[2.2] c9q9md's Abyssal Cry Berserker WORM DETONATOR - END GAME - SICK PACK CLEARING - SICK ONESHOTS

Welcome to my build guide! It is about a new build I have made, which I have named the WORM DETONATOR, and it is exactly like it sounds! Take a look!



How does it work?

With 2.2 and ascendancy, there is some pretty nice options for marauder as a non-melee character. The Berserker class is very good, giving us a 40% MORE modifyer while taking 10% increased damage. This damage is global, meaning any damage we put out will get this modifyer. This means spells, and more importantly Abyssal Cry, a chaos Warcry which is only modifyed from chaos damage nodes on the skill tree, gets it's damage boosted significantly. Furthermore, the Berserker class also gives is a 100% reduced cooldown on warcries, meaning the duration goes from 4 seconds to 2! This is also a key factor for this build.


This is "The Writhing Jar", an unique flask which helps us alot. It is very cheap and even good rolled ones are obtainable for less than a chaos in both HC and SC perandus leagues.

To put it short: the build is somewhat about blowing up worms summoned from our flasks. Killing these worms will put up a chain reaction of explosions that will clear entire packs and even entire boss rooms in one single war-cry!

Even though the life of the worms were nerfed in 2.2.1d, it is still very viable!
Here is a short run of a courtyard map AFTER the nerf! :)



Short Boss kill Video


Gear requirements



Gear
How can something that cool be cheap you ask? Perandus league is the answer!
With the influx of cheap league specific items, we are lucky as two of our most desired items are league specific. These items usually cost 1 ex+ in normal temporary leagues, but in the Perandus league they are only a couple of chaos!

Let's get started: Since we are are going to detonate some worms, we need a spell that's strong enough to kill those worms. The best choice for this spell is Bladefall for a couple of reasons: It shares alot of properties with AC, and physical damage is also very easily obtained with our skill-tree. Both the spell and the warcry benefit from the AoE nodes, which are very important to us. Great AoE means greater clear speed. Further-more Bladefall is a physical spell, which is often bundled into chaos damage nodes. The shadow starting nodes are a good example of this, and we will be taking full advantage of that!

I will go through all our unique gear and explain the reasoning behind using them here.

Main weapon:



We are using The Dark Seer as our main weapon for a couple of reasons. It is a very underrated weapon and is insanely strong. Getting a generic spell damage weapon will increase bladefall damage, but not Abyssal cry. This can be done, but the Abyssal Cry damage is going to be the better pick.

Here is a break-down of The Dark Seer:

Implicit: 15% increased Elemental Damage - Not very useful for this build. Helps Herald Of Ash, but is useless besides that.

(30 to 50)% increased Damage - The global damage helps both our main forms of damage dealing by 30-50%. This is amazing as it applies both to bladefall and Abyssal cry!

7% Global chance to Blind enemies on hit - This mod is just amazing. Since we are going to get alot of evasion for this build, it practically doubles that once we apply blind. Blind is a debuff that halves enemy chance to hit. In other words, we are twice as likely to evade. This is so important for this build as we will be staying at close range alot. It is a very underrated mod and is actually a key factor and a whole new layer of defence.

+1 Mana gained on Kill per Level -
The mana-on-kill means you always have mana whenever you kill a worm. The flask itself also grants mana as it is a hybrid flask, so that also helps! Overall very useful as we can get away with almost no mana left for bladefall!

+1 Energy Shield gained on Kill per Level This is extremely important. It is actually a huge part of the build and I will explain why. Since we are taking some ES nodes we manage to push for 550-600 es on our build. This is what I call an "ES Buffer". It works very well with our worm flasks since we get alot of kills. A level 80 Marauder will therefore gain 160 ES from using a flask once. Since we will be killing worms extrenely fast, this 550 ES buffer is almost always up, and i cannot stress how important this is. It functions very similar to an Aegis Aurora build and is awesome.
Note: Since our ES is still very low compared to our total life pool, we are not using blood rage, as that drains our ES very quickly. Gaining frenzy charges is one of the very few issues with this build, but not that much of a problem overall.

Cannot be Blinded - Not very useful since we have no actual attacks. Beeing imune is still nice and seeing stuff around you is always a good thing. Sucks to be you, shroud walker! Overall quality of life.

Links:

We run a Cast When Damage Taken settup in this slot.
We link it to Molten Shell and Summon Chaos Golem. This is giving us a huge defensive buff and the added armour from molten shell is huge. Run a high level CWDT and supported gems. We can do this because our life-pool is very large and it helps us get more armour from Molten Shell. The Golem is also dying less.

Shield:



The "Mutewind Pennant" is our second league-specific item. We are using it mainly for it's amazing stats. Alltough another shield is possible to run, the huge offensive boost provided by it is more than enough to make up for the lack of defensive properties. Let's break it down:

20-40% cold resistance - Nothing special, but helps to reach the cap.

+1 to Level of Socketed Warcry Gems - Completely useless as we are going to run Abyssal Cry in a 5-link or 6-link

10% increased Radius of Area Skills - This is amazing for our build. Not only does this increase the AoE on Abyssal Cry, but also bladefall. I cannot stress the importance of AoE in this build. AoE is more or less everything due to Abyssal Cry mechanics and overlapping damage. Here is a visual example: http://i.imgur.com/CyVa238.png

(20 to 30)% increased Chaos Damage - Boosts our Abyssal Cry damage by alot. Just overall a rare and good mod.

You gain Onslaught for 2 seconds on Killing Taunted Enemies - This mod is amazing. Since we cast Abyssal Cry with 2 second intervalls, we almost always have Onslaught up. Onslaught is a buff that grants 20% increased attack speed, cast speed, and movement speed. This is amazing for our build as it helps clear speed, both by movement and by cast speed.



Gloves:

Our third piece of unqiue gear is our gloves. With 2.2, we got more unique, one of which we will use:
Wyrmsign!



This item is absolutely mind-shattering amazing, and for a few reasons. Here is a breakdown:

Socketed Gems are Supported by level 5 Concentrated Effect - This is one of the many reasons we use these gloves. We can run two 5-link settups this way, and this slot is for bladefall as it is a free 5-link and provides alot of damage because of concentrated effect. Do not use abyssal cry here. Conc effect may sound good, but it ends up alot worse when using conc. effect over inc. effect.

(120 to 160)% increased Armour and Evasion - Another amazing mod. This gives us ALOT of armour and evasion, both of which we use in this build. On ideally rolled gloves we get close to 200 evasion AND armour. That is very good concidering the low cost.

+(50 to 70) to Maximum Life - Coupled with the good Armour/Evasion we get, this life is very good and for a cheap price.

4% reduced Mana Cost per Endurance Charge - Very nice and helps us sustain bladefall. We are getting 5 endurance charges, so that's a total of 20% reduced mana cost.

Gain Rampage while at Maximum Endurances Charges ,Lose all Endurance Charges when Rampage Ends
- Very good. Helps us keep up clear speed. every 10th kill is 1% extra movement speed, so once we get to a couple of hundred, it is really noticable. The effects we spawn are also very beneficial at times. Losing rampage is usually never a problem as re-gaining endurance charges is easy with this build.

Links:

We run bladefall that takes advantage of the free concentrated effect. Links are: Bladefall - Spell echo - Faster Casting - Added Chaos damage - Conc effect(built in gloves).

We don't get alot of cast speed, so the Spell echo - Faster casting combo really helps. We want this high cast speed simply so we can cast Abyssal Cry right after casting it. It also helps us get out of sticky situations if we must as Spell echo locks your character in place for a short duration. Added chaos damage is taken as we get alot of chaos modifyers which boosts our damage.

Note: Colouring our gloves can be really hard as ideally we want 3 off colours. If you can't hit 3 blue one green, stick with 2 blue, one red and one green. Swap out Added Chaos for Added Fire Damage!



Body Armour:

This is where we put our abyssal cry settup. There is two very strong unique chests that helps this build alot, one is cheap and one is for our complete build.

Cheap chest: - Cherrubim's Maleficence Triumphant Lamellar

This chest is amazing for starting out. It has alot of the desired stats we use with this build and costs as little as a chaos. A short Break Down:

(10 to 20)% increased Chaos Damage - Boosts our main attack. Neat.
(160 to 200)% increased Armour and Evasion - a lot of armour and evasion. Very nice.
+(70 to 100) to maximum Life - Alot of life. Also very good.
100% increased Life Leeched per second - Very nice since we use warlord's mark.

Main chest: Carcass Jack Varnished Coat



This item is amazing and is required in order to take full effect of the ES buffer I talked about earlier regardeing The Dark Seer. Break Down:

(120 to 150)% increased Evasion and Energy Shield - Provides a chunk of ES and Evasion, both of which are used in the build. Alltough not the highest of rolls, it is more than enough.

+(50 to 70) to maximum Life - Not the best, but a life roll is better than no life roll at all!

+(9 to 12)% to all Elemental Resistances Very nice as it helps us reach cap our resists. Makes our other gear pieces slightly cheaper.

20% increased Radius of Area Skills - Just amazing. This AoE is what makes Abyssal cry go from "good" to "Awesome". It is the main reason we use this chest.

12% increased Area Damage - More damage is always good.

Extra gore - Purely a visual effect and can cause lag at times. Pretty cool, but not benefcial in any way.


Links!

Abyssal cry works wonders, but for worms to be an effective way of dealing damage, you need a 5l.

We run Abyssal Cry - Poison - Void manipulation - Added Chaos Damage - Increased Area Of Effect

If you only have a 4-link, remove poison, as most enemies die instantly.


Getting a level 21 added chaos damage would be the ideal way of dealing the most amount of damage using worms. If you don't intend on killing worms, it does not matter as much.
Flasks

The very build difining slot. We want to run atleast 3 of the "The Writhing Jar" for maximum effect.


I am running 4 of them because I like the damage. Make sure your last flask is A bleed removal one. this is very important. If you are running 3 Jars, get a Taste Of Hate if you can afford one! If not, get a freeze removal.

Rest of our gear!

The rest of my gear is rare items. Focus on life - Armour/ev (es on jewelery is nice, but not mandatory). On boots get 30% movement speed.

Here is my gear:



try to achieve something similar. Some of my gear pieces are really cheap and overall I paid a couple of chaos for each slot. Chaos resistance is nice to have.

Links:

We got two 4l's left.

4l nr 1:

In one of them we run: Blasplhemy - Warlord's mark. Herald of Ash Is also here. For the 4th gemslot I recomend you put Vaal Lightning Trap to make sure you get the single target damage needed. This basicly doubles your damage to targets standing in the shocked ground. I have no clue why I have a blind gem there. I sort of left it there and forgot about it, just ignore it as it does absolutely nothing. :p If you run a 6l, use the last slot on Arctic Armour. If not, put it in the 5l 6s item.

In the 2nd 4-link we run another cwdt settup:



We run a high level CWDT with increased duration and two duration-based spells. In our case that's Tempest shield, which boosts our block a little, and Immortal call, which saves us from huge spike damage. The duration of immortal call extends with level and that's why we level this settup.



SKILL-TREE

This build relies on several layers of defense in order to stay safe. The build is easily hardcore viable and I myself made it to level 87 in the Perandus hardcore league.
We pretty much rely on a bag of everything. It is one of the few builds to utilize Armour, Evasion and also Energy Shield in a really cool way. We also get two very conviniently placed block nodes which buffs our block up to 29%. This is further boosted by Tempest shield up to 32% a block chance. As if this wasn't enough, we also Blind our enemies with our weapon, The Dark Seer.

Here is the full skill tree that we will follow for this build(level 87):




Armour: We get this mainly from the left side of the tree we go through Armour Mastery and pick up the endurance charge and the regen behind it. Once we are at the left side of the tree there is a couple of good nodes to take. We pick up Juggernaut as it gives us Armour, Life, and 20% Increased life recovery from flasks.

Evasion: We pick up huge chunks of evasion with this build. We pick up our first node as we travel through sentinel for the 24% Armour/ev node which also gives us 10% to all elemental resistances. From there we go through Reflexes where we pick up a bunch of EV nodes on our way to the shadow starting area. Once we reach deep into the shadow starting area, we take the Nullification node which provides EV and ES, both of which is useful.

Energy Shield: Since we have a carcass jack, and some ES on jewelry, we get to around 600 ES in total once we take some ES nodes. This is achieved via a bunch of useful nodes without sacrificing alot. First ES node we take is Sancity over at templar starting area, the remaining ES nodes are for late-game and is up in the shadow area bundled into life and EV nodes.

Block: We pick up two block nodes. Solidity and it's nearby node. This isn't anything huge, but we also gain some evasion from the shield node. In total we get 5% block chance for 2 nodes of investment.

Flask nodes: We pick up some key flask nodes which boosts our survivability and damage. Juggernaut 20% Increased life gained from flasks, help us gain more life for each time we pot.
The most important node is Arcane Chemistry. At first it seems like a bad node, but it is actually amazing. The 15% less flask charges used allows us to pot ur "The Writhing Jar" flasks a total of 3 times instead of 2. This mod can also be gained on belts, so if you get a 20% less flask charges used on a belt, you can do so. The mana is nice for Bladefall though and you want enough mana to cast Abyssal cry, so it is still a decent node.

For very late game characters (90+) I would pick up Profane chemistry as it gives us so much life from each flask we use. Those 3 nodes give us 50% increased life gained from flasks, which is huge.

Life nodes: We are life based, so naturally we pick up life nodes where were we find them so we can remain safe. A huge life-pool is also our only defence against spells.



Leveling

Early on when we level we will pick up RT. We level as a two-hander and we use Sunder.
We later spec out of 2h damage nodes and RT.
Skill tree 20 points:

Start by picking up the two damage nodes. This will help us level quicker.
After having taken "Warrior Of Blood", proceed to take "Born to Fight" into "Butchery". This is enough damage to level at a decent pace early on. We then proceed through "Armour Mastery"



Skill tree 50 points:
After Armour Mastery, we pick up Juggernaut and Resolute Technique. The order of which you do so does not matter that much.

After that proceed upwards to templar starting area. Proceed all the way to the "Amplify" node.
Our left side of the tree is now complete. We now go for the middle of the tree.

Note: If you suffer from mana/attribute problems you can always pick up Versitality, but remember to spec out of it when you can!



Skill tree 70 points:

After picking up Constitution and it's sorrounding life nodes, go for the shadow area. "Path of the warrior" is taken as it helps us level, and is also good for bladefall later on.



Skill tree 90 points:

Go straight for coordination. From there you either go for the shadow starting nodes or the life, depending on what you need. After that, pick up Fangs of the viper and coldhearted calculation.

At this point you can try to transition into our abyssal cry build.
Here is a skill tree if you are still using a 2-hander.


If you want to transition into bladefall, now is a good time.
We refund 8 points and get:



Using the refund points, we took away RT and all the melee damage nodes. In return we take the "Method of the Madness" node and we proceed to move towards "Written In Blood". We then proceed towards the large chaos/physical circle.

Skill tree 110 points:

Build is more or less completed at this point. Go for "Force Shaper" first. After that get "Arcane chemistry, and finally Atrophy.



Skill tree 120 points:

More flask/Life nodes and the final AoE node.




Bandits

Normal: Oak
Cruel: Kill all
Merciless: Oak

Ascendancy points

Our first 2 nodes is going to be "Warbringer". This makes us able to cast abyssal with a 2 second cooldown instead of 4.

The 4 remaining nodes will be spent to get "Aspect of Carnage" As it is such an amazing damage boost, both for Abyssal cry and Bladefall!


I hope you guys enjoyed this guide. I will keep it updated and add more to it! :) Feel free to leave feedback/questions!

My IGN is "AbyssalPK" at the moment. You can whisper me there aswell :)
I am also streaming at https://www.twitch.tv/farmingdriedlake every sometimes mostly hardcore :D

Reserved

Wow, this is a really great and unique build. I never thought of using worms this way and trust me i've thought about it a lot. Being an avid fisherman i've developed a strange, borderline sexual, relationship with worms of all kinds. It felt to me that this game has always lacked the integration of worm based mechanics, especially because i was kicked out of my local fishing club, but now that this has changed i can finally be 100% happy with my PoE experience. I hope everyone enjoy's this wonderful build as much as i will.

Nicebuilddotcom

Making the build now, looks amazing and cheap! About 30c without the armour

Amazing build man, this is what makes POE great, unique builds like this. Nice job!

I'm also running an abyssal cry berzerker, but as far as I can tell it's much better to run essence drain to proc abyssal cry rather than bladefall. A 5L essence drain in Carcass Jack (you really, really want to run Consuming Dark instead of Dark Seer to get a free poison gem link, meaning you only need a 4L abyssal cry) gets me to an effective 60-70k degen with poison and wither totem, and I only need to kill the weakest mob in a pack to clear well beyond the edge of the screen. This is true regardless of map tier, since the damage scales on mob hp.

The flasks, while a fun gimmick, are also totally unnecessary. I one-shot every boss in the game which has any adds at all, even on multiple player health. The very small number of exceptions still die almost immediately to essence drain alone.

One other tip: forget the endurance charges and get frenzy instead. You can get to 6k life, 40-50% evasion, and acro/phase acro, which grants overall better survivability an a huge damage boost.

Oh, and run life leech in the abyssal cry links instead of warlord's mark. Then you can do curse immune and blood magic maps. For curses, I use blasphemy temp chains + vuln (doedre's ring) for awesome defense and huge degen/duration.

Any idea how much Life the Worms have?

"

I'm also running an abyssal cry berzerker, but as far as I can tell it's much better to run essence drain to proc abyssal cry rather than bladefall. A 5L essence drain in Carcass Jack (you really, really want to run Consuming Dark instead of Dark Seer to get a free poison gem link, meaning you only need a 4L abyssal cry) gets me to an effective 60-70k degen with poison and wither totem, and I only need to kill the weakest mob in a pack to clear well beyond the edge of the screen. This is true regardless of map tier, since the damage scales on mob hp.

The flasks, while a fun gimmick, are also totally unnecessary. I one-shot every boss in the game which has any adds at all, even on multiple player health. The very small number of exceptions still die almost immediately to essence drain alone.

One other tip: forget the endurance charges and get frenzy instead. You can get to 6k life, 40-50% evasion, and acro/phase acro, which grants overall better survivability an a huge damage boost.

Oh, and run life leech in the abyssal cry links instead of warlord's mark. Then you can do curse immune and blood magic maps. For curses, I use blasphemy temp chains + vuln (doedre's ring) for awesome defense and huge degen/duration.

10/10

"

Sheriff_K wrote:

Any idea how much Life the Worms have?

The worms scale with area level! :)