Salvaging Abyssus Build (Scion)

Bought an Abyssus, bought an expensive katana, plan was to make spectral throw build but I didn't play during 1.3 so didn't know they changed it so Disemboweling and Abyssus don't apply to Spectral throw anymore (crit wise) so kinda bummed out atm and don't know what to do on my lv45 Scion I spent half of the other day leveling...

Anyway to salvage this? I know I can still make a crit 2H spectral throw build without Abyssus and it'll be alright, but my aim was just to make a balls deep high dps character just for fun (that includes dying hilariously) and since I never made a char who broke 50k I want to get that feeling of utter destruction. Don't want to roll a new character as this is probably my last character for this league(warbands) at least for awhile. Money is more or less drained aside from getting decent-nice rares.

So any suggestions? tree specs? Has to be crit build, and 2h sword.

Flicker strike is a ton of fun and gets you really big damage numbers. Especially if you get 4+ frenzy charges.

Life kind of sucks for melees right now unless you run fortify with endurance charges though. So you'll probably have to work that into your build unless you don't mind corpsehopping occasionally.

There's also some crit build for ice crash going around that gets high numbers, but I'm not sure the details. I think it's a staff build though, not a 2h sword.

If you're looking for something funny and fun you could try ES/CI with extremely high life regen and try to regen tank =P

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Nasreth wrote:

Flicker strike is a ton of fun and gets you really big damage numbers. Especially if you get 4+ frenzy charges.

Life kind of sucks for melees right now unless you run fortify with endurance charges though. So you'll probably have to work that into your build unless you don't mind corpsehopping occasionally.

There's also some crit build for ice crash going around that gets high numbers, but I'm not sure the details. I think it's a staff build though, not a 2h sword.

Flicker hunh? I tried one way back, got to like 68, didn't work out so well but I was more of a noob back then with really poor gear. I thought Flicker was dead in 2.0 though?

The original spectral throw was going to have 5 frenzy charges, 4 of the other 2, running Daresso's for dodge and endurance build up, so fortify would be a nice option that spectral throw didn't have (though I had planned to have fortify on leap slam). I'm sure the damage lost by fortify over say added fire would be miniscule to the defensive boost fortify grants.

edit: I'm leveling with ice crash atm, pretty good skill. someone also mentioned to me Frost Blades...seems kind of fun too.

I haven't tried flicker since 2.0 hit so you could be right. You might want to poke around before you commit.

Crit cyclone will probably provide both the highest DPS and surviability, IMO.

You just gotta watch for Lightning Thorns.

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zSavage wrote:

Crit cyclone will probably provide both the highest DPS and surviability, IMO.

You just gotta watch for Lightning Thorns.

It would, too bad I already have a crit cycloner in Warbands (without abyssus tho), very strong and somewhat tanky, fun but my vers. has no aoe nodes/gem so kind of have to spin circles a lot as opposed to mow down move on (though in tight maps its a breeze).

So I don't want to make another cyclone. I was testing skills:

-Ice Crash. It's nice and strong but it just feels so sluggish. I know people have been using flicker to move from pack to pack then ice crash them, it's still in consideration but not sure how much aoe is needed for it to be good/safe.

-Cleave. I thought this was going to be good but nope, sucks. Damage is fine but tested on my Shock nova templar(with all witch and temp aoe nodes) and the aoe was still sucking butt.

-Wild Strike. Now THIS was a nice surprise considering I wanted to try it before 2.0 was released, but as DW claws. The aoe is surprisingly good as well as damage, though lightning and cold effects were obviously the better effects and when you rolled fire it was meh. Mana was a problem but I slapped a mana leech gem and sustain was good. The problem here is how to sustain without leech gem, I don't think you can with just physical damage since 60% of your elemental damage gets converted to elemental, maybe if I reach 100k then 40k physical will be enough with 0.8>1.2 mana physical leech, which my current new spec has 0.8 so just need another 0.4 on gear which is easy. If I can sustain mana that way then mana leech gem can be swapped for life leech gem for better survivability with Vaal pact. So far this is looking like the skill I'm going to swing with, tips or feedback on the skill would be appreciated. I know people have been doing 1h+shield but haven't seen anyone go 2h, let alone abyssus 2h.

Two skills I'm interested in knowing if it's viable or not is: Viper Strike. It works with swords, but I don't know much about the skill other than that. and Frost Blades. It seems cool, but from what I gathered its meh, or at least no one has made it seem really good without 20ex+ gear, let alone 2h.

If you go BM + LGoH or BM + Life Leech on Wild Strike, it will resolve your mana issues no problem.

Also lets you run 100% mana reserved if you're into that kind of thing.

I know it's a slot sacrifice to get a 'free' skill; personally I haven't experimented with mana leech at all in 2.0 yet (neither my single(lol, like 1/20) standard specced character nor my Warbands Duelist use mana leech).

But I've found being able to survive and having defensive mechanics in this patch is generally superior to going for big DPS numbers.

-Savage