Defilers see nearly no reference in the forums, the only build even remotely updated in the past year is Afanasenkov’s DW Gargabol’s Shoot-em-up. And there’s a reason for that: Defilers are pretty bad. I’ve personally saved around 6 Defiler builds (not including my foray into Skeleton Defilers, the less said about it the better), all of them serving some sort of niche (gotta justify my Beginner’s Defiler creation somehow). But the uptick in Oblivion builds such as mad_lee’s Virtue caster had me wondering whether an Oblivion build centered around Galeslice’s medal could be feasible. This build is the culmination of that theorycrafting.
Leviathan Spec with passive buffs + Soul Harvest
I understand that a “Defier’s” prefix with the right skill choice is near-impossible, if that’s the case, replace the RR ring with another Living Ring and hope you get some decent affixes out of them.
I tried to make the affixes somewhat reasonable, though you really want a “Fallen Skies” affix somewhere, whether it’s the pants or the shoulders. The Leviathan spec grants you more Physical resistance than the other devotion route I was planning, so you may not even need double Physical resist affixes on your gear.
For conversions, Galeslice medal + Kra’vall Shoulderguards gives you up to 85% Chaos to Cold conversion, while the Conduit + off-hand + Chillwhisper helmet give you 100% Vitality to Cold conversion. Thanks to the medal + belt, you also have 100% Fire to Cold conversion. 22/12 Soul Harvest gives you a huge amount of flat Cold damage to spam your Oblivion with, while BWC ensures that you don’t need to spend valuable devotion points on Elemental Storm.
As for other equipment choices, 3-pc Chillwhisper set gives you huge Casting Speed alongside sufficient Energy regeneration that you don’t need to worry about energy problems. Boots are the gold-standard for Cold builds, with its Physical + Slow resistance, and the helmet and RR ring are craftable so you can craft for more Slow resistance. Obviously if you get a suffix of “Amarasta’s Flurry” you can solve your Slow resistance while getting more Cold damage, but that’s asking more of the RNG gods than necessary.
As for SR, Moosilauke is much more terrifying than in Crucible, as you don’t have towers to zap away its frozen crystals, and with all of your conversions to Cold damage, you have no auxiliary damage to whittle away at their 500% Cold resistance. The other Cold-resistant monsters: Fabius and Kuba, are much more manageable, though slow due to having limited RR, which equals 105% if you’re equipping the RR ring.
Crucible with Leviathan spec where I somehow didn’t have Rumor bound to Oblivion
SR 75-76
