Hey everyone!
Welcome to the Albrecht’s Aether Ray Sorcerer guide! He’s back! My main character has returned due to a few changes in the game; specifically AAR’s buff, the retuning of the expansion content, and figuring out exactly how I’d like to handle his defenses.
So, before the guide, here are the links:
Grimtools: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/62azyzmV
Video Guide: https://youtu.be/pvqqDOBhmAk
Leveling a Sorcerer Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsmjnpeOgYQ&list=PLZgbv9keJuEfWPtm68liKNChbYYDlO_rg
History of the AAR Sorc Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZgbv9keJuEf2i6FuQcMmXNCHCoY75OM_
Five Hour Stream VOD of this Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrBXfBx5OMI
The Old Version from Vanilla: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30239
Damage Mitigation
I’m starting with the defenses of this character since in my view, building up the defenses of a character are the key to making the character work. Once the defenses are up, you can build in any attack skills and skills to support that attack freely. In this case, we’re heavily focused on reseting Mirror of Ereoctes. The Sorcerer is great at this, beginning with a caster off-hand and Star Pact. Overcapping Star Pact to its odd-numbered levels results in greater cooldown reduction and the caster off-hand (required for AAR and Devastation anyways) provides the second source of it. Beyond that, you can get small amount of CDR on weapons, helmets, and amulets. Stacking CDR is important, but it doesn’t require tight precision in this case, due to the Time Dilation Devotion skill, Aldanar’s Vanity, and Eternity. These three cooldown reseting procs will keep this character up and healthy, allowing for Mirror to rotate in something like every 5 seconds between casts, sometimes faster, including have it chained cast to itself!
Secondary to this are the other forms of mitigation the Sorcerer has access to in its class and in the Devotion layout. The Arcanist/Demolitionist combination is possibly the most crowd control heavy combination in the game. It’s got Olexra’s Flash Freeze for a freeze; Callidor’s Tempest with Wrath of Agrivix and Grenado for knockdowns; Stun Jacks, Canister Bomb with Concussive Bomb, and Heavy Ordance for stuns; Flashbang for, well, Flashbang things; and a variety of slows sprinkled throughout. Crowd control is a key factor in its defenses, even though crowd control is a bit weak right now. So, we’re running OFF with Absolute Zero, Canister Bomb with Concussive Bomb, and Flashbangs, all to control and debuff the enemy hordes. Additionally, Blackwater Cocktail, though only a 1-pointer here, with its High Potency transmuter, can also help mitigation damage, reducing the physical damage of attacks by 18%. While not huge, it does help. BWC is also a great Devotion proccer, which is the main reason it’s here.
From Devotion we’re bringing in Dryad’s Blessing, Shield Wall, and Giant’s Blood, all of which provide much needed sustain. The Sorcerer combination’s big weakness is the lack of sustain, so I sought out Devotion constellations to help with that. Tree of Life was an alternative but I feel it may require a bit too much to get into and I didn’t want to take away other options from this character. Dryad’s Blessing is a quick and reliable self-heal which helps immensely, especially given that the Sorcerer is one of the three classes that doesn’t have that feature (the other two being Commando and Battemage who can both tank easily due to being Soldier combos). Targo the Builder and Shield Wall provide armor and health, something this class doesn’t easily generate on its own. Lastly, Giant’s Blood is essentially freely accessed by this character and provides a provenly solid counter damage style heal.
Lastly, good ol’ Maiven’s Sphere of Protection is run at 12/12 for the solid 20% damage absorption, as is the case with pretty much every Arcanist I’ve ever played. Blast Shield is run in the same manner, for its great burst defense.
All of these things come together to form the core of this character’s defensive kit.
Energy Regeneration and Skill Energy Cost Reduction
I’m going to make a note here on energy regen. Most of these abilities and items will be mentioned in other parts of this guide, but I feel I have to bring it up.
To get usable energy regeneration, you need a caster chest piece. These tend to have about 7 energy regen on them and serve as a core of regeneration. Additionally, you’ll need a caster off-hand. You need one for AAR, which means this part is taken care of, but for the purposes of a regen talk, it’s a core piece of the puzzle that bears mentioning. (Anyone using Drain Essence or Flames of Ignaffar may want to consider a caster off-hand as well, even though those abilities don’t require one.)
On top of this, you can add about 20 points of Spirit and Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange. At 12/12, you get 65% additional regen and 22/12 you get a full 100% more. Other places you can get more are from caster helmets, Aethereach, rings, amulets, components, and augments. Mythical Clairvoyent’s Hat, the helmet I’m using, has it; one of the rings I have has it as well; and I’ve got Arcane Heart Powder from the Malmouth Resistance faction on my rings.
If you need more, you can pick up the Mark of Illusions or Ectoplasm for your rings.
For skill energy cost reduction, there are several component options including Arcane Lens, Focusing Prism, and Mark of Annihilation, which can obviously be paired with Mental Alacrity.
For either of these, you can find some throughout the Devotion map. Easy to get regen includes the Candle and Raven, while with more investment you can get the Bard’s Harp, Harvestman’s Scythe, and/or Oklaine’s Lantern.
Albrecht’s Aether Ray
This is the main damage ability, obviously.
It deals more Fire damage now and the Vitality damage on Disintegration was replaced by Lightning damage. Disintegration also gained Electrocute damage, which was a surprise, but a welcome one to be sure. More importantly, the energy cost scaling was reduced in Ultimate ranks, which means the skill is much easier to manage now, opening up gearing and Devotion, allowing this character to be like the other kids and actually utilize new gear (like Runebound Topazs on the rings instead of needing Marks of Illusion).
We’re running the beam at 26/16 and 22/12, squeezing as much damage as we can from the stone of AAR. The energy costs are countered by stacking above 200 energy regen and 47% skill energy cost reduction.
Supporting Skills
Most of the skills in this build are based around the need to mitigate damage and control enemies, as noted above. However, there are skills in here for buffing and enhancing the giant laser and for dishing out more damage.
Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange and Elemental Balance are awesome for this character. IEE for the energy regen and Elemental Balance for the crit damage (and Electrocute damage, how wild is that). Both are capped and overcapped as high as possible. Mental Alacrity has finally found a reason to be overcapped, eeking out all the cost reduction we can get from it. Inner Focus and Flame Touched are also overcapped for the Offensive Ability, Spirit (aka energy regen), and damage support.
Thermite Mines are at cap, granting us resistance reduction to two of the damage types on our main attack and Devastation is, as always, a big, bright, beautiful star at 1 point.
Various and sundry other abilities are also run as 1-pointers, seen in the Grim Tools link above and most of which fill obvious roles.
Notable Gear
Here follows the gear I find especially good for this character. A sub-theme of this character is stacking +1 to all skills, which results in +6 to Arcanist and +4 to Demolitionist.
Mythical Warpfire: One of the best Sorcerer weapons, a weapon I’ve been using in its non-Mythical form since Legendaries were added to the game, is here in mythical form. It’s got everything you’d want in a caster-oriented weapon, whether it’s the stats, the +1 to Sorcerer skills, or the debuff.
Mythical Aldanar’s Vanity: Part of our cooldown reset suite, this off-hand’s proc matter more than anything on it. I mean, it helps that everything on it is really good anyways. Another +1 to Sorcerer skills piece, as well.
Eternity: This relic’s stats are okay. The really stand-out bits are the Aether damage and the skill energy cost reduction. The +1 to Arcanist skills is great, as you would expect. The real reason we have it is the cooldown reseting proc.
Mythical Aethereach: Now that the Mythical version of this item has its proc, it is the best AAR piece of gear in the game again. That proc deals a lot of damage and helps to ping enemies the beam may not be reaching immediately. The stats are really good too, including the additional cost reduction.
Valdaran’s Shoulderguards: The +3 AAR, +3 Flashbang shoulders make these BiS for this character, even when they’re only okay rolled shoulders.
Mythical Clairvoyant’s Hat: This helmet is a stat generating powerhouse, both for the stats themselves but also the +1 to all skills line.
Mythical Rage of Agrivix Amulet: I’m mentioning the amulet here because of the +1 to Sorcerer skills. The stats are nice too, especially the bonuses to Vindictive Flame. That armor really helps make this character more robust.
Fateweaver’s Raiment: This chest piece pushes Elemental Balance to 22/12 and frees up points from Flashbang. This chest’s stats and the defenses it provides are amazing.
Odds and Ends: Rounding out the gearing includes Mythical Albrecht’s Duality, Mythical Band of Eternal Haunt, Mythical Phantom-Thread Girdle, green pants (I need good Aleksander pants!) and boots, and Mark of Divinity.
Components and Augments: The Malmouth Aether damage oriented jewelry augments (Arcane Heart Powder) are needed for the energy regen, at least on the rings. Creed’s Cunning on the weapon/off-hand for its solid stat array alongside a Seal of Resonance for the effect protection. Seal of Annihilation is opaf, both the stats on the component and the proc. Otherwise, everything else is about setting up resistances.
Stats
80 Physique, 25 Spirit. I think he may need to take about 5-10 out of his Physique and put it in Cunning though in case Mythical Warpfire’s Cunning requirement can’t be met.
Devotion
Aetherfire (Devastation): Aetherfire on Devastation essentially creates a field of, well, aetherfire.
Arcane Bomb (AAR): Putting the bomb on the beam gives it a small AoE and lets it self enhance.
Dryad’s Blessing (Flashbang): Throwing out Flashbangs regularly is something I’ve alway done, so using this to proc the heal means the bangs will additionally sustain us while befuddling enemies.
Time Dilation (Canister Bomb): The C-Bomb is great for proccing the Time Dilation ability. I try (and usually forget due to Early Access, pre-Devotion finger memory) to throw them after I cast Mirror, so it gets the reset as well.
Shield Wall (BWC): This is used to grants the character a large armor boost. The constellation itself also gives a direct health and armor boost, which is necessary in my opinion for a class like this.
Giant’s Blood (Maiven’s): Pretty standard issue reverse damage proc.
Other Constellations: The other constellations are used for getting to the big ability ones. For the Primordial stuff we need for Aeon’s Hourglass, I mostly stick with Sailor’s Guide and the Eel for the defenses and movement speed they provide.
Crucible
Don’t know, don’t care, don’t play it.
Conclusion
Don’t worry everyone will get a chance to ride the beam!
