This is one of the builds I was extensively testing during 1.1.9.2 PT and the one that is surely among my favourites of all times. Due to multiple different buffs (won’t list them all here), Veilkeeper Druid is for now one of the best lightning melee builds, with great offensive potential and quite good sustain. Don’t have much to say about it, tho, so let’s jump straight to build’s explanation.
Weapon - core item of the build. It adds a huge bunch of fat dots (like 1/3 of Savagery tooltip) alongside with buffing Savagery itself and Storm Totems aswell. This results ina hybrid gameplay: Totems help clearing trash, Upheaval hits like a truck and adds really big dots.
Pants -went for single-rare ones to better resists coverage and also some more DA.
Gloves - after addition of AS/CS, these are BiS lightning gloves for all builds.
Pros and cons of the build
Pros
Huge solo-damage as well as nice AoE;
The build is a good all-arounder capable of dealing with everything.
Cons
Due to low DA build may seems squishy, so pushing some high shards may be difficult.
Grava is always a mess so nothing new with this point, same as IM.
Crucible
Average time I had was about 4:30. The gameplay key in both Crucible and SR is due to huge dots you can early leave bosses (on ~50% HP and they’ll tick to death in most cases). This also allows more freedom in gameplay like kiting around totems etc.
SR75-76 is quite easy, no matter what bosses you get in boss room. Going higher is risky, and I did it just for fun. As you can see, in deep SR build can easily die so play “normal” shards and everything will be ok.
For superbosses (except Avatar) it’s better to take 6 points from Overload and invest them into Mirror. OA and damage loss is insignificant but having less cd on MoE would be helpful.
Ravager of Flesh/Minds – you can wreck through him with your damage, just be careful with using fail-saves.
Callagadra, Scion of the Sands – need to be focused, though kiting around totems and attacking under mirror/cluster is the key to victory.
Crate of Entertainment – same as for Calla, totems help stacking e-cute. Attack under fail-saves and you will win.
Summary and thoughts
Is the build strong? Without doubts, yes. It is a good all-arounder with great damage potential and nice performance, one of a few working lightning melee builds which I’m very proud of.
Is the build OP? Definitely not. It still requires an SR-dedicated set and some certain greens to work as shown, also note that w/o best rolls (suh as I have), the performance would be slightly worse too. It is also quite glassy so, as for me, this “glass” part balances the “cannon” part, making the build strong but exacting to piloting.
So feel free to download the build, play it and write your impressions. Hope you will enjoy it as much as I while playing.
What do You think would it be possible to update this amazing build for the newest update?
Do You think that beating all Celestials would be possible with this build still?
hello!
I haven’t played gd for some months now, from what I remember from my tests you kinda should take Giant to boost regen, maybe Dreeg-sect legguards and one gollus ring.
this is what I found but can’t say how reliable it is (and how affordable), I definitely had some experiments with devos and didn’t like any of them. maybe Ultos + Korvaak is the way to go still.
Thanks for the quick response Afanasenkov!!
Yeah, I saw on YT as well that Your last updated build was the elementalist 1-2 months ago
8 thousand health regen on proc for this build is Insane
Can I have 1 last question?
I never really understood the reckless tempest skill tbh.
Wouldn’t be better to attach the skill to storm totem?
In case You have to kite against stronger enemies (high SR)/celestials?
Maybe arcane bomb to storm totem?
Hey I am leveling a druid with veilkeeper as my endgame set goal. I am playing on HC, and I like playing high hp regen builds as I find it’s the most reliable way of staying alive.
What do you think of something like this, as like a knock off avenger ofc with the upheaval storm totem thing?
Mythical thread of mortality & dual gollus rings. This is basically the most damaging setup I could make with 4k regen & 4k OA after messing around in grim tools for a bit. Not as fast an attacker the biggest weakness I see.
For hardcore in particular on a Veilkeeper druid I’d invest more in Arcane Will. With the Veilkeeper set it has a high uptime, and more points will give you lots more DA and some extra damage. And it will be active in all the hard fights where you need it.
You could take some points from Storm Touched (at 13 points you only lose 2% attack speed) or Oak Skin. Oh, and that 1 point from Inner Focus, odd points only give you some spirit and no offense.
