Need advice - Aftermath build dying a lot!

Hello everyone, I’m looking for advice regarding my first build. I can kill a lot more than my previous gear but I am also dying a lot more. I cannot clear lvl 120@legend without dying many times.

I think there is a problem with my build and any advice / recommendation / explanation would be more than welcome!! Please, don’t be to rough, I am new to this game and this is my first “real” build ;p

Thanks in advance everyone /peace!

/cheers!

The first thing you do is to find the difficulty where you can optimize your current items-meaning the difficulty where you can kill more and get a decent amount of farm. When it comes to farming though, there are a lot of guides here in the forums which you can use to, well, guide you(lol). Your build also needs more sets. I’d rather have 6 different sets that work together than just two sets, This is only my general opinion tho. Wait fir the other more experienced players give you some advice on the specifics.

PS: oh how i miss my eternal skyfall :cry:

For a newbie you have a reasonable choice of legendary items, although an elixer mythstone would be better for the sets and the aftermath robe isnt actually too good, you have done a good job…

For improvements, i would say to use some diamonds on the head and amulet for the +5 all arch mage because it will raise your base damage a decent amount
use some calcite to make it all one element, from your build i surgest poison (although i dislike the element, it would go well with some sets that come with it) but until you can get the setds with that, i surgest ice to freeze targets preventing them from attacking you…

Your orbs weapon damage is useless to the meteor damage, unless you can kill with shatter its not needed, you should change the element and use sapphire to re-role that to elemental damage (both +5000 and +25%) for the head, swap that +20% mana to +5000 mana (greater benefit from cosmic power)

Some more i could tell you to do but sounds like your a little fresh for those, but change the rings +17.9% elemental damage to +5000 elemental damage.

Cuzeg has an aftermath guide, ill find it shortly, you should read it if you havent already and it should give you some advice on what to look for in your gear

Also yor talents are great, keep them for your current build…

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For efficient aftermath dps build, of course use 1 all proc mythstone and 2 meteor proc affixes, with aftermath 4 as basic.

Instead of 2 working sets, you should consider having maxed out all sets so you can have so much space for more sets, therefore more powerful.
For example ,2 of the 2+ all sets makes aftermath 1 into aftermath (5) therefore fulfilling requirement for the set to work immediately.

Also you should consider mythic when spamming shatter, such as energy for eg so that mana don’t run out easily. Amulet can have sanctuary to be backup so you can have fighting chance or you could have empyrean for more dmg with the cost of being OKHO’ed . Energy and harmony would be a good way to regent mana and up at the same time with the energy working with harmony mythic. Harmony mythic should be crafted on head and energy on ring since it can be placed anywhere.

For the survival affixes now, use dexterity 20 for a bonus 10% dodge so you get 20% free dodge, then add one crystal dodge affix to turn that 20% dodge into 50% . Your build does lack crucial crystal affixes. Your orb can have 45% block as crystal affix (switch orb to shield with jasper, place obsidian and if you find block, switch back to wizard class). 50%+ dodge and 45%+ block is very good for survival in case you make mistake and that is generally better than 100k+ hp as long as you rarely get hit by tnt,skyfall and enemy fire but it helps if you make a few mistakes.

Then another crucial crystal affixes that all build must have is 45% crit chance and 225% crit dmg. You already have base 10% crit chance, with 45% crit chance, you can get 55% crit chance and max cap is 60% crit chance so your pretty much all set for this one. This makes sure you crit much for the most dmg, especially with crit dmg. Crit dmg 225% is best with the 55% crit chance you now got because your gonna crit often and deal lot more dmg. Also you can max crit dmg by having 225% crit dmg then rage (5) and 350% crit dmg is really good with 55% crit chance.

Next use ignore resist. This is extremely crucial if you want to deal full potential dmg in any build, avoiding enemy immune and making it so instead of fire is only way to defeat ice, it makes it so all elements are the weaknesses of every enemy and enemy can’t resist or be immune to it anymore. When you already have max crit dmg, 55% crit chance and high dmg, this is extremely useful.

After you get basic crystal affixes for dps builds such as 45% crit chance and 225% crit dmg as well as a must for every campaign build called ignore resist, you can then focus on other affixes.

Another option you could consider in crystal affixes is 30% crushing blow to make enemies easier to defeat in higher floors but that is really up to you because below floor 200, crushing blow isn’t needed that much.

For some improvements after you got the basics down such as 225% crit dmg with rage set affix, 45% crit chance and ignore resist, you can try using 5000+ ED on anywhere on your gear which is shown by your skyfall staff with 6732 fire dmg. 5000 weapon dmg+ is a must on both skyfall and event horizon if you don’t use the eternal version.

You could try adding a crystal affix like 30% deadly strike which goes good with 350% crit dmg and 55%+ crit chance and to enhance it even more, try adding the brutal mythic on the chest.

Your skyfall if it wasn’t eternal could have mythic such as bombard or cosmic orb to deal more dmg to enemies. Another alternative is find a mutiny gauntlet with 100% ED+ (known as fire dmg+) and 25% dmg to elites is pretty good as well and the fact that you can put a mythic on it such as cosmic orb for example.

Gauntlets also have a higher base dmg than staffs, therefore much more dmg, though you can easily get similar base dmg with affixes such as Weapon dmg or so.

Some dps affixes you could consider: one 50% glasscannon if you tried 30%+ dodge and 45%+ block because sometimes hp isn’t very important if you have a high survival rate thanks to dodge and block as well as constant aftermath movement. Empower + Glasscannon is a very good combo and also doesn’t equal to 1hp.

Also try to get at least 200-300% ED+ , one from a mutiny gauntlet, one from a robe such as aether robe (provided you reached floor 400 on any difficulty including very easy mode) and maybe an optional one from insolance.

Of course since aftermath builds tend to be elemental builds, you can get wizardry talent which you already have and max cap of elemental critical is 30% so your all set for elemental crits. To further enhance your elemental crits, use 100% elemn crit from ruby (which shows up as blistering, frostbiting, blight etc, when applied with ruby) and hopefully alot more dmg.

For set affixes, it all depends on your build objective but some good set affixes could be defiant {5} (from mutiny but optional).Defiant can increase dmg by 25% and increase more dmg as you lose hp.
Another good set affix is pathfinder {5} (pet set affix or on gear) because it goes good with your high dodge if you have 50% dodge from dexterity with crystal affix dodge. You can get 31.25% dmg increase from this set and dodge alone which is great, a cheaper defiant set affix. Combining defiant and pathfinder is like over 50% dmg increase, which already goes really good with glasscannon and empower.

Obviously you use aftermath {5} for aftermath build, along with 1 all procs (mythstone named master) mythstone and 2 meteor proc affixes.

For other set affixes, it depends on your build objective. Plagued {5} is good for poison because aftermath can taunt enemies in a spot, many enemies get caught up and each enemy in poison cloud multiplies poison dot by 125% , means loads of dmg!

If you use fire, by all means, use the inferno {5}. This set affix will make fire dot strike every 0.5 seconds which means much more dmg in a second.Not only that, it increases fire dmg by 50%. Can be devastating with enough dmg and time, also good with bleed which comes from blistering. Bleed and fire is really powerful because you can deal HUGE dmg in a second or two when you done it right. Also you can use vampiric touch {5} which can further increase bleed dmg by 62.5% and that is very powerful in fire and bleed builds. Also has the bonus of healing 1% hp and that’s good in both pve and pvp, though better in pvp. Inferno and vampiric touch is the reason why one of my aftermath builds could reach no1 place at eternal league before.

For ice, using permafrost {5} is good because it already increases all ice dmg by 50%, a basic for ice builds and with frozen {5}, it is really good because you can multiply dmg like the plagued set affix by 125% per explosion but you will need high raw dmg.

Sorry if this is too much to take in but this is my suggestions. There are plenty of guides to help you farm the resources needed for a build and plenty of guides to teach you how dps builds work and how each type of build works.

Here are the guides:

Also for inspiriation for your aftermath build:

Hope this helps. Best way to learn is read the guides carefully, test as much as possible which affixes work and which doesn’t, make sure you know how to conserve more affix space and also practise practise practise.

I was in the same boat as you but I learned by reading as much as possible and learning in-game. I don’t expect you to understand all of what I said but I hope you understand some of it, even if it is just a little bit. Your talents are looking really good. By all means keep them like @TeaCup said.

Thanks for reading :blush:

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Okay so while you spend the rest of your day reading that, im gonna go play some more :sweat_smile::joy:

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After reading this:

I was like TL;DR, no offense @CuzegSpiked but please shorten all your replies…

Note: Image is not mine.

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Shorten his replies? I certainly hope he doesn’t - even if the information might be repeated elsewhere I don’t see an issue with sharing knowledge. If you don’t want to take the time to read the information then…don’t. Others (particularly new players like myself) will immensely benefit from reading these posts.

I, for one, am grateful that there are so many members in this community willing to take the time to teach - rather than simply “talk shop” with other experienced players.

Just my two cents.

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Wow! You guys a goldmine! Thanks everyone for your great help, I’m sure others will also benefits of this documentation. Wasn’t too long for my needs, since I didn’t know the basis all this info was great stuff. Learning to write things the shortest way (when possible) is an art. An art that is much appreciated in the workplace. Peace guys, greatly appreciated and much < 3 !

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