How do I salvage this Blood Mage?
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I thought Blood Mage would have nice flavor, however I did not carefully read the fine print on Life Remnants to see that on bosses the skill needs crits to do anything. And I was waltzing through Act 1 mostly as Essence Drain/Contagion with a smattering of minions (crit doesn't affect DoTs as far as I know, dunno about minions, but either way, Infernalist is the one for minions, not Blood Mage). The Act 2 boss is impossible with my current build unless I have perfect dodge rolls, which will never happen.
I don't mind respeccing, even though it's a huge slog to grind new skill gems and gold for shuffling passives around. But the question is: what build would work on Blood Mage? I saw somewhere that the Act 2 boss has a vulnerability to Cold, so I went for Frost Bomb, Frost Nova, Frosty Skeletons (even though they die a lot, I'll have to replace them) coupled with some crit in the tree, besides spell damage and cold pen, but I'm only level 34 so there aren't a lot of passives to work with. I just wanna get past the Act 2 boss with a build that can work further on as well. Last bumped on Dec 10, 2024, 4:11:42 AM
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Unfortunately I can't help here as im in the same boat. Probably best to unspec Sanguimancy to get health and potion charges back for the time being however.
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Wish you could just disable the main buff, cause I'm more interested in the later traits.
And yeah its frustrating that both witch ascendancies have a focus on crits since as someone who want to do something unorthodox, like a blood knight, is now forced to stack accuracy and crit rather than just pick Resolute Tequnique and have fun. |
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" Do I understand correctly, you're trying some sort of physical attacks build? |
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I play the same build (Blood Mage + Contagion/ED), Act 2 boss was a real pain.
Had two attempts: first with more than 15 rips and the second one with only 2 rips: on ~75% HP and ~30% HP. What I've done between attempts: - got few levels up (farming zone right before the boss); - respec; - changed a gear; - changed my skill setup; - did NOT unspecced Sanguimancy; Gear and skill setup really matters. I don't remember exactly what I've done while preparing for this fight, but here are some points: - crit chance in passive tree is useless for low level chars, unspec it to get inc chaos and inc spell damage; - life remnants is useless on boss fights, at least on low level of this skill and low chances to crit; - move speed 10% does matter; - Chaos Bolt on a wand helps to save life & mana during the long fights; - Vitality helps to save flask charges; - Execute support gem gives 40% more damage for enemies on low life that reduces the time you spend on last stage; - Withering Presence gives two wither stacks that really helps to deal more damage; - life flask with gain 0.x charges per second gives a couple of additional usages Some recommendations for the fight: - skeleton warriors from the scepter may be used as a source of ES overflow (
Spoiler
Grim Remnants
- be careful with dodging, if you do two or more consecutive dodges you definitely doing smth wrong; - do not waste mana and life - use Contagion, ED and then Chaos Bolts - do not waste life flask, give Vitality a chance - boss minions on sandstorm phase can be used to deal damage
Spoiler
do Enfeeble + Impeding Doom, bring them to the boss and kill at least one minion
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Blood Mage and ED/Contagion aren't really a great synergy. What I did was:
- Farm gold for 4 hours - Respec my entire tree to Frost Wall + Fireball + Frost Bomb with Cast on Frozen: Comet - Logged out after 1 shotting packs and destroying bosses I struggled hard with as the classic ED/Contagion dot build. TLDR: Farm gold and respec. Kill a boss in 30 seconds to 1 minute with elemental or physical rather than roll kite for 10 minutes with dots. |
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" Thanks for the detailed tips! I will have to farm so much more gold to respec once again if I take the chaos path again. I just specced out of my chaos damage nodes to go for nodes that favor the cold damage route. Farming gold is so tedious, I'll have to find a better zone than Vanguard. |
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" That's very true, I had sworn off dot builds in many games for a while now, don't know why I decided to give it another chance now. I guess the Witch starting area in the passive tree kinda pushes you either to this or minions. Time to go farm my brains out for gold because this ascendancy is so crippling at low levels. |
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Hm i was plating essence drain to act 4 and it was really good skill when you give it chain and focus on damage over time. Bosses? Zero problem save playstyle , 1 skill and run. Later you will get chaos totem you can get poison gem on him and its really helpfull. ps Contagion for big group of mobs.
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