If it was my choice I’d use build one but you do lose some single target. Survivability is solid for either, don’t fear the 13k HP and 21xx DA.
Videos have korvaak’s brand in medal but direwolf will be better for general usage and timer is the same on Ravager. Most of the original concept text still holds but that was basically a lifetime ago, so we have more HP now (and less DA) and better damage and leech and still the fun stacking absorb+DR.
What’s that Eard, you’re dumb and have long suffered with the understanding you need ~2700 DA for SR75-76 to feel safe, constantly fretting on builds that need to go out of their way to reach this mark?Well let’s get drunk, spirit dump, and throw up on ourselves with…
2 3 1 0 DA
This is not a full build guide yet as this is still under testing and most likely won’t end as a full yolo, but wanted to show some silly results when DA is ignored. Shout outs to @Duchy, @hilly, and @Monceaux for also having similar builds floating around. No idea what Crucible times would be like because @romanN1 and especially @Crittrain hate chaos. Maybe melee extraordinaire @banana_peel has already gone down this road when he was on a Rah’Zin kick.
Quick summary: eHP doesn’t get talked about a ton on these forums, but was the stat of note in Eve Online builds (or at least back in 2006 when my old ass played). The usual newbie player trap at the time was to stack HP to the moon while ignoring resists. Grim Dawn doesn’t really allow for that level of silliness before teaching the player what’s up, but occasionally you can pull out fun things with stacked DR. 20% DR + 22% DR + 20% reduced incoming = was that supposed to be a crit? Ignoring that armor and resist sit in between reduced incoming and our DR, you only take ~49% of incoming damage just from DR, which is great when you don’t give a shit what your DA is and you’re rocking sub 10k hp. Every bit of leech then also becomes extra valuable.
SR75-76 run with mildly unfavorable mutators (I swear I always pull -HP on this build). My usual disclaimer that I’m not especially good so this isn’t a perfect run, but if you show even a mild hint of awareness of things like kill the arcane hero before you take a null bolt to the face or maybe save reaper for second when he’s especially resistant to chaos, you can play pretty wild.
The fact that eHP term isn’t being swinged around doesn’t mean that concept is unknown though
The thing with DA is that most enemies don’t even have a noticeable +%crit damage, so low DA doesn’t even lead to noticeable damage spikes. The highest I’ve seen when I’ve been browsing the database is 50% IIRC…so even if they have a 100% crit chance (in practice unlikely more than 40% even if DA is a throwaway stat) it’s just 50% more incoming damage, so you can pretty much use spare resources to boost health by 50% instead of stacking DA
That can backfire though since while not many have high %crit damage, plenty of enemies have %hp reduction. But you neatly replaced stacking health with stacking absorption and DR, which are perhaps the best forms of damage mitigation…not only they don’t care about %health damage but they effectively make your sustain better as well compared to if you’ve been stacking health.
Nice build, perhaps a bit in the meme territory though. Sure it does complete SR75-76, and quite well from the looks of that, but hey, even pet pyromancers and retaliation battlemages can somehow do that.
DA is also chance to being hit and being hit 100 % of the time and 90 or 80 percent of the time is like another Possession. I find your result hard to believe when I look at my chaos Warlock. Your DPS is higher but my lifesteal is higher, damage absorption is the same. You have more phys res but I have more life and DA. Devos are almost the same (I have guardian for more lifesteal), yet I see nowhere near the results as in your video, my life swings up and down a lot in higher SR due to sudden damage spikes but I kill fast as well.
That’s only true for a sufficiently large number of hits. If you’re dying in 3 hits with a 10-20% chance to avoid each it’s still pretty much an effective durability of 3 hits, while if possession allows you to survive an extra hit you’re basically 50% more durable (can take 3 hits instead of 2 before death).
Well he actually has higher adcth healing by quiet a bit. He has more than double the weapon damage to leech from, his main hand has 2-4% higher adcth value than your build, and his autoattack replacer is much stronger than yours (also double seal for better aoe). Touch of chaos also has built in % resist reduction which helps low rr builds, and it also has built in % damage reduction (the strongest form of damage mitigation), which at a glance your build is lacking. (I didn’t check devotions, as I’m on my phone.)
also @eardianm it definitely would be worth using fang as your main hand weapon… it will give you more leech from bat and fiend procs. (unless the goal was to do slightly more damage with them)
Looking at the video I don’t think more sustain matters at this point since he’s healing full hp anyway very quickly. The extra 1.2s of immortality can be a big deal though, given that his SR strategy is to zerg bosses with damage.
I am actually now replaying my chaos warlock in SR 80 as an update to all of my builds. And maybe I still have in mind the first version I posted because with the current version I have there it is actually doable. Tougher but doable. It was my first run so far. Let see haw it will be after more runs and I didn’t yet came across Reaper or Benny. I couldn’t understand why there would be a difference. Maybe there isn’t. I just fixated on the first version I posted before updates and on my hate of chaos builds
Well shit, guess I need to finish testing this and make a proper guide now.
@Stupid_Dragon It definitely feels like the thick skulled less skilled cousin of witch hunter rah’zin, although performance is still strong enough I’d argue it’s above meme status. Potentially more tanky than WH but I don’t see supporting Arcanist skills making up for the lack of WPS damage that NB brings.
@Valinov GT is a bit off from in game, Fang is currently main hand. Will be one of the points of testing, along with alt devo maps like trying guardian so @Ptirodaktill doesn’t think I’m a baddy
Overload points are just a dump for OA and resist as moncc called out. Only other interesting option was maxing DB, but it caps at 17/12 currently so I wasn’t expecting big results there. Will test this as I play with other devo trees
@Duchy was surprised when I put this together, saw you had near identical build and didn’t seem to think much of it. Glad you’re seeing better results now, I assume with the more AoE focus setup. Agrivix’s Malice is the relic play imo since AoE is the chaos AA weak spot, you’ll notice in the video CoF triggering fiend + relic proc on packs of trash just melts them while I beat away on the big boys.
General comment - Chaos AA gear is really really stale. Max damage rah’zin+2 or 3 piece harbinger set is very hard to top. Only alternative that pops up is if you need different chaos gloves for skill support and then go ravager helm. Rings are basically 3 choices and even medals tend to be limited. At least 1 Fang always shows up as well, every stat is a perfect fit. Hoping 1.1.8 brings a couple other interesting choices
Still playing SR 80 with it. It can be finished all the time but you die everytime as well. Lower number of deaths - you stay within timer. More and time runs out. I still didn’t run into Reaper.
Same can be told about bleeding , vitality, aether and fire . Thats even worse for 1h lightning.
That was a joke. =) Check different devotions, anyway. Korvak for high %WD characters can be quite good. And Guardian gaze is like 2 Fiends. Not sure if you need bat .
