Best late game DPS major/epic enchants?

[MoogVoyager]

Hey all, I've been totally obsessed with playing Chronicon over the last few weeks and just recently hit level 100. I'm to the point where most of my gear is legendary/TL, so I've been trying to min/max my gear with enchantments. The problem I'm having is that it's hard to tell which enchants are the most effective for increasing damage output.

I've experimented with epic enchants such as Hellfire, Twister, Gib Damage, Burst, Frenzy, Novas, Orbs, Kill Damage, etc., as well as many major enchants such as Chill, Chain Lightning, Power All, Lighting/Frost damage, Damage, etc.

It's hard to tell what is worth it and what isn't. Things like Hellfire and Twister seem really good when they actually proc, but the %chance is fairly low. Similarly, enchants like Chill and Chain Lightning seem to do more consistent DPS, but I have no way of knowing if they actually do more damage in the long run.

For the most part, I've been putting Damage (+1000), Power All (+20%), and Lightning/Frost Elemental Damage (+25%) on my weapons, instead of the %chance enchants. Is this a mistake? My logic has been that these stats affect every single hit and I don't have to worry about whether something procs or not, but at the same time I haven't done any Anomalies yet, so it's possible some of the other major/epic enchants are better for that.

For reference, I am playing a Frost Warlock and my partner is playing a Lightning/Frost Warden. What would more experienced players suggest focusing on for enchants going into late game?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[NullPointer]

The damage proc enchants start out very strong but end up falling off in relative damage output as your character gains mastery levels. This is because they use a fixed percentage of the character's damage stat, which doesn't scale with investment into the masteries for the damaging skills. This also means that they work much better with skills that hit multiple times per cast, such as Hell Pit and Winter Storm. You can make a very strong build for the early parts of the endgame by building around these enchants and skills, which should carry you up to at least anomaly 500 if done correctly.

As for the other enchant options, the flat +1000 damage is very good and should pretty much always be taken if it's available. The percent elemental damage enchants beome relatively less effective with higher mastery levels though, since putting points into the elemental lines give +1% elemental damage per point. Other enchants to consider are crit rate and crit damage for builds that aren't reliant on DoT effects, and overpower. Overpower lets your damage ignore a portion of enemy resists, for example against an enemy with 60% resists, 50% overpower effectively reduces it to 30% and 100% overpower renders it completely ineffective. Early on into anomalies the effect is pretty much negligible but it becomes much more important later on since enemies gain resistance bonuses as the difficulty scales.

[MoogVoyager]

Hey Null, thanks for the detailed response. You're actually one of the people I was hoping to hear from. I've been watching some of your YT vids to get ideas for builds, and I based my Deathbringer and gf's Lightning/Frost Warden off your recent videos.

I was wondering, do you plan on making any other build guides for this patch, or are you waiting for future patches in case of changes? I'd love to see other skill tree builds for classes like Warden and Warlock, but I'm guessing that the other builds aren't quite as strong.

I had a couple other questions if you get a chance. What's with all the pickup radius enchants/gems on your builds? Does it help with something besides grabbing gems/hearts?

Also, do you think the Wisp build is completely dead at this point, even with the 6 wisps from the WM set?

Thanks again for the pointers. I'm feeling better about how to develop my gear.

[NullPointer]

Great to see that people are finding those vids helpful! Unfortunately in the current version I think there aren't any other build types for those classes that can match up to the ones in my recent videos. I did find a few setups that could clear the same test setup (anomaly 1.2k, mastery 600) but I didn't like them enough or feel that they were strong enough to showcase in a video. There is one for Berserker that does about as well as the Warden build, but I personally don't like how it feels to play so I didn't go over it. There are videos by other people of that build though, so look around for those if you're interested in Berserker.

The pickup radius enchants are just there as filler since the minor enchant slots on those gear pieces don't really roll anything else that's particularly useful. You can pick any of the other options instead, I just opted for the pickup radius for extra quality of life since magic find is capped and crystal find/exp gain get drowned out by the massive bonuses from just being in high anomaly levels.

I think the Wisp Warden build is indeed completely dead in this patch, since it essentially got nerfed really hard twice with the mastery caps and the mechanics rework. Hopefully future balance changes will make it viable again.

[MoogVoyager]

I wholeheartedly agree on the Wisp Warden build. It might be a long shot, but Squarebit, if you're reading this, I think I speak for more than few people when I say that Wisp Warden may have gotten nerfed a little too hard. Watching videos of min/max'd builds for it, it's obviously a very powerful build that some may find too OP, but when there are far and few any other builds for all classes (let alone Warden) that can effectively clear Anomaly 1000+ content, it feels like a step backwards. Obviously, there are many future patches where balance issues can and will be addressed, but in it's current state many of the skill trees are simply not effective for hardcore players who want to take on the most difficult, high-anomaly content.

In its current state, there are only so many late-game options for skill trees for every single class, and I wish it wasn't that way. I would love to explore poison builds for Warlock or Wind Ranger/Poison for Warden, but because some skill trees are considerably more powerful and potent than others, it almost becomes mandatory to have certain skills over others. Being that this is a single/local co-op game I don't personally see the problem with there being some builds that are more OP than others, as long as it's not limited to just one build. When one build is considerably stronger than the next build down it really limits your options and leads to combat becoming stale.

I know this might seem like a petty criticism, but I want to be able to enjoy the full gambit of skills and abilities, as it's obvious you have put so much time and effort into each and every skill tree. I just don't know if that's going to come from nerfing superior builds/skills, rather than buffing weaker ones. Hopefully, Wisps will someday be as strong as they once were. For those who want a challenge, they don't have to play with these sorts of builds, but I really feel like having options like this for content where you can very easily be one-shot is not only fun, but necessary.

Either way, I'm sure there will be many more changes in the future, and I look forward to seeing this game develop and evolve. Thank for reading!