So it’s basically Abaddon from Dota, which was based on Arthas the Death Knight from Warcraft, heh.
I don’t even understand why anyone would thing bmage would do more Aether melee damage than death knight. Necro has Flat Aether and Aether rr. Synergy is really there. You just need the gear. This is a serious class combo, as serious as any
Exactly…this is why I believe a simple, quick solution to the lack of item support problem would be to add +skills to siphon souls, spectral binding and necromancer to the Krieg set.
The idea was to have triple mastery support on high lvl. legendary items in the first place.
I know this is a deathknight thread, but since you brought this up I’d like to ask why ritualist wasn’t mentioned for drain essence. I thought it would work pretty well with devouring plague for -res and other vit skills under Shaman.
Well yeah, this is true. I updated my DW aether Melee Sorc thread with an alternative setup with Defiler
But thing is, Defiler had a clear cut item support. Death Knight is lacking a little in the gear department. But it is true Aether melee will be good with Death Knight
Aether DK gives me the Chaos WB vibe, so, ugh…
Chaos WB is nicely supported though, be it ranged or melee
I simply forgot…YES, Ritualist would work very well.
And @ Chton. Yeah clearly Death knight gear needs some more love. Seems unfinished
Seems unfinished. Played with this http://www.grimtools.com/db/items/8794. Absolutely bruthal for an epic. Massive coversion base damage, flat, life steal, speed. All in 1. 180K cadence crits at lvl 70 with poor gear. Alas no legendary version…
I just started with the new DLC.
Taking a look and not knowing what item support is availbale, would a Thorns build work for Death Knight?
My old Thorns build was Soldier/Occultist with Soldier beefing up on tanking skills and Counterattack, and Occultist was only used for Bloody Pox to get the enemies to attack me.faster (and thus die faster).
Now, I noticed that Necro has that Skull aura skill whose second tier skill gives out 100% aether/vitality damage on being hit by an enemy, I find it pretty strong in the low levels so far (I’m only level 10 right now)
Does this scale well later on in the Harder difficulties, or is this just a bad build?
I’m thinking combine the Specter attacks with Counter for some Thorns fun. But no synergy in damage type.
Or is it better to combine Bloody Pox with the Necro skill as they are both Vitality damage? Might end up really squishy for a Thorns build, though.
After reading this thread, do I really need to retire my level 42 dk already…
I wouldn’t go that far. If you enjoy it, that’s all that matters. Maybe let it collect dust until an item patch or two. Worst case scenario.
Krieg set is good 
Yeah, I’m still not happy with it, but after rethinking things a bit aether melee with krieg seems like it could work pretty well.
More Krieger than Krieg v.07
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2By94DN
need to numbers tetris resists again after playing with it. Currently 30 skill points unspent depending on what direction I really wanted to go. Devotions would need to be reworked for most options, currently they’re kind of generic. Could go for torga’s hammer, shield maiden, menhir and buff up his blocking a bit. Seems a waste to go all in on overguard since he’s got a lot of big packet damage and the total damage negative on the transmuter annoys me. Retaliation is tempting, Counterstrike would give physical retaliation and I’ve got 68% conversion. Never having paid attention to retaliate before I assume they convert. More likely just max cadence and mash stuff. Probably 1/1 war cry for skill disrupt, weapon kind of overrides it other than that. There’s also a blue 2-hander with 45% conversion, but that drops me to 55% since only one Seal of Corruption.
Markovian Advantage, Zolhan’s, and Reaper Strike all work well. Necrotic Edge doesn’t play well with aether build. Krieg Stomp from the set, Doomforce, even the bull devotion all play well with aether conversion/trauma. Spectral Binding/Wrath and Siphon are great. It’s not bad. I wish the krieg set had some necro bonuses, but it’s workable. Its just hard to shake the feeling that a different combo could do it better.
After seeing this I wonder if there will be a reason to go battlemage over death knight with better necro support on krieg. Here’s what I came up with:
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbK9pOZ
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZPdkmZ0
Replace ingenuity with sylvaria’s essence on beronath and arcane sparks with dread skulls. Resistance reduction is still king and with mindwarp having flat reduction (which is actually less than it shows on grimtools, I have one with 31 flat and asked for trade on another one, it had 25 flat), can’t even take manticore. The big differences are 20% absorb, 25% crit and mirror against -18-33% (depending on setup) aether resistance. How much resistance aetherials have on average?
Compared to Reckless Power or Fabric of Reality (for this build at least) Spectral Binding is extremely efficient, giving more flat aether per point, tiny bit less aether%, health and OA.
Edit: I guess this could be a better way (lose 25% conversion, relevant for arcane currents, and one proc): http://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrGMxGN
It’s really hard to tell the better one, without even taking procs and devotions into consideration.
When/where does kriegs set start dropping?
Fleshweaver Krieg drops chest and helm.
Valaxteria (on the way to Fleshworks) drops shoulders and gloves.
Ternon (Aetherial Mage in Burning Cellar near Malmouth Outskirts rift) drops boots.
Cheers man! on elite/ultimate or only ultimate?
Reckless Power gives 15% more conversion, too. When I converted over to arcanist on the same build and changed only the necklace to suit it was about a 20% jump in auto-attack damage. Admittedly that’s basic attack, but since a lot of the build is big packet hits from blitz and krieg stomp with a goodly chunk of weapon damage and typically a big chunk of physical, I figure that’s a reasonable starting point of comparison. Arcanist conduit neck gives -10 aether resist on Olexa’s flash freeze. Not 100% sure it’s worth pressing the button, but it’s also something to consider.
Figure utility is about even, trades flat OA for OA% etc, so it’s mostly 15% conversion and a few other damage boosts versus -30something resist and 100% uptime life leech aether siphon (which adds another -10% resist, iirc. Not actually looking at the build at the moment)
In general I think it’s close enough that you could do either and argue it. I think with the extra -resist the DK might actually do slightly more damage, but it’s not by a huge margin because of less conversion. Can take some additional big nukes in arcanist, namely Callidor’s (and get it pretty high without changing gear much at all). Utility I feel like it’s more which classes utility you find more enjoyable to your play style.
Think the arcane spark might be necessary for either, though. Build is a bit light on energy regen. Arcanist could probably drop it if using Elemental aura, but it’s a lot of skill point investment for minor gain in damage because of the otherwise unsupported elemental conversion. The crit damage from the 3rd skill in that line might make it worth it, though.
Arcanist’s conduit bonus is worthless, since anything that actually matters can’t be frozen.
Krieg’s Wrath may have a bit high CD for single targets to matter and Blitz has 80% phys to aether from Krieg’s Grip. Last 20% get converted with how much conversion you have.
With 83% conversion, getting 20% elemental conversion isn’t a damage loss. Also a single point is enough to get more leech and % bonus than arcane spark.
Not sure if I can scrape enough points for something else though.
Yeah, my point is that if the current situation that both builds are close enough in power, do we really need to buff set for one of the builds?
I’ll probably roll with avenger and full magelord setup. If anything, Battlemage seems tankier than Death Knight (Death Knight does get siphon, but at the same time haunt is much better on Battlemage), so might as well play to that. Also I like ring set.