Demolitionist BH Trial 110 version 1.5.5

[Ozymandius]

https://youtu.be/3o1vDVjupls

I converted my old Havoc BH into a Demolitionist using some old Celestial boxes that were gathering dust in my stash, but I am still using the Havoc abilities set up and Igniters pistols with Explosive Shot as primary attack and Lethal Shot as secondary. I have equipped Talisman of Pyromaniac and Charm of Qol with Bracer of Mastery for Lethal Shot and Trapper's Belt, which each have special effects.

Most of the damage comes from Sticky Bombs, so this build works best by aggregating large mobs. I am using a combination of Magnetic Trap and Vortex to pack mobs together to get the most out of the sticky bomb explosions. I am still using Rapid Fire and Heatseekers to help trigger the sticky bomb chain reaction explosions, and I am using Tracer Ammo, Pathfinder, and Intense Training as passives.

[MetalMan]

Is it more powerful than Stalker set? Meaning can it take you to a higher trial?
I planned to craft Stalker Set during ANB Gold to get 2 CTs, but maybe I should go for this new set instead.

[Ozymandius]

The Demolitionist build really puts all of its eggs into the Sticky Bombs basket, which means that you can blast through mobs by aggregating them and using the chain reaction to blow away entire groups. However, its performance really pales once you get to the boss fight. I believe that I need to find some better enhancements for the boss fight (e.g., trinkets or bracers), because the Sticky Bombs and Magnetic Trap have little to no effect on the bosses.

I am currently limited to Level 70 gear right now, but I do also get the Vitality boost from 6 Celestials. I can move through mobs much faster than I could with my Havoc gear right now, but I still need to test how the new version affected my Stalker BH before I can say for sure which is more powerful. I will update you once I run those tests, but for now I am still planning on running a Stalker BH in Gold unless I am able to open all of the Demolitionist recipes during the War Gear event next week.

[Ozymandius]

Is it more powerful than Stalker set? Meaning can it take you to a higher trial?
I planned to craft Stalker Set during ANB Gold to get 2 CTs, but maybe I should go for this new set instead.

I ran some tests of Demolitionist and confirmed that the Sticky Bombs had very little impact on the boss fight even at much lower trial levels, so I am feeling that is a major weakness that I have yet to find a way to work around. I can complete Trial 110, which is slightly better than my Havoc BH with the same weapon set, but still about 10 trials behind my Stalker BH that I used to secure a top 200 finish in Season 3.

I also tested my Stalker BH, and I was easily able to complete Trial 120, which is close to where I was at the end of Season 3. I did add legendary belt, bracers, and trinkets to the Stalker build, but all in all it felt mostly unchanged from before the new version came online. Unless I find a magical fix to the boss fight problem with the Demolitionist build, I will most like be running Stalker again in the upcoming Gold ANB event. Or maybe I will run a head-to-head competition between the Stalker and Demolitionist builds on different accounts.

[MetalMan]

Many thanks for this insightful information!

[Verminnard]

Test it with a Molten Belt and a Talisman of Storms. Should melt the boss much much faster.

[UmbraDei]

Test it with a Molten Belt and a Talisman of Storms. Should melt the boss much much faster.

Fully agreed on this point: I dropped a Molten Belt earlier today and the damage boost percentage (even at 0.5% per stack) goes up about 3-4 times faster than the Osmosis one. Molten Belt is a game changer and clearly a must for Demolitionist, it will blow through your boss fights much faster.

[Loreg]

where do you guys farm to get those stuffs?

[UmbraDei]

Keep doing TL80-100 (the higher the better)

[Verminnard]

Molten Belt came relatively quickly, but it took about 20 full bags of drops on TL90 before I got my first Talisman of Storms.

[Ozymandius]

Thanks for the advice Verminnard and UmbraDei! I finally got Molten Belt to drop. What a game changer! I was able to finish Trial 110 in under 5 minutes. Here is a clip of multiple stacking on Molten Armor. The damaged increased even higher from here, but Kara died so quickly that I wasn't able to capture it. Can't wait to try the Talisman of Storms...

[Ozymandius]

MetalMan I am reevaluating my earlier position on Demolitionist based on using Molten Belt. I will try pushing higher trials today to see if I can get within range of my Stalker BHs.

[Reaucat]

This build really reminds me of the Cold fist Monk build from Diablo 3. Still hunting for molten belt. Sigh. So many TL100 runs

[steampunk]

After testing for awhile, I think Stalker Set still the best set for Trial Pushing.

I hope it's true coz I already invest a lot of time and effort for Stalker Set.

[Reaucat]

<sub>So played a bunch with a fairly decent Demo set + molten belt + storm tally.
The one thing i really don't like is that sticky's seems to be resetting timer and never get triggered.
I tried testing on the boss at TL100, by stacking max stickys, waiting until its down to 3s on their explosion timer, resetting them, and seeing if there's any explosion on the previous stacks... doesn't look like it. It seems like they are acting exactly the same as poison stacks, with explosion ONLY taking place if the OVERALL mob sticky timer reaches 0.

This may mean 2 things:
-Re-applying and spreading sticky's may deal LESS dps than waiting out the timer on high-TL groups.
-Boss-Killing DPS comes ENTIRELY from: Molten belt + rockets, as opposed to a steady rate of explosion from bombs, augmented by a steadily increasing stacks of molten armor.

Contrary to this: Stalker set rewards you for each auto-attack, by providing chance to trigger snipe, AND by chance to apply max-stacks to more mobs and creating more poison clouds.</sub>

Did i miss something big?

EDIT: YES i missed everything...

Observation on training grounds:
1) Total dmg from sticky bombs on dummy increased with every new application of sticky. (Observed by recording dmg from sticky before and after the sticky timer reset to 15s).
2) Total dmg from sticky did NOT increase without re-applying new sticky. So when waiting for the 15s timer, no dmg from sticky was recorded.
3) Damage from constant application of sticky VASTLY out-performed dmg from waiting out the explosion timer before re-applying stickys.
4) Molten armor and Tracer applied to groups of enemies from the Explosion portion of explosive shot. Difference between highest and lowest molten stacks armor after moving around the group of mobs: 421 vs 397. Tracer 10 stacks present on all 5 training dummies at all times.
5) Stickys confirmed NOT spreading from target to target unless switching target of auto-attacks.

6) Boss simulated damage at max stickies using the OP's build (no skills):

• Explosive shot + Explosive shot AOE dmg (single target) = 57% of dmg.
• Lethal shot secondary (ONLY from charm of QOL) = 38% dmg

7) Rapid Fire test on fully max stacks (tracer + sticky+ 1000 molten) boss using Explosive Shot vs Lethal Shot.

• Explosive Shot AA +RF (1000 molten): 9.5 - 28 B (rapid fire dmg)
• Lethal Shot AA +RF (1000 molten) : 15.5 - 28 B (rapid fire dmg)

8) Auto-Attack ONLY 15 second test @ max stacks (molten + tracer + sticky)

• Explosive shot total dmg: 97 B
• Lethal Shot total dmg: 290 B

9) 1 minute test starting from 0, using Rapid Fire + Heatseakers + Hide skill (1 storm tally activation).

• Explosive shot primary = 14 B
• Lethal Shot (resetting sticky every 15s) = 22b

10) 1 minute test at 1000 molten. using RF + HS + Hide (no storm tally)

• Explosive shot primary = 865 B
• Lethal Shot primary (with sticky refresh) = 1,809 B

This suggests that optimal strategy when using full demo + igniters = Keep boss at max stickies using explosive shot, but otherwise use Lethal Shot.

CONT'd:

Observed bonus dmg at 1k molten stacks: 14557.5%. Somewhere around the 300 stacks mark every stack starts giving more than 1% dmg, and the amount given keeps increasing (must be a bug). It takes 1m of non-stop AA's to get to 270 stacks.

So optimal strategy in high TL might be (will test):
1) Spend first 1.5-2 minutes using only RF + Explosive AA to stack at least 400 molten for a 500% dmg boost; then switch to Lethal Shot only.

IF boss fight > 4m , spend first 1.5-2m stacking molten.

[LodWig]

Observed bonus dmg at 1k molten stacks: 14557.5%. Somewhere around the 300 stacks mark every stack starts giving more than 1% dmg, and the amount given keeps increasing (must be a bug).

Molten Armor stacks are multiplicative. The damage increase from N stacks is 1.005^N-1