(Blood of Dreeg active in screenshot)
I have recently been fascinated with a “DoT” playstyle in this game, and when scanning the 1.2.1.3 patch notes, I spotted a Bloody Pox buff, and decided to give it a whirl. The build cleared SR 30-31 with ease, Mogdrogen in about 2-3 minutes, Callagadra in about 4 minutes, and Ravager of Minds took quite a lot longer (ca. 10 minutes). The celestials required some kiting, but only Ravager was particularly spooky.
The Build:
SR 30-31:
Vs. Callagadra:
Devotion Order:
Green → Bat → Fox → Remove Green → Blue → Eel → Remove Blue → Red → Behemoth → White → Lion → Lotus → Jackal → Rattosh → Raven → Revenant → Abomination (5 points for Abominable Might) → Remove Red → Kraken
Augments/Components:
Seal of Might
Seal of Ancestry
Sacred Plating x3
Spellscorched Plating x2
Ugdenbog Leather
Mark of Mogdrogen
Runebound Topaz x2
Black Tallow
Potent Ravager’s Harvest
Coven Warding Powder x2
Solarstorm Powder x4
Solael’s Bloodbinding
Rune of Displacement
Basilisk’s Bite x3
The Playstyle:
A lot of content with this build can just be facetanked. Dark One’s set gives a ton of resilience and healing, and the build boasts 39% physical resist as well as overcapped lightning/vitality for certain enemies. You apply debuffs in Devouring Swarm and Curse of Frailty, drop a totem or two, and then use Bloody Pox on something.
Alternatively, you can just walk away. Kiting is extremely effective with this, as your Pox will most likely melt enemies before its full duration is over, and I elected to go without a filler skill to simplify the gameplay.
There are a couple caveats to Bloody Pox, though, and I’ll talk about what I learned from the skill as I leveled up.
Caveats to Bloody Pox:
So, Bloody Pox has some mechanics that aren’t directly stated in the skill. While it says it will infect other nearby creatures, you should take care to target only mobs that will likely survive the initial damage, or ones guaranteed to leave persistent corpses on the ground. This is because Bloody Pox lingers on corpses (and some corpse-adjacent remains, like the fiery crater from those fire zombies) and can pass from mob to mob from there. It can instantly infect things that spawn on top of corpses, too.
However, if the mob is “gibbed” or explodes/doesn’t leave a corpse (such as from high damage), especially on the first hit, it won’t spread the Pox at all. Spiders, grobles and other smaller creatures tend to do this. To deal with these, Devouring Swarm is used to wipe out groups of smaller creatures, or you can target larger foes around them with Pox instead.
Fevered Rage or No?:
Fevered Rage significantly increases the damage of Bloody Pox, causing it to deal 60% more damage and increase your crit rate due to DA debuff, but it also makes everything a lot more dangerous via 150% global speed buff and 25% OA buff. Early in the game when you lack survival options/stats it can spell death against bosses, though later on it’s not so much of a big deal until you hit superbosses. All endgame content that was cleared with this setup was done so with Fevered Rage, though Ravager took like 10 minutes because of huge vitality resist and being very scary at 150% speed/+25% OA.
Running without Fevered Rage significantly reduces the chances of dying to a nemesis/superboss in fast forward, but also reduces its damage. The build already has significant staying power, so I chose to go with once I hit 94. The only fight I might consider unlearning it for now is Ravager.
Leveling Tips:
I leveled the build as-is, but you can easily level it as solo occultist pets/conjurer pets and swap over at 94. If you decide to level it with the skills it’ll make use of at 100, balance how many points you put into Bloody Pox and its upgrades, as its cost can soar and energy management is a little rough for most of the game. I don’t have an outline for how I leveled, as I was tweaking skill point allocation as I went.
Fevered Rage often felt like overkill, so for most of the leveling experience I elected to go without.
Alternate Pieces:
You can use a Boneblade MI and mythical Maw of the Damned for even higher survivability at the cost of damage, though you’ll want to swap out the Kraken devotion if you do. You can also swap some of the Solarstorm Powders out for more DA/hp.
Author's Notes:
I know the Spirit is invested 1 point higher than it needs to be, but I really don’t want to go back and fix it 
Also, this is the first build I’ve made that I felt was successful enough at its job. Enjoy!
