Are SU oSkill builds good?

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void
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So Sigma's been out for a while now and I've been wondering how good the oSkills are that you can find on certain SU's.

For example, there is a barbarian throwing axe that gives Bear Claw Nova oSkill (I believe that's what it's called), but there are more SU's with a similar design.

What has your experience been with those? Are those oSkills any good for a build based on them? How do they compare with regular character builds in terms of strength and clear speed?
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Solfege
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Played around a bit with Charged Strike on a Melee Sorc. Haven't done much with it beyond a few tests, so can't say how a dedicated build around the skill would compare. But it has potential (basically plays like when Khany had Stormblast).
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demonshalo
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I have experimented with over 30 different oskill builds and invested thousands of TG in trying to make ANY of them work over the past few months. While some of the ones I tested did work early-mid game, only two actually stood out.

Stormfront which still suffers from some issues even after being buffed by 100%. It requires massive gear commitment because of its bad scaling but it can work on amazon and druid really nicely for about 30 mins. It´s flashy and amusing but... it will ultimately fail miserably at doing anything beyond mid game content.

Charged Strike is awesome and but from my testing and the testing of others, it seems as if there is a minor bug with the skill where the static charges sometimes do not apply to the primary target (couldn´t confirm what happens or why but I know that it is a thing).

Other skills like Death Blossom are just simply dogshit even after being buffed by 100% dmg wise. I assume the buff was more for mobs that use it rather than for us as players (?).

So yea, about the only useful thing you can do with the current oskill list is to print it out and wipe your ass with it. At least at that point it will serve some function. The new oskills are more of a nice thing to play with if you want to meme around and perhaps kill a boss or two using some flashy schtuff, but none of them make for a viable build really.


<salt>

Actually, I think I might be a bit unfair to the oskill list. I think ultimately it does serve a very important function, namely that it clogs up the affix list so that your crafts can get even worse rolls. In that sense you can see said list as an econ mechanic to help you spend more shrines --> you have to grind more of them or hopefully even buy them. So yay?

</salt>
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Crash
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There's actually a lot of good oskills, but you have to actually logically build around them. Homing Nova Shot gives a really nice alternative to bow druids for single target. Ranged Blood thorns is kinda average but allows you to play a lot safer too. Hunting Banshee on paladin is neat as well.

the new combo of Carnage on pala shield + bonebreaker that makes superbeast give deadly strike instead of spell damage is super strong. Stormfront can be extremely strong, but you need to scale it up for damage as well as get it to slvl 75 for more bolts per cast (+1 bolt per 25 lvl). I've seen charged strike do well and other times do almost nothing. Think there's some bug with positioning or the direction that you're swinging it for whatever reason.

bear Claw nova is really strong with lion stance barb for wider lazy farming since you dont need to aim it like stampede. Exorcism on chain boots fits really well with phys/magic casters for additional damage over a long period of time.

There's really a lot of good ones, but you gotta build around it and try to utilize some of the new items/orange text modifiers.
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demonshalo
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Crash wrote:Think there's some bug with positioning or the direction that you're swinging it for whatever reason.


Think so too. It could also have to do with the monster hit box size as well as I sometimes see the static charges spawn behind the primary target without hitting it first.
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Crash
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I also seem to agree that some of the bolts just aren't hitting properly, regardless of directional aiming. the outer 2 or 3 seem to always just float on by. But you can stack it up pretty high. 13-14 bolts at 125% wdm
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Stormfront Amazon is really promising, because there's good itemization and passive synergy for it. My Build is 117 atm, and while it suffers against lightning absorbing monsters, the damage is massive - I finished my session yesterday with an on-level 10-20 second Azmodan kill @3projectiles. I'm not sure how it scales into late-lategame, but I don't see anything that would prevent it from being close to Bloodwitches in terms of overall power if you commit to it.
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demonshalo
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Liobal wrote:Stormfront Amazon is really promising, because there's good itemization and passive synergy for it. My Build is 117 atm, and while it suffers against lightning absorbing monsters, the damage is massive - I finished my session yesterday with an on-level 10-20 second Azmodan kill @3projectiles. I'm not sure how it scales into late-lategame, but I don't see anything that would prevent it from being close to Bloodwitches in terms of overall power if you commit to it.


A lot prevents it from working in late game. I´ve done extensive testing on SF Amazon while IncognitoMan was doing the same testing on Druid as we were both interested in the skill and how it scales. First of all you need to get it to lvl 75 to get your 4th bolt as the skill scales badly prior to that. Once you have 4 bolts and start playing around with it, you will notice cast directionality problems. In addition, if you are trying to kill an uber like Astrogha with this build, Darklings will walk between the beams and eat your face if you just cast straight so you have to mass-cast with small randomized movements to each side in order to hit whatever small enemies are around. Casters like SF ama usually try to kill tanky ubers like astro by dealing massive dmg in a short period of time. SF´s damage however seems to be done as instances over time, so once the boss gets hit by the first instance, the boss blinks and your remaining dmg instances goes to waste (or at least that´s how it looks like to me).

All in all, you can farm places like dunc with it easily. Heck, you can even do Fautz or bremm. But in terms of boss killing, this build is below average. However, it does look cool af!
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demonshalo wrote:
[...] All in all, you can farm places like dunc with it easily. Heck, you can even do Fautz or bremm. But in terms of boss killing, this build is below average. However, it does look cool af!


I'm not too concerned about Astro, that uber is always a fringe case in terms of builds being able to do it without respeccing. I'll report back with my findings when the build has progressed a bit more.
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Crash wrote:the new combo of Carnage on pala shield + bonebreaker that makes superbeast give deadly strike instead of spell damage is super strong.


I've been wondering about the new cherubim with the bonebreaker. It seems like it could be pretty good as well? With the Xis Zohar runeword it shouldn't be too hard to get the cooldown to 0s.