Re: Tri-Elementalist Revisited
I started this ladder with a Tri-Elementalist. She is in Hell now and i am coming up to have the right gear. She has a Holy Freeze Mercenary as company. She can kill any monster in game and in hell mode without much of a problem. Ofcourse her killing speed is a bit lower than a single tree build, but can be equal to a dual-tree build with good gear.
Tri-Elementalists are built to be versatile and still maintain good killing power and speed. Even if monsters are immune you can still kill with two attacks, one spamming the other timered. So although the damage is lower, this is compensated that you can always use two attacks from two skill trees in hell mode. Almost all monsters in hell mode are immune at least one of fire, lightning, cold, poison or physical.
You will have problems sometimes in games above 5 players, but you can definitly use her in 8 player Baalruns, since her damage output is not that much important there, but rather her or better said your skill at teleporting and securing the thorne room.
Concerning your abilities there are common options:
FB, Meteor, CB, Blizzard/Frozen Orb
FB, Meteor, L/CL, Blizzard/Frozen Orb
For more optimal skill placement you could go for Firewall instead of FB and Meteor, which will save some skillpoints. For FW placing you will need alot of practise, if you are not used to it.
My build that i used as a starting ladder char uses FB, Meteor, CB and Blizzard. I went along with the usual cheap runewords and worked myself up to aquiring as many +skills as possible, since those are vital to the build.
Current gear: Lore Helm, +3 Fire skills amu, Spirit sword, Vipermagi socketed with UM +45 resall, Spirit Shield, Magefist, 2 rare rings with resist fcr and mana, Tal
s belt, rare boots with resist and FRW
On switch is Skull collector for MF.
Like with almost any other build you will breeze trough Normal and NM. I would suggest to start Hell only past lvl75 and do Baalruns in NM to get there. Also be sure to have a decent amount of +skills (my build currently has +6 all and +10 on fire).
The last ladder i had a Tri-Elementalist with full Tal Rasha set, 2x stone of jordan and some rare boots + Spirit shield, CTA and Rhyme on switch, which could MF in any area in Hell without any problems. Added atop that was Anni and a nice Torch. Her killing speed might certainly have been a bit lower that the usual builds, but beiing able to use many skills and beiing able to kill anything was really worth it and alot fun to play.
Your skill setup goes along the lines of maxing on skill in each tree, putting 1 point in masteries and then distributing the rest of the points into synergies for Fireball and Charged Bolt. On the Lightning tree you will split those points between Lightning master and one of the synergies for the optimal damage output, depending on your amoutn of +skills. You should play around a bit with a skill calculator for this.
My current build and current damage:
lvl74
30 FB 1137-1252
13 Meteor 1787-1968
11 FM
26 Charged Bolt 50-55 x 24 Bolts. Closeup on boss this means 1200-1320 each cast, otherwise damage is a bit spread, but with 10FCR the output is still viable.
7 LM
26 Blizzard 1012-1075
7 CM 50% cold resistance reduction
P.S.: I know all people who go for the powerbuilds will come and say, that this is not viable. This is not true. Alot of people have played Tri-Elementalists and they can hold there gorund well in hell games
Yes they lack the killing speed and power of the fast running single tree builds and yes they only come close to the power of the dual tree builds, but with the combinations of skills and the ability to kill most monsters in hell with at least 2 skills makes up nicely for the drawbacks. Speed is not always the goal here. Playing fun and still beiing able to NOT drag along in hell and dieing all the time are other motiations.
Anyone not believing in what those people say about how they play with a Tri-Elementalist are cordially invited to join my games and see for themselves!
