Frenzy charges! What are they even good for? Frenzy charge discussion and a Barrage Stormcaller Arrow Deadeye half assed build
Preface
I am bad at this game, I am bad at poe1 too, but I'm trying to get better. So I ran some back of the napkin math and tried to figure out what the best use of frenzy charges are and in particular how much can it be juiced by stacking and spending charges.
I did this build guide-ish thing and I am writing this mostly to learn more and figure something out without looking it up so if someone has already done a write up like this, just know that I didn't look for it first. Sorry not sorry.
Frenzy charges and the Deadeye Ascendency
Deadeye has the two notables for frenzy charges, Avidity and Thrilling Chase.
- Avidity: 30% chance that if you would gain frenzy charges, you instead gain max frenzy charges.
- TC: Benefits from consuming frenzy charges have a 50% chance to be doubled.
The tree has 3 notable passive skills that grant max frenzy charges and so far these seem to be the only sources of extra charges in the game. Maybe a new unique comes out and gives more, who knows. I don't think they kept any of the other source of max charges from PoE 1 either so for my purposes max charges are 7. One of the three notables gives +2 charges.
So what the hell are they good for now that charges don't grant any stat bonuses out of the box?
Rain of Arrows and Spiral Volley
Lets start with this, "Are frenzy charges worth spending?"
Rain of arrows looks fucking GREAT as a way to spend frenzy charges with 185% damage effectiveness(DE from now on) on the skill at level 20 (I might be wrong on some of these numbers, I don't know how consistent the increases per level are so let me know if something is off about my math). Spending frenzy charges on it gives you 100% More arrows + 50% more arrows per frenzy charge spent. I think its 38 arrows base at 20? And quality gives you 10 added base arrows so lets just round to 50 to make the numbers easier because I don't think it matters.
Remember Thrilling Chase? If we have 7 charges, we either spend 7 or we spend 14 on a coin flip. So its either 450% more arrows OR 800% (100 + 50 * 7 OR 100 + 50 * 14). So thats 275 OR 400 arrows. Sounds great! I like big numbers and 180% DE * 275 arrows is a lot even if I lose the coin flip!
Yeah so RoA drops an arrow every .08 seconds with no way that I can see to scale down this value. So really what you're doing is making a circle of damage on the ground that lasts longer if you spend frenzy charges. Really spending the 7 frenzy charges is 22 seconds or 32 seconds of damage in a small aoe.
Before the freeze diminishing returns nerf this was OK at taking a bunch of added cold damage from various sources and keeping a boss frozen in place to take the brunt of it. I'm not sure how that plays out now but it was nerfed so maybe it still works? But RoA needs to freeze/pin/electrocute something or the monster is just going to walk away and ignore it. I didn't like it for this reason, but on the upside you make the attack and then do the rest of your damage while its raining down. So its adding damage while you work to keep the boss in place with CC.
If you're ok with the CC required here and can keep the boss still for that long then go ahead and skip down to the How do I get charges? section.
Spiral volley is another skill that spends frenzy charges. Yes. Yes it is.
Look I don't know what this skill is supposed to be for. 100% more + 20% more damage for each frenzy consumed sounds good! But like, your character spins forward and fires arrows everywhere. It can't shotgun, at best this thing is an oh shit button if you get surrounded in a Breach and you've added some AoE or something to it somehow. Literally outshined by escape shot for this purpose as an OH SHIT button. Not fun, not a boss killer, not a great frenzy spender in my opinion. Let me know if I'm being stupid, but I did not like this skill.
Barrage
Barrage was recently buffed in 0.1.0e, the skill now gives you 2 repeats of your next bow attack plus 1 repeat per frenzy charge consumed. Repeats have a less damage multiplier of 15% at gem level 20, but quality can reduce this 0% it seems. It used to give just 1 base repeat and a BIG damage nerf for each repeat so the buff was huge and inspired me to try this whole thing out.
It has a CD of ~1215% of the attack time of the skill repeated at gem level 20, capping at 30 seconds. Faster attack speed, lower cool down.
So spending 7 charges again we're looking at 9 (2+7) or 16 (2 + 14) repeats of the next bow attack. But is there a bow skill to use?
Stormcaller Arrow
As far as I'm concerned Stormcaller Arrow is the answer but spoiler marking the other skills attempted:
!I did try a few and mostly...nothing seems to get repeated a bunch? Freezing salvo leaves you without any arrows to fire but it will consume the buff anyway get fucked. Mag salvo just doesn't work even if there are some of your own lightning rods in the ground and it doesn't consume the buff. Snipe/Explosive Snipe don't seem to work at all when they do consume the buff? I can't tell but they're shit anyway. None of the leaps consume the buff that I can see. Lightning rod caps at 20 rods in the ground, but I was getting to like 42 rods fired I think in one go? It's super MEH. I did not try Ice Shot OR LA because the numbers just aren't as good as ScA. I have not tried barrage into gas arrow and then some source of ignition. Maybe thats good, but pulling off the big repeat is already full of steps without having to find that ignition source. See below where I finally get to my current build. I didn't try the poisony stuff generally because I'm more setup to be an ele deadeye, let me know if you do!!<
ScA has two damage parts, the arrow and the bolt of lightning it brings down 1.5 seconds later. The arrow itself has 110% DE at 20, the BOLT has ~425(!!)% at 20. So 535% per use that we're going to repeat up to 9 or 16 times for 5350% DE or 9095% DE total with base use + repeats. When looking at the skill sheet itself, the dps number is just the arrow portion. Right now mine reads as 4,529 dps. If you open the skill panel and read the bolt however mine reads 29,758 dps. My build is so scuffed right now lmao but I can MELT map bosses.
Time to get into some caveats, it takes time to use the repeating skill. Above 14 repeats (6 charges and winning the coin flip) the bolts start before I'm done firing the repeats. So maybe 2 seconds on the high end of attacking if you pull off the big combo. Without like recording myself and timing it I can't really give an accurate DPS. Maybe its 8 uses/second * the sheet dps but that is dependent on attack speed. I think this is better than 32 seconds of RoA /shrug
How to get frenzy charges, the OTHER caveat
To get frenzy charges I've tried three things.
The least effort version is Combat Frenzy, followed by automating sniper's mark with a Cast on X setup, followed by manually casting sniper's mark. Effort here being how smooth is it to map/boss with. All of these were of course tested with Avidity giving you a 30% chance to jump to max frenzy charges.
Combat frenzy is pretty good, every 1.5 seconds if you freeze/pin/electrocute an enemy you get a frenzy charge. Very easy to keep charges on as the small passives to get the ascendency and +2 charge notables give you a total of 110% increased frenzy charge duration which is like 42 seconds before they fall off. If you keep cc'ing you'll just always have frenzy charges. It was easy to walk into a boss fight at max charges, it was NOT easy to get max charges while fighting the boss. If you don't have max charges, the big damage combo just doesn't work.
I tried Cast on Crit Sniper's Mark and just...no. Unless you have stupid high crit chance, odds are good that non yellow mobs are just going to die before you can consume the mark, and if your crit is that high you'll cast it on a DIFFERENT MOB and just dump your mana for no reason. I had this problem at just 12% crit chance. Just do Moxsy's CoC lightning orb and lightning rod Deadeye if you're going to get enough Int to do CoC deadeye. I had a lot of trouble getting charges in the bulk of the map, a bit easier than CF to get charges on a boss.
Manually casting Sniper's mark has been the most consistent. I slapped Arcane Tempo on it and I have no problem just putting it on a yellow/blue/white mob and trying to eat the mark before it dies. My crit is really low right now but its still working with like 12% chance to crit on my attacks. On bosses I can be super intentional and putting the mark on when I need to, and build up to 6 if I low roll the chance to get max charges from Avidity. I am able to keep charges through the map too just less consistently than CF. Rares die to LR/LA anyway, just slower than if I can blast em with the laser bow.
Finally, the build itself
It's fiddly, it has a lot of buttons, so it is not a 1 button PoE build, and it lives and dies by the coin flip. 50% of the time, it works every time.
I use Lightning Rod and Lightning Arrow to make a lot of "attacks" to help consume the sniper's mark. The burst from LR is still an attack and it can consume the mark, its low damage means I get a few tries even on white mobs to get that crit. This is the bulk of my map clear.
Freezing salvo with Ice Bite, Glaciation, and Cold Infusion gives me a shot at 35% extra cold damage on top of the nutty DE that ScA gives me. I have currently built a lot of flat cold damage into my bow and quiver, I am using Herald of Ice and the Coming Calamity notable. I can build up some freeze on the boss while I build my charges, LA and LR do enough cold for me that they can trigger cascading HoI pops, and then if I can time it right freeze the boss with FS. I have some max shock magnitude as well and ScA is really good at hitting that shock the first time the lightning comes down. 16 ScA bolts is fun to watch.
SO...If I can get max charges through Sniper's Mark, freeze the boss with FS, and I win the coin flip for Barrage getting double charge consumption...shit dies. Like hilariously fast. And your character looks funny doing it too lmao. Just 16 arrow draws/launches in under 2 seconds is so satisfying and fun.
I keep Escape Shot around as another freeze source and an oh shit button should I get surrounded.
ScA I have 4(5 for poe1 nerds) linked with Conc Effect, Hourglass, Primal Armament, and Supercritical for right now but this last one is very much experimental and gear dependent. I just got my 4 linking jeweller's to drop today, not in SSF just poor and these are 60+ ex right now. Hourglass works really well because barrage has a CD anyway and I'm not using it for clear/mapping just the boss and big rares. I am using Frenetic and Fervour for +3 max frenzy charges so 6 total atm. I will get Savagery to hit 7 when I get more points, I'm only level 80.
The numbers are very good, but holy shit is it inconsistent. Lots of stars to align with, lots of RNG, and yeah some mechanical skill to run it. If I don't get a mid roll on the RNG its only a little bit better DPS than just using LR+LA to kill the boss. It's probably a lot less investment to just make that super good than it is to do this nonsense. I'd link a PoB if I could, PoB2 when?
I still like it. I made it myself, I'm going to keep playing it and trying to gear it up. I think I can double down on crit and shock effect to really boost the damage on ScA further, it just has a lot of ways to scale and my hope is that even with bad RNG my damage floor is high enough that I can live with it while I try to hit that boss deletion ceiling it might have. I am running it now without ANY + proj, I might try scattershot in the 4th support slot, but I keep it on LR to make mapping smoother. Ideally I get an expert dualstring with the +1 proj suffix and physical prefixes and this thing goes to the fucking moon on big bosses that can catch 48(!) ScAs PEW PEW.
Final Thoughts
Frenzy charges are awkward. The direct spenders in RoA or snicker Spiral Volley just feel kind of meh in practice at best and laughably useless respectively. Barrage is the answer right now if you want frenzy deadeye shenanigans like me. Maybe the Poison Barrage setup is good, maybe the gas arrow thing is good. I don't know. Hell maybe you find some crazy way to get Endurance charge creation instead thats somehow easier and use the Resonance keystone to make those into frenzies! Good luck with that.
I'd like to have more sources of getting charges or an easier way to automate marks that don't re-cast and remove them before I can consume them.
Maybe i'm just bad, maybe I got a lot of math wrong, I did some quick assumptions about how skills scale with levels by just checking with the skill gems I have in the stash.
Let me know your thoughts, what have you tried? Do you like RoA? Is there a bow attack I just missed somehow?
ADDENDUM: I didn't try the Charge Infusion buff that eats charges to give you more skill speed. If you do this just use Combat Frenzy alongside it, I didn't want to sacrifice the rest of the build I'd put together to fit both of these buffs in. That's probably the most consistent frenzy charge use, is it worth 60 spirit minimum? You tell me. I also didn't do it because it gets no benefit for using more charges. It doesn't need the deadeye ascendency notables, just use this combo on any character and you'll just be faster.
EDIT: Mispelling fixes.
Comments
ill just say spiral arrow destroys maps - like it actually might be the best clearing skill in the game, its single target is ass though. Still trying to solve that puzzle. Barrage is interesting, been trying to test it with snipe and SCA, neither feel that amazing yet though.
FANTASTIC Write up! I love it! That's a lot of words and effort into fully explaining the options and the thought process behind it. Honestly, this is what I love about doing PoE buildcrafting. For every "Just use ___" there are thousands of words worth of thought that went into determining that's what you want to use, hours spent comparing alternatives, and even more hours writing them all down. It's hard work, but the end result is always a treasure. Thankyou for putting in the effort.
And now, for my >!Joke!<Version on Endurance Charges:
How do I gain endurance charges? That's the neat part! You don't!!!
You also get them from Pinning enemies, which also makes them more susceptible to getting Crits. I'm currently working on bone spells related to pinning instead of ice.
Will stress test this evening.
You could have a pinning AOE, and maybe 2 or more get pinned giving you multiple rolls for max frenzy in one or 2 button presses. You wouldn't even need the snipers mark or worry about targeting. Just distance would be your only concern
OH MY GOD, can I write two sentences without saying "But..."
Look up ThatsRealNeato on Youtube. He just made a video about deadeye and specifically frenzy charge stacking with those skills. Spiral volley is actually disgustingly good clear. And he used snipe for single target. Watch the video to learn about how to consistantly get frenzies. Vid
Does reduced duration or acceleration affect the .08 second RoA frequency?
Great write up! This answers some questions I had about the viability of the boosts to frenzy charge limits. Also I would definitely consider an ice shot/ gas arrow build with barrage and combat frenzy. With ice shot (tempo, cold infusion, ice bite, fork) and ice herald (magnified effect, clarity) you get amazing add clear that just gets better the more enemy density there is. Honestly two arrows into one weak enemy at the start of the pack just detonates the whole rest of the pack. Added bonus is this will give you almost 100% uptime on max frenzy charges thanks to mass freezing proving combat frenzy. For bossing I cannot stress enough how strong gas arrow /barrage is, I run it with radiant grief so I don’t ever have to worry about igniting anything since I don’t like too many button presses. Standard gas arrow (scattershot/ concentrated effect/ primal armament) is already great for single target damage, and scales great with all the +1 projectile fired benefits ranger and various bow types can get, I’m shooting 5 arrows currently and I think you can get that base max up to 6 every click. Now throw on barrage and you are getting 6x9 (or maybe up to 16 as you mentioned), and they fire fairly quickly since they shotgun, so you aren’t stuck firing for 2+ seconds. It can one shot rares easily, and if you have a good enough damage base I have taken 50% boss health in one shot before with just the x5 I get from 3 frenzy charges. It might have one shot boss potential at x9 or x16.
I absolutely love that you are passionate about the subject, but writing a lengthy and rambling essay is not going to help you convey your ideas.
I am doing a leveling build with Frenzy Deadeye stacker. Here is my thought process and how I craft my build (you may find it similar to Neato):
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There are 3 damaging skills that benefited from Frenzy charges: RoA, Spiral Volley and Snipe. The only non-damaging skill is Barrage. You get access to them in the following leveling order: Sniper - Barrage, RoA then Spiral Volley.
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All of these skills have 0 conversion, and conversion on tree is difficult. So the only way to build them is to use Pure Physical damage, Crit and maybe Bleed with JayTX's build.
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To generate Frenzy Charge with Combat Frenzy, you need to Pin/Electrocute/Freeze. Since we are going for Physical damage, Pin is easiest with the Bushwack Boot, which provides all your Physical damage ability to pin down targets and keep your ability to stun, which is better than using Pin support.
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With Frenzy Charges, RoA fire more arrows while delay remains the same, meaning Frenzy Charge grants you more arrows = more RoA duration. This is ok for mapping and great for bossing, as pinning keeps enemies unable to move and RoA will just keep raining down, dealing more damage.
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This last idea is where I'm different from Neato. Since you are doing pure Physical damage, breaking enemies' armor is going to be a big damage increase. Coming from the Pathfinder Poison build, I bring over the Corrosion Support tech. By using PoisonBurst Arrow or Gas Arrow with Pin support, Corrosion support, and Deadly Ailment, we can break enemies' armor and deal more damage while RoA raining down hell on enemies.
With all those points in mind, my build plan is this:
- Leveling with LA+Rod until we have access to RoA. For bossing, Poison breaks armor while running around pinned enemies while RoA drops. When it is safe, Barrage and Snipe for big d*** damage.
- Once we have access to Spiral Volley, it will be our skill to clear. RoA can still be great on bosses while we run around waiting for perfect opportunity to Snipe with Barrage.
I'm at act 3 right now. I will see how far can we go with this.
Another option for generating your frenzies is using Call of the Brotherhood to convert all your lightning damage to cold. This means you’ll be freezing enemies instead of shocking, which can be really nice. Since you’re hit based, you can use Herald of Ice for the fun explosions for clear.
You can then also run Ice Bite on your main skill for a ton of extra DPS while mapping, although it’s less reliable on some of the higher HP bosses.
Don't forget Barrage is a spell now, so that opens a lot of options, like Cast on crit + barrage, the more you barrage the more you crit, the more your crit the more you generate energy, creating a self feeding loop!
+1 max frenzy is available as a glove corruption in PoE 2 as well btw. It shows up as an enchantment now.
I just had the thought while I obsessively re-read it to make sure I didn't miss anything, maybe I can drop LA and LR for Ice Shot instead if I wanted to try Scattershot on ScA. It keeps my ele damage split and I can drop a bunch of the flat cold I need right now to help build the freeze up for FS and the Ice Bite damage. I'll look into it when I next upgrade the bow, high phys dps bows are expensive sheesh.
Damn this might be the play, cause I'm capped on skill slots right now, if I can get map clear out of ice shot I can stick combat frenzy back into the build and have both sources of frenzy that aren't awful...
Have you thought about barrage snipe?
The fact that Barrage empowers your other attacks should not be overlooked. This opens it up to a few supports including a More multiplier. IIRC it is the only empowering skill available to Bows at the moment. (Sorceress Lightning mana storm might work?)