I’ve leveled a Warlock to 40, running a Chaos and Vitality build that utilizes the item-granted skill Chaos Bolt and Sigil of Consumption. I’m trashing my way through Act 3 right now and wanted to get some feedback on the build before I proceed further. I want this to be Ultimate viable and figured I might as well ask here what I need to change in order to make it so. Solael’s Flame definitely helps to debuff enemies so Chaos Bolt’s low damage scaling can really get some decent hits in. Not a single boss has given me trouble yet, and while I definitely feel squishy, I think I can just chalk it up to spending too many points in Spirit early on. I took out the Amalgamation in around 30 seconds, which felt great because this is the first build I’ve done that hasn’t petered out around level 35. Doom Bolt is awesome and hits like a truck.
Blood of Dreeg has actually been decently effective in terms of healing when combined with Sigil, even at a single point investment, but then again I’m only on Veteran. Curse of Frailty is my current means of CC and I don’t feel like I can justify pumping more points into it solely for the debuff’s duration and an increase on the movespeed reduction since the other resistance reductions on the base skill are meaningless for this build. Vulnerability has more of what I need so I went 10 points into it instead.
As for Devotions, I’ve been struggling to decide. I’m thinking what this build needs is health regeneration on top of its healing potential so that I can survive Ultimate. Right now I’ve just been using Twin Fangs to level as an extra source of Chaos damage. Any suggestions would be welcome.
IMO you are going to need a better attack then Chaos Bolt in Ultimate. It does great in Veteran and pretty good in Elite. Falls off in Ultimate tho IMO. You definitely should max Blood of Dreeg as you can get alot of health regen from it in combination with Devotion and gear. My TSS/Sigil Warlock has 1K Life Regen before Giants Blood or Healing Rain Proc.
http://grimcalc.com/build/sOeRdN is my grim calc so you can see my devotion tree. Would be better if I could grab Scales of Ulcama but I needed the resist reductions.
As said above, you need to use something else with Sigil and Doom Bolt if you want to clear the game without too much trouble.
I’ve cleared the whole game in Ultimate with my chaos/fire build and I can tell you that Ultimate has felt like hitting a giant brick wall with my head.
Chaos damage falls off very hard late game because of the way resistances work and because base chaos damage on skills is relatively low. Doom Bolt falls even harder because of its awful scaling and because it’s a single target skill with a cooldown that serves no purpose in ultimate where mobs are numerous and have a buttload of hp.
The changes to Thermite Mines and devotion were a blessing for my Pyro and now he can now kill Log in a minute with ease but if I had gone pure chaos using only SoC/DB like I had initially planned to, he may still be stuck in Act 3 Ult because you can’t count on itemization to fix anything ( hint : it sucks for chaos builds ).
No need to level it over again, Just don’t expect great clear times on ultimate if you use Chaos Bolt as your spam attack. If you attach Eldritch Fire to chaos bolt it might be adequate, with decent resist reduction. But getting both Eldritch Fire and Acid Spray takes away from the defensive devotions.
Greater Fireblast is probably the best spammable skill. Not sure how well it does in ultimate tho. And you would need to use blood rite to convert the damage to Chaos.
Oblivion Relic skill is pretty good but has a 3 second cooldown.
Chaos Strike also does solid damage.
Im running a fire/chaos AAR/Sigil/Doom bolt warlock. But only 1 pt into doom bolt.
Sigil and doom bolt just arent enough themselves to take on the hordes. But the doom bolt procs on chaos caster items have definitely been helpful levelling.
I think this is my latest planned spec if you want to repurpose - it shouldn’t be much trouble for you: