[0.10.0] Scrangos' CI DW Dagger Crit Witch Theorycrafted

Disclaimer: I've researched a lot of builds that do endgame but have not done it myself yet. I believe this is the closest thing I've gotten to a build fulfilling the titles criteria. I'll update as I play my character, on hardcore. May as well put my name on it since every else is lol. /noshame

100 point Build:


Stats:
ER 0%
armor +242% of base evasion with frenzy charges up
plus +40% of armor
ES +170%
res +20%
block 31% total
+16% mana
2% phys>mana

122% Increased physical with daggers and dual wielding
215% Increased critical chance
106% increased critical multiplier
poison on crit for 10% dmg dealth per sec
81% increased attack speed with frenzy charges up
30% more ice damage (translates to about 9% more physical dmg as ice with hatred)

More offensive version:



CI + BRage + Max 7 Frenzy + DualStrike + GR + More Melee damage on full life.


I have not been able to figure out if going for Iron Reflexes is better than the Double Range Avoidance passive alongside a Stoneskin Flask. Main question is how Evasion and Armor interact with each other for mitigation. Armor scales with damage per swing, being less effective per point the bigger the hit. Evasion with accuracy. Without monster values its hard to evaluate. With armor and the extreme attack speed, Blind would work well if things didn't die in a few hits anyway.


The build is meant to use as many auras as you can fit from Hatred, Discipline, Grace and Purity (3 at best). The build is also meant to run Enfeeble without Iron Reflexes (Less accuracy, and smaller hit means less chance of oneshot). Unsure for armor. Works well with critical weakness too.


Main attack skill is Dual Strike. More melee damage at full health will shine here.

AoE has a big gaping hole due to the lack of a dual wield skill that works with daggers. Options are:

Whirling blades - Desynchs too much to be viable.
Lightning Strike - High dagger damage base means good damage. Can easely get 30% more lightning damage.
Ethereal Knives - Gets boosted by hatred, base spell is good with fork. Might work well with blind. Physical should mean 2% phys>mana works with it.
Detonate Corpse - Teleport and snipe down big targets then explode them to kill the little ones, this is probably gonna be terrible. hatred boosts physical part.
Spelltotem + ? / Mine + ? - Grasping at straws here.

Many cases your just better off spamming Dual Strike with the extreme attack speed the build has.

Other Gems of note:
Whirling blades lv1 - Escape
Warlords mark - More leech, Endurance charges for defense and more juice for stoneskin
Temporal Chains - Easier to line up for one at a time DS. Slower swings. Longer Adder's
Vulnerability - More damage taken, easier to stun (DS applies as one big swing).
Stun - Due to DS one big swing application, this could possibly perma-stun.


For CI tips look for Invalesco's Shadow Guides.

Yeah I dont think pure ES would work. Thats why the build I posted takes DW block and evasion (or evasion turned into armor).

The idea is to wear INT/DEX gear with it. Im a little weary of going ER (thats why I turned it into armor with the keystone) since the effective health wont be all that high, one bad hit could oneshot if you rely on evasion alone.

Evasion has the advantage of avoiding crits more often than armor though, since a hit has to roll against evasion again to crit. And the double evasion vs ranged will leave you extremely avoidy against ranged. Spells cant be dodged though, or resisted by armor, and with no health and not having extreme ES numbers thats the real achilles heel I feel.

Ghost reaver works without CI. A third great advantage I noted for CI is the more damage on full life. More mods are multiplicative, so most melee can only get 1 "more" on a skill. Melee CI users can get 2 "more" gems.

One of the devs posted an aoe skill for daggers/claws was on the pipeline as well. So the future is looking bright.

Shadow would get more damage nodes but less mana/ES nodes. Duelist would end up terrible in this CI build would have a hard time getting to ES nodes. Ranger would waste a lot of nodes getting to the good stuff. (I tried em, though I wouldve played a witch anyway)

The stuff I posted has a lot of offense and is touching or 1 node away from a good amount of defensive nodes... Might be worth getting more of it in exchange for offense.

Oh, CI is mostly being stubborn for the coolness factor. That said a lot of my ES comes from the ER/ES nodes so in reality I cant change the build points that much... and without CI to cover chaos I'd need like 10 life nodes so that's gonna end in like 8 less dps nodes, no on full health gem and no blood frenzy.

But no I don't have experience with it yet =/ Working on getting myself but been busy.

My annoyance with lightning strike is that you could just be using a shield with it. Though the DW dps bonuses are around the highest in the passive tree.

Yeah CI nerf is definitely one of the reasons I don't feel like getting it. But maybe they will buff it or maybe when you have insane ES gear it becomes far more viable.

They actually nerfed discipline by half?? Wow...O_o How much did it use to give before?