Retaliation, particularly DoT retaliation, is something that’s limited to a few gear selections, but once you put it all together, allows you to kill enemies simply walking up to them and letting them hit you. Burn Retaliation has the drawback of not having any resistances whatsoever, and once I saw that the bulk of Poison retaliation comes in the form of the Daega’s Oath set, I was set to build the remaining pieces and try to get something decent going.
Retaliation stats with passives & Blood of Dreeg only
I’ve taken practically all the gear pieces that provide Poison Retaliation [Dreeg Venomspine Girdle, Venomskin Legwraps, and Mythical Venomspine Greaves] and combined them with the Daega’s Oath set to stack the retaliation damage as high as I could. Ascension, Messenger of War, Phoenix Fire, and Stone Form all add more retaliation damage making the values much higher than what is shown in the picture.
The main damage-dealing sources of the build are transmuted DEE and Aegis of Menhir. Bramblevine provides a whopping 50% RATA to DEE at the cost of 2 additional second recharge. Since this is a DoT retaliation build and not a pure Acid retal, we forego the Sentinel set for a Ravna’s Claw to stack more retal to Aegis, and between Vire’s Might, Dreeg’s Afflicted Spines, and Plague Rot from the amulet, you have enough going on that you won’t mind the extra cooldown on transmuted DEE.
A big weakness of the build is a lack of OA - without Ascension, you’re looking at 2,750 OA with all passives and Blood of Dreeg active, and that’s with Agressive prefix on the Belt and “of Attack” on the medal. In that regard, it’s very reliant on Ascension to provide those juicy DoT crits.
Performance:
SR:
It’s very easy to die to Hero chunks if you Vire’s Might right into them, so it’s much more effective to kite them with your two hard-hitting DoTs and Vire’s Might through them into empty spots. Still, it’s relatively easy to make it through SR75-76 without dying, just don’t make bonehead plays like I do and feel like you have to facetank everything. Yes, you are retal, but the Poison lasts long enough that you can take a minor hit, apply the retal DoT, and avoid the bigger, major hits.
I defeated SR 80 to unlock SR 75-76 waystones, but there’s no additional rewards for going to 80.