[2.0] Empire's Slam - MorgNThorg's vaal ground slammer

Gameplay video

Some vaal slammin' and head huntin'. (I just got a headhunter and tried the build with better gear on standard)
Some vaal slammin' on the beach.

Core concept


Ever since I saw these items on the awakening beta I was excited to create a build which uses a vaal skill for general clearing and maintaining the souls for itself. There were several skill candidates, but I usually end up with melee builds because that's the play style is that suits me the most. Vaal power syphon, cyclone and molten shell could have been also nice candidates, but I really like

First the skill doesn't need many souls to activate, second it can store 4 charges. Also it can be used 3 times per charge with a multistrike support. The skill iteslf cries for critical strikes. The "cannot be evaded" property enables higher effective crit chance (as crit hits need double accuracy check) and you need to pump out really high damage with the skill in order to kill enough mobs to refill it with the proper amount of souls in one use (actually three with multistrike). Also you need to shatter enemies to take advantage of the corrupt jewel, and critical strikes with cold damage will just do that for us. If we consistently shatter our enemies we can use vaal ground slam after killing only 16 enemies!

Weapon choice

The skill in itself limits our weapon choices to staves or maces, but with opting into critical strikes it's sceptres or staves in reality. Staves are a nice option also (especially the new eclipse staff), but I like one handers, so I chose sceptre. Reaching high crit chance is crucial for vaal ground slam as we want it to crit consistently, so I opted for dual wielding. A dagger as an offhand adds a nice bonus for global crit chance and brings the possibility to specialize into the twin terrors cluster. The weapon itself need high physical damage (not dps) and high critical strike chance.

Our ideal offhand is ungil's gauche. Vaal ground slam cannot be used with daggers, so the weapons poor damage won't spoil our damage output, but adds huge global critical strike chance, dual wield block, the possibility to use whirling blades as our movement skill and the dual wield bonuses.


Unique armor pieces


Easily my favourite unique introduced by the awakening. As mostly playing melee builds, I really like the ability to pull mobs in tight packs before exterminating them. This item works really well with vaal ground slam's knockback and 100% increased knockback distance. If we fail to crit with our vaal ground slam and do not finish the enemies they will be packed together waiting to be destroyed by ice crash.


This item doesn't need any furter explanation, we need high damage and brutal critical strikes, this helm just does this.


Offsetting the negative side of abyssus.

Remaining rare items


They just cover our resistance, life and accuracy needs.

Passive tree

Level 89 marauder tree. Main features:
- 180% life
- 310% increased armor
- 90% increased evasion
- 43% to all elemental resistances
- cannot be stunned
- evasion converted to armor
- 5 endurance charges + Soul of Steel
- reduced critical strike damage taken
- 300% increased critical strike chance
- 236% increased damage

The high resistance values from passives allow us to cap resistances easily despite using lightning coil and other slots without any resistance. The unique pieces have high base armor value (even the coil is good with the iron reflexes keystone. With the gear above I have 15k armor on top of the 24% physical damage reduction from endurace charges and soul of steel.

The pure damage from passives is not overwhelming, but it will be further scaled with critical strikes so it's more than enough in the end.

Unwavering stance is really important, because if we get stunned when using vaal ground slam we loose the charge!

Bandit choices

Normal - Oak (40 hp)
Cruel - kill all (passive point)
Merciless - Alira (+1 power charge)

Skills


Our main skill. With one (triple) use of this skill the enemies around us are usually dead. If not then they are brought in reach of ice crash. With the increased critical strikes support and the 4 power charges we maintain this skill will crit very reliably. (Cannot be used with daggers - so our offhand won't spoil the damage.)


This skill is used usually for gathering souls for vaal ground slam and for smaller pack where we don't want to waste a vaal charge. In fact it can be used for normal clearing as well, just if this was a simple ice crash build. It also maintains our power charges (on top of assassin's mark). (Main hand only skill - so our offhand won't spoil the damage.)


Our single target skill. I always loved the pure brutality of this skill, but I was driven away by the inherent knockback. With the empire's grasp this is even a benefit. THe built in stun threshold reduction also comes in handy for bossfights. (Cannot be used with daggers - so our offhand won't spoil the damage.)


Movement skill and fortify slot.


Buffs. Hatred is important for the shatter effect as it adds huge cold damage to vaal ground slam based on our physical damage. AA is a nice defensive option. It can be substituted with herald of ice for more shatter damage (the reversed knockback will bring many enemies in the range of the on kill effect) but I don't feel it necessary.


Warcry and curse slot. Assassin's mark is the ideal curse as it grants power charges, higher critical chance and damage. Also the mana gained on kill effect makes mana management easy.


Frenzy charge source.

Life & mana sustain

Assassin's mark help a lot in mana management but it's actually really easy to run this build on mana flasks. I only have this flask:

I can spam it constantly and never run out of mana. It also makes me nearly invulnerable to bleed, which is especially good in an abyssus build. Surgeon's may be even better than avenger's.

Life can also be sustained easily from flasks in most situations. The passive tree grants us
- 40% increased Life Recovery from Flasks
- 20% increased Flask Recovery Speed
A surgeon's eternal flask can be reliably used in most situations and a seething hallowed/divine is nice for incoming spike damage.

nice build, man.

i have one question. have you thought about using Death's Hand as an offhand weapon?

"

ShinningWizard wrote:

nice build, man.

i have one question. have you thought about using Death's Hand as an offhand weapon?

Thanks. Yes, I really like that weapon but the main problem with it in this build is that it's also a sceptre. So you would alternate your weapons while hitting (except ice crash of course). While death's hand can get into the okayish dps interval, it's rather a fast weapon than a hard hitting one. It would be more than ideal for a dual wield reave build off-hand though.

very nice build

"

MorgNThorg wrote:

"

ShinningWizard wrote:

nice build, man.

i have one question. have you thought about using Death's Hand as an offhand weapon?

Thanks. Yes, I really like that weapon but the main problem with it in this build is that it's also a sceptre. So you would alternate your weapons while hitting (except ice crash of course). While death's hand can get into the okayish dps interval, it's rather a fast weapon than a hard hitting one. It would be more than ideal for a dual wield reave build off-hand though.

Groundslam/Vaal Groundslam are also main-hand only. You would not be alternating weapons at all. Also highly recommend you socket Increased AOE with Vaal GS; the current radius is poor.

"

marcosyy87 wrote:

very nice build

Thanks!

"

Languidness wrote:

Groundslam/Vaal Groundslam are also main-hand only. You would not be alternating weapons at all. Also highly recommend you socket Increased AOE with Vaal GS; the current radius is poor.

Didn't know that about slams. I think I'll try to get one to check that out, but I'd still miss the huge global crit and the block chance from ungil. I would also lose the ability to use whirling blades (leap is nice as well, but I just prefer whirling). Also heavy strike would be alternating between weapons then.

As for the AoE gem: it would be nice of course, but I wouldn't give up the crit chance gem (I need really high crit consistency), multistrike is a must so the only slot where I can fit it is melee phys damage (unless I put it in a 5L). Also I found the base AoE quite good. In open maps like strand in the video you could make use of the bigger AoE, but in close maps it wouldn't make any real difference.

Trying out now this weapon


I can overcome losing the crit chance on ungil's gauche for vaal ground slam using this jewel


I like this combination a lot, but missing whirling blades.

Hey, glad you posted this. I'm basically trying to make the same build work. (+Vaal jewels, crit sceptres, abyssus, empire's grasp, coil ) I'm currently only level 54 so far, so I haven't been able to test everything together yet.

I watched your video and standing in the middle of a pack slowly cursing them is painful to watch. We need to figure out a better way to curse. I'm thinking running Hatred and then Herald of Ice - curse on hit. Would have to give up AA, but it might be worth it for clearspeed.

I was intrigued by your tree since you went into the duelist area. For my tree I went into the shadow/ranger area to get vaal pact, crit, frenzy charges, and mana leech (spirit void).

My tree is much less defensive than yours:
Link to tree
172% life, 70% inc life recovered from flasks
13 all res, no US, no IR
6 frenzy charges (with bandits)
278% increased damage
400% crit chance
78% crit multi
90% accuracy
40% atk speed

For mitigation I was thinking of relying on coil+taste of hate, and cwdt-ec-duration with 3 ECs. Also putting a life-leech gem into ice crash for vaal pact leech goodness is helpful as well. I guess life will be low even with 172% given how many uniques are in use.

About sceptres, I think high AS sceptres can be good as well since we can get plenty of +flat phys from abyssus as well as jewelry. High AS also let's us maneuver a little bit better. I got for cheap, looking forward to testing it out with abyssus. For example your sceptre is 408 pdps with abyssus+jewelry, while mine is 370. And your sceptre seems like it was expensive.

Other than that your post needs videos of 76+ maps to give people (me included!) a better idea of what the build is like in real content.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

I watched your video and standing in the middle of a pack slowly cursing them is painful to watch. We need to figure out a better way to curse. I'm thinking running Hatred and then Herald of Ice - curse on hit. Would have to give up AA, but it might be worth it for clearspeed.

I'm not hapy with that either. I was also thinking about HoI - CoH, but my problem was that you apply the curse when you already got the critical strike. It should be good for maintaining power charges, but I also wanted to make use of the flat crit chance it gives. Also with death's hand I usually have them up anyway. I'm trying out a cwdt + curse and a vengeance + coh + curse duo. It's kinda okayish, but I'm not amused. Also it wouldn't work really well with ice crash, because common enemies don't really have the chance to hit me, but I'm trying out cyclone ATM (I had some difficulty against elemental heavy bosses and the mobility of cyclone helps against them). I know it uses both my weapons, but death's hand is not that bad in this regard.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

I was intrigued by your tree since you went into the duelist area. For my tree I went into the shadow/ranger area to get vaal pact, crit, frenzy charges, and mana leech (spirit void).

My tree is much less defensive than yours:
Link to tree
172% life, 70% inc life recovered from flasks
13 all res, no US, no IR
6 frenzy charges (with bandits)
278% increased damage
400% crit chance
78% crit multi
90% accuracy
40% atk speed

Interesting idea. I was also thinking about a similar version, or a mainly templar focused one as well (galvanic hammer, amplify, etc.), maybe with more vaal sentencing jewels to overcome the lack of crit nodes on the left side of the tree.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

About sceptres, I think high AS sceptres can be good as well since we can get plenty of +flat phys from abyssus as well as jewelry. High AS also let's us maneuver a little bit better. I got

for cheap, looking forward to testing it out with abyssus. For example your sceptre is 408 pdps with abyssus+jewelry, while mine is 370. And your sceptre seems like it was expensive.

Abyssus is generally good with fast crit weapons, but the most important for this build that you deal as much damage as you can in a single use of a vaal slam. I was aiming to use the skill with good efficiency even on extra life - enfeeble - curse immune maps. But of course having higher APS is always good. An endgame weapon for a crit phys build will never be really cheap anyway (got mine for 3 ex).

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

Other than that your post needs videos of 76+ maps to give people (me included!) a better idea of what the build is like in real content.

True, I will make a higher map run when I have the time for that. Also I wasn't really lucky with the map drops yet :(

Thanks for the feedback!

Viable without Abyssus? I'm on tempest don't want that 40% increased dmg on me :)