I am posting this mostly as reference I haven’t played all the way through the hardest crucibile but I am confident this build will do it fine having tested it out with GDSTash created character (for the final form) and some initial leveling. Thanks go to Ptirodaktill the idea to do vit to aether conversion this was a significant damage increase. This build may not be optimal, but its quite strong. You should have some options to get similar performance, 100% perma absorb would only truly be necessary to face tank Ravager. Due to the high amount of life steal and the Haunt relic -30% life leech you can life steal, almost but not quite, everything. For the most part you can run around the last zone of AoM on Ultimate and never use your absorb abilities even for purple names, just relying on 25% MoSP and life steal.
Forgot to put this is version 1.0.2.1 in title.
The damage is enough to kill the Ultimate dummy in 30 secs with the posted build. Since this is missing the the -31% res from necro aura the real damage is pretty impressive, however keeping in mind RE tanks 6 seconds to ramp up to full DPS (i.e. you can place one RE per second for duration 6).
Grim Tools Build:
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/62avg4EV
Your Haunt Relic should have +1 star pact.
This build is an idealized target in that certain greens may be hard to find since they would be a very specific combo of prefix and suffic. There are multiple possibilities in each slot. Ie. multiple CDR hats, multiple CDR amulets etc. You may lose some damage on maivens or not be quite at the 41-42% CDR you want, but even on hardcore the life steal in this build can make up for it pretty well. There is also room to swap mythical necrolord hood for CDR hat if you like, I think high CDR works slightly better though. There are also other chest pieces and offhands that offer vit to aether conversion. The build can also be pure vit if you like which can wind up with higher MoT but will probably be a good bit less damage (although still something like a 65 sec dummy kill which is a lot of damage)
The build does need a bonespike dagger, as with most any RE based build. You will want a basilisk crest although its not as important as the bonespike due to duration extension. You do not initially need the aether conversion chest or offhand (i.e. all of verteran and elite could go without) but for your final build you will, as far as I can tell, get far more damage once you kit it out that way.
Depending on what you are doing one may swap out Manticore for some other constellation (i.e. get OA from dying good or whatever). Generally I like manticore for single target stuff and RE kills everything and anything that is large groups.
Reference numbers
DE will do about 15.6k per tick with the various RRs going on the dummy. I think that is close to 150k DPS with about 30k life steal per sec. Maybe less. RE will hit for about 8k per fragment and is at 1 sec CD. Twin fangs will always hit at max rate with a couple REs down. TF + DE is something like 20-30k life steal. For most content RE + TF aloone is enough to kill everything fast AND life steal your sustain, but peppering in DE fills any life steal gaps and makes things very safe and even faster. Haunt, the seal of corruption and the ring proc can all hit for about 4k each per tick. TF hit for 5k per fang (i.e. twice 3 per second for 30k dps and about 18k life steal per second).
RE is very comfortably the majority of your damage, but DE provides a significant chunk of extra damage and VERY good life steal. The DE on this build is not fully maximized, but I think you will find it is comfortably close to builds that completely maximized DE. And since the RE on this build will do like triple the damage of most of the DE builds I have seen and RE is just flat out more damage to begin with the overall damage is much much higher. It is possible to completely remove hungering reach to conserve energy if you like since RE is amazing AOE anyway, this is probably only useful for very long boss fights (i.e. some kind of super boss maybe a nemesis but I kind of doubt it). I like Hungering reach for large mobs though since it smooths out your life steal. There is little reason to maximize DE since it is vastly inferior in damage to RE and the life steal at 15k+ per tick is so high that either it works or it doesn’t, the actual amount of life steal is academic at that level as its far more than the life you have. Having Haunt is far more important than having 3-5k more per tick, and 3-5k more per tick is chump change compared to a longer duration RE/shorter CD (i.e. using bonespike instead of the gun that add base aether damage to DE). At ideal conditions (i.e. all fragments hit) RE would be 678k for 336k DPS. So even at a conservative half fragment number of 165k DPS. A DE that does 4k more per tick is something like maybe 40k more DPS whereas using bonespike with high CDR is something like 70k more dps that is also much better AOE and that is being very conservative.
I have tested this build (with a 48% CDR) against Ultimate Mogdrogen and Ultimate Mind ravager briefly and you can get significant life steal even against them. I am unsure if this build can face tank the second phase of Ravager but it did, mostly, face tank Mind Ravager with a combo of 66% absrob and life steal. The life steal alone is absolutely not adequate to tank Ultimate Mind Ravager with out much higher defenses or absrob going. The Life steal is noticably imparied on ravager (as expected) and probably equal to something like 3k per second healing sustain. I am unsure if you can face tank Ravager with this build. Its extremely close. I will say its possible but needs excellent execution, but maybe not after 50%. Either way you can do the kiting style kill on him that other RE based builds have (you will have less RR than a ritualist of course).
Against Mog I got him down to 75% as a test and then left because it was getting boring. Basically I could face tank him with absorb+life steal but due to all the incredible spam and summoning I had trouble actually targeting him with Mark of Torment. So I did a combo of face tanking and kiting. Anyway I am sure he is killable with this build i just don’t want to do it.
Certain bosses such as Bane’gargoth are completely immune to life steal, but your absorb is fine for them and RE will kill them pretty fast and you can always kite with RE since its an amazing kite tool. However you never really should need to kite. That is actually the only completely immune thing I have found so far (when accounting for Haunt debuff)
Most likely I will not do all the various big time challenges as I rarely finish characters anymore. Someone else is welcome to do it.
Leveling.
Start as a basic Vitality RE/DE caster. Rush RE up as soon as possible and get a bonespike of any sort. Raise DE some doing the vitality skill over the aether skill to save energy and nothing in hungering reach initially. Mature out both masteries according to taste but get RE up nice and high (18 or so). Immediately put twin fangs on RE (can be done before Krieg). Get any bonespike ASAP This will destroy all of verteran HC or SC. Keep in mind Haunt is your main relic and if available at 35 so its ability to allow you to life steal even Obsidian Cthoinics will be availble even in veteran. The life steal will be weak at first until twin fangs levels up, but your offense will make up for that. In Elite mature out your DE. Stat for Vit or aether depending on what converts you have, I personally have found 80% aether in verteran (blue chest and book) so I statted for aether. But either way is fine. You should be able to transition slowly to higher and higher CDR/cast speed/conversion in a fairly seamless manner. For defense get Mirror up initially and then work on MoT even with say 30% CDR ( anyone can get this with star pact and off hand) and Aeon proc you can get absorb up 80% or the time or so. Initiall simply do a couple second kiting loop and then redo MoT/mirror for facetank, remember RE will still hit and proc TF while kiting, so you still get good damage and life steal while not actually casting once it ramped up.