cold-acid warlock, viable and right weapon choice?

back in the day when I played a lot of Diablo II, I experimented with a build that was pretty straight forward, I can’t remember how well it went in endgame nor do I remember what class it was (I believe it was the necromancer).
what I do remember is that it was a lot of fun to play!
it was a build combining cold and poison damage, freezing monsters in place and then applying DOTs.

so… now I’m experimenting with something similar.
I’m trying to build a warlock that basically uses the same mechanics.

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/RVvwGjZE (my browser for some reason blacks out on devotions so I will just name them here: rat, eye of the guardian, scorpion, lion, tsunami, viper, lizard, eel, dryad, kraken and tree of life)

my question is if a build like that is even viable, there is for example no legendary gear really combining cold and acid damage, some useful items favour nightblade instead of arcanist and/or occultist etc.

I am building it 2h ranged, aiming for quillthrower of dreeg, am I making the right weapon choice?

  1. Bosses are immune to freeze.
  2. Resist reduction on gear for this combo is hard to come by. Although you can get easy -60% reduction on Witch Hunter with Vulnerability and Night’s Chill.

Nightblade might be better than Arcanist as a 2nd mastery because it has much more cold/acid support.

I was betting on DEE to be able to do sufficient damage on bosses while kiting them, combined with the standard attack on my 2h ranged

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-T210 met Tapatalk

I’m going to look into that, that would however mean dropping OFF
That may not be such a bad thing, perhaps I can go fully ranged with the nightblade…

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-T210 met Tapatalk

DEE doesn’t have cold damage. And has only 9% WDM on one of the skill modifiers.
I don’t think you can make a viable ranged cold/acid caster, far too many gimmicks in one build.
If you just stick to cold/acid split, something like this would somewhat work, albeit stun res is in a shitter and way too low life.
But if you have infinite time to grind double-rare MIs, this is even better.

@OP: A melee witch-hunter is definitely viable if you go cold/poison.

@Strigvir: -60% without even considering devotions and gear is already huge. With the right choices you can push that number to -100% effortlessly.

The expansion will also add a number of new items/constellations so hopefully you will find something that suits this build. If you follow the dev streams you have seen Necro has some vitality and poison skills. If you search through the database you can see we already have items to convert vitality to cold damage (Speaker for the Dead caster off-hand). You see where I’m going. :slight_smile:

actually, I think a combination of inquisitor and necromancer may pull this off, judging from the skills shown on the latest dev stream

I am not entirely sure if ranged is a gimmick too many, it will however result in the stat of the weapon overshadowing its actual use
meaning that I won’t actually be shooting with it…
in my newest version I have for that reason made DEE spammable
to be clear, I don’t need every attack to apply both cold and acid, different skills for different jobs, so DEE not giving me any cold damage doesn’t really matter
of course, correct me if I’m wrong, that is after all what this thread is for

here’s what I’ve come up with: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zL8kZA

You don’t need every attack to apply acid and cold, but you need your overall damage output to be close to 50/50 split, otherwise it’s better just to boost one damage type.

Going ranged is gimmicky, doubly so if going caster with a two-hander. The point of 2h is somewhat high base weapon damage. Weapon + off-hand or just DW (since you have nightblade mastery already) will always be superior to any 2h weapon for non-weapon damage purposes.
Your build doesn’t make sense. You either use mainly weapon damage to apply your elements, and thus stack as much flat damage on gear as you possibly can (in this case maxing Lethal Assault, since it fits your idea like a glove). Or you stack resistance reduction and direct bonuses to non-weapon skills you use. The only non-weapon skill in NB tree is Blade Spirit, so I guess the compromise would look like this.
You basically run around with non-transmuted DEE and summon Blade Spirit (which does mostly cold and a bit of acid thanks to our item selection) off cooldown. Constellations are like this, in case you still can’t see in the tool:

No you dont actually. Total %3000 damage combine without spirit no matter how you achieve it is enough.

“Combine” doesn’t matter when the bases are different. In a 75%/25% damage split the 75% will get triple more value from the same multipliers than 25%. And in case of cold/acid build, you sure as hell have to choose between cold bonuses or acid bonuses, gear-wise.

You don’t need every attack to apply acid and cold, but you need your overall damage output to be close to 50/50 split, otherwise it’s better just to boost one damage type.

Going ranged is gimmicky, doubly so if going caster with a two-hander. The point of 2h is somewhat high base weapon damage. Weapon + off-hand or just DW (since you have nightblade mastery already) will always be superior to any 2h weapon for non-weapon damage purposes.
Your build doesn’t make sense. You either use mainly weapon damage to apply your elements, and thus stack as much flat damage on gear as you possibly can (in this case maxing Lethal Assault, since it fits your idea like a glove). Or you stack resistance reduction and direct bonuses to non-weapon skills you use. The only non-weapon skill in NB tree is Blade Spirit, so I guess the compromise would look like this.
You basically run around with non-transmuted DEE and summon Blade Spirit (which does mostly cold and a bit of acid thanks to our item selection) off cooldown. Constellations are like this, in case you still can’t see in the tool:

ok that is actually very helpful
one thing though, this compromise does use the crossbow right?
if I follow what you’re saying though that is not my best option and one of my initial questions was if 2h ranged was viable on such a build.
since you said no, I suppose I should be switching to a onehander and an offhand to make this work better
also applying your 50/50 rule is something you don’t seem to do yourself in this build, cold 384-627, acid 2178-2352
yours does bring up HP by 3k which is a huge plus, still the build is only at 7k total which also should raise questions about its viability right?

here’s my version of your version, this time with a onehander and an offhand, cold and acid percentages are as a result the other way around: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVAbjBZD

Surprised no one has thought of or mentioned the idea but you could try applying Speaker for the Dead’s conversion to Vile Eruption.

Edit:

Here’s a couple of quick and dirty grimtools i threw together based on Cold/Acid DEE whilst keeping to your theme StrUktO. They might give you some ideas.

3/5 Dreeg’s set

Main problem i saw was the low casting speed.

5/5 Dreeg’s set

5/5 Dreeg’s more or less solves the casting speed issue and adds a ton of Acid % when Secret of the Guardian procs.

Edit 2: D’oh. Didn’t see KoalaeiO mention Speaker for the Dead when i was skimming through the topic the first time.

You dont understand. Mathemical wise total damage or dps you will do will stay the same if the target has same resistance of each type or similar cycle of each use.

That’s because GDtools preview only shows the damage of a basic weapon attack, which we don’t use. In-between overcapped DEE, Blade Spirit, Leviathan and various other procs, you’ll have close to half split.

You have three sources of heal (Blood of Dreeg, Pneumatic Burst and Wayward Soul) on top of 12% damage reduction from Possession and 12% phys res from Aspect of Guardian, so it’s enough sustain. Won’t be able to facetank everything, but the build doesn’t need to.

I’d go something like http://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4JjyVg

Except targets never have the same resistances. Even with 85% res reduction you still can encounter a super resistant enemy. Had an encounter like this with my pure cold spellbreaker against a Hoarfrost Dreadguard hero, who also happened to spawn with three equipment pieces with cold res on each. Usual 50k crits went down to 5k.
The point of going two elements is having roughly the same damage output if an enemy is very resistant to one of them. If the split isn’t even, you will underperform against resists to higher damage and overperform against lesser damage.

Surprised no one has thought of or mentioned the idea but you could try applying Speaker for the Dead’s conversion to Vile Eruption.

Here’s a couple of quick and dirty grimtools i threw together based on Cold/Acid DEE whilst keeping to your theme StrUktO. They might give you some ideas.

3/5 Dreeg’s set

Main problem i saw was the low casting speed.

5/5 Dreeg’s set

5/5 Dreeg’s more or less solves the casting speed issue and adds a ton of Acid % when Secret of the Guardian procs.

wow, those seem like great options, especially the last one.
I initially dismissed the dreeg set because individual items seemed better overall and the very slim chance of dropping the entire set
still, I could try and even the 3/5 version seems decent enough

I’d go something like http://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4JjyVg

I’m quickly assuming you only changed the weapon and offhand, these look like great options as well, it seems I have quite some stuff to choose from atm!
I really like how you guys have helped me with this, it provided me with a lot of insight on how this actually works within the game and of course with a path to follow, thanks loads!