Did I botch my build?

I've been playing a templar I had wayyy back when that uses max block, aegis aurora, and molten shell as its mainstay.



Something I didnt pick up on until last night is that advancing fortress is a weapon, giving a whopping 15% chance to block for sitting in your weapon slot. I didnt realize this, and allocated my passives accordingly, meaning I chose guardian ascendancy and specced passives into the duelist/range portion of the tree as efficiently as I could to achieve max block (74% with tempest shield)

Having 15% from my weapon would potentially free up my ascendancy (which is fairly lackluster aside from the block) and about 10 passives.

The inquisitor ascendancy, aside from having some really nice benefits for my damage output, can make me immune to ailments while on consecrated ground, which would probably solve nearly all of the weaknesses in my defense. Since damage over time doesnt trigger blocks and chaos damage goes through ES, it leaves me very vulnerable in certain situations.


I'm having trouble finding a reason that freeing up my weapon slot for something else could ever match the benefits of a new ascendancy and 10 freed up passives (or just 23ish freed up passives if I were so inclined).



I'm currently toying around with razor of the seventh sun and trying to use puncture or viper strike to increase my single target damage, since I mow down crowds but find single bosses to be a bit of a slog. Not really sure that's the best way of going about this.

btw, my amulet and boots slots are taken up by stone of lazhwar and rainbowstride respectively, as I need the spell block in order to sustain ES.




Any thoughts? I'm not too optimistic about being able to draw up benefits that outweigh the 15% extra block chance from advancing fortress. Any feedback?

If you already have problems with single target DPS, you want to switch to a weapon that has almost no offensive capabilities?

Well, the thing is that I don't need to be dealing my single target dps with my weapon.

Back when I originally made this build, viper strike did damage independent of base physical damage, which made it easy to stack high dps just with a rare dagger that raised the gem level by 3.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to fill in that gap, and it could potentially be via spells. I use fire trap to great effect, but it's not consistent enough due to the cooldown.

I've tried blight and essence drain, both of which seem pretty lackluster. Viper strike with my razor of the seventh sun is more effective but still limited. I'm tempted to try crimson dance with puncture, since it's only 3 passive points away. It's certainly possible that there's a spell I haven't tried that will outperform it.


Honestly the biggest factor for me right now seems to be the ailment immunity. I'm really not sure how anything will help my survivability more than that. With zandethus's cassock, I'd be guaranteed to constantly be standing on consecrated ground.

Even if you go spells, there are great weapons that boost spell, elemental, chaos, crit, etc. I really doubt you will get more out of it by using Advancing Fortress, but feel free to prove me wrong.

It takes up my weapon slot sure, but it frees up 10 passive skills that I can do whatever I want with, and it gives me the following benefits from switching ascendancy:

40% increased elemental damage
40% increased damage while on consecrated ground
75% increased crit multiplier
Crits ignore elemental resistance
Non-crits penetrate 10% elemental resistance


What I'd be losing from Guardian ascendancy pales in comparison. Hell, the 30% life regenerated every 5 seconds is literally the 6% regen per sec from standing on consecrated ground.



I'd love to be wrong and realize that I'm on the right path, but it's hard to imagine.

Well, do it in Path of Building first and see if it's worth it.

I've calmed down a bit since I realized that the inquisitor passive only prevents *elemental* ailments, so it wouldnt really solve my problems with bleed and chaos damage (though the regen from consecrated ground certainly would help)

Since I've been toying around with ways to deal single target damage, I ended up finding blade vortex (lots of skills have been added since I last played) and ended up trying it with cast while channeling.

I have a spare 5 link armor/ev body armor, so I was trying it with blade flurry, blade vortex, cast while channeling, poison support, and maim (I'd prefer vile toxins, but I didnt want to waste too many chromatics rolling the right colors). I also picked up a Taproot and switched my curse to vulnerability.


I was pretty shocked to find out that the AoE damage was... comparable to molten shell and the single target damage was a bit better, despite the fact that I have basically no passive allocated to support the combo. I especially like that I can channel it to stack and then move around to deal with stragglers. Not really sure what to make of this because I'd probably have to roll a new character and it'd probably work better with as much life as possible with life gain on hit. WIth more passives to support it, I'd get a longer poison duration, and chance to poison would go up from 80% to 100% which would be a pretty massive boost to damage. I dont have enough mana to sustain blade vortex on its own, or I'd just go with that.

Anyway, very interesting, but probably not a good direction for this build.



Next I'm going to try cast while channeling with elemental damage. Given that cast while channeling operates independently of casting speed, it looks like fireball is probably the highest damage I can attain and it has the added benefit of not requiring melee range for pesky "run around" bosses. I might test out firestorm because the base cast time is super high, and concentrated effect can make it a pretty devastating spell against single targets. Channeling spell could be incinerate or searing bond, but I prefer the freedom of being able to move in between channeling searing bond.

Searing Bond is not a channeling skill. You probably mean Scorching Ray. And yes, Scorching Ray is pretty good with Fireball or Firestorm. Can also try Flame Surge, if you don't mind the melee range.

Yes, scorching ray is what I meant.

I tried fireball and firestorm with concentrated effect, and both perform very well, which is a bit of a relief. The blade vortex concept is cool, but it's better suited to another build.

So this kind of confirms that weapon damage itself isnt really relevant to my build, and using my weapon slot to get 15% block is probably worth it due to how many passives it frees up and allowing a different ascendancy.

Guardian's stun immunity when you've blocked recently would be a loss, but I dont think it would outweigh the added benefits of inquisitor.

I just want to point out that Inquisitor's "consecrated ground on kill" is created not at your location but at location of the enemy killed. Yes, you could use zahndethus but except this one mod it is just plain useless.