Abyssal Cry Essence Drain Iron Will Zerker

Hello, My name is SerBubblez and this is a build I'd like to showcase, based off Yalani's Abyssal Cry



The build revolves around one spell: Abyssal Cry

Pros and Cons
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Pros

  • Oneshots 90% of packs
  • Chaos Damage can't be reflected
  • Also you don't have to worry about resistances for the majority of mobs
  • Can do almost any map mod, get packsize and go
  • Cospri's is expensive
  • High health and regen with 25% life recovered on Warcry


Cons
  • Lackluster Single Target
  • You'll be standing in the middle of packs
  • Exploding large packs WILL make your computer wheeze like a smoker in the morning
  • Your AoE is cooldown based
  • The marauder cast animation is hilariously campy



Mechanics
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Abyssal Cry
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Abyssal Cry does 8% percent of a mob's health in an AoE around it, and we scale this damage using

  • Damage from jewels, Doon and Zerker Ascendancy
  • Area Damage
  • Chaos Damage


When you add poison to the mix, the damage of Abyssal Cry is scaled up to over 100% of the mobs health, from just one explosion - and as our ED pierces, it will in almost all cases take one cast to start a lovely purple chain reaction.

Essence Drain
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To kill the mobs to proc the Abyssal Cry debuff, we are using Essense Drain, which is a projectile that has a small initial hit and a large damage over time debuff that regens health based on the debuff damage .

100% pierce is attained by using the Pierce support gem and the Projectile Weakness Curse - this makes killing Allies cannot Die mobs and totems much easier so you won't have to run around like a headless chicken around a mob pack to get the shot off into the mob you have to kill first.


Poison and Double Dipping
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For some reason, Poison "inherits" one of the skill tags of different skills which means that increases of that type will "double dip" and work on both the skill and the poison it causes.

In this case, Area Damage will scale the poison from Abyssal Cry and Projectile Damage will scale the poison of Essense Drain.



Stats at a Glance
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LVL 88 Berzerker Marauder
6491 Life
628 Strength
6.2% Life Regen (8.2% at max frenzies)
923 Mana
1k Armour
2.5k Eva

ED
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Skill Tree
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Gem Links (in order of importance)
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Essence Drain
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Essence Drain -> Iron Will -> Void Manipulation -> Pierce -> Controlled Destruction -> Rapid Decay
I have yet to experiment with lvl 3+ empower but it definitely can be a damage increase.

Abyssal Cry
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Abyssal Cry -> Void Manipulation -> Increased AoE -> Rapid Decay
Keep in mind you don't have to level up your Abyssal Cry gem as it only increases the movement speed slow.

Movement
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Whirling Blades -> Fortify -> Faster Attacks

Auras
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Blasphemy -> Projectile Weakness -> Enfeeble
You can definitely slot in other curses such as Vulnerability or Temp Chains - Enfeeble + Temp Chains being the most defensive and Projectile Weakness being the most kill them before they kill me.

Cast When Damage Taken
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CWDT -> Immortal Call -> Increased Duration -> Molten Shell/Contaigon
Molten Shell gives you a nice bit of armour while it lasts and Contaigon can help kill the straggler mobs that can be left over.

Misc
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Wither -> Spell Totem -> Faster Casting + Chaos Golem/Enduring Cry
Wither for bossfights mostly, and really the last gem slot can be used for any one gem wonder like a golem or enduring cry, though switching between cries may get annoying after awhile.



Gear
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Core Items
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Because we start on the bottom right of the tree, we can make use of all that strength we are getting to use Iron Will and Doon Cuebiyari to scale our ED and get a small bonus to Abyssal Cry as well.


Bino's is the best for AoE clearing as the poison will spread to whatever doesn't die to the initial burst - Also if you kite bosses into packs you can get multiple large stacks of poison ticking on him at once which can flat out oneshot them.


This unique is flat out busted and for this build saves us 5 points from the tree, a gem link and counters the "Hexproof" mod on maps for the tradeoff of no life/strength.


Frenzies are yet another way of scaling the Abyssal Cry Damage, and Blood Dance are a good way of generating frenzies that don't cut into our regen the way Blood Rage does - Also the extra % life regen is a nice bonus given how much health we are stacking.

Look for a high dexterity roll as this build gets next to none and needs 183 to wear Cospri's.


I have been reccommended this item and after testing it definitely is an increase to dps especially if you have low strength - compared to a Doon's increase at 628 strength (78.5 or so) a well rolled Breath wil beat out Doon in damage and utility for ~100 less life and ~15% cast speed. It's worth noting that at high strength there will be a drop in Essence Drain damage.


Special Mentions
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Consuming Dark is a good single target choice and has some AoE clearing merit as mobs outside your blasphemy range will not be poisoned at all, and this will give your mapping some offscreen potential.

Probably the best defensive option aside from if you can roll an off color 1.5k+ armour base - keep in mind that you will need to socket in poison unless you're using a Consuming Dark above.

Everything else
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Nothing much to add here - just find rares with good Life, Resistances and Strength.



Ascendancy
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War Bringer -> Aspect of Carnage -> Rite of Ruin

Berzerker is by far the best option for us - War Bringer cuts the cooldown on Abyssal Cry to half, which is a giant QoL improvement, without mentioning the whopping 25% life and mana recovery on use - at my current health it heals 1.6k life - double a Seething Divine Flask.

Aspect of Carnage's 40% more damage is also too good to pass up as it's the single largest increase to our Abyssal Cry damage.

The 10% increased damage taken can be mitigated with high health and Rite of Ruin giving us stun immunity as a lovely cherry on top.

Pain Reaver I have not personally played around with but it seems to be good, but its worth noting you cannot leech off ED's damage over time.

Crave the Slaughter isn't worth much except for when you are Whirling around like a madman between packs.


Bandits
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Oak -> Skill Point -> Kraitlyn


Levelling
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I wouldn't reccommend leveling up using this setup as you are Very far away from your damage nodes - to have a smooth levelling experience i reccommend putting some points into a levelling build and refunding them later.

I levelled up one with Resolute Technique Earthquake and Facebreaker Shield Charge with Ancestral Warchief but you can go for totems or some other spell.

Aim to have all the area and chaos nodes when you're ready to start mapping.


Jewels
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Aim to have at one or two of these stats
  • Damage
  • Chaos Damage
  • Life
  • Projectile Damage


Good to have mods
  • Area Damage
  • Spell Damage
  • Damage over Time
  • Spell Damage while Dual Wielding



This deserves a special mention due to the very high Dexterity requirements of the gear and gems we use - I've put it above the witch starting area.



Videos
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sorry for map zoom spam
T13 Courtyard
T13 Waterways
Last edited by SerBubblez on Jul 4, 2016, 5:29:42 PM
Last bumped on Jul 3, 2016, 11:41:49 PM

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