Hello Grim Dawners. I just started playing this amazing game and have accumulated quite a few purples that have good affixes for %vit damage on them. I heard vit caster is a pretty durable and solid character so i decided to give it a go. The only thing is there is a bit of discrepancy ive seen on devotions and skills. Is there a generally accepted cookie cutter vit caster build?
me and a friend were kind of theorycrafting devotions last night since a lot of the builds grimcalcs were broken or out of date so take a look
question what do you think of chariot of the dead vs going for scales? It seems mechanically that they achieve basically the same kind of things or is scales vital to vit caster? Im relatively new to the game and the devotion tree is still pretty confusing to me.
additionally is manticore worth the pts? People say its amazing but a lot of the nodes are wasted since i dont really do any psn/acid damage. I know that rr is supposed to be a great stat however. Has anyone taken pen to paper to figure out how effective it actually is.
Resist reduction is a damage multiplier. It beats out % damage bonuses as those are additive and by the time you reach Ultimate, an extra 100% to your 1500+% damage isn’t doing much compared to going between a damage modifier of 1.8 to 2.02 for example.
Where resist reduction is really useful though is dealing with enemies that are resistant to your damage type. Without sufficient levels of it, you’re in for a long fight.
Manticore is definitely worth it if you don’t have access to other sources of flat resist reduction. A few of the nodes aren’t completely useless either giving % health, OA and/or acid resistance if you take the back leg node and complete the constellation.
It goes up to 28 at max level and it’s one of the few sources of TYPE A or flat resist reduction that a Vitality damage user can take. The only other one I can think of is a Plaguebearer’s Master’s Spellblade at 30.
also, im making some kind of vitality tank (Shaman), using vital totems+wendingo+devouring. as for devotions, i have Gallows, Twin Fangs (on Vit totems), Wendigo’s Mark (on devouring swarm) and trying to aim for Will of Rattosh… Since im kinda bulky (well i think so: 37lvl: 5,7k hp, 954 DA, 344 armor :undecided: ), im thinking about Dryads Blessing (because hey, extra heal means less chance to die, and this one seems very attractive to me, like a 2nd wendigo ), Crane (for resists n sht, but mainly because i need brown things) and Scales of Ulcama (dmg and… even more heals)
May i get some insight/suggestions on my Devotion plans?
Devouring Swarm reduces by 60 - 70%. You’ll find enemies with more than that, especially end game threats like Kupa have ~100% Vitality resist. You ideally want more to break that / reduce it into the negative minimum or those enemies will give you a hard time.
The other thing like Safarel said is you can never have enough RR. Just like % crit damage, it acts as a damage multiplier so is one of the best and accessible ways of increasing your damage.
Your choices are ok, I’m not a fan of Dryad due to the low affinity it gives for 5 points but go for it if you want. I’d also keep in mind to look at constellations that give other important stats like OA (Chariot, Hawk, Panther, Viper etc.), DA (Wolverine, Solemn Watcher, Eel etc.) % Attack Speed and Kraken if you are going 2-handed.
that off/deff thing looks kinda complicated so im just ignoring it for now well my DA, is about 1k and the info says that the chance of enemies hitting me is ~84% and 0% crt… i know it kinda reduces damage if you have enough DA, but somehow +500 hp looks more appealing than 30 DA… :undecided:
Don’t worry about the PtH equation or crit thresholds. Just know that more DA = less crits against you (and generally less one-shots :rolleyes:) and more OA means you do more crits which is important because more damage (crit damage, like RR is another multipler) and depending on your build for getting the most out of crit-based item procs or celestial powers like Assassin’s Mark, Oleron’s Wrath or Hand of Ultos.
Generally at level 100 Ultimate, you want around 2700 DA to not be critted by Nemeses (more in Crucible in case you get unlucky with mutators) and 2700+ OA but more is never bad, I generally try to push for 2900 or 3000
Don’t worry about any of this stuff if you don’t plan to enter Ultimate or take on a Super Boss. You can finish first difficulty without too many problems
If you still care about this stuff then let me tell you I don’t think anyone pays much attention to OA/DA at low levels, it’s all about speed leveling.
Can someone help me determine which one is better? I’m thinking of doing Occultist/Necro focusing on Drain Essence.
Option 1 has one point remaining at the end, I put it in Harvestman’s scythe Energy Regen for now as I don’t know how much regen is required to upkeep Drain Essence.
I didn’t go for Dying God because Chaos is useless in the build I’m thinking of. Furthermore I don’t think you can get Dying God on top of the juicy Vitality Devotions in the South.
I use a slightly different setup on my Vitality Decay Reaper, I suggest you take Bat.
Also, while I did pick Ulcama over Dying God on my Reaper, I wouldn’t call DG useless for Vitality builds. I had plenty of OA & crit damage so choose to sacrifice that unnecessary HP drain. But builds lacking OA and Crit damage should pick DG + Rattosh. Builds who have enough RR can sacrifice even Rattosh in favor of DG. At the end of the day it boils down to which build you’re playing
I’ve been toying with a few vitality casters and the Shaman/Occultist option was really disappointing since there is no gear to support vitality storm totem which should be a primary option for the build…
My current, favourite and most effective is my Witch Hunter using vitality phantasmal blades, doom bolt, CoF for offensives then lots of points in passive/temp buffs and active buffs. For devotions I’ve gone Dying God, because of my high ADCtH I can sustain the high health cost even without BoD/PB, then gallows, lizard, eel, panther, hawk, bat (synergises well with Phantasmal blades), wendigo, flamingo looking bird (forget it’s name), scales, tree of life and then points in whatever can buff stats. I’m at a point now though, where I am going to respec to try and get manticore and wolverine, but my issue is trying to maintain dying God and tree of life means the bottom right of the devotion tree does get neglected…
My build probably varies due to the necessity to have high energy regen as Phantasmal blades uses a lot, but it’s the most effective vitality casters I’ve tried as I’m yet to try the notoriously good poison/vitality cabalist.
I guess it comes down to specifically what your casting? As other casters can probably get away with fewer defensive devotions than what I’m using but I need the HP/DA and energy regen.
i was kinda hoping to beat all 150 crucible levels at the lowest char lvl possible (even if its my 2nd char and i dont have awesome gears, the first one is 50lvl battlemage but its irrelevant)
P.S. i got ~112% vit dmg dagger, which is pretty awesome for me probly the best item i have ever got
