>In this video, we’re featuring the Spirit Walker, a new Huntress Ascendancy coming in Return of the Ancients on May 29th.

With two tier 1 supports, from as early as level 4, we can get EQ's miserable 4 second delay down to 1.4s, which makes it perfectly viable as a 1 button clearing and bossing skill. The skill has no '+total to attack time' so using a faster 1 handed mace and taking skill speed on the tree is actually rewarding. As long as you keep hitting different spots of ground on rotation the time between ground patches detonating becomes the same as your attack time with the skill.

On another practice run I'm up to act 3 killing everything with just EQ and the occasional boneshatter with a 1 hander. As long as you keep your weapon upgraded (current league mechanic always helps a lot with this) it's smooth sailing. What's more, the 1 handed nodes on the passive tree even have increased attack speed, not reduced! Taking a handful of reduced skill effect duration on the tree also lowers the delay from 1.4s to 1s.

Don't dual wield though, it lowers your speed and your damage for some reason.

I need help before my brain melts from ascendancy indecision in 0.5

What I want:

• tanky
• straightforward gearing
• I do NOT care about giga clear speed (i rly like the semi dark souls gameplay)
• decent screen clarity without alien disco VFX exploding everywhere
• preferably something comfy and hard to kill

What I liked so far:

• Lich with unholy might + giant minions
• Mercenary gameplay felt like some alien shooter and grenade launcher looked sick
• Chayula Monk purple skills are cool af
• Lich purple chaos stuff also cool af
• Thorns was surprisingly fun

The most fun I had was honestly aftershock Titan with life leech. Big bonk, simple gameplay, felt immortal half the time. Brain happy.

Now my problem:
I LOVE the purple aesthetic from Chayula Monk and Lich, but I also love not dying and not needing a PhD in gearing

Can Chayula Monk do comfy life leech tank gameplay too or is Titan better pick?

Also is Blood Mage actually fun/safe ? Are there even proper red blood - style skills yet? Because thematically it sounds amazing :l

Help me pick an ascendancy for 0.5 before I spend few days staring at the character select screen when league start :C

I am a big fan of molten fissures, even if they aren't the played that often. I just love covering the floor in a sea of pulsating lava. This here is all I know about molten fissures for anyone who actually wants to play them.

Also I'm going to refer to molten fissures as MFs so I don't need to keep typing that.

The Basics

MFs are lines of lava on the ground. Everytime you use a slam skill on them, they create an aftershock that spreads to all other connected fissures. It doesn't matter where the slam is, as long as it hits one fissure that aftershock will spread to the entire web of connected MFs. This is an aftershock so it does function with aftershock related interactions. There is a hard cooldown to how often MFs can get an aftershock which is 0.2 sec. This cooldown is not modifiable by any method.

Something most people don't realize is that MFs can NOT SHOTGUN. This true for multiple fissures from the same cast, different casts of the same skill, or different skills. When you trigger an aftershock it will travel through the web of MFs and hit the enemies on it once. For the purpose of single target it doesn't matter if the enemy is standing on a 100 fissures or just one. Increasing the number of fissures just helps with coverage of the arena and clearing. For single target, what matters is the base damage and the rate of aftershocks. So you want to get as close to the 0.2s trigger cooldown as you can.

At this time I am unclear how different sources of MFs interact damage wise. The best I can guess is that the fissure a boss is directly standing on is what will damage it with all others ignored.

Since MFs have a small width, you will want to get additional fissures. Kaom's Madness is basically mandatory for clearing, though you can get away with Upheaval I.

Area of effect seems to only affect the length of the fissures.

Triggering

Although MFs can be triggered by any slam skill most slams are not good options as they are too slow. Often slower than the skill that created fissures in the first place meaning you would be better off just spamming that. Of the skills here are the better options.

• Stampede - although one of the slower slam skills the multiple footsteps each trigger an aftershock. The recovery and big slam at the end slows it down though
• Shockwave totems - probably the easiest option. Since you can have multiple totems you don't need to scale attack speed as much(but still want lots). They will also automatically slam while you walk around and create fissures.
• Ancestral Cry - this grants volcanic footsteps. So every time your character takes a step it creates a little slam that can trigger MFs. This footsteps are not activated while you are dodge rolling. This can trigger MFs very frequently and ideally you would want to just set them down and keep walking around to maximise the trigger rate rather than do other things. Of course, to use this you need to generate glory by frequently igniting enemies, and again endurance charge investment to extend it.
• Rolling Magma - not a slam but it can trigger MFs everytime the projectile hits the ground. Multiple projectiles will hit the ground at the same time so for the sake of triggering additional projectiles does not help. You would want lots of attack speed to continuously spit them out and trigger the fissures faster. The benefit of this skill is being able to freely move while you spam it.

Note that if a trigger slam gets its own aftershock, those aftershocks can also proc the MF aftershocks.

Snapshotting

MFs have a duration so the skills which create them will snapshot the weapon set you use them in. So you can use a high damage 2-hander for to set down the fissures, then switch to a faster 1-handed weapon to trigger them, and they will still retain the damage of the 2-hander. You can also optimize your weapon set passive points for the different weapons.

As MFs are created by slam skills, bonuses to the slam itself will benefit every aftershock of the MF. Ancestral boost will give its damage bonus to all the aftershock. Infernal cry is also good. The added fire damage will apply to every pulse.

Dual-Wielding

This is only relevant for maces. Most mace skills have the property when dual wielding to combine the damage of both weapons in a single hit with some downside. Volcanic Fissure will use the full damage of both weapons but with 30% less attack speed. Forge Hammer instead has 30% less damage. This will of course always be more damage than using a single weapon. If you are using 2 one-handed maces, this can get the damage more comparable to a 2-hander, but ideally you would be using 2 two-handers to snapshot a lot of extra damage in your fissure. This would of course require Giant's Blood which has its well known downsides.

Skill specific advice

For a mace build focused around MFs you would want to use both volcanic fissure and forge hammer. Volcanic fissure is your clear skill since it has no cooldown. You put Kaom's Madness on it and cover most of the screen with fissures. Build it for ease and speed. Forge hammer is your single target with its higher base damage. It creates multiple fissures by default so you don't need to reduce its damage with upheaval support. Instead you try to snapshot as much damage as you can. Dual wielding again an be useful. I also recommend Rageforged and Fist of War III supports. Get some skill effect duration so the forge hammer fissures lasts 14 seconds. This way you can get 100% uptime on the Fist of War III double ancestral boost during bossfights.

Craters support is useless. No damage and tiny fissures. This is basically there if you want to play stampede or leap slam with the flavor of MFs.

Fury of the Mountain being a channeled skill is clunkier to use. Again you would want Kaom's Madness to use it for clearing. Mostly the same advice as for volcanic fissure. Bear skills often consume rage and this skill is a great way to generate it especially with Rage III support.

Molten Crash comes from the unique Fury of the King talisman. Honestly the fissure component of this skill isn't that meaningful since the jump has high base damage and there's no cooldown. It's more effective to just spam the jump, but you could invest into triggering the aftershocks for additional damage. Also the jump itself is a slam and will trigger an aftershock on the previously created fissures.

Totems

Some more information on using shockwave totems as your trigger. Totem placement speed is very important because it controls how far apart your totems attack when you summon a bunch at once. You want enough placement speed to get that gap close to 0.2 sec, so the next totem attacks right when the MF is off cooldown. On the other hand you can't have too much, because then the totems will attack before the cooldown ends, and you will miss triggers reducing dps. Shockwave totems have 0.6 sec base placement time. Thus I recommend getting a little under 200% increased placement speed, easily satisfied with Urgent Totems III support and some passive nodes. Do not go over this value.

Attack speed is of course also important. We want enough attack speed so that when our multiple totems have each slammed, the first one is ready to attack again when the MF goes off cooldown, so we don't miss our triggers. The amount of attack speed to achieve this depends on how many totems you have. With 4 totems, I recommend getting down to about 0.8 sec attack time, or 1.25 aps. If it was 3 totems, you would want like 0.6 sec attack time.

One important note is to avoid all conditional modifiers to attack speed like "increased attack speed if you summoned a totem" or "increased attack speed per totem". You see totems, being duration skills, snapshot your stats when summoned. So totems summoned earlier will not benefit from these conditional modifiers. What ends up happening is that your first totem has is stuck with x% increased attack speed but your last one has say x+14% increased attack speed. Since the later totems are faster, then will eventually "catch up" with the first totems, eventually they will fire almost simultaneously, which is awful as you miss triggers and your dps goes into the trash. Make sure your totems always have a constant attack speed.

I recommend casting fissures in your set 1 and the devoting your 2nd set to the totems, taking totem specific stats on the passive tree. If you don't care about the totem damage or don't want to kill your fps with jagged ground, you can use a fast weapon like a quarterstaff or a one handed mace for that 2nd set. This saves a lot of investment for attack speed and maximum totems. Fortified hammers are a great option since they will make your totems daze enemies for added stun buildup. One handed maces aloso have a desecrated mod for an additional totem.

Additional Interactions

Echoing Cry Tech

This comes from Dreamcore. You tend to cast fissure skills more often than other slams wtih their limited area and warcries are of course meant for single big slams with their cooldown and limited exerts. However we can greatly increased the number of exerted attacks.

You put echoing cry support on your warcry. This makes it repeat twice allowing for more exerts per cast but it counts half power. On the passive tree you take the nodes Roaring Cries and Vocal Empowerment. This gives us minimum power for warcries so we can use it without any enemies nearby, and the minimum power is not affected by the echoing cry power penalty. Vocal empowerment will grant an additional exerted attack and this triggers with every repeat from echoing cry. Thus for one single cast you can get 6 exerts without any enemies nearby. It's very useful for skills like volcanic fissure.

Echoing cry does have the additional downside that you have to move 8 metres before you can use it again, but it's unlikely you will use up all 6 exerts without moving that far.

Jagged Ground

Jagged Ground II support creates jagged ground when the supported slam does an aftershocks. This works great with MF skills as everytime you trigger them it will also create jagged ground. This opens up some combos.

Stampede - The final slam of stampede will detonate all jagged ground patches in the area. So if you stampede over a MF, each step will trigger it and create jagged ground and then the final slam will blow all of them what in a continuous chain of explosions lasting seconds. The explosions have low based damage but it adds up with how many you can create.

Shockwave totems - Most of the damage from shockwave totems comes from it detonating jagged ground. MFs are the easiest way to take advantage of this. Just place your totems on a fissure, and every slam will trigger it creating jagged ground for itself which the next slam can hit. Unlike the fissures these detonations can shotgun doing lots of single target damage, but not as much as the damage to your fps. Even if you don't want to make a fissure build this is the easiest way to play with shockwave totems.

So I noted a couple things in the reveal and figured I'd share for build theory purposes

1. fox idol has been changed when socketed in body armour from "+2% quality to all skills" to "gain 10% of evasion as deflection." Primate idol untouched, but this does suggest other idol changes
2. mark notes that you can capture "all these" while showing 9 bosses. Unclear if there are any NOT shown there
3. summon silverfist is 47% reservation at level 24. Quality gives +1:2 reservation efficiency
4. bosses do not appear to have an associated command. Sad, but expected. I was hoping their big moves would be commands so you could have greater control over their AI
5. tame boss no longer has azmeri spirit possession
6. when showing idolatry, helmet had 198 life. Probably a hybrid roll, but could be buffed life on gear (big copium here)
7. EDIT(thanks commenter): chest has increased move speed roll. guessing it's an alloy effect since the meta rafting runes shown had a "cannot be removed or replaced" rules text

With GGG saying they are manually creating upgraded versions for all unique's explicits with the exception of skills, are Painters Gloves going to rocket up in value if the new explicits are as broken as I expect them to be? First impression is this will be a mandatory slot if you plan on running Trinity in any martial artist builds.

What's everyones best guess for what these will upgrade into?

Painters Gloves

Gain (5—10)% of Elemental Damage as Extra Cold Damage

Gain (5—10)% of Elemental Damage as Extra Fire Damage

Gain (5—10)% of Elemental Damage as Extra Lightning Damage

33% of Elemental Damage Converted to Cold Damage

33% of Elemental Damage Converted to Fire Damage

33% of Elemental Damage Converted to Lightning Damage

I've scoured our subreddit for thunderous leap builds because its all I want to play. Most examples and theory are from over 1y ago. I am looking to play Titan, take advantage of all the melee and slam upgrades, and AOE clear with big thunder jumps.

I am doing some leveling practice/ campaign runs currently and trying to make the skill work, but the damage output feels so low. Combine that with 7 minute boss fights with abyssmal Single target and I just feel confused looking at my options.

Taking from some example builds, shocked ground from leap into primal strikes seems to be a single target option, but even then at act 3 this feels impossible to pick up and play with.

Anyone have a build suggestion/tree they have experimented with thunderous leap with in 0.4?

This is not intended as a complaint post, but more asking how others get through act 1 on a fresh start. I have multiple thousands of hours, but have not leaguestarted a monk since 0.1, and all my other monks have been twink-leveled later.

I've tried multiple avenues of setups in act 1, and nothing is clicking too well except off-classing either maces or elemental spells (Spark+Flame Wall+Frost Bomb).

Frozen Locus has great aoe and freeze potential, but is really clunky because it's mainly gated behind either hitting it multiple times with default attack, or having to back up about 10 feet to land the final spike of Glacial Cascade every time you use it.

Similarly Killing Palm + Falling Thunder is effective, but requires very annoying micromanagement of mob hp to get culls before you can have basically any clear at all, and just flat out doesn't work on bosses without adds.

Staggering Palm is great, but only really shines once you get either Ice Strike or Tempest Flurry because you can't trigger it quick enough to do anything meaningful with it before that, and default attack locks you in place too much. Tempest Bell exists in the same space as well, only really shining once you get the fast aoe strikes of either of the 2 spammy T5 skills.

Once again this is not intended as a complaint post, I'm just genuinely confused if I'm missing some skill combo or support setup that can make act 1 easier on a fresh start. The rest of the campaign is largely fine.

Anyone have any good setups to help early on?