[2.6 / 3.0] BLADE VORTEX OBLITERATION

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most1010 wrote:

Hey, in merci lab you want skill "Aspect of Carnage".
The 3 points before are just useless, because they give attack speed, little bit movement speed and some attack damage, is it just worth for "40% more Berserker damage" ?

Is there an option to take another class or just another points from berserker ?
I try your build in HC (YOu said its 'Con' for HC, but I wrote that to late, what do you think ?

Is "Cloaked in Savagery" possible to be worth in HC, its good to be alive ^^

Sadly you are right, the 3 points before Aspect of Carnage are almost useless (the move speed is pretty good actually, helps you clearing super fast and dodging stuff); but that 40% more is massive, it's the strongest damage multiplier available in the passive tree, applies to everything you do, always, no matter what. Is it worth? Yes, in my opinion it's worth 4 points. Consider this, most build usually spends 2 points to take a frenzy charge, 4 points to take two of them (8% more damage, some attack and cast speed).. With 4 points you have 40% more damage. I know they are ascendency points, the comparison is not totally fair, but this should give you the idea of how strong that node is.
In the Ascendency class spoiler I talk a little about other class choices, but if you wanna achieve the highest "explosion power" you need berserker, not just because it offers you that 40% more damage, but also for the free life and mana leech (you would be forced to use at least a life leech gem, wasting another link in the damage setup).
Cloaked in Savagery is great, I take it in uber lab since it gives you that little more survivability needed to deal with the most dangerous encounters and allows to facetank and sustain everything that is not going to one-shot you.

I think you have two main ways to play this build in hardcore, depending on your gear, reflexes, playstyle and experience:

- Aggressive style: pretty much the same build I'm playing in softcore, you want to follow the tree I linked (the level 90 one, with Unwavering Stance). You are going to deal huge damage and tank pretty much everything, but you gotta be careful, if you are overconfident and too greedy you are gonna die sooner or later.

- Defensive style: with this setup you are gonna be way more tanky. You sacrifice the dual wielding Obliteration combo, using only one of them, paired with a strong armour shield (at least 1500+ armour, 100+ life). You do not use Carcass Jack, instead you use either a Lightning Coil or a Belly of the Beast (the first giving you more phys mitigation, the latter giving you a massive HP pool). You should try to get the more armour you can on your items (belt with 300+, good armour gloves, boots, helm). You will take the endurance charge bandit reward in merciless, using Enduring Cry often to keep charges up. You can also take War bringer, while sacrificing Cloaked in Savagery (in uber lab), giving massive buffs to your warcry. You can also drop the Mind over Matter stuff, using Determination (to boost you phys mitigation) and temporal chains/enfeeble with blasphemy. This setup will make tanky, a lot. Elemental damage is going to be your only problem, but you can deal with it with flasks if you really want to.

All in all I think the build is not bad in Hardcore, the problem is levelling and reaching your strong point (around level 70/80, when you already have everything you need to start destroying contents), since you are a marauder but also a spellcaster. This combination doesn't work super great in early/mid game.

Hm, thanks for your mind, I will see witch way I choose.

What do you think about start as duelist ?
In ascendancy it would maybe good to get 4 points to go to Fortitude (Permanent fortify) + 2 points for inspirational + 2 points for "first to strike, last to fall"

I mean, I will become good damage (60& more) + VERY MUCH evasion & armour in % + 13% movement.

You only need 5 regrets to become "normal marauder tree" or I'm blind and dont see something ?

For HC would that way very nice, Fortify + 20% Effect = 24% reduced damage taken by hits, together with much armour/evasion, you dodge sometimes and if hit taken, you can easy tank them, also with MoM, I mean MoM is like 20% more life, if you know what I mean.

Before 3 days, I played crit-arc, build from Enki91, 4,4k Life + 1,1k ES + MoM = ~ 7k life and I was on Colonnade Map with 90% extra dmg as cold and Carge (Boss, based on Kole) gave me 7k hit or more and I was one shot, with fortify, if he did exactly 7k damage, it were be reduced to 5,3k damage.
I always play with "AutoHotkey" for faster escapes, if he did 5,3k damage, I would be alive ;( :D

Is there any problem to start as duelist and regret all points ? :)

You can use Champion (Duelist) for sure, if you really feel like you need that fortify. You just have to decide beforehand what's the build purpose and what you wanna accomplish with it.
My goal was to be able to run every map mod, starting with budget gear (new league economy), being able to farm uber lab and atziri with no issue. I also didn't want to be curse/aura dependant (able to run blood magic and curse immune maps), nor to always worry about keeping charges up (I don't want to be forced to rush maps to keep them up, if I want to take it slowly). I also wanted to avoid the most common sources of lag/fps drop (my PC is crap, if I use a build with shatter mechanics I play with 3-7 fps, just to give you an idea). I was playing in softcose, so I wanted a build able to stay alive in most istances (but necessary unkillable).
Berserker allows me to accomplish those things:
- I have free sustain (life and mana leech), so I don't have to rely on curses (warlord's mark), gems (life leech gem for example) and auras (clarity)
- It gives me huge damage for free (40% more), so I don't have to use auras or physical to elemental damage conversion to boost my damage
- I also wanted the obliteration explosion effect to be scaled over 100% of monster life

That's what I was looking for and I builded accordingly.
If you play duelist you are going to be tankier with fortify, for sure, but you are going to lose a lot.
- As you said, you need 5 more points that are "wasted" (5 points are a lot, I'm not sure how experienced are you, but when it comes down to min/maxing a build, those 5 points are important, very important).
- You are going to have less damage. Probably and effective 30% less damage than mine (you gain some incresed damage from duelist, but you lose 40% more from Aspect of carnage). Less damage also means that you are going to leech less, don't forget it.
- You need to obtain leech in some way, at least life leech: if you use the life leech gem you are gonna loose too much damage, so you should use warlord's mark (I suggest with blasphemy). It gives 2% life and mana leech, which is great.. But it's a curse! You won't benefit from it in curse immune maps and against curse immune monsters, not just that, rare/unique monsters have significant reduced curse effectiveness (you are gonna leech a lot less against bosses, where you would need it the most).
- If you use warlord's mark with blasphemy, you are reserving mana, so you cannot use Clear Mind jewel (losing damage).
- Since you are already reserving mana (and your mana pool is not that massive), you should drop Mind over Matter too. The good thing is that you can use at least another aura then, giving you more damage or more defence/utility. On the other side, with my setup I'm still using Haste without sacrificing too much, while being able to also use MoM and Clear Mind. Oh.. and you will probably have to not run Blood magic maps.
- You are NOT going to be able to scale the explosion damage up to 100% monster life (maybe you can get to 70-80% with good jewels, I've not tested it). It's ok, you will clear well and fast enough. If you find yourself in a Enfeeble map though, you are gonna notice it A LOT. I notice it a bit with my build, but without Aspect of Carnage from Berserker you are going to be hurt a lot in terms of clearspeed.
- More armour is good, more evasion is meh.. Evasion is good if you are stacking it and pairing with other evasive/defensive mechanichs (like dodge and spell dodge). Fortify is always good, and 24% global damage reduction is massive for any build.

Those are the first things I can think about. Every choice offers its pros and cons, you gotta evaluate and weight them, accordingly to your goal and playstyle.

Hey man i love the build concept and probably going to run it for next temp league :)

Have you tested abyssal cry? im wondering wether explosions would stack or override eachother..
(if they actually stack it could mean some serious damage improvement, especialy if you take de 100% inc cd recovery for warcry in ascendancy tree)

Also i noticed you have increased aoe in the cull strike wand.. does that apply to explosion or only there to level the gem?

Thanks for your time :) G Luck!

Edit: Any thoughts on Ming's Heart?
the added damage and chaos resist seem to outwheigt the life loss.

E2: I've just read the patch notes :'( Blade V. got a serious hit and poison a minor one but still..

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Nelkael wrote:

E2: I've just read the patch notes :'( Blade V. got a serious hit and poison a minor one but still..

psst, it was a buff.

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Nelkael wrote:

Hey man i love the build concept and probably going to run it for next temp league :)

Have you tested abyssal cry? im wondering wether explosions would stack or override eachother..
(if they actually stack it could mean some serious damage improvement, especialy if you take de 100% inc cd recovery for warcry in ascendancy tree)

Also i noticed you have increased aoe in the cull strike wand.. does that apply to explosion or only there to level the gem?

Thanks for your time :) G Luck!

Edit: Any thoughts on Ming's Heart?

the added damage and chaos resist seem to outwheigt the life loss.

E2: I've just read the patch notes :'( Blade V. got a serious hit and poison a minor one but still..

Hey man, I'm answering a bit late but I hope to still help you. I've tried abyssal cry, I'm not 100% sure how the different sources of explosions interact with each other, but It felt a bit clunky: first of all, casting the warcry slows your clearspeed (you can use enduring cry if you want endurance charges or rallying if you want more damage, but I feel like they are not necessary), moreover Obliteration explsoions are stronger than Abyssal's ones, so it kinda doesn't make much sense to use both (at least in my opinion).

That increased AOE is just there to level up, yup.

I have not tried Ming's Heart, but I thought about it few times. It does give a lot of damage, but I feel like it's not needed at all. I can clear everything without any problem, so I prefer having more life. You may want more damage against REALLY hard bosses (t15 bosses maybe, uber Atziri and I don't know what else, but I actually haven't tried myself any of those), but I would prefer having a larger life pool against them anyway. Remember you are not just losing the % life from Ming's effect, you are also sacrificing another ring slot (losing life, str, resists and whatever). The chaos resist is good, but there are really few hard hitting chaos-damage bosses; Jungle valley is easy and he's not going to kill you with this build, maybe Villange Ruin and Plaza bosses, but they both have DoT chaos damage, so you can deal with it in other ways.

After reading the patch note I'm not sure how this build is going to perform, I'm gonna test it a bit when everything goes live. You general clearspeed is gettin buffed BY A LOT, that's for sure. I clear maps with 6-16 stacks 95% of the time (5% being map bosses or really hard rares, and often they get chunked by explosions if they are near other monsters). Your single target damage is gettin reduced by a good amount probably (the poison nerf is pretty big, too, considering how much damage it was dealing in single target scenario). We also don't know yet if and how the damage effectivness is receiving any change, so Added Chaos Support gem may be not worth in the future (leaving the spot open for Void Manipulation or something else).

The build is definitely 2.4 viable and the changes to Blade Vortex and poison buffed by a lot our general clear speed while nerfing a bit our single target damage output. Overall nothing really changed, expect for few support gem changes against really tough bosses. These considerations are summarized in the first page.

I also thought about another way to build this character, focusing more on curses.
The idea is to use Cospri's Will body armour, gaining free poison against cursed enemies and an additional curse. This allows us to drop the Poison gem, potentially freeing up the slot for another offensive gem, something like: Blade Vortex, Added Chaos, Controlled Destruction, Iron Will, Void Manipulation, Spell Echo/Concentrated Effec (Spell echo for general clearing, Conc Effect for really hard bosses). We are also going to use two curses linked with blasphemy (and maybe Enlighten, just to reduce the mana reservation), in particular they should be Vulnerabilty and Enfeeble/Temporal Chains (in this case I would choose Enfeeble). This way unfortunately we have to drop Haste (that was socketed in the Essence Wurm ring), Mind Over Matter and Clear Mind jewel.
There are obviously pros and cons, up to you. I have not managed to 6-link a Cospri's Will, so I have not tested this build yet, maybe in the future I'm gonna give it a try.

Hey man! as i told you i'm running this build on Essence and it's going great.

I just reached 87 so i figured i could give some feedback and upvote this post

So far i've run: up to t11 maps (done a couple of rare corrupted too), haven't found higher to test.

Atziri smooth at lv 84 (died a couple times only at Atz herself due to my own stupidity)

Lab Merciless at lv 80 alone (you can probably run it earlier)

Many f*king Map Trials (still 1 left to find after at least 15 or so ¬¬)
When i get the last 2 Ascendancy points i'll give Cloaked in Savagery a try because i think its going to be more impactfull on surviability having the 100% life leech (we have vaal pact) on savage hit (15% life hit it quite frecuent on high tier maps and boss fights) than a 6% reduction (from Rite of Ruin). Will reply after some tests.



Passives are exactly like the one posted by Lallalaus for lv 90 exept i till need to grab the last 3 5% life nodes.
I can recomend the build to anyone who wants to blast maps easily and very cheap.
Srry but my computer can't handdle video recording.

Have a nice day and g luck!

PS: Sorry for any grammars, not English native.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it!
Gear is perfect to start with.
I believe the first time I did Merciless lab it was level 70 or something like that, so you should be definitely able to do it even before than level 80.
Not sure how much STR you have, but you may try using Void Manipulation (if you haven't yet) instead of Iron Will if it's not high enough (like 300+).

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lallalaus wrote:

Glad to hear you are enjoying it!
Gear is perfect to start with.
I believe the first time I did Merciless lab it was level 70 or something like that, so you should be definitely able to do it even before than level 80.
Not sure how much STR you have, but you may try using Void Manipulation (if you haven't yet) instead of Iron Will if it's not high enough (like 300+).

I have Void M. leveling as well as add chaos in secondary weapons but not really worth it until i get a 6L carcass jack.. if i can get one i'll test and feedback impressions but so far i have 370 str and still need to upgrade gloves and ring so i believe i´ll get to 420 or so. Probably IW and Add Chaos is the best combination for a 6L Carcass.

Ty for your quick response and g luck!