[3.0] Dark Pact Zerker - Farm shaper/guardian deathless (VIDEO) - Great clear speed

Neat guide you have here.
Though, I'd recommend grabbing the chaos damage nodes near vaal pact instead of the spell damage nodes in the witch starting area -- results in more damage for me comparatively.

Also, instead of the astramentis I opted for the cheap-ass budget version

Pretty okay, I'll still switch some time though, I guess.



What I've been doing for bosses now is dual wielding apep's rage in my weapon swap set and swapping to that. Apep's sucks for the rest of the map due to no shield charge, though. Works wonders for bosses though.

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Fetus wrote:

Neat guide you have here.
Though, I'd recommend grabbing the chaos damage nodes near vaal pact instead of the spell damage nodes in the witch starting area -- results in more damage for me comparatively.

Also, instead of the astramentis I opted for the cheap-ass budget version

Pretty okay, I'll still switch some time though, I guess.



What I've been doing for bosses now is dual wielding apep's rage in my weapon swap set and swapping to that. Apep's sucks for the rest of the map due to no shield charge, though. Works wonders for bosses though.

So do you only have the wither totem in your weapon swap? if so what do you run in your main sets off hand?

Can this Build be done without any Unique items?

This build uses Doon to turn big strength stacking into damage and repentance and the boots to boost it further.....so no I don't think this build would work without uniques

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MFStrange wrote:

Can this Build be done without any Unique items?

Well, the point here is to stack strength to boost damage while staying somewhat tanky. If you replace that, you might as well go crit DP which I imagine would be even more expensive than getting the uniques while suffering in the tankyness. Realistically, a 1% spell reduce repentence is like 20 chaos, 10% is perhaps 10 chaos. A budget amulet until astramentis is a chaos. Doons start at 2c. Boots aren't too expensive either.

So, for an investment of say about 20 chaos you can get to farming anything that's not end-game bosses on a 5-link I'd say.



And as for the weapon swap Souljasam, currently not equipped but I have another spell totem - faster casting - wither in the second apeps.

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Fetus wrote:

"

MFStrange wrote:

Can this Build be done without any Unique items?

Well, the point here is to stack strength to boost damage while staying somewhat tanky. If you replace that, you might as well go crit DP which I imagine would be even more expensive than getting the uniques while suffering in the tankyness. Realistically, a 1% spell reduce repentence is like 20 chaos, 10% is perhaps 10 chaos. A budget amulet until astramentis is a chaos. Doons start at 2c. Boots aren't too expensive either.

So, for an investment of say about 20 chaos you can get to farming anything that's not end-game bosses on a 5-link I'd say.



And as for the weapon swap Souljasam, currently not equipped but I have another spell totem - faster casting - wither in the second apeps.

I have all the pieces minus the ammy and chest. My biggest prob is the Int part for the Repentance gloves.

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Fetus wrote:

"

MFStrange wrote:

Can this Build be done without any Unique items?

Well, the point here is to stack strength to boost damage while staying somewhat tanky. If you replace that, you might as well go crit DP which I imagine would be even more expensive than getting the uniques while suffering in the tankyness. Realistically, a 1% spell reduce repentence is like 20 chaos, 10% is perhaps 10 chaos. A budget amulet until astramentis is a chaos. Doons start at 2c. Boots aren't too expensive either.

So, for an investment of say about 20 chaos you can get to farming anything that's not end-game bosses on a 5-link I'd say.



And as for the weapon swap Souljasam, currently not equipped but I have another spell totem - faster casting - wither in the second apeps.

I wound up actually just duplicating the gems on my main set up in the weapon swap except swapped warlords for enfeeble.

Only Issue I have is with dual apeps mana goes real fast. Thinking about grabbing the 4 nodes that give +% mana and -% mana cost. I only ever use the arcane surge buff for bosses so that shouldnt change.

Great build and guide! Loosely followed your guide for my 2nd league char and I don't regret it. I do have 6.9k life at level 87 and 250k PoB dps. 3/4 guardians down, oooh boy I hate Hydra...

However I would not never ever call this build cheap. Cost effective would suit much better.

My gear so far:

Hello there !

i'm back, it was a very long (and expensive) week but i'm finally settled. i'll try to answer posts i missed.

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Winkq wrote:

I ran a Minotaur (I removed the brightbeak for this ofc) with a few bitch mods on it earlier and it was slow, I even died a couple of times (you cast so fast that if you dont have a target for a couple of seconds you will litteraly rek yourself due to the lack of leech).

I also ran a shaper afterwards, it was utterly garbage, the damage is so low it makes the fight last forever. I know I'm still short around 150-200 strength on gear and I don't have % life affixes on a couple of my jewels, but even if I invest more to get the lacking strength all my calculations tell me that the increase in damage won't be enough to make the runs smooth.

Minotaur is actually the "hardest" of the guardians with this build, wither totems are really hard to place with falling rock AoE and your golem doesn't last long. it was a surprise for me since the minotaur is usually the easiest of all guardians with most of the builds i've done.

for your shaper run, you must have missed something on your gear or you don't have enougth experience to maximise your damage potential. i'll record a few shaper runs and i'll put link here to show how it goes.

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Winkq wrote:

The one thing that triggers me is that I am unable to understand how to significantly boost my damage, the margin for improvement on gear (outside of more hp) is very limited. Or maybe there is just something I didn't get about the whole concept.

you scale strength, HP, spell damage, cast speed, AoE, chaos damage, there is plenty of solutions to get some additional damage if that's what you aim for. get a cherubin's or a carcass jack to get a few % damage increase, get jewels with %life and spell/cast speed/aoe damage or chaos damage, you can get %chaos damage on jewellery with essences of envy, get a nice helmet with DP cast speed enchant then craft a high life roll and strength suffix, or get 21/20 gems (added chaos is nice to have in 21/20) but outside of jewels, it's not even needed to get the shaper easilly.

The other thing is the lack of good flasks for the build, flasks are so strong in poe yet this one doesnt fully benefit from any I could think of.[/quote]

it's sad that there is no obvious choice fo OP flasks. Zerphi's is pretty good defensively if you run with apep's rage, but chaos damage don't get mutch help from flasks. on the other hand, your damage output is not tied to flask charges and it's great for any fight that last a bit.

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Winkq wrote:

PS: if anyone can share the allmighty secret to single target damage with this build before the 20 wither stacks (which will be impossible to sustain 100% of the time on most endgame bosses), I'll gladly appreciate.

wither boost damages a lot, but i'm pretty sure you can do everything without it (it would be stupid tho). the key is : good wither totem placement (require fight knowledge and anticipation of bosses movement) and to be familiar with you AoE to know where to stand to hit things and don't burn your life on nothing.