2015-07-03, 02:32 PM
Lots of good T6 speed runs with [MENTION=6037]Dark Link[/MENTION] last night.
Found a good upgrade compared to my previous ancient K'mar Tenclip
Spent a bunch of time on the PTR afterwards. Painstaking process of fully re-gearing my Monk to Uliana's. It took a ridiculously long amount of time. So many pieces of other sets, including an off-class set before getting my first piece.
Managed to complete the whole thing and get some cubed passives to go along with it. It's an interesting set, but I don't think it's competitive with Raiment.
My first issue with the set is it's awful with just the 6-piece and unplayable below that. But that's the vast majority of sets. I think at 6-piece alone, it could maybe enter Torment VI, but it really needs a Flow of Eternity to not be excruciatingly slow in terms of flow, Gungdo Gear for the spreading, and Focus and Restraint help with the damage. Otherwise, with SSS on cooldown, you basically do nothing. I was running with a non-ancient FoE and it wasn't too great in TXIII as I was finishing up my caches. I believe it was better than my Sunwuko setup which has an Ancient Torch and basically all the supporting pieces. Without FoE, I think Sunwuko's Exploding Palm setups are superior...
When I got my cube up, I put in a Madstone, Flow of Eternity, and switched to an Ancient Azurewrath and a regular Fist of Az'turrasq on the offhand. The damage bump was tremendous. With the Lion's Claw, it could be pretty powerful too, but I think Shenlong Raiment is too far ahead for leaderboarding, not that I'll leaderboard.
Another issue with the set is most of the SSS runes are awful, and EP is really dominated by the Cold rune that explodes for 2.23x more damage. I think using the CD rune for SSS to spam it more frequently is the way to go. I currently have ~2.6 seconds downtime not including the invulnerability time spent attacking, and Lion's Claw is speculated to double that time making for fairly easy permanent SSS which they might remove. My other runes have double that cooldown remaining, meaning I SSS half has often with not much benefit.
Overall, the set seems to have a really high barrier of entry in terms of gear to be proficient, but each additional supporting piece adds a lot to your damage. It's just going to be very difficult to wait through Season 4 to get a Lion's Claw if you're non-season like me, since that's literally a double damage boost.
Some other things from the PTR:
Repair costs are very high now. Like 10x previous. I think it costs me 8m to repair all my gear. God knows why they did this, I have 4b, and I speed run with Hoarder.
Enchanting costs like 5 Blue 10~15 Yellow now.
Key Wardens drop the whole machine now, and all past keys get converted to machines, so don't spend them.
Cube's materials are from Bounties. Get ready to do full game clears of bounties.
Found a good upgrade compared to my previous ancient K'mar Tenclip
Spoiler
and a nice ancient Natalya's Embrace![[Image: sIjrgUE.png]](http://i.imgur.com/sIjrgUE.png)
Spoiler
![[Image: ZmUPY5n.png]](http://i.imgur.com/ZmUPY5n.png)
Spent a bunch of time on the PTR afterwards. Painstaking process of fully re-gearing my Monk to Uliana's. It took a ridiculously long amount of time. So many pieces of other sets, including an off-class set before getting my first piece.
Managed to complete the whole thing and get some cubed passives to go along with it. It's an interesting set, but I don't think it's competitive with Raiment.
My first issue with the set is it's awful with just the 6-piece and unplayable below that. But that's the vast majority of sets. I think at 6-piece alone, it could maybe enter Torment VI, but it really needs a Flow of Eternity to not be excruciatingly slow in terms of flow, Gungdo Gear for the spreading, and Focus and Restraint help with the damage. Otherwise, with SSS on cooldown, you basically do nothing. I was running with a non-ancient FoE and it wasn't too great in TXIII as I was finishing up my caches. I believe it was better than my Sunwuko setup which has an Ancient Torch and basically all the supporting pieces. Without FoE, I think Sunwuko's Exploding Palm setups are superior...
When I got my cube up, I put in a Madstone, Flow of Eternity, and switched to an Ancient Azurewrath and a regular Fist of Az'turrasq on the offhand. The damage bump was tremendous. With the Lion's Claw, it could be pretty powerful too, but I think Shenlong Raiment is too far ahead for leaderboarding, not that I'll leaderboard.
Another issue with the set is most of the SSS runes are awful, and EP is really dominated by the Cold rune that explodes for 2.23x more damage. I think using the CD rune for SSS to spam it more frequently is the way to go. I currently have ~2.6 seconds downtime not including the invulnerability time spent attacking, and Lion's Claw is speculated to double that time making for fairly easy permanent SSS which they might remove. My other runes have double that cooldown remaining, meaning I SSS half has often with not much benefit.
Overall, the set seems to have a really high barrier of entry in terms of gear to be proficient, but each additional supporting piece adds a lot to your damage. It's just going to be very difficult to wait through Season 4 to get a Lion's Claw if you're non-season like me, since that's literally a double damage boost.
Some other things from the PTR:
Repair costs are very high now. Like 10x previous. I think it costs me 8m to repair all my gear. God knows why they did this, I have 4b, and I speed run with Hoarder.
Enchanting costs like 5 Blue 10~15 Yellow now.
Key Wardens drop the whole machine now, and all past keys get converted to machines, so don't spend them.
Cube's materials are from Bounties. Get ready to do full game clears of bounties.