Lord Darryn's Gathering Storm

[indika_tates]

I've never used before this weapon on a fighter, but I have used it frequently on barbarians and druids. To my surprise I noticed that gathering storm, which is a "random" spell that procs on 50% health is quite strong. I was on my way to neketaka and I was near Beina at level 8 (potd), so I gave it a try. I was about to lose the combat then this happened. It just fantastic . The few remaining enemies were dead in a matter of seconds.

Edited December 7, 2021 by indika_tates

[dgray62]

Looks like you got Relentless Storm in this case. That was very lucky in this case!

[indika_tates]

53 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Looks like you got Relentless Storm in this case. That was very lucky in this case!

No. It's not Relentess Storm. It's a neverending bolt of lightning that hits again and again something like 4 or 5 hits for second. There is no spell that does this so I'm interested if others have experience about fighters and lord darryn's mechanics.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, indika_tates said:

No. It's not Relentess Storm. It's a neverending bolt of lightning that hits again and again something like 4 or 5 hits for second. There is no spell that does this so I'm interested if others have experience about fighters and lord darryn's mechanics.

honestly that sounds like something glitched out in your favor. nothing in the spell list for gathering storm sounds like that, unless avenging storm glitched out and kept proccing

Edited December 8, 2021 by thelee

[indika_tates]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

honestly that sounds like something glitched out in your favor. nothing in the spell list for gathering storm sounds like that, unless avenging storm glitched out and kept proccing

I guess it's a bug. But i've never seen anything like this. And it happened twice in this campaign. If you see in the log the delay between gathering storm and enemy attacks to eder  it happens quite fast. And he was the only one standing The rest of the team were withdraw or knocked out.

[Boeroer]

I think you got Avenging Storm. And because Gathering Storm is considered a weapon attack it will proc off itself endlessly in a loop until the duration is over or all enemies dead.

It might proc off itself because it originates from a weapon - nearly all spells on weapons work with weapon quality/enchantments and trigger Avenging Storm, see Chilling Grave on Grave Calling for example).

This doesn't explain why it hit directly in an AoE though. Maybe Relentless Storm and Avenging Storm got triggered both (both will proc Avenging Storm because weapon enchantment).

Edit: or Avenging Storm/Gathering Storm also applies and gets applied by Static Thunder - which might proc Avengimg Storm again which might explain the initial AoE. 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I think you got Avenging Storm. And because Gathering Storm is considered a weapon attack it will proc off itself endlessly in a loop until the duration is over or all enemies dead.

It might proc off itself because it originates from a weapon - nearly all spells on weapons work with weapon quality/enchantments and trigger Avenging Storm, see Chilling Grave on Grave Calling for example).

This doesn't explain why it hit directly in an AoE though. Maybe Relentless Storm and Avenging Storm got triggered both (both will proc Avenging Storm because weapon enchantment).

Edit: or Avenging Storm/Gathering Storm also applies and gets applied by Static Thunder - which might proc Avengimg Storm again which might explain the initial AoE. 

Yeah because no Stun means that Relentless storm is unlikely.

[indika_tates]

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I think you got Avenging Storm. And because Gathering Storm is considered a weapon attack it will proc off itself endlessly in a loop until the duration is over or all enemies dead.

It might proc off itself because it originates from a weapon - nearly all spells on weapons work with weapon quality/enchantments and trigger Avenging Storm, see Chilling Grave on Grave Calling for example).

 

If avenging storm is considered a weapon effect from lord darryn's this explain why it's a neverending effect. Since you hit, it procs again, indefinitely. The AOE is maybe because mob stance triggered the attack on the next enemy so the infinite proc continued on the next one but i'm not sure about this because it happened so fast that I had no time to realize what was happening.

[thelee]

well gee i never before tried binding the voulge to a fighter, but maybe now i will... 

[Boeroer]

It's funny though because I used it with a Fighter/Wizard because I was testing different options for my phantoms. Soulbound weapons keep their soulbound enchantments even on phantoms - doesn't matter that the phantom doesn't have your class. So I was planning to proc Gatherig Storm several times per combat because new phantom - new proc (at blooded). But I never got Avenging Storm. Mostly it was Relentless Storm. Guess I was super unlucky or Avenging Storm has a very low chance to appear. 

[Boeroer]

Okay, tried again with a phantom and got it to work. It's indeed Avenging Storm. And it will loop as long as it doesn't miss (which obviously breaks the cycle). As soon as it's going you should use Clear Out or even better Clean Sweep (or use a Brute to have Carnage going for you) to trigger shocking loops on all enemies in AoE range. As expected Avenging Storm not only procs itself which is already hefty enough but also Static Charge gets applied with Avenging Storm and as soon as AS crits the resulting procs of shock damage will also proc Avenging Storm again which lets this stuff snoball like crazy if you're lucky and no miss is interrupting it. 

Pretty cool.

But as I said there seem to be other spells that are more commonly triggered. Some pretty lame (Blizzard or Returning Storm for example) - but all of them apply Static Charge.

If you're patient Fighter Bloodmage with decent regeneration gear you can use Blood Sacrifice to stay hidden and send one Gathering Storm Phantom after the other. As slong as you personally don't proc Gathering Storm your fresh phantoms will always be able to proc it anew.

Edit: by the way Ball Lightning is only 1/rest but it's very good (especially on Fighter/Rogue due to the Sneak Attack/Deathblows bonus). Another reason for going Fighter with LDV imo. I combined it with the Mantle of the Seven Bolts and you'll have 2 really impactful abilities per rest that can help you turn the tides real quick.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Boeroer

[Not So Clever Hound]

13 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Edit: by the way Ball Lightning is only 1/rest but it's very good (especially on Fighter/Rogue due to the Sneak Attack/Deathblows bonus). Another reason for going Fighter with LDV imo. I combined it with the Mantle of the Seven Bolts and you'll have 2 really impactful abilities per rest that can help you turn the tides real quick.

Ball Lightning and Mantle of the Seven Bolts require a little bit of positioning to optimize impact but with anything Assassin they're absolutely devastating indeed. Wear Deltro's Cage, Deltro's Helm, harm yourself with shock damage beforehand and open up with those... zap zap zap.

[dgray62]

Maybe this requires another devoted/assassin run, this time with LDV and the Mantle for a thunderbolt ninja? You could harm yourself with lightning at the start of the game and hopefully proc gathering storm, then go invisible and unleash mayhem. You'd probably want to dump CON to make it easier to get down to bloodied.

Edited December 8, 2021 by dgray62
More information

[Elric Galad]

By the way, how does Devoted bonus/malus works on this kind of weapon tagged attacks (that are probably not linked to a proficiency) ?

[Boeroer]

33 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

By the way, how does Devoted bonus/malus works on this kind of weapon tagged attacks (that are probably not linked to a proficiency) ?

They all get the +2 PEN (also the bonus crit dmg). Including Ball Lightning which is an active "spell" you must trigger yourself from the action bar.

Streetfighter with Sneak Attack crit while On the Edge should be truly devastating.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Boeroer

[dgray62]

Hmm, maybe devoted/streetfighter would be great for this weapon. Although it would be also nice to have a barb in the mix to speed the static charge more widely via carnage. I also see that Avenging Storm works particularly well with the LDV static charge AOE attacks. You could also wear Heaven's Cacophony or use a scroll to get this up more reliably.

[Boeroer]

Avenging Storm from Heaven's Cacophony would not behave like the version of Lord Darryn's Voulge - because it wouldn't originate from a weapon but a helmet. 

[Constentin Lévine]

6 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Avenging Storm from Heaven's Cacophony would not behave like the version of Lord Darryn's Voulge - because it wouldn't originate from a weapon but a helmet. 

That mean they could stack even if only the Voulge one have this suprising effect.

[Boeroer]

I guess they could. If so then HC's Avenging Storm would trigger from LDV's Avenging Storm.  

[dgray62]

I was thinking you could proc Avenging Storm from another source if Gathering Storm gave you something other than Avenging Storm. Wouldn't be quite as OP, but still nice to have AS proc whenever the static charge AOE is triggered.

[Elric Galad]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

They all get the +2 PEN (also the bonus crit dmg). Including Ball Lightning which is an active "spell" you must trigger yourself from the action bar.

Streetfighter with Sneak Attack crit while On the Edge should be truly devastating.

So Devoted/Ranger for Frostseeker Crit galore ?

[NotDumbEnough]

Would rather go with a hunting bow as Devoted helps with both the accuracy penalty and low base penetration.

It worked OK for me but was super boring.

[Boeroer]

I think you don't need +2 PEN for Hunting Bows because you get Essence Interrupter (shock/pierce) and Aamiina's Legacy (pierce/slash) which helps enormously to overcome almost all PEN issues. I played SC Wizard, Streetfighter/Bloodmage and Streetfighter/Berserker with Hunting Bow + modal and the bonus PEN from Berserker didn't really lift it up.
Streetfighter/Bloodmage was pretty cool because you buff up and call a Phantom, then trigger the right amount of Blood Sacrifice until bloodied and start shooting at incredible speed (50% & 50% recovery + Alacrity). Also pretty nice with one-handed pistol once you get Eccea's to circumvent the pierce-only limitation.
The SC Wizard was Aloth and was meant to use Caedebald's BB eventually (which he did and which is awesome) - but I wanted to stay true to the bow theme for the whole run. Worked well, too. When you give him all the relevant gear a Wizard isn't that bad of a bow user - also because with a phantom + Essence Interrupter you will put additional summons on the field quite frequently. A SC human Bloodmage with Caedebald's and Helm of the White Void has pretty great accuracy with the Blackbow (+7 Fighting Spirit,+10 Rymrgand's Influence,+20 from Citzal's MP). The Helm eve works for the Phantom (which has good base ACC, too). So plenty of teffified enemies at all times.
Streetfighter/Berserker has insane attack speed once bloodied (and even before quite great bc. of Frenzy + modal) but getting to bloodied takes more time and then you don't want to trigger Frenzy anymore - or the balancing between healing/heating up becomes a tedium. But when it works it really works.  Barbaric Smash finishing enemies with 140+ crits, followed by 0-recovery shots and then shooting further with insane speed is fun. But it's also quite one-dimensional. Good AI-toon though. Easy to setup, fire and forget.
In all cases the lowish ACC because of the modal is countered by the awesome attack speed. It's not hat bad to miss a shot if you're putting out 3 while others put out 1.  

For crits galore with Frostseeker I think Monk/Ranger or Cipher/Ranger are best. Both also get some bonus PEN (+2/+1) but they alse get bonus ACC (+12/+20) as well as speed, bonus dmg and even bigger AoE in case of Monk (as well als Stunning Surge which is awesome with three projectiles + Driving Flight). And the Cipher version also is a lot more versatile than a "dumb" pew-pew character imo.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Boeroer