[1.3] Path of Least Resistance: Veil of The Night - UPDATED FOR 3.5

Hello. Did you know that you have a right to make your own build instead of looking one up online? You are still here? Well please allow me to unVEIL this UNIQUE build. Hehe. Sigh. Lets get to it:



-Are you tired of your girlfriend laughing at your small resists?
-Did you ever want to be able to leave your computer running and just go outside, while your character afk tank and kill all the mobs?
-Did you ever wake up in cold sweat realizing how your build pathetically lack any synergy?
-Did you ever wonder why no builds are worthy of Veil of the Night unique?

If you answered "Yes" to all, some or none of these questions - this build guide is for you.

Theory-crafting:

All these uniques are quite cheap. Perhaps except immortal flesh belt. Who knows.

So let's look at Veil of The Night. It is quite a unique... ehm... unique.

1. Veil of the Night is considered to be bad by many but why? People are afraid. Most people will not be able to handle this greatness.
The item has a big downside... or does it? All of your resists are always 0. Well that seems bad. What else it does? Some reflect, and increased global defences. Okay. Global defences include armour, energy shield and evasion, which is great if you plan on tanking. But how do you get over the low resists? You embrace it.

* Merciless already has -60% to all resists. You say nope to that with your veil helmet.
* You don't care about resists on gear, which allows you to focus on truly important things like... magic find?
* You can put on any item with elemental resist penalty *cough* immortal flesh belt, andavarius rings etc *cough* and just smile into faces of Chris Willson and his design team as they are frantically trying to rebalance their whole game around this fresh new build (they probably would not be able to handle all this synergy).

So just stack life regen, block, armour and energy shield. Why not evasion? As you will see, we are going to be relying on dudes hitting us in order to deal damage. If we evade, we receive no damage and vengeance, riposte and retribution are not triggered.

2. Deresso's Courage. Well this is incredibly important. Even though we don't want resists, it has 120% block chance applied to spells. Nuff said. (We will stack so much block, our dude is gonna become voxel-based). Low life will be achieved through the use of Blood magic support gem + Tempest Shield (which also gives block.

3. Immortal Flesh. Well this item gives insane life regen (which we will use with zealous oath to regen energy shield instead. Low life build, remember?) but it has a severe penalty to elemental resists.. oh wait, we don't give a ...

4. Also I chose Ethereal Blade for the increase energy shield. Another option would be just a rare rapier with plain damage mods.

5. ANVIL. Must have because reflect and increased max block. First time this is more useful than the other lapis block amulet.

6. Lori's Lanter is good because of unlucky crits and since we are low life - good ammount of chaos resist. Buy corrupted one since it will be cheaper and you don't need resists on it anyway.

7. Zahnedus Cassock or whatever the name of that thing is... Its just made for this build, and remember consecrate ground is 4% life regen all going to energy shield. And we are pretty much maxed on chaos resist thanks to the rings and armour.
Edit: After receiving some feedback, a good armour for lvl 70 might be Incandescent heart due to decrease in elemental damage taken (thanks to chaos resist)

The rest of the gear. Well I will let you check it out for yourself. I believe the synergy speaks for itself.



Now let's talk about some other options and why I chose this particular gear gear.
1. Veil of the Night's alternative? Out of the question.
2. Anvil. You could go for the Stone of Lazhwar but anvil is a much better choice since you already max your spell block and anvil gives you additional 3% on top of it.
3. Zahndethus' Cassock. Another option would be Lightbane Raiment, or Solaris Lorica, but Lightbane is not worth it damage wise - 60 chaos damage per second is really not that much. And we are kinda maxed on chaos resist thanks to the Cassock anyway.
4.Shield: You could use thousand teeth or maligaro's lens, but all of them basically make you die to any spell while not providing any substantial reflect damage increase.
5.Immortal flesh belt: Well, thats also kinda out of the question considering the life regen it gives and synergy with helm.
6. Boots. I kinda felt that increased movement speed was nice but it's up to you really what boots you want. Same goes for the second ring.
7.Gloves: While there may be better options with higher armour/energy shield - having a curse on hit is also quite nice but not mandatory.

Bandits: All passives. You will travel along passive tree a lot.

Video:

Passive tree:

Defence Stats

Offence Stats

Gem explanation:

The build is quite fun. One of the changes I will add is link one of the melee gems to cast on kill lightning warp. you dont even have to move. True AFK. Future upgrade includes Mjolner.


This is how my character looks in-game. So can yours...

FAQ:
Q: Is it Dominus viable?
A: You should ask if Dominus is viable against this?

Q: Is it Atziri viable?
A: Why don't you find out for yourself.

Q: Can I play it on Hardcore?
A: Yes, but you might die a couple of times.

Q: Why not take off Veil of the Night and make it a normal build with block?
A: Why not shut up?

So.. beautiful...

Love the build. I do have a couple of quick questions though:
1) How do you solve the issue of Ancestral Power nemesis mode on mobs?
2) Could you tell us more about your dual-wield shield unique, please?

Thanks!

"

Gleberont wrote:

Love the build. I do have a couple of quick questions though:
1) How do you solve the issue of Ancestral Power nemesis mode on mobs?
2) Could you tell us more about your dual-wield shield unique, please?

Thanks!

Hi.
1. You just outheal it with insane life regen. I believe it is something like 300-400 life regen transferred into energy shield regen.\
2. Every game should let you dual-wield shields. My friends and I worked on the one-handed club (we called it Oaken's shield"), which would resemble shield and have defensive stats, like armour % scaled with strength. You could not attack with it normally and could only used it with combination of another shield. You could still use shield skills like shield charge and tempest shield.

We emailed Chris Willson, he said that he will pass it onto his design team and we never heard from him again.

I must say I appreciate your creativity and sense of humor, but I wouldn't touch this build with my ten foot **** Kappa

One thing I wonder is if 120% of block chance is applied to spells, can your spell block exceed the normal cap of 75% (78% with anvil...right?), or would you simply be able to achieve max spell block without having max block? I'm assuming it's the latter and has already been explained on the forums countless times, but I'm lazy and don't want to research it! :D

Any video?

"

SmokedCarpenter wrote:

I must say I appreciate your creativity and sense of humor, but I wouldn't touch this build with my ten foot **** Kappa

One thing I wonder is if 120% of block chance is applied to spells, can your spell block exceed the normal cap of 75% (78% with anvil...right?), or would you simply be able to achieve max spell block without having max block? I'm assuming it's the latter and has already been explained on the forums countless times, but I'm lazy and don't want to research it! :D

It is probably for the best as only few coild handle this build and fewer could play it.

Joking aside the build works fine up to merciless because you can get the items at relatively low level and on merciless it starts to work as evasion tank. You are doing fine, then once in a while something just nukes you.

As for the block - you are correct. It is possible to max out spell block without maxing the regular block. In fact i have something like 70 regular and 78 (thanks to the anvil) spell block.

"

chrila wrote:

Any video?

Coming soon.

Why didnt you post any stats screens?

"

akadiablo wrote:

Why didnt you post any stats screens?

Done.