I’m working on a poison-based Witch Hunter, and I’m debating between going full into the Occultist tree for Possession, or sticking with 32 points for just Aspect of the Guardian and using the extra points primarily for Vulnerability and Night’s Chill. I already have 50 invested in Nightblade and 32 in Occultist, so that’s a given.
Basically, which of these two builds would be better?
http://grimcalc.com/build/aWLbuz
vs.
Good idea for some build, bad for others. For your build try this one out first:
http://grimcalc.com/build/2WJkzj
Btw Merciless Repertoire and Elemental Awakening are between really bad and completely worthless for this build - so I fixed that for you. Also Blood of Dreeg is your lifeblood. Pun intended.I 've assumed you can find at least 2 all skills (well nightblade skills) somewhere, if not place those extra points into your DW attacks until they hit 20% and your other skills in NB that are 2 points shy of max. If you do get some all skills or +vulnerability mods don’t let vulnerability go above rank 10 - it scales terribly in ultimate ranks. Also you’ll want at least one of your two weapons to be a Plaguebearer’s (acid implement) of (acid or psn or atk spd suffix) with a mark of dreeg component for another 40+ resistance reduction.
Oh and that one point left into Merciless Repertoire - dump that point if you don’t have any +all skills or +merciless repertoire modifiers on gear, you can find a better home for it.
well, I would say its good for almost all builds to go 50/50… or alteast 40/50. The raw stats you are getting from the mastery’s gets hard to replace especially considering the HP gains.
True, it is rarely an outright “Bad” idea to go 50/50 in Mastery. Although I have seen builds where it might not be the best idea…usually only caster types though. My Dreeg spammer and Totem/sky shard druid both stop at 32/50 and 40/50 respectively - also have one melee at 32/50 but the others are all 50/50.
yea, Though it’s an extreme measure of min/max. For new players i would say go 50/50 as it’s not a bad idea. may not be 100% min/max but it’s still not really gimping your character.
Just curious, what’s bad about Merciless Repertoire? Isn’t the + %poison damage (and somewhat + %acid damage / + %cold damage) damage a huge benefit?
Elemental Awakening was primarily for the +resists, but I’ll dump that in favor of getting gear for resistances and using the points elsewhere.
What makes Blood of Dreeg so desirable? Is it the % health restored and the health regen?
Thanks for the help!
Merciless Rep is bad because by the time you have your core skills flushed out the % poison damage it gives will be a small drop in a big bucket - that combined with the fact that you only have so many points means I have yet to see a build actually make good use of it. Keep in mind that while 90-100% may seem like a big number you can get one handed weapons with over 150% poison damage EACH. You will likely have over 1000% poison damage by Ultimate. Ele awakening is the same basic problem, minimal returns for investment (and unless I’m missing something poison builds don’t have a whole lot of good +nightblade skill items, so you can’t just drop one point here for 10+% elemental resistances like a pierce build can)
Blood of Dreeg is really good because it’ll give all your attacks flat acid damage AND lots of OA AND lots of health regen. Really just a great skill all around - also synergizes well with the +% health regen on the pneumo burst transmuter. With blood of dreeg + burst up you should have no problems at all hiting 5-600 or higher health regen (with a little gear/aug support)
You’ll notice that wasn’t a full build - I would try and mess with the skills some more and get up to Possession, even if you only get 2-3 points into it. It gives higher returns per point on % damage bonuses and the damage absorption/skill disruption protection are really good.
Personally I like to go to 25 or 32 on the second mastery. For me, it depends on what I am getting out of the extra points and what I’d use the points for instead (have a tough time dropping an extra 18+ points just for one skill). I don’t think it’s inherently “bad” just not what I prefer.