[3.2] Death's Oath Spirit Burst Trickster Clearspeed Build

Introduction
With 3.2 we saw the nerf to lightpoacher, one of the key uniques in this build, but with the ascendancy changes we also see a massive damage buff to death's aura, our main ability, so this very much so remains a viable map clearer, but lost a bit of its identity without as much of a presence from lightpoacher. Because of this a normal death's oath build might be more viable, especially when you take into consideration boss killing. As this build still visually feels much different from a normal death's oath build it's still has its place for anyone that enjoys more niche chaos builds.

This is a rather unique/peculiar build that requires a lot to put it all together (but thankfully not lots of $$$), so I apologize if the guide is ridiculously long.

Demonstration/Videos:
[3.1] T11 Primordial Pools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LId8OIOmVVw&feature=youtu.be
[3.1] T13 Desert Springs: https://youtu.be/uicCC7Dm8Ig
(This guide is still in development so if you'd like more videos you only have to ask)

Pros:
+Top tier clear speed
+A massive aura that can deal up to 81k dps to anyone who steps into it that also takes up half the screen
+Flexibility in gear choice for things like magic find
+High life regeneration
+Buffed up despair and temporal chains curses that cover most of the screen
+What you use as a single target skill can be flexible
+No 6 link is used anywhere in the build so it has a relatively lower ceiling to max out the character currency wise, and starting out is fairly cheap (under 10c)

Cons:
-Boss killing damage/potential is only average
-Very very socket heavy: both the chest and helmet slots are used up to make this build work, leaving little room for everything else. This is by far the most confusing and biggest challenge the build has to overcome, so it is not recommended as a first time build or for beginners.
-Can't run hexproof or zero life regeneration maps. Physical reflect from Spirit Burst can be a problem, but there's a workaround that will be explained later in the guide.
-A 5 off-color Death's Oath is needed and will typically run up a cost of 1000-1500 jewelers using the vorici jeweler method. Death's Oath isn't worth using until you have 3 off colors and 4 sockets total, so a vorici 4 is needed to start off and a vorici 6 to complete it, -Spirit Burst from Lightpoacher is the only eye candy provided while mapping, Death's Aura is invisible, so Spirit Burst is the only skill you'll be seeing most of the time.

Key Uniques

Death's Oath

Since Death's Oath is already a little-known somewhat niche unique that hasn't had much attention, an explanation of what it is and how it works is needed. Death's Oath is a chestplate that grants the Death's Aura skill: socketed support gems that are supported can increase/decrease the area of effect and also its damage, with only 7 potential support gems capable of buffing it in any significant way.

Death's Aura is essentially an aura that deals chaos damage over time in a very large area around the player (think double the radius of righteous fire or the size of a "feed souls to the relic" elreon mission.

More in-depth information on how Death's Oath currently works but not at all necessary for how to start the build:


Lightpoacher

The Spirit Burst skill granted by Lightpoacher deals physical damage. Death's Aura deals chaos damage, so this transition to make a build that doesn't really scale much physical or spell damage into one that can bring out Spirit Burst's potential is a very odd problem to solve. My solution for this was dual wielding Innsbury Edge for 50% physical to chaos damage. The 50% combined phys to chaos conversion allows you to scale Spirit Burst's damage as well as use the leech from the two swords, and other things like Atziri's Promise. Only a very small percentage of damage on Death's Aura comes from gear, so it is very easy to sacrifice the two weapon slots to achieve the 50% chaos damage conversion, but this comes at the cost of boss killing potential and survivability along with any of the juicy shields that came with the 3.1 expansion.

Because of the nerfs to lightpoacher in 3.2 it's now strongly recommended to run a faster projectiles support gem with it, which is a fairly significant nerf to this build, but this build remains even more viable in spite of this because of the increased potentials for death's oath to scale its damage. Lightpoacher is a less necessary portion to this build, and therefore innsbury's edge is not needed as much, so swap out these items at your own discretion. Also availability of abyss jewels on bestiary league dramatically increases the cost of good jewels, so lightpoacher (and therefore innsbury's edge x2) is no longer a key portion to this build, so a rare helmet with a increased despair curse effect on it will end up being much more useful for this build, but may look worse

Allelopathy

These gloves allow you to to run a 5 link blight, which is one of the strongest boss killing skills you can use along side death's oath. Blight's single target scales well with the death's oath nodes, and is capable of taking down some of the harder bosses this game has to offer. Because this is a clear speed build these gloves aren't recommended on the higher version budget of this build because of the added advantage attack speed bonus insanity crafted gloves provide us, so it's strongly recommended for you to switch to this next unique sooner rather than later.

The Hungry Loop

This is a new unique added in 3.1 that allows you to effectively 5 link any skill for a total of 4 support skills. Ring slots are really only used for their life and resists in this build, so it is a somewhat simple process to switch out one of your ring slots for this one in exchange for the added movement speed essence crafted gloves provide. The downside is you can't use this ring until you have leveled up the gem from 19 to 20 socketed specifically in this unique. If not done specifically like that you'll end up with a level 20 gem that has not been consumed by the hungry loop, and it won't be added to its effects. Using this ring also allows us to use a boss killing ability other than blight. Typically essence drain and dark pact are the only two that will scale well, but since we'll be getting 50% phys to chaos conversion there's definitely more wiggle room than that if you want to explore a different boss killing alternative.


Passive Tree / POB link




Class Choice / Trickster
Death's Oath works well with both the Berserker and Occultist ascendencies, so why Trickster? Berserker has the 40% more multiplier along with regeneration every time abyssal cry is used, and Occultist is a master of curses and nearby enemies have -20% chaos resistance, which is a massive more multiplier. Trickster is the obvious choice for a clear speed build because of the frenzy charge generation along with the buffed attack speed after having used a movement speed skill recently. No cost on movement speed skills allows you to reserve the majority of the mana without ever worrying about running out as well, which we'll be taking advantage of because of the buffed auras and curses we get along the way.

Leveling Guide


Ascendency Order
Swift Killer --> Patient Reaper --> Prolonged Pain --> Weave the Arcane Swift killer and Patient reaper are essential parts of this build, but swift killer helps more with leveling, and it's harder to take advantage of Patient Reaper without the mapping gear that buffs your life regeneration. Prolonged pain is a substantial damage boost on top of an early way to help mitigate the damage death's oath deals to you, so I take this one before Weave the Arcane, despite Weave being very useful for clear speed and getting blight stacks.

Gear


Flasks

Atziri's promise is used to give our Spirit Burst/Lightpoacher a buff in damage and most importantly for leech. The .4% combined chaos damage leeched as life from innsbury's edge is enough leech in lower tier physical reflect maps, but higher tiers you might start seeing its damage be a problem, and this flask is the workaround for the remaining 50% spirit burst damage that hasn't been converted to chaos damage. So if you're using lightpoacher and running physical reflect maps this flask is necessary, but otherwise it's not needed.


Skill Gems
Chest: Death's Oath 6S (THESE DO NOT NEED TO BE LINKED TO WORK): Void Manipulation, Efficacy, Concentrated Effect, Arcane Surge, Swift Affliction, Less Duration
Note: Swift Affliction and Less Duration won't affect damage unless arcane surge is socketed. When getting 5 off-colors if you aren't doing it in one go prioritize the first three support gem colors on your death's oath (2 blue, 1 green)
Helmet: Lightpoacher 3 sockets linked with 1 abyssal socket: greater multiple projectiles, decay, faster projectiles. Void manipulation pre-3.2 was used in its place before the lightpoacher nerfs, if you feel like you have enough projectile speed you can remove this gem, but otherwise I feel it's very needed otherwise it covers less of the screen than death's aura. If you decide not to use faster projectiles and also don't have the physical to chaos conversion from innsbury's edge use controlled destruction in place of void manipulation.

Boots 4L: Blasphemy, Temporal Chains, Despair, Enhance. Starting at level 2 enhance is actually worth using because of the massive damage increase despair provides. A 20% quality level 20 despair accounts for 30% of your death's aura's damage, and 30% if you're using a level 3 enhance. Having a despair setup is by far one of your best investments you can make, so try and get a 20% quality one sooner rather than later.
Gloves 4L: Whirling Blades, Faster Attacks, Fortify, Summon Stone Golem
Weapon Slot 1 3L: Cast When Damage Taken (level 1), Immortal Call (level 2), Vitality
Weapon Slot 2 3L: Spell Totem, Wither, Abyssal Cry (switch this out with faster casting if bossing is a big enough focus)
Ring (The Hungry Loop): Blight, Efficacy, Swift Affliction, Void Manipulation, Controlled Destruction


Jewels

All jewels should be abyss jewels unless you're buffing your blight/death's oath damage through two spreading rot jewels, they aren't necessary but they're nice for earlier levels or if you want to focus more on boss killing. I would say these jewels are absolutely mandatory if not for the need to have a lot of abyss jewels while mapping for the lightpoacher charges; two spreading rot jewels is a total of 30% more death's aura damage for any enemy that is hindered (which is essentially any enemy that is being hit by blight), along with 30% more blight damage, but often times enemies will only get hindered intially, and in a boss' case if you're moving around dodging attacks I believe there's still a cooldown between when hinder expires and when you can place hinder on an enemy again for the spreading rot chaos damage bonus.

3.2 update: Because this is no longer abyss league abyss jewels are much harder to come by, if you feel like lightpoacher isn't carrying its weight/worth the visual effects, consider normal jewels.
Jewels with increased maximum life, increased damage, area damage, chaos damage, damage over time are all viable even if they aren't quite as strong as abyss jewels, and are typically fairly cheap.

Watcher's Eye is an expensive but very valuable jewel for this kind of build, look for the vitality ones that increase the rate of life regeneration, these go for anywhere from 4-7 exalts but are well worth it once you're into the later stages of your build. The flat life regeneration ones are nice as well as its basically a second stone golem, and is further buffed by the trickster ascendancy. These ones are still expensive but not completely out of the question for the average player, at least at current prices.
Abyss Jewels: Maximum life > Increased Damage Over Time While Dual Wielding > Increased Damage if You've Killed Recently > % of Life Regenerated Per Second While Moving > Chance to gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on kill > Physical/Chaos Damage added to spells > And resists or strength you need.
Abyss jewels with the first three attributes can be picked up for 1c or less, if you're using the shield variant of these jewels instead of dual wield they're over 10c each (thanks RF). You can occasionally pick up jewels with 4 nice attributes for 1 chaos as well, so if you're on a budget keep an eye out for those as well.

Bandits
Grab the 2 passives. Oak is a solid second choice, but it's pretty much the difference between an extra abyss jewel or not, and the abyss jewel wins for sure.

Pantheon
Soul of Arakaali:
I can't imagine a build more capable of taking advantage of any one pantheon more than this one. It doesn't start to shine until you start upgrading it with divine vessels, but is well worth the vessels to upgrade. The "50% increased recovery rate of life and es if you've stopped taking damage over time recently does not trigger off of death's oath's chaos damage over time dealt to you when immortal call goes off, but if you can afford to make room for a blood rage gem, this will force that 50% increase whenever immortal call goes off. The reduced effect of shock is invaluable, and the 25% chaos resistance against damage over time effectively removes 1/4th of the 450 chaos damage taken over time, which is absolutely massive.

Minor God: Soul of Tukohama
Both the physical damage reduction and life regeneration when standing still helps a lot during boss fights if you're using blight, hands down one of the best picks for minor gods.

Enchants
Helmet: 30% Increased Despair Curse Effectiveness. This one blows all other choices out of the water since it ends up being nearly as much of an increase to blight's damage on top of it being one of the best ways to scale death's aura damage. I highly recommend this lab enchant over any other, but I'll list the other options below.

Increased Blight Damage or Increased Effect of the Buff Granted by Your Stone Golems. If you're planning on just mapping the golem one is preferred, but the incresaed blight damage helps with bosses.

Boots: Regenerate 2% of Life and Mana per second if you were hit recently

Other Thoughts/Conclusion
In 3.2 this build became more expensive/harder to start up because of the decreased availability of abyss jewels, even if lightpoacher remains cheap and regular jewels are just as viable in terms of damage and health scaling. The indirect buffs to death's oath bring this build to the next level, but the costs associated with running a lightpoachers and therefore making this build much more fun to map with are weighing it down as a potential budget build. This also makes regular death's oath builds a much cheaper alternative, but this build at the very least is a good template for maximizing the clear speed potential of death's oath.

Aside from blight, it is possible to use other skills like dark pact, or even viper strike for single target, because of the need to use the hungry loop, there's not really any forced limitation of what skill you can use so long as it scales well with chaos damage and damage over time.

If you're struggling to get enough sockets for things like a 4th aura/curse since there's more than enough mana unreserved for it, some of the shaped/elder items can give you an extra socket, but it becomes harder to balance resists for, and becomes a bit of a pain to manage, so I'm hoping my specific gem setup works for most people. There's boots that give the spell totem support, gloves with faster attacks, belts with abyssal cry, and one handed weapons that convert 20% of physical damage to chaos, so you can use something other than innsbury if you have a deep seated hatred for them.

There's an elder mod on weapons that converts 20% physical damage to chaos, less than Innsbury but it opens up a few options for some endgame crafting. Under normal circumstances Innsbury offers everything you need, but there's a few odd things you can do like craft essence of delirium on a weapon, which will give your hits decay. Blight and death's oath don't count as a hit, but spirit burst and shield charge do (dark pact might?). Even though it's a slightly weaker version of the decay support gem, it will allow you to socket your lightpoacher with a gem other than decay, letting you 3.5-4 link your lightpoacher, which is incredibly strong.

Reserved

wow, i was going to reroll cuz didnt find any interesting shadow build, but thats something i really would love to play. is it viable for endgame? (uber/shaper?)

"

3ryk wrote:

wow, i was going to reroll cuz didnt find any interesting shadow build, but thats something i really would love to play. is it viable for endgame? (uber/shaper?)

a 5l blight + death's oath's dps is roughly the equivalent of a 6l blight so I would imagine so. You'd definitely want to swap the helmet out and replace two of the abyss jewels for the blight jewels. And also potentially getting a +1 curse amulet, a shaper's seed +1 curse cost me in the 30-40 chaos range last league, but I imagine it's doable to get something with life on it instead with +1 curses to it. Then again bosses have reduced effects of curses so it's not worth the investment for bossing alone. Also I imagine vaal breach would be useful so that you're always gaining the on kill effects like the +70% increased life regeneration.

Gear wise my build is mostly meant for map farming rather than bossing but gear is pretty interchangeable if you want to go for something with incredibly high regen or a really solid defensive shield, you just can't really use lightpoacher at the same time. Getting into bossing gear can be as simple as switching into a more defensive helmet, wearing a breath of the council, shaped/elder crafted shiled, and equipping two spreading rot jewels, so it's up to you whether or not that's too much of a pain to do for any bosses that are harder than map bosses. Trickster is the ascendancy for clearing rather than bossing though, there's a occultist death's oath guide out there that is similar but with better ehp scaling.

You really should consider Level 22 Blight gloves - Alleopathy iirc.

Don't you feel like gimping your clear speed when you only use 3 Abyss Jewels?

That regeneration Pantheon is great with Blood Rage + CWDT. You should check it out. Coupled with Trickster's regeneration, it should be simply amazing.

Aura effectiveness scales Death Aura damage?

Do you think curse effectivenes scale gives more damage than raw damage increase?

Come to think of it, can I use something like Shield Charge + Decay / Added Chaos + Void Manipulation + whatnot to trigger chain reaction?

"

Aura effectiveness scales Death Aura damage?

Yep, if you use my path of building link and click on the "show node power" button towards the bottom it'll show how well it scales it. The aura nodes in particular by CI increase death's aura's dps by 15.6% in the case of my build. Pretty massive boost for 3 points.

"

You really should consider Level 22 Blight gloves - Alleopathy iirc.

Hence why one of the biggest cons of this build is not having enough links. You either have to drop your wither totem and forsake boss killing, your movement skill abilities and rely only on a quicksilver flask and cut your clear speed in half, or not use lightpoacher which similarly kills clear speed. The non-light bringer version of the build that uses alleopathy works fine and is much stronger for things like boss killing, but isn't nearly as fun to play, light bringer really just brings it up to an entirely different level. It's also a lot easier to run more MF pieces on the non-lightbringer version, instead of a 5 link alleopathy you run sadimas touch, and assuming you're rich can run two ventors, a biscos, and goldwyrm all without being under res capped or affecting damage, it's really one ofdeath's oaths strongest points, almost none of the damage is affected by swapping gear; breath of the council for instance is the single biggest way of upgrading damage through gear and it's only a 15-16% increase in damage, whereas most builds don't see any less than a 50% increase in dps from their top tier weapon.

"

Don't you feel like gimping your clear speed when you only use 3 Abyss Jewels?

I'm typically not having any dps issues when it comes to higher tier maps, and I still have a few upgrades i can make to my dps, a level 3 enhance would increase my death's aura's dps by 3.8% a lvl 4 by 6.7% assuming ideal conditions (no less effect of curses map mods and also the reduced effectiveness of curses on bosses).

With that said it is entirely possible to switch around the tree a bit and get two more jewel sockets, the benefits of doing it roughly breaks even assuming you have an abyss jewel with the first three mods: maximum life, inc damage if killed recently, and inc dot while dual wielding, but this definitely changes when you get things like % life regenerated per second while moving as your fourth bonus from an abyss jewel. I'll definitely add that as an option for the endgame passive skill tree, thanks!

"

That regeneration Pantheon is great with Blood Rage + CWDT. You should check it out. Coupled with Trickster's regeneration, it should be simply amazing.

Hypothetically it shouldn't be necessary since death's oath makes you take up to 450 chaos damage per second as a dot, and CWDT should be activating that portion of the pantheon without having to use blood rage, but from what I remember in 3.0 it didn't work for whatever reason, I'm definitely going to be testing it out at some point though, it's just a bit hard to set up since the only things that stay alive long enough for me to test something like that are abyss rares or bosses while also having the added requirement of killing smaller mobs around me to activate the chaos dot on enemy kill from death's oath. That said frenzy obviously does set it off and is well worth the added investment of making room for another link, and further devalues the need to be a trickster for this build since that gives frenzy charges as well. There's definitely times when my regen shoots up to ~3k so I wouldn't be surprised if the CWDT pantheon setup does increase my regen and I just haven't noticed.

"

ArchieGriffs wrote:

"

Aura effectiveness scales Death Aura damage?

Yep, if you use my path of building link and click on the "show node power" button towards the bottom it'll show how well it scales it. The aura nodes in particular by CI increase death's aura's dps by 15.6% in the case of my build. Pretty massive boost for 3 points.

"

You really should consider Level 22 Blight gloves - Alleopathy iirc.

Hence why one of the biggest cons of this build is not having enough links. You either have to drop your wither totem and forsake boss killing, your movement skill abilities and rely only on a quicksilver flask and cut your clear speed in half, or not use lightpoacher which similarly kills clear speed. The non-light bringer version of the build that uses alleopathy works fine and is much stronger for things like boss killing, but isn't nearly as fun to play, light bringer really just brings it up to an entirely different level. It's also a lot easier to run more MF pieces on the non-lightbringer version, instead of a 5 link alleopathy you run sadimas touch, and assuming you're rich can run two ventors, a biscos, and goldwyrm all without being under res capped or affecting damage, it's really one ofdeath's oaths strongest points, almost none of the damage is affected by swapping gear; breath of the council for instance is the single biggest way of upgrading damage through gear and it's only a 15-16% increase in damage, whereas most builds don't see any less than a 50% increase in dps from their top tier weapon.

"

Don't you feel like gimping your clear speed when you only use 3 Abyss Jewels?

I'm typically not having any dps issues when it comes to higher tier maps, and I still have a few upgrades i can make to my dps, a level 3 enhance would increase my death's aura's dps by 3.8% a lvl 4 by 6.7% assuming ideal conditions (no less effect of curses map mods and also the reduced effectiveness of curses on bosses).

With that said it is entirely possible to switch around the tree a bit and get two more jewel sockets, the benefits of doing it roughly breaks even assuming you have an abyss jewel with the first three mods: maximum life, inc damage if killed recently, and inc dot while dual wielding, but this definitely changes when you get things like % life regenerated per second while moving as your fourth bonus from an abyss jewel. I'll definitely add that as an option for the endgame passive skill tree, thanks!

"

That regeneration Pantheon is great with Blood Rage + CWDT. You should check it out. Coupled with Trickster's regeneration, it should be simply amazing.

Hypothetically it shouldn't be necessary since death's oath makes you take up to 450 chaos damage per second as a dot, and CWDT should be activating that portion of the pantheon without having to use blood rage, but from what I remember in 3.0 it didn't work for whatever reason, I'm definitely going to be testing it out at some point though, it's just a bit hard to set up since the only things that stay alive long enough for me to test something like that are abyss rares or bosses while also having the added requirement of killing smaller mobs around me to activate the chaos dot on enemy kill from death's oath. That said frenzy obviously does set it off and is well worth the added investment of making room for another link, and further devalues the need to be a trickster for this build since that gives frenzy charges as well. There's definitely times when my regen shoots up to ~3k so I wouldn't be surprised if the CWDT pantheon setup does increase my regen and I just haven't noticed.

It didn't worked, because CWDT stops you from taking physical damage and aura is chaos damage.

Yeah. come to think of it, Trickster isn't that good for this build since you can generate Frenzy charges the other ways and a little bit of mana regen should handle movement skills cost.

I mean you don't really zoom-zoom nonstop in that video. You run out of charges on regular basis while goal is to kill initial mobs and continue going until map is cleared.

Yeah, gotta work around the gems. But people report that level 22 Blight is so much more damage though.

..

Do you think curse effectivenes scale gives more damage than raw damage increase?

Come to think of it, can I use something like Shield Charge + Decay / Added Chaos + Void Manipulation + whatnot to trigger chain reaction? Of course in that scenario we are not gonna use Death's Oath. I want something to easily kill first pack and never run out of charges later.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

It didn't worked, because CWDT stops you from taking physical damage and aura is chaos damage.

Oh that makes sense, immortal call only affects physical damage, that explains it all.

"

Yeah. come to think of it, Trickster isn't that good for this build since you can generate Frenzy charges the other ways and a little bit of mana regen should handle movement skills cost.

You lose out on a bit of attack speed from the ascendancy, but if you're already grabbing blood rage for the 50% increased life recovery from the pantheon then frenzy charges aren't at all an issue, so you might as well go occultist for the increased damage, even if you still end up as life based. ES based has the added disadvantage of losing out on any sort of ES from both a shield slot and the chest piece, you'd end up with around 6k ES if you went the ES-based occultist route, but it still might be possible if you tried skipping the physical to chaos conversion entirely and just focused on GMP and decay's damage on light bringer, and just skip physical reflect maps.

"

I mean you don't really zoom-zoom nonstop in that video. You run out of charges on regular basis while goal is to kill initial mobs and continue going until map is cleared.

For sure, the only way I can think of to improve the clearing speed by any significant margin is to do a shield charge brightbeak setup, but from my experience I feel it lacks a little too much damage, maybe going occultist would make up for that.

"

Yeah, gotta work around the gems. But people report that level 22 Blight is so much more damage though.

POB is showing ~ a 22% increase in blight damage from the two level differences, so that's quite a bit of boss damage you're losing out on.

..

"

Do you think curse effectivenes scale gives more damage than raw damage increase?

It depends on how much you're investing in the curse setup. Despair is non negotiable since it's 74% more damage without any curse nodes allocated, and without enhance support buffing it. With enhance support and the curse nodes despair accounts for a 112.4% more multiplier. So anything within the curse radius which is roughly 60% of the screen is taking that 112% multiplier, so it might make sense to try and maximize the damage in that range rather than focusing on any of the off screens that lightpoacher gives you through spirit burst. From what I've seen chain or fork doesn't wrok with it, so I can't think of any other ways to concentrate the damage a bit more.

"

Come to think of it, can I use something like Shield Charge + Decay / Added Chaos + Void Manipulation + whatnot to trigger chain reaction? Of course in that scenario we are not gonna use Death's Oath. I want something to easily kill first pack and never run out of charges later.

The first thing that comes to mind would be either a herald bomber or cospri's discharge, those are both builds that blow up anything shield charge comes into contact with, but using shield charge to apply decay seems like a really really interesting idea, if there was a way to have contagion activate automatically along with it you could have some interesting chain reactions and not have to stop.
[/quote]

"

ArchieGriffs wrote:

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

It didn't worked, because CWDT stops you from taking physical damage and aura is chaos damage.

Oh that makes sense, immortal call only affects physical damage, that explains it all.

"

Yeah. come to think of it, Trickster isn't that good for this build since you can generate Frenzy charges the other ways and a little bit of mana regen should handle movement skills cost.

You lose out on a bit of attack speed from the ascendancy, but if you're already grabbing blood rage for the 50% increased life recovery from the pantheon then frenzy charges aren't at all an issue, so you might as well go occultist for the increased damage, even if you still end up as life based. ES based has the added disadvantage of losing out on any sort of ES from both a shield slot and the chest piece, you'd end up with around 6k ES if you went the ES-based occultist route, but it still might be possible if you tried skipping the physical to chaos conversion entirely and just focused on GMP and decay's damage on light bringer, and just skip physical reflect maps.

"

I mean you don't really zoom-zoom nonstop in that video. You run out of charges on regular basis while goal is to kill initial mobs and continue going until map is cleared.

For sure, the only way I can think of to improve the clearing speed by any significant margin is to do a shield charge brightbeak setup, but from my experience I feel it lacks a little too much damage, maybe going occultist would make up for that.

"

Yeah, gotta work around the gems. But people report that level 22 Blight is so much more damage though.

POB is showing ~ a 22% increase in blight damage from the two level differences, so that's quite a bit of boss damage you're losing out on.

..

"

Do you think curse effectivenes scale gives more damage than raw damage increase?

It depends on how much you're investing in the curse setup. Despair is non negotiable since it's 74% more damage without any curse nodes allocated, and without enhance support buffing it. With enhance support and the curse nodes despair accounts for a 112.4% more multiplier. So anything within the curse radius which is roughly 60% of the screen is taking that 112% multiplier, so it might make sense to try and maximize the damage in that range rather than focusing on any of the off screens that lightpoacher gives you through spirit burst. From what I've seen chain or fork doesn't wrok with it, so I can't think of any other ways to concentrate the damage a bit more.

"

Come to think of it, can I use something like Shield Charge + Decay / Added Chaos + Void Manipulation + whatnot to trigger chain reaction? Of course in that scenario we are not gonna use Death's Oath. I want something to easily kill first pack and never run out of charges later.

The first thing that comes to mind would be either a herald bomber or cospri's discharge, those are both builds that blow up anything shield charge comes into contact with, but using shield charge to apply decay seems like a really really interesting idea, if there was a way to have contagion activate automatically along with it you could have some interesting chain reactions and not have to stop.

[/quote]
Yeah, but Cospri / Autobombers are completely different builds. It's like advicing to try EK Lightpoacher :)

I was thinking about something comparably cheap and chaos damage based. Issue with shield charge is that you need FA and Fortify, so you are left with 2 less damage supports. Ideally you would want 4L, not 6L, because you need to do single-target somehow and Gloves of Insanity are BIS for shield charge.

Berserker can be great choice as well. Hell, even Pathfinder/Raider or something else can be great.

Also, there is Scion - can grab Occultist for -Res and Trickster for regen :p

What about Al Dhin for automatic Abyssal Cry cast? There is so many possibilites man.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

Yeah, but Cospri / Autobombers are completely different builds. It's like advicing to try EK Lightpoacher :)

I was thinking about something comparably cheap and chaos damage based. Issue with shield charge is that you need FA and Fortify, so you are left with 2 less damage supports. Ideally you would want 4L, not 6L, because you need to do single-target somehow and Gloves of Insanity are BIS for shield charge.

Berserker can be great choice as well. Hell, even Pathfinder/Raider or something else can be great.

Also, there is Scion - can grab Occultist for -Res and Trickster for regen :p

What about Al Dhin for automatic Abyssal Cry cast? There is so many possibilites man.

Yeah i've definitely toyed with the idea of an Al Dinh berserker build, it probably would mix fairly well with death's oath since all you really need is shield charge to set it off, and death's oath is pretty lose on what kinds of weapons you can use. I really feel like there's so many half completed concepts or routes to take to be able to make a complete chaos build, it's just missing a few things like easier conversion, or its own unique that does something similar to poets pen, cospris' malice etc.

If there was a way to get contagion to spread automatically I could see a decay shield charge build working well, but as it stands a 6 linked shield charge build does roughly as much as death's oath and the difference in aoe is on a completely different league. I think it only cost ~ 30 mana as well, so it's not like you could use it to trigger kitava's thirst, and that's a helmet slot so no lightpoacher.