The Headbang Gang 2.0 - Raging Spirits madness - now with cheap version + leveling guide

Finished a large update to the main post. My latest iteration integrating Dominating Blow is now the first and main version, while keeping the other two - "Wand and Shield" becomes "The poor man's version", which I will rework accordingly, complete with videos of a level 65-70ish character with truly terrible gear - 4L coil, no alphas, lvl17-18 gems, maybe even blue or 3 affix jewelry, the works. Hope I can get on that soon.

I could use some help there from those of you who did/are doing this build in the one month race, especially regarding easy and fast leveling tactics. I did level this to a3m in the 1 month myself, but did a terrible job at it - it was slow and unenjoyable. I know some of you had a drastically different experience, I hope to capitalize on that. That is what a build guide should be about after all, catering to newer players without a lot of experience or currency...

Gear:



Cost of gear is about 7ex... 1ex for the shield, 1ex for Tabula, 3.5ex for Alpha's, another 1ex-ish for Sceptre, boots and rings. Ammy, gloves and belt self-found. Tabula was my first purchase around level 72, been slowly upgrading as I've gone along.



No EE because I usually play in parties

Leveled as SRS the whole game and I would not recommend it. Searing Bond, Flameblast, Spec Throw would probably be the way to go.

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PepprmintButler wrote:

Finished a large update to the main post. My latest iteration integrating Dominating Blow is now the first and main version, while keeping the other two - "Wand and Shield" becomes "The poor man's version", which I will rework accordingly, complete with videos of a level 65-70ish character with truly terrible gear - 4L coil, no alphas, lvl17-18 gems, maybe even blue or 3 affix jewelry, the works. Hope I can get on that soon.

I could use some help there from those of you who did/are doing this build in the one month race, especially regarding easy and fast leveling tactics. I did level this to a3m in the 1 month myself, but did a terrible job at it - it was slow and unenjoyable. I know some of you had a drastically different experience, I hope to capitalize on that. That is what a build guide should be about after all, catering to newer players without a lot of experience or currency...

There are a quite a few possibilities because leveling with raging spirits isn't really the best thing you can do. It actually really blows.

Since I level'd my scion together with a witch, i could use his searing bond while he used flameblast and later DD. If you're going solo with scion I would pick flameblast from a1n, chance to ignite from a3n and eleprolif from a3c. This should be enough for getting to merciless act2 which is where I transitioned to raging spirits.

If I would be a witch, I would pick searing bond instead of chance to ignite, craft a +1 to fire wand with the vendor recipe and that's basically it. You can't really go wrong with that. Something that increases your damage while leveling big times are the burning damage nodes near the templar, which can be respecced later and EE + ice nova.

The reason why I would pick one of those ways is, you don't need other people for it. You're getting all the gems yourself and both playstyles aren't gear dependent besides resists and life. The transitioning to raging spirit in that case is really easy, too. You don't even have to respec much or at all.

Other ways as a scion are spectral throw, which requires more respeccing or better weaponrng/ currency and firetrap, which also needs more respeccing but less gear.

Other ways as a witch are freezing pulse-lmp, which isn't gear dependent but needs respeccing and maybe arc but i'm not really sure about that one.

I hope this helps a bit at least.

How to level in new league as witch: 1-24 use rustic sash (trans then alc) vendor recipe on 2h axes, use cleave (make a new character to get it as quest reward). Then get searing bond from q1 a3. Cast searing bond, cast elemental weakness/flammability, cast raging spirits. When raging spirits do more damage than searing bond (around docks merci), don't cast searing bond any more.

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PepprmintButler wrote:

I could use some help there from those of you who did/are doing this build in the one month race, especially regarding easy and fast leveling tactics. I did level this to a3m in the 1 month myself, but did a terrible job at it - it was slow and unenjoyable. I know some of you had a drastically different experience, I hope to capitalize on that. That is what a build guide should be about after all, catering to newer players without a lot of experience or currency...

I'm doing the build in the 1m, cruised through with arc in a +1 lightning gem sceptre. I put passives in spell/lightning damage and then used respec points from quests when I was ready to use SRS.

My levelling build (about lv 69)


Used 16 points to respec to SRS build


Gear for anyone interested

I actually found the staff myself, otherwise it would have cost me ~4ex. Everything else is either self-found or bought for a few chaos. I think most of my currency now is being spent on trying to 6S5L the staff.
About the gem layout, I dropped EE mainly because I party with people who use lightning damage - so I replaced ball lightning with a CWDT setup (still need another increased duration) for more surviability. Stuff normally dies before I remember to trigger EE anyway. I've messed around with Dom Blow, but it just feels too clunky with a 65% chance to hit. Skeletotem is amazing at keeping agressive bosses occupied.

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Hojirozame wrote:

I'm doing the build in the 1m, cruised through with arc in a +1 lightning gem sceptre. I put passives in spell/lightning damage and then used respec points from quests when I was ready to use SRS.

That might be the way to go for the guide. I'd rather advocate Arc than Searing Bond (which I personally really dislike). I'm not a big fan of using the respec points from quests by design, but this is probably most efficient for a first in league character where you just don't have any twink gear to compensate for inadequate passives.

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PepprmintButler wrote:

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Hojirozame wrote:

I'm doing the build in the 1m, cruised through with arc in a +1 lightning gem sceptre. I put passives in spell/lightning damage and then used respec points from quests when I was ready to use SRS.

That might be the way to go for the guide. I'd rather advocate Arc than Searing Bond (which I personally really dislike). I'm not a big fan of using the respec points from quests by design, but this is probably most efficient for a first in league character where you just don't have any twink gear to compensate for inadequate passives.

Since I had a good grasp of my final build the 18 respec points would be going to waste anyway. Really any spell in a +1 weapon will be effective, and as a witch we get access to most of them as well as all elemental penetrations.

One addition you could add to your guide is what gems to get for the quests and which ones you'll have to buy.

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Hojirozame wrote:

One addition you could add to your guide is what gems to get for the quests and which ones you'll have to buy.

That's the plan.

Thanks for this build, I'm doing the Poor Man's version without the leveling plan, just building straight into the full passive tree.

I've never played a SRS build before, and would like to know what I should prioritize when building the tree. I was planning on going into Minion nodes first, then get some HP nodes, until around level 48 where I get aura nodes.
-Would this be the best way to prioritize building the tree from start to finish without the leveling plan?-

My highest level character is 80 and the tree is level 87, and I wasn't sure which nodes should be left out if I don't make it high enough.

Love the introduction of the tank build! Will definitely being following it. Thanks for the great guide.