[3.14] Bloodthirst VGS Champion of the Caged God. Low Life, Blood Magic, Impale, Slammer

Welcome to the meme. This is just Theocrafting, so pls help me.

https://pastebin.com/ey9gNaN3

This is a Low Life Petrified Blood Champion using Ground Slam (+Vaal+) with Blood Thirst.
Waepon: Pillar of the Caged God, so it is a Str Stack Build.
If you check my Pob you won´t see the new gems yet. It is only for Life and Str Stacking.

Problems: I am not sure at all about Ascendency Class. I picked Champion because of the Impale, but Maybe i need to do Jugg if Champion is not tanky enough. Petrified Blood will make this build vulnerable to DOTs and there are not many anti-DOT-mechanics on the Big-Boy-Classes.

Maybe you have some suggestions what fits best. What about Chieftain Totem Synergies for example, is it viable for Slam Builds? Looks like Chieftain is the tankiest class.

Damage:

Pillar gives 3.6k increased phys dmg on 2k str, that i could achieve in this build. 9k life gives 180 added phys dmg. I am not sure now what exactly this dmg is. Can i just multiply this and i get my Weapon dmg? Just take it this way: it is a combined 210 phys hit weapon and you have around 4k increased dmg by tree and pillar. Should be the highest pDP..Slam in game, noncrit.
A short note about Vaal Ground Slam. It has 400% base damage and 400% added effectiveness. So i don´t care much about maths, because all the dmg sources will come together really well.

Links:

Groundslam: Blood Thirst, mPhys, Pulverise, Brutality, Fist of War
VGroundslam: Blood Thirst, mPhys, Pulverise, Brutality, Maim/Fortify/Rage/Impale/ConcEffect?
One Setup ofc, but Fist of War will not support the Vaal Version so i swap something else on bosses. Strongest Version is Rage i guess, if you play this as Berserker.
On my Champion i go Impale, if i can get a white socket on Pillar for Single Target.

Survivability:

On 9k Life (remember, we stack life and str...) it would be around 6-7k EHP for hits and 4.5k for DOTs. So we care about Dots and only Dots. Biggest Counter is Overleech, because we are always on low life. I am not sure how big the leech is, because of Life Reservation (this is a Blood Magic Build). Fortify is always up if we hit (Overload Cluster Jewel). Warcries recover 10% life on use (effectively this Value is doubled on half Lifebar) and Enduring cry is also an option. This Build could easily have 6 permanent End-Charges, but this will cut life on tree. But End-Charges would be a good reason to go Jugg or Chieftain. Regen vs Dots.
Block can be a part on this Build: Iron Fortress offers around 40 attack Block and if we go Call of Steel it can offer more projectile Block. But again: this build suffers on Dots, not Hits.
CWDT setup with Steelskin or Immortal Call, because we have solid EndCharge sustainment.

Gearing:

Weapon -> Pillar (double Dip Str.)
Body -> Kaoms, Iron Fortress, Crafted Chest (Kaoms is life, Iron Fortress is Str. stack, Crafting a chest can be a hybrid of both and will be the endgame choice. We need Sockets on this build, because of Warcries.)
Amulet -> Astramentis for the start, str Stack rare craft for endgame.
Helm -> Abyssus (did i tell you this is a softcore build? now you know.)
Rings, Boots, Gloves: rare str-life crafts. And some resis. Don´t forget Chaos, DOTS...

Flasks: Full Dot Defense and maybe 1 life Flask to Trigger Adrenaline on Champion. (life flask is the only way to skip low life. if "recovery" is also giving you more than 50% life, life flasks are not important for adrenaline, but maybe to not die...)

Aura Setup
As i mentioned this is a low life and Blood Magic build so it is restricted to 1 Aura. The reason i picked Blood Magic is because of the 20% increased life and avoid mana struggles. Maths again: Petrified Blood and Pride on its own will reserve 85% Mana. I also want to run Blood and Sand and Banner. So i have to use Arrogance either way. Flesh and Stone would be really usefull on this build, but i don´t see any way to integrate this 35% Reservation.
Blood Magic plus Mortal Conviction make things easy: Choice between Pride and Flesh/Stone. Petrified Blood and Blood/Sand will reserve 45% life, so it fits perfect. (Banner is for free).

Blood Magic always feels so good on Melee Builds, it is all around smoother and we don´t even care about getting some shitty mana leech on gear. The Lifecosts shall not hurt this build at all: Vaal Skills cost Souls, not Mana/Life.


Sooo whats left on the theory? Playstyle is normal Slamcry-Style with Impaler and focus on Vaal Skills: Charge your VGS up to 4 charges, swap Impale or whatever instead of Fist of War and use VGS to tilt the boss. I am not sure how this works on Endgame Bosses where you can´t charge your Vaal Souls while Mapping. Bosses give Souls now more consistently, but slams don´t hit consistently. Maybe some Wormflasks would help here before you enter the fight. Anyway: even without lot of VGS charges this build should be able to oneshot most content.


And thats it. Now you can tell me the garbageness of this build, im listening.

I'm going to start with low life Champion too. But almost everything is different. I will just drop my points here in case they will help you.

1) Weapon - as i can see it you want to get voidforge (melee) or doomflercher's prism (bow). Why? Cause if you go low life attack build you get allot of added phys dmg from new support. And both of those weapons have x4 on added phys dmg.

2) cause of it - no impale - you do elem dmg. x4 dmg is stronger then impale imo.

So my logic here is next - the only reason to do low life attack is new support. It gives you allot of phys dmg added. How can you abuse it the hardest? Gain as much %phys dmg as extra "x" dmg as you can. Voidforge and doomfletcher's prism is by far the best for it. Plus you can use another kinda new support - trinity with them.

So if your main goal to make low life attack character you might think about it.
If your main goal is to make str stacking phys slammer and you are looking to put low life in it - then forget about all above.

3) Main reason to go champion is adrenalin abuse. How i'm planing to do this: you use new aura; you reserve 49% (as close to 50 but less then 50) life; with new aura you are at low life; you use life flask and you go to 51% and thus loose low life; with new aura your attacks cost life now; you attack, you pay life, you go to low life, you get adrenalin. After 20 sec - do it again. Now you have ez 100% uptime of adrenalin.

I'm not sure if you have thought about it or not. Based on you planing to reserve 45% life you might have. Based on you considering other classes and on fact that you said nothing about adrenalin - you might have not.

My logic here is again about maximum abuse - with new reserve skill you can jump between low life and non low life easy. What is the best abuse here? Get that 100% adrenalin going.

4) That kinda rules out blood magic. Not really but kinda. With blood magic you can only reserve 45% of mana. With no blood magic you can use stuff like vitality/precision (clarity lol) to reserve as much mana as you want to due to flat mana reserved. It makes adrenalin abuse much better - you want to fall off that non low life as fast as possible at any point in time. And the best way to do it is to reserve all but 50%+1 flat life so the very 1st attack you do will get you back to low life.

So that is my main thoughts. If you want to go low life attack you use one of those weapons and abuse adrenalin. Other stuff will benefit from low life attack build less.

I have know idea what you should do with this opinion of mine tho...

"

agarwean wrote:

I'm going to start with low life Champion too. But almost everything is different. I will just drop my points here in case they will help you.

1) Weapon - as i can see it you want to get voidforge (melee) or doomflercher's prism (bow). Why? Cause if you go low life attack build you get allot of added phys dmg from new support. And both of those weapons have x4 on added phys dmg.

2) cause of it - no impale - you do elem dmg. x4 dmg is stronger then impale imo.

So my logic here is next - the only reason to do low life attack is new support. It gives you allot of phys dmg added. How can you abuse it the hardest? Gain as much %phys dmg as extra "x" dmg as you can. Voidforge and doomfletcher's prism is by far the best for it. Plus you can use another kinda new support - trinity with them.

So if your main goal to make low life attack character you might think about it.
If your main goal is to make str stacking phys slammer and you are looking to put low life in it - then forget about all above.

3) Main reason to go champion is adrenalin abuse. How i'm planing to do this: you use new aura; you reserve 49% (as close to 50 but less then 50) life; with new aura you are at low life; you use life flask and you go to 51% and thus loose low life; with new aura your attacks cost life now; you attack, you pay life, you go to low life, you get adrenalin. After 20 sec - do it again. Now you have ez 100% uptime of adrenalin.

I'm not sure if you have thought about it or not. Based on you planing to reserve 45% life you might have. Based on you considering other classes and on fact that you said nothing about adrenalin - you might have not.

My logic here is again about maximum abuse - with new reserve skill you can jump between low life and non low life easy. What is the best abuse here? Get that 100% adrenalin going.

4) That kinda rules out blood magic. Not really but kinda. With blood magic you can only reserve 45% of mana. With no blood magic you can use stuff like vitality/precision (clarity lol) to reserve as much mana as you want to due to flat mana reserved. It makes adrenalin abuse much better - you want to fall off that non low life as fast as possible at any point in time. And the best way to do it is to reserve all but 50%+1 flat life so the very 1st attack you do will get you back to low life.

So that is my main thoughts. If you want to go low life attack you use one of those weapons and abuse adrenalin. Other stuff will benefit from low life attack build less.

I have know idea what you should do with this opinion of mine tho...

Hey, appreciate your sharing, thinking of the same with you. What attack skills you planned to use tho? I am thinking about cyclone/lacerate or even sweep.

I guess i will start as ranged cause doomfletcher's prism is so much cheaper then voidforge at the start - 5c vs 125+c (according to few past leagues on 1st couple days that is). Plus i tried to make build around it long long time ago and failed hard. I kinda wanna give it one more chance.

And on the ranged side of things - tornado i guess.

If it fails i will work towards double voidforge setup. Static strike + vaal double strike (i'm not sure here - don't know how good it will be with no bleed). With singe voidforge i would go with cyclone.

Planing to go voidforge cyclone is a save way imo - you can always just forget about all that low life stuff and clear all the content. If you will want to do so.

Kinda important stuff to know about me is that last two leagues i went hard on meta builds clearing fractured maps, and after i do so i switch to some strange shit that i want to make working. So at this moment in time i'm kinda wrong person to listen to if you want reliable build.

"

agarwean wrote:

I'm going to start with low life Champion too. But almost everything is different. I will just drop my points here in case they will help you.

Thank you for responding. Voidforge is not an option for me because i want to Ground Slam. So this build doesnt aim the best use of Bloodthirst but the Synergies of Bloodthirst, Pillar and and Slam builds. Slam builds are slow, you do not need to invest something in Attack speed, you can go full Bonk. So i just need to grap any source of str and life on tree.

If you want to make the best use of Bloodthirst you probably be good with physconversion. Maybe Wanderbuilds could also be a good choice since it will be the best added phys you can add to wand attacks.

I will test the Slams and i want to be tanky.

Hey thanks for post, any feedback on going Mortal Conviction?
What Aura did you end up going with?
How is the banner free?
How is survivability with low life?
What about Supreme Ego?
Only reasonable BM build I have ever played was Totem focused this was a long time ago, think it was Flame totem then, now Holy Flame totem, but I think there is an Ancestral war-chief build

Always wanted to take a BM + MC build to endgame, love the idea of strength stack. however problem I have found is that really hard to get the needed Resistances.

How are you getting Low Life to take advantage of Bloodthirst? maybe I just am not thinking this late.

My thoughts since blood magic, no mana:
CwDT + BladeFall/BladeVortex/Reap/otherAoe skill that hits many times + LGoH + Leech + Cruelty

Did you see the VGS with hate gloves to pay cost with rage?

Did you try the Cruelty and Lifetap in this setup?
I was going to play around with Corrupting Fever plus Lifetap in Trigger because it says you pay the cost even with trigger maybe you can force full uptime on Lifetap for massive life flasking.