A melee warlock certainly seems like an uphill challenge for a few reasons. The synergies aren’t apparent, very little physique added from the masteries of the two classes and no attack skills to speak of.
Those issues aside, I still want to give this a go. In the starting levels, I’ve had success getting healed by my raven, and a few points of both Solael’s Witchfire and IEE for damage with my two-handed weapon. Curse of Frailty/Vuln for bosses.
All my stat points have been going into physique. I should be able to keep my spirit high enough with just mastery investment alone. Cunning, I might need to get on my gear since I am lacking that as well.
The current plan is to head to Sphere of Protection for some damage mitigation. A point into Arcane will doesn’t seem like a bad investment either. A point into mirror for when things go really south.
Which brings me to mid/late game. I don’t have a direction in mind. This character is so very weird since it uses almost every damage type. It lead me to think that trying to get Total Damage gear was the way to go with this instead on trying to focus on just elemental or just Chaos. Heck, Aether found its way into my damage types. It’s hard to stay focused.
Any late game gear that might help shape my melee warlock? (I’m not married to two-handers, its just very good for leveling.)
I guess your best bet would be to go for elemental damage and use the shard of Beronath from level 55 on. Then you would probably go for something like this: http://grimcalc.com/build/xLXm3dK
Problem would be that not only you have low physique because of only using caster classes but also only skilling the second class to 15.
The other possibility would be to go for a more chaos-focused build I guess.
That would probably look somewhat like this: http://grimcalc.com/build/s0LSyNC ( I don’t know where to put the last few points ). This way you have more attribute points and you get the extra 12% damage absorption from Possession. You’d probably want to use chaos strike then.
Yeah, the damage reduction from Possession seems really nice. I am playing around with the idea of using The Blood Orb of Ch’thon in melee to convert all elemental damage into Chaos damage. I’m not too sure how that would work out though. Seems like I’d be REALLY squishy.
That’s actually a good idea… I guess. Then you can still use Shard of Beronath which deals elemental damage, so there you have your standard melee attack.
You probably should go for heavy armor, all physique, then you might be not that squishy since you have 32% damage absorption from Possession and Maiven’s Sphere.
And then you could use the remaining points to either take Sigil of Consumption for a bit of extra healing or invest more points into Callidor’s Tempest for a stronger burst. Or even OFF - that way you would again gain more survivability.
That actually looks pretty decent. I too was thinking about abomination. Added bonus, the more I convert Physical to something else, the less damage penalty I suffer from Sphere of Protection.
That’s true. It would be cool if the Blood Orb would convert the physical damage that IEE converts to elemental damage into chaos again but if I understand the order correctly Blood Orb and IEE work at the same time.
And if I recall correctly, added Burn/Frostburn/Electrocution damage wouldn’t be modified by Elemental Damage OR be convert to chaos, right? I’m thinking I shouldn’t really pump Overload. Perhaps drop a point and allow +skills to raise it.
I just tested it : the #flat elemental damage from IEE gets converted, but the %converted damage is not (because damage cannot be converted twice)
I have very low amounts of elemental damage left, once blood rite is on (speaking of normal-auto-attack), and I guess those low amounts come from the Shard of Beronath component (+ the actual %converted damage from IEE.)
The component also converts 10% physical dmg in elemental dmg and I am pretty sure those 10% weren’t converted (one more time) to chaos, because that conversion happened before the other or at the same time.
Confirmed : without the Shard of Beronath, with IEE and blood rite on, with a pure-cold weapon : no elemental damage left, it is all converted to chaos.
However : with a pure-physical weapon, damage conversion from IEE turns physical dmg into elemental first, so you lose the % amount of conversion from the IEE skill.
I don’t know how to explain it clearly (not a native english speaker) but the damage absorption isn’t additive :
So you don’t get to have (10% + 12%) actual damage absorption.
About your Melee-warlock :
if you go the ‘elemental’ way :
Attach either ‘elemental storm’ (from rhowan’s crown) or ‘elemental seeker’ (from blind sage) to Curse of Failty + Vulnerability : those are really effective combo with both crowd control and damage
if you go the ‘chaos’ way :
You’ll need the Necrosis relic (provides a debuff skill) and the Eldrtich Fire (from Solael’s witchblade)
Occultist skills : I would strongly advise you max ‘Aspect of the Guardian’ for the physical resistance. And ‘Solael witchfire’, for the attack speed, if you go full melee.
Are you sure about that “can not be converted twice”-part? That’s a possible explanation but in the game guide this isn’t mentioned anywhere ( at least I can’t find it), but if you look at the “order of events for Conversion”
“Base Skill > Skill Modifiers > Conversion on the Skill or Transmuter > Conversion on Equipment and Buffs > Equipment, Auras and Passives”
You see that Conversion on equipment and buffs are done at the same time ( equipment being the Blood Orb and buff being IEE ) therefore Blood Orb can not convert the converted :rolleyes: elemental-damage of IEE but the flat damage.
That’s too bad but I was somewhat expecting that to be honest. Then it’s questionable to go for Maiven’s Sphere if you already have Possession I guess since it’s only 8% more protection (next to the other stuff from its modifier) for quite a load of points.
