Need some constructive criticism about this Vitality Ritualist

Hey guys. Long time no see and all that. I’m on a GD binge again because of the expansion and I’d like some criticism about this build I have in mind. Here it is -> http://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrGe81N

I’m lvl 41 now and it’s been a blast. Necro is very imaginative without it veering too much from the concept of the necromancer in general, so props to Crate for that, but I digress. Since I like this build very much I’d like to see it through to the end, so I’d like general, and not so general, pointers from someone more experienced about what I should change. I’ve allocated the skill points and devotions.

Hmm i think you should consider maxing devouring swarm for it’s vitality resistance reduction, at 16 points you have -60% RR that you can combine with the RR reduction of your necro :slight_smile:

You missing Devouring Swarm that a must have for a vitality damage build as a bonus it also debuff bleeding resists which a couple of your other skill have.

I made a fast vitality build on grimtools, i think it can deal a correct amount of damage, just the OA/DA are a bit low: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/4VxAAwpZ

Tell me what you think of it!

I was thinking about removing Grasping Vines or Blood Boil (or some points from multiple skills) and putting the points into Devouring Swarm, but I’ve heard DS isn’t that good and that’s why I didn’t take it. Will consider it more seriously now. Is Wending Totem worth putting 12 points in or 1 is enough?

I think you should consider a couple of things: which skills you absolutely want, and how many points to put into them.

Take devouring swarm: the resist reduction is very good, but it doesn’t scale well beyond the soft cap (above 16/16). It’s a very good skill also because the damage over time makes devotions proc very easily (a trait in common with grasping vines).

Grasping vines one of the very few crowd control skills you have. I don’t know how good it is damage wise, but not very much I think.

Storm totem provides only extra damage, it could be good, but I don’t know if you need it. It’s another good skill for devotion procs though.

Wendigo totem is similar to storm totem, but it heals you in exchange for dealing less damage. Good utility, not sure if you need more healing if you factor in drain essence and syphon souls, this looks really like a potentially immortal build if you can avoid getting oneshot.

On the Mogdrogen’s pact line consider heart of the wild up to 10/10, the extra health can never hurt, it may also be key to your survival, especially in the new content in ultimate. Oak skin is decent if you really need the pierce resist.

Drain essence, passing to the necromancer tree, could be a candidate to be the main attack, only I’m not sure how the damage is, I personally found it lackluster early on in the game, for the amount of energy it needs to sustain, but that could be better later in the game, with more energy regen and %vitality and aether. You will need to build some energy regen to sustain, I don’t think 50ish will cut it, but it shouldn’t require as much as aar from arcanist. For hungering reach on that line, I think I wouldn’t overcap it, those extra point could be more useful elsewhere. The damage lines should have as many points as possible to get good damage.

Syphon souls is pretty straightforward, I’d put as many points as possible and I like a lot the offensive ability debuff on blood boil. Depending on whether you care more about the damage or the debuff, you could take the trasmuter for 100% uptime, could be useful for bosses despite getting healed less.

Spectral binding I think would be a good source of both health and offensive ability. The buff to aether damage is a good extra, but probably not necessary (85% at level 12). Spectral wrath on its line is good, resist reduction is always good, I’m just not sure about the range, it feels short, but then again you will most likely find yourself not using the full reach of the other abilities unless you’re godlike at kiting, which still wouldn’t be optimal having to channel drain essence, and your main survival option should still be lifestealing through your abilities, while having enough health to actually do it (so not dying in one or two hits).

Now the one ability I think you should always have, and maybe even cap (though getting it to 6/10 should be good enough, beyond that it doesn’t scale very well): mark of torment. I think it will be a very very good “oh shit!” button, and it’s the only one you have with this class combination.

Bone harvest: I’m not too sold on this skill with this build. It could help giving you some extra aoe, and the buff on soul harvest is not too bad, but I think in the late game it’s not going to be very noticeable. If you like it though, I suggest putting one point on dread for the extra range.

Ravenous earth. It doesn’t really belong with the build you’re doing as a theme, but it has decent potential. There is some vitality damage, but what interests me the most is the resist reduction on foul eruption, it’s flat, so it would stack with the percent one from devoring swarm or spectral wrath. The poison damage on the main skill makes it good to proc devotions too.

Harbinger of souls is a good aura. I’m not sure how worth it would be to overcap it, but if you happen to have the points to spare go ahead, the cast speed is very good for drain essence.

With all the stuff there is, I’d love to have double the skill points :stuck_out_tongue:

If you are going vitality, Ravenous Earth is far better than any of the other AOE skills (siphon souls or bone harvest). Unless you specifically need Life drain, although DE should be taking care of that anyway.

RE’s fragments multiply the damage output with good placement (granted things can move out of the center but its still excellent) and its damage debuff is pretty huge. I suspect you can clear all of Veteran with just RE, not the best way to play of course, but I suspect it can be done and would be surprisingly fast and safe.

Not taking Devouring swarm is a HUGE mistake.

Vit transmuted Storm totem is good, not as good as RE, but its good. Its a fine choice, but there might be other better choices. Can go either way. Also this is highly dependent on some items, but those tend to enhance lightning (i.e. you can reduce recharge ALOT with a groble effigy green, I think it’d do that with a lightning build though)

I, personally, do not like blood pact enough to put that many points in it.

For a Vit build Devouring swarm is probably the best skill in the game. Maxed out at 26 its -70% vit resistance. That is stupendously powerful.

The bolded statement above is right, but for the wrong reason. RE is , probably, the best devotion procer in the game. Not because of the poison, although that helps, but because of the multiple fragments. Anything near the center can get hit by multiple frags and therefore can get to easily the double the proc potential. I suspect, but have not tested, that the inquisitor fire rune has a similar but initially stronger effect although not as good since RE keeps spitting out frags.

Grasping vines is an excellent devotion procer, I have often taken 1 point pure to put a deovtion like arcane bomb on it.

Try the following experiement at the training dummies. Put Twin Fangs devotion (0.6 devotion recharge) on Grasping Vines and check out the procs on two dummies. Then put Twin Fangs on RE and place it directly under one of the dummies. You will see about double the proc rate, often enough to get max procs on twin fangs. Considering grasping vines is an excellent procer that is pretty amazing.

What the best devotion proc to use is will depend.

Thanks for the feedback, Shaka Alek. I’d like to give some comments -

I’m definitely gonna take Devouring Swarm. Storm Totem is coupled with the Wendigo constellation, so it isn’t just damage, it heals me as well.

Drain Essence is excellent for now, but I haven’t completed normal with this build yet, I have to test it more on the higher difficulties when I get there, but I, too, think it’s going to make me unkillable if used correctly.

I took Bone Harvest only for the buff, but I might drop it if it turns out it’s negligible, which it might just be.

I’m conservative about taking Mogdrogen’s Pact and Spectral Binding because of the aforementioned unkillability (not a word), but I will if push comes to shove.

I already have Spectral Wrath and the range is quite significant. Ravenous Earth is clunky, I tried it and I found it lacking, but I haven’t tried it with any devotions.

I know you put wendigo on storm totem, but you’re not forced to keep it there, you can assign it to other skills, ravenous earth is an option, and syphon souls too, depending on which skills you’re taking.

For mogdrogen’s pact and spectral binding, for most of the game you’ll probably be fine without, but once you get to ultimate I’m not sure what’s the minimum life that will guarantee you won’t be taken down with one hit. You don’t really have to reach a point where it’s entirely impossible, at worst if you get killed by a random crit you can just try again, as long as you’re not playing hardcore. And if you really need it, you can respec if you don’t have enough hp. Try, see how it works for you.

Ravenous earth… I haven’t really tried it myself, I see the potential of the skill, just that. If you’re not confortable with it, you can probably work without, it would be a support skill after all.

Try out a few combinations as you go, I’m actually kind of interested in this build, it’s similar to a necro/arcanist one I’m doing.

However at 16 it’s already a -60%, in terms of skill point investment, getting the first 16 gives you 60, the next 10 only award you another 10%. It’s not bad to have that extra, but from an optimization point of view those 10 points are probably better spent on other skills, unless you don’t know how to use them.

Im running a Drain Essence Spellbinder (necro/arcanist) in hardcore using aether and vitality damage, I have a bit of insight on DE…

Currently level 96 with all but 1 piece of the Uroboruuk set --damn ammy. DE gets pretty respectable damage output later on via gear that adds flat ~3k aether damage to the skill for me (Uro’s ammy adds flat vitality damage as well).

Not taking advantage of the aether damage probably isn’t an option late game, it was a HUGE difference getting the Uroboruuk pieces and my Hex Launcer pistol.

200% cast speed is nice…depending on how many -resist skills I proc and criticals I’m hitting anywhere from 15k-30k damage per tick, which heals me 15% (Uroboruuk Effigy adds 5% life steal to DE) or more if Hungering Reach procs while sitting at 13.5k hp.

edit: Sitting at -99% resist aether if everything procs, -65ish resist vitality.

Pretty comically unkillable to just be holding down the right mouse button :rolleyes:.

How did you level up? Early on I find DE terribly slow/weak. I could go PRM+OFF, but I liked the idea making use of the necro tree from the beginning.

I went 2h bone harvester for most of leveling, swapped into DE somewhere during late epic difficulty.

My biggest issue leveling with it is fully skilled out it eats over 500 energy/sec lol.

Yeah, early on that’s quite a prohibitive cost. With AEE I think I could start using it after level 40-45, fully stacking energy regen devotions and components. Also things died so fast that I didn’t need to keep it up for long. Only I noticed that when DE reaches the base cost of level 1 AEE, the damage it deals is like half if not less, and that’s base AEE, without del vitality damage node.

Yeah, I know the life steal is strong but I’d take 1/3 the life steal for a damage buff any day. Its been a fun theme build but once I finish it its probably going to the shelf.