[3.3] The Dancing Mystic - Chaos Degen Summoner/The Dancing Dervish/Rampage

You can now corrupt Two-Handed Swords with "Resolute Technique". This means it will always hit (but never crit) which is a huge damage boost.

Remember that while it's not manifested, the Keystone will apply to you and you won't be able to crit until it's active. This is not relevant to this build but still worthy to be noted down.

This build revolves around the Witch's Occultist Ascendancy with it's newely buffed Nodes which now work with Minions like "The Dancing Dervish" (TDD) in it's manifested form.

Why not Necromancer you ask? Well, I kinda already made a Necro and I wanted to build a chaos DoT Minion build for a while now and managed to do so with this one. Last league I tried to make something work with Speaker's Wreath to get those sweet explosions but it was quite underwhelming.

The Dancing Ancestral Fister - Doryani's Fist/The Dancing Dervish/Rampage/Ancestral Totems (4)

The Dancing Avatar - AoF IW GC/The Baron/12 Zombies/The Dancing Dervish

The Dancing Baron - The Baron/The Dancing Dervish/Rampage/SRS Summoner

The Dancing Baroness - The Baron/The Dancing Dervish/Rampage/SRS Summoner

The Dancing Dominatrix - The Dancing Dervish / DB Melee Necromancer

The Dancing Infernal Warper - Lightning Warp/Stormfire/Burn Prolif/The Dancing Dervish/Rampage

The Dancing Phantasm - Crit Cold BV/The Dancing Dervish/Perma phasing/Rampage

The Dancing Whirly - Cyclone/The Dancing Dervish/Rampage/Doryani's Fist

I remember as if it was yesteryear when I first got in contact with this item



I really like this thing because it is really unique in what it does. It was the core of my first build ever to successfully and seriously get my casual ass into mapping up to two digit maps which is also why I tried to make a viable build with it in each subsequent league. In Legacy I managed to sucessfully make two other builds with it, a Scion and another Duelist. In Breach I tried myself on a TDD Raider which kinda went... meh... because you can't really scale TDD that well without minion damage and support gems are leveled up sometime which means it won't scale further.

TDD got a serious AI overhaul. It Cyclones hard now! (Before/After)

Since probably only like four people use it seriously, I got this TDD for 1 Alch or something.

A 6 Socket version is all you need because Manifest Weapon is an inherent Skill which gets supported by all gems in it meaning you have an artificial 7-Link comparable to Nhagamu's or Whispring Ice.

You always reach the Rampage State after just 15 kills now because it seems they kinda forgot to update that after Kitava encounters. I like it a lot.

It can also sustain itself in a bossfight now if it hits the boss in it's manifested form.

You can artificially create/keep up a rampage with thefollowing two things since 3.1

+ Rampage.
+ Fairly Cheap.
+ Fun to play with.
+ Stuff goes boom if it gets cursed and killed by minions.
+ The satisfying visual of a very nice Cycloning Sword.

- You lose defenses as you cannot wear a shield. You do have taunting Minions but stray attacks might hit you.
- If you fail to start a rampage, you are missing a lot of damage and clearspeed.
- Build only really starts at lvl 59 because you can only then equip TDD and you might have to invest into stats a bit to equip it.

Skillwise I prioritized Minion and Aura nodes equally, then went to ES and life.

When I reached lvl 59 I had too little dex and int so I went to get some items with stats on them.

As of now at lvl 85

If you need to be immune to Chaos Damage, you can spec into CI for that situation.

Ascendancywise I chose:

Normal: Profane Bloom

This is the boomboom node which was the main reason I chose this class. It helps the clearspeed a lot. The Hexproof pierce works wonders too.

Cruel: Malediction/Void Beacon

This one is not that easy to decide on. You either go Void Beacon to counteract high regen mobs or you go Malediction to get a Despair/Temp Chains combo on enemies.

Merciless: Wicked Ward

This is for your survivability, quite needed too.

Uber: Vile Bastion

2 presses of Writhing Jar can give you 4% ESreg for 4 seconds and can quite possibly save your behind.

1. Approach a pack of monsters

2. Curse them, let your minions kill them.

3. Repeat step 2

4. Repeat step 3

5. ????

6. profit

Notes on Rampage

You can artificially create/keep up a rampage with thefollowing two things since 3.1

The Rampage dependancy however, is one of the reasons why Elder Guardians are hard to do, if they have no Adds. It's recommended that you have an offhand with something to help in these fights like Monti's or The Queen's Escape with 6L Skeletons.

If you manage to give a singletarget boss without adds an Ashscale Talisman like this (rarity doesn't matter)
or a Deadhand Talisman, you can start a rampage because they will begin to spawn mobs.

The Ashscale Talisman spawns Raging Spirits which should be handleable due to your AoE damage coverage.

The Deadhand Talisman is dangerous due to the almost non existing Chaos Res you have (except you spec into CI). The spawned worms explode with Chaos Damage and the Boss too once they're killed so you could die too.

Disclaimer: Those are just the skills I'm using in the setup they are in. You don't HAVE to link them exactly like that because there surely is room for improvement.

Raise Zombies - Fortify (from boots) - Minion Life - Minion Res - Chaos Golem

The walls and one of the Rampage starter of the build.

Raise Spectre - Culling Strike - Summon Phantasm - Spell Echo - Faster Proj (from Gloves) - Poison (from Gloves)

The bulk of Phantasms summoned by this setup help the clearspeed too.

Ball Lightning - Curse on Hit - Despair - Temp Chains - (Decay)

This Setup is a HUGE QOL improvement from selfcasting curses. The Decay is just an added bonus which can certainly be left out. This also allows for the use of Elemental Equilibrium which boosts the damage of your minions by a bit again.

Hatred / Discipline / Haste / Convocation

This is to buff your damage and reorganize all of your minions.

Dank Dervish

Since it's just 5 socketed, this is what I chose.

Lesser Poison - To get the 100% Poison Chance

Poison - To get the 100% Poison Chance

Minion Damage/Added Chaos Damage - The DPS doesn't deviate a lot from one another. I still have to test with 20/20 gems to come to a final conclusion.

Multistrike - This is better than Minion Speed in many regards and doesn't reduce the Posion Damage

Additional Accuracy - The accuracy stat on TDD is shit, this helps it out

The Spectres I chose for this purpose are Wraith for their EK spell. Since they have Culling Strike, they regularly summon Phantasms on kill to bolster the damage and also Blind/Taunt regularly due to the Abyss Jewels I have socketed which also use a physical projectile spell. Any physical Projectile Spell based Spectre works for that purpose but Wraith are easy accessible and offer damage coverage.

Kill them all

Ele reflect might kill your totems regularly but you can simply recast them
Phys reflect is not a problem
Reduced Mana and Health regen, not a problem
Elemental Equilibrium , no problem
Totems, not a problem
Extra damage, not a problem
Extra crit, you gotta watch out, the thing is that you can still be frozen.
Bloodlines, no problem
Beyond monsters you have to watch out for but it works out
Shocking/Burning/Chilled ground no problems up to now, the chilled ground can impede your Rampage though
desecrated ground due to my current boots, no problem. Else, watch out
2 bosses is only a problem with certain bosses
Rogue Exiles Some are danagerous, but nothing impossible
No Regen Rather not
Master missions are possible without much of a problem except particular Vorici missions

Rare Tribunal Map (character lvl 85, updated build)
Rare Bog Map (character lvl 82, old version)