Vengence vs. Elemental Auras

[Bhima]

I was wondering if Vengence + Conviction could do more elemental damage than any of the Holy (x) Auras. Let's use Holy Shock as an example and focus on just the lightning damage....

Holy Shock at lvl 20 = 1-936 lightning damage (469 avg)
Vengence at lvl 20 = +184% lightning damage
Conviction at lvl 20 = -125% resistance to lighting.

Ok, I just blew a circuit when trying to figure out Zeal speed and how to factor in the Conviction. I think I need a calculator, but here's where I'm at so far, maybe someone can pick up the ball and run with it? :)

A weapon that does 165 damage +184% lighting damage from Vengence equals the 469 avg damage from lvl 20 Shock........ Now to factor in Zeal speed for the shocker and Conviction for Avenger.

...and then there is the fact that Holy Shock gets 12% synergy where Vengence only gets 6%.... *bzzzt* ~dang, i just replaced that circuit!
Any number-crunchers out there like a challenge? :blink:

[Mavfin]

A few things, although I can't dig up Zeal frames out of my head....

A weapon that does 165 damage, with +184% Vengeance, is doing ~303 damagte of cold, lightning, and fire EACH, so it's 909 elemental, plus the physical damage....

I would imagine that shock will do more damage, with Zeal added in, but, Lightning Immunity (some will be, even after Conviction) will stop you cold on that. Vengeance will be lessened, but not stopped by immunities.

I'll let someone else supply the rest of the numbers...

Remember, the 6% synergies on Vengenace add 6% of EACH element, so 18% total damage...while 12% HS is just 12%.

[Teiur_Embisque]

I would use the vengence, conviction combo. Vengence does all 3 elemential attacks at the same time, with conviction lowering the foes resistance. As for the elemital auras, i would only put points into them so i have the prerequistis for other skills. While holy freeze isnt bad (at slowing down the enemy noct hurting them) holy shock, and fire do very little dammage @ lv 20, holy fire expecially. Don't waste skill pts into them, use conviction, vengence.

[adeyke]

The zeal attacks are about half as long as normal attack. With a sequence of five hits, slow-fast-fast-fast-fast, zeal is about 5/3 as fast.

I think there are just a whole lot of other factors to consider. With vengeance, you do get all three types of damage. If something's really immune to lightning, obviously vengeance is better than holy shock. If something is really immune to fire and cold, though, you have to ignore those parts of the vengeance damage. If you have a weak weapon, the vengeance damage won't be as high. If you have a lot of non-physical damage on your equipment, zeal will inflict this damage more often. Zeal distributes damage more, than vengeance, which could be good or bad.

I just don't think the whole comparison can be simplified to "more damage" and "less damage."

[Brista]

A point to take into consideration is that Holy Shock will work well even with fairly poor equipment, whereas Vengeance (I think) is really crying out for a good Cruel or similar

Conviction is much more party friendly. Even your merc will hit more and do better elemental damage

Conviction is better against immunes, as is Vengeance

Vengeance is hard work until you have plenty of mana recovery. Caster gear might be a good choice if you do it in no-twink

[Bhima]

Thanks for all the input guys! :)

I agree that vengence + conviction is best for me especially since I'm in a party 90% of the time. Plus the Meteor Sorcs and such will be my new best friends. hehe

I kind of thought that vengence could beat any of the other Holy (x) aura's at thier own game.... even when just looking at one of the elements. But really, I like conviction because it looks cool. :D

Well, Victor the Avenger is lvl 12 after last night. I'll post any new findings I come across in my adventures.

[Rataxes]

Vengeance is hard work until you have plenty of mana recovery. Caster gear might be a good choice if you do it in no-twink.

Not hard at all. Just leave Vengeance at blvl 1 and it'll cost 4 mana per strike, which is definitely managable with only 100-150 base mana and a few mana pots. If you think about, the only thing Vengeance has going for it compared to the Resist X auras is the added cold length, since the AR bonus will be useless if you use maxed Conviction.

Personally I think a pure Avenger will make one of the best no-twink melee characters in v1.10, since their attack has such sick damage potential that even a relatively weak (100 average damage) weapon, can let you hit for almost 3000 average dmg, and also because it is so amazingly versatile, in combination with Conviction being able to damage every single monster in the game with almost equal efficiency.

[kier]

Isn't vengance based on phis damage or something? I'm sure someone said that to me on here once. I rarely use it, I'm a zeal fella. If so, Fana or might would be more usefull, or conviction (lower res=more damage).

Probably wrong, but there we go. If so, tell me please, I'm going to making a vengance/zeal pally atm (his weap is a schaefers, seems to do more damage than cruel weapons such as mythical swords etc).

Kier

[MMAgCh]

Thus, using Fanaticism with Vengeance doesn't do anything for the elemental damage. Of course, Fanat improves AR and swing speed, so it does have an impact on damage dealt per time unit. Conviction would serve an Avenger far better, though.

Back in 1.09 you could just flash Conviction and then switch to Fanat, but alas, 'tis no more.

[IlleglWpns]

Conviction+Vengeance is definitely better than Fanat+Vengeance from a pure damage/time standpoint. However using fanaticism definitely has its upshot namely leech and speed. Leech is self explanatory, and speed is very useful to prevent being constantly interrupted when facing a crowd of monsters (or even a small group). It also helps in keeping monsters in stunlock.

I've run the numbers and fanat + vengeance + one synergy does comparable damage/time as fanat + zeal + sacrifice maxed with the advantage that you can damage every monster in the game (the disadvantage being the mana cost, but that is relatively easy to handle with moderate leech, pots, and meditation or redemption).

[StateOLuvNTrust]

I spent 5 hours twinking and testing this stuff a few days ago. By FAR the most powerful realistic build was zeal/holy shock with a crescent moon phase blade. Getting the Um for that would take awhile, but the build is still decent with makeshift gear and would make you strong enough that you could do countess runs for the runes to make an Um. Using holy shock capitalizes hardcore on a weapon that's already extremely powerful for taking down groups (20% chance to cast lvl 13 static field! ITD! charges of spirit wol... ITD! -35% lightning resistance!).

After maxing just holy shock and resist lightning, with zeal above lvl 4, you have a pally that kills as fast as an avenger with max vengeance, 3 maxed synergies and max convic (I gave the avenger a crescent moon berserker axe for comparative testing). But the coolest part about this build is that you have all the freedom in the world past those first ~46 skill points: you can max sacrifice, or even sacrifice + zeal for damage/leech (and AR for superuniques/bosses), max salvation for the extra light dmg, max holy shield (10K def is very attainable if you do this), max fana to kill light immunes or to leech as necessary, or you can even... be an avenger! vengeance/convic, even with only one point each if you have ~7 or so + skills, is usable even in act 5 /players8 for killing light immunes since you're casting static field, and convic + crescent moon's -35% light res allows you to do that to about anything. I didn't run into a single monster that maintained immunity. You can even go somewhat heavily into the avenger tree: vengeance will already have the resist lightning synergy, and the sacrifice synergy as well if you chose to max it.

The zeal bug is the only problem with this build. When you're hitting, you're hitting HARD, and even an impossible vengeance build--all 4 synergies maxed, vengeance maxed and convic maxed--doesn't kill as fast as shock + resist lightning + salvation. But when you don't get into position correctly you can end up missing 30 attacks in a row. How the #!@#$ did blizzard manage to UNFIX this bug?

I can't mod or mule those new rainbow facets, so I didn't even get to see what this looks like with +light skill damage and extra -light resistance, features which could help damage quite a bit, and aren't really usable for pure avengers.

[Crystalion]

By FAR the most powerful realistic build was zeal/holy shock with a crescent moon phase blade.
...the coolest part about this build is that you have all the freedom in the world past those first ~46 skill points

Holy Shock at 20 points is already +100% damage synergy to FoH lightning (which supposedly ignores undead and demon resist entirely). With 20 points into FoH and adders you could probably get ~2000 pts of damage out of it fairly easily. Even ignoring resists the recast timer on that prevents it from being a time efficient primary killing spell in hell difficulty. But it's a thought.

Interesting that this build is coming back into workability--my first serious character in D2C was a Holy Shock Zealot. When the expansion came out he didn't look nearly as fun for hell difficulty. Of course at that time, iirc, HS did not add lightning damage to ranged attacks. If I made such a Paly now you'd probably find throwing daggers of piercing on my weapon switch.

Thematically it is interesting that Paly's get skills infusing weapons with weenie fire, soso cold and decent lighting; Assassins have a skill to infuse decent poison; Sorceresses can infuse decent Fire (and they trump bigtime by being able to do that to other players, hirelings, summons, minions). (I can hear some complaints that I neglected Necros? Poison Dagger doesn't really "infuse" the weapon, as it is an attack itself--not granting the user the option of how to deliver the damage).

IMO, the weakness of Crescent Moon, and Static in general, is that it only gives you a "discount" on the monster's HPs (due to Static cap and monster regen in hell) at the price of waking stuff up (which is usually no problem and other times really bad). Against a tough monster this can be a real time saver, but against a crowd regen can make it a relatively small bonus.

But if you can "touch" the monsters with PMH or keep them under the influence of poison or OW then the discount is quite substantial. This suggests Poison Javalin (long term duration area effect poison) or applying PHM or OW at range. However, afaik v1.10s, only Multishot, Strafe and Blade Fury are any good at touching monsters at range rapidly with effects. At only 30 charges, a multishot bow is a bit iffy in practice. So, imho, Amazons and Assassins are more likely to easily get the full "discount" from Crescent Moon.

Of course in normal, without a cap, Static Field is an awesome skill. For example, you can cast Confuse (charges available in shop) and toss out a static, which, at more than 1/12th damage puts the monsters into HR causing them to re-evaluate their action--as they are now confused they will attack the closest thing (i.e. monster). As you continue to Static the monsters have an excellent chance of killing each other (whereas normally, their regen generally precludes this before confuse wears off).

My base build for HolyFist is now clvl 52 with half a dozen or so unspent skill points (base theme is max Holy Bolt, max FoH, prereqs--literally I don't know any auras; some Paly, eh?). I had been planning to continue his silly xp factory anti-undead theme with Sanctuary and wrap up with points in Prayer to be party friendly. But I think I'll clone him off--having read your post--to try HS/zeal/FoH as well.

As a side note, as I've posted elsewhere, if you find yourself with a FoH 20 build (or BH 20), it is attractive to grab a Boneslayer axe (if you can) for its 200 charges of level 20 Holy Bolt (which is synergized by both FoH/BH) for massive shoot-the-undead damage (on a weapon switch).

[Raziel]

Some really superb points here, all.

I've been playing a cleric with my wife.. now hold on, I have a point to this! :) .. and haven't had much time to level my shock trooper. So I decided to cut a few corners here and there and just cheaply bump him up some levels to see how he'd look at higher levels.

He's now in the 50's I think, has maxed Resist Lightning, maxed Holy Shock, a point in Vengance and Holy Shield and is on his way to maxing Fist of the Heavens. I'm beginning to wonder if Holy Shock's synergy to FOTH is really 7%, because the damage jumps between points seem absurdly huge. Next level i'll actually write down the before and after FOTH lightning damage and exercise the part of my brain supposedly devoted to math.

The Boneslayer Blade idea is awesome, and would suit this character really well.

I've been dreaming about an Um rune, hoping I would be able to build a Crescent Moon phase blade. It would be just about perfect for this guy, as it would bump the damage of Holy Shock. I wonder if Crescent Moon would make Fist even more damaging?

Oh well. Wait and see, I suppose. Unfortunately, Crescent Moon doesn't work in bows. Then again, that's probably a good thing, I can't imagine how unfair it would be in the hands of an Amazon with Multishot.

[Pren]

It probably isn't 7%. Holybolt got 17% synergies in 1.10, but 50% in 1.10s (according to the sheet.)

Limited testing, FoH sucks in hell. With lvl29 FoH doing around 3000 damage, it certainly kills. BUT, the cast timer, and the fact that it only hits a single target makes it unviable. 3000 damage is -not- a lot in hell, as sad as that is. If it could be spammed, it would be pretty effective. Very effective in fact.

Against lots of undead it can be useful, but tweaked holybolt (500~ damage per skill level at mid-high levels with maxed synergies) probably does a much better job at taking them out, hitting for 5000 easily, on up to 8000 without much difficulty, and even higher with obscene gear. And I've killed magic immune undead with holy bolt.

That's important, because fist of the heavens DOES NOT pierce immunity on demons. Lightning immune rogues in hell/act 1 laugh at your worthly skill and stab you in the eye. I havn't tested on undead, since it's a monumental pain in the ass. I imagine conviction to break the immunity would enable FoH to ignore the rest of the resist.

Items with -resist% don't break immunity, IIRC, so they won't help FoH any.