This is not a build guide but rather a post showcasing a build I was so hyped to make since before the expansion and also recounting my experiences in making the build. I just finished this build a few hours ago but I had so much fun that I wanted to share this even without much testing.
So one of the few items revealed first before AoM came was Spellscourge Bulwark and a lot of people, including me, were immediately hyped about a potential physical devastation battlemage, not knowing that the rest of the set was bad. I know that a few of us though, still tried to theorycraft and play spellscourge battlemage. Some might have found it fine and still had fun but I definitely did not like it. I decided to try my luck on abandoning the Spellscourge set and making JoV’s Triple meteor concept as a template for a physical Triple Meteor Battlemage with Beronath, Reforged and dual Seals of Might. Just at the Grimtools planning stage though, I already encountered a lot of problems that the same Spellscourge set also had. The biggest of them was that Devastation just does not have any physical support other than Spellscourge, and that to get Devastation to 26/16, you have to sacrifice a lot of physical bonuses to get there, resulting in a low (for my tastes) damage output. I tried Warborn and Markovian, the two premier physical sets to no avail. And I abandoned the concept to focus on other builds.
Fast forward a month after that, when Zhuugus posted his Krieg Battlemage just last week, I remembered about this concept and even commented something in there about buffing Spellscourge so I can play this build. I was focused on other things though so it slipped my mind until just this morning (it’s 2 pm here at the time of posting) when something popped in my mind: Krieg set also supports physical damage. I then go to my laptop after I had time and opened my saved GT build on meteors battlemage (Thanks Dammit on the offline Grimtools!) I replaced some pieces with Krieg set and put some MIs because I needed it to cover up the lack of synergy in the build. I open GDstash because my MIs were so demanding affix-wise and made a test using an existing Battlemage. I was surprised at the result:
[spoiler]GLADIATOR CLEARED. WAVE 150 CLEARED (with buffs expired. Don’t mind the x1 multi. double Moose moves so slowly I can’t group them up with maiden chasing me)
[/spoiler]
I never expected this to be gladiator viable and just tested on Glad because I respecced in Crucible fo the Dead. I was so glad it worked great on the first try and on an unpolished build too! It just proved that Krieg S&B is not the only strong battlemage out there. Battlemage has historically been viewed as a weak class due to the lack of damage and the three good builds I have seen before the expac (Cthon’s CT and Aether Blitzer, and the Cadence build Drizzto used in one of his videos) merged into one build with the Krieg set. The negative thing about this build is just that it requires a ton of MIs with specific affixes, or that’s how I build it so it’s not really noob/non cheater friendly. But it works and I’m glad to share this to everyone.
The concept of triple meteors is really fun to play and to watch and is really strong at the same time. The main disadvantage of the whole concept on my end is that it lags my laptop more than usual due to meteors covering the screen. Because of this I won’t be able to play this build a lot. I don’t have any good closing to write so I’ll just encourage everyone who can improve this build to share your build to everyone by either posting here or creating your own thread/guide. Also big thanks to JoV for introducing the forums to the triple devastation concept. I don’t know him but he’s certainly done a lot for this forums.