So, following a piece of feedback to patch 1.3, this comment from @ArtCrusader came up:
Which of course sounded like a fun challenge, so here is the thread story of that character.
The goal: To complete the campaign in ultimate and reach level 100 with Devouring swarm as my MAIN damage-dealing skill.
The rules:
Now, I’m not exactly a stickler for really strict rules like passivist @thuter or classless @Crab_Turtle_2112. The goal here is only to see if this is possible, not drag myself through a thousand Taoist hells. This is not a real “challenge” but just a fun playthrough with strict rules that I thought other people would enjoy reading.
- Devouring swarm must be the only skill I use to deal damage.
- I need to kill the Loghorrean, Theodin Marcel, Korvaak, and Beronath, but not complete every quest.
- I need to reach level 100
- I need to get every skill and stat point
- Softcore
- I’m allowing myself to kill the first 3-4 zombies with the starting weapon to reach level 2
- I’m allowed to use other skills that deal damage if I use them for something else, as long as I don’t optimize for damage. For example, I might use Wendigo totem for the buff and heal, or use wind devil or guardians of Empyrion for the RR or to proc devotions. In those cases, I will put a single point into the main node.
- I will use a merit, but only for convenience, not to farm XP from lore notes.
- I’m using my stash and everything that’s in it (including mandates, warrants, Lokar set, components, and stashed end-game gear when I get there)
- I will stick to SSF for the gear I use while leveling. If I need MI, I will farm them while leveling (As I don’t have that stuff below level 84 in my stash anyway)
The build:
First, I need to figure out how to milk the absolute maximum out of that skill for this run to be successful, as the damage is kinda low.
Pros:
- has its own RR built-in
- available at level 1
- has built-in ADCtH
- lasts a long time
- Bleed is one of the least resisted damage types in the game
- no cooldown
- good range and radius
- you can kite
Cons:
- Damage is low
- Not a whole lot of upgrades possible
- 2 damage types
- Damage is low
- Vitality is one of the MOST resisted damage types in the game
- Damage is low
Step one is to increase damage. This can be done by equipping gear with mods that add damage, by making sure I reach max rank (26/16) in the skill, and by making sure my %damage bonus are the highest possible.
After that, the best way to improve performance is to hunt for as much resistance shred as possible, which is a bit harder than usual since I have 2 damage types to work with.
Speaking of which, while the absolute best scenario would be to max out our 2 damage types and make this a true DDD build that @RxJunkie would be proud of, I will still have to make a choice whether to lean in more on bleed or Vitality. Ultimately there is no conversion that can turn one into the other… so I will have to make smart choices here. The itemization available lean STRONGLY towards bleed, and Shaman has an exclusive skill that boosts it, so this is likely the reasonable choice. However, I cannot neglect vitality since that’s half the skill’s damage, and I need everything I can get. Not only that but since we can’t leech off of DoT, I need a strong vitality base to stay alive.
Next decision: Which second mastery ?
Since RR is the name of the game here, the only masteries worth considering are those that have support for one of the 2 damage types in the form of RR, as well as %damage bonus … preferably with both. It also helps is that mastery has a lot of passive abilities into which to sink our skill points, since we’ll be very limited on what we can spend them one.
That leaves us with 4 candidates: Oathkeeper, Occultist, Nightblade, and Berserker.
Oathkeeper has vitality support, great passives, and passive RR for BOTH damage type.
Nightblade has %damage support for both, great passive too, but only RR support for vitality.
Occultist looks like the whole package: %damage support AND RR support for both and good support skills
Then Berserker, which has no support for vitality, but has some of the best bleed support in the game, and good general support abilities.
It looks like Occultist is the runnaway winner here, but Nightblade and Berserker both offer me something more: the possibility to use 2 of these :
…Which is arguably the best weapon for this build by a good margin until we can use Death’s reach.
As of writing this, I still have not settled on which mastery to go with… I’ll just wing it until then!
I’ll be adding a post to this thread for each act I clear. Wish me luck !
boosted most of the old Bosses to make them worthy of the title and to bring them up to the level of the FoA Bosses/Monsters. It seems you’ve already noticed that some of those Bosses hurt quite a bit and it appears per GT that a significant chunk of Physical Damage was added to their attacks (Zarth’s fireball shotgun, Ravna’s poison shotgun, Abaddoth (in general), etc.).
