INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone, it has been a while since my last build post but Fangs of Asterkarn has dropped and with it, I’ve been reinvigorated in sharing my builds. Today, I present you the Ratadin.
UPDATE
After some brewing around with some other items inspired by @banana_peel , I think my new setup is better for the more well rounded survivability as well as also the realization that seal is honestly not helping my survivability much at all these days.
STATS AND GT
Ratadin GT Link (note that GT is currently bugged for the Whirling Blades buff and does not have any option to show it)
BUILD THEORY
This build is effectively a new and improved version of one of my old builds (linked here) which utilized ranged Righteous Fervor in combination with various ranged weapon pool skills to multiply the Retaliation Added to Attacks damage. This build is basically that exact same concept except done exceptionally better. With the advent of ascended item affixes, we now have some very strong bonuses which enable this new version of the build.
Firstly, we have the RF bonuses on the weapon and shield which total to 30% added RATA to RF. Additionally we get more RATA from Stoneguard’s Ward, our ascended ring, and the Awakened Blacksteel Gauntlets (which also conveniently is what converts all of our fire damage on RF to physical). Combined with our 22/12 Retaliation, we get 58% RATA to RF. Hellborne wishes it could have these levels of RATA. To make it even stronger, we have coupled this RATA with a 99% chance to proc Storm Spread. For those unaware, the RATA on RF also applies on every projectile of Storm Spread for a total of 5 projectiles per shot. Meaning in total, we get 290% RATA per shot. As you would expect, this is a lot of damage.
Also, since we now get to actually use a shield, we get a lot more retaliation damage and also a lot better defenses. With the new block potion mod, we actually achieve 100% block chance in total on this build alongside a metric ton of armor and flat damage reduction from Inquisitor’s Seal.
On our weapon swap we have the Needle of Fates Unwound which gives our Storm Spread 100% pass through. We will weapon swap to this gun for clearing trash and swap back to our main RATA gun for killing bosses.
PERFORMANCE
SR 36 (no buffs)
17 Second Ravager Kill
, “inb4 nerf” 
). you’ll notice i didn’t even take any of the sr buffs through this run because I prefer to show realistic performance rather than trying to farm for the absolute best runs out of dozens. I did some superbosses as well but I’m not like others on the forum that feel the need to record every accomplishment of the build so don’t assume that if it isn’t recorded, it isn’t possible. I’d highly encourage in fact for you to take the build and get your own higher runs though because it’s definitely doable, the build wasn’t exactly struggling through these shards even with the full dps setup I had.