[3.21] Vatinas' Spiders + HoP Guardian - CI, 70K armour, 1400 ES on block, millions of DPS
"
Wharhogg wrote:
Awesome build, am I missing something? Where does the bleeding come from? Lotta skills do a ton more dmg with bleeding and I dont see what causes bleed in the build.
I added bleed+impale to cyclone and put cull and maim in place of empower/bloodlust on the 6L so I could run clarity with watcher's eye----gave me 9775 health @ lvl 93. I have 2 24% Circles of Guilt.
It's explained in the section named "Build mechanics (please read!)".
Also, impale on Cyclone is useless, since we deal no significant damage.
Just got the build up to about 90% complete. It is a truly awesome build. I'm new to the game this season and tried about 10 different builds. Most were ok but something never was always off for me to truly love them....then I tried this monstrosity you've developed. By far my favorite! Thanks a ton! Still leveling up and havnt attempted sirus yet but I have him que up and ready to summon. just still fearing it after my first attempt on another build. I will gladly say though I'm way more confident at least this round. Just letting you know it's still kicking ass in Harvest :)
I have played this build twice in HC Harvest and have the following discoveries to contribute in no particular order:
1. Deathmark on spiders seems to also control HoP AI (even if HoP is not linked to DM) as the manual part of it is a targeted skill and minions generally swap aggro to target on things you click on.
2. HoP + Impale + Rotten Claws + Dread Banner = 90% chance to impale for HoP. The HoP inflicts large impales which are then procced by spiders. Spiders are able to proc all HoP impale stacks instantly so impale ends up acting like crit+crit multi for HoP. On single targets, the Impale DPS from spiders themselves also gets very high.
3. I added skitterbots and banner by using cluster jewels with uncompromising + self control and another one that gives uncompromising + stalwart.
4. Jade flask + Skin of Loyal + Shapers Touch = 10k EVA = +43% chance to dodge which is extremely strong. This pretty much makes a jade flask better than all other flasks for the 5th slot.
5. Molten Shell + max Inc Duration bound to left click = 5.91 secs of "invulnerability" with a 4 sec cool down.
6. Take Wicked Ward, our ES is constantly recharging as if we have 3k es regen/sec. Normally WW sucks but on this build since we can proc it reliably it is very strong, especially for Lab Traps. Just touch a trap, then proc WW then you have 4 secs of trap immunity which is enough to face tank walk thru all traps. By alternating MS and WW it is a big boost to the phased invulnerability of this build.
7. 20% inc minion dmg on an abyss jewel in Darkness enthroned is very strong. You can get 70% inc minion dmg this way and its the best mod for DE.
8. Arena Masters are Drox map specters that never die even without investment in minion life/regen. These specters offer a "vaal haste" type of aura for you and your minions. They are superior to Apes as the haste applies to you too so you finally get to move fast. They are superior to carrion golem as the dmg boost they offer is much greater. They also make it very easy to summon spiders as they bang their shields in unison giving you a 2 sec window to reliably summon spiders at the start of a map or during a boss phase. You won't realize how good these are until you try them. A couple of downsides are they are annoying in HO due to the noise and they also might die in AW8. Typically AW8 will kill 1 of my specters.
9. I did try an alternative build by investing in 7 points into +1 specter and grave intentions with Animated Guardian (Ephemeral Garb, King Maker, Mask of the Stitched Demon). This allows for the use of One Arena Master specter + 2 frenzy apes for maximum zoom zoom and theoretical dmg. However it was not as smooth as I imagined as you sometimes lose the fortify buff and its harder to cull things if every minion also has culling.
10. Multistrike on spiders + Flesh Offering to maximize the impale dmg and increase clear speed.
Hi,
1. I've heard someone make the same remark, so it's possible, but Deathmark is still a huge damage gem nonetheless, so I'm planning to keep it.
2. Yes, it's possible to play pure phys, but I find the "phys as extra chaos" version stronger, for a few reasons.
a. Since the spiders hit very quickly, and since all 20 of them do, it's one of the rare instances in the game where we can reliably apply the maximum stacks of Withered, which is an insane damage increase if you invest in chaos damage. With Spirit Offering, even sentinels deal substantial chaos damage, which is further increased by withered.
b. It's easier to fit in "phys as extra chaos" gems into HoP compared to pure phys, as well as not requiring any other aura. This allows us to keep the Stalwart Commander notable, which is insane defensively. Since you play HC, I'm assuming you know what you're talking about in terms of defence, but I still prefer having this notable over Self Control / Uncompromising.
c. Going pure phys is a larger investment in terms of currency and sacrificing defences, and the damage increase you get from it is just not worth it in my opinion.
That being said, please feel free to keep experimenting with pure phys, and sharing your experiments with others here (myself included of course). :)
3. See 2. Also, I have fiddled around with 2 medium cluster versions of the build, and didn't like it; we get a lot of very good nodes from the tree, each of them having their own specific purpose, and I think all of them are crucial.
4. That's a good point, I was so focused on armour and block that I didn't consider the evasion we got from those two items! I'll look into it. :)
5. I don't like having Molten Shell on left click, for the simple reason that I want to control when I use it. 99% of the time, you don't need it anyway; and in the 1% of the time when you do, why take the risk of not having it up? I'm thinking, for instance, about Kosis' "leap slam" thingy, Sirus' meteor, harvest T4 seed bursts...
6. Wicked Ward halves our ES regen, which, unlike ES recharge, is constant and consistent. I'd much rather have permanent regen than occasional recharge. Plus, the only thing that can actually kill us is DoT, and DoT is exactly what regen is good against and recharge is bad against (since it prevents the start of the recharge). So I don't think that keystone is a good grab, unfortunately.
7. Indeed, you're right, but I prefer getting defensive stats in the implicits of my jewels. That being said, I mostly want mana, and ES/armour as a prefix is optional, so maybe I could look into jewels with mana + minion damage on them. I'll check it out :)
8. I had never heard of those! They sound interesting for sure. Plus, other pro of them, they get two support gems instead of "just" one like the golem, since we don't need to cast them when stunned. Feeding Frenzy, and maybe minion life to make them beefier? Like mentioned before, they should already have decent(ish) resists from Spirit Offering, so I'll need to flesh out the details. Also, remember that out Warcry taunts enemies, which could help them survive in A8 fights?... I'll be sure to give it a try!
9. Yes, I understand the problems you faced. But maybe it could still be a good idea, even without Death Attunement (to some extent)? Giving our guardian (the animated one :p) something else than Kingmaker could possibly solve the mentioned issues. I have to be honest, I have no idea what other weapon could be good on him, since Kingmaker has always been the go-to weapon... Apparently, giving him United in Dream won't give the Envy aura. Sign of the Sin Eater could make us "immune" to elemental ailments, and giving him Soulwrest + the abyss boots could give everyone 5% life (or ES, for us) regen as long as we desecrate under tht guardian... Lots of options. I'll look closer into it, but the idea sure is interesting. (Also, I hadn't thought about using Mask of the Stitched Demon for guardian regen without investing in minion life regen, nice one)
10. Like I mentioned before, I prefer the "phys as extra chaos" version. :)
Thank a lot for those remarks!
1. DM is basically 10% more dmg if you cast it and 10% less if you dont. I found that on most bosses I was only casting it inconsistently at best and at worst, totally forgetting it (its just one less thing to worry about on a big fight).
2. The strength of spiders is indeed their attack speed. That is why scaling the attack speed on them with multistrike/minion speed (which both scale impale damage) scales harder than "just" the wither effect of which only is only 30% of your damage. Why not scale 100% of ur phys dmg vs 30% of ur phys as chaos? In particular since monsters do not have much armor, big phys hits from sentinels are not mitgated.
3. re: defense, my version for HC had around 10k ES at lvl 95 without clarity watchers so it should be able to hit around 13k ES. I keep both stalwart commander, get more armor and ES than the suggested build. One jewel has Uncom/Self Ctrl, the other has Stalwart/Uncomp. On this version of the build i also squeezed in +2 max res with the tree. Another thing I wish I could find would be a will shaper megalomaniac with good dmg nodes
4. If only we could also fit in a jade of reflexs suffix!
5. You are right, it is smarter to have it when you need it. I'll give that a try. With MS up how much dmg would AW8 meteor do?
6. WW is another one of those things that looks TERRIBLE on POB but in practice you will find that it is MUCH stronger than it seems. Once I tried it, I COULD NEVER GO BACK. 200 regen/sec is no where near as good as 4 secs of invulnerability (including DOTs too btw). There are only 3 degen sources. Bleed (immune from flask/CB jewel). Chaos (we are immune) and ignite (70-90% reduced dmg makes even the biggest ignites a joke). WW is undeniably best for lab trap degens also
7. The minion dmg is actually a suffix (when you used a minion skill) so ideal jewel in DE is Mana, ES, Res, Dmg (get spell block on tree instead of jewel)
8. Arena masters only need 1 link (feeding frenzy) nothing else.
9. The primary purpose of the AG is to enable two KEY defenses that we cannot otherwise get easily. 1. Immune to crits 2. Immune to slows/freezes.
On paper the on reason I liked AG is because it saves several gem slots by giving you culling AND fortify so it pays for itself in terms of gem slots.
I ran 3 AW8 with this AG setup and his hp never even moved (he can tank the meteor and storms) but then randomly on the 4th AW8 it just died so thats why I ended up scrapping the idea. But in theory it seemed good.
I ended up with too much hubris on this guy and was face tanking AW8 die beams left and right for fun but eventually got unlucky and died to the beam either because it failed to block 5 times in a row or it crit me and the AG had already died so I was not immune to crits.
Here is the link with POB CODE to the AG version. My current version scraps AG for more auras and is called DrGalaxyBrain on ladder
My POB^---made 10k health with watchers eye/clarity...and I had a 6L geofri's so i used it---more ES+save the zeolots oath point and easier to cap sists, dont have vuln gloves----so I have curse on hit+lvl 20 vuln....the beefier vuln is pretty awesome. No issues with damage fully modded T16 maps are a breeze with this build. Impale on spiders seems pretty awesome as well. I found cast on damage taken better than cast on stun for uptime on the carrion.
For mapping/delving I use 2 worm flasks and replace the other with jade or quartz with bleed immunity.
A+ build will use again!
Last edited by Wharhogg#3518 on Aug 29, 2020, 10:58:09 PM
I have played this build twice in HC Harvest and have the following discoveries to contribute in no particular order:
1. Deathmark on spiders seems to also control HoP AI (even if HoP is not linked to DM) as the manual part of it is a targeted skill and minions generally swap aggro to target on things you click on.
2. HoP + Impale + Rotten Claws + Dread Banner = 90% chance to impale for HoP. The HoP inflicts large impales which are then procced by spiders. Spiders are able to proc all HoP impale stacks instantly so impale ends up acting like crit+crit multi for HoP. On single targets, the Impale DPS from spiders themselves also gets very high.
3. I added skitterbots and banner by using cluster jewels with uncompromising + self control and another one that gives uncompromising + stalwart.
4. Jade flask + Skin of Loyal + Shapers Touch = 10k EVA = +43% chance to dodge which is extremely strong. This pretty much makes a jade flask better than all other flasks for the 5th slot.
5. Molten Shell + max Inc Duration bound to left click = 5.91 secs of "invulnerability" with a 4 sec cool down.
6. Take Wicked Ward, our ES is constantly recharging as if we have 3k es regen/sec. Normally WW sucks but on this build since we can proc it reliably it is very strong, especially for Lab Traps. Just touch a trap, then proc WW then you have 4 secs of trap immunity which is enough to face tank walk thru all traps. By alternating MS and WW it is a big boost to the phased invulnerability of this build.
7. 20% inc minion dmg on an abyss jewel in Darkness enthroned is very strong. You can get 70% inc minion dmg this way and its the best mod for DE.
8. Arena Masters are Drox map specters that never die even without investment in minion life/regen. These specters offer a "vaal haste" type of aura for you and your minions. They are superior to Apes as the haste applies to you too so you finally get to move fast. They are superior to carrion golem as the dmg boost they offer is much greater. They also make it very easy to summon spiders as they bang their shields in unison giving you a 2 sec window to reliably summon spiders at the start of a map or during a boss phase. You won't realize how good these are until you try them. A couple of downsides are they are annoying in HO due to the noise and they also might die in AW8. Typically AW8 will kill 1 of my specters.
9. I did try an alternative build by investing in 7 points into +1 specter and grave intentions with Animated Guardian (Ephemeral Garb, King Maker, Mask of the Stitched Demon). This allows for the use of One Arena Master specter + 2 frenzy apes for maximum zoom zoom and theoretical dmg. However it was not as smooth as I imagined as you sometimes lose the fortify buff and its harder to cull things if every minion also has culling.
10. Multistrike on spiders + Flesh Offering to maximize the impale dmg and increase clear speed.
Hi,
1. I've heard someone make the same remark, so it's possible, but Deathmark is still a huge damage gem nonetheless, so I'm planning to keep it.
2. Yes, it's possible to play pure phys, but I find the "phys as extra chaos" version stronger, for a few reasons.
a. Since the spiders hit very quickly, and since all 20 of them do, it's one of the rare instances in the game where we can reliably apply the maximum stacks of Withered, which is an insane damage increase if you invest in chaos damage. With Spirit Offering, even sentinels deal substantial chaos damage, which is further increased by withered.
b. It's easier to fit in "phys as extra chaos" gems into HoP compared to pure phys, as well as not requiring any other aura. This allows us to keep the Stalwart Commander notable, which is insane defensively. Since you play HC, I'm assuming you know what you're talking about in terms of defence, but I still prefer having this notable over Self Control / Uncompromising.
c. Going pure phys is a larger investment in terms of currency and sacrificing defences, and the damage increase you get from it is just not worth it in my opinion.
That being said, please feel free to keep experimenting with pure phys, and sharing your experiments with others here (myself included of course). :)
3. See 2. Also, I have fiddled around with 2 medium cluster versions of the build, and didn't like it; we get a lot of very good nodes from the tree, each of them having their own specific purpose, and I think all of them are crucial.
4. That's a good point, I was so focused on armour and block that I didn't consider the evasion we got from those two items! I'll look into it. :)
5. I don't like having Molten Shell on left click, for the simple reason that I want to control when I use it. 99% of the time, you don't need it anyway; and in the 1% of the time when you do, why take the risk of not having it up? I'm thinking, for instance, about Kosis' "leap slam" thingy, Sirus' meteor, harvest T4 seed bursts...
6. Wicked Ward halves our ES regen, which, unlike ES recharge, is constant and consistent. I'd much rather have permanent regen than occasional recharge. Plus, the only thing that can actually kill us is DoT, and DoT is exactly what regen is good against and recharge is bad against (since it prevents the start of the recharge). So I don't think that keystone is a good grab, unfortunately.
7. Indeed, you're right, but I prefer getting defensive stats in the implicits of my jewels. That being said, I mostly want mana, and ES/armour as a prefix is optional, so maybe I could look into jewels with mana + minion damage on them. I'll check it out :)
8. I had never heard of those! They sound interesting for sure. Plus, other pro of them, they get two support gems instead of "just" one like the golem, since we don't need to cast them when stunned. Feeding Frenzy, and maybe minion life to make them beefier? Like mentioned before, they should already have decent(ish) resists from Spirit Offering, so I'll need to flesh out the details. Also, remember that out Warcry taunts enemies, which could help them survive in A8 fights?... I'll be sure to give it a try!
9. Yes, I understand the problems you faced. But maybe it could still be a good idea, even without Death Attunement (to some extent)? Giving our guardian (the animated one :p) something else than Kingmaker could possibly solve the mentioned issues. I have to be honest, I have no idea what other weapon could be good on him, since Kingmaker has always been the go-to weapon... Apparently, giving him United in Dream won't give the Envy aura. Sign of the Sin Eater could make us "immune" to elemental ailments, and giving him Soulwrest + the abyss boots could give everyone 5% life (or ES, for us) regen as long as we desecrate under tht guardian... Lots of options. I'll look closer into it, but the idea sure is interesting. (Also, I hadn't thought about using Mask of the Stitched Demon for guardian regen without investing in minion life regen, nice one)
10. Like I mentioned before, I prefer the "phys as extra chaos" version. :)
Thank a lot for those remarks!
1. DM is basically 10% more dmg if you cast it and 10% less if you dont. I found that on most bosses I was only casting it inconsistently at best and at worst, totally forgetting it (its just one less thing to worry about on a big fight).
2. The strength of spiders is indeed their attack speed. That is why scaling the attack speed on them with multistrike/minion speed (which both scale impale damage) scales harder than "just" the wither effect of which only is only 30% of your damage. Why not scale 100% of ur phys dmg vs 30% of ur phys as chaos? In particular since monsters do not have much armor, big phys hits from sentinels are not mitgated.
3. re: defense, my version for HC had around 10k ES at lvl 95 without clarity watchers so it should be able to hit around 13k ES. I keep both stalwart commander, get more armor and ES than the suggested build. One jewel has Uncom/Self Ctrl, the other has Stalwart/Uncomp. On this version of the build i also squeezed in +2 max res with the tree. Another thing I wish I could find would be a will shaper megalomaniac with good dmg nodes
4. If only we could also fit in a jade of reflexs suffix!
5. You are right, it is smarter to have it when you need it. I'll give that a try. With MS up how much dmg would AW8 meteor do?
6. WW is another one of those things that looks TERRIBLE on POB but in practice you will find that it is MUCH stronger than it seems. Once I tried it, I COULD NEVER GO BACK. 200 regen/sec is no where near as good as 4 secs of invulnerability (including DOTs too btw). There are only 3 degen sources. Bleed (immune from flask/CB jewel). Chaos (we are immune) and ignite (70-90% reduced dmg makes even the biggest ignites a joke). WW is undeniably best for lab trap degens also
7. The minion dmg is actually a suffix (when you used a minion skill) so ideal jewel in DE is Mana, ES, Res, Dmg (get spell block on tree instead of jewel)
8. Arena masters only need 1 link (feeding frenzy) nothing else.
9. The primary purpose of the AG is to enable two KEY defenses that we cannot otherwise get easily. 1. Immune to crits 2. Immune to slows/freezes.
On paper the on reason I liked AG is because it saves several gem slots by giving you culling AND fortify so it pays for itself in terms of gem slots.
I ran 3 AW8 with this AG setup and his hp never even moved (he can tank the meteor and storms) but then randomly on the 4th AW8 it just died so thats why I ended up scrapping the idea. But in theory it seemed good.
I ended up with too much hubris on this guy and was face tanking AW8 die beams left and right for fun but eventually got unlucky and died to the beam either because it failed to block 5 times in a row or it crit me and the AG had already died so I was not immune to crits.
Here is the link with POB CODE to the AG version. My current version scraps AG for more auras and is called DrGalaxyBrain on ladder
This is a great build and well written guide! I combed through it several times to make sure I understood what you were doing. I don't usually do other people's builds but my builds this league weren't working out and I want that portal :P.
So, I dropped the belt for this.
And, I also dropped Holy Dominion and replaced it with Mystic Bulwark. I'm getting 75% chance to block attacks and spells even outside of combat. Is there any reason not to do this? It seems like a better option but I wanted to run it by you and see if I'm missing something.
Thanks again for the great build guide!
Last edited by CentauriSoldier#5802 on Sep 3, 2020, 4:18:04 PM
