Aether Rune of Hagarrad finally has a home! If only the walls weren’t full of holes and the roof wasn’t leaking.
I spent countless nights with sleep deprivation thinking of several ways to make my Apostate work with this set and guns, but deep down I knew that neither the Berona’s Fury nor the Heathen’s Decree had the firepower to make it viable for SR34+. This was before people noticed that Storm Spread worked better as a shotgun blast.
Glad to see someone finally made it work even if it took a whole different class.
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Can I see your GT? I was wondering how the Apostate side of this turns out, the AA is going to be much weaker from Heathen’s Decree but I figured perhaps having two RR masteries and Necro for flat and % damage could do the trick. Though, it also lacks the Onslaught stacks so no nuke…
“Made it work” is a relative term here, it’s currently the weakest build I’ve made in FoA. Still got superbosses down, but Crucible ex200 is pure hell to even survive, let alone do in reasonable time and SR35 seems about the limit for Shattered Realm for this one.
Made a thread asking for help back then.
I reworked that char a week ago into an acid gunslinger. Still far from being the big Billy the kid of Shattered Realms as I was hoping (specially after last week someone made a much better acid gunslinger with Paladin class) but at least she can hold her ground now.
I think there could be something there still if you swapped some of the items like the gloves, the offhand pistol (I think you still want Ragefire for Bursting Round and the pierce conversion, plus it has attack speed). I also don’t think Rattosh is worth it, IMO the only T3s worth considering are Attak Seru and Spear of the Heavens. I personally found the path to Spear a bit too weak so I stuck with Attak just for the stats I get along the way (also Wendigo is a lot of wasted points).
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A bit more than 3K hours in this game and I admit I still don’t have that much experience with the elemental/aether devotions in the bottom, so it was kinda logical for me to choose Rattosh instead, specially since the sum of all my gear had a bit more than 100% vitality to aether conversion and I disliked how random the arcane seals popped up (at least with Rattosh being kinda single target I knew how to focus it’s damage). This gunslinger was already a rework from a melee dual wield with fleshwarped strikes and Rattosh also worked insanely well back then before the FoA update.
Edit: I’m just noticing that you have 2 seals of corruption in your guns. Did you ever try switching one for a Seal of Resonance? You still get the %aether boost minus the flat aether, but the passive 500 health regen per second was a nice safety measure for my char back then.
The Krieg gloves worked well because you get extra %120 aether dmg when paired with another piece set from Krieg’s, it also gave me a bit of flat aether dmg for the guns, an active with aether dmg and a mini-stun, along with 2 more points in mark of Torment that used a lot against nemesis with sunder attacks.
Edit2: kinda got me curious with your setup, I’m already downloading someone else’s Apostate and I’ll give it my set and see if some ideas I got from your build would improve it.
Would love to see what you’ve built. I was testing a similar build to yours, but I couldn’t squeeze in any damage.
I’ve been working on an apostate with this set as well, no aether RoH though as it conflicts with the DAR amulet. Needs a little more refinement as I havent had much chance to test it beyond running SR 32/33 for the quest skill points and killing dread once.
I look as the 500 regen as just a bit of nice side bonus to a CC res fixer component. Unless I need the CC res or the ele damage I don’t bother with Resonance. It’s not gonna do anything for me in Crucible or against Superbosses. I don’t have any base regen or % healing increases to make something meaningful out of it. Given that Runekeeper was inevitably going to suffer from low % damage cause of no Necro on the combo, I wanted all the flat in the world, hence why it’s on all the augments, the seals and why I feel the gloves are a must. Not only does it help with damage output which I knew was going to be a problem (and was proven right, the damage isn’t great), more damage also means more sustain, which is basically filling the role the 500 health recovery was doing, though for this I have to attack instead of it happening passively. I also really wanted the OA from the seal cause this character has quite a bit less OA than I’d like, though Biting Cold is helping in that regard.
Spent most of yesterday afternoon leveling the devotions of a lvl 100 Apostate from
iamntbatman and did various test with the Ragefire gun and some other things.
Man, wished someone had told me like a month ago that Attak Seru devotion was miles better than Rattosh even with full vit conversion to aether. The change was quite noticeable against my old Aether Apostate just with a few levels in Attak Seru.
Coming back to Ragefire, and investing points in Bursting Round and Storm Spread looked at first a really good idea. But around SR34-35 it was noticeable that it just wasn’t enough. I had the wild idea of switching it for a juiced Rutnick Blaster just for kicks, and it was a really noticeable difference in dmg based on the “shotgun” style that we’re going with these characters. The most noticeable nemesis where the Rutnick gun shined were Alexander (which was always a chore to kill due his high aether res) and Grava Thul that was always a fast kill due the racial buffs.
On the other hand I believe that Ragefire is far better suited as a “snipe” gun due it’s damage and linear pathing. It was a pretty good gun when it came to advancing in long hallways or chokepoints. I would recommend this gun without storm spread or other spread-like wps.
Now I’m able to clear Sr35 in time and maybe with better pace I can clear 36 in time. Edited link with updated ver.
If anyone wants to try out my reworked Aether Apostate, here’s a link to the character file. Aether Apostate Gunslingr
That is indeed a chunky Rutnick 
However, it’s still costing you damage over Ragefire cause you’re not getting the rest of your Pierce to Aether conversion, and the WPS on it is nowhere near as good as your Reaping Strike or Storm Spread. With your current setup you’re actually sitting at 134 % chance to use your WPS. You want to be at 100%. You could easily drop Rutnick, take Ragefire and not even bother with Bursting Round (though I think it’ll serve you a whole lot better than Necrotic Edge, which is completely unnecessary on your setup).
A few optimisations if you are going to stick with Rutnick: like I said, you’re way overcapped on your weapon pool skills. You can drop Necrotic Edge completely (it’s not like it’s a good WPS compared to the rest you’re packing) and shave off some points from the others to sit at 100% with Rutnick involved (you’ll actually be slightly over even with 1 point in each WPS).
In terms of your damage reduction source you’re better served with Ill Omen than Ravenous Earth. You get more DR, more reliably over a larger area for fewer points.
As to where to spend the points you save, Word of Agony could definitely use some extras so it hits a much bigger area. More area coverage = less interruption from attacking to recast it. As for the rest, you’ll have enough to build up a full Siphon Souls with transmuter, so you have to interrupt yourself less by reapplying it, you get more comfortable AoE and sustain in your facetanking playstyle and it helps with defense too through reduced enemy OA.
For some reason I completely forgot to count the wps in Rutnick.
I disagree with Ill Omen being better as dmg reduction compared to Ravenous Earth. Omen It’s a clunky single target ability that requires line of sight to be cast, if the mob dies the debuff is also gone. With Ravenous I can cast it near a corner in dungeons and whatever mobs gets close it gets debuffed. This also works pretty good for bosses in the small boss rooms in SR and I don’t have to be bothered being in range to cast it on top of the enemy. It’s a great cast and forget kind of skill that works way better for a gunner that needs to be moving around.
For instance, when facing Mossi in the boss room, you’d have to be in line of sight and his archers would hit me before I can even target Omen on any of them or Moosi. With Ravenous Earth I can just cast it in a mid point, and let moosi and his troopers get close to it while I’m repositioning.
If you’re maxing Inquisitor Seal than I’m guessing your plan isn’t to move around all that much. Especially not if your target playstyle is “in your face shotgunning” with Storm Spread. Ill Omen will do the same job as Ravenous Earth with a much wider area coverage as it spreads around and will require less recasting to apply it everywhere, i.e. less attack interruption.
If the plan is to move around and ignore Seal a lot of the time, you simply cast your Omen and it stays on until it’s off cooldown again (which also means you have an easy way to tell when it’s still active). Meanwhile with Ravenous Earth if you move out of the area where it’s effective and a speedy enemy like Iron Maiden or Vinn chases after you, the DR will drop off as soon as they move out of where your Ravenous Earth was, and you need to cast another one, delaying your attacks and therefore your healing. Ill Omen just travels with them wherever they follow you. If ranged enemies are a concern, you can simply mobility skill into range and cast Ill Omen, then use Evade to dodge the first salvo. From that point on, everything is DR’d wherever they move and you can just blast. Also in case chaff is a concern, Ill Omen confuses them all.
To each his own, but from where I’m standing, you’re spending 14 skill points (actually 16 cause you invested in the base skill for more projectiles) to do a job you can do better with 10.
Honestly I think Omen is the better cast and forget option as it has much higher duration, even higher than it’s cooldown over 10 points. RE DR only works for 1sec so if you’re moving around constantly, you need to spam RE when enemies move compared to Omen which spreads through all of em and doesn’t rely on projectiles. I agree the range of Omen is bad, but with Storm Spread you’re up in their faces anyway. It’s much much worse for casters trying to actually stay at range
With Omen the massive problem is range. Like I said, ranged characters like archers, yetties with tossing rocks, those pesky birds attacking one screen ahead, will shoot first as soon as you’re in the range to single cast ill Omen, it has happened dozens of times with my other necro characters. IMHO Ill Omen is better suited for bruisers/casters that have the resources to be in melee range more comfortably or for pet builds (which I also have quite a few).
It is definitely an over-investment using Ravenous Earth instead, but it’s a much safer one playwise. In your scenario against Vinn in anything over SR34+, casting Ill Omen will 100% get me killed or almost killed because he will charge in as soon as I’m in range and like I said these target skills like Ill Omen are quite clunky and easy to miss the target if they have dashing manouvers. This doesn’t happen with a cast and forget skill like Ravenous.
Regarding Inquisitor Seal, it’s quite situational. It helps out tank nemesis (with the help of Mark of Torment) that CAN be tanked (BenJar, Grava, Moosi after dealing with his archers and crystals) but against other nemesis like Vinn, The Herald, Crownley it’s all about hit and run tactics.
All the goodies from Omen are worthless if it gets my character killed. Like I said, it’s a clunky spell that requires to be targeted, and thus it requires my character to stop for a fraction of a second within enemy’s range and cast it to a very specific enemy. With RE it can be cast without that akward pause that Omen does and with the safety of range and not to be worried because I cast a single target ability in a mob that was either about to die or is in a bad position that won’t allow to spread it further to other mobs. For me it’s all about function over form.
I don’t mind recasting RE, the same way I don’t mind casting WOR to debuff enemies once in a while while still moving or shooting at point blank depending the situation.
Edit:
Just for kicks, I did a quick respecc, maxing out Omen with 10+6 points. It’s cdr was 4.6secs to recast. RE with my setup has only a 2.5sec recast. This is massive against sneaky mobs that come from different fronts at once or in batches.