Devotions: A how-to on maximizing them

Why???

DG has suffered enough as it is. Have you read its lore? :rolleyes:

Aye.
So he needs less of those heretical elementalists abusing his power, and more earnest followers of the one true faith!
Pity they can’t add chaos damage on critical.

offtopic: Ah, this is my rp side, i only play Paladins in arpg’s, mmorpg’s, loyal to my class xD, i made 3 inquisitor pure level 100, one used kalastor (pure fire ofc), another used storm box of elgoloth (pure lightning ofc) and another rune of hagarrad (pure cold ofc), i used what i could, the itens i have acumulated through my playtroughs etc (kinda of ssf style).

Now im tweaking one by one, min/max (mid tier, not veteran like the guys here), adding the strenghts of oathkeeper, fixing holes in the build, like you said “test the build to see how it runs and adjust accordingly”, xD.

Thats why i really enjoyed your topic :D.

ok guys, on-topic, some suggestions for melee-defensive, from must-have to like to have?

Ghoul, Behemoth, chariot of the dead, targo, obelisk, etc?

Which ones is must, which ones is nice? (some constellations to add?)

It’s hard to tell without a GT link.

But for S&B, obelisk is without question the best defensive devotion.

Targo is also really really good. The trouble with it is that you seldom can afford the devotion points for it.

Ghoul is the best for auto-attacking builds (e.g. righteous fervor).

Chariot of the dead, behemoth, and harp - all excellent on cooldown-reduction focused builds. To explain, it would be easiest to use chariot as an example:
Chariot has - 18s CD, 7s duration. 18 - 7 = 11s downtime.

So the more I can reduce my cooldown, the smaller this downtime becomes.

E.g. With 40% CDR, (60% * 18s) - 7s = 3.8s downtime.

This means, that for ever 10.8s in the game, 7s will be spent with you having +130 DA, +150 armor.

If you start stacking this with things like the eternity relic (-1s CD every 4.5s), then you can almost always have chariot buff up.

This was basically how a soulrend breaker survived.

Chariot is imho mainly for OA reasons (though the procc is really nice).
55 OA + 4 % + Cunning…really good, even more for Nightblade builds.

Ok, finished the list of transitory constellations.

Edited OP with korsar’s/myhr2’s suggestions

Just a small suggestion:
Since this is for new players, they might be better off if you use the sctual names instead of abbreviations like SotH.

Might help them if they don’t need to look around in your post what SotH meant.

I only ever use abbreviations after spelling out the name once. :eek:

Is it too unclear?

EDIT: List of abbreviations added

Sometimes I’m guessing what people do with that energy they saved when using abbreviations :smiley:

I usually scratch my balls with that time. :stuck_out_tongue:

Interesting.
Looks like I’ve been quite into shit tiers so far.
Though I’m not actually about to disagree - I could see Affliction as having a minor role in retal builds, though.

I wouldn’t take affliction just for the vit decay retaliation damage. It has no %retaliation damage bonuses at all, and is terrible to unlock

I dunno, for poison retal I’d try to get Murmur, so unlocking hasn’t been the problem. As for it’s actual use, yeh, impressive is something else.
Not sure what it lacks, though.

Why u put Ulcama on the “shit tier”? I mean, isn’t it helpful for melee vitality builds? It provides a decent flat vitality dmg on a low cooldown with a great life steal. Am I wrong? =(

The “shit” tier is a subjective one. Ulcama has a bad rep because while the healing is nice, it’s not on a competitive level with ADCTH, it’s also limited to Vitality build, and it has a poor return in terms of affinity points.
But yeah, I like it too on Vitality builds.

I feel that by taking Ulcama you prevent yourself from taking dying god, manticore, and rattosh. All of which are far better choices.

As for adcth, bat does a far superior job than scales.

The only real benefit offered by ulcama is its energy regneration. However this can easily be mitigated by taking things like viper, and revenant’s first node, that new lotus constellation, or even lantern - all of which are conveniently placed along the way to DG/rattosh.

There is absolutely no place for ulcama in a vitality build looking for respectable resist reduction.

EDIT: In other words, while ulcama, when viewed independently, may seem ‘good,’ the opportunity cost which comes with investing in it is far too steep for the returns it offers. It’s essentially a honeypot trap.

Ic. Got it. Tks guys.

I like where this guide is going.

Some suggestions:

Explanations on why a devotion is crap or godly.

Examples of devotion trees with one way of obtaining that devotion tree. For different build structures and damage types.

Sorry. L2p n00b

EDIT: The explanations on why a devotion is good/bad is actually a great suggestion. I’ll definitely get around to doing that. But I’d like to add in the different build structures first which, as you can see, is in my outstanding to-do list at the top