With the release of 1.0.0.7 and Port Valbury, now seems like a good time to release a build I’m proud of: A Chaos Ray build. No longer is Bastion of Chaos the ultimate dungeon in the game. It’s time to kill some Aetherials, and nothing does that better than Chaos damage. With the Black Flame set released in 1.0.0.6, a Chaos Ray build is a beast able to handle even those pesky Flesh Hulks. With the right devotion skills and taking advantage of the set’s bonus to Sigil of Consumption, this is also easily the sturdiest caster character I’ve made yet, able to refill plenty of health in battle (though admittedly, I have not made a vitality caster yet). The granted skill of the Black Flame set bonus, Ritual Circle, is the key. In addition to drastically boosting the power of your Chaos Ray, it grant 25% physical resistance! Pop a Ritual Circle under yourself and a Sigil of Consumption under your enemy and tank away!
Crossroads (Purple)
Complete Owl
Remove Crossroads (Purple)
Crossroads (Green)
Complete Scholar’s Light
Complete Chariot of the Dead
Remove Crossroads (Green)
Complete Viper
Complete Solael’s Witchblade
Crossroads (Blue)
Complete Behemoth
Complete Oklaine’s Lantern
Remove 3 points in Behemoth (leaving the skill)
Complete Dryad
Complete Turtle
Remove Crossroads (Blue)
Crossroads (Yellow)
Complete Scales of Ulcama
Put last 2 points in Harvestman’s Scythe
Skills
Active:
Albrecht’s Aether Ray (bound with Eldritch Fire)
Sigil of Consumption (bound with Dryad’s Blessing)
Blood of Dreeg
Olexra’s Flash Freeze
Mirror of Ereoctes
Solael’s Flame (granted by Symbol of Solael)
Ritual Circle (granted by the Black Flame set bonus)
Passive:
Possession (bound with Tip the Scales)
Maiven’s Sphere of Protection (bound with Giant’s Blood)
Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange (bound with Wayward Soul)
Solael’s Witchfire (bound with Turtle Shell)
Aether-Ward Aura (granted by Purified Salt)
-I don’t think Solael’s Witchfire buys you much. The attack speed is useless for a caster build, the flat Chaos damage is not added to Aether Ray, and it costs you energy. The only bonus is +% Vitality damage, which just boosts your Sigil a little bit. Second Rite is marginally more useful by giving you Vit resistance and Chaos % damage but is still subpar.
-Elemental Balance is really nice for the crit damage.
-Fabric of Reality boosts Chaos damage. At least a few points in that is good.
-At least 1 point in Arcane Will is good.
-Nullification is just about the best skill you could possibly get for 1 point.
-More points in Conversion is good for important resists against disruption effects.
Going 50/50 in mastery leaves me little to work with. I can’t get everything I would like. That said:
Solael’s Witchfire is only at 1 point, and is only there to take advantage of +skills and provide a toggle-buff to attach devotions to. I technically could drop one buff as I also have Aether-Ward Aura, but I have +5 to Solael’s Witchfire and it feels like a waste to not take advantage of that for cheap.
Elemental Balance does provide +crit damage, but absolutely nothing else for me. I’ll take what crit damage I can get, but I don’t want to make poor investments just to get a little more.
Fabric of Reality is a poorly-scaling point suck. 1.0.0.7 really increased its value for melee, but it still sucks for casters. I can get more Chaos damage on a single item than I can for a full 12 point investment in that skill.
I will grant you Arcane Will. That was a tough one for me to sacrifice.
I have never been so bothered by enemy auras that I wished I had Nullification. So I have to wait a few seconds for their reflect to drop. Oh well.
Conversion is another poorly-scaling point suck. What you get for maxing it out is just not worth the investment.
Use FRAPS, its free to use. Pretty reliable. Never used it for recording and only for taking screens (my pc sucks:cry:) but i hear its good for that as well
I used the clairvoyant’s set for my warlock and got more base dps for AAR (148k just with auras, no procs), but my build lacks some resistances and also some HP. Unfortunately I did not play with Sigil of Consumption because I did not have any points left, but I like the combination with Sigil and the Ritual Circle and that the build is more tanky than mine. Nice build!
I am working on something similar, I agree with you that PoV is a great addition to the game since it makes Chaos/Vitality builds less gimped. Here are some suggestions:
Your DA is awful. Getting crit all the time will force you to kite vs more dangerous opponents (I can’t imagine you would survive 3 hits from Mad Queen), which sucks since you are at your best then you sit in your circles and keeping the ray on target constantly while activating Agrivix procs. I don’t know off the top of my head how to fix it, probably trough better rares (you can get up to 6% DA bonuses on boots and pants). Hallowed ground chest augment helps as well.
The weakness of AAR is that, while it is unparalleled in terms of single target DPS, it is horrible when you get swamped by trash mob. Agrivix and Sigil are good ways of dealing with those situations, but you can go further. If you are not too attached to the completion bonus of Black Flame set, you can pick up the iff-hand that converts elemental to chaos. This allows you to use the Elemental Balance rings for an amazing proc that clears everything around you in combination with Agrivix. A step further would be the The Covenant of the Three (helm that drops from Sentinel), which has a very sweet 0.5 sec cd chaos damage proc and +3 to AAR.
+5 to Solael’s Witchfire actually makes it worse, since the mana drain increases with levels. Srsly, drop it.
Is there no way to max AAR without Badge of Mastery? There are much better relics for you, like Mark of Divinity or Black Star of Deceit.
Since you don’t use BSoD, consider getting Manticore. Also CoF. I know you have a lot of buttons to push already, but if you didn’t want to use your skill bar, you could have made a Warder. Your resistance reduction is pretty poor (this is in general a problem with chaos/vitality setups).
I agree with everything you stated, except the red part.
Seriously, why vitality? Vitality has largest rr shred in game devouring swarm, not to mention cof.
For point 2, I must say that OFF is a nice cc spell. When the trash mobs are frozen, you can easily kill them. Unfortunately hero and boss monsters have a high freeze resistance and aren’t affected by OFF. However hero monsters also die quickly to AAR while the trash mobs around are frozen and most times boss monsters are alone (if they don’t summon allies) and you have to kite them anyway (what is one of the basics when playing with AAR).
I would recommend to use Flame Torrent on AAR instead of the Elemental Balance Ring, otherwise you lose the Ritual Circle skill for a complete Black Flame set.
All hydralisks have at least 100% resistance. Pointy black dudes and aetherial bouncers have very high, champions even 80%. Even skeletons and ghosts have 30-50%. Endgame bosses consistently have 80% or more. Coupled with the fact that there is not a single spell, proc or attack that does overwhelmingly high vitality damage, except maybe Phantasmal blades with the new and improved Demonslayer set AND the fact that the available constellations are all over the place and neither is very good, vitality+chaos are consistently the slowest content clearers in the game.
Just compare to lightning or piercing damage. Or aether. Or physical. Don’t get me started on poison/acid.
I have 3 vitality dmg builds (PB tricster, DEE/sigil conjurer and DW savagery conjurer) and 4 chaos dmg builds (2H ranged harbinger, DW pistol, DW melee and S&B melee) and majority of them are clearing faster than any phys dmg build I made including S&B BM and wichblade. With DW melee chaos pyro and DW melee vitality cojurer leading the ranks when game clearing time is concerned. Only thing that can measure with them aether dmg vise is 2H ranged vortex build and just because of vortex.
I cant compare it to lightning or pierce cuz those two dmg types are, due to many things, strongest when it comes to non dot imho but I can compare it easily with any other dmg type.
Sigil+cof alone on my vitality conjurer is more than -100% rr, If you add to that some flat rr reduction, % rr, maybe few more sources of -% rr, you diont care does some mobs or heroes have 80% or 100% vitality resistance, cuz after your rrs are applied they are below 0% no mater what.
P.S. My apologies to OP because of off topic things.
@OP: I don’t want to sound like a ‘dick’, but I don’t think you are playing to the strenghts of AAR with your build. Since I actually played a couple of days with a Chaos Warlock in 1.0.0.6. and managed to finish Gladiator Solo with it, let me point out some things:
Too low OA: AAR gets around 5-6 ticks/ second at max level and 200% casting speed. That means in order to get the most out of it you should have an OA around 2900-3000 or higher. Replace your amulet with Beronath and keep an Avatar of Mercy in your pocket for “stun-lockers” and the Crucible.
Insufficient radial coverage: AAR ticks fast, so you would want radial damage attached to it in order to cover the fact that you are basically a turret. Voidsteel gauntlets is the right idea but I suggest you attach Flame Torrent to AAR because it has a WDC, meaning you will life-leech and energy-leech (IEE) on an area. This is paramount for keeping your enegery levels high without overinvesting in spirit or ‘bullshit’ constellations. Last but not least: GET AGRIVIX !!!
Too low DA: Get a Golemborn at least and farm some nice Gollus rings.
Not enough resistance reduction: you have no manticore and no black star. I suggest you go with the Black Star. It gives nice resistance reduction and provides you with AoE. Generally, that means around a 5-6k dps increase in a couple of seconds. Without that flat resistance reduction, there are not enough “-%” sources in the game to pull off a competitive chaos build. Harbinger crossbow has a massive one, but it is not a caster weapon. Ergo, you are stuck with Manticore or Black Star.
Too much investment in Sigil. The +x Sigil buffs on the Black Covenant set is meaningless. In fact, it is a red herring. Vitality conjurers can pull it off due to massive additive sources of “-%” reduction to vitality. Warlocks…can’t. The survivability boost provided by the Sigil in Ultimate and/or Crucible is very low for a Warlock. Even with mass destruction and 22/12 in sigil, you will still be killed if you want to facetank the Mad Queen. Why, because the sigil ticks and triggers the retaliation aura. Furthermore, going is Sigil forced you to take a BoM in order to get to the hard cap of AAR. Bad idea. Without those points you could:
a) Invest in Mirror or Conversion - which is much more useful from a survivability PoV.
b) Get Black Star and still have AAR and Disintegration at max cap.
c) Get more points into Devastation, i.e. the most powerful skill in the game that will now do aether, fire and chaos damage. Consequently, chaos Harbingers will not take one hundred years to kill.
I have updated the build slightly based on comments here. I would also like to address some concerns.
The Badge of Mastery was solely for the offensive ability and elemental resistance. This build sorely lacks elemental resistance, and I need to get it from somewhere. I can easily max out my skills without it. However, the comments motivated me to rethink my gear and I found a way to make Black Star of Deceit work by replacing one of my rings to cover the deficit in resistances (my green gear is all either Harmonious or of Nature’s Bounty, you must focus on elemental resistance for gear). I have shifted skill points accordingly.
My energy regeneration is so prodigious that I have no use for energy leech. This is also why I didn’t bother maxing out Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange. I do not need any more. Therefore, I did not need Flame Torrent to trigger energy leech. As for the radial coverage I lose from that, I already do have Agrivix’s Malice equipped. There is no need to tell me to equip it again.
I already feature resistance reduction from Eldritch Fire (yes, it does that). I don’t need to switch to a suboptimal constellation like Manticore like the Aether builds do. This is reason #2 for not taking Flame Torrent (otherwise it is an appealing choice). Resistance reduction also comes from Solael’s Flame, granted by Symbol of Solael. I have also now added Black Star of Deceit as suggested. That’s 3 sources of resistance reduction. Is that not plenty?
Yes, my DA is low, but I don’t think I can do anything about that without gimping other aspects of the build. I do not want to lose the +points to Destruction from the boots, or the auto Doom Bolt from the ring, and those are the only 2 pieces that could reasonably be changed out. If anyone wants to make a Chaos Ray character of their own, they should feel free to make their own choice about that. Follow me or don’t, it doesn’t bother me. I would like to say thought that in my own experience, the DA has not caused me any noticeable problems. If you must, feel free to put more points into physique. I stopped because I had plenty of health, but as I stated before, I have plenty of energy regeneration so it should not be a problem to pull at least some from spirit.
I have done the best I can for OA. If you must, you can change out the gear I mentioned before for more OA, but you’d have to choose between that and DA. As much as I would like, I just cannot have everything.
Sigil of Consumption is a healing skill, not a damage skill. You need to change your philosophy. I am not attempting to kill anything with it. Instead, it provides a sizable boost to your health regeneration in battle (doubly so since I have attached Dryad’s Blessing to it). This helps you to facetank enemies when you are standing still with Aether Ray, or in your Ritual Circle.
Finally, Solael’s Witchfire has a great looking evil aura, I have plenty of energy regeneration, and I just don’t care. Feel free to do what you want. Note that you will have to bind the devotion to Aether-Ward Aura instead.
I don’t wish to present my opinions as facts that everyone must follow. One of the things I enjoy most about this game is the great degree of customization allowed in builds. I wanted to make this build public because I didn’t see much discussion going on about the Black Flame set and Chaos Ray builds, and I wanted to get one started. There may be room for improvement (because there is always room for improvement) but ultimately personal opinions will come into play at some point. I know you will have opinions that differ from mine, and I encourage discussion, because I like the Black Flame set and transmuted Aether Ray.
Lastly, I have figured out recording videos and posting to Youtube, but it is… slow. It will probably take a couple of days for Youtube to upload them all, but rest assured, they are recorded and uploading. I will update the post once again when they are done. I hope you will see that I have plenty of both energy regeneration and healing, and that the build is a fun and viable option for the new Port Valbury content (because that is what I recorded).
