[3.7] Consecrated Path + Staff + Inquisitor

Added video and Image in last section


Sorry if my presentation sounded boring or long for some players as this is my first post XD...

How I ended up with this combo (Skip if you are not interested)
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I used to play Raider Cyclone but when all people just started using it in 3.7, it was not interesting anymore and felt like just another cycloner player to me so I began my search for another skill. I had my eyes first on Ice Crash because of the high damage on it, said to myself: "I will play Staff in 3.7 because it is the least in popularity among other melee weapons" or so I thought at that moment upon building the character and Templar was an easy pick; all staff specific points are around him on skill tree.

I wanted a 6 linked staff real bad to replace my Tabula, I thought going for Stormwall is the smartest thing to do as this will allow me to convert all my physical damage to elemental which has some benefits I will mention later in the thread. The problem with this weapon is the "Attack Speed", pretty sick low with 1.15 combined with Ice Crash which only hits with a speed modifier of 80% of attack speed; made me feel too slow.


In an attempt to save my efforts I realized I should search for another skill, maybe if I go for something else it will work out; second highest in damage was Consecrated Path. After reading about it I loved the idea of teleporting to the target, not only that but it deals 20% more damage to closer targets! AND creates Consecrated ground < this effect gives 6% max life regen per second to you and allies standing in area and 100% increased crit chance on enemies inside AOE.

To my surprise almost all my hits are crits, it was insane to the point I redesigned my 6 linked gems, thats where I decided to go Inquisitor because of 1 very important buff: All criticals ignore target's elemental resistances (why bother with penetration when you can reduce target's resist to 0?), other benefits are attack speed, damage and additional critical multiplier which scales our damage really well with staff and C.Path.


Pros and cons
Spoiler
Pros:
1- 1hit kills in t16 maps (insane burst dmg)
2- Crits like crazy (100% ignite, shock and freeze on crits)
3- Frozen spikers do not counter shoot spikes on death
4- Movement skill - kill on the move
5- Cannot be shocked
6- Insane block chance
7- Relatively cheaper than other builds with same dps

Cons:
1- Can be stunned or frozen
2- Burst damage on us can be dangerous (possibly kill us)
3- Depends heavily on 2-3 unique items


Pantheon & Bandits
Spoiler
Kill all bandits

Soul of the Brine King > Soul of Gruthkul


Skill Tree & Ascendancy
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Current Gear
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This is what I currently use, have over 5k life, max elemental resistances and over 40% chaos resist.

*Why Inpulsa (body armor)?
We shock on almost all our hits, we get direct increase to our damage and we are unaffected by shock.. plus the shock effect is really nice, lastly it gives us life too. HOWEVER, you can replace it if you want, "Carcass Jack" is equally good in my opinion.

*If you have a problem with Accuracy (hit chance), you may want to use this unique amulet; having a high hit chance is very important for a crit based build.. we dont want to miss our crits!!


*Why Stormwall (staff)?
This is a cheap fated weapon, just get a 6 link unfated 1, then do the quest to fate it. That was my reason at first but then I realized how good this idea was; it gives you great damage per hit (although naturally slow but nice crit chance) and it converts all your physical damage to elemental damage allowing us to hit all 3 elements with C.Path.


Flasks
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*Taste of Hatred can be expensive for some players but it is really just optional, you can go with any other flask of your choice. Silver Flask (Onslaught) is great or Quartz (Dodge attack/spell for more avoidance) or you could just use a Sulphur (40% more damage though the Consecrated ground effect is useless cuz we already generate it while using C.Path) but still a cheaper option than Taste of Hatred if you cant afford it.

*Rumi is a MUST have flask, 3k armor is already good enough and it also gives more block chance which we already have a lot being a staff user. I highly recommend using it.

*Atziri is a common flask among builds in general, it gives you chaos resist, more damage and helps leech more life. It is too cheap, just buy 1 no big deal.

*I prefer going with 2 life flasks for safety; 3 unique flasks are more than enough and we do not really need more effect from flasks. Make sure you get immune to bleed and immune to freeze on your 2 life flasks!


Skill gems
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Check the gem links in gear section, here I will explain why I use some of the gems so you dont go like: "Is this guy a noob?" you may be right still XD...

*If you are wondering why my current gems are not all at max lvl because I corrupted my previous maxed ones hoping for a good result before I lvl up spare gems so thats why, I learned my lesson so this time will wait patiently.

*Why use Shockwave Support (new 3.7 gem usable only with staff and mace)?
This gem was designed so that it gives an extra hit when you attack, this extra hit benefits from all you other linked support gems (some support gems do not work but I chose other support gems carefully so they all work on Shockwave support). Imagine Shockwave does more damage per hit than our C.Path hit, it is like you C.Path twice per activation!!

*Why Critical damage multiplier support?
I have a total of 429% crit multi with this gem.
You may be thinking why not melee damage support; it will work on our crits and non-crits, it is true but crit multi is more dps in my opinion. I am not good in math but for the sake of comparison, take the following example:

59% melee damage (with max lvl quality 20% gem)
100k damage gets 59k more damage

VS

118% crit multi (with max lvl quality 20% gem)
Having this added on our natural crit multi will give us 118k more damage if we crit the hit, now imagine I have 41.66% crit chance and 51.56% crit chance with 3 power charges +Consecrated ground and Ascendancy crit chance boosts (easy to accumulate power charges due to Assassin's Mark as aura) also do not forget Assassin's Mark gives us 20% extra damage on our critical damage.
Now imagine that you can actually get a crit on Shockwave Support as well so you got 2 chances to crit with a single use of C.Path followed by Shockwave Support; that is why I use crit damage support and not other support gem options.

*Why Blood Rage with Blood Magic?
Our mana pool will be reserved much for 3 skills, we want to frequently use Blood Rage mainly because it is a "Spell", casting a spell recently (4 seconds) will give us 50% increased attack damage from our Ascendancy point; thus a very clever way to refresh and keep this damage boost up all the time, Blood Rage does not delay you; it can be used much like a flask- meaning it wont stop your dps at all.. you can even cast it why "leaping" in mid air lol.

* Why Summon Lightning Golem? Why Ancestral Protector?
Like I said, our weapon is slow by nature, you will notice I took as much as possible attack speed from skill tree while going for other stuff in the same points e.g. attack speed and dex, AS and accuracy, AS and damage etc. Having those 2 skills helps a lot, I rarely ever use totem because I am fast enough; only ever use totem on legion sometimes? and always use it on bosses thats for sure.

*Why Frost Wall, Body Swap and Riposte?
Frost Wall is a MUST, it saved me in many situations simply because it will stop enemies from hitting you both melee or projectiles while you could still hit them with C.Path or retaliate and take a breather, you wont regret using it at all.. you will thank me seriously.
Body Swap can save you at times from AoE and stuff, if you feel it is not good enough or annoying with that random teleport (cuz its linked with Cast when damaged support) feel free to replace it with whatever makes you happy. Riposte does around 40% of our main damage for free upon blocking, again if you feel you dont want it just drop it for your preferred alternatives.

*Why not using Hatred or Anger?
Those 2 auras reserve a lot of mana, I found both herald of purity and herald of ash combined with Assassin's Mark to be greater damage than having less auras active along with Hatred or Anger.


I dont want to do exactly what you did, alternatives?
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There are many other options you could actually go for:
1- Using a different staff and taking the full fire convertion point on skill tree
2- Applying the same build but on a Marauder for a different Ascendancy, although I did not try it myself but it could work out well too.


Images and videos
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May not be the best I ran so far just woke up and decided to record it lol, had a T12 ready in inventory so I just used it for this vid. I will update it when the time is right.

https://youtu.be/IKPZxzm9icQ

Added Image below.

https://imgur.com/qYtkk0I
Last edited by ahm1687 on Aug 16, 2019, 3:36:32 AM
Last bumped on Oct 11, 2019, 12:24:14 AM
3 questions: Why 2 points over Alira (resists, crit multi and flat mana regen are pretty useful)? Didn't you consider another staff and getting conversion to ele dmg from another source (for example: Hegemony's Era provides more DPS - higher AS and similar crit chance, faster power charge generation and +1 to
max power charges)? Hatred over 2 Herald skills?
Last edited by reevall on Aug 13, 2019, 6:52:14 AM
"
reevall wrote:
3 questions: Why 2 points over Alira (resists, crit multi and flat mana regen are pretty useful)? Didn't you consider another staff and getting conversion to ele dmg from another source (for example: Hegemony's Era provides more DPS - higher AS and similar crit chance, faster power charge generation and +1 to
max power charges)? Hatred over 2 Herald skills?


First thank you for raising those ideas, 2nd sorry for the late response.

My honest opinion:

1- I always value 2 more points over helping any of the bandits, simply because it will allow me to get any benefit I want and not just the fixed bonuses from each bandit. That being said: crit multi is low, notice I have not invested in the 2 nearby specific crit multi circles on the skill tree, simply because we already have too much crit multi, if I would describe this character, I would say glass canon only difference that we are much more solid than a GC "but only because I did not go overboard with damage/dps nodes".
Do not forget that my calculation and example on crit multi was not 100% accurate because I forgot to calculate the added crit chance from consecrated grounds and the added crit/crit multi from ascendancy.
Resist can just be covered from gear and we do not really have a mana problem because we leech more than we spend.

HOWEVER, if you disagree and enjoy having Alira's buff then feel free to cut short 2 points for it, I suggest you drop out the 2 points invested in life leech, at my current lvl94 (over 75% to 95 XD) I am surviving only with 1 point in life/mana leech and no other leech source on me (0.4% seems more than enough with a crit multi build).


2- YES I DID!! That actually was bugging me for a long time now, I went time and time again thinking of changing my current staff to more dps but then I had 1 other concerns: How will I convert all my phy. dmg to ele? it may seem like a simple task but it requires some tradeoffs, I did not try yet but I may for the sake of boosting my dps further. I suggest not converting it by going full fire cuz that will prevent us from freezing and shocking enemies (also elemental equilibrium), Hrimburn unique gloves converting 50% phy to cold, then u will need added lightning dmg on a rare so you get shock too.

It is totally possible, If you wish go for it! (I completely agree with this).


3- We did not drop hatred for 2 heralds, we have Assassin's Mark as aura too. The reason why I dont like hatred is that it gives us a great dmg boost but at the cost of a high mana reserve. It is a matter of preference really. If you wish to drop an aura for another you may do so. Best will be using a rare with curse enemies with Assassin's Mark so that you can use hatred with 1 herald. I just thought 2 heralds are great because minions on Purity ups your dps by a lot; they are not bad as added dps, Herald of Ash provides a nice bonus for map clearing which is the explosion on dead enemies (added to the effect of Inpulsa), ALSO I focused more on boosting my fire dmg for "Ignite" to add on passive dps instead of going with Hatred. I was using Hatred and when I switched it out, I was killing even better murdering enemies much faster.

I say test and find your cup of tea in this matter.
Last edited by ahm1687 on Aug 16, 2019, 2:22:41 AM
With new BLIGHT 3.8 about to start for PS4 I think I would like to try your staff inquisitor build. Any updates to the build for BLIGHT 3.8?
"
kasey1948 wrote:
With new BLIGHT 3.8 about to start for PS4 I think I would like to try your staff inquisitor build. Any updates to the build for BLIGHT 3.8?


Sorry for the late response as I rarely visit forum, nothing changed in 3.8; build is valid and functions the same.
Last edited by ahm1687 on Nov 1, 2019, 2:23:13 AM

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