🩸Blood Sacrament Chieftain🔥 [3.19]


Art by: Carlos Torres







Welcome to the guide.

It's been some time since the Ultimatum league came out and some of us tried creating builds around the new unique items back then. Some of them worked fine, others not so good. Some game mechanics were changed since then.
But this league, many (if not all) uniques from Ultimatum were brought into the game through the Trialmaster challenge.
So I decided to work out a build around the Relic of the Pact wand. Apparently many other players decided to give it a try and achieved success through Scion while stacking Strength/Life with a Timeless jewel, Unnatural Instinct and whatnot...

I decided different. An idea with great potential...

Let's start.

Overall Performance (1 to 10):
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Endurance: 5 (mediocre)
Map clear efficiency: 9 (very high)
Single Target damage: 9 (very high)
Budget: 5 to 7 (mediocre~high)



Ascendancy: Chieftain
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1. Ngamahu, Flame's Advance.
2. Hinekora, Death's Fury.
3. Ramako, Sun's Light.
4. Tasalio, Cleansing Water.


Pantheon:

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Major: Arakaali or Lunaris

Minor: Ralakesh or Shakari or Abberath - it is a personal choice. We aim to negate either Burning Ground, Bleeding or Poisons. Adjusting Flask effects based on this choice.

Of course both fully upgraded.


Bandits:
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Kill them all.



Gear and Sockets:

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Jewels:
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Unique Jewels:
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Dissolution of the Flesh - Mandatory for this build.


Anatomical Knowledge (optional). Find one with Reservation Efficiency implicit if necessary for the main skill.


Forbidden Flesh and Forbidden Flame (+Aspect of Carnage). This is absolutely not mandatory since it's very expensive but will literally add 40% more damage.



Cluster Jewels:
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Only one Large: A Fire base with 8 points. Has to have: Master of Fire, Widespread Destruction and Prismatic Heart. Master of Fire is mandatory. You could swap one of the other motables with Doryani's Lesson but this notable usually adds more value to the cluster jewel and is not mandatory for our build.


Other Jewels:
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Rare jewels should have maximum Life. Additional mods can be Fire damage, Damage, Area Damage, Added Phys dmg to spells, etc.




Flasks:
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Life flasks are not mandatory but I highly recommend you to have flasks with exactly the same mods as I am using since Corrupted Blood and Bleeding are effectively negated for a lot of time - until you clear the screen out of any monsters/effects causing these debuffs. Also, since we're taking Arakaali/Lunaris (and not Brine King) for the Major Pantheon, we need to make sure we're not Frozen by Strongboxes or anything, so we use the anti-freeze effect on the other flask. You can try to find Boots with Cannot be Frozen and use anti-poison effect on the second flask instead.


We use the Wise Oak because of both additional Fire penetration and additional defense. Make sure your total resistance to fire is highest (won't be too hard as Chieftain).
Rumi's Concoction and Overflowing Chalice are a personal choice. I recommend them for a light gameplay without thinking about flask charges.




Detailed build description:

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There isn't much happening on the screen except your Blood Sacrament spam.
You just run around and one-shot everything, including very difficult rare monsters. Spell has a very small cast time so you will barely feel your character stopping to cast it. Let's look more into detail:

Damage scaling:
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There are two main things for this build: Life and Elemental damage. We aim to stack up as much Life as possible through gear and jewels. Then we boost our elemental damage through passives, curses and more:

-Most of all we stack up Life. Trying to get all the possible and better passives on the tree to boost our Life. Jewels, including Dissolution of the Flesh. The Keystone Blood Magic and other passives are your best choice.
Life on gear is the best you can get along with proper resistances.

-Elemental damage. Since my version of the build is not Physical because I convert 100% phys to fire, boosting Elemental Damage is our next priority:

*The Chieftain ascendancy is perfect for the case since it provides Fire penetration, Cover enemies in Ash, 100% Phys as extra fire for an average of 40% more damage, 50% conversion (and +50% additional from Avatar of Fire), Additional Leech, and additional Strength. Also has defenses including a flat 100% fire resistance which helps a lot since it might not be easy to cap resistances at the start;

*Elemental Overload is your best friend. It also helps for the Ignites we deal. Even though they are not as effective as the direct hits, they still help with the clear speed (since we socket Elemental Proliferation);

*Additional "Physical Damage as extra Fire" from the tree, the Added Fire Damage Support, and the Ascendancy Ngamahu, Flame's Advance;

*Exposure - provided by the cluster jewel;

*Unnerve - provided by the Eldritch implicit on gloves;

*Using double Impresence with Flammability and Elemental Weakness is the best you can get as an amulet (with the +1 curse anoint of course);

*Ignites are very good even though we do not upgrade the DoT specifically. The Elemental Proliferation Support helps us a lot with additional clear speed.



Defenses:
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The defense is based mainly on two things: Damage and Petrified Blood.

-As it is said - the best defense is our offense. This may make you feel uncomfortable but it's true and after some time playing the build, you will see for yourself.
-Petrified Blood, socketed into the Essence Worm ring, is our other line of defense. Speaking for itself, it provides a lot of damage absorption. Very important thing to know is that the life lost over time from this skill is completely overhealed by the Life Recharge we have from the Eternal Youth Keystone. You can read the skill tooltip until you understand how it works. Anomalous quality recommended.


Eternal Youth vs Dissolution of the Flesh vs Petrified Blood
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It is important that this part is understood by the player. Even if you directly copy the build, it is recommended to know how it works.
Dissolution of the Flesh makes so that the game won't consider your character taking Damage and the Life will be Reserved instead of Lost. This works perfectly with the Recharge mechanic and Petrified Blood. Petrified Blood will absorb some of the damage taken below 50% Life and then your Recharge will overheal the degen part from Petrified Blood. Life Recharge will not be paused from the degen effect of Petrified Blood.
The reservation from Dissolution of the Flesh disappears after 2 seconds of not taking any damage. The Chieftain ascendancy making us unaffected by Ignite helps a lot since we won't take any damage from ignites so they won't keep us with reserved Life. You may somehow try to get Evasion on the gear even though it won't be much but will increase the chance for you not getting hit within 2 seconds so that the Life Recharge starts.
This whole thing will feel weird and in 99% of the times you will die only if you are hit within the cast time of the skill. It takes practice to feel the monsters around your character so that you don't spam at just any moment but rather when you have a clean shot. Skill has a lot of damage potential so continuous spam for mapping is unnecessary and not recommended.


Uniques:
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We're using 6 unique gear pieces:


-Relic of the Pact. It is one of the main items of our build. A simple wand that provides our main skill as well as lucky crit chance when on low life. Our aim is to make the Blood Sacrament skill reserve so much Life that it's is cast by the first channeling tick. When we release the explosion we're always on low life, therefore our crit chance is always lucky.

-The Rathpith Globe is the other mandatory piece of our gear which provides additional Life, and additional crit chance and spell damage based on the Life. There's no better offhand for our build. Not even The Squire. It's a cheap item that can be found with additional Life as corrupted implicit.

-Having so much % Life on the tree requires a flat amount of Life to make sure we boost it properly. There's no better armour than Kaom's Heart which provides 500 flat Life. In addition to our build the 40% increased Fire damage fits perfectly as well. Try to find it with % Life corrupted implicit.

-Essence Worm, as mentioned before, is another mandatory part of our gear. Its purpose is to reduce our Life reservation efficiency so that we "channel" the Blood Sacrament skill quicker since it will reserve a larger portion of our Life. It is the perfect place to put your Petrified Blood skill.

-Crown of the Tyrant gives our character another big chunk of up to 175 Life, and weakening nearby enemies with additional -10 to their resistances. It also gives a slight bonus of added damage. It is definitely better than the Glimpse of Chaos which will only create additional problems just to give you ~15% additional increased Life at the cost of so many other negative effects. So, don't take Glimpse of Chaos.

-Double Impresence with Flammability and Elemental Weakness is best in slot.



Rares:
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Rare items should generally provide as much Life as possible. Additionally, jewels with Reservation Efficiency mods will be required to balance the skill's reservation.


The Skill:
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Blood Sacrament is a skill that is completely based on your Life pool. It is provided by the weapon we use.
The more Life you have, the more damage you deal with hits and ailments, and the better radius it has. That's why we also get gear with as much Life as possible to also synergize with the other uniques as well.
Basically it's a channeling skill which Reserves 2% life per channeling tick. Our aim is to increase the Life it reserves by reducing Life reservation efficiency. We do this with a few tricks:
-Essence Worm ring - provides 80% Reduced Reservation efficiency of skills;
-Rare ring with at least 20% additional Reduced Reservation efficiency;
-Socketed Support Gems in the wand multiply the Cost and Reservation of the skill.

The most tricky part of the build is to balance the Reservation of the skill. We want it to be as much as possible - yet again, not bringing us to so little Life that we get one shot by anything. Please note that on any Spell cast, the shield Rathpith Globe sacrifices additional 10% of our Life.
It is recommended that your Life does not go below 8~15% since you may experience a lot of sudden deaths unnecessarily. With my setup currently, I am reserving 88% Life + 10% sacrifice from the shield = 98% Life taken upon casting the skill. This is not safe.
After taking mandatory items, the only way to balance the Reservation of the skill is with basic jewels with Res efficiency mods, as well as with socketing the most beneficial Support gems. This adjustment will take time until you get to the right number. Recommended Reservation of the skill is 80%. Using Second Wind Support (Anomalous quality recommended) is mandatory for the overall performance because it gives another 1(2) additional charges to the skill, as well as helping with the Reservation of the skill.



Links explanation:
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Helmet: Currently empty. You can put any gem there. Recommended a Red socket so that you can benefit from the added fire damage even though it won't be that much.

Gloves and Boots: We socket our Curses, making them auras. Feel free to use Empower since it won't increase the Reservation - it's set to 0 because of the Amulet. We only need one 4L for the Curses so unless you find Gloves with # to level of socketed AoE/Aura gems, etc, it won't matter where you put the Curse auras...

Armour: There are no sockets in Kaom's Heart.

Additional links:
-You can put one or two defensive setups in the rest of the items. For example Frost Wall + CWDT or change the Steelskin with Enduring Cry and then use the defense setup of CWDT + a guard skill (Immortal Call or Steelskin);
-Vaal Righteous Fire supported by Increased duration for some additional Spell damage on burst for bosses. Definitely not mandatory but it will help with around 20% more dmg for approximately 7 seconds on use.




6 Keystones:
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-Avatar of Fire: Helps us fully convert the Physical dmg to Fire;
-Blood Magic: Big boost to our Life. Generally does not matter if it makes our skills reserve Life instead of Mana since the only thing we have as reservation is socketed in the Essence Worm;
-Iron Will: Provides additional Spell damage;
-Pain Attunement: Since we reserve so much Life before releasing the spell, at the time of the cast we are always on Low Life and we always benefit from this Keystone. Additionally, Petrified blood makes sure that we don't Recharge more than 50% Life... ;
-Elemental Overload: This Keystone provides its damage boost nearly all the time since our Crit chance is lucky because of the wand itself. Using the Rathpith Globe boosts our Crit chance so much that with these Lucky strikes our crit is more than 70%. For characters with more Life pool it can even get to 100%. Our aim is to get one Crit in 8 seconds and it's more than enough to achieve 100% uptime of Elemental Overload;
-Eternal Youth: This keystone works with great synergy with the Dissolution of the Flesh jewel.

Masteries:
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+50 to maximum Life

10% increased Maximum Life, 10% reduced Life Recovery rate

5% increased Attributes

Fire Exposure you inflict applies an extra -5% to Fire resistance


Gameplay:

Leveling:
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Since it's going to be a Fire build, I decided leveling with Fireball+Volley. It's easy enough with good clear speed, etc. Once you finish the campaign you can assemble your gear properly...

Mapping:
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Nothing special - just running around spamming Blood Sacrament. There might be a few deaths until you feel the skill properly. Your best friend is actually leveling up to get more and more passives on the tree, as well as benefit from all the dmg/defense penalties for monsters.



Budget:
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Weapon: The wand was around 3d at the start of the league but is now less than 100c at the end. It has no rolls except the implicit so it won't matter which one you buy;

Shield: It goes around 20c. You don't need any specific rolls except for % chance to block Spell damage but price does not vary much. Try to get it with a useful implicit (% Life is best but it might be expensive);

Helmet: Around 1~2 divines - depending on the Life roll. Finding one with additional % Life corrupted implicit will surely be very expensive;

Armour: Kaom's Heart is usually cheap. If you try to get one with max Fire dmg roll it can get around 1d. If you get it with % Life implicit it is around 4~8d;

Boots and Gloves: Get them with as much Life as possible. Avoid getting synthesized Gloves since we need to put useful Eldritch implicits on them.
Both Boots and Gloves I have were around 3~4 divine orbs each;

Belt: Usually cheap - around 2 divines for a very good Leather or Stygian. You can get a high-end Stygian with % life and flat Life + resists for around 8~12 divines;

Amulet: Double Impresence with Flammability + Elemental Weakness is around 8~15 divines. You can start with a normal red Impresence for 30c;

Rings:
-Essence Worm does not roll any mods and is literally 1c. Just change the socket to Red;
The rare ring is very important. It has to additionally have reduced life reservation efficiency of skills. I bought mine for 8d but you can get one for around 1 divine;

Jewels:
-Anatomical Knowledge (optional) with 2% Reservation efficiency of skills implicit is around 1 divine, maybe less;

-Watcher's Eye: We do not use any. We do not have auras;

-Forbidden Jewels: with Aspect of Carnage - approximately 25~40d each. Very expensive and not mandatory. It's only for min-maxing your build.

-Dissolution of the Flesh with maximum Life roll is around 1 divine;

-The Cluster jewel is around 3 divine orbs with the desired Notables;

-The rare jewels should have maximum Life in any form (flat or %) and you most likely will have to get some with resistances to fix them up. Mods will Reservation efficiency of skills will most likely be needed. Price may vary between 20c and 4d...;

Skill and Support Gems: We do not need many gems. Most expensive are Anomalous Petrified Blood, 21/20 Elemental Weakness, 21/20 Flammability level 3 or 4 Empower, Awakened Blasphemy and Awakened Added Fire Damage. They are all around 1 divine each by the average.

OVERALL BUDGET: between 10 and 120 divine orbs.




Pros and Cons:
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Good:
-Simple gameplay;
-Low-to-medium budget;
-Really good damage;
-Does not require specific items that are expensive;
-Maps with no Life regen or reduced Aura effect don't matter;
-Unique and visually beautiful.

Bad:
-Takes time to get skilled even though it seems easy af;
-Can suddenly die from time to time;
-Can't do Elemental Reflect maps;
-Scaling up Life/Damage can get expensive;
-Definitely not a build for Hardcore.



Videos, Screenshots and Links:



Ideas and Alternative options:

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-Most players play Scion to stack up Life and Strength through jewels around the middle of the passive tree. But a lot of Crit multiplier is needed to catch up with the dmg of the Fire version;

-There was a similar build on Inquisitor which used 50/50 Cold and Fire which should perform better defensively;

-Additionally to the build, you can take the Call to Arms Keystone, put an Enduring cry on left click and create a CWDT defensive setup with a guard skill - Steelskin or Immortal Call;

-Instead of Anatomical Knowledge, a Lethal Pride Timeless Jewel can be used at one of the sockets to boost your Phys dmg/Life/Fire dmg/Strength. With this passive tree there aren't many places where to benefit too much from a Timeless jewel; also the Reservation Efficiency can be really tricky and we rely on rare jewels to balance the Reservation of the Spell;

-Three Grand Spectrum jewels with 5% Life each can be used for a total of 45% increased Life but this would make a very small difference - around 25% additional Increased maximum Life compared to 3 basic jewels with around 20% total. This variation of Grand Spectrum jewels is very expensive and it's not worth it. The build, as it is, needs proper Reservation Efficiency adjustment, as well as additional Resistances to be obtained from basic jewels;

-Since the Blood Sacrament is considered a Nova spell, the unique ring Astral Projector can make you cast it from distance making your build safer to play this way but your Reservation Efficiency will be harder to be adjusted properly and also you're losing the potential of having bonus Life on that ring slot;

-Another way of boosting your damage significantly is not using Petrified Blood at all and use Anger in your Essence Worm. Then using Sublime Vision jewel with the bonus to Anger making your hits Scorch the enemies. Maybe even invest a few points or gear mods on effect of Non-damaging ailments. This is obviously a pure damage boost at the cost of 90% of your total defenses... Not recommended unless you want to play a real glass-cannon version.




P.S. This post will be updated every now and then.
Last edited by fostaa on Oct 8, 2023, 9:55:52 AM
Last bumped on Sep 23, 2023, 10:54:28 PM
Oh! the sacrifice build kekw KooL
Great build my dude!

Interesting mechanic and DELETES BOSSES!

Well done
I came back after 5 years. I built a new pc. Back then exalteds were in the place of divines. I had 80 exalteds worth char. I didn't see a skill tree
"
CatGodJL wrote:
I came back after 5 years. I built a new pc. Back then exalteds were in the place of divines. I had 80 exalteds worth char. I didn't see a skill tree


I guess interface changed for a 5-years time. Just click on my profile, then choose the character and you can see the Passive Skill tree right below.
Last edited by fostaa on Dec 1, 2022, 5:52:30 PM
"
fostaa wrote:
"
CatGodJL wrote:
I came back after 5 years. I built a new pc. Back then exalteds were in the place of divines. I had 80 exalteds worth char. I didn't see a skill tree


I guess interface changed for a 5-years time. Just click on my profile, then choose the character and you can see the Passive Skill tree right below.


Thanks a lot bro! there isn't that much change if you ask my opinion:) other than new currencies
Hi its looks realy nice but i dont understand wiht what you macke dmg ? what skill?
Blood Sacrament? on the Weapon on lvl 80?
Last edited by Erragon on Dec 19, 2022, 5:26:23 PM
"
" Our Crown of the Inward Eye increases Life with another ~21%, and providing Transfiguration of Body to increase our damage by 30% of the total Increases to Life. "


Transfiguration of Body is a passive skill from item or skill tree, which "Increases and Reductions to Maximum Life also apply to Attack Damage at 30% of their value"

It is a spell not an attack.

You don't use ES to use transfiguration of mind nor enough mana increases to use transfiguration of soul
The helmet is useless if only used for 18~21% hp.
"
Overspeedo wrote:
"
" Our Crown of the Inward Eye increases Life with another ~21%, and providing Transfiguration of Body to increase our damage by 30% of the total Increases to Life. "


Transfiguration of Body is a passive skill from item or skill tree, which "Increases and Reductions to Maximum Life also apply to Attack Damage at 30% of their value"

It is a spell not an attack.

You don't use ES to use transfiguration of mind nor enough mana increases to use transfiguration of soul
The helmet is useless if only used for 18~21% hp.


Not my problem it gives dmg to Attacks only. Sorry. I guess GGG have to work more around the Transfiguration bonuses. The helmet is still better than Glimpse of Chaos which will only make your life miserable with the resistance deductions.

I am now thinking about changing it with a Tyrant Crown or even a simple Three Dragons mask...
Last edited by fostaa on Jan 10, 2023, 2:09:04 PM
"
Overspeedo wrote:
"
" Our Crown of the Inward Eye increases Life with another ~21%, and providing Transfiguration of Body to increase our damage by 30% of the total Increases to Life. "


Transfiguration of Body is a passive skill from item or skill tree, which "Increases and Reductions to Maximum Life also apply to Attack Damage at 30% of their value"

It is a spell not an attack.

You don't use ES to use transfiguration of mind nor enough mana increases to use transfiguration of soul
The helmet is useless if only used for 18~21% hp.



Fixed.
After changing into the Tyrant Crown, the Life pool remains the same - around 17k
I guess we can now be sure there will be some damage coming from that helmet :D


Last edited by fostaa on Apr 25, 2023, 6:16:46 AM

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