And now, part 29 of my controller friendly build series: **Permascension Fire Dervish **
Due (I think) to this build’s crit bonus, it ended up as very high damage build. Most of the time. I enjoyed it, and SR85 wasn’t too challenging.
grimtools link. The MI prefixes and affixes are just the best I had, not what is theoretically optimal. With better MIs, I think SR90 should be possible. But, as it was, I just barely had enough crits to keep Ascension up, and the overcaps on my resists were insufficient to go any higher. And I needed more lifesteal.
Playstyle: Use Ascension, dive in and kill everything.
Video proof of clear
Fight tips
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Offense: keep Amarasta’s Blade burst up, and you’re good.
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Defense: the most important thing is to keep Ascension active, as your defense relies on it. For me, defense was mostly about managing Pneumatic Burst so that I had the healing that I needed, and/or fighting at the correct place in a horde of trash to keep critting constantly without getting killed.
Gear
As usual, the resists are overcapped to deal with resist reduction on high SR, however the overcaps are low for SR85. There is definite room for improvement in the MI department.
I considered – and tried – Vilgazor’s Heart, Vestments of Severed Faith, Fleshwarped Pauldrons, and Ugdenbog Waistguard. I found that the lack of CDR on the Vilgazor’s Hearts that I had meant I couldn’t realistically keep Ascension up enough of the time.
Essential Gear:
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Bloodlord’s Vengeance x2: needed for permascension. I had horrible luck farming these – Bloodlord Thalonis only drops them 50% of the time, which worked out to about 20% of the time for me – but what you want is attack speed, fire damage, and lifesteal.
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Virtue’s Gaze: needed for permascension
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Virtue’s Ward: the 6% CDR I had on mine was needed for permascension
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Belgothian’s Carnage: the CDR is needed for permascension.
Stuff I’m pretty sure is best in slot:
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Virtue’s Light set: With Virtue’s Ward, you end up with 4 pieces, for 4% OA and DA, 20% health, and +2 to Oathkeeper. This works out better than alternatives.
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Gauntlets of Ignaffar: you don’t need the conversion, but it gives +2 to RF and 20 fire damage, plus up to 19% attack speed.
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Combustion Band: fire damage, attack speed, and fire resist reduction
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Gargabol’s Ring: +3 to RF allows you to hit the 24 point threshold where you get 9 max stacks instead of 8. If I had +RF on the weapons, I probably would have done something different here.
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Magelord’s Greaves: needed slow res, and this was the best option.
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Crimson Lotus: the acid to fire makes Lethal Assault a huge skill. With Vilgazor’s Heart that would be redundant, and there would be better options.
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Crest of Ember’s Calling: There are other options here, but the massive fire damage to Pneumatic Burst made this the best one, although Mark of Burning Shadows and Pyroclasm Mark were both tempting.
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Arcane Harmony Leggings: “I know I’m probably the biggest fan of these, but I believe a build is only as strong as its weakest link, and without disruption protection you will really struggle against certain enemies. +84/126 spirit is great, and +84/126 DA is awesome as well. The resistances are good too. I don’t know why other people don’t use this as much as I do.” – me, on like 80% of my builds.
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Osyr’s Temper x3: it might not offer the most damage, but the flat OA and DA get multiplied by the ridiculous %OA and %DA in this build, making it a clear choice.
Devotions
Somehow, I managed to get everything I wanted with a few points to spare.
Core:
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Solael’s Witchblade: fire RR
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Rhowan’s Crown: fire RR
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Alladrah’s Phoenix: the damage absorption stacks with Ascension, so this was fairly obvious. I think it made a difference.
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Viper: don’t neglect the 20% resist reduction it offers. It may be the worst type of resist reduction, but I’ve noticed a significant effect in many cases.
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Light of Empyrion: while you don’t get close to 100% uptime on its damage reduction, it still makes a difference. And it gives significant weapon damage.
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Obelisk of Menhir: DA and Armor are necessary for a melee build like this.
2 bonus points:
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Fox over Hawk: you have such high % OA from Ascension that Hawk doesn’t offer that much. You need the cunning and lifesteal from Fox anyway.
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Crane over Lion: you need the resists from Crane.
Skill Choices
This build only puts 25 points in Nightblade, leaving it sparse on attributes. This is necessary because this build relies on so many skills, and allowable because the build gets its health OA and DA elsewhere.
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Righteous Fervor: the damage skill
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Ascension: the point of this build. It gives damage, a huge amount of damage absorption, allows 100% piercing and chaos conversion to fire, gives 15% OA, and 50% Stun and Freeze and Trap resists. Keeping it active is imperative.
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Judgment: the DA reduction enables this build at higher SR. The point in Heart of Wrath can proc Phoenix, and also offers more chances to crit.
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Vire’s Might: mobility is great
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Smite: a solid WPS
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Amarasta’s Quick Cut: I’m pretty sure this strikes thrice for 330% weapon damage, making it the highest damage skill here.
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Whirling Death: the best multi-target one available
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Belgothian’s Shears: combines with Burning Void to give 100% WPS.
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Amarasta’s Blade Burst: the flat damage if offers via Lethal Assault gets significantly converted, and in a dual wielding build that makes a huge difference.
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Pneumatic Burst: It isn’t just OA and total speed, its health restoration was critical.
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Veil of Shadow: I figured a point here was worth it for a constant 70 OA reduction. If had been getting critted at all, I would’ve put more points here.
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Shadow Strike: I would have put a point here if I played on keyboard, but I didn’t have the available button on a controller.
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Blade Barrier: come to think of it, a point here instead of Vire’s Might would have been a smarter option. It would have allowed a safety margin when keeping Ascension active was difficult, and it would have been great when the build needed healing, as it would buy time for Pneumatic Burst.
Leveling
This levelled extremely well; I was able to keep Lokarr’s set until level 94, for a few reasons; Consecration and Phantasmal Armor provided Armor, along with the devotions, so I wasn’t stuck with 200 or so armor at level 70+.
While 100% uptime on Ascension was not possible until 94, from level 60 onwards I ran 2 Bloodlord’s Vengeances with Belgothian’s Carnage, and had a very high uptime. Since this build has high damage, I was able to kill most enemies before Ascension expired. I did die a few times, so I wouldn’t recommend that strategy for hardcore.
Remember to get Light of Empyrion as soon as possible, since it takes the most XP to max. I wouldn’t sacrifice the RR though, since this build doesn’t get any from Nightblade.