If you had seen my first post in the Drizzito’s build thread i mentioned i used double Eternal Rot for procs and solving the duration issue.
Double Poison Nova procs with Tainted Eruption is such an amazing burst and AoE, you gotta try it.
Judicators nice for OA/DA, resistances and all that stuff but mainly for Energy Regen.
I think Hourglass would cost a lot of damage and AoE loss plus CDR isnt necessary in this build imo. Build thrives on the full aggresive procs and acquires a lot of OA and damage from the devotion setup.
I cycle between Overguard and Menhir’s Bastion for bosses and they already cover each other’s duration 95%.
Even Overguard Transmuter isn’t that necessary thanks to the Relic choice i made.
Just did my first test today: I managed to include Hourglass with the cost of losing about 200 OA and Manticore devotion (had to compensate for its mandatory proc with good old Mythical Black Star of Deceit).
Equipped double Mythical Ring of Eternal Rot + Mythical Venomlash.
In this setup I have 630% increased poison duration in my character sheet, but the resists were real PITA to cap.
I don’t use transmuter in Overguard. Didn’t go for Menhir’s Bastion relic, I think the damage loss is too big and damage absorbtion is not added to Possession, it only overlays it and we get 15%, not 27%.
I cleared 150-170 in 25 min on my first and only try (with 3 blessings). Hourglass works wonders, helping with defences a lot. Not even talking how Hourglass and increased duration affect damage, it’s pretty obvious. However didn’t feel safe, it’s harder to play than 2 sorcerers posted here for example. Definitely requires more testing, I just wanted to share first result.
EDIT: Ok, 630% increased duration seems to be overkill, since dots from the same source do not stack. But my damage seems much better now, is it Hourglass that buffs it so much? Definitely needs more testing.
Hey, you don’t need 3 MIs for the Octavius build, I can clear 150-170 the same buffs as yours in 18-20min quite reliably with this one https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62a650DV
Dont forget Focused Gaze adds another 100% duration to DEE aside from 460% ish. Im still testing between Wendigo’s Mark and Wayward Soul and i like both of them.
I think its safe to say this a pretty solid and strong build for 150-170 without needing any MIs also.
Thanks for sharing - any thoughts on Tactician instead Witchblade for the build? Just wondering as i have a 85 WB and contemplating on leveling it or just making a new Tactician?
I think a Witchblade or Deathknight is better than Tactician despite the fact the the set was obviously made for Tacticians. I took a look at the Inq bonuses:
2 to Steel Resolve and Vior: Meh, these two are easy to softcap anyway.
12% armor to WoR: Good, but Blood of Dreeg or Mark of Torment is better for survival. It’s not the physical hitters that kill you with this build anyway.
1 Inquisitor: Actually meh, you only need a few support skills from Inq tree which are all easy to softcap.
No phys RR
The seal is useless as you are too tanky for MC (thus don’t need it) but would need to hit and run all the time in 150-170 (thus don’t need it either).
I think Octavius is a bit like Krieg, the latter was originally made for Battlemage but everyone chose to make Death Knights with it anyway.
Yeah, I was going to add the non-green version myself, but since you’ve already done one, I’ll add yours
The rings are good choice, extra RR seems very helpful (but Judicators are safer, more regen). I wanted to go for Mythical Boneshatter Treads, they seem to give -210DA debuff.
Why do you go for crane in devotions? It seems useless. Ulo at least works as Nullification.
And the most important question: The Pummeler has 10% piercing, does it affect Forcewave? Because if it does it is 10% damage loss. I guess it’s still ok for budget version, but I would like to know how much better Mutant Bludgeon is. Btw, you can obtain one from vendor, so just refresh him many times, and in the end you’ll be rewarded.
I’ll add your version as a budget one anyway. It seems to me the main downside of your version is small stun res without Overguard.
Vestments of the Great Guardian is definitely the way to go, but why do you use that helm? With Dreeg helm from set you can get +2 skills to Occultist mastery. And why do you use Haunted steel and Restless remains? Lifesteal only works with weapon damage and we basically have none.
Rings are definitely better than Judicators, huge damage boost. Mythical Widow’s Sting epic ring is also very good.
From my testing I’m now thinking I have to let go the Hourglass and lean to something like your setup, because Mark of Divinity is too good to pass.
Witchblade all the way. Actuanpanda is absolutely right. Occultist has RR debuff, look at it as 25% damage increase. Plus blood of dreeg. Deathknight is ok, but I doubt you can make a budget version with no MI, because it doesn’t give +100% poison res like witchblade.
You could switch Solemn for Ulo and our devotion routes are basically the same, like Crane vs Panther , what’s the diff :D?. I prefer Solemn since I’m bad at timing the Ulo proc.
I have no idea why they added 10% armor piercing to a freaking hammer, we lose a bit of immediate damage but at least it doesn’t affect the DOT.
Edit: Did they add 5% crit damage to Panther in a recent patch? Looks interesting although I doubt it will make any big enough impact.
Still testing and another successful run around 22 minutes.
I take Haunted Steel because Blood Burst and the Helm gives 33% Weapon damage to DEE and it helps quite alot although not significant but different sources of damage make it valuable.
The Helm also gives quite bit of HP and has high flat energy regen so i really see no reason to not use that helm as BiS.
Vestments of the Great Guardian was my initial choice right away and it is perfect for the build with all the bonuses it grants. Another fat source of Energy Regen.
Im using Footpads of the Grey Magi again, i find the 100% reduced entrapment duration to be amazingly invaluable since i have been in a lot of hard situations. Proc has 50% uptime and gives 15% physical resist, in game with the proc i have 54% physical resist which is insane and makes me able to facetank quite strongly.
Dreeg’s Affliction is an option, i liked Menhir’s Bastion for the bonuses but im quite happy with the Citadel since it increases my DA a lot and i got 4% DA rolled as bonus so with procs i see around 3.1k DA.
Stun resist is almost capped and the only slightly lacking thing is armor but high phys resistance and increased DA, HP, Shield make up for it more than enough and im quite satisfied with this build.
I’ll test double Widow Sting and i do like the proc, its quite strong but still Eternal Rot is BiS for HP bonus, amazing proc and especially duration bonus.
The only undecided part for me is the Devotion. There are different options to take and i can’t tell which one is better.
But i have never thought Hourglass fits to the build in any way tho
I think Bat has better sustain and eases up the devotion path compared to Wendigo.
Im not a big fan of Rumor proc but i also made it fit in this at the cost of some OA and slight HP.
I like the modifications you made to this build. I put together a version that uses Hood of Dreeg like Zhuugus suggested because I think getting the set bonus (+2 to occultist skills) is too good to pass up. Although you lose some DA, health, cast speed etc. you gain a decent proc skill and elemental resistances which frees up some options for components.
The loss of % weapon damage to DEE made me decide to forgo adcth completely in favor of more hp regen based setup (although I’m not sure how this would impact survivability, it would need testing). Instead of Haunted Steel I opted for Seal of Blight which adds valuable % crit damage.
As for devotions, I dropped raven and viper in exchange for hawk and filling out behemoth while also adding 1 point in revenant for energy leech & 2 points in crossroad for the 10% health). Let me know what you think.
You can easily allocate Hawk without altering anything so i think i’ll also put Hawk instead of Raven.
I think the build doesn’t really require hard skill points thats why i didn’t really bother with the Dreeg Helm since its lackluster compared to Voice of Dreeg and i even switched MB with Citadel and even -1 Soldier didn’t really affect the overall build.
Sure could it use more skills points? Hell yeah but its not an obligation neither necessary.
I’m hard set on using this although i liked your 750+ ish hp boost and you can still replace HS with SoB but these are minor changes and with Hawk its the same crit damage bonus.
And again if you want to put Murmur in its a different setup and for some people every possible RR is a must take and i also noticed things die faster with Rumor proc on.
You can also easily replace Dreeg’s Affliction with Citadel to reach 17k HP again. As i said bonus points from Hood of Dreeg barely affects the general outline of the build and i firmly stand with my Voice of Dreeg choice.
I agree, the changes I made were minor overall. It was just to give an idea of what the build would like using Hood of Dreeg over Voice. Thanks for your thoughts.
As a returning player I have some questions regarding crucible farming without a lot of the new mythical items.
In terms of farming speed (gladiator 100-150), how does a SnB Aether DK compare to a Cadence witchblade (like the one linked 5. for 150-170 builds)?
Got a witchblade up to hc ultimate but its damage doesn’t seem great (although I lack most of the items but not sure how much the damage will change when I have everything).
One big issue I noticed is the super low OA which gets me like 95% hit chance and 5% crit vs level 110 bosses, often not even giving me assassins blade procs.
Due to that I tried changing the devotion setup a bit. Anyone want to critique my attempt at merging the best of its survivability with some additional OA/damage sources?
Basically I dropped ishtak since I dont like that it only has like 30% uptime, which doesnt seem like it’s crucial for face tanking stuff for extended periods of time.
I also dropped tree of life since passive hp regen just doesnt seem that appealing compared to the damage I receive and how much leech heals me.
I could also drop light of empyrion for another 6% OA and some more leech, but that devotion actually seems pretty strong assuming the damage reduce stacks with warcry. Does it stack?
Thanks in advance to anyone taking the time and answering my questions!
Aether DK is roughly equal to cadence witchblade in farming crucible. There will be a difference only if one has offensive devotions and the other has defensive.
You said yourself you lack good items, so obviously you’ll become stronger when you get them. Withblade is one of the strongest classes in the game.
Your lack of OA is due to lack of items. If you play HC you should think twice before going more offensive, but campaign is so easy for a witchblade that you can do whatever you want with your devotions, you won’t die unless you mess up really hard. For crucible I’m convinced defensive setup is the best for a HC player. Don’t even try 150-170 without the superdefensive version presented here.
Your devotion choice is totally fine for campaign and for 100-150 crucible probably too.
I was told that Empyrion damage reduction does not stack with War Cry. Still a great constellation.
Just a minor change to BWC sor: swap Tome of Arcane Waste for Aldanar Vanity, better proc, the char has more DA and burn dmg, only lost 8% crit bonus and some OA(but 2x coils already grant a huge source).
Thanks for your reponse.
Been doing very well with the devotion setup I posted, just wished I could get Targo as well without dropping anything major but I dont think it it possible.
Another question though, what exactly makes Witchblade particularly good for a physical build like this?
Wouldn’t arcanist or necromancer instead of occultist work similarly well?
DK has same -% phys res and a bit less OA but health and more leech for example.
And wouldn’t inquitor as a secondary class outshine either of the others? 18% OA, 20% crit from deadly aim, several defensive and offensive bonuses from word of renewal, maybe even seal if some skill points can be spared.
Just seems superior to CoF and BoD in terms of the bonuses provided or what am I missing here?
The flat -phys from the flames of ignaffar transmuter doesnt stack with break morale, right?
