Spam DEE and DEE set ->discussion on tweaks to the set viable for this and various DEE ideas

Humor my OCD and let me add some clarifications to that statement:

  1. The OK is fine as it is. TBH, it doesn’t need nerfs. If you nerfed the OK, acid damage as a whole would not be able to compete with other damage types.
  2. My opinion on the matter (and it’s just that, an opinion) is that the problem lies with acid devotions/itemizations.

For example, because acid items give acid resistance, you’re automatically going to be less inclined to include the occultist in it. This is why I think you see acid dervishes popping up left, right, and centre.

Then there’s all the benefits of permascension + PoT3 which trivialises one of the biggest problems faced by non-OK builds, etc. etc.

Don’t nerf the OK. Diversify acid items/devotions.

EDIT: It’s worth noting too, that for some reason, most quality acid items provide skill points for the OK mastery, and not others.

The one which bugs me the most is the pack of treacherous means. It freaking belongs to nidalla, a legendary nightblade, yet it has +1 to all OK in it. :confused:

Well, I did question that decision in the forums and Z basically said “thanks for stopping by” to paraphrase. But tbf I was the only one so it can’t be too much on the top of most players’ concerns. OK is immensely popular.


Items tend to be tweaked more than skils/devotions. So I’m going to suggest adding this to the DEE set:

  1. Armor pieces: add stun/slow and increase OA, DA and pierce and elemental resistance on the armor. (note that 30% of elemental resists on the build above comes from using arcanum dust!- intended for arcanist)
  2. Dagger: add cast speed and %cdr - as this dagger will not be used for anything other than the set ( I can almost guarantee it).
  3. Amulet: add energy regen and some physical to acid convert.
  4. Set bonus: increase DEE pass-through chance to 100% (To compare…the crazy Desolator allows for spam FS with this), add %RR to set proc

As this is a 5 piece acid caster set covering both weapon and amulet, imho some fairly substantial additions are needed. Unlike some of the other “psuedo-caster” sets that don’t have minimum Spirit requirements, this one does - which means even a non-offhand build will have a certain investment requirement.

Those are extremely reasonable suggestions, my concern, however, is that they’ll serve to push that set further into OK territory.

If the root cause of the problem isn’t addressed, my guess is that any buffs will serve to widen the divide between OK acid builds, and non-OK acid builds.

EDIT: For example…adding +1 to all NB, and +1 to all necromancer on murmur’s kiss belt would be a great start. Acid reapers are already suffering, and honestly? Necromancer’s have shit belts.

Aside from the lunal’valgoth one, and maybe a handful of pet builds, I’ve never seen a build use a necromancer belt.

OK on the other hand are spoiled for choices when it comes to belts:

  • Crimson lotus
  • Avenger
  • Infernal knight
  • deadly means

It is the class with the most number of belts

Another change I would suggest: make Dreeg’s affliction actually comparable to meditation. Or better still, move the +1 to all skills in occultist from dreeg’s affliction to death stalker, and swap their crafting bonuses accordingly…that would go a long way in overcoming the CC-res problem faced by non-OK acid builds.

If everything around it is the problem, couldn’t one design DEE set so that it solves those problems? Most other acid builds don’t seem to have that big of a problem.

Name me a solid acid build which doesn’t use the OK.

EDIT: I’m talking about what’s efficient/powerful. Not what’s possible and fun.

Here you go! You forgot about this beautiful Witch Hunter possibility. [1.1.4.0] Return of the poison queen-Vileblade DW Witch Hunter, Gladiator in 6.25!

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Right. But you get my point though. That’s one out of a dozen or so acid builds. And it took a massive redesign of the set to make it work

Because of the innate problems faced by acid builds, the OK will always be the better pick unless such radical changes were made to each and every set.

And that may still be insufficient.

According to fluff, despite all the buffs given to acid-based radaggan cabalist, the sentinel still looks better on paper.

EDIT: and IIRC, some playtesters like valinov have confirmed this in their testing.

Just seems easier to me to add a few plus skills and OA/DA to more generic acid items, than it is to redesign a whole bunch of sets.

P.S: Nice build!

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Yup, it’s tough to make even Witch Hunter shine, a mastery with dual source of RR and synergetic damage but even more for class without. So Oathkeeper will be often better support mastery just because of juicy CDR, Ascension, automatic RR and Mediation relic and gearing as whole.

It’s permascension. Because acid classes lack %OA and %DA. Stacking these flat values without those % bonuses is quite…underwhelming.

But with permascension, you’ve overcome that hurdle.

Same thing with CC res as mentioned earlier. Itemization/devotions don’t give sufficient CC-res/

Boom. Problem solved with permascension.

EDIT: For the record, I’m not suggesting we nerf the OK. Because it’s not like these acid builds are overperforming. I’m suggesting we buff other acid masteries.

But without perma ascension allowed by Oathkeepers you will suck even more. Basically Dervish is the only strong acid mastery with more than one viable options. I tried for example 2h RF Sentinel and results were underwhelming. And Sentinel is a nice class too.

The nerfs to Venomblade were slight but they immediately made the Dervish second tier and were reversed. See how fragile balance is. And to make something like whole damage type to have multiple viable builds requires massive undertaking and re designing of gear. And then some builds will still struggle and some will be overpowered as hell.

I tried non set DEE spamming and it’s sucks. As nuke isn’t impressive but is lot better than spam. Fire DEE spamming is big no too. Never tried vitality, but doubt the results will be sufficient.

Right, permascension is fine. I agree that the OK needs it.

What I’m saying is that other non-OK acid builds don’t have anything which is competitive with permascension because they are so starved of other valuable stats.

Does possession with perfect chaos/acid conversion rival PoT3? Of course.

But not if you can’t fix your OA, and CC-res.

Because OA, and CC-res is more critical to how well a build performs, you’re just going to take the the OK (aka permascension) over other masteries.

And that’s just one thing which pushes acid builds that direction. The other which I have mentioned repeatedly is how acid items have acid res.

This immediately makes you less likely to pick the occultist.

Funnily I often find Occultist a great solution for stats problem for secondary class, except Acid where needs to shine and sometimes chaos. :frowning:

But I often have on my acid build something like 100% acid overcap. And then toggle BoD…

I agree about resistances. Had an idea posted in the section for change regarding resistances on Plaguebearer of Dreeg amulet. Same problem is for relic, armor, belt, medals. Everything gives acid resistance to infinity.

Yup. It’s everywhere. And you can’t find those resistances in your devotions, which means you need to scramble to fix them with augments/components (and greens if you GDstash).

And that in turn means you can’t patch up your shitty OA/DA with components.

Basically, most non-OK acid builds are only allowed to pick 2 of the 3:

  • Healthy res overcaps
  • Important CC-res
  • Valuable OA/DA

And in some cases, you can only pick one.

OK is just a superb supportive mastery for acid damage, kinda like Inquisitor for elemental imo. That’s why you pretty much only see sentinels and dervishes around nowadays.

Could give you a similar quest: Name me a solid build that uses Dreeg set. Bonus: Name me a solid build that uses spam DEE.

Ofc you are right that OK is very powerful for acid, but (spam) DEE and Dreeg set are just as weak as OK is powerful imo.

  1. Pre-FG, mad_lee made a pretty decent WH using dreeg set. (EDIT: Not sure if it’s dreeg’s set, or if it was DEE nuke. I could be wrong).
  2. I don’t think it’s fair to bring up spam DEE because that skill has been poorly designed right from it’s conception. I don’t think it’s ever been used outside of levelling.
  3. I certainly don’t disagree that the DEE set needs improvement. But the question I’m trying to ask is this - How can we improve it without catering it for the OK?

This right here is the issue. It’s not just a superb support mastery for acid damage. It is currently the only viable supportive class for acid damage because of permascension.

And lore-wise, it just doesn’t make sense. If any class should be given that role, it’s the occultist.

Which brings me to my point about the inquisitor. It makes perfect sense to me that the mastery designed to excel in the elemental be the best supportive class for elemental builds. That being said, solid competitive alternatives do exist - The arcanist, and the occultist both support elemental builds pretty damn well too.

Make spam DEE good. Nuke DEE will ALWAYS choose OK secondary because of cdr on Path of the Three. And tbh Rotgheist is better or just as good/bad as Dreeg set for that. I’m fine with Rotgheist being the choice for nuke DEE, but Dreeg set needs way more stuff to make you wanna go for spam DEE instead, like 100%vit to acid conversion to benefit from the flat vit, remove all poison mods to DEE and give it more flat acid instead. The only thing that witchunter has over sentinel is casting speed, so you need to try to make spam DEE good as making nuke DEE be good on anything except sentinel seems like am impossible task imo.

Edit 1: DEE skill line might need some Blade Arc treatment, reduce strengh of mod while buffing base flat values. This is how crate succeeded at making Spam BA viable while not destroying nuke version.

Edit 2: About ascension problem, why not give a caster offhand huge oa/cc res modifier to pneumatic burst? This makes sure that it can’t be abused by venomblade builds and caster dervish really has no main ability for acid. An acid caster offhand with boni to pneumatic burst is the best way I can think of how to buff caster witchhunter as it also doesn’t occupy a Dreeg set slot.

Edit 3:

You are right about that, elemental in general is in a way healthier spot than acid/poison, also due to Inquisitor nerfs and Demo buffs.

Why do you need CDR on a DoT skill? Even without CDR, your increase in duration time already exceeds DEE’s base CD.

TBH, if I could, I would go WH. You can get more %acid/poison damage with AoTG + possession than you can with PoT3.

Agreed. But that’s such a massive change…

Not true, double heal is pretty huge IMO. Anatomy of murder is also vital for acid builds because aleksander has crazy acid res.

Again, imo, the biggest reason why the sentinel will outperform the WH is simply because permascension is the most straightforward fix to the common problems faced by acid builds.

Maybe…I wouldn’t know. TBH, I’m not so much concerned about spam DEE as I am with the whole acid kerfuffle.

Because there are plenty of indirect ways of improving spam DEE’s situation. (E.g. better acid rings) which will also improve the health of acid builds as a whole.

I like this idea. I also think you can buff non-OK acid builds by improving belts/relics, but that works too.

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Ulzuin’s set got an even more massive change, so there could be hope :smile:

I agree that DoT is the main part, but there is decent amount of flat aswell, which benefits nicely from the cdr.

True, but as you stated ascension gives massive oa/CC res/absorb and non dualwhield nightblade doesn’t even have phys res, which is why I think they need a massive mod on an offhand to make up for not dualwhielding. At least they got what I forgot to mention but you did not:

This would also be nice.

Honestly, what would be perfect for the DEE set is if they could hybridize these 2 things: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2j1810N

EDIT: And for the love of all that is good and holy, get that +1 to all OK out of that weapon. Replace it with +2 to all necro or something.

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Should put this into the 1hander/offhand feedback thread.