This will be a general overview of the comparisons between the 2 more popular variants that combine w Taoist + Chronomancer after testing from the latest patch recently. Post is meant to facilitate discussion.
Cryomancer
- Single Target - S (Bossing)
- AOE - SS (Wide Radius Damage Potential)
- Stability - A+ (Damage Variance isn’t too high so it is very reliable)
- Survivability - A (Multiple tools to mitigate possible damage taken, playstyle can be relatively safe)
- Difficulty - A+ (Relatively easy to play)
Cryomancer is a simple class that is not only easy to play but also outputs a good amount of damage reliably. Frost Pillar is a fantastic tool to CC + damage on multiple targets in a wide radius. Ice Bolt, Ice Pike and Ice Blast are “fast” spells which can be used quite quickly, meaning you have time to do other things at your leisure.
Due to how simple the class is, there aren’t many complex things to watch out for. You would just need to keep track of certain timings to combo well.
When Cryomancer is paired with Tao+Chrono, it further boosts the overall damage potential higher with natural synergy of Backmask being able to reset Frost Pillar’s duration along with Fire Charm + Snow Tempest Charm. All of the Taoist spells are also “fast” and without much of a delay, this means that there will be a 3-5 seconds of downtime after your full rotation. You can use this downtime to buff up, debuff the enemy or simply reposition without any loss to damage potential.
Overall, this combination of classes would provide you with a less stressful and comfier playstyle that caters to both mobbing and bossing content.
Recommended Starting Spell Rotation:
Creeping Death Charm → Fire Charm → Frost Pillar → Snow Tempest Charm → Ice Bolt → Divine Punishment → Ice Blast → Eradication(Optional) → Ice Pike → Backmask → Pass →
Fire Charm is 13 seconds duration while Frost Pillar and Snow Tempest charms are 10 seconds of duration. Frost pillar has a slight cast time even with Quick Cast activated so this is perfect to line up the duration of all 3 of the tile spells to be as close as possible for maximum value of Backmask usage.
You should use your extra 9x skill pots from leveling rewards into divine punishment to bring it up to lv13.
Example Damage Graph of CryoTaoChrono
Keraunos
- Single Target- SSS+ (Bossing)
- AOE - C+ (Wide Radius Damage Potential)
- Stability - C+ (Damage Variance can be from medium to ultra high depending on luck + timing)
- Survivability - C (No tools to help boost survivability, aggressive playstyle required for build to do max damage)
- Difficulty - C+ (Hard to play well, Ping reliant at times)
Keraunos is a complex class that can actually be condensed down into a semi-simple style of gameplay. The AOE potential of this class is absolute dogwater (relatively speaking to Cryo), but its Single Target damage can be said to be the highest in the game.
Keeping Current stacks up will be the baseline of dealing damage and this means you will be wanting to Auto Attack as much as possible using Electric Current.
When using Electric Current to AA, you will have a chance to reset a random offensive spell CD along with a separate chance to refund the CDs via the temporary Spark Buff if your timing is good.
The main damage source of this build is basically Lightning Spear. This spell when combined with good gearing and a few other factors has the possibility of achieving over 1,000,000% sfr worth of damage on a single target within a 30-35 second time frame.
When using your other spells, they will reduce the number of current stacks on the enemy. This means you will want to keep AAing during the duration of both Static Field and Electric Orb to ensure they continue to do the maximum possible amount of damage.
The addition of the Taoist and Chrono classes do help with the AOE abit, but not to a good enough degree since all of your attention is mostly on single target AAing.
Due to the nature of this build getting max value as you AA more, you will need to adopt an aggressive playstyle of AAing as much as possible along with keeping up with the timings of your Fire/Snow Charms for Backmask usage. This means that the build has virtually no downtime as all excess time is spent AAing to roll for resets. The result of this is a more risky way of playing as time spent repositioning/buffing/debuffing equals to potential loss of damage. Be careful of being too greedy with AAing as it can lead to a quick death from eating big attacks to the face.
Overall, this combination of classes would provide you with quite possibly the ultimate peak of single target damage at the cost of a more focus intensive playstyle which has little AOE and higher risk of danger.
Recommended Starting Spell Rotation:
Electric Current → Fire Charm → Creeping Death Charm → Snow Tempest Charm → AA → Electric Drive → Lightning Spear x5 → Backmask → AA → Electric Orb → Static Field → AA(for 10 seconds) → Pass →
Compared to the Cryo build, you do not need 1 point of Eradication for filler since all your fillers are AAs in Keraunos. You will want to stand still and AA for the duration of Electric Orb and Static Field to ensure they deal the max amount of damage. This is to keep Current stacks at max due to both the spells reducing Current stacks.
You should use your extra 9x skill pots from leveling rewards into divine punishment to bring it up to lv14.
Recommended Skill Allocation - KR variant
Recommended Starting Spell Rotation (KR variant):
Electric Current → Fire Charm → Creeping Death Charm → Snow Tempest Charm → AA → Electric Drive → Lightning Spear x5 → Backmask → AA → Pass →
This is a very specific Korean variant of the build in which you do not take any points in the other skills of the Keraunos class tree except for Electric Drive, Lightning Spear and Electric Current. This ensures that the random skill CD reset of Electric Current via AAing will always land on Lightning Spear. The playstyle of this variant is basically AAing to use Lightning Spear as much as possible, if you happen to get lucky and get the Spark buff as well during the AAs, you can cast Lightning Spear twice in quick succession before returning to AAs again. There is also a Side Variant that includes the leveling of static field too for the VV4 effect (this is the stronger subvariant of the KR type, lets call this KR+).
You should use your extra 9x skill pots from leveling rewards into divine punishment to bring it up to lv14.
Example Damage Graph of KeraTaoChrono - KR+ subvariant
In the CryoTaoChrono build, your attention can be split equally between both Cryo and Tao spells and the natural synergy between them makes it very smooth to play without much stress.
In the KeraTaoChrono build, your attention is mainly on the Kera AA mechanic and the playstyle is less smooth with more focus required.
