[2.5] Berserker Abyssal cry/blight build, pure chaos bomber, so much purple
This is a build I made as the breach league comes to an end, just for fun, I thought I was only making a gimmicky build that couldn't perform, but the resulting character turned out to be quite strong, so here to share with the community is this build guide.
Will be playing this for the legacy league, update when that character is ready.
pros and cons
Pro 1,great clearing speed, AOE can be insane 2,never worried about reflect 3,contribute well in a party, not just the damage, you run around slowing everything down and drawing fire from enemies gonna make you teammate very happy. 4,relatively cheap 5,more monsters means more damage, crazy good at farming breach and similar fights. also great at lab farming 6,abyssal cry = extra portable instant life flask on a low CD, very powerful, in danger just run away and cast waycry. 7,abyssal cry's damage is base on monster's life, so this part of the damage is always at a constant level no matter how high or low the zone level is. Con 1,certain map boss can be really hard, can't tackle all the content like meta builds. 2,guardians? will be challenging to say the least, do-able but challenging. 3,corrupted bloodline is very dangerous 4,chance to get one shot is higher, require good positioning 5,people might judge you for using a "crap" skill 6,you will hate boss with no adds
mechanics
offense
abyssal cry
We use abyssal cry to apply a debuff to enemy, when the enemy is killed, they explode and deals an AOE chaos damage to the enemies within a radius, explosion from different enemies with the debuff can add up or to say overlap, the damage in this situation is mas mas massive. The way I set up my character, each explosion can deal damage as big as somewhere between 70% to 80% of a monster's life pool (without boost from sulphur flask and wither totem, oh value is measured by sight), and we all know that in POE, each pack of enemies have the same amount of life, so for each pack you only need to explode 2 to "one shot" the whole pack, and certainly the more the merrier, even if you only manage to trigger only one explosion, all the rest enemies will be easy to kill anyway. Abyssal cry as a skill even though acts like a spell, but it's not a spell, the tag says area/chaos/duration, so you only have limited options for support gems. Also, this skill cost a ton of mana, but gem level only increased the slow effectiveness, so when use this skill for damage you don't want to level the gem at all.
blight
We use blight here as the bomb trigger skill, this skill deals chaos area dot damage, will benefit from all the passives and gear boosts we chose for abyssal cry. Like said above in abyssal cry section, we don't need to kill many with blight, but we do need to get the trigger kill fast, that's why we link the skill to conc-effect, not like general Aoe builds use increased aoe gem. As a matter of fact, we sometimes switch to increased aoe for single target boss fight to get some kiting ability, that's kind of funny huh. Some people say blight is a bad skill, that's not true, this skill has some unique characteristics, so it requires some special planning that's all, Pohx manage to level his occultist to lvl 100 with blight in BHC, I think that's quite a strong indication.
defense
Our defense consists three aspects Slow from temporal chains curse from the first layer of blight from wither totem in harder fights Chill(you don't need all of them, get at least 2 would be enough) from arctic armour from CWDT vortex from "xxxx of spite" lab enchantment from aquamarine flask life from higher life pool from decent life regeneration from leeching granted by berserker ascendancy passives you will get hit from time to time, this set of defense is to make sure we don't get hit several time in a roll Chaos damage, is also something you want to deal with, since with this build you get hit alot, over 75% is recommended. I got 135% which is chaos capped, and feels like I'm playing CI, even against chayula you are in no real danger, chaos res is really awesome.
gear
core item
increase radius, increase chaos damage, and increase duration are all perfect for abyssal cry, BIS. area is very important for abyssal cry, we want the overlap area as big as possible. BIS we use two curse-auras and arctic armour, that is 95% mana reserved, with an elreon jewelry we don't worry about mana anymore, it doesn't have to be amulet, could be a ring. rest of the gear go with high life, ele resist, chaos resist, cast speed if possible,pretty generic. enchantments we want xxx of spite on glove, I would say it's a must since chill is a big part of our defence , other pieces just get what you can.
budget version
breach of the council and carcass jack are not dirt cheap uniques, especially early in a league, but you can get around with this shortcut combo this combo can deal good damage, about 75% of the main build, certainly enough to start maps with, but lacking some versatility since you can't replace a built in support gem, also lack of resists. use this to farm dried lake or low tier map for currency until you can afford the core item.
flasks
the must-have flasks are seething divine life flask of staunching and chemist's sulphur flask of heat,I don't have one but have the next best thing witchfire brew helps alot in high tier maps, that's why I also use the overflowing chalice an aquamarine flask is also good for the chill ground effect, you can replace CWDT vortex with it.
jewels
best mods are life, chaos damage, area damage, damage, cast speed but those jewels are really really expensive due to poison meta, most likely you will be stuck with crappy life jewel like me.
ascendancy
going Berserker normal crave the slaughter cruel aspect of carnage(40% more damage) merciless warbringer(warcry node) uber pain reaver(leech)
bandits
life skill point or cast speed skill point
gem setting
abyssal cry + void manipulation + increased aoe, 4th link is life leech before finishing uber lab, and less duration after blight + void manipulation + rapid decay + controlled destruction + conc effect, 6th link is faster casting (or lvl4 empower), however using a 6l carcass jack you will have to move arctic armour somewhere, maybe replacing faster attack linked to shield charge, losing some mobility. shield charge + fortify + faster attack for movement, use leap slam for certain situation, for example in Uul-Netol fight you got so many obstacles on the ground you can't shield charge anywhere. wither + spell totem + increased aoe, 3L is necessary blasphemy + temp chains + vulnerability arctic armour, quite a big chunk of our defence, not replace-able, if you don't have enough unreserved mana, take that mana reservation node near CI keystone. summon lightning golem, take cast speed where ever we can CWDT combo, 4th link is vortex or vaal lightning trap. in weapon swap, we want a 6L bow crafted with deafening essence of woe, if you have the money get +1 gem level essence drain + void manipulation + empower + controlled destruction + poison, 6th link is slower proj or rapid decay, didn't test which is better. this is our range single target, for some difficult situation, like plateau boss, there's simply nothing to explode with and those totems hits really hard from afar
leveling
level as a two-hand melee character, it's quite generic, this is how I will do it. start with 1 or 2 cleave + heavy strike lvl6 switch to 1 or 2 cleave + heavy strike lvl18 switch to two hand sweep + heavy strike lvl33 earthquake + warchief totem, use blasphemy + warlord's mark for sustain, maybe a mana flask lvl40 earthquake + warchief totem lvl64 earthquake + warchief totem,this is when you are strong enough for merciless lab switch to abyssal cry at lvl 66 or later
example character
gear
jewels useful for this build can be really expensive, and it's end of the league, so I didn't bother with them just use whatever trash jewel I had.
stats at lvl92
6226 life 1155 mana, 57 unreserved 299 life regen per sec ele weakness cap chaos res cap 5L blight all gems at 20/20, each layer deals 6797 dot for 3.5 seconds, 7185 with sulphur flask , 7828 with both sulphur and witchfire flasks.
variations
occultist, going CI or low life, see pohx https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1790235, and I would say only berserker and occultist abyssal cry build make sense in this version of POE.
videos
plz don't mind the quality, computer is fine, it's the internet connection, I have to use a proxy to upload. T10 courtyard partial clear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csF2M0bTwAQ T12 vault clear, this is an example of undesirable boss, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eXF9TuxgfU T9 promenade with budget gear, ignore the part I try to do trial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcJ03_xH6yA Last edited by TravisL on Feb 24, 2017, 7:47:21 PM Last bumped on Feb 24, 2017, 11:20:32 AM
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