[3.11] Veil of the Night Inquisitor (WIP)

What makes the Veil of the Night a generally useless meme item is that it sets your elemental resistances to zero. This means you'll be taking four times as much elemental damage as you're expected to be taking, which naturally would be deadly for most builds. Even without that modifier the helmet is underwhelming, but that one's the killer. However, there's now a way to turn that fatal weakness into some kind of a strength.

The key item that made this possible is this:



Which can give us the Divine Flesh Keystone which gives:

All Damage taken bypasses Energy Shield
50% of Elemental Damage taken as Chaos Damage
+10% to maximum Chaos Resistance

Divine Flesh, when combined with an Incandescent Heart



gives us 75% of elemental damage from hits taken as chaos damage. With the +10% max chaos resistance, plus a Saffell's Frame, Grey Spire Staff, or rare shield with +3% maximum chaos resistance, we can easily get chaos resistance up to 88% or 89%. Currently I'm using a rare shield so my resistance is 88%.

When these are combined with the Inquisitor ascendancy node Augury of Penitence, which makes nearby enemies do 8% less elemental damage, the amount of damage taken from elemental hits is only slightly above what is expected with 75% elemental resistances.


Where does this leave the rest of the build? Since chaos resistance is so high, chaos damage is no longer much of an issue. Divine flesh makes all damage bypass energy shield, so life investment is required but it allows us to reserve 100% of mana and use Eldritch Battery to spend the energy shield on skills instead. But all of that can be, and has been, done without the Veil of the Night with much better defensive utility since elemental damage ends up reduced by the conversion.

What makes Veil of the Night become possibly useful is the very same modifier that makes it otherwise useless - elemental resistances are zero. This means that we no longer have to care about them whatsoever on the rest of our gear. Life investment for survivability is necessary. Investment into chaos resistance is also necessary, but it can be lightened by anointing an amulet with Cleansed Thoughts, which doubles chaos resistance.


With the rest of our gear, we can do whatever we please without having to care for resistances

Ventor's Gambles with negative resistances? Not an issue
Thread of Hope? Go crazy
Just want to use the suffixes on something else like attributes or damage? Go ahead

The Wise Oak is also guaranteed to be fully effective, and might reduce elemental damage taken to normal levels. Haven't checked yet.


And that is currently where I'm at. Right now I'm just testing it with relatively generic gear. I'm going crit Divine Ire just because I thought Divine Ire looked fun and haven't put a whole lot of thought into my actual skill setup. But as I continue playing and can afford to do so, I'll likely be experimenting with ways I can optimize the build and take it to harder and harder content successfully.

Here's what I'm aware of so far.

Pros

+ Chaos damage isn't spooky
+ Little resistance investment required
+ Possible variety with gear setups due to the above
+ Can reserve 100% of mana
+ Should be able to work with a variety of skill setups
+ The Wise Oak is guaranteed to be fully effective
+ The Wise Oak may allow Veil of the Night to be usable with other classes/ascendancies as well
+ Meme item is finally usable

Cons

- The helmet is mediocre if not taking advantage of low resistance investment
- Heavy life investment is required
- Elemental hits are still a bit spooky
- Elemental damage over time is very spooky
- Can't do elemental reflect