Why no love for the Leviathan constellation?

Hey all,

I’m levelling a cold Inquisitor (https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqP8P8V), and despite being about as squishy as a Jello pudding (starting to improve somewhat in that regard in recent levels), she melts (probably the wrong term) stuff almost as quick as my king of speed killing, my Vitality 2H Ritualist.

However, like many of you, I assemble my builds by dissecting and trying to understand the builds others have made.

One thing I can’t work out is - not one, not a single one, of the cold Inquisitor builds I’ve looked at use Leviathan… and I can’t work out why? It has tonnes of +cold% damage, a gob-load of flat cold damage, and a decent (if not necessarily earth-shattering) devo proc. Same goes for Yugol - it’s nominally a Cold constellation but I"ve only seen it used on Acid builds.

Every build I’ve seen for a cold Infiltrator either uses Ultos or Blind Sage with conversion, or simply skips T3’s altogether and just stocks up on defensive T2’s.

I’m sure there’s some blindingly obvious reason I’m just too dumb to recognise, but can anyone else running a cold Infiltrator build without Leviathan let me know their reasoning?

Much appreciated.

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If I remember correct it’s probably due to devotion path to Leviathan and the constellation nodes bonuses, i.e. you have to invest a lot to unlock Levi but the result is not worth enough.

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Ummm, what? My cold FoI for example.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25dzePN

It’s great build with one apparent problem, OA. OA on Levi normal route and devotion nodes lacks big time. And proc is OK, but not worth most of the time, except maybe in caster with big fat CDR.

Alos Yugol is used in most cold melee builds, damage reduction, AdctH are very good. Stats and damage/movement speed on proc aren’t impressive but it’s hard not to use Yugol these days on cold melee.

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I have a love-hate relationship with Leviathan myself. Proc is nice, and the road to it is less of an issue than what people make it sound to be, but Leviathan nodes itself are pulling the blanket into different direction (SS build is happy for extra flat but doesn’t care much for energy and it’s regen, while Chillwhisper is opposite) and overall feel like lacking a bang just a bit.

As for the reason it’s not seeing much love is a great deal of cold builds have in-built %crit and Leviathan is lacking OA. It can be worked around, but since the selection for cold T3 devotions is pretty good with three cold T3 constellations these cold builds just opt for other two T3’s since they have OA.

So, do Levi nodes need some buff?

Squeezing a kitten, aren’t ya? :rofl:

Sure, add missing +100% frostburn, buff physique to 100 so I could spirit dump more and replace 10% energy with totally equivalent 5% OA.

EDIT: forgot to mention that Leviathan could use something like 5% cdr too. :rofl:

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Thanks for the thoughts. Might try Yugol and see how that goes. Lose 22% stun resist and 4% DA from Throne and Wolverine, but I do have enough spare points to go 2 nodes into Ulzuin and end up with 8% OA and 6% ADctH I didn’t have. Probably a reasonable tradeoff.

But, yeah, takes serious trade-offs to get there. Buffing purples for elemental would do the trick of making Lev universal.

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I think the addition of DA shred to proc made many builders reconsider their opinion of this constellation.

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Pretty much this in my experience. High requirements, a weird path to reach it (not as much affinity overlap with similar constellations), and not as powerful as you would hope/expect.

Infiltrator = Aura of Censure damage reduction doesnt stack with Yugol, so i did not use it, even if its strong enough without it. I think its not a bad idea not to go for Yugol as Infiltrator. Because i see the damage reduction as one of my main intention to use Yugol, besides ADctH.