Some of you may or may not remember this topic about purple devotions and the general consensus that purple devotions by comparison are worse than then other colors.
With this build I will definitively close and or relight this 5 year old conversation.
What this build lacks in basic survival, it makes up for 10 fold with dps. The average doombolt doing well over 200k with 183% cast speed and 36% critical damage. This build is the definition of “glass cannon”
But the point isn’t to be tanky. It’s to prove the point that no one asked for! Purple devotions are and can be some of if not the best possible choices for very specific niche builds. While I agree that the average build would benefit from other devotions, elemental casters, specifically glass cannon builds, benefit more then any other subclass from the purple tree.
Yes, I understand the issues with this build; yes Kiasan does and will always 1 shot me; however I can kill him in around 10 seconds or less. The game turns from “Fight to stay alive” into “Kill them before they kill you” This is not by any measure an “average” build. Moreover it is NOT an example of what you should do. It is simple proof that the purple skill tree has more than enough potential for niche builds.
i think there are some fundamental misunderstandings about the ongoing argument about devos worth there
It’s not about “basic” survival (which you could easily have obtained with those devos too btw),
And the point is indeed to be “tanky”, or rather “as” fairly simiarly tanky enough as other builds, because those other builds can still kill Kaisan in under 10sec no sweat, but don’t have the fear of 1shots (and can in some cases even handle Celestials without worry too)
It’s a builder perception to some that tradeoffs should be either worth, or to some degree “equal”, so you’re not arbitrarily “selfgimping”/sacrificing a lot of stats going X devo, when you could get the same, everything, and moar simply going a different devo.
On a personal note i think fun is also an element, and not everything has to be peak tiptop hyper-optimized,
but when there was a time where you outright ended up with a bunch less base stats, on the same build, just for going south devo, that can add validity to the optimization gang, as they were just that far apart before fun or dmg comparison aspect weighs in.
*which has been addressed over time, and purple devos have been buffed since
I’ve taken Sage and Seru on one character in my 4k hours of playtime. And I’m never taking them again. The purple devotions are mostly physical, there’s not enough generic ones or elemental ones to reach 16 points.
The purple cost for Seru and Sage needs to be reduced to about 8.
Seru has the highest devotion sum cost, along with Vire (30). Also, its support is split between Aether and ele, making it a bit of a niche pick class-wise. I find it useful only for some cases of Arcanist-based classes. I tried it with Inquisitor classes but always found points spent on Sage + Korvaak to produce more rounded builds instead of Sage+seru
Yeah, there is definitely no cannon here, just glass. You missed all of the RR devotions you could miss (Widow, Murmur, Crown) and melee part of your build is merely tickling.
On subject of “glass cannons”: 90% of the uber damaging specs can also be made tanky nowadays if you know what you are doing.
On subject of devotions:
Seru: great nodes, decent proc, limited use in builds because hard to get to
Leviathan: great nodes, mid proc, used quite a bit
Sage: probably the best nodes, proc is below mid, usually used just for the first four nodes
Ulzuin’s Torch: good nodes, one of the best procs (probably the best when converted), widely used
Ultos: good nodes, good proc, easiest tier-3 to get to probably
But they are two of my earliest attempts at builds, and not especially strong characters. (Tri-elemental Cadence witchblade and 2.5 elemental Forcewave Tactician.) Pretty fun builds, but they will not be featuring in any top 20 lists anytime soon. Or top 100 lists for that matter.
One redeeming virtue is that if you have one of them, getting the other is pretty doable since they at least do share purple and green requirements. (Although also fitting in RR devotions is pretty much a lost cause at that point.)
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