[1.0.2.1]Ravenous Earth Ritualist Ultimate Ravager, Lokarr and 150 ex.spawn Challenger Crucible Down

Hello Everyone and welcome to a quick guide of the build I have been using to clear the game for the past couple weeks. I came up with it pretty much purely by accident when I was leveling a Necro for a drain life build using ravenous earth and realized half way through:
“Wow, this build is doing insane damage while being virtually unkillable, why am I even bothering with drain life?”

First a “quick” break down of pro’s and cons:

Pro’s:

  • NO GEAR DEPENDENCY. Literally the only two items you need are two green monster infrequents that you can farm in less than an hour. Most of your damage comes from skill synergies (with the exception of Viperfang grips, which push your dmg by about 20%). You can beat the entire game on ultimate with complete garbage greens untwinked so long as you max resis. That said, if you actually DO get your hand on the right items you can push your dmg quite a bit, though most legendaries are primarily for survival of the truly challenging stuff (Like Lokarr or tripple Nemesis in wave 150).
  • As tanky as you can be without playing an actual tank, very high sustain and 16k++ health pool and mark of torment for near Immortality on demand.
  • Sustain is not affected by stun, so unless Fabius und Valderan are going berserk on you together, you can safely sustain yourself through any punishment even when incapacitated.
    -Very high damage, even against mobs that would usually be entirely immune to vitality damage (e.g. Ravager) due to a very high amount of resistance reduction. That said, this build is not dracaris incarnate pushing 600k dps, but you can still murder mostly anything instantaneously, particularly if you are holding your position (like in a death room) and keep up 4 ravenous earths.
  • Currently Bugged! Ravenous Earth stops scaling at Rank 22 instead of 26, so in the nearest bugfix patch this build will hopefully receive a significant damage boost.
  • Over-saturated in skillpoints. Currently I have 4 to spare with everything beneficial maxed out that i just put into Mog’s pact cause i don’t know what else to do with them, but you can get everything beneficial to appropriate ranks very early in the game.
    -Extremely HC viable. I just wanted to try it and see how far i get, ended up clearing the whole game. Easyly. Completly untwinked and self found (first HC char). No need to be even careful, killed Mad queen and Kupa. 10k+ Hp at lvl 40, 20k+ hp at lvl 75. With full resis and high HP the game is just a complete cakewalk.

Cons:

  • Resistances are a bitch to max. You have very little of them on the actually recommended gear and if you look at my grimcalc you’ll see I have mostly everything maxed out on point, and that is with most components and augments devoted to resistances. I spend more time farming Ugdenblooms for the new resistance components than I spent farming gear for my Lokarr kill…
  • Only 15% reduced stun duration. This will affect you literally in 3 places of the game and that is: Crucible Wave 130+ when multiple nemesis or smth similar attack you while stunned (can be counteracted with blessing), if Lokarr lands a stun on you before you hit mark of torment and when fighting Ultimate Mogdrogen. There are, to my knowledge, no other encounters in the game that have both stun and insanely high dps.
  • Relatively low DA. I can not express how much I hate this stat. I think, when designing that stat Crate was thinking something along the lines of: “You know what players love? A 1% chance of being exploded by random bullshit because one of the main defensive stats is underrepresented on every gear set except dedicated tank builds!”. Jokes aside, this will also not affect you for 99,99% of the game and only become relevant when you take the fight to the demigods and take 2 crits in a row. Doesn’t happen often, but I’ve had a couple hilarious deaths when I just lost 18k hp+ in less than 30 frames and stood there like :rolleyes:.
  • Relatively low phys. resitance. Basically, if you get a double iron maiden or double fabius in wave 150 on top of all the other stuff that spawns, you’ll propably just explode through 25k hp and 8 regenerative procs. Crate REALLY wants people to play shield soldier, I believe.

The premise of this build is a vitality dmg centered Ravenous Earth spammer with very high sustain, including 150%+ Vitality resistance penetration breaking down as follows:

68% Devouring swarm + 37% Spectral wrath + 20% Ratosh + + 15% Signet of the fallen + 10% Voidheart (+ 12% Cursed Tincture + 10% Ravagers Gaze)= 150/172% Vitality Resistance reduction under perfect circumstances

Mostly you play by placing down a ravenous earth, using devouring swarm, placing another ravenous earth, placing wendigo totem, placing a third ravenous earth and doing another devouring swarm + potentially ravagers gaze.
That is, if you are fighting against something really though or holding of an onslaught of enemies. When just clearing trash mob you place ravenous earth, do a devouring swarm and keep running to the next pack as a single ravenous earth will already decimate anything none boss.

Remember that ravenous earth can hit MULTIPLE TIMES on the SAME enemy, so place it strategically in front or behind them. I found that if you place it directly below, you can actually miss everything, place it too far and it only hits once or twice. One gets the hang of it pretty quick, though.

Tools for my char when I killed ultimate ravager: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/4VxAoyEZ
(stats on gear are mildy inaccurate, also I had about 1k less health on gear and no jelly tonic when taking on Lokarr and Crucible maxed for the first time (→16k hp base))

Tools for what the char ACTUALLY should look like, if I occasionally got lucky with drops: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4DeA5N

Ult Ravager 3 minutes pre kill:

Ult Ravager finally dead after a 38 minutes (don’t judge me this guy’s a fucking god) bloody brawl:

Me showing off my Lokarr transmog for absolutely no reason whatsoever:

I’ll be happy to answer any questions, take criticism or suggestions from anyone interested. If this build actually gets any attention I’d be glad to post some videos of gameplay. Cheers and happy slaying!

EDIT:
HC Ult ravager kill, 47 Minutes with complete garbage gear http://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NK4zmJ2:

I don’t get it, did you dwindle him down to 1% hp for 3 minutes and then took 35 minutes to kill him?

With a Blood Orb of Ch’thon, you could convert that Poison on Ravenous Earth to Vitality Decay. :wink:

First screenshot is 3 minutes PRE kill, not PER kill. The first pic is from 3 minutes before the Ravager died. Took me a second to figure that out too.

Why in the world are you using Harbinger of Souls and not Master of Death?

Nice one :slight_smile:

Im making ravenous earth build(s) also, but since didn’t had shaman leveled I used oculist as second mastery.

You should try to use valguurs gems set for extra -20% vitality rr and mix ravenous earth with siphon souls potentially transmuted storm totem also.

Thats actually much better option for occultist/necro where you can mix ravenous earth with DEE when using BOoC.

Yes I am also working on an RE build using but spellbinder:

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/62avg4EV

I was intending to use perma Mirror/MoT to tank some of the harder things for faster kills.

Testing with GDstash character kills the ultimate dummy in about 30 sec (I think that is something like 400k dps not real sure).

I did actually use drain essence because there is still gaps to fill and I can get it to 15k(with RR) per tick so its pretty real extra DPS. I think the damage comes out to like 2/3 RE, 1/3 DE. Of course due to equipment that is different for you, I maybe should switch to viperfang as well it would have to be more damage I think. The extra chaos stuff can’t work for me and is probably not a big deal anyway.

The thing I am unsure on is if I can life steal at all on the majorly hard bosses with the -30% life leech on haunt. If not then I doubt i have the sustain to facetank certain things and I would have to basically do the same thing on ravager that you did but with slightly less RR. Although on ravager it might turn out similar since I am leveraging Aether instead.

Just twin fangs + RE is actually mostly enough life steal on normal things its pretty strong, especially at a 0.3 sec proc rate and 1sec recharge on RE.

Edit: oh I missed you aren’t using twin fangs I just assumed you would since RE procs it damn fast and its vit. It may be better than wendigo on an RE build.

This looks very similar to my vitality caster I’m making. So far he’s tearing through everything without any difficulty and I can’t wait to get to 94+ to use some gear I’ve found.

The only major difference is I still have Soul Harvest incorporated into my build (minimal skill requirement for a decent damage boost). It doesn’t do much for trash mobs as RE obliterates everything in sight, but for bosses, it’s a nice little buff for the short duration - though I’m not sure how useful it would be on high-level enemies.

Have you tested your damage output if you remove two points from somewhere and grab Soul Harvest?

I am pretty sure he would get more out of storm totem. He could remove poitns from decay and blood pact since they scale like shit and have max storm totem. I am not sure off hand how hard it would hit but at a guess I would say you can lay down 2 and they would each hit for 10k easy and do 20k DPS.

I would guess he can get boneharvest to hit at like 15k every 2 seconds.

Storm Totem with the transmuter would also be a good idea, but I’m not saying to use Bone Harvest for damage - merely as a buff for RE that you’ve already casted on a boss. Any boss that sits on top of RE can have Soul Harvest cast for a 5-second damage buff to RE.

Just adding one point to Bone Harvest and Soul Harvest put SH at 7/12 which gives 40% Vitality Damage on top of Bone Harvest’s damage and slowing mechanism. The slow effect isn’t much, but it does keep them on top of RE for a bit longer which could easily mean more damage.

So, Storm Totem + Transmuter could help clear mobs, but Bone Harvest + Soul Harvest could help you nuke bosses. Something to think about I suppose.

Shit RE actually works against the Ravager? I gave up after 5 minutes of running around with some scratch on his health bar, congrats on the kill.

I made a RE Death Knight build recently it’s a ton of fun to play with.
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZR9D4BV

Cleared gladiator crucible with ease and am able to face tank pretty much all nemesis in the game. Haven’t tried ravager yet since i’ve made the mistake of spawning the wrong one and im fairly sure he’ll shit on me. amazing kill and build man!

@OP impressive build, you managed to change my opinion about Ravenous Earth :smiley:
Grats on Ravager kill

The Master of Death aura should be better than Harbinger of souls

Imo it’d be suited for conjurer better than Cabalist

Sadly this (conversion) is one of the best ways to make a vitality decay build atm :undecided:

Thing about Ravager is he doesn’t have any summons getting in the way of your targeting so he is actually easier than Mogdrogen for builds who can damage while kiting but his melee attacks are bitch this makes him hard to facetank
Ravager of Souls is the easier version, Ravager of Minds is the juiced up asshole and the real nightmare. So this build killing RoM surprised me as well but considering he’s a large/medium hitbox shotguns are his weakness.

Thanks for the feedback. I’m gonna adress a few of the topics mentioned:

  1. Transmuted storm totem:
    I have tested this extensively, and PERSONALLY i find it very lackluster. The dmg is virtually negligeable (about 10% of a ravenous earth), the cooldown is relatively long and the range is relatively short. It also costs a GCD that you could use for devouring swarm (since you rarely hit all enemies with a single swarm) or to reposition yourself, or use ravagers gaze. I just found a 17 pioint investion into a skill that offers so little and complicates the playstyle so much to be not worth it.

  2. Harbringer of souls vs Master of death:
    I have always wondered which of the two is better.
    Harbringer increases your Vitality damage by total 10%, Aether dmg by 20% and Cast speed by 13%.

Master gives roughly 300 OA and 100 DA. That’s roughly an 8% chance increase to hit or to crit and a 2% lower chance to be crit or hit.

Now since crit damage is pretty low in this build (whooping 15% and that is with a 5% ravager of minds helmet) and your OA ishigh enough to hit mostly anything, I just figured I would go with the skill that gives a consistent boost to damage and lowers my casting frame time rather than the skill who gives me rng based damage. Aether damage is also a nice increase for impurity healing. It could very well be that my reasoning was off somewhere, if so I would very much welcome it for someone to point it out.

  1. Soul Harvest:
    I forgott that existed. It is propably a fairly small dmg buff considering the 2100%+ vitality dmg the build has, but even a 5% dmg increase is definitely a better point investment then mogdrogens pact. Thanks!

  2. Valduurs Hunger set:
    Would require me to drop viperfang grips. Not worth it imho. Also I don’t have a single item from that set :smiley:

  3. Twin fangs.
    Would require me to drop Ratosh from Ravenous Earth. The advantage of Ratosh is, that it has NO CD at all, and offers a really nice dmg boost. The question is more, do I want to use wendigo on wendigos totem or bat on wendigos totem. I went with wendigo since it offered much better passive stats and I thought the passive life drain would benefit me more than spiky healing. Worth some investigating though, since it would also give 3 green points, and possible allow me to switch some devotions around.

  4. Blood orb of chton.
    100% Acid Damage converted to Vitality Damage. But…but It’s poison damage on RE not acid?

ALSO: I’m an idiot and of course title should say Gladiator and not Challenger crucible

  1. Harbringer of souls vs Master of death:
    I have always wondered which of the two is better.
    Harbringer increases your Vitality damage by total 10%, Aether dmg by 20% and Cast speed by 13%.

Master gives roughly 300 OA and 100 DA. That’s roughly an 8% chance increase to hit or to crit and a 2% lower chance to be crit or hit.

Now since crit damage is pretty low in this build (whooping 15% and that is with a 5% ravager of minds helmet) and your OA ishigh enough to hit mostly anything, I just figured I would go with the skill that gives a consistent boost to damage and lowers my casting frame time rather than the skill who gives me rng based damage. Aether damage is also a nice increase for impurity healing. It could very well be that my reasoning was off somewhere, if so I would very much welcome it for someone to point it out.

Harbringer is better. Should be even better if you put some points intro Bone harvest .

  1. Blood orb of chton.
    100% Acid Damage converted to Vitality Damage. But…but It’s poison damage on RE not acid?

Poison is converted to vitality decay. Shouldnt affect this build performance too much, cause most of your gmg come from direct dmg.

I do not get it. He has +1770% to vitality decay and +500% to poison, why do you both think it’s not a huge increase in damage?

Because its 200 flat vit decay per second?

Where do you get bonespikes? Trog mages only?

Sadly yes but on ultimate they drop a lot. For that matter even on veteran you can get one within 30-60 mins of mountain deeps farming

Just had the pleasure of experiencing a double iron maiden in wave 150. Couldn’t even use MoT before I exploded. Guess I’ll have to add low phys. res to weaknesses, wave 150 be seriously overtuned though. Pretty much the only wave that can RNG you to death without any chance of counterplay.