[3.25] Undying Vampire - Colin Robinson Build! | Exsang 2x Overleech | League Starter | Progressive

Ohhhhh okay, I'm used to other games where you need like 20%+ life leech, so 1% feels like it should be insignificant on paper lol. I'm only level 38 now, and I've been using Exsanguinate with Vitality and the Devour Support gem to keep my health up as I work my way through the campaign, which is working well so far, but I knew I was missing something obvious. Thank you!

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Wynterknight333 wrote:

Ohhhhh okay, I'm used to other games where you need like 20%+ life leech, so 1% feels like it should be insignificant on paper lol. I'm only level 38 now, and I've been using Exsanguinate with Vitality and the Devour Support gem to keep my health up as I work my way through the campaign, which is working well so far, but I knew I was missing something obvious. Thank you!

Check out the Enduring Cry gem, I usually use that for easy healing when leveling - although it will be nerfed in 3.25

I've just switched from EK -> Reap in A3, and I'm feeling squishy AF. Playing HC so kinda scary but Reap is dealing more dmg than Vitality + Endurance Cry can heal.
Since I have only 140ish ES, 900 life, and all my leech is ES based, I'm struggling quite a bit.
What am I doing wrong?

I'm not sure if I'm enjoying the build. I just got to the end of act 10, level 60, and in previous seasons I just felt way stronger at this point.
I can barely survive anything, I'm not killing fast enough, or reliably, to feel like I can just grind a couple levels to get better gear.
I really don't know where to go from here, I think the build just takes too long to properly come online with the survivability.

I think the reality is that this isn't a good league starter.

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I've just switched from EK -> Reap in A3, and I'm feeling squishy AF. Playing HC so kinda scary but Reap is dealing more dmg than Vitality + Endurance Cry can heal.
Since I have only 140ish ES, 900 life, and all my leech is ES based, I'm struggling quite a bit.
What am I doing wrong?

I relied on Enduring Cry a lot in previous leagues for healing, but it seems it was nerfed hard when it comes to regenerating HP. Might need to invest in some other forms of restoration instead at this point (not sure what yet).

That being said, the last time I tried it (previous league) I was testing Exsanguinate of Transmission at that point and it seemed to work fine (with Unleash Support). Maybe try that?

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I'm not sure if I'm enjoying the build. I just got to the end of act 10, level 60, and in previous seasons I just felt way stronger at this point.
I can barely survive anything, I'm not killing fast enough, or reliably, to feel like I can just grind a couple levels to get better gear.
I really don't know where to go from here, I think the build just takes too long to properly come online with the survivability.

I think the reality is that this isn't a good league starter.

Hey, I'm sorry you feel that way :( This build did depend quite strongly with defenses on the Grace aura, which was heavily nerfed for that early mapping (it works fine later) as well as on Defiance Banner, which doesn't help anymore the way it works now. Enduring Cry also doesn't heal near as much as it used to.

The evasion removed from Grace was moved to the new, stronger item bases, but these are not something you would get in an early mapping scenario, leaving us a bit lacking. Maybe getting 20% quality to bump those evasion numbers would help at this point.

It seems I need to revise the build for that early mapping feeling, shift some defenses, maybe switch to ES leech later on, try to find new solutions for some of the problems that the patch changed.

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Thank you for giving it a try, I'm sorry if it didn't work as you expected. I hope you're still having fun with the league

I will definitely revise the early stages of the build as soon as I get some time

Oh good, it's nice to know it's not just me--I wondered why everyone seemed to love Enduring Cry so much when it didn't seem to be helping at all, I thought I was using it wrong or something. I switched from Devour Support to Life Leech Support on Exsanguinate and it's been working all right so far (I'm around level 50 now); I want to add Devour back on because it was incredibly useful for life sustain (you're immediately back to full life any time you kill a group of mobs, and this game seems to throw a lot of trash mobs at you, even during boss fights), but the socket gods have not been kind to me so far. I know you didn't recommend it until later, but I've already started using Petrified Blood and it's been fun constantly living on the edge this way lol. Using a triggered Steelskin + Withering Step has helped a lot, and I've been using a chaos golem to run interference and Void Sphere to pull big groups off of me, but I just hit Act 6 and it feels like the difficulty just spiked big time (probably due in large part to that huge resistance penalty I just got). My early rough take on your build is still fun, though.

Hey everyone! I league-started as this build for Settlers. I'm currently doing t16 maps and it's pretty comfortable. I will say that early maps and Atlas progression felt kind of slow and bad due to low DPS even with two CIPs, but the issue seems to have resolved itself now that I can fit Herald of Purity in.

For auras I'm running Pride, Vitality (on Arrogance), HoP, and of course, PB (technically not an aura). I don't have any space for a defensive aura on my setup but I just took extra care to get more evasion and energy shield on my rare gear.

Some notes:

-Personally I think vanilla Exsanguinate instead of the Transmission variant is the way to go. Mob packs are so dense that even Transmission's 10+ bounces won't reach all of them (and I don't really like trying to aim. Regular Exsanguinate says a 'narrow cone' but it seems more like 90 degrees). I will swap in EoT + Swift Affliction for thick bosses but I do find that it shrinks my Cruelty buff.

-Asenath gloves are more of a comfort item than anything, I think not having them would be completely fine, but it's nice to have Temp Chains and Blind. The explosions don't really do anything that normal Exsanguinate wouldn't do.

-Most of my deaths actually come from being stunlocked (I don't have Presence of Chayula yet). Brine King and/or Corundum flask have been very helpful. Stun avoidance or setting stun threshold to ES doesn't sound reliable enough to spec for.

-I estimate my current gear to be around 50-150 chaos total, however because this build relies on Atlas pinnacle boss drops (Burden of Truth, Watcher's Eye) you can't really expect this to function as advertised on a fresh league. I think it would be a good idea to suggest some helpful super-early uniques you can replace later. Imagine my surprise when The Broken Crown was incredibly hard to replace during Atlas progression! High ES, red slots easy to acquire (the perfect place to fit your pride + arrogance-vitality), low life damage bonus, and a silly amount of chaos res.

-Soul Eater rares are truly abysmal. With my usual setup it's simply not possible to avoid killing everything around them. I've had more than a few encounters where I just stood in place spamming Exsanguinate while a Soul Eater rare was playing the bongo drums with my head and neither of us could dent each other. So I guess that's a compliment for this build's durability?

-I'm not running Wind Dancer or Lethe Shade, I think those are up to preference.

-Soul of Abberath is a must-have forever and always, there's so much burning ground from everywhere it's kind of unbelievable how much mileage I'm getting out of it.

-You technically have 90% spell suppression. You gain 10% from having full energy shield so it reads 100% in hideout, but be aware of that.

-Enduring Cry has a fun use case this league for Petrified Amber nodes as it taunts rares away from the tree.

tl;dr league start has to be improvised, but fairly solid and fast once everything is online. Here's my far-from-finished PoB so you can laugh at my (cool and awesome t16 mapper) spaghetti: https://pobb.in/XMRqluk3UTXm

Carrion Golem is there because he is a friend :)

Thanks for your notes Cygnuts, very helpful :) I agree that there are many things in this build that are a case of preference - things such as Exsang vs Exsang of Trans, Wind Dancer, Kintsugi, etc.

I was researching alternative sources of spell life leech for early game, since I think that would improve the early phases a lot. I see two viable options: Doryani's Invitation belt (physical version). Seems to cost 18c at first day of the league, dropping to 4c after 3 days.

Another option, for before someone can afford that, is a plain simple Life Leech Support. It is an opportunity cost, since we lose a support socket, but it seems powerful - and can be quickly replaced once Doryani's Invitation is acquired.

I imagine Doryani's Invitation belt can be replaced by Burden of Truth once Watcher's Eye with Vitality Leech is acquired (Eye with just that one mod should not be very expensive)