The maelstom hand

[Constentin Lévine]

This is not a build, but a great synergie with solo or multiclassed monk :

the Sun and Moon hit twice, for a small amount of damages but a small chance to repeat the attack ; swift flurry and heartbeat drumming give anothe and greater chance to repeat the attack on crit ; the heaven cacophony give Avenging storm. With the high intellect from turning wheel and the higher crit chance from one handed weapon, the weapon of the monk is like a Great Maelstrom Hand with crush, fire, shock and freeze damages, very often in murdering cascade . This is great to see suddenly  a big column of numbers above an poor ennemy ..

 

On lvl 20 solo monk with Wotw, because each of 2 hit from the initial attack can proc another strike from different source, so potentialy 4 crit chance (if you duplicate sun and moon) per maximum attack, that can give another 2 chances per proc to crit, with one lightning from Avenging storm per hit , it is fun and impressive.

I'm not very confortable with english but I hope everybody understand pretty well the idea !

Edited December 18, 2020 by Constentin Lévine

[Haplok]

Well, having 2 strikes with every attack sure is nifty. But in practice I'm not sure it beats the crit rate boost provided by, for example, a rapier with modal (Ranning's Wrath +29 Accuracy), maybe further boosted by Scordeo's Edge Adaptive (up to +20 Acc).

[Boeroer]

Blade Cascade aside (it always wins):

I tested most melee weapons for use with Swift Flurry/HBD and Sun and Moon is def. one of the best. I mean it highly depends on the enemy, your class(es), abilities and buffs... but still. For several reasons it procs crit-chains more reliably than Rännig's Wrath for me, despite its lower accuracy.

Keep in mind that the Rapier modal doesn't stack with other active universal accuracy buffs like Enduring Dance and such. I just think that (with decent crit conversion) the repeated chance of S&M outperforms higher accuracy. Of course Rännig's Wrath is still a good pick here.

I also had excellent results with the Willbreaker + Body Blows + Stunning Surge (or Spirit Frenzy) + Enervating Blows on a Monk/Berserker because of the -45 fortitude/Brute Force synergy, combined with the highly increased crit conversion.

A Sage with Concelhaut's Draining Touch in the main hand with a club + Bewildering Blows in the offhand + Miasma + Merciless Gaze is also very good for producing crit chains with Swift Flurry/HBD because the DT targets Will and that defense will get reduced by 65 points which is enormous. Works even better as single weapon if somebody else wields the club of course.

Since offhand crits only proc main hand attacks(!) (and those will determine whether crit chains will follow with Swift Flurry/HBD) I guess Sun and Moon in main with Scordeo's Edge in the offhand or even single handed Sun and Moon works better than two Sun and Moons. Maybe even Sun & Moon + Rännig's Wrath in the offhand is better. Looks odd though.

By the way: using Sungrazer with Swift Flurry/HDB is a great way to trigger Extinction Event often since it only triggers on crit-kill. It will proc chains less often but when it does it nearly always kills with a crit which means Extinction Event will follow (which is very strong).

Another nice weapon for Swift Flurry/HBD is Stalker's Patience. While the raw dmg won't stack with crit chains those will make the triggering of the recovery removal (enchantment) more likely which then results in fast rates of attack which in result leads to more crit chains. Works very well in combo with Blood Thirst.

Also a Battle Axe + Bleeding Cuts in the main hand and Scordeos in the offhand will lead to excellent results. It will not chain crits as often as some other combos but Bleeding Cuts do stack with themselves. Since SF/HBD always procs main hand attacks without any animation or recovery this is a substantial dps increase.

My personal favorites are Draining Touch and Willbreaker. 

[Powerotti]

Ring of Focused Flame gives stacking +10 Acc to fire part of Sun and Moon . Unfortunately single weapon wielding bonus for Acc works only for fire, not the freeze part, as i remember. Bug or implementation method of weapon with double hit roll?

[Boeroer]

They are separate attack rolls, one with keyword fire, one with keyword frost - so I guess the implementation is correct?

Good point about the Ring though, I forgot about that. 

[Waski]

you don't get +12acc if single wielding for the second hit of sun and moon

[Powerotti]

It seems, like second (frost) hit roll is not "proper" weapon attack, but rather separate ability with 100% chance to proc on greaze/hit/crit. It work simillar to Grave Calling proc Chill Fog - CF benefits from weapon enchantments and other bonuses, like sneak attack, but not from single handed bonus Acc. The character sheet seems to confirm this, since it only shows dmg and acc of flame head, wich would be "main attack roll" of weapon. On the other hand, blunderbusses are described the same way (only one of four bullets in the weapon tooltip), but all of them gets single handed bonus. Weird

Btw i found, that Ring of the Marksman acc and pen bonus works with Chill Fog from Grave Calling and other AoE spells from weapon, like Ghost Blades of Engoliero, but not with Sun and Moon.

[Boeroer]

Very interesting. Does the crit conversion of One Handed Style work with the frost head? Does the frost head have a biggere chance of repeating its attack than the burn head (see enchentments)?

Sun and Moon is truly a very weird implementation... I have not a very well educated idea why it procs crit chains that often - but it does for me. I toyed around a lot with different setups and it just procs more ofhten than most other stuff. 

Same is Stunning Surge by the way: the -10 deflection can't be the only reason - wonce I use Stunning Surge I get crit chains a lot more often than when using other abilities. This could be wrong impression or simply bad/good luck since I didn't write down the results of all the console sessions.

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Powerotti said:

Ring of Focused Flame gives stacking +10 Acc to fire part of Sun and Moon . Unfortunately single weapon wielding bonus for Acc works only for fire, not the freeze part, as i remember. Bug or implementation method of weapon with double hit roll?

Eh, now I read it correctly. Singe weapon bonus, not the +10 fire bonus. Sorry for the confusion.

[Powerotti]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

I have not a very well educated idea why it procs crit chains that often - but it does for me. I toyed around a lot with different setups and it just procs more ofhten than most other stuff.

Two initial rolls should result two times longer crit chain. Statistically. Another possibility is that every crit from one head launches two hits from both, but i doubt that

[Boeroer]

Iirc it only lauches the burn head attack witzh Swift Flurry/HBD.

If the frost head is implemented like Chilling Grave etc.: would it still proc Swift Flurry? Afaik spell-like abilites like for example Forbidden Fist will not...?

[Powerotti]

FF is meele but not weapon attack. Looks like fire part of Sun and Moon would be "proper" main hand (weapon, meele) attack, and freeze - "additional" (weapon, meele) main hand attack. Then, if SF/HBD uses only main hand, could the initial hit from frost head proc flame head chain?

The spell effect of grave calling is probably tagged as weapon effect, and not meele. Then it would benefit from weapon upgrades, but can't proc SF/HBD

[Boeroer]

Chilling Grave does indeed not proc SF/HBD.

By the way: Grave Calling's Chilling Grave + the paralyzing effect of Grave Bound can help a lot with generating crit-chains (because Paralyze gives you +25% hit to crit) - another option for a SF/HBD setup - for example if you have a Chanter (or even Beckoner) with Ancient Brittle Bones in the party. A lot of enemies wil be paralyzed after some pulses of the Chilling Grave Chillfog once you killed one or two of the skeletons. 

[Constentin Lévine]

On 12/18/2020 at 5:02 PM, Constentin Lévine said:

I made some tests with the scordeo blade cascade (and accuracy bonus) and the strand of favor trick , then i could keep in my solo hand the Sun and Moon (for the second accuracy bonus from just one handed weapon and the crit conversion ), i didnt use the avenging storm , it is a nature test where you can see only the swift flurry cascade proc (the crit which proc that is before on the list).

By the way both fire and ice will proc a complete attack.

304 dammages with one SF proc is pretty huge

 

[Powerotti]

So i did some testing and results are surprising

1. I made custom monk/debonaire with total Acc, when weapon equiped - lower than 49 (dummys deflection), to prevent regular crits on dummy

2. Added Heartbeat Drumming by console command. Swift Flurry was off to not disturb the tests

3. Charm Dummy with Chanter Invocation, so only first hit can be critical - no HBD chains

4. Hit dummy

5. Profit!

1 - Chanters Charm

2 -  initial frost head missed

3 - HBD triggered frost head hit

4 - HBD triggered flame head hit

5 - initial flame head hit->crit by Debonaire ability (this one initiate HBD)

 

On 12/21/2020 at 3:32 PM, Powerotti said:

Another possibility is that every crit from one head launches two hits from both, but i doubt that

Here I was wrong - it does launches two hits

 

Edit: I did some more tests, to confirm repeatability, and it seems like frost hit roll is counted as first and fire as second. Frost get converted to crit even if both head hits, but fire head, only when frost missed.

Both can be converted to crits by One-Handed Style talent and both can trigger HBD.

The order in the fight log looks like this:

1a. Frost hit roll from HBD

2a. Fire hit roll from HBD

3a. Initial frost hit roll

1b. Frost hit roll from HBD

2b. Fire hit roll from HBD

3b. Initial fire hit roll

So all HBD procs are typed above the hit roll that launched them

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Powerotti

[Boeroer]

That does explain why it procs SF/HBD chains so well.