First time posting a build, but long time player of the HC variety and love theorycrafting.
I had fun with a few different FOA MI builds but this one actually has the skills to pay the bits. Although really it’s just one skill over and over and over again. Welcome to Bone Harvest physical skeli-spam.
with Battlecry, Fighting Spirit and Soul Harvest active
Grul’Thunn is the star here converting cold, vit and aether to physical with zero cool-down. Annoying as it is to farm, Krieg’s set supported the masteries and gave nice flat damage that would all get converted. Originally I was using War Cry for the flat physical reduction and DR, but with Krieg’s Wrath, I could eliminate it and use Ill Omen for DR and proccing. Deathstalker is a nice little RR buzz-saw combined with Blind Fury. Sustain is good with constant 200-500,000 AOE hits at 200% cast speed and 20% adcth, with Mark for bad spots.
I tried to get this to work using Menhier’s Bulwark instead, for the damage absorption and flat physical, but I just couldn’t find the OA to get crits going for Assassin’s Mark or Blind Fury, and waiting/hoping for Blindside + Fighting Spirt just isn’t fun.
I also know the over-caps aren’t where they should be, but I’m quite open to suggestions if anyone has any ideas for polishing this.
Leveling was super easy, and I’ll post a leveling guide if there is any interest.
what i mean is, you’re using Reaver, but GT is of Amethyst
Amethyst is what you’re waiting for to drop? - “but isn’t Amethyst a dmg loss” (conversion conflict), so why wait for it?/just keep using reaver?
I see what you’re saying. Without testing with the Amethyst, I’m not exactly sure how the total damage will shake out. More flat on the Amethyst than Reaver, plus casting speed. It’s been working great with Reaver, but I’m still not capped on casting and that’s a huge dps boost.
I’ve got a similar DK, I’ll try to explain my choices since I’m also interested in the different ways to build the phys BH archetype. Bear in mind, I imported my char as-is, so there are ascended bonuses (generally: casting speed, OA, DA, crit). It pretty easily handles 5-altar farming (2 aster 3 ashes), including the dread.
At a high level, I think the main differences between our specs are:
Skills
Dread (BH modifier) - I believe the “all damage” modifier is a more multiplier to the on-skill flat damage (not the WD component), applied before all other increases (I may very well be wrong, perhaps some mechanics guru can chime in here). For me Dread adds somewhere in the region of 25% more damage (comparing 0 to 21 dread, on target dummies using a DPS meter).
Fighting Form - I opted against this because of the cooldown not starting until the proc runs out, so it felt unreliable. Probably just preference here though.
Warcry - numerically better than krieg 5pc (RR) + ill omen (DR), and better QoL + coverage + damage uptime (1 instant button vs 2 non-instant buttons). You lose the proc capability of using two skills, but per the devos section below, I don’t think damaging procs are that great.
Gear
Helm (Death’s Whisper) - 2m range is great for clear and damage uptime (e.g. safely DPSing through Dread’s sunder). 80% WD to BH is self-explanatory - about 15% more damage to BH, especially big for thick 2Hers.
Ring (Combustion Band): personal preference. I like the casting speed, but it has a marginally worse proc numerically. 20 DA vs 2 blindside points is comparable
Amulet (Peerless eye of beronath): just a strong amulet across the board. Maybe deathbound is better with the 2m range, though that parasitic vit conversion seems questionable. I imagine you’re only really getting net 50 phys or less given the 75%/25% vit->phys/cold conversion, which gets worse as you scale flat vit harder (e.g. via dread).
Maybe what you already have on (reaver) is better than either of these choices…
Pants (Dreadrune): unsure about these. Maybe a magic ascended BH pair are better. But all around nice stats and bonuses to dread for big DPS.
Medal (Magic with BH ascend): lots of stats, good DPS. Given my opting against fighting spirit investment, rylok didn’t give me much.
Belt: yours is a better choice, with the aether conversion. Honestly I had the impression that crafted rares couldn’t have two affixes, so didn’t think to try crafting. Not sure where I got that impression from.
Relic (aurora): just a decent relic, maybe deathstalker is better with the speed and such actually. Though the +skills helps a lot as you get a lot of bonuses from overcaps in both trees
Devotions
Personally I haven’t noticed any meaningful DPS difference from using damaging procs. I opted for vire, you opted for oleron, I don’t think there’s a considerable difference really. I do have a soft spot for berserker though, probably unwarranted.
Always fun to see variations on a theme, one of the many things that makes GD great.
I went back and forth on War Cry vs Krieg stomp. Plus farming the head and chest is such a PIA. So this was what I was originally working on
As much as I like using the Death’s Vigil hood, the cool down reduction from Warborn (or a Fleshwarped Casque) has much more utility with some bonus flat and additive TDM. Unless you are only doing single target bosses and really need that range, I like the utility of more frequent WC/Krieg stomps. And if I can cast every 4 seconds or so, I’m usually getting more Oleron up-time.
As for the amulet, as I replied to Gnome, until I actually get an Amethyst to drop, I’m just goin off my gut. Reaver is quite good as it’s adding 1m of range to offset the loss from the hood, and also adding some flat vit.
If you aren’t going with Fighting Spirit (and Rylok), Harvoul is a pretty good medal, you know it will have physical affixes and the damage to War Cry certainly helps with clearing trash.
I’ll try comparing the Dreadrune vs the Barbaros and see how that works out on a TTK on the dummy. EDIT - no RR applied - 19s with Dreadrune vs 20s with Barbaros - but the loss of OA was definitely noticed. So more consistent higher damage with fewer crits. But I should theoretically run the test like 20 more times for each condition…
more utility with some bonus flat and additive TDM
I think the warcry CDR is not so useful at this point, because the RR and DR have full uptime as of one of the recent patches (both last 12s, while recharge is less than 8s). The flat is ok, but I would be surprised if it outweighs the big weapon damage
damage to War Cry certainly helps with clearing trash.
This is definitely an interesting tradeoff - I have often thought it would be nice to have something almost autobomber-ey for clearing trash. The benefit to the trash clear would be potentially more nemeses when rushing to heroes, but at the cost of killing those heroes slightly slower.
EDIT - no RR applied - 19s with Dreadrune vs 20s with Barbaros - but the loss of OA was definitely noticed. So more consistent higher damage with fewer crits.
I think with your setup, dreadrune might be worse - given the dummy (I assume) isn’t hitting you, you aren’t getting fighting spirit proccing, so you’ll be testing without that extra crit from the medal?
Plus farming the head and chest is such a PIA.
Tell me about it haha. Still, at least the hood affixes can be rerollled. The krieg stuff though, gives me path of exile eater rushing flashbacks (though thankfully not quite as painful)…
