[3.16 - RETIRING BUILD] VD Brands: S-Tier Bosser, A-Tier Map! -- MURDERED BY GGG_INTERN SOMEWHERE--

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lordchopf wrote:

What? i am a lv 88 Necromancer. As a matter of fact i do not even have a lv 64 Elementalist oO

Edit: Okay i DO have an ~lv 64 Elementalist... in Standard~~

Hmm, he was your last played char, he has Volatile Dead - Arcanist Brand and Desecrate-Arcanist Brand socketed. I just assumed that's what you were running with.

Your setup looks fine but Martyr is a horrible staff to use. The build needs fire damage to scale the explosions - I suggest you convert to a simpler EO build (cheaper too) listed in Page 1 and go crit only when you have a Cane or Duskdawn.

In fact a Duskdawn switch will feel much better. Take Nimbleness for sure though, and finish off Mental Rapidity.

Also, the final hurdle is very likely you're ooming and not realising it, and also, you're attaching two similar brands to the boss/kill target. Videoing yourself and uploading it will help us analyse what's going wrong.

I checked out of curiosity on my elementalist and it was some old discharge character, no detonate or brand skills whatsoever. I guess the ggg Servers are doing their thing.

I will probably give duskdawn a try then, i like staffs ;)

Btw Martyr is not THAT horrible, there is the 100%inc and situational pen at least.

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Unironically, AG with Kingmaker may be just the biggest buff for this build. Any minion experts in the house - what should we do to make it immortal?

Thats a good idea. Might try it. It's expensive tho.

I think the best way to make your AG immortal is with Mask of the Stitched demon. The Regen is really good.

The synthesis armor Ephemeral Garb adds more ES (synergize well with disciple too) for the life regen with the helm and we become crit immune! Or simply use influenced rare body armor with "gain endurance charge when hit" and % ES max life craft.

We could add Southbound gloves for more % life (side note, flat life is really bad with AG, %life scale way better).

Rare boots influenced with % life regen and some elemental/chaos res.

And level 21/20 is a must imo.

I played a lot with AG in the past and even with the best godly gear, mine could die sometimes with super juicy delirium map, or the meteor slam from Sirus or Vaal Flameblast from Uber Atziri. Be careful :)

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Feurn wrote:

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Unironically, AG with Kingmaker may be just the biggest buff for this build. Any minion experts in the house - what should we do to make it immortal?

Thats a good idea. Might try it. It's expensive tho.

I think the best way to make your AG immortal is with Mask of the Stitched demon. The Regen is really good.

The synthesis armor Ephemeral Garb adds more ES (synergize well with disciple too) for the life regen with the helm and we become crit immune! Or simply use influenced rare body armor with "gain endurance charge when hit" and % ES max life craft.

We could add Southbound gloves for more % life (side note, flat life is really bad with AG, %life scale way better).

Rare boots influenced with % life regen and some elemental/chaos res.

And level 21/20 is a must imo.

I played a lot with AG in the past and even with the best godly gear, mine could die sometimes with super juicy delirium map, or the meteor slam from Sirus or Vaal Flameblast from Uber Atziri. Be careful :)

Hmm damn, that is some crazy risk, and I trust your judgement. It's so good though. And now Scourge.. I guess the risky part of Scourge is the 200% increased damage taken which doesn't apply to minions I hope. Rest of the fights I guess you unsocketed it?

I'm trying hard to scale into Scourge 150 now (with crazy 120-150 quant), so I'm just spamming T15-T16 seeing what setup works.

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Rest of the fights I guess you unsocketed it?

Yeah you could. I would unsocket VS Uber Atziri and Sirus because we don't use Convocation.

I'm confident with a good set up that AG will survive in scourge. I'll try it for sure but not now since I need currency lol.

Is there are any reasons for not using Cinderswallow Urn? Seems super strong but noone uses it. Am I missing something?

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acidapple wrote:

Is there are any reasons for not using Cinderswallow Urn? Seems super strong but noone uses it. Am I missing something?

You could add it to your build if you aren't planning using Leadership's amulet (since you don't ignite with it). But the amulet is WAY better than this flask imo.

But you could still use it without the ignite for the ES/Life/mana on kill. I don't feel like it's necessary with the actual specced tree and Life on hit rings/fenumus boots

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acidapple wrote:

Is there are any reasons for not using Cinderswallow Urn? Seems super strong but noone uses it. Am I missing something?

Haha yeah Feurn's right on all counts. Cinderswallow is god-tier pre-Leadership - but to be honest, the build is god-tier WITH leadership, and Cinderswallow croaks :(

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Feurn wrote:

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Rest of the fights I guess you unsocketed it?

Yeah you could. I would unsocket VS Uber Atziri and Sirus because we don't use Convocation.

I'm confident with a good set up that AG will survive in scourge. I'll try it for sure but not now since I need currency lol.

That would be super. AG is exactly what I need to push the build into comfortable Scourge 150-200s. D: Often times the chip damage is what gets me - with Fortify up we'd be invincible again. Culling Strike and 50% mult is nothing to sniff at either!

Thought I must say, certain maps you really can't hit high Scourge with this build nor farm it effectively. It needs open maps you can leapslam and "infect" quickly - corridors and DOORS absolutely crush the momentum. Maps need to pack some 35% pack size minimum, too.

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primaeva wrote:

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Feurn wrote:

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Rest of the fights I guess you unsocketed it?

Yeah you could. I would unsocket VS Uber Atziri and Sirus because we don't use Convocation.

I'm confident with a good set up that AG will survive in scourge. I'll try it for sure but not now since I need currency lol.

That would be super. AG is exactly what I need to push the build into comfortable Scourge 150-200s. D: Often times the chip damage is what gets me - with Fortify up we'd be invincible again. Culling Strike and 50% mult is nothing to sniff at either!

Thought I must say, certain maps you really can't hit high Scourge with this build nor farm it effectively. It needs open maps you can leapslam and "infect" quickly - corridors and DOORS absolutely crush the momentum. Maps need to pack some 35% pack size minimum, too.

Couple of things here. I would suggest moving both raise spectre and animate guardian into a 3 link with minion life and / or meat shield, moving the 4-link arcanist setup out of the main weapon and moving the CWDT setup into the weapon + this new 3-link (dropping ball lightning in CWDT). I'd also suggest taking the three passive points to grave intentions, since that's a very important node for our animate guardian if we're using stitched demon.

(Note, base life of animate guardian is really, really high, with minion life linked + grave intentions + stitched demon, we're looking at something like 5-10% life regen per second). Divergent animate guardian is super cheap at the moment and will hopefully go further down and is pretty big for survivability.

Now this where it gets tricky for me. We have the open cyclone slot, so instead of infused channelling we could use convocation to keep the animate guardian close to us, ensuring better uptime on the fortify and survivability of both our spectres and the AG.

Note with garb of the ephemeral and kingmaker, especially in boss fights, we will never take critical hits which is nuts, so paying 3 passives points for 50% crit multi, fortify, culling strike, no crit hits taken and movement speed reduction can't be below normal is worth it imo.

Also, since we're atm attempting to mitigate phy damage, we could replace frenzy charge on hit with endurance charge when hit recently on our chest (ensuring max endurance charges all the time due to getting hit often in this build) for constant 12% phys mit (we're also 2 points from a max endurance charge node, so potentially 16% phys mit). If we really miss the frenzy charges, we could consider blood rage but without leech to counter it could feel pretty bad. We have the option of just keeping the cyclone setup as a 5-link, running vitality as an extra aura (which additionally allows the option of a vitality damage leech + disc es on hit watcher's eye later on), + blood rage for frenzy gen. However finding the gem slots for this will be quite challenging and probably require unset ring schenanigans.

The sum of this though, is that we can maintain our 20% less damage taken with fortify, + 12-16% phys mit from endurance charges + 8% phys mit from infused channeling (when spinning) + more phys mit when immortal call procs + 10% less damage taken (from bosses) if using meat shield support on ag / spectres since from taunt.

Also side note, with elemental mastery I would look into 40% increased effect on non-damaging ailments instead of -18% exposure. Scorch shred should be better than -18% guaranteed exposure shred (is it 10% default?), since 1.4 * 30 = 42% (42 + 10 > 30 + 18), + stronger sap and brittle. Not sure honestly. Discipline should definitely be Vaal Discipline at some point (sorry if that's already implied).

Also, is Holy Conquest effect (re-attach every 0.3s) really necessary for our build, especially with all the increased attachment range? We could potentially drop the upper brand cluster (bold I know), exchange the Holy Conquest effect with + 2 brands (or leave as is with 3 max), and use those points elsewhere.

Final question. Thoughts on speccing into Death Attunement (via minion damage side) to add additional spectre to pool for more corpse explosion damage? No idea how the maths works out here but it's 4 passive points for + 1 spectre, might be worth it.

Apologies for the brain dump. I love this build and appreciate the effort you put into getting it out there for us.