I was tinkering around with Venomlance rifle and came up with… a Paladin? It’s such a meme concept really, cuz why would you go acid Paladin if you can go fire, aether, pierce, physical and with Goredrinker - bleed? The answer is: because Venomlance is a rifle that is intriguing, but doesn’t have much to offer when you actually try to build around it. But 1.1.9.0 changes to it and Gulgazor’s Heart were a push in the right direction.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jQdlEN
This is what I came up with. Affixes are the best I happen to have in my possession.
I have no idea how viable it is in-game, because I can’t waste a week or more for leveling and gearing just to feel dissapointed. On paper though, I can see multiple problems with this concept:
- Lack of skillpoints. +2 to OK and +1 to Inquisitor is not enough, sadly. I barely managed to cover the basics. If by some chance this rifle received +2 to Inquisitor instead of +4 to Ravenous Earth (no one will play acid RE with a rifle - no one!), it may have a chance at being something.
- Righteous Fervor transmuter converts fire to vitality - this means all fire from Smite and Bursting Round are wasted. You can’t ignore this transmuter either, because we can only have ~75% physical to acid, and we lose +% acid/poison from charges (just checked this, it only adds % physical and fire even with transmuter). Is it possible to change this conversion to acid? Or at least remove it completely? RF on its own has only burn damage and it is already half converted by Path of the Three. Gulgazor’s Heart now gives 100% fire to acid, which are useless with this transmuter in effect. For vitality RF it’s even more harmful. So basically the only purpose of this conversion is to botch retal builds I guess?
- Rather low health. This can be somewhat fixed with affixes and more points in Vigor and Haven (which we don’t have). But even that will raise it to ~13k. Raising Health on the rifle to ~700 would be decent. Maybe add some health to Widow’s Sting as well?
- Physical resistance is only 10-12%. Armor isn’t that high too. Bloodied Crystals can help with that, but stun res will be bad (and less health).
- This you cannot combat, but still: RR is rather low - only 78%. Maybe Manticore’s RR can be buffed a bit? Even to 30, that would still be an improvement.
Surprisingly, resists are fine, attack speed can be capped with lucky rolls, sufficient crit damage, rank 24 RF and 22 Consecration. That’s quite an achievement to be honest.
@eardianm, seeing you as a ranged weapons expert, what’s your opinion on the matter?