when I first saw the necromancer skills explained on the dev stream, I immediately wanted to play a plaguemancer cabalist using plague fiends and reduced item cooldowns
as I started to play it however, I really felt that it was a clumsy playstyle and could do much better in terms of overall damage
I have since dropped the plague fiends and have taken another direction
I’m still wondering though if you think it is a viable option, here’s a grimtools of my design, without gear:
I have now switched to a poison/vit caster that makes use of terrify and confusion
for that purpose I use ill omen, backed up by tainted eruption and the really great pants proc
it’s going smoothly so far and really melts away everything at level 37 (of course no tainted eruption or cool pants yet):
[spoiler]Since there’s so many Skelemancer threads flying around, I thought i’de try and do something with the Blight Fiend and the transmuter, though, I don’t think it’s worth picking up Unstable Anomaly until Mythical Circlet of the Great Serpent becomes available so I currently just have it as a permanent pet.
The initial idea I had was to build up Blight Burst as high as I could so the Fiends would be running in and bursting for big amounts of Acid/Vitality/Poison both when Blight Burst procs, on death and when Tainted Eruption goes off. Since Blight Burst and Virulent Death are spells, I wasn’t as concerned with stacking flat damage as it shouldn’t effect those.
There’s not as many items supporting Acid/Poison pets as I hoped so I filled some of the other item slots in with things like Viperfang Grips/Vestments of the Great Guardian to try and build up my OA and make it into a Hybrid by supporting the Fiend’s Poison with my own via transmuted DEE, applying Poison from my weapon with Burning Void and obviously, resist reduction from various sources including a fair amount from my weapon and offhand.[/spoiler]
So far, I’ve cleared everything up to Elite Log with few problems.
What I can say is: harbinger of souls and possession are exclusive skills, you can’t have both at the same time, and for this kind of build the better one is definitely possession, because as a caster with (almost) no weapon damage attack damage converted to health is useless, and given the nature of the skills so is casting speed. Besides possession fits better with your damage types (you have almost no aether damage (only foul eruption has got a little), your main damages will be vitality and poison/acid, with minor bleeding from bloody pox.
Also your health is a bit too low, you should try to move devotions to have more (above 10-11k if possible). You also want more defensive ability and offensive ability; for DA at least 2k or more.
I’d go for something like this: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4Dx05N
The damage% isn’t very high overall, but I didn’t really go through the gear, and probably a mythical version of the dreeg set would give you all you need.
Augments and components are still missing too, those should help in increasing DA and fixing the resistances. Also having some extra +skills on gear would be good, both for necromancer and occultist (+1 or +2 to occultist would give the highest benefit overall).
Spoiler!
So far, I’ve cleared everything up to Elite Log with few problems. [/QUOTE]
interesting, I can see how that might work
my focus was more on bein a plaguemancer using a pet, where yours truly is a pet build
What I can say is: harbinger of souls and possession are exclusive skills, you can’t have both at the same time, and for this kind of build the better one is definitely possession, because as a caster with (almost) no weapon damage attack damage converted to health is useless, and given the nature of the skills so is casting speed. Besides possession fits better with your damage types (you have almost no aether damage (only foul eruption has got a little), your main damages will be vitality and poison/acid, with minor bleeding from bloody pox.
Also your health is a bit too low, you should try to move devotions to have more (above 10-11k if possible). You also want more defensive ability and offensive ability; for DA at least 2k or more.
I’d go for something like this: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4Dx05N
The damage% isn’t very high overall, but I didn’t really go through the gear, and probably a mythical version of the dreeg set would give you all you need.
Augments and components are still missing too, those should help in increasing DA and fixing the resistances. Also having some extra +skills on gear would be good, both for necromancer and occultist (+1 or +2 to occultist would give the highest benefit overall).
I have gone mythical on the dreeg set and have indeed swapped harbinger of souls for spectral binding
I haven’t gone for mark of torment because to me it feels underwhelming and it’s just one skill too many in my setup, which would mean going back to clumsy
in a lot of other cases your point distribution maede a lot of sense to me though, which is reflected in the skill trees
I’m not using your devotion idea because I don’t want to miss out on rumor and especially tainted eruption, if I get into trouble along the way I can always respec and see if it’s a better way
which might be, because it’s still a bit low on HP