This will be my first build showcase/guide, any and all suggestions or questions would be appreciated. As of now this guide for lack of a better word is a work in progress.
Pros:
-Pretty safe build to play with the right mind set
-Strong aoe and decent single target damage
-Strong sustain and life leech from devotions and skills
-Decent hp pool
-Looks cool durrr
-Can clear pretty much all campaign content with the exception of ultimate ravager (havent really given it an attempt though)
Cons:
-Can sometimes get bursted and need a degree of reaction since armor is still kind of low
-Lots of ability spamming so the play style isnt too laid back
-Need to be wary of CC, biggest enemy of this build imo
-May have to kite in certain situations to avoid getting bursted down
Play-style:
Play style is pretty straightforward, keep Blood of Dreeg up always and try to use it as a healing cooldown in situations that cause your hp to dip. CoF > Solael’s Flame > Siphon Souls > Sigil of Consumption is your main rotation, and you want to cast Doom Bolt on cooldown. Use Chaos Strike to move out of sticky situations or tight corners and for mobility in general. Be wary if Divine Light is down, you’ll want to kite and play a bit safer if you see potential to get overwhelmed/bursted down. Try saving Mark of Torment for higher risk/burst targets and pop Ill Omen on high physical damage mobs, or mobs clustered around you to avoid getting bursted as well.
100-150 glad ex spawn clear, im playing sloppy here but its cleared with relative ease.
140-150 glad ex spawn clear with updated setup
Grava’Thul kill
Mad Queen kill
Gear options:
Fang of Ch’thon can be switched out with a Plaguebearer Masters Spellblade for the flat RR.
I have a similar build as a Ritualist and overall it looks solid plus the low armor and physical resistance is a problem in my case despite the beefy HP pool.
But AotG would help the physical resist and spammable heal would help survivability in your case i guess.
Only change i’d make is taking the excess points from Blood Boil, Destruction and either AotG/Doom Bolt/Second Rite to invest and max in Foul Eruption since build doesn’t have a flat RR source and it could use one.
And you are using weaker weapon augments than there is available.
Im not sure i follow what you mean by flat RR source, i do have multiple sources of RR such as (vulnerability,spectral wrath, rings, valguurs siphon soul set effect etc.)
Updated weapon augments, cant believe i overlooked something so obvious thanks!
I made a similar character around 1 month ago, just with higher OA/DA (about +300 or so higher) and it worked alright in the Crucible, as well as Vanilla. To be frank with you I don’t think those rings, nor the Fang of Ch’thon work in your favour, sir. I say this because there are a couple of enemies in this game that have 115% chaos resistance and 25% vitality resistance is base in Ultimate for almost every mob. Even with Dying God and the Fang, you will not have enough RR to to capitalise on the massive chaos boost.
I’d rather take a Plaguebearer Master’s Spellblade instead of the Fang because you have no WD% skill in your repertoire to benefit from the inherent ADcTH of the dagger, nor high Type A RR (i.e. no Manticore). I’d also put a Ravager’s Eye (for DA) or Essence of Ch’thon on the tome or dagger because you have no Type C RR either. It’s not a bad setup - on the contrary, but there are better ones you can go for.
P.S.: By flat RR he means there are three types of RR in this game: Type A (flat), Type B (what you mentioned basically) and Type C (i.e. “% reduced”). You have no type A and type C, sir. NONE !
First off thank you for your input and clarifying certain details! The thought process behind the rings were simply that i liked the well rounded stats and the fire to chaos conversion i felt brought more out of destruction (which also synergises with the converted damage on valguur robes), i did however consider using signet of the fallen for an extra RR proc but i felt the RR in my build was adequate for the most part (i rack up about -145% vitality RR in an ideal situation).
As for fang i didnt look much at the ADcTH and more at the other stats it offered including the RR, the only notable weapon damage proc i have is twin fangs but i guess the scaling is negligible.
As for weapon augments i guess its purely preference, and ill definitely try out essence of cthon for the extra RR im sure it would work fine if not better than the current setup. Ravagers eye could definitely be worked into the setup as well so i may test it further and see if i prefer it for the final build.
The thing is, as I explained before, Vitality resistance is massively abundant in Ultimate because most vitality spells and skills also heal the user. This was implemented to somehow balance the situation and make vitality casters win their battles through a “war of attrition” so to speak.
Type C RR (i.e. "% reduced) is actually quite important, because it amplifies your damage output considerably if you manage to get the mob’s resistance well into the negative levels. In fact, the more Type B and Type A you have, the stronger Type C RR becomes. At -100% resistance for example, a “15% reduced” amount to a 15% increase in RR (not necessarily dps, though). For Void Fiends and other massively resistant enemies, however, the increase in a merely 1.15%. Therefore, it is useful, but only for characters (such as yours) that can bring enemies in the negative zone.
If he said it explicitly then they probably changed it somewhere from the first versions of the game, though I highly doubt it. In that case, I’m curios what happens when the resistance is negative, say “-20%” ? General wisdom will say Type C will get you another -3.2., but if Zantai said it doesn’t do anything you might as well through type C in the thrash can because with few exceptions (e.g. Void Fiends for vitality, Shar’zul for fire, most undead for bleed) almost all tier 1 builds get the resistances in the negative.
No, it can’t go into negative itself because it’s %. But if Resistance is already in negative due to other rr then % rr gets it even farther into negative
FML. If I can ever find that post again (google is being unhelpful) I’m bookmarking it. Even if I’m wrong several times I’ve wanted to look at Zantai’s exact wording.
IIRC he was saying something about “% reduced” type being overvalued by some players. I’ll have to keep looking I guess.
I hope you do, because it has been considered sort of common knowledge that the more you bring an enemy into negative rr the more effective %rr becomes
…and it seems like I was getting a big mixed up between “Zantai correcting conventional wisdom” and “conventional understanding of % reduced RR is wrong.” Oh well - at least I can correctly evaluate % reduced RR now.
(P.S., this might be the first time in a decade+ that a forum’s search feature was less trouble than a major search engine. Bizarre.)
