[3.4 Pathfinder] Disintegrator Delving - Zerphi's Blade Vortex
 Sections: • Introduction • Videos • Path of Building Pastebin • Build Mechanics & How to Play • In-Game Stats • Skill Tree & Ascendancy • Gem Links • Pantheon • Minimum Required Items • Jewels • Flasks • Full Gear • Alternative Gear • To-do list Introduction: After playing roughly 6 builds this league I found Blade Vortex with Disintegrator to be a fun concept. It's not the most damage I've ever done with a build but at this point I'm just playing to do whatever I feel is interesting. The primary purpose of this build is Delving and quick but high level mapping to maximize sulphite gain. This build isn’t going to one hit smash Uber Elder but it will perform admirably in Delves and crush literally any map content with a couple of mod exceptions as with most builds. Parts of this build were inspired from people on poe.ninja but I have found a few optimizations that push the damage higher while maintaining a sizable health pool with truly insane regeneration. This build is not budget friendly and requires a Zerphi’s Last Breath at a minimum to actually play which is roughly 20ex give or take. I recommend a respec into this build from another Ranger Ascendancy once you have enough cash to drop on the minimum required items for the build to work at all. Note that while I say it's not budget friendly, I ran this build with anywhere from 2 to 8 Shaper/Elder items and have cleared up to Tier 16 maps quite handily during the progression of building the character out more and more. As long as you have enough life and resists, the staff will carry you damage-wise through a lot. I'm personally also toying with the idea of trying out some other skills with faster cast speeds than Blade Vortex but that will come later! Please note that if any of the images are broken in the post, I've included a clickable version of it in the names right above! Pros:
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• High health regeneration • Sizable health pool • Strong elemental defenses • Decent physical reduction • Very strong in end game mapping & Delves Currently at Delve depth 385 and pushing easily, the only thing holding me back is the amount of time I have to put into mapping for sulphite. Cons:
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• Expensive mostly due to Zerphi's Last Breath • Requires awareness to play and maintain the mechanics against single targets especially • Uses a staff, meaning relatively immobile other than move speed and Flame Dash • I don’t recommend trying to play this build before having a character at least level 75 Videos: T15 Sunken City, unidentified corrupted, Beyond Zana mod There's an Abyss as well as a Breach in this map, it's a pretty casual run but you can see how little danger the mobs present to me. Path of Building Pastebin:
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https://pastebin.com/5h7sxTwS The Path of Building link contains some variation pieces that I have tested in some instances and not tested in others. I've expanded upon everything below, bear in mind that I specifically haven't tested a lightning variation of this build - only theorized about it so far. Build Mechanics & How to Play:
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The crux of this build is stacking Shaper and Elder items with Disintegrator which, per Siphoning Charge, gives us added flat physical, added non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage, and damage leeched as life. It’s important to the build that we don’t leech mana. With Zerphi’s Last Breath, our primary source of life regeneration, reaching maximum mana will cancel the flask effect. As a Pathfinder it’s usually fine due to an abundance of flask charges but there will be cases where you don’t quite have the flask charges required and die from Disintegrator and Blood Rage degeneration until you’re comfortable with the build. Similar to a Poet’s Pen Volatile Dead build we need to maintain some level of health degeneration in order to keep our mana low and maintain the Zerphi’s Last Breath flask effect. The VD builds typically do this through Blood Rage as we are. With this build specifically I’ve been using Blood Rage in order to minimize the amount of actual health I lose. The 4% degeneration from Blood Rage has been the perfect amount for me to maintain the Zerphi’s proc in most instances. You could do Righteous Fire but I prefer Blood Rage for the frenzy charges to buff our cast speed, RF is certainly worth testing though. I'm too scared to do it while leveling so I just use it for the Vaal RF active. We use Mind Over Matter with this degeneration tactic to essentially fully deplete our mana and constantly maintain any mana flask in our belt. Unlike the builds I took inspiration from that reserve 2 auras, I’m reserving 3, which leaves me with 51 flat mana, so it’s essential that we maintain degeneration in some form to ensure that we aren’t hitting maximum mana during Zerphi’s. Another interesting mechanic since the introduction of instant skills is using Blade Vortex and Blood Rage casts at the same time in order to quickly build up Siphoning Charges. Instant skills count toward “using a skill.” Blade Vortex’s cast speed can feel really slow, especially below level 87, so learning to hit Blood Rage on recharge while building up Blade Vortex is a large gain to fully ramping up the damage. To take full advantage of the Zerphi’s Last Breath and Blood Magic combination in with Blade Vortex, we stack Fevered Mind jewels in the tree which give us increased spell damage with 100% increased mana costs. Blade Vortex casts for me are a +245% modifier from Blood Magic support and 400% increased due to having 4 Fevered Minds in the tree. Currently, that’s 770 mana per cast. My Zerphi’s roll is 581% (871.5% with flask effectiveness calculated) which means I’m getting 4,473 life regeneration over 4 seconds on every cast of Blade Vortex, or 1,118 per second for a single Blade Vortex cast without considering that we're a Pathfinder. On my build currently, my cast time is 0.38 standing in town (38% of one second), meaning that in 4 seconds I can fit 10.5 Blade Vortex casts in that time, netting out to 11,719 life regeneration per second while standing and casting Blade Vortex uninterrupted. This is even more with the frenzy charges gained from Blood Rage and properly calculated flask effect. I plan to test Spell Echo at some point which could theoretically push the build closer to the regeneration of a Poet's Pen VD build. Cast speed is far tougher to come by than attack speed. Obviously, those conditions don’t always happen in practice but suffice to say the regeneration on this build is nutty even with a few casts. If you ever played Vaal Pact when it was instant, that’s any Zerphi’s build. Insanity. Cast Order:
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I can’t stress enough how important not having max mana is, this is how I begin every map and also how I fight single target bosses: 1. Blood Rage 2. Zerphi’s Last Breath 3. Cast BV stacks to desired level (you won’t need to be max in much of the content) 4. Smash flasks 5. Smash content 6. Smash flasks 7. More content During a single target fight, you’ll need to hit Blood Rage once every 20 seconds, it’s very easy to forget since it lasts so long but if you hit max mana and your Zerphi’s is down for 4 seconds without you noticing, you will degenerate very quickly and be at risk of dying without really being able to react. When I’m playing BV in a fight or when I’m hopping from pack-to-pack, I find that stopping to do 2 casts every pack or every couple of seconds will maintain 9-10 stacks comfortably even without a Blade Vortex helm enchantment. In-Game Stats:
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Skill Tree & Ascendancy:
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The most important areas to prioritize are stat requirements, for Strength in particular, health nodes, jewel slots, flask effectiveness and duration, and skill effect duration. This means that we want to prioritize the middle portion of the tree first and build outward from there, the nodes on the way to jewel slots in this area give good benefits such as elemental resists, much needed strength, and percentage health regeneration. If you’re fairly new to making your own skill trees, here’s how you should prioritize stats between levels 75 and 95:
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1. If you’re below 7,000 HP, prioritize health as soon as possible
- • Consider filling out the Scion life wheel in the short term and moving points around later, once you’re post-87 it’s easier to have the full life wheel and all the stats you’ll need. It’s often worth taking away some health to get crucial AOE or jewel nodes. - • If you have to drop jewel slots for HP, drop ones with dexterity leading up to them first, you need strength for Kaom’s. 2. After you hit close to 7,000 HP, go for cast speed and AOE nodes which provide regeneration through increasing the rate of Blade Vortex casts during Zerphi’s, as well as the obvious benefits of increased Area of Effect and Area Damage, which improves the damage of both Blade Vortex and Vaal RF. Here’s the minimum required skill tree, in my view, level 75 with two bandit points: Here’s my current skill tree at level 94:
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Here's a variation that includes an extra jewel slot at the cost of 12% increased health (very viable with a moderately good jewel in the spot):
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There are two main paths you can take for your Ascendancy: Movespeed during Flask effect:
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 Maximize overall flask effectivness:
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 Gem Links:
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Your number one priority is to convert physical to elemental damage as soon as possible. As a Pathfinder with our Ascendancy choices doing physical damage means wasted potential. Main Damage: First 4 required, add the last two in the order they appear here.
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Using a Watcher’s Eye with X% of Physical Converted to Cold while affected by Hatred:
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• Blade Vortex • Blood Magic (level 1, 0 quality) • Controlled Destruction • Elemental Focus - • Increased Area of Effect - • Cold Penetration For bossing, swap Increased AOE for typical BV damage gems like Concentrated Effect. At 1.5 million vs. Shaper with Concentrated Effect with my build. If you're having a tough time mapping or staying alive, take off Elemental Focus for Efficacy in order to take advantage of freeze as a defensive mechanic. Without a Watcher’s Eye, you have two options:
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1. Use Hrimburn to do cold conversion, you can hit up to 90% instead of 80% at best with the Watcher’s Eye, but you lose an Elder/Shaper item slot 2.Use Physical to Lightning Support to do 50% lightning, 40% cold conversion and keep the Elder/Shaper item slot open If you can afford a decent pair of Elder or Shaper gloves, I recommend doing Physical to Lightning Support because Siphoning Charges are very powerful for the build. As it stands with my Watcher’s Eye, I only convert 72% of physical to cold so I have a ton of wasted potential, need to divine my jewel. Physical to Lightning set up:
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• Blade Vortex • Blood Magic (level 1, 0 quality) • Physical to Lightning • Elemental Focus • Increased Area of Effect • Last slot: - • Efficacy - • Lightning Penetration (using Physical to Lightning we end up doing more lightning than cold) It’s also possible to get a Watcher’s Eye with physical converted to lightning while affected by Wrath, but Hatred is a stronger aura with Blade Vortex due to it giving us extra cold based on our physical damage, versus flat lightning damage from Wrath. That said, the potential for lightning’s damage seems pretty good. With Physical to Lightning Support and a decent Watcher’s Eye, you’d easily hit 90% lightning conversion. Remember, if you end up having 120% total conversion, lightning is prioritized before cold in the chain, so you’ll end up with 50% lightning, 50% cold if you have over 50% physical conversion to cold with using Physical to Lightning support. Auras: Early on, you’ll probably only be able to fit 2 auras into the build until you have a level 3 Enlighten. I found it tough to maintain my Zerphi’s without a level 4 Enlighten on a 100% mana reservation setup as this build currently uses.
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• Level 4 Enlighten
• Hatred • Herald of Ash • Purity of Fire If you have a level 3 Enlighten and a tough time with maintaining the build, swap Herald of Ash and Purity of Fire as necessary when you’re running content. Utility: This is a fantastic CWDT set up for a BV caster of any kind, but especially this build with increased fire damage from the Kaom’s Heart, big health pool, and increased Area Damage from the tree:
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• Cast When Damage Taken • Immortal Call • Increased Duration • Vaal Righteous Fire If you don’t understand why Righteous Fire is used here and highly praised, Vaal Righteous Fire is actually what we’re after which, for its duration, grants 39% more spell damage at gem level 20. For the level of CWDT and Immortal call, you should aim to have CWDT activate upon a Savage Hit which is 15% of your health. So, for the minimum recommended health pool of 7,000, I would run a level 8 CWDT and level 10 Immortal Call. As mentioned previously, it’s worth experimenting with Righteous Fire instead of Blood Rage for the degeneration tactic but I found RF works better in the VD builds where you’re warping toward enemies and corpses with less effort than it takes to maintain BV. Movement & Golem: I personally don’t mind self-casting golems, when you’re sitting around with max Blade Vortex stacks and instant health recovery casting a golem is nothing.
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• Flame Dash • Summon Lightning Golem • Blood Rage • Blood Magic Support (level 1, 0 quality) Pantheon:
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• Major: Soul of Lunaris • Minor: Soul of Shakiri Minimum Required Items:
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• Disintegrator, 4-link minimum (highly recommend 5 for Increased AOE) • Zerphi’s Last Breath • Kaom’s Heart Items to Prioritize: • Elder ring with needed stats • Mark of the Shaper - • Max life roll - • Highest spell damage roll possible We prioritize an Elder ring to pair with Mark of the Shaper. Affordable Shaper rings even with great Shaper mods like spell damage didn’t out-damage the potential 80% from having the Elder ring. Jewels:
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• Watcher’s Eye  Other good mods for a Watcher's Eye if you can't get your hands on a double Hatred: - • (6-10)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage while affected by Purity of Fire - • Immune to Ignite while affected by Purity of Fire You could also run Purity of Lightning instead of Purity of Fire and go for: - • (6-10)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Lightning Damage while affected by Purity of Lightning If you were running a Wrath version of this build and can afford the following, it's conceivable to run a 100% lightning version of this build using the Watcher's Eye and Physical to Lightning Support in tandem: Required for 100% lightning build: - • (25-40)% of Physical Damage Converted to Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath Plus any of the defensive choices above, or these offensive choices: - • Gain (15-25)% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath - • Damage Penetrates (10-15)% Lightning Resistance while affected by Wrath You could also potentially run a Hatred/Wrath combo with an Enlighten, drop all other auras, and get a Watcher's Eye with conversion to both cold and lightning. • Fevered Mind x4  • Conqueror’s Potency  - • Jewel of choice 1 - • Jewel of choice 2 My jewels are way less than ideal so here's how I would search for rolls on poe.trade: Require (And): • % Maximum Life, min 6 • #% to All (or whatever you need) Resistances And some number of these (Count 1): • % Increased Global Physical Damage • % Increased Area Damage • % Increased Spell Damage • % Increased Cold Damage • % Increased Lightning Damage (if you have Physical to Lightning) Alternative Tree gives a third jewel of choice slot. Flasks:
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Core Flasks: • Zerphi’s Last Breath (required) • The Wise Oak • Divination Distillate • Experimenter’s Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline • Taste of Hate Swap Slots: Depending on the need, I will swap either the Divination Distillate or the Taste of Hate with the following flask: • Experimenter’s Granite Flask of Warding (haven't rerolled mine yet) If I’m in a Delve where the speed is completely unnecessary from the Quicksilver, I will use: • Experimenter’s Quartz Flask of Warding Full Gear:
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My Gear:
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Weapon: Chest: Jewelry: Appendages: Improvements/possible changes for my gear:
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• Aiming for increased Life Recovery Rate on my belt • My Elder ring is less than ideal, it fills the slot and gives me good stats • Need to experiment with Elder/Shaper swaps in the helm, glove, and boot slots in the quest to min/max with more invested in the build • Flat spell damage on the amulet Alternative Gear:
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When I’m mapping to get sulphite, I swap my helm for a Devoto’s Devotion. Move speed for the win, baby! As mentioned above, Hrimburn can be worked into the build for the conversion instead of a Watcher’s Eye while you save up. You can easily substitute a decent Stygian Vise for the belt slot, if you do get a Stygian Vise I recommend flat health and the affix that gives a chance for phasing on kill with your Abyss jewel, it's a nice QOL to have free phasing as BV. To-do list:
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• More gameplay videos • Test Spell Echo for more regen and less damage • Test lightning variation after saving up for another Watcher's Eye • Attempt Uber Elder (Shaper & Elder down, both easy though)... • Test Indigon Thanks for reading, I will respond to questions and feedback in the thread as I can. Delve deep, exiles! Last edited by steezyfbaby on Oct 18, 2018, 2:33:27 AM Last bumped on Oct 19, 2018, 11:13:30 AM
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Looks kinky.
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Potential Feedback-ish? <3
The 1.02 sec Immortal_Call would proc thus giving you full mana removing Zerphi's_Last_Breath and Divination_Distillate's effect ( Fix could be to run Righteous_Fire with Blood_Rage to still trigger the Pantheon ) ^ Would have to get tested to back it up ^ I also can't tell if the 2 nodes near Amplify are intentional or not. <3<3<3 muchu love |
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I've been testing Righteous Fire quite a bit. I gave up on 95 for now so I've been carelessly throwing myself at Delves and Aul (got some impossible mods unfortunately).
I find that it's pretty rare to hit max mana even with Immortal Call procs since we're generally taking damage from mobs given we're essentially in melee range. I'm also not using Soul of Arakaali at the moment for three reasons: 1. The regen is already getting me past potential one shots at my current Delve depth. 2. Disintegrator gives us physical damage reduction per stack vs. hits (1% per stack). This puts me at 8% physical reduction vs. hits at max stacks and 8% additional physical damage reduction if there are 8 enemies nearby by using Soul of Lunaris. Having this for Delves is wicked since there's mobs spawning around you often. The build has low armor to begin with so free flat physical reduction is very strong. 3. I use Blood Rage as part of my cast order constantly. Blood Rage is super effective for maintaining Siphoning Stacks instead of casting BV. Disitegrator requires using a skill, not a spell, so this is basically a failsafe for me to maintain the Divination Distillate and Zerphi's Last Breath flask effects. It's also worth noting that if you cast BV and Blood Rage at once we're increasing the mana spent during Zerphi's and therefore increasing our regeneration rate as well. Since I'm using Elemental Focus in the build I don't freeze mobs, meaning the ones that are close to me generally get a hit off unless they're insta-gibbed. So basically only some rare and magic mobs (like the last couple from Union of Souls for example) will hit me. A quick note on Soul of Arakaali (I may be wrong here...), but I believe the Pantheon regeneration bonus only applies once you've stopped taking ALL damage over time recently. So if you're running RF, even if Blood Rage goes down, you will not proc Soul of Arakaali from my understanding. I'm unsure what nodes you mean. The stuff I have in that area is focused around cast speed, spell damage, penetration, and increased AOE. All pretty strong for the build, especially since cast speed is hard to come by. Last edited by steezyfbaby on Oct 19, 2018, 11:18:38 AM
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