Those pants and boots really don’t fit.
Overview
Ever since the stats for the new legendary items were posted in the first 1.0.0.8 preview I was really interested in the new Alkamos items and started to theorycraft a build to use them. I got all the items I needed together and waited for the patch to drop (the delay was killing me). After the patch I must have been blessed by RNJesus because I got the Alkamos drops fast. Maybe this was to compensate for having to spend a whole day farming Anasteria for her hat.
Some initial impressions I saw of the scythe weren’t super positive; it has no attack speed after all. Well it turns out you don’t need attack speed if your damage doesn’t come from basic attacks.
The Build
Toggles, Hungering Void, BoD, PB, and Lethal Assault are active
Weapon: Soulrend; Oleron’s Blood/Potent Outcast’s Deathtouch
Amulet: Demonslayer’s Defense; Wardstone/Mogdrogen’s Sanctity
Ring 1: Alkamos’ Touch of Anguish; Mark of Illusions/Uroboruuk’s Word
Ring 2: Alkamos’ Touch of Dread; Corpse Dust/Survivor’s Ingenuity
Medal: Undying Oath; Arcane Spark
Head: Demonslayer’s Hat; Leathery Hide/Outcast’s Warding Powder
Chest: Demonslayer’s Jacket; Hallowed Ground/Spellward Powder
Legs: Arcane Harmony Leggings; Scaled Hide/Spellward Powder
Shoulder: Stonehide Zantarin’s Shoulderguard of Menhir’s Will; Scaled Hide/Outcast’s Warding Powder
Hands: Iceskorn Talons; Unholy Inscription/Outcast’s Warding Powder
Feet: Golemborn Greaves; Mark of Mogdrogen/Mankind’s Vigil
Belt: Girdle of Stolen Dreams; Rigid Shell/Mankind’s Vigil
Relic: Scourge
Grimcalc (no +skills)
Grimcalc (with +skills)
Full Disclosure: The shoulderguard is absolutely crafted with GDStash. I had it leftover on this character from when it was a DW poison/acid build with awful gear that I was trying to improve without consideration for if I have the items or not. Instead of leveling a new WH for this build I figured I’d respec and I saw no reason to get rid of the shoulders. That said the shoulders, pants, and boots are all nonessential to the build (though I’d recommend having some sort of Zantarin Shoulderguards), so if you’re trying this feel free to replace those with whatever you need to round out your stats. I just was using what I had on-hand for this.
Gameplay: How does this build work?
Part 1: Weapon Damage and Conversion
The fact that Soulrend has no AS on it is damning at first glance, but if there’s one thing 2H weapons have going for them it’s high base damage. Also, we want to take advantage of the high %vit damage on Soulrend, but the flat damage from Second Rite isn’t nearly enough. Using the Demonslayer Hat, we can convert a chunk of cold damage to vit. Between the Demonslayer’s Jacket and Alkamos rings, about 50% of pierce damge from skills is also converted to cold/vit. From skills, gear, and devotions we can get a ton of flat weapon damage leading to stats that will look something like this:
Part 2: Applying Weapon Damage
So we have a ton of weapon damage, what do we do with it? There are 3 low CD skills that this setup has access to that hit hard: Scourge Strike, Shadow Strike, and Oleron’s Might. This is what the damage numbers on the skills look like.
This is your damage output right here. With high cast speed and 25% CDR, these skills will come out fast and frequently. Weave in auto attacks and ABB while they’re on CD and you’ll have pretty consistent heavy damage output. Damage numbers can get pretty high with good OA/crit damage; as of the most recent setup I’ve seen hits for around 160k, but my highest damage dealt is ~240k due to playing on multiplayer.
Specific devotion progression and gameplay videos will come shortly.
Concluding Thoughts
This build turned out better than I could have imagined considering I didn’t really have much to test it with before 1.0.0.8. I’ve been running BoC with 0 issues to try and get Shar’Zul’s weapon. Haven’t tried Nemeses yet. Since your damage doesn’t come from holding LMB you don’t have to facetank if you’re worried about dying, and 2 heals + insane ADCtH (with no compromises might I add ;)) means survivability is high. DA is a little lower than I’d like but Veil and ~50% uptime on Wayward Soul means around 2200-2350 effective DA which is satisfactory. Also I enjoy the playstyle way more than that of most DW builds.
As far as leveling is concerned I have no idea how viable this kind of setup is at lower levels since a lot of your damage banks on these specific items. It’d probably be better to do a DW setup then switch over if you’re looking to try this with a fresh character.