so I started a new character. An occultist/nightblade based on a DoT stacking build I saw from another forum member. The reason I started this guy was because I got venomspine boots as my second legendary and I wanted to play a build that used these effectively, had a lot of procs and I really like how acid/poison works in this game. I’m adding in a bunch of chaos and vitality damage from solael’s passive as well.
So as usual I had some questions. Why is it that more occultist builds don’t use the summon familiar? I took it very early in the game and its heal ability has allowed me to face tank everything so far.
Why is blade barrier not more heavily utilised? Seems like an incredibly excellent skill with the healing and the momentary invulnerability.
I had some issues with slow clear speed in early levels but with the gear I have now I am really starting to churn through the mobs and the bosses.
I am using Nidalla’s justifiable ends on shadow strike but it does not seem to be doing as much damage as the tooltip seems to indicate? I have it maxed and have gone into repertoire and it should be doing 6210 damage over 3 seconds but that just isn’t the case. I think I’ve seen about 2100 but nothing close to the 6210 it is supposed to be doing. Am I missing something?
If I take the other Nidalla ability on the dual wield line will that overwrite the procs from belgothian’s shears? I have dryad’s blessing on the shears and they are giving me a lot of survivability so I don’t want to interrupt the maximum number of proc opportunities.
I have been stacking multiple healing spells. The familiar, the alchemist belt, dryad’s blessing, behemoth proc, blade barrier and of course pneumatic burst. I had the thought to go for abomination, enough points to get the abominable might at least.
Still trying to learn how to properly use blade barrier as it seems quite a niche skill and I don’t have enough points in it yet for it to really come into its own.
I am playing normal at the moment just because I wanted to get this character quickly through the game into elite. I know there is going to be a big difficulty spike but I have also played several characters through veteran and ready to go into elite so I am aware that the spike will be greater from normal to elite.
Concerning your shadow strike question: Those 6200 dmg over 3 seconds translate to ~2100 per second, so that looks actually accurate.
Skill descriptions can be a little misleading. There are some skills that state “X dmg per second” or “X dmg over Y seconds”. “per second” is pretty clear, “over Y seconds” means you have to divide total dmg by duration, so 25K dmg over 5 seconds means 5K per second (for 5 seconds).
WPS skills don’t cancel each other out as long as total chance doesn’t go beyond 100%. So if you have 1 skill with 25% to be used your attacks look like this: 75% normal attack 25% WPS. If you take another with 25% chance it will look like this: 50% normal attack 25% WPS1 and 25% WPS2.
If that chance goes beyond 100% all WPS are somewhat reduced so total chance stays at 100%, but this may cause your favorite WPS to not be used 25% of the time. There was a thread explaining this more detailed, search for game mechanics if you’re interested. Basically->don’t go above an additive chance of 100% for weapon attack replacers and you’re fine.
And if you like poisons, Tainted eruption is your friend.
Personally, I’ve found the familiar’s heal to be unreliable at best, especially once I added in Storm Spirit. And there are much better and more reliable heals like Blood of Dreeg and Pneumatic Burst… not to mention the healing celestial skills.
Way back in beta, when Act 1 was all that was playable, Blade Barrier was instant cast… and it was great. It also had a 5 second duration and the reflection scaled to awesome levels. Back then, I caught a full thorn spray barrage from the warden… and dropped 80% of his life in one go. Ahh, the old days. Can’t do that anymore!
Then they added in the skill animation, which made it a lot more difficult to use as a safety net, since you have to plan about .5 seconds ahead. I lost count of how many times my characters have died in the brief time it takes to cast that skill. That it immobilizes you is also potentially dangerous. So don’t think of the barrier as a safety net, it will let you down… instead, think of it as a delay. You need a couple more seconds before your nuke skills are ready, pop the barrier and unleash hell when it drops.
Well, coincidentally I’m playing a poison/vit/chaos witch hunter right now, let me answer your questions.
Familiar AI is rather bad, and its animation is atrocious. I did take 1 level in healing and order it to be defensive. It is useful, but once you have both Blood of Dreeg and Pneumatic Burst, you don’t need that puny heal anymore.
It is a circuit breaker yes, but Blade Barrier healing is fixed, not percentage, and you cannot move. Most of the time you want to get out of sticky places, not staying there, delaying your demise.
6210 damage over 3 seconds = ~2100 damage per second, it’s just confusing wording.
WPS procs stack fully, until their total chance exceed 100%, then they are weighted down. Still skills with highest proc chance will proc the most.
Dryad is a tad bit unnecessary, it’s healing is limited, the main point is reduced poison/bleeding duration. With Blood of Dreeg and Pneumatic Burst, you might not need it. Still useful early game though.
I know some people can time Blade Barrier to block/deflect nemesis special skills, but that is above me so I wouldn’t recommend it. At the end of the day it’s a panic button that you can press while waiting for Pneumatic Burst cool down.
Thai: would love to see your set up and how it differs from mine. Didn’t realise the dryad heal was so minimal, will have to rethink that. Where does your survivability come from if you don’t use familiar heal or dryad? Blood of dreeg and pneumatic burst? Is that enough?
My new char is not even level 40 yet, and I don’t think there is any issue with survival, I don’t even have Blood of Dreeg or Pneumatic Burst yet because I like offensive skills more. I just put 2 hollowed fang and bind Bat’s Twin Fang to Curse of Frailty, and that keeps me alive together with Behemoth.
Appreciate the reply as always Thai and really enjoyed the video, your clear speeds are pretty nuts. I took your advice and changed my devotion path because I didn’t realise dryad was not going to scale well. Switched out of blade barrier and familiar and dropped a few of my heal procs for pneumatic burst and blood of dreeg. I’ve died twice so far to completely ridiculous situations where I can’t even be sure how I died.
Our builds could not be more different, well our devotions are close. I’m only level 46 and just finished the normal difficulty (picked up a really nice legendary axe for my build). Are you not worried for end game that you have gone so hard with the damage? I mean you are sacrificing defense for offense, do you think that will cause you issues in the long run? Also I’ve put 8 points into spirit. What reason do you have to put 15 points in cunning? Is that essential to your gear or something? Is that essential to witch hunters gear end game?
My focus is shadow strike using Nidalla’s as the main damage with scorpion sting proc. Aiming for possession at the moment but a lot of points to go on that one and when I hit fifty I only get two devotion points per level >.>
Is there a good place to farm for legendaries? I wouldn’t mind a second one of these awesome axes I just got. I’m hesitant to enter the SoT and BoC even on this level. I died a couple times in SoT on other characters and I really hate these “hardcore” style dungeons, they are so nerve wracking. I’ve seen a few people say farm treasure troves but aren’t they completely random? Every time I go into a place where I encountered a trove it either isn’t there or in a completely different spot.
Offensive skills are great but still having a tenuous grasp on the game mechanics I was hesitant to go all out attack as this build is really squishy and without the healing skills I’d have died a hell of a lot. Also I have to ask about your tool bar. Your first button is bloody pox and your next two are what? Also what is your system for engaging the enemy? Bloody pox and then eye of dreeg? Will you continue with the bloody pox when you hit ultimate?
Farming Legendaries at Normal Difficulty is next to impossible, because their drop chance is very low. Elite is better, Ultimate has the highest drop chances.
Treasure Troves have guaranteed spawns at certain areas. My most favorite Treasure Trove runs are first level of BoC, before the gate, Arkovian Undercity, on the way to Kilrian, SoT, before the gate and Tyrant’s Hold (you can find those runs on my YouTube channel). You have to run at each spawn point, at one of them, there will be a Treasure Trove. But as I said, the droprate for Legendaries is pretty low at Normal.
I put points into cunning because I want to be able to equip sword, they usually require 450-490 cunning. If I can’t find end game dagger/axe then that’s the only way. You don’t really need points in spirit because occultist mastery already cover that.
The build actually is not that focused on damage. My build has quite low multiplier 1200-1500% comparing to other crazy damage build with 1600-1700%. But it has many weapon damage sources with 17% life steal on top of nearly 600 HP regen. And it might not be very obvious, Possession gives you 10%+ damage absorption as well.
As for legendary, there is really no way, either you run BoC or Crucible and pray for RNG. BoC is actually rather easy except the final boss that can debuff and 1 shot you. SoT is more annoying because of the skeletal knights reflection
My toolbar is bloody pox + 2x blood drinkers (hollowed fang skill).
As for engaging, ALWAYS use Curse of Frailty first, it slows down enemies and leaves you room to cast spells. My bloody pox is used to trigger Scorpion sting only, it has no damage value, I will not add more than 1 point to it.
As for defensive vs offensive, my build gather a lot of +DA on self and -OA on enemies, as well as dodge chance and slow. I think I will do just fine.
Jager: don’t know if it is allowed but could you tell me your youtube channel? I’d like to check it out.
Thai: Ah, I see. Yeah, I am not sure what my end game gear is going to be as I am just playing through and allowing the game to surprise me with loot. Didn’t take into account all the spirit I get from the occultist. They really need to allow us to redo our attribute points. I know 8 points isn’t a lot but when you consider that if I start putting points into cunning now then that is 8 points in spirit plus whatever goes into cunning not being put into physique. Also I subbed to your channel because I enjoy watching videos of people playing as much as I enjoy playing.
Thinking about rolling another character today. So many combinations of options and skills to try out and find the one that most fits me. I know it means it takes longer to get into elite and such but I am okay with that. Also playing through on multiple characters gets me a lot of crafting items which is never a bad thing.
It would be easier if you play 1 faceroll character (lightning warder or DEE witchblade) to level 75+ so that you can farm BoC on elite or Gutworm/Swarming Hive on Ultimate. That would help a lot on finding gears.
After you have some usable gears you can roll whatever you like
You can find the link in my signature (hotlinks are not allowed in signatures), but here you go.
WH is pretty much a new player friendly faceroll build; for Vanilla that is. DEE WH not so much, but every decent WH based on ADCTH will be a fast and reliable Vanilla farmer.
You guys are fantastic and absolutely right. I need to focus on one character, apart from my multiplayer character. Little bit worried my witch hunter build will not fair well in higher difficulties. Switched over to veteran difficulty on him and did the first area before you go through the gate into BoC, got pretty smashed even though I am decently geared with 3 legendaries and some pretty heavy armour. Think it is down to my resists being low.
Sorry, not so familiar with the acronyms. What is ADCTH?
Attack Damage Converted To Health. As a Chaos/Vit WH, it’s easy to aim for Devotions and gear providing ADCTH.
Even though, nearly every non caster character has to have at least one source of ADCTH to be viable.
If you want to aim for a tanky dude with okay clearing speed, take Witchblade. My first character was a Blademaster and I died pretty often (300+ deaths up until now :D). Without too much knowledge of the game and no decent gear, it just might happen as a rather squishy character.
And you are right, you should focus on one character and level him up. You will find decent gear on higher difficulties, which might come in handy for your other toons. Plus, the real game, imo, starts at Ultimate.
If you are having problems with the character you want to max, just ask for help in the Character/Build section of the forum.
So I thought I would just ask here. Jumped into elite to see what it was like but haven’t finished anasteria’s questline or done the sealed dungeons on veteran. Am I missing much by doing this? I know I can go back and do them later but should I have completed them before jumping into a new game?
Also what level do the sealed dungeons in veteran cap at?
If played right, dw WHs can be very sturdy and hard to kill just with Tainted Eruption as CC. They can also be pretty noob friendly as first character.
That’s not true. Normal mobs scale up to level 59/60 later in the game, even more in BoC/SoT.
I always level up until lvl 55 before hitting Elite without any problem.
Looking back, I’d say that I was still a newb after having reached lvl 85 for the first time.
But yes, reaching that point indeed requires some playtime and experience, naturally.
Still, reaching Ultimate as a dw WH is definately not that hard, even as a new player. Witchblade, Commando and Warder are definately safer though, as I already mentioned.
As a Chaos/Vit WH, it’s easy to aim for Devotions and gear providing ADCTH.