[2.4]Dragon Jooced - "Pick Your Poison" Necromancer



INTRODUCTION



This is my Dragon-Jooced "Pick your Poison" Necromancer which uses Spirit offering as well as the duration and cast/attack speed that the Necromancer ascendancy provides to inflict a powerful poison on enemies using a physical spell.


VIDEO



Video Guide and Gameplay Playlist

Its going to take a while to add more gameplay videos so keep checking back!
OVERVIEW


Pros:

+ Cheap
+ Fast
+ Space for Inspired Learning(Unique "Headhunter" Jewel)
+ Exceptionally easy to cap resistances.
+ Does not Require a 6L or even a 5L.
+ Can run any map mod reasonably well(though phys reflect does slow you down as care must be taken when poisoning the enemies.)
+ Core build can be used with a variety of skills(Blade Vortex, Ethereal Knives, Bladefall)

Cons:

- Requires capped chaos resistance.
- Very demanding on sockets to fit everything in.


SKILL TREE


Witch - Necromancer

Ethereal Knives(my personal favorite)
Bladefall/Blade Vortex



Ascendancy Points: Mistress of Sacrifice, Spirit Eater, Commander of Darkness, Beacon of Corruption

Bandits:Kill, Kill, Kill


LEVELING


Level as any sort of physical spellcaster with the level 70ish goal of Passive Tree

Afterwards we prepare for lowlife by gaining our last 2 ascendancy points and grabbing Pain Attunement, Arcane Vision and More ES


SKILL TREE EXPLANATION



We are focusing on Life and Energy Shield so we grab a decent amount of each, since we gain extra ES from Spirit offering we are able to dual wield, since we gain almost 300% increased damage from various sources we don't take many damage nodes. additionally we take Charisma so that all our auras fit nicely, all the skill duration we can reasonably get our hands on and the flask nodes below scion for far better dragon joocing!.


JEWELS




We focus mainly on combined Energy Shield+Life jewels as these are fairly cheap, the best dps boost for us would be Area Damage, additionally we take advantage of Inspired learning since we have a spot for it and the clear speed boost is quite noticable

GEAR





GEAR EXPLANATION


Spoiler
Weapons

We use at least one redbeak as the 100% increased damage on low life double dips on our poisoning in all 3 variations of the build.

Secondly we use Bino's for EK and Bladefall Variants to spread our poison for a much faster clear speed.

For Blade Vortex as well as for boss farming we use a second redbeak.




Helm

We use The Vertex with our Spell of choice to reduce its mana cost exponentially while slightly increasing its damage.



Chest

We use a hybrid Life+Energy Shield chest as we are scaling both.



Gloves

Any Life+ES gloves with chaos res can do the trick

Alternatively for EK you may consider Winds of Change for projectile speed and massive projectile damage.



Boots

Same idea as gloves but with some movement speed for positioning between whirls.

For EK we have the choice of Mutewind Whispersteps if we can afford to use them.



Amulet

Life and %ES with whichever attributes we need(likely str+dex) as well as any resists we may need.



Rings

Life, Energy Shield and Resists.


If our life/es totals are high enough we can sacrifice a ring slot and some life and ES for a Ming's Heart which gives us massive chaos resistance and a pretty sizeable dps boost.



Belt

A belt with Reduced flask charges used and life is required, bonus stats include other resistances, energy shield and strength.

Flasks

We use our Dragon Jooce combo'd with a Seething/Panicked Divine Life Flask of Staunching to protect ourselves from heavy chaos damage as well as providing a slight healing boost.


Another powerful flask we use is Atziri's Promise which boosts our damage as well as providing us with just under 1% of our total damage leeched as life


If we are using a Bino's we can also take advantage of The Sorrow of the Divine for an icrease in damage as well as some extra healing.


Can't hurt to have a granite or a Freeze immunity flask, so we use that in our last slot.


LINKS AND GEMS



Main DPS Setup
Helm:
Blade Vortex, Poison Support, Void Manipulation Support, Increased Area of Effect Support
After trying with spell echo I have determined that it is far too laggy and have opted for less stacks on a much stronger poison. You can use spell echo if you are ok with the lag it generates additionally we double dip on the 10% less damage.

Bladefall, Poison Support, Void Manipulation Support or Spell Echo, Increased Area of Effect or Concentrated Effect
Bladefall has many options, my personal favorite being the Void Manipulation and Concentrated Effect combination as the poison spread from Bino's is not affected by the concentrated effect and this will annihilate packs with the massive spreading poison. Again Spell Echo causes us to double dip on the less damage and as such spread a weaker poison through Bino's

Ethereal Knives, Poison Support, Pierce Support, Void Manipulation or Spell Echo
Ethereal Knives is the most fun to use for me personally, I prefer Void Manipulation for the increase in mobility as well as the slightly stronger poison spread.

Mobility Setup

Whirling Blades, Faster Attacks, Fortify

the basic setup for any whirling blades, because we are using swords we can also use leap slam if we prefer.

Aura Setup

On mana we run Haste for extra speed and Grace for some extra defense(we do not use hatred since we are not scaling elemental damage as well as physical/chaos)
On Life we run Discipline and Clarity which puts us on low life for the redbeaks and pain attunement damage boosts to take effect.

Golem

you can use Chaos/Lightning or Fire Golems as each provide unique benefits, I personally prefer Lightning Golem as it boosts our speed a decent amount

Buffs

Spirit Offering, Faster Casting, Increased Duration
An additional power of the Necromancer is that it allows us to use an offering skill on ourselves, we have gone with Spirit Offering as it grants us some extra chaos damage, Energy Shield and Elemental Resistances.

Desecrate, Spell Echo, Faster Casting
This provides us with 10 corpses thanks to Spirit Eater meaning we gain maximum benefit from Spirit offering.

Its also worth noting that we could use this in a cast when damage taken setup as the healing from Spirit offering is quite decent, we would then use Cast when Damage Taken - Desecrate - Spirit Offering - Increased Duration. The only reason I don't do this is because I don't mind the extra casting which provides a much more consistent ES buff since we cant guarantee maximum corpses with a cwdt setup.

we also put flame dash in one of these 2 four links to cross gaps while saving on using another faster casting.

Lastly we use Wither and Spell Totem along with Immortal Call and Cast When Damage taken in a 2+2L (Note: Immortal call will not work if it is linked to the Spell Totem.)

HOW IT ALL WORKS



We scale both life and mana in this build which has 2 important effects, it boosts the power of our Spirit offering and also in combination with Dragon Jooce for emergencies allows us to run low life without Shavronne's Wrappings or Solaris Lorica.

We scale mostly "Increased Damage" which boosts our poison exponentially and coupled with the massive Skill Effect duration bonuses we get from the tree and from the Ascendancy points we more than double our damage through the use of poison.

In total Spirit Offering grants us somewhere around 18% of our life as extra energy shield which is then scaled by our increased energy shield giving us around 36-45% of our life as extra energy shield and healing our shield for 18% of our life as well.

Due to the nature of our damage physical reflect is only a minor issue and elemental reflect is mostly insignificant(save for 1 too many stolen elemental damage buffs from Inspired Learning)

LABYRINTH/TRIAL TIP


When running trap sections in labyrinths or Trials I drop grace and discipline so that the Dragon Jooce heals more ES per second and makes surviving traps much easier, with the Profane Chemistry Notable we heal all our life after each dragon jooce with a Panicked Divine Life Flask which means almost 2000 ES per second when we really need it.

BLOOD MAGIC VERSION



I have recently had some success with a blood magic version which skips out on the flask nodes beneath the scion to pick up blood magic, the advantages of this are
+ you can use a 6L if you choose
+ you can use the Clear Mind Jewel which grants up to 60% increased spell damage when no mana is reserved
+ you gain extra life regen, damage and attack/cast speed from the vitality aura.

The disadvantages are
-You lose 1 sip of each flask.
-You lose some duration on your poison and Spirit Offering.
-Slightly tougher to do the labyrinth
-ES Recharge doesn't start while whirling/casting

both versions are on par with each other in terms of clear speed and the gear is the same(except not needing the Vertex).

Ethereal Knives Blood Magic Tree

It is however worth noting that this doesnt really work well until you are in the mid 80s since we need to travel all over the tree.

BoE
(BoE)skill=Blade+Vortex;skill=Bladefall;skill=Ethereal+Knives;item=Ming's+Heart;item=Bino's+Kitchen+Knife;item=Coruscating+Elixir;defense=Hybrid+Life/ES;cheap=true;atziri=true;coc=false;crit=false;hardcore=false(BoE)

THE END



Last edited by codraziel on Sep 8, 2016, 9:27:41 PM
Last bumped on Jul 24, 2017, 11:33:39 AM
Playlist and details of Blood Magic version added.
Added Asstree and Palace runs to the playlist!
Uber lab run added to the playlist.
Should work just fine for atlas, the poison nerf shouldnt hit us too hard
I noticed this build because I am doing something similar of course. Necromancer seemed superior to Occultist in EHC 2.4 because of the extreme cost of Wicked Ward Synergy items. This character has great defense and stacking damage that destroys bosses.

I had a very similar concept in mind especially the huge ES/Health pool (because of crafting) for leveling. I had initially stacked Chaos on tree, but I finally understood that Poison Damage is 8% of Physical+Chaos and then your tree made great sense. I will try to do something lower DPS for Shield but this was a great resource.

Nice guide, brief, good video editing. Thanks for posting.
Last edited by kr4sh3r on Sep 12, 2016, 10:21:58 PM
"
kr4sh3r wrote:
I noticed this build because I am doing something similar of course. Necromancer seemed superior to Occultist in EHC 2.4 because of the extreme cost of Wicked Ward Synergy items. This character has great defense and stacking damage that destroys bosses.

I had a very similar concept in mind especially the huge ES/Health pool (because of crafting) for leveling. I had initially stacked Chaos on tree, but I finally understood that Poison Damage is 8% of Physical+Chaos and then your tree made great sense. I will try to do something lower DPS for Shield but this was a great resource.

Nice guide, brief, good video editing. Thanks for posting.


Thank you for your post! I too intend to work something out for HC, dropping the dual wielding aspect in favour of a rathpith seems the way to go. would love to know what you end up with and how it goes, I definitely felt like I could lose some damage and still be fine though.

Edit: oh, and BV is an even better option now
Last edited by codraziel on Sep 13, 2016, 6:50:51 AM
Did you took Ghost Reaver just for the Atziri Flask ?
Didnt see any other form of leech here?
This looks pretty fun to play, Do you think it will be able to handle Guardians? Since I think two of them are poison immune. Also think it could do shaper? :o
"
TheLumikko wrote:
This looks pretty fun to play, Do you think it will be able to handle Guardians? Since I think two of them are poison immune. Also think it could do shaper? :o


Poison immunity would be a considerable issue for the build since a lot of its power comes from its immense amount of double-dipped damage scaling to the physical spell, however its certainly possible to do it the "Mathil Way" by actually using your skill to beat them.

"
Did you took Ghost Reaver just for the Atziri Flask ?
Didnt see any other form of leech here?


Unfortunately this is one of those "Avoid the damage" type builds, we use Dragon Jooce and Spirit offering as our main sources of healing.

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info