Thank you for the awesome build!! I used this as my first level 100 build (I had played previously without expansions a long time ago). I used it to farm up a ton of gear on SR75-76 and killed Ravanger. I merged this guide with some elements of this Blightlord/Seal of Skies guide here which unfortunately for a newer player without any gear wasn’t initially possible. But I was able to start with this guide and farm up blueprints/gear to eventually transition. I wanted to share my experience with others, add some tips that I think improve upon your (already awesome) guide, and the progression stages between the various builds.
Devotion Triggers
I like a slight change to devotion tree: My final build. Viper is swapped out for Jackal (I think bonus is slightly better because of physical resist, but it also saves a single point). Panther is swapped out for Eel (slightly worse, more defensive, but saves a single point). Owl is swapped for Lantern (better but requires more points).
I also swapped up the devotion trigger bindings. I use Chain lightning to proc Will of Rattosh which frees up Ravenous Earth for Wendigo.
While not a change to your build, I just wanted to mention an obscure mechanic to others that I learned with respect to Devotion Triggers from summons and Attack Damage converted to Health (ADctH):
- Devotion triggers off of a summon (such as Guardian of Empyrion) do NOT leech to you UNLESS the trigger includes weapon damage. In otherwords if you bind Guardian of Empyrion to Wendigo, it does not provide any leech to you. If you bind Guardian of Empyrion to Twin Fangs (which includes a weapon damage portion) it DOES leech to you. I highly recommend binding Guardian to Twin Fangs late game because of this reason.
Stage 1 - Leveling and Preparing for farming Dark One Set and Lokar Version
Here is the build before I farmed Dark One:
During this stage you probably don’t have any real gear. Some items that I found important to get before farming Dark one set:
- Bonespike MI Dagger. This can be farmed from Trog Blood Mages and Savarok in Mountain Deeps. I would run through and as soon as I found Savarok (2/3 chance he spawns in zone) and treasure trove, I reset and start a new run. Make sure to be grabbing treasure trove (100% chance) and the totem (50% chance it spawns). Ideally you’re looking for a level 94 version of the Bonespike with a “Vampiric” prefix (6-10% attack damage converted to health (ADctH)) which is a reasonably common prefix and make everything significantly easier; in about 3 hours of farming Mountain Deeps I got three Vampiric Bonespikes. For suffixes it isn’t as important - just take whatever you can with vampiric. “Of Decay” is weighted to be very very common (20%?) on bonespike and is a really good suffix.
- Magi Visage MI Helmet. This drops from the Court of Magi in the Tomb of Heretic Dungeon (Location). This helmet will absolutely carry you and comes with so many good things (flat vitality damage to rav earth, converts acid to vit for rav earth, and gives you an additional Guardian of Empy). The rolls on it really don’t matter too much, I’d just farm to get one even with junk prefix/suffixes so that you can start farming Dark One set. You do NOT need the level 94 version, so even if you get a low level one (lvl 40+) from the dungeon in normal mode it’s fine and will carry you to end game. You’ll be replacing it later anyways, so no sense in farming too hard for it.
- Basilisk Crest MI Medal. This is critical to the build and something you will never get rid of. You can get a good rolled medal from the vendor in Ancient Grove dungeon by doing the vendor reset trick (clear mobs between vendor and zone change, change zones, wait 10 seconds, go back to vendor, repeat). Just go in with ~$1-2M gold and plan on buying all the good basilisk crest rolls (and maybe Living Ring if you need it as well). Ideally you want some OA/DA on it and maybe some good resists.
- Living Ring MI Ring. This ring is sub-par to many legendary options, but it will make it easier to get to a 26/16 Ravenous Earth level. It drops reasonably commonly from the plants in malmouth expansion. You can also buy it from the vendor in the Ancient Grove dungeon (and is a good thing to check while you’re trying to get a good Basilisk Crest)
- Either a Lunal’Valgoth’s Girdle or Lunal’Valgoth’s Waistguard. They both drop off of the same monster in Malmouth expansion. The Waistguard (+1 necromancer) is better at this stage, but ultimately I’d recommend moving to the Girdle. The Girdle is +1 occultist (worthless for this build) BUT it enables you to convert Elemental → Vitality (up to 60% with a good roll). This will enable you to use Seal of Skies later.
- Venomfire Amulet. Very good amulet and recipe can be bought from Dregg. Will carry you until you eventually transition to Blightlord set.
Stage 2 - Dark One Set and Seal of Skies Version
After you’ve farmed up the dark one set I think there are some good improvements that can be made.
The first improvement is Seal of the Skies. The base build has two significant downsides (1) there is some downtime in between cooldowns that is wasted DPS and (2) you have too many celestial triggers and not enough good abilities to trigger them - in particular “Will of Rattosh” which is extremely powerful. Chain Lightning from Seal of the Skies solves both of these downsides and adds significant DPS/leech because of Soul Harvest. In order to best use seal of skies:
- You need to use Lunal’Valgoth’s Girdle. The Girdle is +1 occultist (worthless for this build) BUT it enables you to convert Elemental → Vitality (up to 60% with a perfect roll). This is worth farming for a good roll on (preferably a ~55%-60% conversion) and maybe some OA/DA/resists. When farming for this belt it would behoove you to also Nemesis farm Grava’Thul (assuming you have reputation to spawn him) as the majority of his spawns are along the way. His legguards are probably best in slot.
- I’d highly recommend using a macro if you want to best maximize your DPS and avoid carpal tunnel from playing piano on your keyboard. My macro casts the following abilities in the following order. Ascension → Mark of Torment → Ravenous Earth → Bone Harvest → Siphon Souls → Chain Lightning (you can manually cast ascension/mark of torment but I’m lazy and we have a lot of cooldown reduction so its up reasonably common). I then run around casting Ravenous Earth and if a tough monster is there i’ll trigger my macro (and disable it when I want to dash/move away).
- Ring of Basti is also very valuable for more elemental-> vitality conversion, but I held off on farming it until Stage 3 as its a pretty rare drop.
The next improvement I’d recommend is the off-hand. There are several options here. The base build guide recommends Word of Solael which is very good especially for new players since it is craftable off of a bought recipe. However, I think there are other good options. I think Mythical Hallanx’s head is probably best because of the Acid&Aether->Vitality conversion. Contagion is a close second because it gives resistance reduction. Solael is good because it gives a third Guardian (and could potentially be used to hit 24/16 on skill which will grant a fourth Guardian). Edrick’s backscratcher is good for leveling. My personal ranking is as follows:
- Mythical Hallanx’s Head > Hallanx’s Head (but not worth farming) > Mythical Contagion > Contagion (almost as good as mythical version) > Word of Solael > Edrick’s Backscratcher (useful for leveling)
- Mythical Hallanx’s is target farmable but I’d only go for the mythical version. Should take about an hour to farm. Make sure you have your movement medal augment to make it faster. It has some pretty wide rolls (conversion, vitality, cooldown reduction being three most important rolls) so it might even be worth farming a second one later.
Ring. There are a lot of good ring options for this build, but I think there is one that stands out:
- Mythical Lifegiver Signet or Lifegiver Signet. This is probably the best possible ring you can use. It grants 5-7% ADctH which is so valuable. It also gives +2 Summon Guardian, DA, Health, Max vitality, +2 Soul harvest, healing effect increase, some good resists, and a really good life leech proc. There isn’t a huge difference between the mythical and normal versions so use whichever you have. The constitution roll is pretty useless for this build since Hungering Void celestial proc will often prevent the out of combat healing.
Relic. Mortality is a good entry relic, but as you indicated in post above me I’d recommend upgrading to either:
- Meditation. I’d only go this route if you are using Word of Solael and can hit 24/16 on Summon Guardian (which gives an additional Guardian). You can do this by 16 base skills + 2 from ring (Lifegiver Signet or Ring of Basti) + 1 Meditation + 2 Word of Solael + 2 off prefixes (Dagger prefix, Medal prefix) and a couple other places.
- Impurity I think is a better relic for this build. +1 necro is better than +1 oath and the completion bonuses are much better. Ideally you want to aim for +1 Ravage earth (25% chance) on the completion bonus. +1 Ravage earth and +1 Siphon Souls (12.5% chance) is the best completion option.
Legs.
- Grava’Thul’s Legguards are really good for this build. It has both +3 Spectral Wrath AND +3 Celestial Presence which both provide Reduced Resistances. You can farm this while farming the Lunal’Valgoth’s Girdle as the nemesis is very likely to spawn along the route.
Stage 3 - Blightlord Set Version
I mostly copied the build guide found here: Blightlord Oppressor with some improvements. This build setup loses % ADctH (because you can’t run a Vampiric Bonespike anymore) BUT gives a big boost to damage, resist reduction (-20% from blightlord’s gift), lets you run quadruple Guardian of Empyrion, better cooldown reduction, and faster cast speed. While it has less ADctH percentage, the higher raw damage output feels like it leeches better than before. I miss the Dark One’s Gift proc, but overall Blightlord feels like a big improvement.
I changed out a few things that I thought were improvements. The biggest improvement is by far changing out the devotion procs (his likely did not understand the obscure mechanic of ADctH, summons, and devotion procs - see my section on the Devotion Tree). Identical devotion tree though aside from the skill assignment.
For boots I found the Mythical Runeguard Greaves offered more value (life, physical resist, vitality resist, chaos resist, elemental resist, +2 presence of virtue, and useful defensive proc). It’ll be less damage than what other build guide has, but I liked the survivability more (you can’t DPS if dead). I also made some very minor tweaks to skill point distribution and my component/augments.
Other notes:
- Blightlord set frees up the valuable chestpiece. Mythical Fiendscale Jacket is a lot better than Dark One chestpiece and converts more of your acid damage to vitality. But it is important to note that you do lose 7.5 energy/sec which you’ll certainly notice if you’re running a macro to cast all your abilities efficiently. As such, you really should run Arcanum Dust augments on your rings/amulets and Prismatic Diamond on helmet. It’ll help you keep up with the mana cost without having to constantly chug potions.
- You don’t need to actually find every piece of the Blightlord set, just the helmet blueprint. If you find the helmet blueprint you can craft multiple helmets and transform them into the other set pieces.
Conclusion
Thank you for such an awesome build. I know this is a lot of text in this response, but hopefully my detailed notes will help any other players looking at this build.