Long time since I have made a post or had any activity on the forum other than lurking. Regardless, I had an idea the other day. Context to start:
I was playing around with this build by Ekkhrono: [1.2.0.3][HC] Chaos Shadow Strike Witch Hunter: DW Bloodlord’s Blade + Conduit of Night Whispers [Callagadra, Lokarr, SR76, Cr170][vid]
This build is fun as hell, props to you sir. I took it to level 80 or so, no conduit amulet, but the CDR mechanic is hella fun. Weirdly enough, the way the CDR procs it makes it so almost every skill will be off cooldown VERY frequently, regardless of the amulet. It ends up being very “bursty” without the endgame set up, probably much less consistent than when taken to the author’s intended end state.
The key bit that intrigued me is the standard attack hitting WPSs from Nightblade to add damage while waiting for Shadow Strike to be off cooldown. Since you use it as a LMB/RMB, the auto attacks and WPS just happen while its on cooldown, and you get your burst damage when it comes up.
While this set up is massively improved by the MI items used, giving a global ~20% chance for 100% CDR, I started looking at options for my favorite skill in the game, Ring of Steel. I wanted to try to couple this with my first ever character build, the Blademaster. Thematically fitting, it would be cool to see how hard it could spam, if at all.
I saw the Korba set-ups with 0.5s CD Ring of Steel (I’d link one but you can google this or search the forum, there are a lot it seems). What I didn’t want was to turn everything into cold. I wanted to see if Pierce damage could be the primary method of destruction.
I also wanted to retain as much of the quality of life that Ekkhrono’s build had in the devotion department. In particular, Aeon’s Hourglass and Behemoth devotion skills. The CDR from Aeon’s flat out resets your attack cycle, which gives you a crapload of flexibility. 3 movement skills and a OHMAHGAWD button that can (almost) instantly be available is very useful. Behemoth regen is amazing. It helps so immensely to have a constant safety net of healing, particularly when combined with ADCTH and your alternate OHMAHGAWD buttons (see:potion&pneuma).
With this in mind, I played around for a bit and came up with the following: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWD9YdZ
I am sure anyone that has played this game for a bit sees the gaps in the build. This is where the topic subject/title comes in: Can anyone help me plug the holes?
What I am trying to do with this build:
- PIERCE (or physical, but much less desirable)
- RoS primary skill.
- RoS on LMB/RMB, auto attacks with WPS fill gap during cooldown.
- minimize RoS cooldown (Servitor Slicers and Blood Briar Ammy have to stay, sorry for posting the impossible greens. I think the Pierce Resist is unrealistic with what I used. Only other option which is icky, is Pitmaster axes). Regardless, its at 0.8s CD now, I don’t want to budge on these items.
- Belgo Relic for -1s CDR as often as possible, proc’d from any source.
- Keep Aeon+Behemoth for QOL.
Big holes I see:
- Resists are kind of dooky and very much red-lined to Ultimate acceptability, let alone anything beyond.
- Devotions are not my strong suit. I have a spare point just floating for DA/HP. These could be cleaned up with the intent of maximizing offense/defense but maintaining Aeon and Behemoth.
- Skills have a good chunk of play, about 30 points or so that are not mandatory for anything. I spent them to shore up defenses, but there must be a better way to go about this?
- What devotion proc on what skill?
I could go on, but I already posted a wall of text. I feel like I just need another set of eyes (or more) to figure out the rest.
If you took the time to read this and made it this far, thank you! If you are able to provide some feedback, even better. This community is great, and I wanted to give a big shout to Crate for making a stellar game. Any help with this is appreciated. Hoping any feedback will give me something to work with when I get off work in a few days.
