It’s a tanky Dervish (Oathkeeper + Nightblade) that focues on the ‘Acid & Poison’ damage type - particularly by stacking the poison ticks (which can reach upwards of 180k) of our player-scaled-pets: the Guardians of Empyrion.
We stack bonuses to both the damage of ‘Guardians of Empyrion’ (GoE) and the Summon Limit of our GoE (up to 4) - so we can have our 4x GoE stack their DoTs together -> which we further boost by having a high OA (3.3k+ pre-ascension) to make our DoT ticks crit for massive damage.
On the defensive end, we have a sleugh of tools: a massive 21k+ HP pool for a Dervish, high overcapped damage resists (40% overcapped on average), high effective DA (3k+ base, with access to -250 OA debuffs), access to 2 massive heals on short cooldowns (7k+ heal on a 4s CD, 4k+ heal on a 6s CD), 3 emergency circuit breakers (Prismatic Diamond, Serenity, Resilience), and miscellaneous tools like: Ascension, Blade Barrier, and ‘Chance to Avoid Melee/Ranged’.
I think it depends on what you mean by effective and what you want to do in SR.
If you mean quickly farming the middle levels of SR over and over then I’m sure this build isn’t in top tier of clear speeds and less effective for that use case.
If your goal is to complete and push for highest levels of SR you can (e.g. getting to 75 and going further) or not to die in SR on HC - then it’s definitely an ‘effective’ build since it’s amazing at both killing and surviving bosses/ boss rooms.
In summary this is particularly great boss killer (can even safely kite and kill Callagadra in ~5 mins, which is considered very fast, and survive even the worst debuffed/shotgunned attacks) and more of a medium pack/trash mob killer (e.g. forced to clear mobs in SR shards) because our Guadians of Empyrion have medium/melee range and our DoTs are overkill on weaker mobs.
Ah, just farming 75-76 consistently with good times is my immediate goal for now. How fast does a run of that stage usually take?
I’m impressed with Callagadra kill times. Hopefully you or someone else can upload some gameplay clips. I just want to see it in action before I make one.
Looks pretty nice, what skill would you use while leveling till GoE is availalbe?
Also why panthera or raven constelation, when GoE are not benefiting from pet bonuses?
For an early leveling < lvl 15, I personally like going Aegis until ~ level 6 then swapping/resetting for Phantasmal Blades, then swapping/resetting into GoE around ~ lvl 15.
As for the devotions, both Raven and Panther are there for the juicy OA and for the lack of other good green or blue/white affinity gainers. Both of them are really good, cheap devotions and are sometimes underrated because they double as a pet constellation (e.g. for non-pet stats: Panther gives 57 OA, 6% Crit Damage, 15 Cunning/15 Spirit for 4 devotion points - which is really good, especially given how scarce % Crit Damage is)
It’s my goal to add a gameplay clip this week - I’m unsure about the speed yet as I have yet to do and time a run for SR 75 with all the changes influenced by patch 1.1.7.0!
You definitely could but yeah you would probably have change the binds (maybe move Bat to GoE and something like move Manticore/Murmur to a movement Medal augment?), in fact by ditching Fetid Pool/Afflicition and rearranging some other devotions you can fit in both Bat + Yugol’s into a setup like this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbavJz2
^-> it gives you a consistent source of % reduced damage, but it trades out damage (mainly in the form of OA/Crit Damage) and some laziness compared to the earlier version
For attributes, I just put them all into Physique - if you’re low on Spirit/Cunning while leveling up then I’d suggest put enough so you can equip your gear then use a reset potion at level 94 and dump them all into Physique.
For skills, I’d try to max GoE and Celestial Presence asap then move onto maxing Night’s Chill and getting a few levels into Pneumatic Burst. After that, it’s just passives and you can pick and choose what shores up your weaknesses in your leveling gear.
For devotions, I’d recommend: Vulture -> Raven -> Manticore -> Eel -> Murmur -> Panther -> Owl -> Harvestman’s Scythe -> (remove Eel and Owl) -> the rest should be simple enough now
Thanks! I can’t see myself giving up 400 OA though so the original version looks like its better. I did leveled one from scratch and it just mows down everything through campaign, which was amazing for a build that doesn’t have attack skills. I’m just sorting through gear now so I can run it through SR later. Any crafting bonuses I should get for the boots and pants?
I try to level this one. I’ve got the “Scion of Dregg” Mutator active. Which Items will suite the Damage of the GoE’s the most?
Ive tried several %pys %fire %acid. But it look like it doesn’t always count towards the DPS of the GoE’s. My Rings for Example add fire% but wont change the numbers of the GoE’s. My Chest with %phys doesn’t ether. But my %fire Boots do.
I am so confused. Is there any help about these Guardians? Which items affect them in which way?
If you use the scion mutator then GoE’s damage type changes to vit and acid as described in the tooltip so only those element bonuses in your gear will apply.
But why does the molten walkers change the damage? They are pure fire% boots.
And a fire% ring doesn’t change anything.
With Skills (Like Fire Strike) you can hover with your mouse above the Character Screen Window and see exactly what changed, but this doesn’t work with pets. And the Tooltip looks to be buggy.
My problem is, that I can’t see the changes. Just the tool tip of the skill changes, and this is quite irregular. (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t)
oops, sorry, missed this change in 1.1.4.1: