Vigilant Strike

So I was looking at this skill for a poison build, and while I dont think its any good for mostly anything, I did cook up this way to spam vigilant strike 100% of the time. Not sure if anyone cares but I think ascendancy is the first time we have a 100% certain 100% uptime on vigilant strike (because of malachais loop), so ya.

Put on malachais loop: upon reaching max power charges, remove them.
Put on volls devotion: power charges become endurance charges
Put on 4x powerlessness jewel, you now have 1 power charge max
Put on romiras banquet and volls protector.

Now if you hit something you get a powercharge, immediately removed and turned into an endurance charge, and you can keep hitting. If you crit, volls protector grants you a powercharge, same result.

I tested this in game and it definitely works, and there are a number of ways to do this. Either get the powerlessness jewels like I just showed. Or get an equal max power charge and endurance charge limit, which means you will have a short windup time of 5 hits (generating the first batch of endurance charges), you will also have a reasonable uptime on the charges themselves.
You can also remove volls protector, but then you need RT, cause otherwise romiras will theoretically cause breaks in the chain of charge generation when you crit. You can also keep protector but remove romiras, but then you need capped crit and an active assassins mark on your target, for 100% crit chance.

Even if you do all of that you can probably still not do very much with this skill, but there you go :)

I've just done a pretty big re-work on my mara so that I can use VS as my main. So far it's working great.

Endurance charge generation:
I have a max of 7 charges, I'm running warlords mark as an aura, ascended as a juggernaut and took the 20% chance to gain an endurance charge when hit, and have ECoMS linked to VS.

Gem setup: VS is on a 5l with Multi-strike, Melee-Splace, Melee Physical, and as already mentioned, ECoMS.

Damage: I get about 35k tool dip dps, with about 19% crit chance. My 2h Mace has a rather large amount of damage and a second 5l with earthquake for dealing with physical reflect mobs or for when I run out of endurance charges.

Having said that, I've found that with this combo I basically never run out of endurance charges, not even against bosses. Sometimes I might get down as low as 4 or 5 charges by the time the boss is dead, but I don't run out. On the other hand, I also haven't run any maps over level 77 with it yet either though. A reasonable size pack of monsters will often get me close to max charges starting from zero.

Why I'm posting: There is just one weird thing about it, this happened a lot before I'd solved the endurance charge generation problem. It still happens very occasionally, but not often at all now. Sometimes, if I have hit a monster and gained only one endurance charge, when VS is on cool down and I go to attack again and the monster gets hit and dies, but the attack animation doesn't play. I'm not sure why this is, but it's almost like the client doesn't play the attack animation because it hasn't realised that I've got an endurance charge to bypass the cool down with. *shrug*.

Overall I'm very happy with the result of this build though. My marauder seems more survivable than ever before, and it's working like a charm. Chaos damage can still be a bit scary, but what else is new.

Hi!
I am thinking of several ways to play Vigilant Strike, from Hierophant Conviction of Power+Romira+Voll, to Jugger EC when hit, warlord, to ECOMS etc.

I want to know how to best taking advantage of the huge base damage of VG, in terms of Auras, and support gems, and gearing.

for example, does flat elemental damage on gear (or supports) get like, 203% (at lvl20 VS) of its flat value?
does flats on HoT and HoI get scaled by VS's multiplier?
and between Hatred and Wrath/Anger, which is better?

Feedback:

Cool skill, but hey GGG, some feedback on how it SOUNDS

It literally sounds like you're playing a casio keyboard, hitting random keys on the keyboard. Is that intentional? Could you perhaps rework the sound so it sounds like you're actually hitting someone with a weapon? It's sort of irritating and turns me off to the skill. Either that or make the keys go in key, or perhaps a C major scale or something. Haha.

I feel I need to post this since my previous post is now completely null and void.

With patch 2.2.0, The Vigil had the following change:

"

Chris wrote:

• Any skill with an associated Threshold Jewel is now supportable by Support Gems that could affect the additional properties added by the Threshold Jewel.

Today I decided to check out how big I could make the AoE fortify effect and to my suprise I could make it cover the WHOLE MAP with 0% INCREASED RADIUS OF AREA SKILLS!

Did someone at GGG add 2 or 3 too many zeros at the end when they buffed its base AoE? I mean, I like it, but this is one of the most radical buffs I have ever seen. The old AoE was so so tiny and now it's larger than I can comprehend..

The skill itself can't miss, so you don't need to invest in accuracy. The base AoE is larger than the whole continent of Wraeclast, so you don't need to invest in AoE. The duration of the fortify effect still scales with nothing so you don't need to invest in that either. The only investment needed is the threshold jewel(s) and a melee weapon, maybe a Writhing Jar if you wanna keep out of harms way at all times.

Pretty cool.

I absolutely love the bass explosion sound effect that comes from each hit. Thanks.


Edit: Since the sound is rewarding and satisfying, could it be made that the crit sound effect does not conflict or override it; but rather enhances it.

"

Mokihiki wrote:

Today I decided to check out how big I could make the AoE fortify effect and to my suprise I could make it cover the WHOLE MAP with 0% INCREASED RADIUS OF AREA SKILLS!

The whole screen, or the whole map?

"

The duration of the fortify effect still scales with nothing so you don't need to invest in that either.

It scales with the number of The Vigil jewels you are using.

"

dudiobugtron wrote:

"

Mokihiki wrote:

Today I decided to check out how big I could make the AoE fortify effect and to my suprise I could make it cover the WHOLE MAP with 0% INCREASED RADIUS OF AREA SKILLS!

The whole screen, or the whole map?

Whole map. To be more precise; I was hitting stuff in one corner of The Fellshrine Ruins and a friend of mine would get fortified in the opposite corner.

"

dudiobugtron wrote:

"

Mokihiki wrote:

The duration of the fortify effect still scales with nothing so you don't need to invest in that either.

It scales with the number of The Vigil jewels you are using.

True, I didn't really write what I ment to say, which was that you don't need Potency of Will or Exceptional Performance.

"

Mokihiki wrote:

Whole map. To be more precise; I was hitting stuff in one corner of The Fellshrine Ruins and a friend of mine would get fortified in the opposite corner.

Wow. That AoE seems... unnecessarily large.

Hitting air start cooldown, this is stupid