[2.5] Baelrog's Abyssal Cry Berserker - Send the whole screen to the Abyss with one attack.

Most of your question are covered in the guide, but I understand that its a lot of information, as this build utilizes a lot of complicated interactions and scaling. So, I will try to elaborate.

About picking shadow/assassin: If you want to use abyssal cry (AC), going beserker is a must for the 100% faster warcry cooldown recovery. Without it AC has a 4 second cooldown, which is just too long for a main clear skill. AC has a base critical chance of 0%. So, to be able to benefit from Toxic Delivery you would need to invest a lot (Critical strike support / Deadly Infusion). In short, going crit just isnt efficient.

The single target DPS: I use Earthquake because with concentrate effect and less duration it deals immense single target damage, and all DoTs and stuff double dip from those. Fully buffed my paper DPS is around 30000, but this doesn't account for the Poison inflicted or the afterquake. I calculated for the poison and my effective DPS is around 110000, without the afterquake. This is correct because uber Izaro melts within a couple of seconds. It takes more time to get to max frenzy charges than to kill him.

The question about the Poison Support is explained extensively in the Build Mechanics part of the guide. To summarize; AC deals chaos damage based on monster HP. So does Poison, which is based of the initial hit. Because of effects are separate forms of chaos damage, sources like +% increased chaos will scale the initial hit and the poison separately, which means they go up exponentially. This is called double dipping. The result; the damage done by the poison is more than the damage done by the initial AC hit.

You are right that most monsters will die due to overlapping explosions. The advantage of scaling over 100% monster HP is that even monsters at the outer side of the screen, which will likely only get hit by 1 explosion, will still die due to the poison. Furthermore, monster HP differs quite a lot per type, so even with a mix of low and high HP monsters you will kill everything. Finally, it helps with bosses and party play. In party monster HP goes up, but AC damage is always based on the HP of an 1-player game. It doesn't scale with players.

Concentrate Effect will make it a lot stronger yes, but due to double dipping of poison it will actually result in less damage than the Poison gem would. Moreover, you will get less overlap and screen coverage, making it less suited for a general clearing. My conclusion; its not worth it at all.

I did not realize that the poison application of abyssal via supportgem is able to double dip on chaosdamage-modifiers. Thanks!



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Just for the curious:

The backround of my question is actually different. Im calculating a lot to make a simple archetype of an berserker with two weapons that skips on magicstuff. Most people just play, or copy builds, i dont. PoE does not reward you if you dont plan your character. Additionally it also punishes you for not going hybrid - and that is my problem:

I dont have:
-a shield
-the possibility of two 6links for aoe and singletarget
-no Skills with save range and big aoe like reave or earthquake

To solve that problem i came over the idea to push the singletarget damage for an ability and use abyssal cry for aoe. This way i stumpled over your thread.

Then i wanted to use viperstrike as it fits a "Dark Berserker"-Theme. VaalPact and berserker's acendancy allow to even leech on chaos damage and heal more than fulllife per hit. I thought with enough HP and Armour i could survive singlehits and that would be enough. But with so much nodes in surviveability my viperstrike-damage is embarrassing in comparison to a shadow's.

So im not sure i can make the build ever work and i dont expect you to help me out on that.
It is cool that i found someone that already used and improved the idea i had with abyssalcry
though!

Yes, thats why scaling chaos damage is very important. Its nice to know what you are trying to do. I can relate to building an arch-type. I'm not sure what you mean by skipping magic stuff, is this a restriction for the arch type you want to make? I'm also uncertain what you mean by "punishes for not going hybrid".

- If you build around and scale abyssal cry, you only need a 4-link for packs.
- If you want to dual wield the best single target is Dual Strike, AoE is Cleave. Viper strike is an inefficient skill for duel wielding, because it will alternate weapons. Two-hander would be better in that case.
- You could duel wield Breath of the Counsel maces, this would give you strong single target DPS with Dual Strike and Voidheart. You could drop Aspact of Carnage and pick up Cloaked in Savagery to compensate for the loss of defenses. I think it will be hard to pull this off though.

We have very similar thoughts:

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Baelrog wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by skipping magic stuff, is this a restriction for the arch type you want to make?

Yes. abyssal cry seems a bit magic to me, but im okay with it as long as my attack looks physical.

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Baelrog wrote:

I'm also uncertain what you mean by "punishes for not going hybrid".

I could give an example, but i fear it will erupt an discussion i dont want to have in this thread - the thread is about your build

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Baelrog wrote:

If you build around and scale abyssal cry, you only need a 4-link for packs.

Yeah, that's the reason i chose it for dualwielding, since dw does not allow to use two 6linked-skills.

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Baelrog wrote:

If you want to dual wield the best single target is Dual Strike, AoE is Cleave.

I agree with cleave, but viperstrike (no matter how weird it sounds) is still stronger than dualstrike even with no "increased chaosdamage" at all. DS is roughly 208% weapondamage per use, viperstrike is 160+(160*0,8)=288% wd. Even if you use addedfire we see: DS=299% wd and viper= 230+128=358%. With a good balance of phys and chaosdamage, the difference becomes huge.
As Berserker keep in mind that the 40%more damage double dip on the poison damage from Viper.
Viperstrike is the only skill in the game that surpasses op-quake-2hander-dps on singletarget, presupposed you use some crit with/or toxic delivery.

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Baelrog wrote:

Viper strike is an inefficient skill for dual wielding, because it will alternate weapons. Two-hander would be better in that case.

I dont know what you mean. Poison stacks and does not override like ignite or bleeding. So everyhit applies its own poisondamage that is a percentual of your intial hitdamage, all that matters is your weapondps in that case. So it soley depents on your dps. Maybe you meat that dual-claws/daggers/swords will have lesser sheetdps than a twohander. That could be true.

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Baelrog wrote:

You could duel wield Breath of the Counsel maces, this would give you strong single target DPS with Dual Strike and Voidheart. You could drop Aspact of Carnage and pick up Cloaked in Savagery to compensate for the loss of defenses. I think it will be hard to pull this off though.

You are exactly in my head, Baelrog. I already had something similar in mind. Thanks!

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Philkingz wrote:

I agree with cleave, but viperstrike (no matter how weird it sounds) is still stronger than dualstrike even with no "increased chaosdamage" at all. DS is roughly 208% weapondamage per use, viperstrike is 160+(160*0,8)=288% wd. Even if you use addedfire we see: DS=299% wd and viper= 230+128=358%. With a good balance of phys and chaosdamage, the difference becomes huge.

You are right, I forgot that the viper strike poison lasts for 8 seconds, instead of the normal 2.

"

all that matters is your weapondps in that case. So it soley depents on your dps. Maybe you meat that dual-claws/daggers/swords will have lesser sheetdps than a twohander. That could be true.

True. However, I'm pretty sure going two-handed sword will give your more DPS. Dual wielding Breaths of the Counsel is not an option with Viper Strike because it can't be used with scepters. Well you could try to use any claw/dagger/sword combined with one Breath of the Counsel. That might actually work out to be the best. Alternating weapons doesn't benefit viper strike, so your best off using one really strong weapon that you hit with, while using Breath of the Counsel as a stat stick.

Another big reason why I don't like non-AoE melee skills is the clunky targeting. They really should address that problem soon.

Hello,ive read all the pages on this build and i like it.Have a question,since ure focusing on ev/armor why you didnt take Iron reflexes?Its 4 points away from Savegery and it will be huuuge boost of defence + instead of determination run grace = More defence boost.What's your toughts for dirty techniques?

Well its not necessarily a boost in defense, its a boost in Armour at the cost of all your Evasion. The problem with Armour is that its the least useful when you need it the most; against big hits. In order to have it work well against big hits you would need additional flat physical damage reduction, such as endurance charges, which this build doesn't really have access to. Evasion on the other hand doesn't care and works equally effective against all types of incoming damage. Furthermore, it helps against attacks that deal elemental damage (map mods), where Armour would do nothing. Lastly, going hybrid allows you to make full use of Enfeeble, as it lowers both incoming damage (more efficient Armour) and accuracy (more efficient Evasion). Dodging/blocking attacks also creates time for Life Leech to kick in. In my opinion, hybrid is highly underrated, and I prefer it over pure Armour or Evasion.

Four points is a lot, and I don't even think the build would get better. Dirty Technique is pretty good. Increased duration is bad for earthquake but good for poison. Overall those cancel out, more or less. The DoT bonus is good though. I just wouldn't go out of my way to get IR and those nodes.

hey baelrog

Sure, there are pretty much two options; one handed or two-hander.

I prefer Two-hander, especially at the beginning (till lvl 28); you pick up Butchery at the Marauder and spec out of it later. Start using Sweep at lvl 12 > Pick up Wideswing at lvl 18 > switch to Earthquake at lvl 28 > then to the Cauterizer at lvl 40. This will carry you all the way until you can switch to Breath of the Counsel.

One-hander; would start with Crest of Perandus (high block) and any decent starting weapon > Lavianga's Wisdom at lvl 20 > The Gryphon at lvl 32 > Daresso's Courage at lvl 54.

You could also switch to one-hander shield at lvl 28, when you pick up earthquake.

I just realized today, this build gets a TON of duration on abyssal cry. My tooltip for cry is 16.8 seconds, almost 3x as long. All that increased duration also applies to the poison from AC, which means I'm getting 5-6s poisons using one Breath of the Council (tested it and it's true!). Crazy stuff, and it explains how bosses die so consistently to the Cry.