HowlingSlayer's Raging Army Scion // Cast on Crit Raging Spirits ~ Hardcore viable!

A dagger with the highest crit chance you can get. Everything else is ignorable. You can go after resistances and attack speed, but you don't need it that much.

That's the only MUST on the build. Everything else is up to you.


Not exactly a MUST, but really makes your life easier. Any 5L with the right socket colors would do just fine.


Again, not a MUST, but really increases your survivability, since you'll be spectral throwing for much further.


This item is amazing. REALLY amazing. Auras are very useful when using minions.

The rest is up to you, armor, ES, evasion, HP, resistances. "Whatever floats your boat, man".

Spectral Throw in my opinion is the BEST skill for Cast on Critical, since it hits the mobs two times (when it goes and when it returns) and also because you can shotgun enemies if you hit them from the right distance, giving you a lot of hits. Even more, it's ranged, so it's safer.
DON'T level it up. You won't deal any physical DPS anyway, it's just gonna increase de mana cost for nothing. And more, attacking reflect mobs deals no damage to you too.

Five times the amount of crits you would do. Simply insane. You don't need to level this up either.

Doesn't work on Spectral Throw, and that's better, it doesn't increase the mana cost. It just makes the raging spirits hit very fast. The main source of dps increase.

This is the gem you would be dropping off if you're using a 5L instead of a Tabula Rasa or a 6L armor.
Increases the Raging Spirits duration. On gem level 13, it increases half the time your fire skulls will be up. This means something like 1,7 or something extra seconds. Enough to really increase DPS.

Raging Spirits, your DPS. They are small, uncontrollable skulls that beat the shit out of enemies.
I'm still kinda foggy about them, I'm not exactly sure on some points, nothing that makes a big difference, but since they're out for so little time, I didn't try out some things.
They are "untargetable", this means monster will ignore them and hit you, party members, skeletons, spectres or zombies. Even so, if a monster fires an arrow or a spell, it is going to hit the skulls. This is VERY good, they are ignored when they should so they can attack nonstop and if there's a large group of firing-spells/arrows mobs, they are going to block everything.
Something else here, they don't have a "hitpoints bar" like anything else. Yes, they have a lifebar, but they are NEVER going to be 1-hit killed. They have something like 3~5 hp, this means they have to be hit 3~5 times to die. Until that happens, they'll have already lived their whole 6 second lifes (or 3,5 or whatever).
About their DAMAGE, this is the part where I'm not sure. They deal fire damage and are able to ignite enemies, but the ignite deals a quantity of damage so pitiful that I'm don't even bother with it. What I THINK is:
They have PHYSICAL DAMAGE that scales with Minion Damage (on the skill tree and in the gem) and when they attack, this damage is checked with "Elemental/fire resistance" and "Armor", maybe "Fire Penetration".
They can:
Have x-y physical damage and n% is tranformed OR added as fire damage.
OR
Have x-y physical damage and n-m fire damage.
I think that's it, I can't see how else their damage is calculated. GGG, GIVE US SOME LIGHT, PLEASE!
...
I'm really not sure yet, only time will tell how the fuck these minions deal damage, sorry. :(
Because of that, I use multistrike to increase attack speed and I try to "ignore" increasing their damage. Their DPS goes up just with attack speed in my case.
They are "ghosts". They can go through terrain, just like projectiles (Not walls). Closed doors, ramps... This is amazing. You can stay behind a door spectral throwing and your skulls will go through the doors and kill everything inside.
The skulls are very vicious, whenever they see any mob on the screen they rush to them like crazy.

GGG call those "Flying monsters". They've been added to the game with the "Summon raging spirit" gem. Maybe later on we'll have more flying monsters, this time as enemy mobs.

How to target the skulls:
Kinda hard, actually. If you spectral throw a rare mob, when the skulls appear, they'll target THAT mob, but they'll stop to attack any other mob in front of that one. I had a real bad time from level 1~35 with that, since i could just make a few or so skulls, the FUCKING NECROMANCERS would keep reviving everything and I'd usually get stuck on a necromancer x necromancer fight.
This is solved after level 40. You'll make so fucking many skulls you won't have to bother with focusing anything. The skulls will run over everything in the way.


Your tanks. They deal a good amount of damage too, but they are there just to tank.


Gotta be Tankier.


Reduced mana is a must in any build with auras, so no biggie.


Since your skulls have so little life, make them enjoy it! The good thing here is movement speed.


A Clarity gem. Since you spam spectral throw so much, you need one. I don't level up spectral throw, so the mana cost is 22 for ever. Then I leveled my clarity to 5 and don't intend to level it up more, since I don't need it.


Minions have very low elemental resistances. Very useful using one of those.


The damage on the skulls and zombies increase a lot when you are using elemental damage gems.

Unfortunately, Hatred doesn't work, since it's "weapon damage". Minions don't have "weapon damage".

Gems you might consider:

(This means I haven't tried them much, but they ~may~ work).

"

if you ever have survivability problems, switch increased duration for frost wall.
that will block the enemies, but ST can pass through, and raging skulls being airborne should be able to fly right over the walls

I'd say it's better switching Multistrike for Frost Wall. Then you have Increased duration walls too. I'm not struggling with survivability, but this idea is insane! I just think Frost wall on CoC is hard, because the walls are put sideways or not effectively. Still a nice idea!

Critical Weakness:
If you're struggling with crit chance.

Projectile Weakness:
Very useful, push monsters back with spectral throw.

Knockback skill gem:
Better than Projectile Weakness, but you lose a slot on your main attack. You push enemies back with both spectral throw and raging skulls. I tried it and it's kinda funny, the monster get pushed around to all the directions.

Summon Skeletons + Spell Totem:
Easymode, just drop it and monster fight an endless horde of skeletons. I prefer zombies, they deal more damage and are way tankier.

Desecrate & Flesh Offering:
It's AMAZING how much Flesh Offering increases in DPS. If you have 30 skulls out and use it, everything on the screen dies very quickly.
If you're using an offering, it's importante having Desecrate, because you'll run out of corpses to make zombies sometimes.

Freeze Mine + Cold Penetration + Elemental Proliferation:
Permafreeze everything on the screen.
For whoever that doesn't know how Freeze Mine works:
It deals NO DAMAGE, however it freezes the enemies "AS IF IT DEALT X amount of damage", this is said so that this X number can be used to put in the calculation for the time enemies are froze, that takes in realation damage dealt, target's HP...

"The finished skill tree"


Step By Step

I'm pretty low level here, normal mode Brutus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETpAAdKJr6s
From 0:00 to 1:00 I kill Brutus.
Then, until 9:10, just gibberish. After that I get to kill more mobs, if you're that insterested.

Level 40. The build is "working".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KjunvT3Px0

The importantant thing here is that I fight Merveil on 8:00 minutes. I'm kinda sad about that fight, I have a really bad time on her. xD
At that time I wasn't sure about my HP node picking and everything else, I had like 600 Hp on level 40.

Level 50. The build is working very well now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rpjtbLqF8M
13:55 I'm on the Ledge, i get to 50 raging spirits two times. :D

I'm going to post more videos and update this post once I do it.

"

nightblade157 wrote:

really like the concept, so gonna try it out. Couple of suggestions:

1. if they are affected by auras, the 2x elemental auras + aura effectiveness passives (which are mostly right next to ur passive tree) will give them an insane dps boost.

2. hav u considered going dual wand with barrage+chain and elemental equilibrium with cold dmg? You can reach 90+ crit chance with a 11-12% crit wand (which are not so rare to find), and -50% resistance to fire/lightning coupled with buffed wrath/anger wud be crazy good dps.

Not to mention that with barrage, u can attack really fast without having to worry about the attack speed of the weapon, and the chain wont affect ur minion's dmg.

1. I'm using elemental auras and the damage isn't increasing that much... I'm going to test further, but I added the aura effectiveness in the build.

2. That way probably i'd have to change the build completely. It's a completely different build. It ~would~ be effective, but elemental equilibrium wouldn't, the minions hit way faster than my physical damages would, even more being barrage, that is a very shitty spell for Cast on Critical (I say that because I tried already... twice).