Witch - [2.4] Poison Sunder Necromancer - Forum

Poison Sunder Necromancer

Hey and thanks for checking out my build!

I'm StaeFrostae. I've leveled up this character to 84 without any real difficulties, and I'm looking for some feedback about how to min-max everything and improve my build. It's no BV Pathfinder, but Poison Sunder Necro has been pretty fun so far. If you're interested in a non-meta build, I'd definitely consider giving this one a shot.

Passive_Tree

lvl 100- Concept
lvl 84- Current

Ascendancy

I chose necromancer because Mistress of Sacrifice allows me to gain the benefits of Spirit Offering which gives 29% of my physical damage as extra chaos damage.

Then after picking up Spirit Eater, I get 2% attack speed per consumed corpse and an additional 40% damage every time I use Spirit Offering.

Next I pick up Commander of Darkness which again increases damage by 10% and attack speed by 5% for each aura I run, and I get an extra 20% all res.

Finally, I'd pick up Beacon of Corruption (if I wasn't terrified of Uber Lab) for 20% increased chaos damage and 15% chaos res, but even without this, the build is pretty solid.

Some other options for Ascendancies are Occultist, Trickster, Raider, and Pathfinder.

Gear

My Gear so far has been focused on getting life and strength, while keeping my resistances capped. I've also started working on getting extra damage from my gloves and jewelry.

The only uniques I'm using at the moment are Soul Taker and Essence Worm. Soul Taker is a decent DPS axe that allows me to not have to worry about mana. Essence Worm just lets me grab 2 35% auras on top of Grace which is nice. Eventually, I'd like to run a 6L Daresso's Defiance, and switch from Warlords Mark to Temporal Chains or Enfeeble.

Flasks

I need to switch out my Life flask and Basalt flask, but this is generally what I'd like to run.

Ideally, the life flask would dispel curses or bleeding and the Basalt Flask would cover the opposite.

I run Witchfire Brew for the evasion bonus and the massive increase to DOT. Atziri's Promise adds 24% of my physical damage as extra chaos damage, and gives life leech. Lion's Roar gives me a good chunk of armor and a massive 35% more m phys damage, and knockback.

Links

6L_Chest

Main Damage Skill

Sunder, Melee Physical Damage, Multistrike, Fortify, Faster Attacks, Poison

I've tried replacing FA with Void Manipulation, but the damage is consistently lower and the attack motion "feels" much clunkier/less fluid.

4L_Helm

Blood Rage and Spirit Offering

Spirit Offering, Blood Rage, Increased Duration, Blood Magic

I've got all of my mana reserved at the moment (with soul taker for attacks), so I have to put everything on blood magic. Otherwise, I'd consider running faster casting. Cast time for SO is still nice and quick at .63 seconds with 5 frenzy charges.

4L_Gloves

CwDT Setup

Cast when Damage Taken (lvl 1), Immortal Call, Tempest Shield, Summon Chaos Golem

4L_Boots

Vaal Auras

Vaal Haste, Vaal Grace, Increased Duration, Faster Casting

3L_Axe

Auras

Purity of Elements, Blasphemy, Warlord's Mark

Note: with Essence Worm these two auras will reserve almost 100% of my mana.

3L_Shield

Leap Slam

Leap Slam, Faster Attacks, Culling Strike

How_It_Works

Offense

So this build works by getting lots of hits that all apply poison stacks.

Sunder is used because it hits multiple times per attack. This is increased by increased AOE (quality on the Sunder gem and witch passives).

I get a large attack speed from my Necromancer ascendancy, frenzy charges, Blood Rage, FA, MS, Vaal Haste and Soul Taker's base attack speed.

I use gems, jewels and some phys damage nodes to scale up my physical damage. Then it's converted into extra chaos damage from Spirit Offering, Atziri's Promise, and Force Shaper. I'm also considering running a Malicious Intent Jewel to get Unholy Might.

Then there's poison and everyone knows how that double dips and does silly good damage, especially with Witchfire Brew cursing mobs with Vulnerability.

In the end I have a tool tip dps of 14 k from just BR, Frenzy charges and Spirit Offering. This goes up to almost 33k with flasks and vaal haste active.

Of course, tooltip dps doesn't accurately model my actual dps. Every mob that's hit gives off another circular AOE which applies 70% of that initial hit again. That means, when hitting 2 mobs standing next to each other, I'm actually doing almost 79k dps. On a tight group of 5, it's 148k dps. In other words, the bigger the group, the faster it falls.

And those numbers don't even take poison damage into account. 8% of all that damage (it's almost entirely physical and chaos) would then be added on top of everything and multiplied by 112% increased DOT and 165% increased chaos damage. It's also affected by the Vulnerability curse which increases damage over time.

Basically, damage isn't much of an issue at all. And that's calculated from my stats with cheapish gear at level 84.

Defense

There isn't as much to say here. Here are some screen caps of my defenses.

Charges_Only

Flasks_Up

Vaal_Grace,_Flask,_and_Charges

On top of that, I have fortify always up. I have Immortal Call blocking big hits. I get life leech from Warlords Mark, BR, and Atziri's Promise. Finally, I get knockback from Lion's Roar.

Last bumped on Jan 4, 2017, 12:59:41 AM