The flat aether is entirely irrelevant here it may as well not exist, we cannot boost it in any meaningful way alongside our other types and resist reduction will never be great either. Boosting cold/vit together is an option, but honestly the gear support isn’t great even with perfect gear and the devotions mishmash isn’t so amazing either. Going pure cold, or acid with cold->acid items, ends up being much superior. Even if you go cold/vit the huge oa/da bonus outweighs the vitality bonuses. % bonus aren’t nearly as valuable once you’ve stacked up 1500+% to a bonus and the vit decay while nice isn’t super valuable
The lifesteal amount is huge no denying that, but this build has access to a surprising amount of survivability and solid amounts of lifesteal can be obtained without it
I’ve yet to try the 2h variant with soulrend, but there’s no doubt it’s very strong. DW version is absolutely insane for both cold and acid! Super high auto attack damage and massive ss hits
I’m gonna throw together a tree and devotion set, let me know what you think.
Based around running level 75 then 94 Soulrend… not sure what else to itemize with. http://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwRJkkV
posted the 2H build i’m currently using. farmed a soulrend and it went from strong to silly. used green weapons in veteran and later used a nightshade reach (lvl 58 leg.) until i could switch to soulrend (similar stats, but acid based, so lacking a bit of synergy with the cold themed build).
link is on 1st page of this thread.
about halfway through ultimate now and it still feels like a wrecking ball. most trash groups basically die before the initial bone harvest cooldown is over. single target damage is a bit weaker than a DW build, but so far its still pretty good.
champs usually die before i can throw a 3rd bone harvest, story bosses live a bit longer, but not all that much.
@tomadark For the DW reaper build which set would you go for gear? And is reaping strike worth it when leveling for the leech? And stat distribution would you go full physique?
Ok, i was tinkering with Grimtools last night and came up with this devotion setup for a mostly cold (vit/acid/pierce on the side) dw build. Tried to pick up as much ADTCH as possible as well.
Is Leviathan still worth it, or is it too expensive?
Edit: The gear is not correct. I was thinking of going with four pieces deathmarked, open hand of mercy, and a different amulet untill i get better gear.
thanks for the info . What I did was , im still only lvl 28 , im sticking to cold and vitaly dmg . Im also DW at the moment . Any ideas as to what to add more too , phys , cunning ? ? ?
I havent added any points here . You are right , its mainly lifesteal im looking at , I think later in the end game it will be difficult but in the devotion tree have to focus on cold/vitaly skills and health increase and resistances .
looks pretty similar to the one i played. I’d trade elemental storm for acid spray. storm is 32 flat elemental RR which only really boosts cold damage in that build, while acid spray is 28 flat RR for all types. and you’ll have quite a lot of acid, vita and aether damage in that build as a byproduct of lethal assault, soul harvest and spectral binding and from the wps. also some pierce on the nightblade nukes. and some unconverted physical for all attacks other than bone harvest. so RR vs. all types will probably make a bigger difference than a tiny bit more RR vs. the main damage type that will make up less then half of the total weapon damage (and a bit more than half for bone harvest).
i think i went for kraken first (using spider and eel for the affinity prerequisites). then viper afterwards (i think that adds just enough blue so you no longer need eel and can refund the points).
IIRC i went for murmur after that and picked up behemoth and manticore.
then crane, rattosh and finally dropped remaining points into chariot.