First full season new question/help. I feel stuck with damage and die a fair amount. I am dealing between 15 and 40M damage, which seems much lower then those I play with. I got melt first mythic item(Shako) but only have the one. Anything obvious I am missing? 2ga ophidian, 1.5 serpent aspect wand. I see some use staffs to get 3.0 instead. Is that a big source of my lack of damage?


Thanks in advance for helping a new.

Wand and focus allows more CDR for speed farming setups but staff offers a bit more damage. I use a staff because it’s easier to 2x or 3x crit a single item than two items when masterworking hydra heads. You’ll want as many hydra heads as you can get. You’re definitely missing something with that damage. I’d just look at build guides and go point by point through your gear, paragon and glyphs and I’m sure you’ll spot something. Also the unique aspect on ophidian is more valuable than the GA’s. Make sure it’s as close to 100% as possible.

Thanks, I will work on remastworking items for heads vs. intelligentce.

If you have a shako and serpertine aspect with Iris unique already and doing only 40M damage. That’s not from gears, that means your gameplay is wrong. Either you don’t cast hydra at full energy or you probably spamming hydra like a mad man

Yeah heads+ophidian unique aspect are the biggest source of damage multipliers for this build by a pretty substantial margin.

When I Google a build I see +2 and +4 heads. I only roll plus 1, do I just keep rolling items until I get more heads?

I'm only casting at full manna. I agree something is wrong, I just can't finger it.

You want to temper either +2 on your wand and focus or +4 on a 2h staff.

The temper has a range. On a wand/focus, it either rolls +1 head or +2. On a 2h staff it rolls double, so either +2 heads or +4 heads.

You need to temper until you get the maximum head roll (again it’s variable). And then try and masterwork crit the extra heads. You can theoretically triple crit a staff to roll with +12 heads or triple crit both wand/focus at +6 each. Ideally you’ll want as many heads as possible (10-12 is ideal).

The ophidian iris grants up to a 100% [x] damage multiplier for each head above 3 your hydra would spawn with. Which is why extra heads is a massive damage boost.

This post was edited by TeenyUncle8 on Jul 24 2025 08:57am

Thanks, I have been tempering % conjure damage and not heads as I was only getting one.

What/how you you "crit" masterworks? Just keep exchanging until you get it? Sorry for all of the questions and thank you for your help.

This post was edited by gg_jsp on Jul 24 2025 09:09am

Every 4th masterwork you get a crit. Normally masterworking bumps each stat 5%, but every 4th one jumps a single stat 25%.

I’d google masterworking explained and there is likely a YouTube video that will show you graphically what this looks like.