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:
