1.1.9.1 "Smash, Slash, and Ash" Conduitless Fire Guardian + Blade Spirit Dervish SR75

INTRODUCTION

Hello Crate Forums,

I am back once again with another build. This time it’s a fire player-pet Dervish using Guardian of Empyrion and Blade Spirit. @RektbyProtoss has done a similar concept by utilizing the Fire Blade Spirit Conduit, but for this build, we will actually use global conversion via the Ember’s Calling set, Gargoyle’s Girdle, and Light’s Oath to convert all of the Cold Damage and up to 90% of the Pierce Damage on Blade Spirits to Fire Damage.

BUILD CONCEPT

Why would we want to do this, though? Well for starters, Dervish only natively gets a single source of Fire RR (from Oathkeeper), but Ember’s Calling compensates this by providing 22% Fire RR. On top of this, not using the Conduit frees up our amulet slot to use Flames of Wrath which is a really solid item for our Guardians and provides 8% more Fire RR. The global conversion also allows us to convert our devotions as well like Blizzard and Twin Fangs.

The tradeoff is that we have to use our helm slot for the set and that means we lose one Guardian from not using Magi Visage. I think, however, the benefits for our damage outweighs losing one Guardian. We get 30 more total fire RR on top of extra flat to our Guardians. We can compensate the loss of one Guardian too by using Barthollem’s Gavel which provides us +2 Summon Limit to Guardian of Empyrion.

GT AND STATS

empyrionspiritsstats
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV9OvpvN (only green affix necessary is Onslaught on the weapon for Blade Spirit levels)

VIDEOS

Deathless SR75

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I advise you to read this thread carefully [1.1.9.1] World Police and Friendly Fire - 5 Guardians of Empyrion Paladin [4.20 Crucible] [SR75] [All Celestials] for small but significant changes you can make :slight_smile:

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Which ones did you have in mind specifically?

I meant the paragraph “where does the damage come from” and some mechanics facts from there that I think you could benefit from in your build.

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Ah do you mean you think Fissure would be better bound to Guardian rather than Judgment? I originally had that setup but the only issue for me was actually proccing Eldritch Fire then. If I put it on Judgment, I waste a ton of CD. Kind of the same with Fissure on Judgment but less so. I figured it was just more important in the end that I had consistent RR as opposed to more burn DoT from Fissure. I could maybe swap it out on Blizzard, though.

This and I also meant that dots from devo procs procced by different pets stack and it would be good to utilize it.

Dunno, I’d consider something like that / test if it works in practice. Fissure on Judgment seems wasted and it might be even stronger than Meteor (I mean just a single proc). Maybe if procced by Blade Spirits it shotguns more because they can freely go into monsters hitboxes?

  • Guardian’s -> Fissure (I’m starting from that because it looks OP although I personally haven’t tested it recently)

  • Elemental Storm -> Judgment (100% chance on single target)

    • this is kinda sketchy, rather for single targets and we assume they don’t move much?

      • but you don’t have that great of Storm proccer either I feel like, btw PBS would be better on single target here with 99.7% proc chance instead of 85%
  • Meteor -> Grand Smash (100% chance on single target)

  • Blizzard -> Blade Spirit (here benefit of stacking Dots probably smaller due to longer cooldown)

  • Bat -> Stormfire, as it dosn’t have any DoT

  • Eldritch Fire -> Phantasmal Blades (88% chance on single target due to 3 blades, 51% per blade), if you hit 2 targets with Blades the chance goes up to 98%

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BrElB2

I’m not really sure, just some ideas for you to test, it might depend on situation, i.e. Crucible vs SR and build is good anyway.

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Yeah I swapped up the devotions a bit. I’ll try making Eldritch Fire work once again on Judgment, but it is a little annoying to operate. Despite that, I think it would help at least for burn damage to have Fissure/Blizzard on the pets like you said.

Main reason I wanted Twin Fangs on Blade Spirit was for passive healing while kiting, but having played this build some more, I think that’s too wishful of thinking. Player pet AI is incredibly dumb, and unlike pet pet AI, you can’t do anything to change that. Even if you use Pet Attack on a target, your pets sometimes just won’t bother if they’re not close enough to them or while you’re running away. I think they are better on Blizzard now.

One point PB could be interesting as a proc skill, but I already have several skills that I’m juggling cooldowns with. I think, for right now, it’s best if I try to limit the amount of skills this build has to use and just use the ones I already have as proccers.

Elemental Storm on Judgment vs Ring of Steel is interesting. I think 85% is a decently high enough chance to proc especially in an AoE and Judgment probably could be better used to proc something else especially since we don’t necessarily need to proc Elemental Storm every time it’s off cooldown.

BS / Guardians have really small aggro range, I really dislike it :frowning:

I meant is instead Ring of Steel. I didn’t use it. I think it’s better if you don’t care about Fumble due to range and three 85% chances instead of one on single target. It’s not pleasant when those 15% happen :slight_smile:

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Yeah that’s fair; I personally think the build already forces the character to be up close for Ground Stomp and our pet aggro range, so I don’t mind having to get up close for RoS. That being said, I think PB instead of RoS also has its benefits in that you can trigger it while kiting, so I can definitely see that as an option too.

what order do you get things in, please? skills and devotions etc.

I have no idea how to even start this build :smiley:

You can get some info about how to level from my post to a different but also Fire Guardian build: [1.1.9.1] World Police and Friendly Fire - 5 Guardians of Empyrion Paladin [4.20 Crucible] [SR75] [All Celestials]

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thanks. I’ll check this out.

I haven’t played in years, and I have only ever played as an occultist (was vit/chaos damage hybrid, actually was pretty broken TBH, ha ha)

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I actually played Guardians with Occultist too but converted them to Physical Damage and really liked it.
But now (1.1.9.2) converted Physical damage no longer ignores armor so it’s probably not worth it.
However there is a lot of Internal Trauma there which ignores armor so maybe it’s not so bad.

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Good afternoon! Sorry for my bad English, but I needed to ask in what order should I assign and unassign the devotion points so that they are as you show them there. Thank you very much and greetings from Argentina. :+1: