hello! this is most, for anyone who remembers me from many years ago. i’ve always loved cocktail-spam despite its lackluster damage, and i finally managed to make a decent enough build around it. this is a hardcore viable build because i only play hardcore.
we have 22500 health, 3000 da (+250 oa shred), and 2700 health regen (2500 outside of inquisitor’s seal). this turns out to be tanky enough for most content! it facetanks mad queen without proccing blast shield, and it facetanks lokarr without our health bar even moving. i am trying to farm mythical scales of beronath, so i dabbled in challenger crucible and was able to facetank virtually everything except double reaper of the lost, which requires a bit of kiting in between blast shield procs. i’ll try gladiator once i get the belt, since an extra 96 damage absorption is a tremendous upgrade (that’s like a free level 9 sanctuary at all times!!).
virtually nothing makes our health bar move, but we have blast shield if they somehow chunk us, as well as mark of divinity in case things get out of control. i usually don’t like playing with mark of divinity because it is kind of corny, but it has so many relevant stats for our build that i went with it.
the damage is not great, i will be the first to admit this. mad queen took about 15 seconds i think. the nice thing is that our damage is all aoe so we can just stand there throwing cocktails, safe inside our seal, while everything around us melts. the weapon is very important for damage; an extra 2s duration to cocktail effectively boosts our fire (and lightning i guess, thanks wyrmscale handguards) damage by 50%. it is unfortunate and strange that the weapon is a mace and not a scepter, as its fire damage roll is quite piddly as a result.
the rest of the gear is all relatively easy to farm. despite the plethora of mi’s, none of them have especially powerful rolls, except for maybe the zarthuzellan’s codex. i went for rolls with additional fire/elemental damage as our fire damage is quite low, but the downside to this is that it overcaps our elemental resist by a ridiculous 150+. maybe losing some damage to shore up our resists would be correct? we are only overcapped on poison by 10% and aether by 18%, so that should probably be rectified. the living ring was a pretty lucky drop as well since it covered some much-needed resists, but we can swap around conduit suffixes and drop an ancient armor plate for a third ugdenbog leather if absolutely necessary.
i am very happy with how the devotion tree worked out, with nary a point wasted. phoenix gives us yet more flat damage absorption as well as some much needed fire damage without having to invest heavily into red or green, allowing us to go blue and yellow for some heavy defense. with giant’s blood and tree of life active we have about 7000 regen, and tree of life additionally buttresses our energy sustain, which is important as cocktail costs an unreasonable amount if you ask me!
for resist shred we have 23% from eldritch fire, 37% from thermite mine, 29% from aura of censure, and 30 from agonizing flames, totaling 119. i like deadly aim because it helps against trash, which the build is pretty slow at handling, but as we are never critting bosses we could put the points into temper for yet more da. you could also play around with flashbang for fumble/da shred, but i really do not like pressing buttons!!
this build is pretty easy to level with, as it’s comprised mostly of easily-farmable mi’s. you probably want to use bat devotion on cocktail early on until you have enough sustain/mitigation from inquisitor’s seal.
as for upgrades, i am desperately in search of a mythical scales of beronath!! revered with cult of whatever would let us swap out our two vit/poison augments for aether/poison, which would give us a comfortable aether overcap of 40%. a well-rolled gollus’s ring would probably be pretty good, but i haven’t taken the time to farm one yet. a well-rolled pair of stoneplate greaves would undoubtedly be better than the wyrmscale footguards. this is very strange and niche, but i am also wondering if we should replace the ancient armor plate; assuming flat damage absorption works like it did in titan quest, physical is mitigated twice: once for the physical damage reduced by armor, and again for the physical damage not reduced by armor. does having 100% absorption still trigger the double reduction? if not, replacing the plate with another ugdenbog leather and going down to 95% armor absorption would be correct. i am not sure how to test this.
any insight into improving this build would be greatly appreciated. after i get scales of beronath i will try gladiator crucible and shattered realm, and probably die in the process as i am not a great pilot. i would love to see what the build is capable of in the hands of a skilled player though!
, will be fixed in 9.2