Math is not my strongest skill, so I thought I’d ask for a 50/50 blend of mathematical assistance and build advice.
I’m currently levelling a S&B Purifier - Yes, I know, odd S&B combination, but it’s actually a tonne of fun and kills stuff hilariously fast. Progress as at L65 is here : https://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwElz82
I’ve got the following on-attack devotions bound to the following skills:
Bat, bound to Devouring Swarm - works well, a projectile-style shotgun skill firing a projectile proc.
Rattosh, bound to Savagery - this is mostly useful for bosses and tough mobs, and with a low 15% application rate, I want as many attempts to re-apply it when it’s required, given it has no cooldown.
Ulo, bound to Reap Spirit - I’ve only got a few points in RS and mainly use it as ‘baby Nullification’ on boss fights or on other tough mobs which can put up annoying buffs or debuffs.
Dying God, bound to Reaping Strike WPS - DG has a high enough proc chance and a long enough cooldown that it reliably comes up within a second or two of coming off cooldown anyway through natural auto attacks.
Revenant, bound to Necrotic Edge. I want to have as high an uptime on this as possible via overlapping skeletons.
It’s the latter I’m trying to work around the efficacy of. I know from reading @Malawiglenn’s devotion guide that using WPS’s to proc devotions is not ideal, but since Revenant has a 2 second cooldown and a lowish 20% proc rate, I don’t really have many other alternatives that I can see :
Siphon Souls has a high cooldown (5-6s) and so I’d be relying on luck and possibly damage ticks to proc Revenant on anything like a 2s interval, albeit AoE helps if there are more than 1 mob. Plus, best case scenario, it’s only ticking 50% of the time, with a 6 second cooldown and a 3 second duration.
Bone Harvest - not currently using as it requires heavy point investment and feels wonky to use as a S&B melee character, seems more caster focused.
Reaping Strike - moderate cooldown, plus haven’t sunk many points in, and don’t have any other viable options for on-demand proccing of Ulo, since for it to be viable for Revenant i’d have to use it every cooldown and hope for some luck.
Totems - can’t bind Revenant to them, not even Storm totem! Otherwise would be perfect.
So I’ve opted to bind to Necrotic edge, because I figure with a 25% WPS proc rate and roughly 5-6 auto attacks occuring during the 2s cooldown of Revenant, on average Necrotic Edge should proc about once per 1.5-2s which seems to be about the best proc-to-cooldown ratio I can find from my current toolset.
Yes I know there is some RNG involved in tying it to a WPS proc but I can’t see a better / more mathematically sensible option. Appreciate some feedback in either direction.
Seperate but related question - Necrotic Edge hits 4 targets at its current level and even more when overcapped - in a multi-target situation, does each hit have a chance of individually proccing the devotion skill? Or does the WPS proc as a whole count as one chance for the devotion to proc?
Should probably point out - the plan for using this build was essentially crafted around the easily craftable Bloodrender. Not yet identified the ideal shield, will worry about that when I come to it. Bloodrender should, through converting Savagery to vitality, make a massive difference to DPS.
Put Revenant on Siphon alright. AoE plus ticks = lots of rolls per second (the number of enemies hit by Siphon, to be precise, so if you hit 3 enemies you’ll have three 20% rolls per second meaning nearly 50% chance per second until those enemies die). Revenant never was demanding, and now that Skeles are immortal you’ll be having 6 of them always.
Ratosh or Bat to Ravenous Earth or Totems - that’s even better because you got AoE plus ticks TIMES the number of projectiles/totems.
Never bind stuff to wps if you can help it.
If this is vitality melee you should by all means be using Bone Harvest for the Soul Harvest buff.
I know your pain. It was in 1.0.4.0 or whereabouts when Crate made this limitation that pets cannot proc other pets (if it says “scales with player bonuses” it’s a pseudo pet). No Arcane Bomb on Totems or Devils. I also miss the times when devos could be bound to offensive auras.
Bind Ulo to something you don’t normally use in combat, so that you can cast it on-demand when you actually need it. I would suggest Bone Harvest or Grasping Vines.
Definitely consider binding something to Ill Omen as well.
I can completely understand in a multi-target environment. My concern is that when I really ‘need’ Revenant up, i.e. on a boss fight, you’re often only fighting 1 mob. So if my maths is right, on the ~6s cooldown of Siphon, you’ve got 3 ticks over 3 seconds each with a 20% proc chance and only 1 mob for those ticks to occur on - so that would be a combined 49% chance of it proccing per 6s-cd cast of Siphon Souls on a single mob - not exactly reliable
Soul Harvest looks amazing, the reason I’m not currently using it is because Bone Harvest itself feels extremely awkward to use as melee on groups - in group melee, you’re generally surrounded on all sides rather than them lining up in front, and Bone Harvest seems to have an extremely narrow width at point blank. It’s totally cool for bosses, I get that, but on trash it seems like it’s designed to constantly focus the bulk of its damage a few metres past melee range.
Plus I get the feel I won’t have enough points for both BH and SS and I don’t want to lose the sweet, sweet OA reduction on SS Maybe I’m just overthinking lol.
I’m gonna try binding Rattosh to Devouring Swarm, Revenant to Savagery, and Bat to Ill Omen, and see how that plays
Good idea, guess I only need 1 point in either to do that too
