Hello everyone. Few words about this build. My first character was Lazy Pokemon Master (shoutout to JayNyne) and I enjoyed playing it a lot, but pet AI was sometimes astonishing, so I thought about a new build that will allow doing nothing without involving AI. I opened grimcalc and gracefuldusk, calculated a bit and created a new character. It became awesome at lvl 8 and became even more powerfull with every further level, so I decided to share my expirience, I’m opened for discussions as I’m not so good at guide writing and even worse at calculating. Everything is written means I have this parameters and items at the moment and will be changed if neccesary.
Toxic Apocalypse
The main idea of this build is casting dots and staying alive.
Pros:
- Insane AoE DOT damage
- No need to skip trash: one cast will destroy huge packs. But you can easily skip if you want to.
- High survivability for caster
- Lazy gameplay: you put dots and wait till enemies die
Cons:
- Single damage type. Not a problem right now, but if Crate decides to add mobs with poison\acid immunity - this build won’t work
- 7% Aether resistance
Videos are coming ASAP I have some time to work with FRAPS.
Skills and Attributes:
Without item bonuses:
With item bonuses
I currently have 20 points in spirit and all the rest in physique, but there is no need to put so much in spirit, 715 is enough.
Dreeg’s Evil Eye (DEE) is our main spell, it does huge aoe dot damage. I modified it with Focused Gaze to make it suitable for my lazy tactics. There is actually no difference spending points during levelling, but maxing DEE line and Mirror of Ereoctes is a good idea, because these two spells are the base of our strategy. It is also essencial to put 6 points in Aspect of the Guardian to get some amount of Poison resistance.
Devotions:
All constellations were taken to maximize damage, but Ultimate was easy passed, so it’s ok.
Chaos crossroad
Rat
Akeron’s Scorpion (attatched at the Mark of Dreeg)
Eye og the Guardian (attatched at the Caustic Pool)
Affliction (attatched to Blood of Dreeg)
Vulture
Spider
Oklaine’s Lantern (except the last star)
Abomination (body and poison hand) (attatched to DEE)
Manticore (except +25% poison resist and +10 OA) (attatched to Dreeg’s Afflicted Spines)
Ulzuin’s Torch (first 3 stars)
Disclaimer: Ulzuin’s Torch is actually not for posion build, but first 3 stars provide %OA, Crit damage and Chaos resistance, which is just brilliant.
Items:
Endgame gear:
Head: Hood of Dreeg with Runestone
Shoulders: Mantle of Dreeg with Silk Swatch
Chest: Vestments of Dreeg with Chains of Oleron
Hands: Viperfang Grips with Unholy Inscription
Legs: Nidalla’s Legwraps with Silk Swatch
Feet: Venomspine Grips or Golemborn Greaves if you die too much with Mark of Mogdrogen
Offhand: Wretched Tome of Nar’Adin with Vitroic Gallstone
Weapon: Runed Dagger of Dreeg with Mark of Dreeg
Rings: Ring of the Black Matriarch x2 with Corpse Dust
Amulet: Black Gem of Dreeg with Aether Soul
Medal: Mark of the Apostate with Wardstone
Belt: Thorn Girdle of the Misty Glade with Rigid Shell
Relic: Dreeg’s Affliction
It’s perfect to get Dreeg’s Affliction with +1 to Aspect of the Guardian
+1 to Vile Eruption, mine is not, unfortuntaly.
Speaking about augments, I use them from the Outcast vendor, 2 +10% aether resistance and others for elemental resistances. Mogdrogen’s Sanctity from Rovers for amulet and rings and Nature’s Harvest from Homestead for weapon and book. I preffered defensive jewellery augments because the damage alternative doesn’t give much damage while having 540 health and 36 elemental esistance is viable at ultimate.
Levelling gear: Armor from Rovers and jewellery from Devil’s Crossing, Rovers and Homestead will make levelling nice and easy. I also found Slime Bolter, which made everything more fun. I tried Empowered Slime Bolter as well at level 85, but you’ll have enough abilities to cast then and another strategy of killing. It still works though to make gameplay a bit more variative. It’s a nice idea to use Venom-tipped Ammo or Mutagenic Ichor in the beginning to have an additional skill. Apply Mark of Dreeg as soon as you get one.
Tactics and gameplay expirience.
I actually can’t say if this build works in act 3 and 4 of ultimate without
the endgame gear, because I made the build, got all the items needed and then levelled to 75, which was obtained while clearing Homestead portal at ultimate, but playing selffound gear was easy even in Eastmarch and Tyrant’s Hold. I dressed everything at 75, though I knew there are some items with lower level requirements cause I wanted to test the selffound gear and I can say that farming Cronley’s Hideout at ultimate with 100% selffound gear is absolutely doable, so it won’t be a problem to get other items. I faced some problems with reflecting mobs at the beginning, cause my damage was high and I killed myself with my dots, but getting some items for resistance and casting Blood of Dreeg with the Aspect completely solved the problem. Blood of Dreeg should be always on and you should renew it when you need some healing.
The main point of our tactics is: we do not avoid taking damage. Actually, it’s fine for us to run with 60-70% HP to have +130% additional damage from Arcane Will. This may look strange because we only have 6.3K HP, but Posession and Mavien’s Sphere of Protection give us 33% of damage absorption(not sure if they stack, but it seems like they do), so I never had problems with survivng.Being hit by ranged mobs is excellent, because Fetid pools from devotion will kill them all even without our spells.
The tactic is simple:
- Cast Curse of Fratility
- Cast DEE
- Take some damage
- Get in the melee range
- Activate Mirror of Eroectes
- Cast Mark of Dreeg, Dreeg’s Addlicted Spines, Caustic Pool
- Cast DEE again
8*) Make some melee hits if you want to have some fun and not afraid to die occasionally
points 6-8 shuild be done within 3 seconds of Mirror.
Repeat the procedure for fat guys like Nemesises and so on. This may involve some kiting, but it’s not always neccesary. For example, I kite Fabius (It takes 2 or 3 round to kill him), But just stay a bit in a distance from Milwuakee in order not to die.
Some interesting numbers:
The largest crit was on Cronley. DEE hit him for 143k and it was a just a single tick of the dot.
The fastest Fabius kill was 19 second.
to be continiued
Summary:
I played Everquest 2 for more than ten years, six of which as a warlock. This build is the closest to the EQ2 warlock. Hope you enjoy it!
