YouTube Transcript:
3.26 Spark — What’s BUFFED, What’s DEAD, and What I’m Playing

What's up, YouTube? It's your boy AP.
Welcome back to patch 3.26. Today, I'm
covering how different variants of spark
have been impacted by the recent patch
notes. We'll start with poison spark,
move into archade spark, and finish off
with the possibilities of an
elementalist spark. I'll also lay out my
content plans and what you can expect
from me going into the new league. All
right, poison spark. Poison spark made
it through the patch notes completely
unscathed. We've got some nice power
creep with the free mercenary, the
option to use an animated guardian, and
whatever new crafting options pop up in
the league. I haven't released a league
starter guide for poison spark yet, but
that's going to change in patch
3.26. The next few days, I'll be
dropping a full league starter plan.
We'll begin as Pathfinder Peacon
Bouncing and transition seamlessly into
Poison Spark with nearly identical
passive trees and gear. Both builds are
strong offensively thanks to Poison's
ramping nature paired with two of the
best applicator skills. Defensively,
Poison builds scale so efficiently that
there's plenty of room to fit in solid
defensive layering. I've already tested
this setup thoroughly. Ran it through
three private leagues last patch. So,
here's the plan. First, expect a
standalone Peacon Bouncing League
starter guide. then a full guide
covering the transition into Poison
Spark for Endgame. All of this coming
within the next few
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Now, let's talk Arkade Spark Hierofant,
which got hit with a number of changes.
The Ark Made's support gem was nerfed
slightly, 15% less damage, but that's
honestly inconsequential. It still adds
a ridiculous amount of flat lightning
damage. To put it into perspective, on
an endgame mana stacker with 6,000 mana,
which is very achievable, arch mage adds
960 flat lightning damage. Compare this
to awakened added lightning at level
five, which adds around 400. You can see
that it's still over twice as powerful
as the next best gem option. A lot of
support gems were also buffed, including
Spell Echo and its awakened counterpart.
10% more damage and 10% reduced mana
multiplier. Pinpoint 6% more damage and
10% reduced mana
multiplier. Arcane Surge support now
adds 10% more damage. Important to note,
we have to separate the support gem from
the Arcane Surge buff. Hierofant only
gets the buff unless you also socket in
the support gem. The buff itself lost
28% mana regen, but gained 10% cast
speed. So, it's harder to sustain mana,
but you do gain more
damage. Now, for the bad news, the
Sanctuary of Thought Ascendency node was
gutted. It no longer gives 25% increased
mana reservation efficiency. Thankfully,
this is not a big loss. It doesn't
affect the Arch Mage build at all, but
it also lost the massive 50% less mana
cost, and this is a big deal. Instead,
it now grants 1% mana regeneration per
second. That is a significant buff to
regen. We go from 1.8 to 2.8% base
regen. And all of our increased mana
regeneration as well as flat mana
regeneration is going to be 55% more
effective. But here's the issue. With
higher mana cost, inspiration support
becomes significantly worse. Inspiration
charges, which are the damage portion of
this support, expire after spending 800
mana. With our new higher costs, we burn
through that quickly, losing the damage
benefit. We're only left with the
reduced cost portion, which is no longer
worth it. So, if we drop inspiration
entirely, we're now losing around 85%
less mana cost both from the ascendy and
the gem, which makes archade spark way
more expensive to run. Can you still
make it work? Absolutely. You can lean
into something like Indigon, embracing
the high mana use, or you can use
Lavanga Spirit Flask to negate mana cost
completely. Alternatively, you can just
invest extreme amounts of mana regen to
compensate. There will be good arch mage
builds, but they're probably going to be
a little bit clunkier.
Now, smaller generic nerfs are the
elemental mastery resistance inversion,
which is now 15% was 25% previously. As
spark, you can still use a mercenary to
reduce boss resistances with Doriani's
prototype. So, this nerf is more than
compensated for in the short term. Leech
mastery instant leech is knocked down
from 10% to 5%. This affects a lot of
builds, but Spark handles it well due to
its frequent multi hits. I still
recommend taking it. It's overpowered on
Spark. As for crafting changes, the
hybrid projectile speed plus damage mods
have been moved from amulets to glove.
What did this mean? No more mirrored
focus amulets with 100% projectile
speed. However, thankfully, you can
substitute this mod with either cast
speed up to 80%. Or a whopping 280% mana
regeneration. So, there are some really
good alternatives here. It's more of a
side grade than an earth.
Have any of you guys watching the video
discovered any spicy new spark tech in
the patch notes? Drop your weirdest idea
in the comments. I want to see it. Maybe
I'll implement it myself. And I guess
that segus into the question, will I
also be making an archade spark league
starter? I do want to release some form
of elemental spark starter, but that'll
come after the peacon and poison spark
content. Will it be arch mage? Maybe.
But there's another option that looks
really interesting, which is
elementalist spark. This one's shaping
up really well. So, the buffs here are
Shaper of Flames now converts 40% of
enemy physical damage to fire on ignite.
This helps solve Fizz mitigation issues,
especially when we crit swap and apply
flat fire, which is easy to do with an
Abyssul. Shaper of Winter no longer
increases chill effect. Instead, enemies
chilled by your hits deal less damage,
equal to half the chill effect, around
15% reduced damage taken. It also
increases your damage to chilled
enemies, acting sort of like a 15% more
damage
multiplier. Transfigured righteous fire
gives us 25% more cast
speed. Golems, uh, you can run four or
more golems for some strong buffs. The
lightning golem is going to give us
around 30% cast speed. and a massive
flat 54 mana regen. Ice Golem gives 120%
crit chance and flame golem is going to
give upwards of 80% increased damage. We
could make use of a stone golem to scale
our defenses. There's a ton of potential
here and we'll dive into it on stream
once the peacon and poison spark guides
are
out. Now, a final note to leave you guys
with. If you're into spark, you should
join our Discord server. We've got more
than 5,000 members, most of them spark
enjoyers. Some seriously sick builds are
already being theory crafted, and
sometimes I'll share my stuff in there
first. Hope you enjoy the video, and I
will see you guys in the next few days
as the content starts rolling out.
[Music]