[3.15] Theorycrafting Absolution Guardian + Phantasms MoM/EB

Theorycrafting an idea for the new Absolution skill. I have no idea how this is going to work so I hope some people have some good ideas.

https://pastebin.com/MspPvDj7
Updated: https://pastebin.com/d2vrh9Xm

(*The PoB has Wave of Conviction in place of Absolution because PoB doesn't support the new gems yet.)

The basic idea is that you are using both Absolution, which summons up to three (unless the higher level gems summon more) Sentinels that cast Absolution themselves, along with summoning Phantasms (10 max).

Update
Huge buff incoming. And good thing, as this build really is hitting a wall in late yellow maps. The base damage of the skill has been buffed significantly along with the damage multiplier of the summoned sentinels.

Main 6L setup:
Absolution - Our main skill. It converts 50% phys to lightning and summons sentinels on kill or when hitting bosses.
Phys to Lightning - To get full lightning conversion and extra lightning damage.
Spell Echo - Gives insane cast speed and hit's twice which allows us to easily summon our sentinels and phantasms, while also scaling the damage of both the Absolution spell itself and all the minions (both sentinels and phantasms cast spells)
Summon Phantasm - Summons up to 10 phantasms. The phantasms deal physical damage, so unfortunately we will only be able to scale half of the damage to lightning. We could scale all of it using Triad Grip, but giving up an entire glove slot seems a bit of a waste.
Controlled Destruction - Boosts our spell damage with the tradeoff of less crit chance, which we don't need.
Minion Damage - This only scales our minion damage so I'm putting it as the last link.

Utility / Auras:
Wrath - Large boost to our lightning damage. This is the only aura and it reserves 50% mana.
Leap Slam - Movement skill which also procs the Bastion of Hope Guardian ascendancy to give us 10% more attack block for 4 seconds. We will link this to Fortify, Faster Attacks, and Endurance Charge on Melee Stun. Because Leap Slam always stuns enemies on full life, this should allow us to generate Endurance charges while mapping.
Summon Carrion Golem - This boosts all of our other minions' damage by adding more physical damage. Link to Minion Life and Elemental Army for more survivability so we don't have to resummon so often.
Sigil of Power - Even more lightning damage for us and minions. Link to Increased AoE Support.
Molten Shell / Vaal Molten Shell - We should have around 8000 armour. Vaal Molten Shell will add even more armour and reduce a lot of damage from hits. Link to CwDT and Increased Duration. Still, Steelskin might be the better choice here, we'll have to see.
Tempest Shield - Linked to Blind, Hextouch, and Enfeeble.

Defensive layers:
This build should be pretty defensive.
Mind over Matter - We leave 50% of our mana unreserved for mind over matter which gives us 30% of damage taken from mana before life.
Block - This one is a bit complicated. The base block chance will be 36% attack block / 20% spell block. The Guardian ascendancy passive will give us an additional 10% attack block if we have attacked recently (Leap Slam) and an additional 10% spell block if we have cast recently (which should be up most of the time). Also, Bastion of Hope gives us 50% additional block chance 2/5 of the time. So, our attack block will sometimes be 36%, sometimes 46%, and sometimes capped (2/5 of the time). Using Rumi's Concoction can give us more black chance, but with the flask nerfs, no telling how reliable this will be.
Armour - This build should have a good amount of armour to protect from some small-medium physical hits. Using Doryani's Prototype chest will also use armour to mitigate lightning damage.
Fortify - We keep this up with Leap Slam.
Life Leech - We leech lightning damage as life using Doryani's belt.
ES Leech - We are using EB to supplement our MoM and to use for casting, so ES leech from the Heart of Thunder tree passive helps us here.
Life Regen - Life regen is not a whole lot, but more than some builds. The Time of Need Guardian passive will let us regen 30% life over one second every four seconds, which could be good if the timing is right, but is obviously situational.
Blind - Tempest Shield is linked to blind which will lower enemies chance to hit with attacks to 50%. Blind Support only has a 10% chance to work so it's not that big of a deal.
Enfeeble - Also linked with Hextouch to Tempest Shield.
Molten Shell / Vaal Molten Shell - We should have a decent amount of armour, which will make this pretty good.
Curse immunity - We will be 100% curse immune through the Time of Need Guardian passive and one node on the tree. 100% curse immunity should be really nice after the flask charges are nerfed.

Gear
We'll be using a couple uniques, but none of them are required. I would try to get the Doryani's belt as soon as possible for the life leech.

The Black Cane - Gives us increased elemental damage, minion damage, cast speed, mana regen, and Phantasmal Might buff for each Phantasm summoned, all which help our build. I don't think the Phantasmal might will do anything for our minions, so it is possible that a different choice could be better, but this should be fairly cheap to start out with.
Aegis Aurora - 32% attack block chance, +5% max cold res, %ES on block, and huge armour and ES. A rare shield might be better.
Doryani's Invitation - The lightning variant to leech lightning damage as life. This will give us some good resists, extra lightning damage (not for minions unfortunately), a decent chunk of armour, and shock chance. Every stat is good for our build.
Doryani's Prototype - Makes enemy lightning resistance equal to our own. Since we should have -40 lightning res, this is going to be pretty big. We have to mitigate the downsides, though. This chest makes you have 0 effective lightning res, which means you will be taking 4 times the lightning damage we normally would at 75% res cap. We mitigate this with high armour (the chest allows armour to work against lightning hits) and an Avian Twins talisman (which makes 50% of lightning damage taken as cold). You can completely mitigate lightning damage if you also get a Glorious Vanity jewel that grants you Divine Flesh (which lets you take 50% of elemental damage as chaos damage). This also makes all chaos damage bypass ES. This isn't much of a problem as we are using EB. Honestly, I've never used this chest before and if the downsides are too bad, we'll just go with a rare chest and probably switch out some things and use gems like Lightning Pen in our main setup, and use Conductivity instead of Enfeeble.

For the other gear, we will probably be using rares. Prioritize the following stats:

Life, Mana, Mana regen, resists, armour/es. Resists should be easy to cap. Make sure to also cap chaos res if you are going for Divine Flesh.

Ascendancy
Absolution was made for Guardian class, so that is what we will use. I will probably take the nodes in the following order:

Radiant Crusade - Should give us and minions nearly permanent onslaught and 10% more damage. The 20% all res is actually bad for Doryani's Prototype, but we'll live with it.
Unwavering Crusade - Makes all our minions faster and enemies take 10% increased damage. (10% more multiplier)
Bastion of Hope - Increased block chance and near stun immunity.
Time of Need - Will allow us to become 100% curse immune after also picking up the Sanctum of Thought passive on the tree. The 30% life regen over one second every four seconds is also nice, while situational.

Bandits
Shouldn't have to say this, but kill all.

Day 1 update

It's feeling not too terrible in T5 maps.

Current gear:



Right now I'm using the following 6-link. We can drop Light Pen and put in another damage support if we can get Doryani's Prototype working.

Absolution - Spell Echo - Summon Phantasm - Phys to Lightning - Added Lightning - Light Pen

Not sure if Added Lightning or Minion Damage is better here. Of course, Minion Damage Support won't do anything for our self-cast, but I might try it out. Controlled Destruction could also be better, but I'm trying out EO at the moment. It might be good to put Increased Critical Strikes on Tempest Shield to proc EO, though.

Right now, I'm self-casting Conductivity, which is a lot of button pressing I'll be glad to be done with if we can get the Doryani's working.

With the nerf to flasks, you might want to get Time of Need before Bastion of Hope. It seems like it will actually help a lot in the Expedition fights. Especially if you don't have lightning life leech yet.

Triad Grip... If we can use it... But I'm only theorycrafting...

"

oilusionista wrote:

Triad Grip... If we can use it... But I'm only theorycrafting...

I considered it, but Triad Grip seems like a waste of a glove slot only to get the remaining 50% conversion for phantasms.

I'm thinking of dropping Bastion of Need for Harmony of Purpose this league.
Spectres are normally used to generate charges but I had a really hard time keeping them alive in the past, even with stacked gear.
With the damage boost from charges (I'd drop controlled dest for elemental army) I believe we can gear for more survivability.
Thoughts on this ?

The version of absolution I'm thinking about right now likely won't include phantasms. I'm not 100% certain on this yet but I feel like the added damage won't be as good as other options (Depend on absolution minion stats, but with charges inc crit chance; crit multi, light pen or elemental army might do more damage). The crit option could potentially be even more interesting with new boss reduced ailment resistance, making shocks better.

I plan on using Herald of Purity because the skill tags synergies are just insane (You can also scale both off phys damage, though I'm having a hard time finding good sources that would be worth that investment) You might have to sacrifice Wrath early on, but I'm still not sure how much it will be needed anyway as I expect the damage from absolution to be enough for clear and single target mostly coming from HoP.

Still need to see abso minion stats, but normally minion scale incredibly well off levels and the exponential growth of this is pretty insane.
+3 to absolution and HoP levels is fairly reasonable to get on amulet + weapons and is a 33% more damage multi to both with late game scaling being +1 all spell +1 all physical spell on both weapons and +1 physical +1 strength skill on amulet for +6 total gem level and +9 on the HoP from +3 on helmet. Comes to 77% more damage on abso, 136% on HoP.

Survivability might be an issue with 2 weapons though and that damage might not be needed so I'll balance it as I go.

what Does EB mean in your build i cannot figure it out?

"

Arksos wrote:

I'm thinking of dropping Bastion of Need for Harmony of Purpose this league.
Spectres are normally used to generate charges but I had a really hard time keeping them alive in the past, even with stacked gear.
With the damage boost from charges (I'd drop controlled dest for elemental army) I believe we can gear for more survivability.
Thoughts on this ?

The version of absolution I'm thinking about right now likely won't include phantasms. I'm not 100% certain on this yet but I feel like the added damage won't be as good as other options (Depend on absolution minion stats, but with charges inc crit chance; crit multi, light pen or elemental army might do more damage). The crit option could potentially be even more interesting with new boss reduced ailment resistance, making shocks better.

I plan on using Herald of Purity because the skill tags synergies are just insane (You can also scale both off phys damage, though I'm having a hard time finding good sources that would be worth that investment) You might have to sacrifice Wrath early on, but I'm still not sure how much it will be needed anyway as I expect the damage from absolution to be enough for clear and single target mostly coming from HoP.

Still need to see abso minion stats, but normally minion scale incredibly well off levels and the exponential growth of this is pretty insane.
+3 to absolution and HoP levels is fairly reasonable to get on amulet + weapons and is a 33% more damage multi to both with late game scaling being +1 all spell +1 all physical spell on both weapons and +1 physical +1 strength skill on amulet for +6 total gem level and +9 on the HoP from +3 on helmet. Comes to 77% more damage on abso, 136% on HoP.

Survivability might be an issue with 2 weapons though and that damage might not be needed so I'll balance it as I go.

Remember, Harmony of Purpose doesn't work with Minions, because minions don't count as party members.

Also, I'm not sure about Phantasm damage either, to be honest. I added them because they scale well with what we are already doing (they cast physical spells), and they easily get us over the five minions we need to proc Radiant Crusade.

I thought about Sentinels of Purity, but I'm not sure how to scale their damage effectively. The patch notes raised the mana multipliers on pretty much every support gem, so if we try to add supports to Herald of Purity, they are going to reserve a huge amount of mana, so we wouldn't be able to run this and keep Wrath and MoM. We will also be pretty much be forced to go Triad Grip if we want to convert their damage at all to lightning.

Raising gem levels is probably going to be another good way to go late game when you have a lot of currency. There are several ways to do this. Besides what you mentioned, Cold Iron Point daggers give us +3 phys gems and we can dual wield if we want to give up the shield. A level 4 Empower in the 6L can give us another +3, and we can get a corrupted rare chest with +1 gem levels.

"

Altoid94 wrote:

what Does EB mean in your build i cannot figure it out?

Eldritch Battery-
Spend Energy Shield before Mana for Skill Mana Costs
Energy Shield protects Mana instead of Life
50% less Energy Shield Recharge Rate

Yeah I messed up with Harmony, which means still need to invest on spectre for charges as it's just too strong.
The new iteration of my idea is to convert all minion damage to cold with triad, have AoF so my absolution procs EE.

HoP links would become melee phys, increased crit damage and cold pen for still decent damage to compensate the % reservation upgrades at same amount than old Multistrike, melee dmg and Ruthless.

I don't want to do MoM myself but it would leave you with 50% if you did.

I still plan on using phantasm while leveling.

Edit: Even late game Phantasm might be worth depending on how stats look like for Abso minions.

Edit 2: They made it so spell cascade works with minions, so you'd want to now for sure.

Edit 3: Tentative links would be Abso - Spell Echo (Maybe not cause that locks us too) - Spell Cascade - Minion damage - Bonechill - Increased critical damage

"

Arksos wrote:

Yeah I messed up with Harmony, which means still need to invest on spectre for charges as it's just too strong.
The new iteration of my idea is to convert all minion damage to cold with triad, have AoF so my absolution procs EE.

HoP links would beoome melee phys, increased crit damage and cold pen for still decent damage to compensate the % reservation upgrades at same amount than old Multistrike, melee dmg and Ruthless.

I don't want to do MoM myself but it would leave you with 50% if you did.

I still plan on using phantasm while leveling.

Edit: Even late game Phantasm might be worth depending on how stats look like for Abso minions.

Edit 2: They made it so spell cascade works with minions, so you'd want to now for sure.

That's an interesting idea, but cold gems are going to be really hard to run on anything close to the tree I have set up, because of the low Dex. You will need to get a lot of Dex on gear. Also, what 4 socket green gem setup are you going to use in the gloves?

Also remember, that elemental conversion on the skill gems is prioritized over other sources, so you will only be able to convert the Absolution minions to 50% lightning 50% cold.

I don't think phantasm spells are AoE, so Spell Cascade probably won't work for them, although it should work for Absolution cast by Sentinels.

The 4 green links are kind of a waste indeed. Probably need to use Dash and desecrate there and manually cast Desecrate.
HoP rings give quite a bit of the dex. Otherwise maybe need 30-40 more on gear which isn't the worst.

I forgot about 50/50 but it shouldn't hurt anyway tbh. Slightly weaker cold damage from abso but only bonechill is pure cold scaling anyway

Edit: Gotta use Unbound Ailments too now with the buff from cold conversion.

Edit2: Info from Viperesque. The spell cascade works when we cast absolution but doesn't make minions spell cascade.