Definitely not easy to optimize, but yea, it is a ton of fun. I think my current CDR is sitting at about 75% on SS? Its pretty much right at that break point, which isn’t bad considering this is my first Ulti character and I’m using him to farm everything.
One of the best parts of the build is the fact I can just use SS to get places, and not actually have to walk. And the fact I don’t have to invest in MS is really REALLY nice, as why bother getting 135% MS when I can just run off of SS’s 500% MS? So long as you know where you are going and rotate the camera, you can cover tons of ground near instantly.
And also, most of the build works off of just random junk you find, or Elite Vendor gear. You don’t need super specific legendaries to make the build work, and for the longest time I actually ran the entire right side of my character page on exclusively vendor gear. I still check vendors all the time for ring replacements and such, or for the 1 in a million Seer’s of the Grove amulet (Once I get enough scrap up again I’m going to just scrap dump into amulet, as now I don’t need any more stuff for scrap-dumping for resistances), but the build works fine, and I’ve just ran on the stuff I found for the most part. And many epics in the level 50-65 range work wonderfully for the build.
I am sort of hoping that the Witchgods update may give us a few more devotion points to play with, because 5 more points would open up so much potential for my devotions that I have stretched to the absolute max atm. If I could grab Spider over Raven it would give me that wonderful retaliation AS slow, which would help a lot with how I freeze-lock enemies to reset their attacks, but as is I can’t afford to swap to invest in it without dropping a far more valuable devotion point somewhere else, and let me fill out a few nodes in Leviathan, Crown, and Blind Sage that would give me so much more damage for just 3 more points, still leaving one point extra floating that I could dump into something like a crossroads order point for more hp.
This lets you gain a wonderful 24% chaos resistance out of your devotions (16% more than the old devotion set), more spirit and cunning, a bit more flat OA and DA, in trade for a small chunk of OA%, Crit damage, and energy regen, which is more than worth it. I personally consider the change more than worth it, as the AS retaliation proc means you debuff the enemy AS by 45% instead of 25%%, which is a massive further reduction to their AS, which also makes Freeze-staggering easier by a lot.
Considering how much I have to give up on my ring slots for Chaos and poison resistance, this lets me open up another ring to use in it’s place easily. Also, the spider node does mean I also get the resistance to reduced damage from insects, which is a nice little boost for farming Derpanian hives, part of the Ancient Heart Tyrant run where you kill that spider in the cave, and a few other spots.
lol, pretty much what I had theory-crafted the first time around when I was planning out the build. You can condense the 2x Arcanist rings of Starpact down quite easily as well, as an Empowered Starfire has +2 Starpact on it, as well as some %elemental resistance, %cold, lightning, and frostburn, 40 OA, meaning your second ring can be used for either a super-resistance stat-stick, or just a powerful ring in general that fits what you need, like Band of Eternal Haunt or Closed Fist of Vengeance (Note, with CFoV, you actually have something like 60% AS slow. Meaning you just devastated most enemies ability to hit you, especially with the freeze-locking you can do).
Mmm… A guide to the devotion order, alright, give me just a second.
Start at crossroads green, get Scholar’s Light. Spec Crossroads blue, get Wraith. Get Harpy. Spec crossroads red, and get Rat. Spec Crown 3 points. Get Behemoth, and unspec Rat. Finish Crown, get Lantern, Throne, then Leviathan. Get spider and Sage. You should have everything if you do it in that order, with minimal respeccing, the only respec being Rat which you used to get enough red points to grab behemoth before using it to sustain itself, as the other crossroads points are actually needed to sustain the devotions (2 of them being specificly to sustain behemoth).
Do note, a fairly irritating part of the build is a rather weak early game, partially due to how you only get your first devotion procs near the end of normal. If you want, you can grab Falcon for a good chunk of time instead as a starter devotion, and unspec it later, as the green and purple points will help you get into other things you need faster with Falcon’s proc giving you a bit more early power. I legitimately felt more powerful in Elite than I did in most of Veteran, as the build heavily needs a LOT of points spent in general to start picking up steam, but I steamrolled almost the entirety of elite with it without any issues, and Ultimate has not offered me too many issues either.
OFF is wonderful for clearing trash, this is just a fact in normal-veteran, the only weakness is it has absolutely no boss killing potential. Literally no boss killing potential at all, as they are immune to the freeze component of the spell, making them immune to the damage as well.
I have a Fabius kill!. Ugg was he tough though… And dropped jack sh- for loot.
Also have the Aetherial nemesis down as well, nowhere near as tough, so long as I remember to overcap lightning resistance so he can’t just keep gibbing me with thunderbolts after he drops my resistances.
Screw Fabius though. I mean, I was specificly hunting for him, but screw him. Between Blade Barrier and Pneumatic Burst, getting damage on him and keeping it on him is insanely tough. If he didn’t heal himself so often, the fight would probably only last a minute or so, but the fact I have to struggle through his heals, and that his Blade Barrier can’t be Nullified (Honestly, this is really irritating. Only case of a skill I’ve ever seen that can’t be nullified.) makes him much tougher than he should be allowed to be.
How does this build do without having any points in Pneumatic Burst? I have a cold based spellbreaker at the end of veteran now and I’ve definitely been making heavy use of PB.
PB can be used early on when you dont have much cdr even go dw for better heals and stronger SS. Once you get decent cdr you will see the core of this build which is basically always frozen trash, low cd mirror and SS for big guys
Pretty much this. Trash is perma-frozen (literally. My Flash Freeze CD comes off before they break out of the freeze), I get more than enough healing off of pots as needed+ADCtH from my Haunted Steel. Also, due to how low this build’s HP pool is compared to some other builds, because its based on two of the squishier classes, a %max hp heal isn’t that impressive compared to a flat hp heal. I can easily heal half my hp on every shadow strike, of which I have brought down to a 1 second CD. If I really need a burst of healing, I can pop the Haunted Steel active, or use the potion. As is, I get about 3-4x as many pot drops as I use in general, even in dungeons like SoT and BoC, so I never have issues with those and often have to sell them once I rack up 4-5 hundred.
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Looks like I just need some more CDR and a bit of ADCtH then. Build definitely sounds like it’s just going to be super fun (already having a great time just destroying trash with OFF).
Olexra is my favourite skill in this game so this build sounds right up my alley. Would really like to see a video of it in action… maybe you can send a save to someone and let them record real quick? Would offer to do it myself but away from my gaming PC atm.
With Olexra being able to proc devotions soon I bet this build could do some insane stuff with devotion abilities as well
I really enjoy this build, I am playing a variant of it but the style is the same. It ranks amongst my top 2 favourite builds.
It is challenging but rewarding to play. If played correctly, it can be near impossible to kill yet if you don’t you can die instantly.
In regards to damage I personally classify it as single target and aoe. It has both in abundance.
Flash freeze just destroys all mobs- that are not resistant to cold, combined with whirlpool-devotion assigned to blade spirit it pumps out heaps of damage.
Single target- shadow strike does truck loads of damage my highest crit so far is 97k and then combined with the extra poison and frost burn on top of that. Not to mention nightfall also does some aoe damage.
I finished ultimate at level 82, I haven’t achieved the super low cooldowns of the op but you don’t need it to win.
levelling up I followed this attack pattern which served me all the way through the game. Flash freeze- Mirror- Flash freeze- Blade barrier- Flash freeze. You obviously mix in shadow strikes whenever you can, but the above pattern will kill everything and keep you immune to damage for a long long time.
The mobs/bosses I found the most difficult were the hard hitters that were immune to cold/frost.
The only way I would improve is to have something that stops those one hit wonders- I am trying turtle shell currently but I’m not sure of better options.
I’m glad a variation of this build still works and is fun to play. Sorry for making the devs aware that 100% CDR was possible on Shadow Strike, causing them to reduce the CDR on some items and Nidalla’s Justifiable Ends.
My bad.
Here was my pre-nerf (build 30) dps using no-cooldown Shadow Strike:
It would have been found out at some point, no matter what. Anyone who knows how CDR works would have seen it and realized eventually just how broken as hell CDR stacking is. This is because it has exponential gains at an insane rate, where each 50% closer you get to 100% you double your damage output (50% CDR is double damage, 75% is quadruple, 87% is octuple, 94% is 16x, 97% is 32x, 99% is 100x, 100% is theoretically infinite (Although cast times prevent it from actually becoming truly infinite DPS).
I like this build, but it has some downers for me:
Basic run speed is meeeeh. If there are no trashmobs to use for SS, you are really slow, because Pneumatic Burst is the only skillwise increase of runspeed for this build. But even with constant use of PB, i cant reach the runspeed cap. Also i don’t like that you have to use PB all the time. Another button which has to be pressed every 15-30 secs so PB stays active. Thats not good game design on that skill.
Build is difficult to cap on resistances. i practically used all augments and components to stack resists and still have problems…
I actually have the opposite problem on resistances, my resistances are all capped except Chaos at 72%, with bleed overcapped by like 50%+ overcap, and I could easily swap my component on my Amulet or Medal if I REALLY wanted that last 8 points of chaos resistance.
Notably, just about the only Nemesis I feel confident face-tanking is, of all people, Benn’Jar, the only one of them who is striking a non-capped out resistance.
