The Boogermancer AKA
The Snot Rocketeer AKA
Deep Sneeze AKA
“GD V1.0.0.2: A Twink Odyssey”
What’s that spell she’s casting? It’s snot what you think…
This is a character built around one niche green affix, and on exploiting the everloving snot out of it.
In this guide we will eschew all sane notions of endgame gear and conventional skill choices, all in pursuit of maximizing our BPS (Boogers Per Second).
Pros:
+Excellent AOE and single-target damage output - If there were build tiers, probably a solid Tier 2 or (optimistically) Tier 1.5 in the grand order of things.
+Incredibly safe - enemies remain slowed, immobilized, confused, enfumbled, and on the other side of the screen at all times.
+Incredibly mobile - You can sustain your maximum BPS against all enemies even as you run away from them, towards them, or just in circles.
+Incredibly cheesy - Do you enjoy abusing the rules so hard it feels like you’re cheating? Do you maybe enjoy ACTUALLY cheating? You’ve found your build!
+Incredibly lazy - 2.5 active skills! Rejoice! Or relax. Whatever.
Cons:
-Extremely item-dependent - Don’t even start this character unless you have at least 5 or 6 level 70 ‘of Blight’ pieces of equipment waiting in the stash for them!
-Hates reflect - With 300-400% increased poison duration, you will get shredded by reflect mobs, even with an overmaxed resist of 86%.
-Maybe too easy - especially with the lower-level Blight sets (if you elect to use them), you will melt through everything in Vet+Elite without lifting a finger.
-Unfashionable - Green items means you won’t look like a badass in the endgame.
-Little customization - Most item choices are very narrowly prescribed.
Vids & Benchmarks
Just some quick easy runs for now to show off, more to come. The build can clear BoC with minimal frustration, but it is definitely not the fastest clearer, especially since it has no way to skip trash mobs.
Cronley Run
Karroz Run (uploading…)
Broken Hills Action @ Maximum BPS (Slithtongue + 11 ‘of Blight’ items)
Cronley - 23s
Karroz - 49s
Theory
The reason this build functions, despite involving an ‘underpowered’ assortment of mostly single-affix green items and zero damaging active skills, comes down to the proc component of the ‘of Blight’ suffix. It has a recharge time of 1 second, massive range, can hit tightly packed multiple enemies, and applies a monstrous DOT. How monstrous, exactly? At ilvl 90, these boogers deal base 219 poison damage per second (and 139 acid damage on hit).
Well, maybe that doesn’t seem like much to you. But remember, we’re talking about base damage, not augmented damage. Everyone’s going to be waltzing around endgame with 1000%+ to their damage types of choice, buffed attack speed and stacked monster resist reduction, but it all doesn’t mean squat if your bread+butter skill has poor base damage, since that’s what all these factors scale on. The base damages of most endgame weapons are around 100-200, and the base damages of many maxed out spam skills (DEE, PRM, AAR, ES) usually amount to around 400-600 base damage. Of course weapons and spam spells scale off attack and cast speed respectively, which poison ticks don’t benefit from.
So let’s consider a 22/22/X/22 DEE cast 3x/second for comparison: it can deal about 1600 base dps. Those are the numbers from Grimcalc. That seems pretty good compared to an ‘of Blight’ DOT of 219 dps, right? But here’s the thing: each ‘of Blight’ proc is its own skill. Separate skills stack their DOTs. If you have 10 ilvl 90 ‘of Blight’ items equipped and their boogers all connect, you’re not dealing 219 base poison dps to an enemy, you’re dealing 2190 base poison dps! Plus base 139 acid damage per hit, which happens many times per second. And while DEE (or any other spam skill) drains mana and renders you immobile while you chaincast, Blight boogers cost zero mana, use up zero skill points, can autocast while you kite baddies, and can even finish dudes offscreen while you go and take a potty break. And with a lot of blight gear, you have +200-300% poison duration. Hit a bad guy with a booger, and it sticks to him 'til he’s dead.
Consequently, we forego much Legendary equipment and opt to equip as many ‘of Blight’ items as reasonably possible instead. We employ skills with large AOEs that roll for hits every second, for maximum booger proccing. We turn to components, augments, skills and devotions to make up as best as possible for all the Legendary stats we’ll be skipping out on, confident in the power of our boogers to carry the day. In Snot We Trust.
Class, Skills & Stats
[spoiler]
I’m 82, and I don’t even know what to do with these skill points. I’m so unrestrained from skill requirements, it doesn’t even matter. So free yet so sad. [/spoiler]
Because all your damage comes from equipment skill procs, you can devote all your skill and stat points to mastery and to utility/defensive buffs. Stats points, particularly, should be 100% Phys, except for however Spirit you need to support your Focus/any caster armor you equip.
Occultist is a natural pick for the aspiring boogermancer. CoF is the king of slows and grants precious poison resist reduction. It also rolls a hit every second it’s on an enemy, proccing boogers. Blood of Dreeg gives delicious OA and poison resist. Storm Spirit grants elemental resists, Second Rite grants vitality resist, Possession grants damage absorption, poison damage and chaos resist. That’s it. I don’t care about anything else in the tree, really.
Shaman may seem like a weird choice, but it’s all for one skill. Grasping Vines. The damage is crap and the slow+immobilize are redundant if you have CoF applied. The only important thing about it is that it is a big spammy persistent AOE, and it rolls hits on every enemy inside its area every second. And you can cast multiple instances of GV, and they all roll separate hits. Simply put, if CoF is the king of slows/CC, then GV is the god-emperor of item procs. Beyond that, the Mog’s Pact line gives essential HP and pierce resist, and your briarthorn has its tremendous aura. That’s it, though. The rest of the tree is dumb, ignore it.
So why not Nightblade? Nightblade gives an amazing -50% to poison resist via Night’s Chill, which also ticks for damage (ie, more boogers) every second! It has poison damage buffs, boosts to cunning and ele resist, and a great player-damage scaling pet skill to pair with Tainted Eruption. And Blade Trap is somewhat comparable to GV, immobilizing a large group and ‘hitting’ every second it’s active for extra boogers. All I can say is that Nightblade could be a fine choice, but it absolutely requires you to get within that 6 meter melee range to activate Night’s Chill on enemies. Consequently, you will take lots more damage (even if enemies do die faster with their stacked -resists), and will almost certainly die much more often, because the Rocketeer, wearing mostly green equipment and missing out on a lot of +HP and other defensive stats from legendaries, is inherently not built for durability. If you don’t care about that, then by all means go for Nightblade as a second choice.
Devotion
Devotions are a pretty standard poisony build, with a bigger emphasis on defensive nodes because you’ll be missing a lot of resists on gear, unless you can roll perfect prefixes on your green equipment. Key constellations are Manticore (sweet -resists on Acid Spray) and Abomination. Beyond that, you can build for OA with constellations like Hawk, Chariot, and the first part of Ulzuin’s Torch, or you can shoot for more HP and resists with Behemoth, Crane and Scales.
Devotion progression? I have no clue! I’ve fiddled with it so many times I can’t remember any more, sorry. Definitely beeline for Manticore and then Abomination, though.
Scorpion Sting -> Summon Bloodhound
Acid Spray -> Grasping Vines
Tainted Eruption -> Summon Nemesis / Wendigo Totem / Wind Devil (seems not to work well with WD)
Strategy
Cast Blood of Dreeg. Approach mobs. Cast GV under them. Cast CoF while GV’s on cooldown. Cast GV again if you feel like it, and keep on casting it if you’re feeling feisty. Run around a bit, maybe. As your CoF and GV score hits on the enemy, revel as you transform effortlessly into a veritable machinegun of phlegm, and enemies expire under your snot onslaught. Repeat as necessary to sustain maximum BPS.
Items
This is where the magic happens.
It’s possible to get up to 13 ‘of Blight’-type procs rolling at once, if you equip dual Slithtongues and obtain ‘of Blight’ versions of every other piece of armor except, of course, your Relic slot. In reality, there are some BiS legendaries that edge out boogerbombs in certain slots.
This is my current equipment, which I also consider to be BiS except where noted, and except for any missing prefixes on green equipment. Components and Augments should be switched up as needed to compensate for missing resists - don’t bother with offensive components at all unless you REALLY have all your resists in order first.
Plaguebearer of Dreeg - Vitriolic Gallstone - Outcast’s Bastion
Eadrick’s Backscratcher - Purified Salt - Outcast’s Bastion
>>>No clear BiS - other options: XYZ of Corruption - Fiend’s Resolve
Black Gem of Dreeg - Corpse Dust - Mogdrogen’s Sanctuary
Ring of the Black Matriarch - Corpse Dust - Mogdrogen’s Sanctuary
Emerald Ring of Blight - Corpse Dust - Mogdrogen’s Sanctuary
Resistant Exalted Hat of Blight - Sanctified Bone - Mankind’s Vigil
Vigorous Imperial Spaulders of Blight - Silk Swatch - Nightshade Powder
Bloodsworn Robes of Blight - Silk Swatch - Outcast’s Elemental Scales
Aetherfire Exalted Vambraces of Blight - Unholy Inscription - Mankind’s Vigil
>>>Viperfang Grips are BiS if you can average >5% crit chance against mobs, and at least 2-3% crit against bosses.
Imperial Leggings of Blight - Silk Swatch - Outcast’s Elemental Scales
Impervious Exalted Sabatons of Blight - Mark of the Traveler - Outcast’s Elemental Scales
Impervious Exalted Belt of Blight - Bristly Fur - Outcast’s Elemental Scales
>>>If reflectors are absolutely destroying you, consider Thorn Girdle of the Misty Glade.
Mark of the Apostate - Wardstone
Nemesis
>>>BiS: Dreeg’s Affliction
Brief explanation of why certain legendaries/epics were used instead of more Blight equipment. Plaguebearer applies a -25% poison resist plague effect to enemies, which represents roughly a 20% total damage increase (or higher, against resistant mobs) to enemies in Ultimate, and ticks every second for more proc chances. Black Gem poops out three suicide eyeballs, each of whose explosion DOTs stack with each other! Fighting a boss, this makes it about 3x as effective as another piece of Blight gear, though against mobs it’s arguably less useful, as it procs less often than Blight gear and eyeballs all tend to suicide on the same trash mob, which is not terribly helpful. Ring of the Black Matriach applies a damaging debuff, without cooldown, which ticks every second on affected mobs, rolling even more proc chances for you. Mark of the Apostate is a great persistent poison AOE that applies fumble and impaired aim to enemies. I haven’t checked specifically in GD yet, but in Titan Quest fumble and impaired aim were irresistible status effects that applied to bosses at 100% strength!
And finally, I use Nemesis so I can attach Tainted Eruption to kitty. The cat procs it often, which lets the eruption happen at full damage in the middle of packs of mobs for maximum coverage, while I stand far far away from the fray. Technically, Wendigo Totem, Storm Totem, and especially Wind Devil should all be able to accomplish the same goal, but the former two have terrible cast range, and the latter just does not seem to proc as often as it should (Wind Devil in a pack of 5 enemies will regularly take 5-10 seconds to proc TE for me, if it ever does, and I have no clue why this is). That said, gritting your teeth, equipping Dreeg’s Affliction and sticking your TE on Wendigo or even Dreeg’s Spines is numerically the superior option. Even though it’s got the biggest poison DOT in the game (I think), I don’t really like Dreeg’s Spines as it doesn’t penetrate packs of enemies well and it has an annoying cooldown. Also, it’s another button I have to push. Laaaame.
Oh, and the reason I don’t use a focus ‘of Corruption’ for an extra booger is because I just learned the suffix exists 5 minutes ago… I will probably switch out for it as soon as I find one.
Pre-Leveling / Leveling
This character is a twink. Even though it has a very easy and forgiving playstyle (for the most part - except for Reflect mobs), it is NOT intended to be your first character. It demands you farm up equipment for it, before you even hit ‘Create Character’ on the main menu. And unlike with epics and legendaries, which you’ve probably been hoarding since day one, it demands that you hunt down random rare equipment with one weird affix on it. If you’re already at endgame on a character, chances are you’ve already had a lot of these greens drop, and you ran right by them because your itemfilter hid them, or maybe you picked them up but then sold them to vendor.
Here’s the thing, though. There are three different tiers of ‘of Blight’ suffixes, with player level requirements of 35, 52, and 70 respectively. If you wanted to level a boogermancer, ideally you’d like to have full sets of each to switch into as you level. I can tell you that the level 70 set drops, either from mobs or from crafting, with pretty decent frequency. But the level 35 and 52 sets? Absolutely abysmal drop rate. Crafting these lower level sets up, I had to roll probably 2000-3000 times per piece to finally get an ‘of Blight’ suffix to drop (I savescummed like a mofo - was testing proof of concept at this stage). It is completely unrealistic that you would self-find a full set of level 35 or 52 Blight gear, either leveling naturally or even if you went back to Vet with your level 85 main and specifically farmed the right areas for weeks.
So how to level this build, if even aggressive farming won’t yield suitable equipment for pre-70 gameplay? You have two options.
Option A -> On your main, farm up a set of level 70 Blight gear, then level your boogermancer from 0-70 as a cookie cutter DEE or Pet build until you can switch in. Snore.
Option B -> On your main, farm up a set of level 70 Blight gear, then level your boogermancer from 0-32 doing whatever. Then Cheat!
This stash file has near-full sets of all three levels of Blight gear, generated in a spree of savescum crafting in which I probably developed an RSI or three. You ought to come to terms with cheating before you go this way.
Consider that any secondary character you normally build would probably be twinked out from beginning to end with the most powerful possible blue/purple gear that your main has already farmed up. Consider that with this transfer file, you’ll be doing less than that - you’ll be twinking your character out almost exclusively with poorly optimized, single-affix green items. The only reason you’re cheating is that finding this objectively crappier equipment on your own is, for silly reasons, magnitudes more difficult than finding full sets of the world’s best epics and legendaries (most or all of which you already own!).
I personally recommend Option B! This build is all about enjoying the journey, and it’s a shame to have to wait to level 70 to formally initiate your phlegm odyssey. But I also firmly recommend farming up a level 70 Blight set and complementary legendaries yourself first! I think of this build like a cheesecake - it’s something sweet and easy, something indulgent to reward yourself with after you’re finished with all the heavy lifting of the main course (ie your first character’s journey to Ult and their endgame loot grind). Treat yourself, but only after you’ve earned it.
Reflect
Reflect is so much the Achilles’ Heel of this build that it deserves its own section. When you hit a reflective enemy with your booger DOT, some portion of it is applied to you too - with the same duration as the original! This is the real sticking point. You’ll have 200%+ to poison duration fully geared - you can’t NOT have it, because it’s built into the Blight affix itself. That means even if you kill a reflector in a couple seconds, all your poison hits will keep ticking on YOU for an excruciating 15-20 seconds. Some ways to mitigate this:
1) Keep your poison resist maxed ALWAYS! There’s no excuse not to, because Blood of Dreeg gives 100% Poison & Acid Resist and your devotions give you oodles of it as well. Abomination constellation and Black Gem of Dreeg also both give +3% max resists, which is BIG.
2) Max Heart of Mogdrogen - it gives -25% Poison Duration Reduction. You want to max it anyways, because it gives amazing +% Health.
3) Shoot for the third star in the Dryad constellation, which gives -20% Posion Duration Reduction. The Dryad’s Blessing skill, on the other hand, is unreliable and hard to fit into your skill rotation, so I would not recommend it. (thanks Dioarchet for reminding me about this one!)
4) Find and carry a Belt of Detoxification while leveling. It gives -50% Poison Duration Reduction. Paired with Heart of Mog and Dryad, it’ll reduce your reflected poison duration to just one or two seconds, short enough to survive under most circumstances. Switch into the belt when you know you’ll be dealing with heavy reflect mobs like Skelly Priests and Elementalists (Aether Clusters are usually not a biggie, but use it against them if you need to), or any reflect Heros you bump into.
5) Stay at range. This gives the reflector more time to die before extra boogers can travel across the screen and hit them. Since boogers ‘hit’ and can beget more boogers, at point blank they can fire in such quick succession that you’ll stack 5 or 6 booger DOTs on yourself before even a trash reflect mob has a chance to die.
6) Suck it up and die/quit sometimes anyways. Seriously, some reflectors will kill you before you even know they’re there, even with maxed resists.
7) If all else fails, you can equip Thorn Girdle of the Misty Glade. You’ll lose a precious booger, but between the +5% max poison resist and 30% reduced poison duration, this should put you over the top and get you in control of late-game reflectors for good.
OA and Crits
There’s no nice way to say it. Your OA sucks. You’re missing out on many hundreds of OA by passing over legendary equipment choices, and even your devotion choices need to prioritize resists and HP over offense. Unless/until you get some great prefixes on your green gear (defense and OA) which let you spec into more offensive choices with your devotion and components, you will probably have a less than 100% hit chance against even trash mobs in ultimate, and a crit chance near or at 0. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. Especially against bosses. Why not?
Let’s say your OA is so bad you only hit 50% of the time against Cronley. Well that means your DPS suffers by 50% too, right? Not actually. Since most of your DPS comes from your poison DOTs, and your poison DOTs last 20+ seconds, all you need to do is hit bosses with each of your boogers just once, and you’re set. It might take a couple extra seconds to build your poison ticks to full strength if you’re whiffing 50% of the time, but after that, you deal almost the same DPS as if you had a 100% hit chance.
Now, if you CAN get great affixes and spec harder into OA, enough that you can manage a decent crit chance against even bosses, then the same rule applies to crits. If the same booger hits 10 times, it just refreshes the poison DOT each time. But if it crits just once, then the crit DOT takes priority for the duration, and it keeps critting for the next 20+ seconds. That means if you have +50% crit damage and a 10% crit chance against an enemy, your effective DPS boost isn’t 5% (dealing +50% damage 10% of the time), but actually approaches 50% as all your boogers crit just once!
This is only really meaningful against bosses since it takes a few seconds to build up your crit DOTs. It’s something to consider as a very endgame, super-twinked-out strategy to eke out more DPS against big bosses. If you can get your OA high enough (how high? I don’t know, my affixes still suck), it might make sense to spec out of Possession and put the points into Stormcaller’s Pact, just for the +50% crit damage.
The End
Go forth. Answer the call of BPS. Cover all you meet in a spray of snot, and don’t quit until the whole world is as green as your taste in endgame equipment.
