I am currently leveling a melee Battlemage with a shield that is focused on converting physical to aether damage.
At the moment I am level 52 and so far so good (although slow on the dps at the moment, at level 50 it started to feel much better). Not that I have that much conversion from phys. to aether now, but it will come when I am level 65.
I tried countless times to make a char like the one you have in mind.
Simply and clear, it do not work…
One problem here is that conversion in this case do not help much (also iirc 100% only 6 sec out of 14). Dps will be low.
If you want to deal melee aether dmg, i can advice:
1- Primal Strike Druid, with Temporal Archblade (also the 3/4 of the devotions that buff aether buff lightning as well). Strictly inferior to a full Ultos’one, but still playable.
2- Fire Strike dw Sorceror, with Warp Fire (one with cold>fire conversion above 90% is ideal) in the off-hand, maxed brimstone and two Albrecht’s Duality with decent rolls (mostly you need 100% chaos>aether conversion between the two rings). Very good versus trash mobs due to OFF (clear a screen in a single cast), a little weak (but still playable imho) against bosses.
Neglecting defense completely, wielding two mindwarp at once (with relics/medals that give dw) and wearing all the possible items that have flat/percentage bonuses to aether damage and under both the procs from the swords/bonuses like Fighting Spirit one of my battlemages managed to break 30000 dps. But almost any mobs in the game (ultimate ofc) would have one-shotted her.:o
If you really want to try, i can only wish you better luck than mine.
Sadly I must mirror ETK’s message: it doesn’t really work. It suffers too greatly in applied DPS and survivability. The majority of your damage output will come from Targo’s Hammers procs, but what with the nerfs to shield blocking over the last couple patches, its impossible to get a 100/100 chance/recovery setup and not do dick for damage.
Plus you’ll never be able to kill Aether Crystals, which are immune (or at least highly resistant to) Aether Damage. And in case you haven’t noticed, there’s kind of a lot of them in the game.
Not really sure about convert to phys, because multiple damage types are king. I’m attempting a lightning/aether dmg play through, and plan to update my older battlemage.
My older battlemage focused on using gear/passives to boost aether damage from devotions, and other procs (like good ole aetherfire). The point was to cause the procs to go off as much as possible. The base damage, was not aether though. It was more phys dmg, and trauma.
Like Ceno says, its a pain in the arse to fight crystals with pure aether damage. Again, that’s why having multiple damage types helps alot. Though, I’m curious what the resistance on those crystals are.
Other than those crystals, there is two other aetherials I can think of that have high aether resistance: harvesters (in spirit form), and Flesh Hulks. Beyond those, there is bosses like the Herald of the Flame.
Another nice feature of having multiple damage types is you can weapon swap to whatever damage type happens to deal more damage on a specific type of enemy.
At the moment I am level 53 and I am on Elite in Homestead. I am destroying the lvl 59 - 60 mobs with ease with my current gear which is not overwhelmingly good.
My DPS is at around 4900 buffed (with no bottles) and goes up to around 6 - 7K with procs.
My overall toughness is ubergood at the moment. I am at 7K hp and resistances way up there. With block chance and everything else I just face tank all that is.
Offcourse at level 65 much will change gear wise so I will update on that.
Thought I’d post an image of my character just to show how it currently looks like. As I wrote I have an easy time clearing lvl 59 - 60 mobs at the moment. And it goes pretty smooth. The DPS jumps to about 6 -7K when proccing.
You are in mid-Elite and you have insane gear. So of course it’s working well right now. You’ll also do fine through much of Ultimate. What ETK and Ceno are talking about is what happens when you get into the more difficult portions of Ultimate. This build doesn’t perform well in BoC, against Log, against Nemesis, etc.
A lot of people want this type of build to work. If you can succeed with this you will be a hero. Then we’ll all copy you. Good luck!
I have been planning one for a while but just not sure what to do with it. There doesn’t seem enough support to use cadence well but maybe going a caster and using soldier for tankiness would work best. My commando does that it it’s great.
I have both of these and they seem really good for the build:
