Aether / Chaos Caster

Good afternoon everyone,

in this thread I want to present my first (mostly) self-created build.

As the title suggests, the core of this build is damage conversion. We convert elemental damage to chaos damage, and chaos damage to aether damage. This allows us to use pretty much any Arcanist spell we want.

Used damage types: Chaos, Aether, Vitality

To the specifics.

The equipment (most of these are just suggestions, there really is only one required item for this build):

Head: Clairvoyant’s Hat
Chest: Clairvoyant’s Robe with Chains of Oleron
Legs: Boneweave Leggings with Ancient Armor Plate or Silk Swatch
Shoulders: Clairvoyant’s Mantle with Silk Swatch
Hands: Handguards of Justice with Unholy Inscription
Feet:Golemborn Greaves with Mark of Mogdrogen
Waist: Sash of the Bloodlord
Amulet: The peerless Eye of Beronath with Focusing Prism and Kymon’s Will
Ring 1: Albrecht’s Duality with Ectoplasm and Survivor’s Ingenuity
Ring 2: Albrecht’s Duality with Ectoplasm and Survivor’s Ingenuity
Medal: Mark of Divinity with Attuned Lodestone
Relic: Agrivix’s Malice
Weapon 1: Clairvoyant’s Wand with Symbol of Solael (remember to use the active!) and Outcast’s Riftstorm
Weapon 2: Blood Orb of Ch’thon with Essence of Ch’thon

Note: Any Components or Augments not mentioned are used to fill out resistances.

Explanation:

The Clairvoyant Set just fits well with the built, increased aether and chaos damage, +2 to all skills, bonuses to Doom Bolt and Devastation amongst others. I use Albrecht’s Duality for the same reason. The chaos to aether conversion is useful, too, in order to diversify our damage output. We still want to kill chaos resistant enemies after all.

I use Agrivix’s Malice because it increases our two main damage types and its proc is just plain awesome. You need to be close to your enemies to make use of it though.

The peerless Eye of Beronath is just a very solid Amulet, not much to it. Pretty much anything can be used here, +skills are recommended though, as we are somewhat starved for points as is.

I use Boneweave Leggings simply because I like their proc, +2 to Sigil of Consumption is nice, too. Also, health regeneration.

Sash of the Bloodlord: +4 to Doom Bolt, a proc that aids our health sustain, +Chaos and Crit damage. Need I say more?

Medal, Gloves and Boots are used to fill out missing resistances, give some much needed Health and flesh out our defense in general. If you’re confident your survivability is good enough, go ahead and use a Badge of Mastery or Black Star of Deceit. Most likely you will have to look out for Bleed and Pierce resistance specifically, since caster equipment rarely features either of the two.

Blood Orb of Ch’thon is the only really mandatory item for this build, because without it the whole thing makes no sense. Converts all elemental damage to chaos damage (note: damage can only be converted once, so despite having 100% chaos to aether conversion anything that was originally elemental damage will not be converted to aether).

Now that we’re done with the items, here’s the skill build:

Without +Skills

With +Skills and Devotions

Bind Time Dilation to Doom Bolt (has 100% proc chance) and Arcane Bomb to Callidor’s Tempest for single target or Olexra’s Flash Freeze for AoE. The others don’t really matter, just make sure Hungering Void’s uptime is as high as possible.

Note: Adjust Skill Points according to the +Skills on your Equipment, for priorities see explanations below.

Why am I using certain skills?

Sigil of Consumption - I need some sort of sustain during fights, and since we have a lot of relevant +Skills on our equipment aswell as boosted vitality damage thanks to possession, Sigil of Consumption does a decent job of it.

Trozan’s Sky Shard - I like this spell as a filler, also I like having a pure chaos nuke (Doom Bolt’s chaos part is converted to aether). Also good for killing off Aether Corruptions.

Callidor’s Tempest - I use Agrivix’s Malice as a relic so Callidor’s Tempest was a natural conclusion.

Olexra’s Flash Freeze - Basically freezes everything on your screen, once its level is high enough, also kills off weak monsters by itself.

Curse of Frailty - Debuffs enemy Defensive Ability aswell as vitality resistance, increasing our damage (and heal).

Doom Bolt and Devastation simply are great nukes.

I also recommend the use of Nullification (just one point is enough) to get rid of reflect buffs on enemies or pesky debuffs on yourself, personally I don’t use it (yet) because my skill bar is full.

If you don’t have as many +Skills as me or just want to reallocate a few points, you can cut them basically anywhere. This comes down mostly to preference.

Due to our equipment setup we can use any Arcanist skill we want, so if you don’t like Callidor’s Tempest, give Panetti’s Replicating Missile a shot. And neither do you have to use Trozan’s Sky Shard - if you don’t like it simply put the leftover points into Elemental Balance, Sigil of Consumption, Destruction or wherever you see fit. Just keep in mind that we have to kill bosses somehow. :slight_smile:

As for Attribute Points, I put 20 in Spirit and the rest in Physique. If you plan on using Empowered Legplates of Valor (which is a legitimate option) without relying on other items to boost your Physique or lower Physique requirements, you should put atleast 85 points in Physique. To be honest, you don’t really need any points in Spirit, Energy might become a problem during the first few levels though - personally, if I had the choice now, I’d put between 0 and 5 points into Spirit.

With the setup presented here, I successfully cleared Bastion of Chaos - Shar’zul can be facetanked for most of the fight, just pull him out of his firestorms occasionally; killed the Mad Queen - this fight involved a lot of kiting though, in close range I get killed quite quickly at times; and I also killed the Aetherial and Ch’thonian Nemesises (didn’t get to test the build against Fabius yet, still lacking reputation).

Note though that this build does not kill the above mentioned bosses in 15 seconds or less, like some of the other builds advertised on this forum. Personally though I find the build a lot of fun to play, especially because you have to always be aware of your cooldowns and so far I was able to kill anything that crossed my path without too much trouble.

If there is any interest, I can add a levelling guide, though getting to 68 (level requirement for the Clairvoyant Set) was much easier than expected.

I will try to add videos in the next few days - I just hope my PC can handle it.

I hope you enjoyed this “Guide” and have as much fun with this build as I do. If you have any question or suggestions, feel free to leave them here. :slight_smile:

Have a pleasant week and lucky drops! :slight_smile:

here’s another build based on the same idea we discuss a while back :

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42212

from what i see (but it’s theoric, didn’t have time to try it myself for now) you lack defensive options and probably have too many nukes (DB, Devastation, TSS…) i’d probably drop TSS in favor of DB (because your gear will give you more additional points to the skill so you may be able to get more damage from it), and put more points on sigil for better heal. maybe use Wrath of Agrivix for more CC (already got the freeze though).

you didn’t list your devotions but i’d say Widow, Solael’s Witchblade, Dying God are pretty much mandatory for this type of build. if you lack HP Giant could greatly help if you ain’t already using it, Aeron’s Hourglass provides help too in the defensive side.

that what comes to my mind at the moment :slight_smile: i’m happy to see another Aether/Chaos build able to clear ultimate content, anyway, kudos on that !

Thanks for the input, very interesting thread.

Quick status update:

Using these Devotions for the time being. Really like the double healing proc and the HP Behemoth gives do help quite a bit. Unfortunately this doesn’t leave me with enough points to get Solael’s Witchblade.

After trying to run with and without it I also decided to stick with Trozan’s Sky Shard for now, double Doom Bolt double TSS is nice burst against Heroes, also useful for killing Aether Corruptions.

With this Setup I can mostly face tank Shar’Zul and albeit I won’t set any new records, the kill is decently quick I think.

I also managed to kill the Mad Queen (no face tank here sadly…took a bit longer with all the kiting going on) and the Aetherial and Ch’thonian Nemesises. The latter two were somewhat annoying because of all the stun / root effects going on but were manageable (once I knew what they were doing …).

If anyone is interested I can make a guide for my version of the build, though I am not sure whether I would recommend it. Quite fun to play in my opinion, uses a lot of abilites though and since the Time Dilation nerf it won’t set any record kill times.

Looks like a solid build. Fun to play too. The only thing I would add is one point in nulification. Best one point wonder behind mirror.

maybe you could drop one point in Sailor’s or Eel passive to get the skill ? - chaos resist seems hard to bypass to me.

i’d say it’s up to you, but fun is more important than kill times to me (might be different for others ofc). your build is fun and original so no reason not to share it if you care :wink:

Huh, thanks for mentioning the Devotions, just noticed the link is wrong. I have to get Empty Throne, otherwise I can’t get Chariot.

Because of that I have no points in Witchblade, not 5 as shown in the link above. Will correct it. :slight_smile:

Updated the OP into the semblance of a guide. Let me know what you think. :slight_smile:

it’s great ! you should change the title of the thread with the title of your first post, though, and add a screen of your char + UI (with res and dps and the like). some may ask for videos too, although personally i rarely wtch them.

otherwise good work ! :wink:

Okay, so after not really using a forum like this for anything other than reading in years, I must confess I find myself neither able to change the thread title nor embed an image successfully. Oh well, I added a link to my stat screen for now.

This is somewhat embarrassing. o_O

Edit: Fixed the image atleast.

i think you have to edit your first post to change title. you have a very nice gear by the way :slight_smile:

May i ask why the double conversion?

As far as i know you can’t convert elemental into chaos, and then the resulting chaos again into aether.

Indeed, you can’t convert damage twice. The chaos to aether conversion only really affects Doom Bolt and Sigli of Consumption. To be honest, it is in no way integral to my build, I just thought Albrecht’s Duality fits the build well, since I use pretty much all its stats (the +2 to Disintegration aside).

As I mentioned in my first post, the two rings can be replaced, notable options would be the Judicator’s Signets Set or Band of the Eternal Haunt.