[2.4]Scourge Knight - Dominating Blow Max Block Necromancer



The moment I saw The Scourge I knew I wanted to make a build around it. It seemed like such a bad base to attach it to keeping it away from some solid skills, but it gave me a chance to play with a skill I would have never used otherwise.

The build is based around the new terror claw released in AoW and the Aegis Aurora shield.


Pros
-High survivability due to high block for physical damage and spells
-Affordable
-Great AoE damage
-Get to use and underrated and not well known skill
-You get more minions than just Floating Skulls

Cons
-Clear Speed dependent on minion in maps
-Chaos damage will shred you apart
-Can be rough against single target bosses or those without minions
-Can get kinda laggy
-Doesn't play well with builds that shatter or ele prolif burning

Why Witch?
I chose with simply for the huge amount of Minion damage that comes from the ascendancy tree. This frees me up to move around my tree quite a long way get down to duelist and focus on my survival and physical damage.

Sources of Minion Damage
-Necromancer Ascendancy 90% + 30% damage for us and our allies(minions)
-The Scourge gives us 70%
-Jewels give us up to 64% with 4 slots
-Glove Enchant for 15%
-15% from tree. You could grab another 30% at Lord of the Dead in witch, but i recommend spending those points to move forward in your tree.
-Dominating Blow 20% quality will give you an additional 10% minion damage. Dominating Blow says minions deal 35% LESS damage, this does not effect us because it is not an increase or decrease.

Add these all up including aura bonuses and we get a 294% global damage increase for both us and our pets.

How to obtain Max Block as a Witch?
We use the Aegis Aurora that has a 32% chance to block + 7% from tree + 35% from bone offering.
This leaves us at 74% and you can pick up that final 1% on a jewel or corrupted Stone of Lazhwar.

Now we are sitting at 75% block chance and stone of Lazhwar gives us 50% of our block chance as spell block. Bone offering gives us 34% at level 20 putting us at 71%. The remaining 4% can come from either Rainbowstrides or the Unique jewel Reckless Defense.


Why Bone Offering?
Reaching max block is the obvious choice here but we get a great bonus in addition to that.
When we manage to dip below our ES pool or take damage from chaos sources our blocks will also give us life back.

Passive Tree


Jewels
Spoiler
Jewels for this build are dirt cheap for high damage but will cost a bit more for max life and minion damage.


Gear
Spoiler


Flasks
Spoiler





Links
Spoiler

Main Attack

5L/6L Dominating Blow-Multistrike-Melee Physical Damage-Melee Splash-Minion Damage-Increased AoE/Minion Speed

Movement

3L Whirling Blades-Faster Attacks-Fortify/Minion Damage

You have the option of dropping fortify if you have enough physical reduction to add minion damage to help out those wolves you summon.

You could use shield charge here as well but I felt my attack speed was too slow to make it comparable.

Auras, Curses and Utilities
Since the introduction of Lockstep CWDT with desecrate and offerings has not worked because they go off at the same time before any corpses exist. I have been hard casting the offering and it seems to work just fine.

Auras


Multiple auras mean quite a bit to use because of the Commander of Darkness ascendency that gives us and our allies 10% increased damage and 5% attack speed per aura. As a bonus we also get 20% all res.
-Hatred or Determination/Grace
-Clarity
-Herald of Ash

I am still playing around with auras and want to try an essence worm and see if I could do both hatred and determination. As for curse I run an enfeeble currently because of my colors, but I plan on going with Temp chains.

Single Target
Ancestral Warchief-Concentrated Effect-Melee Physical Damage-Added Fire Damage
You will need a way to deal with bosses when your minions are all killed or as just as a way to speed things up. For this we use ancestral Warchief. Not only does it hit like a truck but we can also throw it down during AoE combat for a melee damage increase to ourselves.


Videos
Last edited by Koochi on Sep 25, 2016, 6:14:25 PM
Last bumped on Mar 10, 2018, 10:00:03 PM
Videos Added.
Slow clear speed, low boss damage. I think you could have done much more with "The Scourge" if you dropped dominating blow for something like reave and go for some poisonning (has both your minion and you would gain a lot for things like vulnerability).
I love the idea, but I agree with the above post. The minons dont really seem as involved in the battle, and I wonder how essences would help.

I think Ill try this, but with another melee skill.
GGG listens to its fans!!! Thank you!
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I love the idea, but I agree with the above post. The minons dont really seem as involved in the battle, and I wonder how essences would help.

I think Ill try this, but with another melee skill.


It's a Dom Blow build. If full speedfarming runs were the plan then I would use something else. Currently trying different ones out at the moment.
Just FYI, saw on Reddit that minion gems in the scourge affect the summoned wolves
Looks cool, I think the real issue here is that with dom blow you cant control where your minions go iirc, so they are basically just meat shields for projectiles that cant pierce.
Hi,

Just wanted to let you know i'm using this build in 3.0.

Currently lvl 81 and having the time of my life. It's so much fun to play around with rare minions and their auras.

Snowballs any map with no effort. Of course, single target is a problem... but tell me a build that doesn't have a weakness, right? Also, its a manageable problem. Once you learn how to abuse 150 minions to do bosses you can do great.

Only change i made is not using ancestral warchief and using a 4l for golem + guardian, then equip guardian with uniques that give +30% damage to me and my minions. The guardian easily reaches 75% block chance to attacks and spells, so he is naturally invincible.


Thanks for posting it. <3
Yeah in 3.2 I had this idea while staring at dominating blow. This gives me a nice start thanks.

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