I have tried to add this devotion to builds various times (including to builds without pets) but it always ends up inefficient compared to other setups also I have tried to think about it logically and came up with various reasons why I think this devotion is rarely useful and needs changes.
Soldiers, demolitionists and inquisitors are likely interested in physical/fire, but are all having better ways to apply damage reduction consistently on groups of enemies. Oathkeepers are often paired with one of those classes for phys/fire, so the usefulness of the DR seems limited to the oathkeeper+arcanist combo.
Suggestion: change the DR for stackable -OA, this is very useful for all the above classes.
For knockback its even worse, all of the above mentioned classes are already having ways to apply knockback with their phys/fire skills
The nodes of the devotion offer nothing special except +3 max aether/chaos, the rest is just very easy obtainable stuff, health, resistances and damage. +5 max resistances to pets is maybe useful in SR150? The devotion doesn’t really double down on tanking potential like obelisk and tree of life or ishtak (in case of pets). The devotions lacks focus, feels mediocre both defensively and offensively, pet builds like only taking the first node.
The devotion seems at its best made for a retal tank with pets doing the damage (since only then all stats would be used), but it is hard to think of a build that would actually use it as such since those builds would already have DR elsewhere and prefer other blue tier 3 devotions. Only combo I can think of is fire pet build with arcanist+shaman.
I’ve found LoE to be most usefull on aether builds, believe it or not. The ones that convert fire to aether, anyway. Having some options for DR in devotions is nice, stackable OA is already present in abundance on other stuff. Although I can agree that bonuses from nodes could be a little bit better. Maybe changing % physical and fire damage to % all damage will do the trick, I dunno.
I only have 1 build that uses Empyrion and for me, it lines up perfectly with how it and the rest of the build works: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYrWoB2.
The build stacks a decent amount of weapon damage and full converts Empyrion to Aether damage with the weapon so it’s actually quite noticeable when it clears crowds, especially on Undead/Ch’thonians. The enemy damage reduction is also welcome feeling noticeable both in crowds and in Boss encounters, layers well with other defenses (Seal/Menhir’s Bulwark) and procs regularly to maintain the effect constantly.
Now, while I could just grab War Cry or Horn of Gandarr instead, I actually prefer having Empyrion for a few key reasons:
War Cry/Gandarr are another skill that interrupts casting Flames of Ignaffar. The longer I can channel Ignaffar uninterrupted, the longer I can keep applying damage and keep life stealing while minimising lapses. Typically in a fight I set up Seal and Word of Pain and for the next 10 or so seconds only need to apply Storm Box regularly, my rotation is very clean.
For War Cry, the damage reduction doesn’t have full uptime (though admittedly Horn of Gandarr does here barely).
Empyrion saves me valuable skill points on a build that doesn’t have spare points to throw around so easily.
The AoE damage on Empyrion meshes very well with Ignaffar where FoI clears in front of me and Empyrion clears enemies to my side and back that swarm.
This too. I remember Crucible runners testing Empyrion and Oleron paths on Physical/Trauma builds sometime ago and finding out that Empyrion was better?
I suspect that octavius build would do way more damage with azrakaa, so much so that using empyrion is an inefficiency.
As for the others, ofc there exist builds that use it effectively but funnily those are converted or with classes like nightblade/occultist which are not a thematic fit for empyrion. This is why I find it a very strange devotion.
Oh, by the way, I don’t believe LoE can have stackable OA reduction in the first place. For that you need a skill/proc that ticks, like Curse of Frailty, Blood Boil, Rumor, etc.
I don’t question the effectiveness of DR, but I believe the cost of 10 skillpoints invested in warcry is smaller than taking the empyrion devotion in exchange for alternative devotion paths. I did overlook however the gain of 1 button and the fact that if it is desired for a build to be completely purple, the common resists on empyrion increase in value.
Still I think the devotion has some other unresolved issues. Are there Empyrion pet builds?, what do they look like? If pets get the insane tankiness of +5 max resist only useful extremely deep SR, then why is this added to a devotion that intends for the player to be hit. It would make much more sense as part of the Ishtak devotion.
I don’t know about taking the proc on pets (as generally, you never want to take aggro on pure pets, hybrid is a different story). However, the +5% max resistance node used to be higher, enough that combining it with Eye of Dominion at one point meant you could do things like this:
Pierce, Poison, Bleed would also be overcapped with Aspect of the Guardian, Oakskin and Emboldening Presence.
If memory serves, it was nerfed early into FG and as a result, SR’s lifespan. Perhaps it was found that it made pets too durable for deep shard pushing.
I like using it on fire or physical build. 12/12 warcry give 25% DR while Empyrion give 24% with better uptime. It’s devotion route have synergy with Azrakaa, and on fire it give a more defensive setup compared to Ulzuin, you can also get Korvaak for second T3 devotion.
Almost every phys build that doesn’t involve war cry should use LoE for the DR. In 1.1.9.1 I think there’s enough builds that warrant using Azrakaa + LoE route over Azrakaa + Oleron. However…
(Test patch spoilers here. This is relevant because we already have an idea of how 1.1.9.2 will be)
In the ongoing beta test, we all know phys gets revamped, and the current state is that soldier builds are king for phys mainly due to 2 things - they’ve got the chunky weapon skills that can ignore the armor changes and they’ve got war cry which is more valuable than ever for the test patch. This means that the devotion pathing for the majority of strong phys builds now gravitate towards oleron instead of LoE. LoE might need a buff, but I’m certain it’s on the offensive side rather than the DR being useless. It’s just that most phys builds now have free DR.
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