Vitality Phantasmal Blades Reaper

[Fimbul]

Welcome to yet another Phantasmal Blades build!

This time it’s as a Reaper, which means Nightblade + Necromancer. I really like this skill, which is why I made a second build around it.

Skill trees.

The Necromancer comes in handy with his skills which are great for lowering enemies’ resistances. The key skills here are: Spectral Wrath (Spectral Binding, Foul Eruption (Ravenous Earth) and Harbinger of Souls.
Ravenous Earth is a onepointer, while it’s Modifiers “Decay” and “Foul Eruption” get maxed.
We do get Mark of Torment too, but more to lower the dangers of hard hitters. It’s not a one pointer in my opinion, because it really benefits from a few points. Feel free to spent less here, I use 10/10.
That’s it for the Necromancer Tree.

Let’s have a look at the Nightblade Tree.
Here we have our mainspell “Phantasmal Blades” which of course will get 26/16 with gear bonuses. Also we’ll max “Heart Seeker” and “Nether Edge”.
Max “Veil of shadow” to reduce opponents OA and lower their attack speed and therefore improve our chances of surviving, 6 points into Night’s Chill to lower Cold resistances of enemies (and because I don’t know where else to put them).
“Pneumatic Burst” maxed, “Shadow Dance” maxed for some extra DA and Avoiding Attacks/Projectiles. If you like you can also put some into “Elemental Awakening”.
One Point into Phantasmal Armor for the energy leech and absorbtion.
Max “Anatomy of Murder” for sweet Vitality damage and some more Cunning.
One Point in “Blade Barrier” as panic button.

Now for the Devotions.
I won’t explain every constellation as some are more for getting to higher tiers.
Obviously we get Rattosh. Vita Resistance reduction all the way. Bind it either on Phantasmal Blades or Ravenous Earth.
Wendigo Mark, to stay alive. Bind it either on PB or Ravenous Earth. I suggest PB because we constantly hit stuff with it and i think staying alive is more important than damage.
Tree of Life - Healing Rain. More Survivability and Energy regeneration.
Oklaines Lantern - Little bit of everything.
Behemoth - Giant’s Blood. Life regeneration and Health.

I suggest not binding Healing Rain or Giant’s Blood on Spectral Binding, as it sometimes vanishes. Probably due to mana lacks.

Now Gear.
Obviously you want the new Mythical version of the demonslayer set. It offers you two additional blades which is a huge damage bonus! For the ones who are new to the game. Phantasmal Blades is considered a shotgun skill. Which means that the damage on your character sheet only represents one projectile! So if your Phantasmal Blades have 10k damage you have to multiply it by the number of projectiles you’re throwing. With 26/26 and the bonus form the demonslayer set we get 8 projectiles.
The other stuff is actually kinda replacable depending on your personal flavour, but obviously I suggest using this setup.
The MIs aer obviously hard to come by, but if you at least get a stonehide affix you won’t have to worry about your resistances at all.
The MIs are also incredibly useful. Gravathuls get you massive +Skills and Moosilauke’s get you +3 Phantasmal Blades.
You may switch the spellbreaker belt for a girdle of stolen dreams for more OA. That’s up to you. Though I have to say that this build has pretty high OA. When the procs kick in I have 2,9-3k OA not sure anymore
The rest is pretty self explanatory.

Augments
What you need for resistances.

Here’s the short version of the above.

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZP4r9dZ

I hope you guys like this build. It is fun. No, it won’t be Meta and it’s also not ridiculously strong. But you can easily beat the game on ultimate with it. Even the AoM stuff. I had no problems with Valbury, BoC and SoT either.

Have fun!

Fimbul

[Ceno]

Some slight optimizations to skills:

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/RVvd3AJN

-Overleveling Pneumatic Burst/Shadow Dance and Veil of Shadows doesn’t get you a whole lot RoI.
-I didn’t see much use for Night’s Chill in this build, especially since you’re converting Cold Damage away.
-Likewise for Mark of Torment past level 6. Anything further is largely useless.
+Maxed Blade Barrier for more uptime and a far stronger heal.
+Picked up a max Siphon Souls for yet another heal and significant damage.

You’re going to have a lot of Energy Problems with the build, I imagine.

Good writeup, though.

[Khalanos]

I want to try a phantasmal blade build, and yours seems really good.

3 questions for you :

• Is the mana regen enough ?
• Aren’t you too squishy for trucks like Kubacabra ?
• Healing rain seems to require heavy investment on blue constellations, isn’t it too expensive ?

[Fimbul]

@Ceno: Thanks for your additions.
-Yeah Syphon souls… Didn’t get too warm with that skill. Can be useful however.
-Where does the cold damage get converted? Not using Blood Orb of Chthon. Interesting enough, when using BOoC my damage goes down instead of up.
-Blade barrier max? Hmm depends on the player i guess. I don’t see much need for it.
-Actually I’m not having to big energy issues due to the leech and Oklaines and healing rain is kinda enough. But as you see I’ve yet to put in augments for rings and weapons. so enough room for optimization.
-in the end i struggled where to put the points. you see, this build was completely theorycrafted. i applied it to the toon now and it works really good. or at least good enough for me.

@Khalanos:
-Energy regeneration is normally enough. See above.
-yeah kubakabra is a pain. I don’t see this build do him “Easy going”. It can be done with a lot of kiting though. the Mark of torment works wonders here. but I don’t recommend this build for kuba.

• healing rain… get’s you massive heal and energy regen. Also the constellations that get you there get you neat stats. you can of course get something else, but prepare to get even more squishier. If you really want to get something different i suggest getting hungering void from dying god. it makes the most sense. and while picking up dying god you can get the shariot of the dead too to compensate the loss of healing rain.