So i’ve been trying to create a cool warlock build for ages, i’ve always wanted maivan’s + possession but i always found my builds came up short when i tried to craft them.
In light of changes coming, i thought i’d give it another go. Ended up with what appears to be a solid build at first glance. This is the v1 theorycraft post. Raining chaos/vit spells, fires, doombolts etc. Only cool stuff in there methinks. It’s GDstashed yes and deals only only chaos/vit damage(except for tiny amounts from random stuff).
So yea, as you can see i went for the idea to go as much leech as i could and get as much health pool as made sense. Managed nearly 24k in grimtools, with 39% damage reduction. In addition i’ve vastly overcapped resistances because it’s required to push hard content where you can get nasty debuff combinations. The thought is that i won’t be at risk at all just tanking it out like some retal warlord, raying them down as they come.
Missing stats are 12% physique(72 da + some health) from crafts and maybe other small things, depending on how realistic gd stash i want to do.
When black flame set circle is down it’s sitting on 50% phys resist or more. It can be down nearly all the time when you need to stand stilll and fight. That’s in addition to maivan’s + possession.
There are a few weak points - namely low da but this is much better to go low on da and get insane health than medium health and good da. Overall, da and health considered, i fear not oneshots. The second and most major point is that i have no clue how it will manage energy, i have tried to compare it to other AAR builds i could find and it seems alright’ish, but i wouldn’t know until i’ve tested it. I also fear for leech, i was aiming for getting insane leech but i doubt i’ve reached that goal - still strong with 31-55% leech, 24% wd on ray, and sigil of corruption that can more than doublestack on average.
Over the next days i will see if i can find improvements and try to gdstash it up and test it out. Until then i just wanted to share this since i didn’t see a black flame warlock for quite some time, and am looking for criticism to help improve it.
I do not think Caos / Vit AAR Warlock works well. It is weak when trying to extend multiple attributes.
Lightning AAR MH and Aether AAR binder are clearly better than this.
Maybe that is true, but i wouldn’t be surprised if this one could handle harder content with it’s survivability, even if having lower dps. I found it not very troublesome that it uses both vit and chaos actually, i don’t lose that much from doing it at all.
With changes to dead thing, this one might be averaging some -100rr or so for both chaos and vitality, and it’s got better health and i think leeches a lot more. Or maybe that’s just what i dream!
I wanted hourglass for a bit but i had to recognize it will cost me a lot to get it and it’s only a few seconds lacking uptime on the black flame ability, i’ll work with that.
You got a well optimized aether ray build to compare it to of the aether lightning varients? And btw, have you tested yours? How is that leech working out? How long on single target for you to heal to full?
Thanks for posting, i’ll be keeping an eye on these builds to see what everyones choices are and try to come up with something using the best as i can see it.
Did a small update: shift 4 points from Maiven (no need to overcap it as you only get 1% more absorb from 12 to 16 points) and max Conversion as well add last point into Overload for the Aether res.
Also in my experience - if you run Black covenant - you need to go for Hourglass to have almost 90% uptime of the set skill - its make of break in SR.
Okaaaayy. I spent hours, all day, to optimize it and craft overpowered rolled greens to see how far i could push it.
Thought i’d test in out in an easy SR 50.
Roofl. I have almost 28k health, 42% damage absorption, 52% phys resist with circle up. Still died like nothing - had okayish leech, at least in aoe. Life went up and down like a yoyo, nearly every second when 4+ hero monsters i went below 20% health. I mean i made it through it all easy enough but every major pack was like tha and it was after all only SR 50!!!
So yea, out of the window with the idea of making a leech facetanker like this. I could “handle it”, but literally every random trash nemesis or bossroom thing could splat me in a few seconds even with that pool. Just a little mistake and got deaded.
Sure you could kite it out, it’s good at that but i don’t wanna play this build like so… Was a fun experiment while it lasted and i learned:
Fix your balance crate. Reduce shield block values obtainable by 70%+, reduce armor by 60%(and remove or heavy nerf mastery sources that give tons easy flat armor, reduce damage of monsters, mostly after base game scaling, by like 50-60% and nerf flat damage reductions by 70%. Remove monster nullifications, they don’t provide challenge or fun, they just break your character integral functionality much to frustration and annoyance and requires time to stand still for boredom. From this i learned because your values are way overscaled the way to survive any kind of facetanking is to get flat damage reductions and various cc abilties to prevent them attacking you at all, i can’t much rely on these other types of reductions at all if i am under pressure i’ll just get deleted like nothing if i rely on % reductions because incoming damage is out of control.
Maybe give aether ray something new, something like stacking buff when channelling giving flat damage reduction. How you are gonna use this ability in a meaningful way when you can’t use shield with it and can’t tank shit that’s challenging?
i a ctually like your build more, more simple, only “problem” i got with it is that only 87% chance to proc eldric fire with doombolt, so it lag some uptime.
Maxing out physical resist is a good way to go. valor leg, fateweaver body, seal of might. Hourglass is needed for ritual circle up time. Symbol of solael is needed for RR. Footpads of grey magi are an option. Stun res becomes a lot less needed with the sigil life steal and phys res that can be stacked. Also not sure I would use bloodied crystal unless bleed res is needed.
