The cold Light of Empyrion manifested in my Saboteur and pushed him to new hights. This is one of my favorite class combinations since jajaja posted his Tri-Element Saboteur and well, since FG I haven’t seen many solid Saboteur builds. A Saboteur uses to be squishy as hell, but Shattered Guardian Set and some strange Devotion and skill choices help out. 22/22 Explosive Strike (ES)? Which insane person skills into max ES? I did it. Maxed Nidalla’s Hidden Hand (NHH) with just Whirling Death? Oh yes! And btw, Sacred Harmony Set still is awesome.
My recommended Gear, Devotions and Skilldistribution: Grimtools
Buffed up
Credits to mad_lee who created this build with a more offensive direction!
The build
This is a dual wielding melee Saboteur build, focused on Cold + Fire Damage, Crowd Control and damage conversion (Acid into Fire & Cold plus Fire into Cold). Conversion happens as follows: Base Skill > Skill Modifiers (NHH) > Conversion on the Skill or Transmuter > Conversion on Equipment and Buffs (Sacred Balance, Mythical Chains of Nightfire & Mythical Death’s Wail Mark) > Equipment, Auras and Passives.
That said, NHH is now providing a nice flat Fire & Cold Damage buff plus it modifies 50% of Whirling Death’s Piercing Damage into Fire & Cold Damage.
Fire Strike’s Damage is multiplied by Sacred Harmony and the dw melee Transmuter plus Explosive Strike to > 200% Damage multiplier for the WPS to hit very hard (Max. Explosive Strike adds 40% Weapon damage to the Main skill and deals 40% Weapon Damage in an AoE).
Yes, the build is very item dependent, but you could switch out the pants and boots, I guess. Or at least the affixes on them.
As for Devotions, well, it’s a bit all over the place but you really want the Light of Empyrion proc to reduce 24% of the incoming damage. Also, Obelisk of Menhir provides some nice passive bonuses to Armor and DA.
200% Attack Speed and high cc resists together with 9% ADctH is enough to keep you alive. Also, Pneumatic Burst and the sword procs (Shadow Bolt works a bit like a Twin Fangs proc from Bat Devotion).
With all buffs active you inflict around 160k paper DPS, but together with your procs it cleans house.
The OA sits around 3000 with (lousy) ~30% Crit Damage. High OA is important to make the Sacred Balance proc go off pretty much every second.
Together with ~3000 DA, 15k+ HP and all the cc (Sacred Balance freezes every second) it is very tanky.
Resist Reduction is served by Devotion Procs, gear and skills and sums up to -124 Cold RR plus Viper RR .
Rush in with Blazing Charge, cast Thermite Mines and ABB, spam Flashbang hit with Fire Strike, everything dies.
Crucible:
I am not a Crucible player but I cleared 150 to 170 a few times with 3 buffs and no banners.
To sum it up: It is an agressive (and a bit weird) dw melee build with very good cc and DPS, making use of some unusual Devotions and skills. Give it a try!
Shoutouts to jajaja, Superfluff, Chthon, JoV, Thrasheur, Stupid_Dragon, TomoDaK, Drizzto, mad_lee, whoever I forgot.
I don’t recommend skipping flat damage augment in jewellery for OA one. It’s better to use flat damage augment and boost OA with a little Cunning boost
Restless Remains in gloves is 2% less ADTCH than 2x Seal of Blades, but with it you can put two Coldstones in which will ramp up your damage tremendously and in the end your ADTCH will be higher with Restless Remains + 2x Coldstones
Stacking so much armor with that armor absorb is a bit inefficient. 84% armor absorb means that you have around ~500 Armor hole in your armor number. Better use Scaled Hide
Last but not the least, always overcap your Resist Reduction skills before overcapping anything else
And I almost forgot: this build THRIVES on OA. Swords proc is SICK. More OA, means more procs means more damage and more damage means more adtch and more adthc means more tankiness.
Yeah, I revamped my Sabo back then to your build. But it felt a bit too squishy in high SR Rifts.
Just before recording I switched sword components from Coldstones and Restless Remains to Seal of Blades because I died in SR 77 a few too many times. But yeah, the DPS skyrockets with Coldstones (20k sheet DPS). Undying Oath underperfomed though, tested it a few runs in a row. Conversion does better in this case imo.
I will switch the Augment in the amulet though and give it a try with more cunning and Scaled Hide in pants, thanks for the advise! Also, I will try overcapping Night’s Chill.
Yeah, mine is mostly for Crucible and ocassional SR75 stroll. I guess with Alkamos Rings it would become a bit tankier due to damage reduction on the proc. Or with Light of Empyrion route. But I would never do that because N&O Sabouter is prettier as a dps-machine and NOT very effecient as a tank (other Shattered melee builds do it better).
hm, that’s weird, sheet DPS (second page) of Fire Strike is same with both medals.
Is double conversion happening now? Because iirc, double conversion are NOT happening and it always didn’t. You are converting ~50% piercing to acid with NHH (which applies to Whirld Death). That acid damage CANNOT and will NOT be converted again. So I need an explanation why do you say it will be converted
Dude, where do you get that? 0.14 - 0-03 = 0.11 which means ~78% decrease, much more thant that 2% you claim
Well yes, I meant “2% less ADTCH” as in his adtch number -2%. Obviously in total more than “2%”. But it’s also not 78%, it’s 22% decrease, lol, dude, check your math
Forgot to update grimtools, I’ll do so when I am home again this weekend.
Afaik this didn’t change, so I guess I’ll correct this and the actual damage is provided by the flat acid bonus. Sorry, I didn’t think about no double conversion overall and assumed it’d just refer to no double conversion from the same source, e.g. no double conversion from items. Which is wrong, should’ve read the game guide.
But it felt a bit too squishy in high SR Rifts.
