[3.10 HC] Apep's Darkpact Totems are BACK (original build 3.1-3.3)

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Orion72 wrote:

Preliminary testing of a new variation specifically geared toward improving high level DPS while maintaining a reasonable amount of tankiness is underway. Too early to say anything with certainty (Only lvl 74 atm) But preliminary results are promising.

My thanks to the folks who have been posting ideas in this thread, as my current experiment incorporates a number of those that have come from y'all.

Downside is this variation has significantly greater complexity to play, and may result in me getting myself killed while practicing with it.

Basic components that change from original for anyone who wants to mess around with it before I am done testing:

1. Uses repentance gloves (which do, in fact, significantly impact dps, and are not actually difficult to get required stats for on our tree. Str currently a bit under 400)

2. Uses devoto's helm, which is a significant improvement to clear speed, makes fights with bosses who have 1 shot mechanics feel safer, and makes getting needed chaos res trivial.

3. Uses Dream Fragments ring, which makes frozen ground a free mod and is anticipated to improve ease of playing with Hydra and Shaper significantly.

4. Adds wither>inc duration>faster casting (edit--wither on totem failed, wither self cast is working well)

5. Adds summon skeletons>spell echo>minion life>vaal summon skeletons.

Summon skellies in this build has an absurdly fast cast time. Summoning skellies around any high health mob does in fact improve actual dps significantly, due to chaining effect, higher health of skellies with minion life gem, and greater ease of creating overlapping fields of fire. I do not use this for general mapping, but it is good for bosses and specific fights like harbingers/beyonders/tough rares. Skellies also pull some aggro. [edit--skellies in conjunction with wither on bosses is doing that melting thing I've been looking for--this is where the top tier single target damage is for this build, as long as we don't get so distracted dpsing that we forget to renew the decoy, or forget to dodge, or forget to notice that we're out of flask charges, or . . . you get the idea]

Defensively I'm currently around 9k EHP fully ascended at lvl 74 , and I'm expecting to get around 10.5k EHP for endgame, possibly as much as 11k, which should still be sufficient. More detailed report will follow if things work out and I progress to upper tier content. [edit-A bit over 10.3k EHP at lvl 83, going according to plan]

Please note that this is not a newbie friendly variant. I'm not even sure it's a me-friendly variant. Right now it's a race between my technical abilities and the level of content. That said, I believe that in the hands of someone with sufficient piloting skill (maybe me if I get in enough practice before I die) this version has the potential to really wreck the top tier content.

-O

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4. Adds wither>inc duration>faster casting (edit--wither on totem failed, wither self cast is working well)