Failed New Tech Help

I'm running a melee character and had a spare three link so I decided to try linking static strike to Greater Devour (20 quality) and Cull The weak.

At level 3 for both supports I would cull normal / magic monsters at 34% life and have a 5% chance per monster power to gain a soul.

While I currently only have level 2 on the gems, and I thought I'd eventually need level 4 to sustain, I thought that I'd at least see streaks of 1-2 3 souls or something before it falls off.

The static strike is definitely culling, but the highest I've ever seen is one soul. This is also when I stop using my main skill and am purely running the culling skill.

Anyone else tried this tech? Any guesses as to what might be going on.
My current thoughts are:
- maybe explode is interfering with it... but I only have 15% from a devastator node on a cluster
- maybe herald of ash is interfering with it... I will try running with it off...

Explode would interfere: you need the corpses to gain souls, and explode removes corpses.

If you math it out, 15% chance to explode and a Greater Devour with 4% would only yield a realistic percentage chance of .15 x .04, or 0.6% chance per corpse to get a soul. That's quite low.

This is purely a mathematical analysis, not a practical one because I haven't tried this myself. But this is how I understand the issue.



Spirit Offering would also all interfere because it consumes corpses. Herald of Ash and your main skill wouldn't DIRECTLY interfere, but you would then need to kill something with static strike around those corpses to eat them. So if you kill everything already....no more enemies for static strike to kill and proc.

Well that maths for explode would be 0.85 * 0.4 (i.e. the chance to not explode and gain a soul) which would be 3.4% which isn't as bad, but i've tried turning off various things and the best i can get is three stacks.

runegraft of the warp should hepl the stacks last longer, but beyond that it's like I'd have to build specifically for it.

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whyBish#2562 wrote:

Well that maths for explode would be 0.85 * 0.4 (i.e. the chance to not explode and gain a soul) which would be 3.4% which isn't as bad, but i've tried turning off various things and the best i can get is three stacks.

duh....you are right, sorry! My guess is the chance is just too low to outpace the burnoff. Perhaps it requires adding More Duration in there. That could be the next experiment

As for building specifically for it....I think perhaps that might be the intention. If you want high uptime of Soul Eater per this support, then you need to specifically plan for a ton of increased duration, and perhaps linked into the main skill.

On a build with super high clear and no other sources of dps, I bet you can get some pretty reliable soul eater buffs going. It also appears to favor buffing your maps with tons of rare monsters, as the percentage is tied to "power" of the corpse.



Interestingly, the wiki says this:
"Certain stats, items, or passives may grant the ability to Eat # Souls when...; this grants the listed number of eaten souls and the equivalent bonuses, but does not grant the Soul Eater buff itself. The stacks are shared, however."

Does that mean that the souls you are getting don't actually....do anything?

Well you cant use this tech with rares due to the cull the weak only works on normal and magic monsters. You'd have to put it as part of your main 6 link if you want to get the buffs from rares.

You also can't add the more duration gem, because souls eaten is a buff not a skill.

at 4% you need to kill more than 25 monster power per 4 seconds to have positive uptime (not sure how much more).