Active buff/debuff

[kobi]

so i wanted to ask what you guys think. I feel that active buffs are literally never worth it, things like blodlust arcanepower and so on seem like a good idea but can't be multicasted and their value is never going to scale in any way

[Ulyaoth]

Well I feel a bit the same like you.

In some cases I use a buff, e.g. in a pure Chaos build, because you will get Synergy Chaos Upgrades like +dmg so Bloodlust gets more powerfull.

Scent of Blood from the Barb is must have if i go for a bleed build, because the scaling is actually very good and again, you can make a pure swing bleed build or a mix of slam and swing to get those powerful upgrades.

Arcane Power and Might completly got strapped from my builds. There are way better ways to fill this slot.

Bestial Wrath can be usefull if you can manage to pump the area and cooldwon to hace perma upkeep on your summons, but maybe simply another summon in place could be the better choice.

Shield Wall is ridiculous, if you can manage to pull it off and make it perma. But this is only really viable in longer Loop Runs.

Suger Rush is a absolute waste for me.

Cheers!

[Dominic]

can stack em with singular focus and then group upgrade them when you get a synergy upgrade for pretty big gains and they are about the only way youll ever hit the crazy high cast spd thresholds. i like picking up 3 or so bloodlusts then just let them amp other skills they also apply to summons which is where the multicast buff shines imo. Only complaint i really have is that they can get Area upgrades which feels useless since they already have a massive aoe and the aoe only matters in the first place if you have summons with the exception of scent of blood

[Ulyaoth]

If you talk about Singular Focus, yes thats true but only one Scent of Blood can outscale 3 Bloodlust very quickly, because the scaling is way better.

But to be fair, with Singular Focus you can make nearly everything bonkers.
i assume op was relating on builds, where you mix a buff into the skill pool without stacking multiple instances of one skill.

[KellyR]

Sure they don't stack on themselves, but have you seen the sort of buff level they scale to? Getting to 2000 cast frequency is a thing with Scent of Blood, getting to 600 multicast is a thing with Arcane Power. Getting those kinds of numbers without the buffs is nearly impossible. Arcane Power's potency buffs are 20/30/40/50. Compare to the actual Multicast upgrade cards at 4/8/12/16/20 and it's obvious which one wins.

Same with Shield Wall, it's basically the ONLY way to get reasonable armor values, as the normal Resilience cards are near worthless. Intimidating Shout is the only way in the game to reliably nerf enemy damage by any noticeable amount, etc.

[Ulyaoth]

Shield Wall as I said before is good if you can pull off the perma upkeep.

But dont forget about Rare Synergy Buffs with 24% Multicast for e.g. Swing, they can be pretty common. I am not certaiin atm, but i belive those have epic and legendary variants too. If i remeber correclty legendary with 50% chance of main tag.

I can only tell from my personla experience that in most cases a build with buff ends up weaker than a build without, except in rare cases.

But i guess its with all things a matter of taste.

[kobi]

wait, so far i understood that buffs can't be multicasted, like the effect applies once and then you only get cooldown resets on it

[Ulyaoth]

Yes, except you use them multiple times via Singular Focus Rune.

[kobi]

uh oh i don't think i saw that run yet :c

[DJDiceZ]

Wut? Active buffs are OP as hell. Especially the multicast and damage one, they can infinitely scale with damage and they apply to ALL your skills.

If you have 6 skills that does 1000 damage, you have 6000 damage.
If you have 5 skills that does 1000 damage, and a skill that gives them x2 damage, you have 10 000 damage.

This is simple math. There are some builds where it's not always better, but in the vast majority of cases it is extremely strong to have one buff skill.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by DJDiceZ:

Wut? Active buffs are OP as hell. Especially the multicast and damage one, they can infinitely scale with damage and they apply to ALL your skills.

If you have 6 skills that does 1000 damage, you have 6000 damage.
If you have 5 skills that does 1000 damage, and a skill that gives them x2 damage, you have 10 000 damage.

This is simple math. There are some builds where it's not always better, but in the vast majority of cases it is extremely strong to have one buff skill.

However, you'll want exactly one buff skill, because buffs don't boost other buffs. Summon builds will also find them a bit more fiddly to work with, although Bloodlust isn't actively terrible if it's only boosting your own stats.

[Ulyaoth]

Originally posted by DJDiceZ:

Wut? Active buffs are OP as hell. Especially the multicast and damage one, they can infinitely scale with damage and they apply to ALL your skills.

If you have 6 skills that does 1000 damage, you have 6000 damage.
If you have 5 skills that does 1000 damage, and a skill that gives them x2 damage, you have 10 000 damage.

This is simple math. There are some builds where it's not always better, but in the vast majority of cases it is extremely strong to have one buff skill.

It is not THAT simple.
Most skills havent even initila dmg of 1000.
So if i say they startwith 500 it is already very modest.
so it would already be 3000 vs. 5000, but you have to invest heavy in a buff to gain perma upkeep to becaome it usefull.

it would agree in pure elemental like arcane would fit Arcane mastery, because it gets buffed along with arcane, if your rng is good.

But from simple testing i almost ended up clearing faster with a 6th dmg or, dmg support skill instead of using a buff.

The only thing where i always put Scent of blood is bleed barb, simp,y the scaling of SoB is damn high, compared to every other buff.

The other exception is Bloodlust in pure Chaos builds, because there arent too many Chaos skills over all and i prefer Bloodlust over Golems for example.

Holy Might would fit into a Light build, but when i play pala i mostly use the arcane build or his new Slam option.

So again all about taste and opinion.