Okay. So:
1) Deathguard Cabalist
I’ve tried playing it as an autoattacker. I’ve tried playing it as a caster: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQrwdp2 (this is a rough GT of what I did).
Right off the bat you’ll see how difficult it is to patch resists because the set offers little in the way of that. OA, and DA are also pretty awful. The only way to patch this up is with:
> Unrealistically rolled greens
> Forgoing acid based devotions which cripples the build because you lose %acid damage
> As I’ve said before, pierce to vit conversion on deathguard does nothing, and in fact hinders the skill because my chest piece now can’t even convert 25% of that to acid.
> I’m also forced into the deathstalker relic if I hope to be able to deal respectable damage because of a distinct lack of acid RR.
I’ve played this character several times in the crucible, desperately trying to love it, but no. It was a rather painful experience.
Bone harvest felt significantly weaker than ravenous earth, and ravenous earth was mediocre at best.
It struggles because you’ve given so much by way of poison damage to BH , but you give it a modifier to reduce its cooldown (i.e. -0.5s CD on helm).
This is antagonistic. What real benefit do I gain from the poison damage if I’m going to be spamming BH frequently?
Conclusion - Acid bone harvest serves no purpose. Best thing about DG set is the vitality to acid conversion on the daggers, and the cold to acid conversion. I can see how/why this would be attractive to the reaper, but alas - you lack a solid attack replacer to truly capitalize on it.
To add insult to injury, the only %vit damage to be found in the deathguard set is in the shoulder piece, the chest piece, and the 2 set completion bonus.
The result is a mediocre set which looks deceptively attractive/promising, but fails miserably to live up to its expectations.
With the introduction of righteous fervor skill modifiers to the vileblade set, the Deathguard set will indubitably fade into oblivion.
This brings us to experiment #2
2) pure acid RE cabalist
Since RE is doing all the heavy lifting, BH has no use for me.
So, out of curiosity, I GDstashed what I deemed to be the most offensively geared acid/ravenous earth build imaginable, using 3 highly unrealistic greens to shore up resistances - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrj9g5Z
To my surprise, this build performed worse than my DW ravenous earth cabalist - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77301
Sure, it’s sheet damage was higher, but the absence of the dark one’s proc made it so much more fragile, preventing me from facetanking enemies.
What use is stacking damage to RE, if I can’t hold my ground long enough for it to take effect.
And even when I could (e.g. under MoT), the damage wasn’t significantly greater than a vit-based RE cabalist despite stacking ~130 more damage per projectile.
Ergo - the impossibility of gearing for such a build, coupled with its lackluster performance makes it irrelevant.
3) Deception of dreeg set
I’ve personally never played this character as there is absolutely no reason to. Just by looking at the set/skill itself, it is reasonable and possible to conclude that it simply CANNOT work.
It splits itself in 2 antagonistic halves in almost every single way imaginable:
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You have a dagger with vitality damage as its base damage type, despite the set giving significantly more bonuses to acid damage.
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A huge proportion of the damage from DEE comes from poison, and yet the set bonus grants casting speed.
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The only real benefit of spam casting DEE lies in vile eruption, but this skill node grants more vitality damage than acid damage, thereby rendering the inherent acid-biasedness of the set pointless.
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This same flawed logic can also be applied to the %WD component of bloodburst itself, as the base damage of my dagger is vitality.
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I can’t even use 4 of the 5 set items by replacing the amulet with the conduit of eldritch whispers which converts all of my acid damage to vitality damage because I’ll lose my casting speed. Something which the dagger SORELY lacks (edited)
There are 2 feasible solutions to this zero sum game:
a. Use the m. blood orb offhand.
However, by doing so, I’m now denying myself of the groble effigy which would do so much more for the skill.
And even IF the blood orb offhand proves to be successful, I’ll be piloting a vitality build. NOT an acid one.
b. Use the sentinel.
This might actually work since the OK is the only other class with both acid/vid RR.
HOWEVER, it would now be a hybrid build capitalising on both acid/vitality damage which again goes to show that acid damage is poorly supported.
This also brings me back to the original point I made: It’s absurd that the witch hunter - the mastery which epitomises acid damage - is being outclassed by the sentinel.
I’ll get back to you on pierce damage (most probably tomorrow as writing that was tiring), and I’ll ask Rhylthar &/or user_name to do one for bleed as I don’t know enough about that damage type.
EDIT: The distinct lack of solid acid based casting weapons, 1H or otherwise, also renders seal of shadows useless. The best way to use seal of shadows right now is to convert all of it to chaos using fang of chthon, rah’zin’s chest piece, and the darkblaze amulet. And we are once again deviating away from acid damage.
