SSSo i just (almost finished) to polish my full runebinder magehunter it was one of the characters i had in mind to roll before expansion, with this one up and running i was thinking to try the dark side of the force : i really liked DE in those pre release streams and wouldn’t mind rolling something around it.
From what i’ve read on the forums it’s common knowledge that the way to go for a build like that is aether dmg with full uroboruuk set and hex pistol, even if i usually craft from scratch my own builds i’m curious to know the reason behind this.
Does Vit drain essence sucks and if yes why? Lack of synergies, poor itemization? Pls enlight me.
It seems to be just plain easier to stack Aether, my own experience with a hybrid DE + RE build was that you can get like 50% more damage by converting all Vit into Aether (via chest and offhand can give 95%) and stacking Aether damage and completely ignoring vit.
Basically the same core build was 50% more damage with better RR after taking a suggestion from Ptirodaktill.
I can’t say if this is always true but it seems like it. Its possible to stack Vit high and especially with shaman get vit RR high. But the combo of Aether and vit seems to favor aether, the Rattosh devotion is very limiting since it need three colors vs arcane bomb being easier and more RR. You really gain a lot more option when you just convert all vit to aether or possibly vice versa (not sure if that is possible) but for some combos like spellbinder its seems like aether is almost always going to be better.
Edit: Note I don’t use any Uroboruk’s in that build just the gloves that give 40 vit to DE and after applying all RR (except necro aura since it requires a hit) can hit 15.6k per tick on a dummy. And my main hand is focused on RE stuff since RE can do much more damage than DE. So you can do pretty serious damage with DE without Uruboruks and it may be the case that losing the set bonus extra DE damage is worth it for an offand with 55-60% conversion on it + that gun. I weighted conversion even more than some DE builds because RE is all vit so I wanted as close to 100% as possible. Even the 40% from the gun still winds up being like 75% aether on DE.
what do you use to convert vit to aether beside the hex pistol?
edit : actually i wouldn’t mind a quick gear suggestion (nvm i got it : diviner offhand, agrivix chest and that pistol)
Poor itemization is the main reason.
To get Aether -> Vitality conversion, you have to use underwhelming blue set, that still gives only 75% conversion, and 50% of those - only after kill). And without conversion, you want to max out Decomposition, not Drain Essense itself. And there arent many items with bonuses to Decomposition, you cant max it even.
On-topic, Cold based Drain Essence has zero support atm. That trasnmuter is absolute garbage I had to resort to using Vitality DE Gear to get back the ADCtH the transmuter removes (for no good reason imo)
The rest of the gear I used wasn’t too stellar either, overall my experience with Cold DE was very underwhelming. It really friggin’ sucks to have a cold spell in Necro Mastery only to find out it sucks donkey balls
I don’t know why, honestly I’m pretty happy with my aether/vitality DE Cabalist and elemental/cold DE Apostate… but everybody here complains all the time so I wonder if I should be less calm.
