[1.0.4.1] Sick Burns - Bloody Pox Cabalist

[i]I Am Jack’s Raging Bile Duct.
I Am Jack’s Cold Sweat.
I Am Jack’s Complete Lack of Orientation.
I Am Jack’s Inflamed Sense of Rejection.
I Am Jack’s Smirking Revenge.
I Am Jack’s Broken Heart.

I am the terror that quacks in the night.[/i]

I haven’t seen a build that uses Bloody Pox as anything but a carrier so I tried my hand at a build that “fixes” that.
/edit This is not a fast build. And while I maxed BP as much as I could, it isnt the main source of damage.
I still use it to proc a variety of things.

Here it is. I didnt find a mythical Signet of the Damned and Black Gem of Dreeg yet but this works well enough.
I think I lucked out on the pants - the alternative would have been Mythical Flesheater Legwraps.

The core idea is to infect everything and then cackle and dance as everything dies around you.
Unfortunately, every single monster charges or throws spells at you when they notice you so we’ll need to fix that first.

This build has so many iterations I had to start over to get the beginning stages straight - basically start off as a DEE or Skelemancer build.
You can turn this into a kite build as soon as Level 15 where you can slap a Mark of Dreeg on your weapon or offhand and actually deal damage.
As far as I could tell it turns out very clunky though. It involves a lot of running around and waiting for cooldowns to end. Skelemancer is a lot easier.
In spite of it being a Bloody Pox build, we wont look at Bloody Pox for a long time.
The core concept for the early-ish game is Eldritch Fire bound to Curse of Frailty. It will provide the reason for cackling and dancing for up to Elite Homestead if i remember correctly.
Anyway, rush Eldritch Fire.

If you play 5 rounds of Crucible this will most likely be on Rocky Coast.
I was Lv 25 by that point and looked like this:

Necromancer 32/50
Spectral Binding 1/10
Spectral Wrath 10/10
Mark of Torment 5/10
Occultist 15/50
Curse of Frailty 5/10 (Eldritch Fire)
Blood of Dreeg 5/16
(Twin Fangs unassigned)

If you dont go the Crucible route you should grab your 14th shrine in the Barren Highlands.
There are additional shrines in Craig’s Crags, Steps of Torment and the Arkovian Undercity.
Here’s me at Lv 32:

Necromancer 32/50
Bone Harvest 4/10 (Twin Fangs)
Spectral Binding 1/10
Spectral Wrath 10/10
Mark of Torment 10/10
Occultist 15/50
Curse of Frailty 10/10 (Eldritch Fire)
Vulnerability 7/10
Blood of Dreeg 5/16

Since CoF/Eldritch Fire works decently as a proc skill you want to pick up any gear that triggers extra stuff.
Lightning bolts, fireballs, ice spikes, poison bolts, Doom Bolts, Sigils of Consumption/Elemental Seals and the like.

From there, max Vulnerability. Max Occultist, dropping extra points into Bone Harvest when necessary, then rush Posession.
Eldritch Fire should scale well enough to allow you to run circles around the monsters.
Get 40/50 Necromancer, followed by 1/max Siphon Souls.
The -OA acts as a security net. Sear Souls drops the damage output but extends the effects to well over the cooldown.
If you need more poison resistance, level Aspect of the Guardian accordingly.
Otherwise, max out Bone Harvest and Siphon Souls eventually.
If you feel that your damage output lacks, get Bloody Pox.
Bloody Pox deals damage, Wasting stacks more -OA, Black Death adds confusion to the mix.

I grabbed Ravenous Earth at the very end - mostly because I didnt know how to incorporate it into the build but it gets nice bonuses from the Dark One’s Gift.
Turns out it makes a good killer of heroes.

Devotion

  • Crossroads Eldritch
  • Bat (bound to Bone Harvest, then Siphon Souls)
  • Crossroads Eldritch
  • Rat
  • Solael’s Witchblade (bound to CoF)
  • Crossroads Primordial
  • Eel
  • Crossroads Primordial
  • Lizard
  • Wendigo (bound to Bloody Pox)
  • Behemoth (bound to Spectral Binding)
  • Crossroads Ascendant
  • Empty Throne
  • Crossroads Ascendant
  • Chariot of the Dead (bound to Posession)
  • Scholar’s Light
  • Raven
  • Abomination (6/8, ignore right side. Bound to Bone Harvest)
  • Affliction (1/7)
  • Ulzuin’s Torch (2/6)

This build relies on the Dark One’s set so if you can get it I assume that you have loads of stuff to choose from.
I’d suggest (Empowered) Eyes of Flame (Lv 30/65), Virulent Maw (Lv 50), Viperfang Grips (Lv 65) and Mark of the Forbidden (Lv 58).
An Entropic Coil (Lv 65) and Screams of the Aether (Lv 65) work very well for offense and defense, respectively.

/edit The damage output is a hot mess. I tried to spec for Vitality but we end up additionally getting

  • Aether from Spectral Binding, Spectral Wrath, Sear Souls and Foul Eruption
  • Chaos from Eldritch Fire
  • Fire from Eldritch Fire and Combustion
  • Cold from Bone Harvest
  • Piercing from Bone Harvest and Twin Fangs
  • Bleeding from Bloody Pox, Blood Boil and Wildvines
  • Physical from Presence of Might (Elemental to Physical conversion) and Wildvines
  • Poison from Black Death, Ravenous Earth, Poison Bolt Burst, Toxic Gas Cloud and Plague of Dreeg.

We also get a fair share of debuffs:

  • Aether Resistance: -33% from Spectral Wrath
  • Chaos Resistance: -23% from Eldritch Fire
  • Vitality Resistance: -33% from Spectral Wrath, -30% from Vulnerability
  • Elemental Resistance: -30% from Vulnerability
  • Fire Resistance: -23% from Eldritch Fire
  • Poison Resistance: -30% from Vulnerability, -10% from Plague of Dreeg
  • Physical Resistance: -25% from CoF, -25% from Spectral Wrath
  • Bleeding Resistance: -50% from CoF
  • Slower Movement Speed: -50% from CoF, -45% from Bone Harvest, -36% from Eldritch Fire
  • Slower Attack Speed: -18% from Spectral Wrath
  • OA: -270 from Wasting, -162 from Blood Boil
  • Confusion: 37% from Black Death, 100% from Tainted Eruption
  • Terror: 25% from Dread

And if we wanted to we could drop Ulzuin’s Torch and grab Fetid Pool on the Affliction Constellation for more Vitality, Poison and Slow.
I had the Viperfang Grips when I grabbed my last constellation point and since Envenom procs on crits I went with the 5% OA instead.
Fox over Raven adds more bleeding damage specifically but since my damage output is a melting pool of everything I went with 20% damage overall.

I’ve been trying to make a very similar build over the last few days. Level 77 ATM. I’m sad to report that it’s failing hard. Maybe once I level up to 94 it would get better. It clears trash very fast but single target damage is abyssmal. Part if it is my crappy low level item collection (most of my farmed items are level 94+.

But that said I’ve played many other builds damn near naked until level 94 and it was almost always reasonable some builds were harder than others but this one is my worst experience by far. Fighting regular mob hero’s felt like a nemesis fight.

My skills are identical but I took Ratosh and murmur on my way to the abomination reasoning that it would be better to have an extro source of poison debuff and a strong tier 3 damage proc. I have sunk in about 27 points by now into the bloody pox line and it’s only good for spreading devotions. anything that has resistance to life reduction is painfully slow as I have to wait for ravenous earth is soooo much better.

Which is why I supplement it with Eldritch Fire and Bone Harvest. BP has a very weird leveling curve and serves best as a support skill, I’ll give you that.

But that said I’ve played many other builds damn near naked until level 94 and it was almost always reasonable some builds were harder than others but this one is my worst experience by far. Fighting regular mob hero’s felt like a nemesis fight.

I agree, thats the prime reason why a well-timed Mark of Torment is in the build. And if you are 75+, get a Seal of Blight and Acid Purge them.

My skills are identical but I took Ratosh and murmur on my way to the abomination reasoning that it would be better to have an extro source of poison debuff and a strong tier 3 damage proc. I have sunk in about 27 points by now into the bloody pox line and it’s only good for spreading devotions. anything that has resistance to life reduction is painfully slow as I have to wait for ravenous earth is soooo much better.

Well, yes. BP on its own is painful.
BP stacked with Eldritch Fire, Blood Boil, Spectral Wrath and at least one of Wildvines, Mark of Torment, Plague of Dreeg and Toxic Gas Cloud - while sporadically being hit by Combustions, Bone Harvests and several poison bolts - still isnt fast but manageable.

I dont claim this to be a quick or easy build. I focused on Bloody Pox for disruption and it happens to be a good trash clearer and I can hold my own against bosses, but I attribute that to the stuff that happens around BP.
I get a combined -432 OA and 37% confusion from the follow-ups.

I tried to spec for Vitality but I have procs for chaos, fire, physical, bleeding, Aether, Vitality and poison damage aswell as drops to all of their corresponding resistances. Some of the drops are negligible but whatever.

When I get hit, everything gets bolted by Solael’s Decimation.
Most of it gets Spectral Wrathed and sometimes Wildvined.

I am aware that the build lacks a fast killing mechanism for bosses, but I can face tank several of them and face down multiple heroes at once. Which is something I didnt expect from a disruption/kite build.

<Offtopic>

Dear RNGsus

You owe me at least a few more hard earned double MI rare chances and a better % chance of dropping a (mythical) lifegiver signet and/or avenger of cairn!

Boo!

</OffTopic>