fire would do. Which in itself probably makes it worth running 3 elements instead of one. Cold black hole may not be the best choice, but if you're running arcane as main, then blazar really isn't that much better and you can obviously not use spellsteal because that would waste a skillslot for procing meteors. MM - conflagrate or glacial spike w/ BH - absolute zero or blazar is pretty much what you have to chose from with arcane as main if you're running with thunderfury (which you really should for a Tal Rasha build). You canrun with BH - spellsteal, but you would have to sacrifice something like teleport or force weapon for it. Which i m o isn't worth it, but that's personal preference.
Also, Ice armor or storm armor really isn't going to cut it on T5+. Maybe you can get away with it at T4, but i m o energy armor - prismatic armor is far superior. The main reason being that on elite packs, you are getting pummeled with ranged attacks and affixes before getting melee hit, so ice armor doesn't even have time to build up before taking a whole lot of damage. Storm armor is just completely out of the question probably already on T4.
Edit: I just learned that a whole lot of elite affixes are actually considered melee damage even though there's no actual melee involved, so I might have to revise my thoughts on Ice armor.
Both Tal Rasha and archon are very strong builds. However, when you try to get the best from the two worlds, they both become sub-optimal.
You want Tal Rasha proc 4 elements, but all +all arcane damage for archon build.
You wantRCR for Tal build butCDR for archon build.
You have to give up Aughild set and Captain Crimson set which are excellent for archon build.
I have all the pieces for the two builds and I decidednot to have a merge.
While I do agree that the two should probably not be mixed, I disagree with several of your points. Running 4-piece Tal Rasha, you only stack one element, exactly as with archon, and it might as well be arcane. There's absolutely no reason to mix elemental damage ever. Also why on earth would you have to give up aughild to run Tal Rasha and archon? That makes absolutely no sense. Tal Rasha doesn't even have shoulders or bracers and neither does Vyr and you might as well not use Tal head if you have other pieces to get 4-set bonus. Even with Born set andCaptain Crimson, you still don't need to drop Aughild set. But you can of course not have 4-piece Tal Rasha, 4-piece Vyr, Born and Captain crimson. But drop either the Vyr or Captain Crimson/born, and you can have both,
Is it optimal? Probably not, I haven't tried it. But assuming CDR on some gear, you could quite easily go without 10% CDR from Born for instance.
Before marauder i had magefist and cinder, could fire 7 cluster with full hatred plus 14 more with discipline(my preparation is set to get hatred).I also could NOT move past t4...
Now, with my current setup, i can fire 6 cluster with full hatred plus 24 more with dicipline(blood vengeance nets me an extra prep while spending my hatred....my dicp cost reduction is 30% atm and 22% on hatred)
My paper dps is 1.15 + 20% from calamity + 30% for wolf + 55% on elites with aughild or 40% without...G iven everything, on elites my paper dps is around 2,4 mil for those 10 sec wolf is active. I can get extra 20% for using steady aim but i hate loosing 5% CC archery gives me.
IF a cluster crits all, it hits anywhere between 25-55 milion(main crit plus grenades, main is usually 25-30 while grenade ranges from 4 - 6.5)...hence my speed killing a yellow elite under 15 sec on T5 . My wolf crits between 4-7mil, Spider 3-5, and rest from 2-3 mil. EVEN if they did no dmg what so ever, their sheer number give them excellent tanking ability allowing me to pound them with ease from a safe position.
I am not underestimating elem damage...its just that currently this setup works wonders for me.What i WOULD like is perhaps getting prides fall helm because it gives 30% reduction which works well since i can fire at least 5 cluster b4 something hits me...
You don't have to tell me how much damage you have and how many clusters you can fire, I can tell by your gear. And as I said, you have 700k less elemental elite DPS than me. Or put differently, I have close to 50% more damage (with elemental and elite bonuses) with worse rolled gear. I also have more cost reduction and only 7 less discipline, so you aren't firing more arrows.
The pets damage isn't really making any difference, remember I have the wolf also, which btw does not crit anywhere close to 7M, so I doubt that yours do with less damage. What the pets do however, is distract mobs, so I imagine they work well solo when you can't kill an elite pack with one barrage of clusters. However in group play, they pretty much do nothing since you would already have barb, monk or WD in party to do their job.
So for solo play, it might very well allow you to clear higher torments than you usually would, although at a slower pace beecause of less damage. However in group play, this setup is far worse than a 'normal' setup with cindercoat and magefist.
For the record, there actually are setups like yours, where you don't even have to sacrifce cindercoat, magefist or SoJ. Or any significant kind of damage or toughness for that matter. 4-set marauder with legs, shoulders and head. 3-set natalya with xbow and boots. Cindercoat, magefist. Witching hour or the other belt with AS and elite damage (forgot the name). And reapers wraps on wrists.
There are several things in this build I don't really agree with. First of all, cindercoat and magefists aren't really optional for a CA build, they are pretty much a must have. What good is natalya bonus compared to 25-30% cost reduction and+fire damage 15-20%?
The 4 piece marauder bonus is pretty good, but it's not worth to sacrifice as much as you are doing to have it. I mean there are a bunch of combinations available that are far better than this. The 4-set bonus also isn't really that good in group play, only solo.
I have 700k more elemental elite DPS than you, with about the same toughness and I don't even have that great gear. And on top of that, I have at least twice the resource cost reduction you have even if you've put full points in paragon. If I got my hands on natalya boots I could craft aughild head and shoulders for an extra +15% elite damage. You are severely underestimating elemental damage and resource cost reduction.
The worst luck I've had on a single item was rerolling natalya ring over 40 times to get almost min rolled CHD. On the other hand I've rerolled plenty of items over 20 times and finally given up because of the escalating gold cost. Overall I've been ridiculously unlucky when it comes to rerolling. You'd think that it will even out in the long run and get incredibly lucky every once in a while, but no
If you smokescreen while running, the mobs will continue to run to where they last saw you (and a bit past that), so they´re still running in many cases after the 1.5 secs have passed and they just keep chasing you when they can see you again. When you smokescreen you should either be standing still and wait to use the skill until just before you get hit or you need to change direction if you´re running while using it.
Well I´m done arguing about what the text is refering to since it´s clearly pointless when people ignore half the text. I´m clearly just seings things when I´m reading "gems" in there. Eitherway it doesn´t matter, there´s no reason to think a nerf is coming.
I don't understand why all these life affixes is needed. It just makes it hard to balance. I would remove life after kill because it is mostly useless and merge LoH and life steal and properly balance it properly. Now LoH is OK or slightly OP and steal sucks...
Life after kill is pretty much useless yes. However life steal does outheal life on hit when you reach a certain dps barrier, so with extremely good gear life steal isn´t useless at all.
What´s the difference what the topic is when the text is clearly referring to LoH? And yes, gems are mentioned which only have LoH. It´s very obvious that the text is referring to LoH and life steal both, I don´t even know why we´re arguing about that. Eitherway it doesn´t matter, if a blue has said that LoH is working as intended, there´s no reason to think it´s going to be nerfed.
I just read that link about ten times, and if you really are paying attention, I see no reason why you would think they are talking about LoH.
Quote from »
Life Steal
The effectiveness of life steal skills, equipment, and gems – those that heal you on hit or kill, NOT health globe or life regeneration bonuses – is reduced in advanced difficulties, as shown:
Normal: 100%
Nightmare: 70%
Hell: 40%
Inferno: 20%
For example, if you have a weapon that provides you with 100 Life each time you hit a monster, it will be reduced to 70 Life in Nightmare difficulty.
They are clearly talking about life steal, they are just giving you an example at the end for dummies who don't know what that means. If you have 1% life steal and do 10.000 DPS, then you will have 100 unnerfed "life on hit", which is then nerfed to 70%/40%/20%.
Anyway, you are right about the fact that there's not much to argue about, as CM's have stated that LoH is working just fine. And it is working fine, if people want to tank champion packs for 5 minutes to kill them, good for them. If they nerf LoH, it would destroy most Monks/Barbarians and the market, as they suddenly have to change gear.
"The effectiveness of life steal skills, equipment, and gems – those that heal you on hit or kill"
Gems don´t have life steal, only LoH so it can´t possibly be referring to life steal. Also they mention life steal AND life on hit and also life after kill. To my knowledge life after kill isn´t nerfed in inferno either so that´s also clearly wrong. One could make the argument that the last part of the text is "for dummies" and that may very well be, but it´s so badly written that it still refers to LoH since life steal never has a fixed heal as it´s bound to damage.
The text IS refering to LoH, at least partly, it doens´t matter how you interpret it, end of story.
Your reading comprehension is terrible.
Despite the fact that they mention gems, using the word "hit" doesn't exclude Life Steal from being the point of the sentence. Both Life Steal and Life on Hit utilize a mechanic which returns life to the player upon hitting an NPC. It's common knowledge that these numbers represent the values which affect Life Steal. To misconstrue it as Life on Hit because of the word "hit" is being extremely naive.
And you´re just ignoring the mention of gems because...? And yes life steal require "a hit", but first of all it would be retarded to use the phrase "heal you on hit" if you´re refering to life steal when there´s also a LoH that works entirely different. And second of all: life steal, life on hit AND life after kill is mentioned when only life steal of those 3 actually is nerfed. So please, before you throw "reading comprehension problem" accusations around, read the text as a whole.
What´s the difference what the topic is when the text is clearly referring to LoH? And yes, gems are mentioned which only have LoH. It´s very obvious that the text is referring to LoH and life steal both, I don´t even know why we´re arguing about that. Eitherway it doesn´t matter, if a blue has said that LoH is working as intended, there´s no reason to think it´s going to be nerfed.
I just read that link about ten times, and if you really are paying attention, I see no reason why you would think they are talking about LoH.
Quote from »
Life Steal
The effectiveness of life steal skills, equipment, and gems – those that heal you on hit or kill, NOT health globe or life regeneration bonuses – is reduced in advanced difficulties, as shown:
Normal: 100%
Nightmare: 70%
Hell: 40%
Inferno: 20%
For example, if you have a weapon that provides you with 100 Life each time you hit a monster, it will be reduced to 70 Life in Nightmare difficulty.
They are clearly talking about life steal, they are just giving you an example at the end for dummies who don't know what that means. If you have 1% life steal and do 10.000 DPS, then you will have 100 unnerfed "life on hit", which is then nerfed to 70%/40%/20%.
Anyway, you are right about the fact that there's not much to argue about, as CM's have stated that LoH is working just fine. And it is working fine, if people want to tank champion packs for 5 minutes to kill them, good for them. If they nerf LoH, it would destroy most Monks/Barbarians and the market, as they suddenly have to change gear.
"The effectiveness of life steal skills, equipment, and gems – those that heal you on hit or kill"
Gems don´t have life steal, only LoH so it can´t possibly be referring to life steal. Also they mention life steal AND life on hit and also life after kill. To my knowledge life after kill isn´t nerfed in inferno either so that´s also clearly wrong. One could make the argument that the last part of the text is "for dummies" and that may very well be, but it´s so badly written that it still refers to LoH since life steal never has a fixed heal as it´s bound to damage.
The text IS refering to LoH, at least partly, it doens´t matter how you interpret it, end of story.
Yes, they did it in a bad manner but what they're trying to get across is "If you have 10% Life steal, and you hit 1000, you will heal for 100, but on inferno you will heal for 20"
Not to mention, that this game guide is full missing/wrong info that has yet to be updated.... What you SHOULD do is find a blue post stating it's being changed.
No one is saying it HAS been changed... I really don´t understand how 75% of the people in this thread refuses to understand what OP is asking.
It´s very simple. The link OP is referring to is clearly stating that LoH is supposed to be nerfed in inferno. We know that it isn´t. So the question is simply where the mistake has been made. Is LoH supposed to nerfed in inferno, but isn´t, or is the info in the link simply wrong? I´d wager that the info is simply incorrect since the rest is very badly written and full of misinformation.
LoH is not supposed to be nerfed in inferno, you can find blue posts about it already when they went over how at some point Life steal will be > LoH and if it still isn't the case they will look at Life changing lifesteal around.
The info IS correct on the site about life steal, just POORLY written, they have "You heal for 100 it heals 20 on inferno" that makes you think they're talking about LoH, but if you re-read what i said, they are implying you hit for 340573490 and out of that damage your % life steal gives you 100 health, but it heals for 20 on inferno.
"For example, if you have a weapon that provides you with 100 life each time you hit a monster, it will be reduced to 70 life on nightmare difficulty"
There´s absolutely no way to read that sentence as anything but referring to LoH. It´s not even badly written, it´s referring to LoH, it´s as simple as that. But yeah, as I said, they were probably trying to illustrate how life steal is nerfed even though that´s not what they´re talking about at all.
If a blue has clearly stated that LoH is working as intended, then that´s the end of the discussion.
Yes... referring to LoH under the life steal section, good work sir, this is why you need to read everything they said and not just the one tiny snippet.
Then again they do list "gems" Which i don't recall them having "life steal %" on a gem even in beta.
What´s the difference what the topic is when the text is clearly referring to LoH? And yes, gems are mentioned which only have LoH. It´s very obvious that the text is referring to LoH and life steal both, I don´t even know why we´re arguing about that. Eitherway it doesn´t matter, if a blue has said that LoH is working as intended, there´s no reason to think it´s going to be nerfed.
Yes, they did it in a bad manner but what they're trying to get across is "If you have 10% Life steal, and you hit 1000, you will heal for 100, but on inferno you will heal for 20"
Not to mention, that this game guide is full missing/wrong info that has yet to be updated.... What you SHOULD do is find a blue post stating it's being changed.
No one is saying it HAS been changed... I really don´t understand how 75% of the people in this thread refuses to understand what OP is asking.
It´s very simple. The link OP is referring to is clearly stating that LoH is supposed to be nerfed in inferno. We know that it isn´t. So the question is simply where the mistake has been made. Is LoH supposed to nerfed in inferno, but isn´t, or is the info in the link simply wrong? I´d wager that the info is simply incorrect since the rest is very badly written and full of misinformation.
LoH is not supposed to be nerfed in inferno, you can find blue posts about it already when they went over how at some point Life steal will be > LoH and if it still isn't the case they will look at Life changing lifesteal around.
The info IS correct on the site about life steal, just POORLY written, they have "You heal for 100 it heals 20 on inferno" that makes you think they're talking about LoH, but if you re-read what i said, they are implying you hit for 340573490 and out of that damage your % life steal gives you 100 health, but it heals for 20 on inferno.
"For example, if you have a weapon that provides you with 100 life each time you hit a monster, it will be reduced to 70 life on nightmare difficulty"
There´s absolutely no way to read that sentence as anything but referring to LoH. It´s not even badly written, it´s referring to LoH, it´s as simple as that. But yeah, as I said, they were probably trying to illustrate how life steal is nerfed even though that´s not what they´re talking about at all.
If a blue has clearly stated that LoH is working as intended, then that´s the end of the discussion.
Yes, they did it in a bad manner but what they're trying to get across is "If you have 10% Life steal, and you hit 1000, you will heal for 100, but on inferno you will heal for 20"
Not to mention, that this game guide is full missing/wrong info that has yet to be updated.... What you SHOULD do is find a blue post stating it's being changed.
No one is saying it HAS been changed... I really don´t understand how 75% of the people in this thread refuses to understand what OP is asking.
It´s very simple. The link OP is referring to is clearly stating that LoH is supposed to be nerfed in inferno. We know that it isn´t. So the question is simply where the mistake has been made. Is LoH supposed to nerfed in inferno, but isn´t, or is the info in the link simply wrong? I´d wager that the info is simply incorrect since the rest is very badly written and full of misinformation.
It´s alot easier to kite phasebeasts if you´re using vault for instance. At the very least I would replace nightstalker with tactical advantage since 28% crit isn´t really gonna make that much of a difference for your disc pool, especially not compared to how much more distance you´ll gain using tactical advantage. Personally I like to run with frost arrow for the 60% slow for 1 sec (combined with cull the weak for 15% more damage), you may not like it but it let´s you kite alot easier as well when the mobs are constantly slowed.
It´s kind of hard to give advice on gear you should buy for your 10M when I have no idea what your gear looks like ^^
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But to answer your main question, which is about CDR, about 60% cooldown vs about 56-57% cooldown isn't much of a difference. 10% loss in cooldown when stacking it everywhere else is, as I said, not going to make much of a difference. If you can use Captain crimson, Tal, Vyr and Aughild (which you can), you can of course get "optimal" stats on them. Why wouldn't you be able to? It makes absolutely no sense.
But as I said, mixning Tal rasha and archon build is probably suboptimal
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Also, Ice armor or storm armor really isn't going to cut it on T5+. Maybe you can get away with it at T4, but i m o energy armor - prismatic armor is far superior. The main reason being that on elite packs, you are getting pummeled with ranged attacks and affixes before getting melee hit, so ice armor doesn't even have time to build up before taking a whole lot of damage. Storm armor is just completely out of the question probably already on T4.
Edit: I just learned that a whole lot of elite affixes are actually considered melee damage even though there's no actual melee involved, so I might have to revise my thoughts on Ice armor.
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Is it optimal? Probably not, I haven't tried it. But assuming CDR on some gear, you could quite easily go without 10% CDR from Born for instance.
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The pets damage isn't really making any difference, remember I have the wolf also, which btw does not crit anywhere close to 7M, so I doubt that yours do with less damage. What the pets do however, is distract mobs, so I imagine they work well solo when you can't kill an elite pack with one barrage of clusters. However in group play, they pretty much do nothing since you would already have barb, monk or WD in party to do their job.
So for solo play, it might very well allow you to clear higher torments than you usually would, although at a slower pace beecause of less damage. However in group play, this setup is far worse than a 'normal' setup with cindercoat and magefist.
For the record, there actually are setups like yours, where you don't even have to sacrifce cindercoat, magefist or SoJ. Or any significant kind of damage or toughness for that matter. 4-set marauder with legs, shoulders and head. 3-set natalya with xbow and boots. Cindercoat, magefist. Witching hour or the other belt with AS and elite damage (forgot the name). And reapers wraps on wrists.
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The 4 piece marauder bonus is pretty good, but it's not worth to sacrifice as much as you are doing to have it. I mean there are a bunch of combinations available that are far better than this. The 4-set bonus also isn't really that good in group play, only solo.
I have 700k more elemental elite DPS than you, with about the same toughness and I don't even have that great gear. And on top of that, I have at least twice the resource cost reduction you have even if you've put full points in paragon. If I got my hands on natalya boots I could craft aughild head and shoulders for an extra +15% elite damage. You are severely underestimating elemental damage and resource cost reduction.
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Life after kill is pretty much useless yes. However life steal does outheal life on hit when you reach a certain dps barrier, so with extremely good gear life steal isn´t useless at all.
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And you´re just ignoring the mention of gems because...? And yes life steal require "a hit", but first of all it would be retarded to use the phrase "heal you on hit" if you´re refering to life steal when there´s also a LoH that works entirely different. And second of all: life steal, life on hit AND life after kill is mentioned when only life steal of those 3 actually is nerfed. So please, before you throw "reading comprehension problem" accusations around, read the text as a whole.
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"The effectiveness of life steal skills, equipment, and gems – those that heal you on hit or kill"
Gems don´t have life steal, only LoH so it can´t possibly be referring to life steal. Also they mention life steal AND life on hit and also life after kill. To my knowledge life after kill isn´t nerfed in inferno either so that´s also clearly wrong. One could make the argument that the last part of the text is "for dummies" and that may very well be, but it´s so badly written that it still refers to LoH since life steal never has a fixed heal as it´s bound to damage.
The text IS refering to LoH, at least partly, it doens´t matter how you interpret it, end of story.
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What´s the difference what the topic is when the text is clearly referring to LoH? And yes, gems are mentioned which only have LoH. It´s very obvious that the text is referring to LoH and life steal both, I don´t even know why we´re arguing about that. Eitherway it doesn´t matter, if a blue has said that LoH is working as intended, there´s no reason to think it´s going to be nerfed.
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"For example, if you have a weapon that provides you with 100 life each time you hit a monster, it will be reduced to 70 life on nightmare difficulty"
There´s absolutely no way to read that sentence as anything but referring to LoH. It´s not even badly written, it´s referring to LoH, it´s as simple as that. But yeah, as I said, they were probably trying to illustrate how life steal is nerfed even though that´s not what they´re talking about at all.
If a blue has clearly stated that LoH is working as intended, then that´s the end of the discussion.
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No one is saying it HAS been changed... I really don´t understand how 75% of the people in this thread refuses to understand what OP is asking.
It´s very simple. The link OP is referring to is clearly stating that LoH is supposed to be nerfed in inferno. We know that it isn´t. So the question is simply where the mistake has been made. Is LoH supposed to nerfed in inferno, but isn´t, or is the info in the link simply wrong? I´d wager that the info is simply incorrect since the rest is very badly written and full of misinformation.
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It´s kind of hard to give advice on gear you should buy for your 10M when I have no idea what your gear looks like ^^