[2.1 Updated Tree] The Blasphemer - Low life - 5 Curse Aura and 5 Aura/Herald Support Melee

@Alex_Lied

That is a neat trick. I'll definitely give the Fireborn thing a try if I run into mana issues.

Mantra of Flames is a phenomenal idea too. This would be even better for those doing elemental scaling, but will likely a dps bump for me too over other dps jewels. Many of the bonuses and mods that this character uses won't scale it, but it is a TON of base fire damage for a build like this. Great suggestion.

@SirDragos

If you want to improve this dmg base from mantra of flames, you can also try to change it into pure-fire build.

just combine these:

"cold to fire + call of the brotherhood + avatar of fire"



One point on your skill tree, switching from hatred to anger aura and changing two gems in your main attack ("physical to lightning" to "cold to fire" and "more melee" to "fire penetration").

....but even if it give you dmg boost, you would lose one curse and chilling/frozing from cold dmg. So I don't think it is a good idea right now. Might be different if we will get some curse-oriented sub-class for witches.

To be honest, I am really curious how this build will turn out. I am too poor player to be trying it myself, but still, it looks really interesting so I am crossing my fingers for it xD

@Alex_Lied

So it is still good, but it occurs to me that Mantra of Flames might be less good than I thought. I don't think the 5 curses will count as "buffs" so it will only be about 6-8 buffs. That is still at least 51 base fire damage, which is probably better than other jewels.

A Glacial Hammer Scepter variant or Ice Crash might be a good thing to try with AoF. Interesting stuff.

@SirDragon

Yea, it only works with buffs "on you" so negative auras working on enemies won't count. Someone from GGG also confirmed it (I don't remember where, sorry). When I was proposing it I thought you could also get some buffs from CwDT setup so it would go up to 10-11. But after thinking it though that might be imposible with the heavy linking you already have on your gear.


...so only auras, punishment buff and maybe golem should be counted.

Even with that much ES, having almost no evasion, no block, no armor, no constant endurance charges generator and so-so damage still mean that you are not tanky. In the situation of a group map boss fight at tier 13+, I can't imagine you tanking bosses, or even be able to get to melee range without getting killed.

@Taxi_Driver

I am concerned a little with survivability, but let me address some of your comments to show the situation is not as bad as it looks:

Evasion: With the linked gear and Grace, I have 10K evasion. Against non-unique enemies affected by 150% Enfeeble, this is an effective 50K evasion after monster accuracy penalty is run through the hit formula. Against map bosses, I still have Enfeeble at 90% after curse resist, which works out to about 30K or so effective evasion.

Physical Mitigation: I have no armor, but I definitely have a way to automate 4 endurance charges in Warlord's Mark. I suppose that I could add an enduring cry to help against longer boss fights, but I usually run in a max three man team, so boss fights don't last very long. I also use Rumi's Concoction and Taste of Hate flasks, with +150% flask charges coming in from Poacher's Mark.

General Mitigation: 150% Enfeeble lessens all damage by 45% from non-unique enemies and 90% Enfeeble against map bosses is still less 27% damage. Fortify on Leap Slam is 20% reduced damage taken. I am also considering using Blind on Leap slam instead of Faster Attacks, depending on final attack speeds. And finally, I still have the 22% block and 50/12 block with Rumi's up. Add to that the fact that I will chill with my attacks and use Increased Duration AA ground ice on bosses and that slow will stack with my amped up Temp Chains, enemies are not moving very fast.

Leech: I'm not sure what you mean by so-so damage. 115K dps is what I've calculated based on current tree and gear for a single target. With 3% life leech (1.8% vs. map bosses) and Vaal Pact, I'm getting 3450 (or 2070) ES back per second from instant leeching. Now, that is pure elemental damage that will be partly mitigated by resist, but I have 66% (or 39% against map boss) reduction in resists and I ignore armor entirely.

What I am actually worried about is how low my ES is going to be. With current tree and gear, it is only just over 6500 ES, which is pretty bad for an endgame ES build. Without an ES shield or helm and using all unique jewelry, I have to rely on very few slots for my base ES. 5 seconds of Vaal Discipline will help as a panic button, massively increasing my ES pool and recharging me through damage, but it does not make up for a generally low ES number. I'm hoping the other levels of mitigation that I've described above will offset it.

Edit: I am going to add this info to the OP.

@Taxi_Driver

If you are not sure how much temporal chains + chill slows down enemies check this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTJbrBDu7M&feature=youtu.be

So a top of what he already calculated, it is at least another 50% less hits.

This build is curse-dependant so curse-immune maps / mobs will be problematic here but... they shouldn't be everyday occurance. Also, if there will be at least one other player in the party, that weak link will be easily overcome.

Much bigger concern to me is dealing with ranged enemies outside of blasphemy influence - since even if he will jump quickly inside the pack of mobs, ranged-mobs won't be sticking in one big chunk nor waiting for him to finish others. If there was room for some CoDT setup with immortal call that would be a different story, but with so many curses and auras that doesn't seem to be viable. So all depends on the clearing speed, final range of aura (supposedly it will grow with level), ES final number... and many other things. Right now we can only wait.

The 2.1 tree is fantastic for this build. Repathing the Shadow area, we get another good Energy from Within jewel socket (don't forget the 5% life in Nullification), tons more damage, more INT and DEX, and we actually save a point.

The only real loss is with the Witch AoE nodes. I am down on taking them now, as we mostly wanted the actual AoE%. Going from 16% to 10% kinda stinks, despite the damage boost. The area damage is not great for us as it only affects the blast portion, which is only half our attacks and does less damage. The points are likely better spent elsewhere. We actually dodged a bullet on AoE, though; I'd thought that curse and aura AoE would get nerfed too, but that appears to be fine.

The aura effectiveness nodes now say "Non-curse aura." This was known not to work with curses before. Making it explicitly use that language in the tree is good, as it will cut down on confusion.

Started adding some alternate builds. The crit variants are maybe better suited to the Assassin Shadow, depending on what the Witch Ascendancies get for curses or energy shield.

You might also try to make a version with dualist leech cluster, as it is now saying "attack damage leech" rather than "physical attack". But since it is on the opposite site of the tree from what you want (curse bonuses, ES, Aura nodes) it might be imposible. Maybe going for just life nodes and putting Energy from within jewel would be worth trying but I will wait for poebuilder.com to get new tree before testing it.