[2.6] The Death Knight, melee witch that delivers pain <Guardians+Shaper videos>

Not even death can save you from the Death Knight.




Introduction:
Spoiler
Hi, I would like to present to you my take on a melee Witch.
Seeing current builds (and some from earlier patches), I was dissatisfied to find out that none of the presented builds stand up to my fantasy of a Death Knight, Median XL style, and those that do, do not have enough dps or struggle with red maps.
So, I've decided to make my own build, taking inspiration from many other builds around. The build has evolved quite a bit and along with patch 2.6, passive tree has changed dramatically (for the better).

Build in its current state relies on poison damage and double dipping, so changes in 3.0 will most likely kill the build off. However, I already figured out a replacement gem and tree setup that while less effective, will still enable you to do end game content.

Thanks to buffs to claw nodes in 2.6 and some careful calculation of nodes, the build have been transformer from glass cannon, to more of a cannon.


How it works:
Spoiler
Scourge claws allow Minion damage to influence our own damage, and what's more, it double dips with poison. Since there isn't any other witch melee builds that can reliably farm end game content (apart from HoWa), I've decided to create this guide and help those, who want to build a Deathknight. Here's the gist of it:
- To synergize with Scourge's, we pick Necromancer ascendancy for whooping +145% to damage (105% from passive minion damage, 40% from Spirit Eater proc effect).
- Spirit Offering is used for additional Chaos damage added to our attacks and to help with resists on Elemental Weakness maps.
- Wither totem and Vulnerablity is used to further increase our chaos damage and poison.
- We use Ghost Reaver, Vaal Pact and Chaos Inoculation for leech purposes.
- Spirit Offering should have almost 100% uptime thanks to being in a CWDT setup. Desecrate is used to provide us with corspes during boss fights.

Whirl into a pack of mobs, Blade Flurry it to death, move on to the next pack. Easy gameplay.


Pros and Cons:
Spoiler
Pro's
- Very fun, fast paced build
- Non-meta, hipster build (not a HoWA, not a Shadow)
- Good clearspeed, can do all T15 and T16 maps with crazy damage map mods.
- Great in parties
- Melts bosses (amazing single target damage)
- Great survivability thanks to high leech
- Easy Shaper
- Easy Atziri
- Clears all Breaches/Beyond spawns without dying, ever (unless you lag/freeze like me, see videos to know my pain)
- Matches dps of Shadow variant, and is cheaper to gear at the same time.

Cons:
- Cannot do some map mods (physical reflect, blood magic)
- Some map mods can be very annoying (no mana regen) or much harder to run (no leech)
- It's not a 20k ES build, so cannot facetank everything, double flameblast from Uber Atziri will kill you and you need to dodge telegraphed attacks
- Build cranks up the damage with level and gear (if you are lazy 86-88 like me, you'll lose 22% dps compared to lvl 94, and even more with better gear)
- Hydra and Chimera both have poison immunity, so those fights will take longer then usual.
- Doesn't scale as greatly as Shadow with 100ex+ budget gear
- Socket starved for gems, needs careful planning and coloring of sockets


Videos:
Spoiler
What you won't see: White map runs showcasing the build. Real Death Knight doesn't run white T16+ maps.
What you will see: Corrupted maps, some with easy mods, some with rippy mods. Also potato laptop - Intel HD 4k and 4Gb of RAM with i3. Your eyes will hurt, and you will feel sorry for me playing on such specs. Plenty of slowdowns and lag ;(

6 link chest, level 89-90, Hatred passive tree:
Shaper - yet another Shaper run, featuring facetanking of golden balls of death while lagging.
Minotaur+Phoenix+Hydra+Chimera+Shaper deletion - bit less laggy then previous videos
Shaper - how easily you can kill Shaper with plenty of lag and game freezes. Gear changes since last Shaper video are in video's description
Chimera - Elemental Weakness, 30% more monster life, Monsters cannot be stunned, Hexprooof, 50% increased monster accuracy, Unlucky dodge chance
Vaal Temple trio - -Maximum resistances, Skills chain additional times, Beyond, Chance to avoid Poison
Normal Atziri

6 link chest, level 89, Grace passive tree (no longer recommended):
Shaper
Minotaur + Phoenix deletion - map mods in description. 9 second kill with hard mods and 5 second kill with easy mods respectively.
Hydra - Shocking ground, More monster life, Increased boss life (both mods together total +73% more life), Increased monster AoE, Monster skills chain +2 times, Monsters take less damage from criticals.
Uber Izaro

5 link chest, level 88, Grace passive tree (no longer recommended):
Overgrown Ruin - Vulnerability, Enfeeble, Elemental Weakness, Hexproof, Twinned boss, Extra projectiles and Chaining skills
Chimera - More monster life, Extra fire damage, Chaos/Elemental resistance, Chance to avoid Poison.

Path of Building - 110+ million dps.


Passives, leveling and gearing up:
Spoiler
42/123 points
You do want to invest some early points in spell damage nodes before you make your way into Shadow area. You will respec out of them when you decide to transition into BF.

63/123 points
At this point, you should have enough Regret orbs and quest rewards to refund spell damage nodes, and invest them into more physical damage.
Mortem Morsu or rare claws (easy to get 200 dps claw for 1-2c for level ~50) will last you till maps.
Other then that, get as much resists/ES on gear as you can.
You can still continue to level with Flameblast/Totems/Firestorm/other spell if you prefer.

96/123 points
Grab all neccessary damage nodes, ES, CI, VP and go for Harrier and nearby jewel slot, or more ES if you need it.
If you cannot afford Scourge claws (I couldn't with average price of 3 ex in first week of the league), double Essentia Sanguis provides a great alternative at this point.

Tree level 95For most up to date setup, check out my character in Legacy league.
If you have decent mana regeneration, skip Dreamer node.
If you have enough ES, skip some ES nodes near Foresight.
You can get Alchemist for maximum dps when you pop your flasks, or Force Shaper/Gemini for more stable dps. There's also an option of concentrating your poison damage even more, this can be done by grabbing Potency of Will.

Leveling uniques (great to have, but you can always use any 5L chest over Tabula if you can't afford it):
Mortem Morsu - will last almost till maps
Maligaro's Virtuosity
Ondar's Clasp
Rainbowstride
Goldrim
Skin of the Loyal
Tabula Rasa
Bated Breath
Belt of the Deceiver
Great Old One's Ward

"I reached maps and I'm poor, what now?"
- Get Shaper's Touch gloves - it's only 1c for some botched corrupted version or low ES one (prices have gone up since posting this, and hover at 10-15c).
- Buy or find rare ES boots and helmet with at least 100+ES and resists, also get 40+ ES on rings.
- Get one of many cheap unique claws - Essentia Sanguis is my top pick, thanks to block and additional ES.
- The Magnate unique belt can serve as poor mans Doryani's if you have over 200 strength (get those +30 strength nodes if you can, they synergize well with Shaper's gloves anyway), however you should be able to get Doryani's with weak stats for cheap.
- Corrupted Eye of Chayula shouldn't cost more then 2-5c, even quite early in the league.
- Get yourself some 200+ ES 5-linked chest - prices can vary from 1 to 5c for a chest that should last you till tier 8-11.
That should be your basic mapping setup, personally I didn't have much trouble starting my Tier 1-4 maps with only 3.5k ES. Just make sure your resistances are capped, and you have decent claws.
You might want to hold off switching to CI, and use claws with "life gain on hit" instead of normal leech - this will make your life pool able to sustain a lot of damage (but also leave you more vulnerable to one shots).

Your first priority when upgrading gear should be getting more flat ES - boots and rings are easy to upgrade. Once you start mapping, you should be able to afford some 130+ ES boots - get them asap.
Upgrading chest is more difficult because of additional cost of colouring - it's best to buy chest that already has desired colours. 450-550+ ES chest with some resists/5-link might cost you 10-25c early in the league, but will last you for some time until you probably start getting one shot in red tier maps (t12+).
After hitting around 4.5-5.5k ES, your next upgrade should be your first Scourge claw - save up currency if you have to, they will be expensive during first couple of weeks.
Next, a good idea would be to upgrade your rings/boots again. Try to break 200 ES mark on your boots.
After that, either get Atziri's Splendor with pure ES mods (640+ ES), or rare ES chest. Don't spend more then 2-3 exalted on it. Make sure you don't downgrade, and buy one that has 5L (it's not worth it to try to gamble with fuses yourself, if you are left with only 3L and can't map, you are screwed).
Now you should have at least 5-6k ES and run red maps without much trouble - try to run some white Guardian maps to unlock them safely, or save up your currency again for another Scourge claw, to get more damage if you aren't sure if you can do it. You can even try farming Chimera for another claw :)
You can also postpone getting second Scourge and invest into %ES on your rings - I prefer to get damage first.

Final touches are as usual - better boots/rings, getting 6L, getting better rolled Scourges and so on.


Bandits
Spoiler
Kill all - Attack Speed - Frenzy charge/kill all.
Frenzy charge is great for mapping, however, in some tougher figths there are no trash mobs (or not enough of them) to generate frenzy charges, so depending on what content you prefer to do, either get additional frenzy charge or get another passive point.


Ascendancy:
Spoiler
We roll as a Necromancer.
Why? For synergy with the Scourge claw, converting our additional minion damage as attack damage.
- Mistress of Sacrifice: Grab it first for "Your Offering skills also affect you". We use Spirit Offering for extra chaos damage and resists, allowing us to run Elemental Weakness maps almost stress-free.
- Commander of Darkness: +20 to elemental resistances, also 10% damage and 5% attack per aura. This ascendancy, and the one above, is what allows the Necromancer to match or even excel Shadow's performance. Getting those extra 60 total res is hard on the gear and can potentially cost a lot. If you get resistances from jewels, you lose other mods and damage. If you pick up resist nodes for just resists and not other bonuses, you lose damage. When you buy 150 ES 40 fire res 40 light res boots, you lose survivability, because Necromancer can buy boots with 20 fire 20 light res, but 180+ ES for the same price, allowing you to spend more points on damage nodes instead of ES.
- Spirit Eater: 30% increased damage, 40% increased damage if you consumed corpse withing last 4 seconds and 2% attack speed for each corpse consumed. Great synergy with Desecrate and Spirit Offering.
- For our last 2 points, we pick up both small nodes instead of getting either Flesh Binder/Beacon of Corruption. Flesh Binder is useless for us and additional damage from Beacon of Corruption is situational and unreliable. Also, two 15% Minion damage nodes work with our physical damage, scaling our chaos and fire damage, while small chaos damage from the Beacon of Corruption can only increase a portion of our damage.


Gear:
Spoiler
Legacy gear (23/04/17 - Hatred setup):


- Thanks to "Increases and reductions to Minion damage also affect you" from Scourge claws, we get +140% global damage to our attacks, and what's more, this damage double dips our poison. Cost: 40c each, or 10c for low roll budget option (or up to 3 exalted if it is a start of the new league).

- Abyssus almost doubles our total dps. Try to get one with lower increase to damage taken and more crit multi. Cost: around 10-40c, depending on rolls. One with Arctic Armour enchantment cost me 45c (update - now I roll with Spirit Offering enchant on a better base for 40c).
There are multiple enchantments that we can use: Blade Flurry AoE/damage, Aura mana reservation reduction, buff granted by Ice Golem, Wither duration etc.
However, by far, the best enchantment is "Spirit Offering grants +xx% of physical damage as extra Chaos damage". Almost the same damage as Blade Flurry enchant, but over 10-20x times cheaper.

- Atziri's Splendour is both a budget option and great mid-end game body. Very easy to color, try to get one with pure ES bonus or just any combination of ES/Armour or ES/Evasion if on a budget.
- 6L Vaal Regalia with high ES will be better then Atziri, but it's going to be harder to get (2/2/2 color spread). When your budget increases and you look around for a 4-7ex body, ES chest will be cheaper for same resists/links/es then pure ES 6L Atziri.

- Doryani's Invitation is a great belt overall, and easy on the pocket. If your other gear has a lot of resists, and have enough strength, you could pick The Magnate unique belt for even more damage.
On the other hand, if you prefer to top up resists and get more ES, buy a rare belt with ES and resists. Keep in mind that a rare belt that will outperform Doryani's in resists department (and then try to match damage or get even more ES) can be costly, as prices for such belts can vary from 40 to 200 chaos.
Cost: around 10c for decent rolls if you go with Doryani's.

- We are looking mainly for resists and ES on rare boots - we don't need movement speed, so buy one's without - save money and get more ES/resists instead. Unless you want to run Chayula, additional movement speed is not useful.
Cost: 20c for a decent pair.
Skyforth can be a good choice if you can afford them. Having 3 power charges will give you around 15-17% more damage without Diamond flask on, and 12-13% more damage with Diamond flask on. It also lets use use a rare amulet instead of Eye of Chayula.
Compared to rare boots, you will lose a bunch of ES and resists, so those are the mods you need to look for in your rare amulet.
ES, %ES, all res, single or double res, physical damage to attacks would be a good amulet to look for. Agate amulet is the best base you could get.

- Gloves are a great place for damage mods. We can get a lot of accuracy, physical damage to attacks and attack speed. However, if you can't afford anything fancy, just go with 150+ ES, some res and either attack speed or accuracy. You can craft either Minion Damage prefix or Attack Speed suffix on your gloves, depending which mod is free (attack speed is better).
Cost: 1.5 ex, or 10-20c for budget version.

Scratch whatever is written above. BiS gloves for this build are cheap ass 1-4c unique, Shaper's Touch.
With minimal investments in the tree, this gloves beat rare gloves in ES department and also damage - unless you get 240+ ES, flat added damage, 350+ accuracy and 12%+ attack speed gloves - but good luck with getting all that for less then 30 exalted. In other words: why would you ever spend 5-10 exalted on a pair that can be beaten by 1c vendor trash tier unique?
Rare gloves that can match Shaper's in performance will cost you an arm and a leg, or maybe even two. However, rare gloves come with added benefit of possible resists - so don't rule them out completely.

- There's two ways to go about stun mitigation - Eye of Chayula amulet or Valyrium ring. Personally I prefer the Eye of Chayula for 100% mitigation, as stuns can easily stop you from leeching and kill you.
If you can afford Skyforth's, you can increase your damage even more thanks to Power charges and maybe saving some passive nodes taken for mana reservation. However, it is entirely optional and high budget option.
Cost: around 5-10c for corrupted Chayula, 1c for Valyrium.

- Mods to look for on rare rings are (in order of priority):
Resists
Flat ES
Any stats you might be lacking (you shouldn't)
Flat physical damage/critical strike chance
Accuracy/attack speed
Open socket (great if you need sockets in general)
Mana regeneration (great QoL improvement, lets you spec out of Dreamer node in Hatred setup to save 2 points)
Cost: If you know how to shop, you can steal good rings on poe.trade for 5-20c. Total cost for my rings was never more then 5-20c + 1ex each eventually for the %ES craft.
Legacy Voidheart is a great damage increase at the cost of resists and ES. With it, you can drop Poison gem from Blade Flurry setup and replace it with Void Manipulation for more poison damage, or Faster Attacks for more front loaded damage/leech/damage against poison immune targets.

Skyforth and Voidheart:
Both options will increase your dps, however, I would only ever recommend to use one or the other. Voidheart puts a lot of pressure on your resists and ES, so do Skyforth.
Having both would mean low resists and very little ES. An option only for the brave people who want to trade -20% ES for +25-35% dps.

Alternatives:
If you are scared of running with only 7.5k-9k ES, swap Abyssus with ES helmet (Bone Helmet for additional Minion Damage works best) or one Scourge Claw for an ES shield. Keep in mind that either change will reduce you dps by as much as 50%. You could even replace Spirit Offering with Bone Offering, which will work better against smaller hits, but won't help you against one shots as much.


Flasks:
Spoiler

- Bleed immunity, Freeze immunity are constantly in our slots.
- Atziri's Promise is a very cheap but powerful flask, and we should always aim to get it first. -
- Lion's Roar is more expensive but provides us with even more dps.
- Taste of Hate is not recommended - ToH is expensive and doesn't increase our damage enough to justify its price in a budget version. We can get the same or higher damage increase from Atziri's or Diamond flask. Also keep in mind, that using ToH is not a valid replacement for anti-freeze flask - or any map with +extra cold damage will be a nightmare. That being said, if you can afford Vulnerability corrupted gloves, you can drop Witchfire Brew, leaving you with 1 free flask slot - in this case, using Taste of Hate is a good option.
- Vessel of Vinktar is also not recommended - we can not only get shock easily using Vaal Lightning Trap, we also don't need to get the shock immunity (which would necessitate removal of other unique flask).
- Witchfire Brew is a great flask to have - if you don't have Curse on Hit corrupted gloves, it is a neccessity, and boosts your damage more then any other flask.
- Ordinary Diamond flask is a great choice and is almost on par with Lion's Roar when it comes to increasing our damage. Get it, use it, love it.
- I've tried both Jade flask and Basalt flask, and so far defensively Basalt flask wins, period. If you are using Jade flasks because of my earlier setup in this guide, please change your flask for better survivability.
- Last but not least, if you do have a big budget and Vulnerability corrupted gloves, replace Witchfire Brew (or Taste of Hate) for Sin's Rebirth flask.
Cost: 10c for full set in the middle of the league, or 40c for full set with decent rolls. First 1-2 weeks of the league, prices will be much higher.


Jewels:
Spoiler

Stats to look for, in order from best to worst:
- Minion damage (double dips)
- Area damage (double dips)
- Energy shield (very expensive mod)
- Attack speed with claws
- Critical multiplier
- other Attack Speed mods (4%+)
- Physical damage
- Critical chance
- Chaos damage (mainly works with poison)
- Damage over time (only works with poison)

Note that both Minion damage and Energy shield mods on one jewel are terribly expensive.
So is Energy from Within jewel, which hovers around 2ex at the moment (and 15c in Breach lol). Fortunately for me, I dropped one from Chimera :)


Gems:
Spoiler
Main attack:

When fighting bosses, swap AoE with Concentrated Effect.
If on the budget (5L), use BF/Melee on Full life/Melee Phys/Poison as a base, juggling around AoE for trash and Conc for bosses.


Our movement skill and source of Fortify. We cannot link it with Faster Attacks, because we are desperate for sockets.


Discipline is a no brainer.
Hatred is great for more front loaded damage. You can also use Haste if you prefer, as it provides you with:
- more reliable leech (less, but more often)
- more poison damage
- small amount of movement speed (and faster whirling speed)
- around 2 more Wither stacks (15->17)
At the cost of some front loaded damage and much less tooltip warrioring.


This constantly recasts our curse fights, while Immortal Call helps with sudden spike damage (like Chimera adds). With Ascendancy, we easily get 0.8+ second immunity without any charges.


Additional accuracy and critical strike chance, both extremely important. If you have Vulnerability corruption on your gloves, put it in your Cwdt setup instead of Vulnerability gem.


This constantly triggers our bonus from Spirit Eater and recasts our Spirit Offering during boss fights.


This gives us steady supply of Frenzy Charges for more attack speed, more damage, life leech and increased attack speed.
With Abyssus and some additional skill duration nodes, Blood Rage can easily kill you if you stop to pick up loot and stop leeching. If you have it in a ring, just unequip it and drop it back into its slot to stop the buff. Alternatively, if you have it in your claws (much better option), just swap your weapon sets twice to stop its effect.


Source of shock, great damage multiplier for boss fights.


Wither boosts our single target damage, and is essential for tougher bosses. Faster Casting is better then Increased Duration, as you get pretty much the same amount of maximum stacks, but Faster Casting is applying them quicker.


We have 2 choices when it comes to our last bit of mana to reserve:
Arctic Armour is great for bosses you can chill (t15 and lower), but is still great even against immune bosses as it provides additional layer of defence after our Basalt flask and Fortify buff.
Herald of Ash is great for mapping in general, slightly increasing our damage, while ignites help to kill off any stragglers and let you focus on bigger groups of enemies.
My preference is Arctic Armour, as we have enough dps already, and additional mitigation helps a lot.


Vulnerability in Cast When Damage Taken setup
Put Vulnerability in one of your CwDT setups (Immortal Call). Together with Witchfire Brew, you should have your curses up almost all the time (altough not all the time, you can see in 5L Chimera or other videos, during minion phase the curse was off most of the time, and there wasn't enough mobs to refill the flask fast enough).
You could also get Shaper's Touch gloves with Vunlerability on Hit corruption, but those cost a bit - starting price is 1.5 exalted, but it's easily the best bang for buck. When you get them, drop the gem and replace it with something more useful (Vaal Discipline for Chimera smoke phase, or Vaal Haste for even more damage).


Stats:
Spoiler

Current stats (29/04/17 - Hatred setup) with Path of Building:
Flasked with conc:
Spoiler


Please do note that for this damage to happen, you need:
- Keep the totem up for at least 3 seconds (should always be up against bosses)
- Apply shock with Vaal Lightning Trap (should be used against all bosses)
- Attack same target constantly for over 3 seconds (approx. duration of our Poison)
- Have Spirit Offering buff (should always be up, the only time it may not be procc'ed is first seconds of Shaper fight)
- Have Frenzy charges (problematic, but doable depending on the boss)
- Spirit Offering must proc no longer then 4 seconds ago (+40% damage is based on "consumed corspe recently", this should be up 100% of the time against bosses who attack)
- Have perfect or near perfect timing on Blade Flurry (not that hard if you find your rythm).

However, real damage is higher, as my totem can stack Wither 15 times, not 10 (15 isn't an available option in the program).


Even tough it has been said that Path of Building isn't accurate, it provides us with rough estimate and allows us to compare it with other builds. However, I do believe that stats provided are real. Why?
Guardian of the Phoenix - 12 million hp.
Damage vs average Guardian at the time of the video - around 4.7 million.
Time for Phoenix to die in Forge video: 5-6 seconds (with no Vaal Lightning Trap - around ~3-3.5 million damage)
12 million divided by 3 million per second = 4 seconds for the kill, but! Remember that poison has to be stacked up first for the dps to reach its maximum, and Spirit Offering only procs on second cast of CwDT, unless you precast Desecrate first. Does that confirm Path of Building's accuracy? If not, it's at least very close :)


Damage presented in almost every build is NOT set up to consider reduced curse efficiency, increased resistances or shorter duration of poison etc.
Here is actual dps against end game bosses with my current setup (29/04/17):
Spoiler

Real damage is higher thanks to 15 Wither stacks instead of 10 (not an option in the program).


Boss tips:
Spoiler
Chimera:
Make sure you have your Blood Rage disabled at the end of each minion phase, so that you ES regenerates and you can take some hits in the smoke phase. Also, save your Basalt flask/Bleeding flask for smoke phase. Move around during minion phases, Goatmen jump or Snakes projectiles can hurt a lot. Vulnerability is the most dangerous mod, not only increasing damage you take, but also bleeding damage during smoke phase.

Phoenix:
Really, its a DPS check - you can kamikaze and end the fight in the first 5-7 seconds on easy mods, and 10+ on "65% chance to avoid poison" with other mods like "physical damage reduction" or "+% monster life".
Recommend to save your flasks for the second half of the fight, to finish the boss quickly as more of his adds spawn and it becomes more dangerous.
You could also kite the boss around the room and kill his adds using Inc. AoE gem, but I'm too hot headed for it.
While he channels his burts explosion, he reduces your fire resistance by up to 50. You can dodge it,
or tank through it, but if you want to do that you need 50 fire res over cap. Shouldn't be too hard to achieve with Spirit Offering. Tanking through his explosion is very risky on Elemental Weakness maps, unless you are seriously overcapped.
You could also swap your Bleeding flask for Ruby flask with burning immunity. That takes care of the fire resistance and increases your survivability (side note, I don't use such a flask as I'm too lazy, and I died a couple of times to burning damage AFTER I killed the boss - quite embarassing).

Minotaur:
ES/mitigation check. With easy mods, you need to have over 8k ES with Hatred setup to survive his slam or burrow. Map mods can change those numbers.
Still, its better to dodge both his telegraphed attack and burrow, former since it can shock you and the latter since it can hit you twice and kill you almost instantly (once while tunneling and second time on emerging).
Also, try to stay out of the area of falling rocks, as they can hurt a lot as well.
With certain level of gear, however, you can tank through most of his attacks and just get your kill in under 5-10 seconds, depending on map mods.

Hydra:
This one is easy but is also long, which leaves a lot of room for error. General tips apply:
- Always stay behind the boss and she won't hit you, ever
- Dodge ice cannoballs as much as you can
- Try to find her asap during minion phase if you don't want to eat her Fork arrow dealing quite a lot of damage
Also, it might be a good idea to get another anti-freezing flask instead of bleeding flask, as being frozen, while standing in front of Hydra who is charging her attack is not a good place to be.
Dangerous mods are most definately "monsters cause status ailments", and it increases the chance of you getting frozen, and with only one of those anti-freeze flasks, you won't have enough charges to keep it going all the time.

Shaper:
General tips apply:
- Dodge golden balls and teleport slam attacks
- Try to stay in melee range, so he uses his other attacks less often.
- Tank through the laser only if you have charges in 1 or 2 damage flasks (otherwise you might not have enough leech)
- Keep vortex orbs on the edges (so unlike I did brainlessly in my Shaper video)
- Dodge Uncreated/Unshaped slam attack as it will also one shot you
- If you've used any flasks during Uncreated/Unshaped fights, return to kill some more mobs for quicker Shaper kill


3.0 and double dipping nerfs:
Spoiler
We do not have the information about the changes yet, but we can already predict that we will either have to scale DoT (and have very low leech), or go pure crit physical or crit conversion route.
Luckily for the build, I've done my homework, and here are comparison stats of my current build and a theoretical one:
1. Current build (07/05/17 at time of writing):
- 9230 ES
With 15 Wither stacks:
- 2299k attack damage fully buffed, 885k without flasks (against Shaper/Guardian)
- 7245k total damage including poison, 2681k without flasks (against Shaper/Guardian)
- 2968k attack damage, 21095k total damage including poison with flasks (against normal monster)
Without Wither (you don't use it while mapping):
- 2382k attack damage, 11512k total damage including poison with flasks (against normal monster)
- 1000k attack damage, 4585k total damage including poison without flasks (against normal monster)

2. Build 1 (physical conversion)
- 2618k attack damage fully buffed, 1019k without flasks (against Shaper/Guardian)
- 4460k attack damage fully buffed, 1745k without flasks (against normal monster)

My build guides:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2180198

Taking a break from PoE, catch me up in Warframe: https://www.warframe.com/signup?referrerId=5b625847f2f2eb0ea0750322
Use above link for free booster when you sign up! :)
Last edited by Bristoling on Jun 3, 2017, 2:24:02 AM
Last bumped on Jul 25, 2017, 11:42:11 AM
Reserved
My build guides:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2180198

Taking a break from PoE, catch me up in Warframe: https://www.warframe.com/signup?referrerId=5b625847f2f2eb0ea0750322
Use above link for free booster when you sign up! :)
I've been playing for years and melee Nec is the closest to a DK I can figure out, too. Cheers and good luck!
Updated skill tree for 2.6 and loads of improvements in used skill gems.
Possible to get much more dps and ES with better gear.
My build guides:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2180198

Taking a break from PoE, catch me up in Warframe: https://www.warframe.com/signup?referrerId=5b625847f2f2eb0ea0750322
Use above link for free booster when you sign up! :)
Last edited by Bristoling on Mar 2, 2017, 8:17:01 PM
Hello!

I read through your guide, I would like to add it to the witch listing as you have requested, however I would like you to do me a favor and correct the title a bit.

Path of Building has a known issue of rounding numbers incorrectly. No build in-game does 10 million dps, grand spectrums included. I realize it's a small annoyance, but if you could please remove this claim or calculate your dps through any other means, I can add it to the listing with an accurate heading.

Cheers
Hot Flashes: poeurl.com/bPZT
Balance: poeurl.com/btzp
Shocking EleHit: poeurl.com/bZXo
Fun build am enjoying it. Thanks :D
Fuuuuu im try to make this build but im strugle at lv ~60... absolutely 0 leech.. idk what to do.. i know im the problem..
"
mojito000 wrote:
Fuuuuu im try to make this build but im strugle at lv ~60... absolutely 0 leech.. idk what to do.. i know im the problem..
By level 60 you should have taken Soul Raker node, that is 1.2% leech, you can also get another 1.2% from Blood Rage buff, it helps a bit.

Personally, I found that not getting CI too soon, and just playing a hybrid till you reach maps (or even early tiers as well) works quite good.
Your normal leech can go into ES with Ghost Reaver, while your life can be quickly replenished with any claws that have "xx Life gained for each Enemy hit by Attacks" mod.
My build guides:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2180198

Taking a break from PoE, catch me up in Warframe: https://www.warframe.com/signup?referrerId=5b625847f2f2eb0ea0750322
Use above link for free booster when you sign up! :)
Last edited by Bristoling on Mar 27, 2017, 3:10:22 PM
Added Chimera and Overgrown Ruin videos.
Fixed several typo's.
Added some additional notes in gear and gem sections.
Updated linked Legacy league equip.

Come one people, almost 20k views and only 8 replies (including 4 of mine?)...
No questions, feedback, suggestions? :P
My build guides:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2180198

Taking a break from PoE, catch me up in Warframe: https://www.warframe.com/signup?referrerId=5b625847f2f2eb0ea0750322
Use above link for free booster when you sign up! :)
Last edited by Bristoling on Mar 31, 2017, 8:31:45 PM
Hello. I just wanted to say i changed to your build at lvl 89 after playing strictly flameblast totems. I 'm having a blast. This build is so much fun. IT cost me about ~2.5 ex for all the regrets/gear but I am greatly enjoying this build.

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