[3.3] The Dancing Dominatrix - The Dancing Dervish / DB Melee Necromancer (Atziri w/ AW (+video))


(Disclaimer: TDD can't be dual wielded)

Abstract
Changes for 3.3
You can now corrupt Two-Handed Swords with "Resolute Technique". This means it will always hit (but never crit) which is a huge damage boost.

Remember that while it's not manifested, the Keystone will apply to you and you won't be able to crit until it's active. This is a bit relevant to this build.
Changes since 3.2
None, it got even buffed by the Ascendancy Changes and the introduction of The Dancing Duo.

Spoiler
This build revolves around the Necromancer witch ascendency class focusing on dominating foes with the unique "The dancing Dervish" and then punching them afterwards on rampage with Doryani's Fist in the horde of minions you command providing a meatshield. It also has the potential to be used as a hybrid with AW as a bonus to the DB Minions so you can have the "90 Minions" achievement in a breeze. The hybrid version is Atziri viable.


Introduction

First a few questions.

- Are you kinda sometimes bored leveling up characters?
- Have you started new character?
- Are you a hipster?
- Are you bound by the few Chaos you have laying around in your stash?
- Are you SC?
- Do you not mind dieing occasionally?
- (Do you not care that you'll be most likely unable to solo ubers?) <- It's Atziri and Merc Izaro Viable at least
- Do you not mind your GPU howling of processing lots of entities?

If you answered at least one of those questions with yes, this build might be for you.

Concept

Spoiler
I've always wanted to make a melee witch but never found anything which would be fitting one because of the limited damage nodes for melee weapons in close proximity of the witch start. Then, after the release of Ascendency, a new hope rose with the Necromancer ascendency class. This hope was increased even further with the post adressing this unique:



My first objective was to reach lvl 59 to get to this milestone but on the way to there I noticed that it was just a unique to expand the army I would have eventually. Now it's not a keypart, but an expansion to the vast army I have at my disposal and a really strong one at that. (This 6 socket was only 10 chaos too because this sword isn't sought after that hard. Just, it's hard to get more than 3 blue sockets on this without vorici crafting, which is a contra.)

Noteable things about TDD in 3.1
TDD got a serious AI overhaul. It Cyclones hard now! (Before/After)

Since probably only like four people use it seriously, I got this TDD for 1 Alch or something.

A 6 Socket version is all you need because Manifest Weapon is an inherent Skill which gets supported by all gems in it meaning you have an artificial 7-Link comparable to Nhagamu's or Whispring Ice.

You always reach the Rampage State after just 15 kills now because it seems they kinda forgot to update that after Kitava encounters. I like it a lot.

It can also sustain itself in a bossfight now if it hits the boss in it's manifested form.

You can artificially create/keep up a rampage with the following two things since 3.1

Pro/Contra

Pro
+ Extremely fun to level as enemies are your minions and it snowballs from there.
+ Rares and their auras are yours to command.
+ Extremely cheap. (I invested maybe 12 chaos into this build and I can play Merciless pretty comfortably and mapping isn't a problem either. Nice clearspeed if you begin a snowball. Ofc you would have to invest a bit, like 30 chaos overall, to tickle all the potential out of this but it is by no means mandatory.)
+ The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
+ You basically scale with the map level as the minions are the level of the map.

-/+ You give away 6 sockets for The dancing Dervish but it itself is strong so it's pretty much even.

Contra
- You are melee and close in the dangerzone. Dangerous with AoE spell enemies
- You lose defenses as you cannot wear a shield and your gloves have to be offensive.
(Either



or



)
- You have to buy Dominating Blow from someone else.
- If you fail to start a snowball, you are pretty done.
- Your GPU might die on you.

How to Dominatrix:

How I leveled
I started out selffound and with a normal melee setup with Zombies as my first meatshields. I fought with them, defensive rare stuff and rare weapons until I found a fast one handend weapon from when I was always dual wielding. It worked surprisingly well. The zombies later recieved a melee splash gem and minion damage. This went on until I got my hands on Dominating Blow and Raise Spectre at lvl 28. I was lucky that I also found another good one handed leveling unique which increased my killspeed threefold or so... a bit... at least... Skillwise the Minion skills were priority increasing my zombies survivability and damage. I kept those 2 weapons until I switched to The Dank Dervish. I first only supported DB with Melee Splash and later Increased Duration. Culling Strike came afterwards.

Skillwise I first took the ES nodes from the witch right at the start, went to lord of the dead, up left left left , took the ES nodes there and went to death attunement over the damage side and left out the defensive minion nodes. From there I went down, took the strength noteable ignored Puppet Master as of now and went to the Potency of Will noteable aswell as the Gravepact noteable over the AS/CS side while ignoring the defensive side. After that I went over the Constitution Noteable to the Exceptional Performance noteable. After that I pretty much took every single minion node that was left and filled the res nodes in the south of the Scion, Faith and Steel in the north aswell as Cruel Preparation. I refunded some points to go to Melding and from there to Foresight for some survivability. Still not done though. Now I'm stacking health and ES.


Items


In depth Gear Description


This is mandatory. I got this for 10 chaos because it's 6 socket. Mind that they don't have to be linked to support "Manifest Weapon". In general, with 1-4 sockets, one of these costs 1 chaos since, well, nobody builds this. After a lot of Vorici crafting (If you aim for 3 blue sockets, use the "at least 1 blue socket" crafting option as it will cost less overall statistically.) I originally had Faster Attacks and Poison in there but since I decided to put Phys to Light in there, Poison doesn't hit that hard anymore and it has a fast attack anyway. I got lucky with the RRRBBB as Melee Damage has a more multiplier which is always better anyway.
Tl;dr Just put damage in there and look what works best for you.


This is needed because of the non existing phys damage I have on this witch. In this case, these gloves are literally 3 times better than facebreakers. You do miss out on the spell damage if you don't run any spells but the lightning damage is really nice on it. I got this for 1 chaos since, well, nobody builds this either. Edict of the Grave is a nice touch to this because those heads hurt a bit and explode afterwards to deal cold damage and make a caustic cloud.

NOTE
At lvl 59 I had Facebreakers as substitute. If you have Crown of Eyes laying around, you could keep using Facebreakers and stack flat phys damage and % phys damage on your other items.



I got this fairly cheap in standard and since I'm using Animate Weapon too, this helps. The blind is a nice defensive stat becuase you do have a lot of minions hitting which means the blind is bound to proc sometimes. You don't have to have this, a nice defensive chest is good enough.


This is pretty much "Endgame Gear" for me as it has everything I lacked reswise or ESwise. It was pretty experimental as I was just looking for a way to push through the 1 Minute mark for my Dominated Minions. You can also just get a Soulthirst or any defensive Belt for that matter. (This was around 6 C.)


Those are the boots I will be using for the time being. It has Chaos Res on it, getting it in the positive numbers on Merciless, +2 Skellies for the Weaponswap Singletarget setup, AR and ES and 20% MS for keeping up rampage. The 15% increased Strength is needed to compensate what was lost from the pair I had previously. You need some Strength to equip the skillgems and gear.


Since I am running around with Commander of Darkness now, I wanted to maximize what I could do so i got more slots for auras. I socketed Wrath into it because it reserves 50% mana and like this, nothing. (This was also around 6 C.)


To free up another slot for another aura I got this one. A nice touch are also the % Light res. The conc effect is kinda wasted on the socketed light golem but this is one of the if not the best golem for this build and the % life you get for your golem on this plus the +2 gives the golem a whopping 25k health.


I kinda was just looking for a way to free up a gemslot with a corrupted Lvl 8 Clarity Amulet but found this. It's really awesome as you don't take additional bleed damage the regen really synergizes with Zealoth's Oath from Geofri's. Originally I planned to just use corrupted Sidhebreath with miniondamage to buff my Minions but because they are plenty strong already, I went the more defensive route. You can have any you want ofc.


This will be my helmet for the time being because of the highly defensive values aswell as the +1 to all skills in there. If you think a +2 Minion helmet is better, I tell you no. The +1 also supports the Culling Strike, Increased Duration and Melee Splash aswell as DB itself. +2 to Minions Gems would only support DB and this would only result in increased damage on DB itself but not on the minions damage or duration. Still gotta work on the enchantments on this. If it's not verified it's because I'm trying to get a decent lab enchantment.

Weapon Swap


This setup allows for your minions to get Power and Frenzy Charges and empowers your Zombies for potent Single Target damage if your rampage ended and you can't get it up again in time. (Merc Izaro for example) Victario's Charity combined with Necromantic Aegis allows your Minions, including you, be permanently on 3 Frenzy Charges and occasionally 3 Powercharges too which is an awesome boost for them. (Combined with Warlords Mark you can even have all 9 charges on them from time to time.)
What those charges do for them (as seen on the wiki):
"
15% Physical Damage Reduction per Endurance Charge
15% to all Elemental Resistances per Endurance Charge
15% increased Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge
15% increased Cast Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% more Damage per Frenzy Charge
5% increased Movement Speed per Frenzy Charge
200% increased Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge
3 Maximum Endurance Charges
3 Maximum Frenzy Charges
3 Maximum Power Charges

Remember that Rampage with your dervish manifested disables your weaponslot which also includes your offhand. This means it's only useful if your Rampage indeed ended.


How to play
1. When you arrive at a new instance in a new game, get your desecrate out, summon those zombies and raise your spectres. (There's a guide somewhere here telling you in detail which Spectres are better than others or you can just summon what you want) Then get your Guardian and Golem.

2. Approach a pack of monsters (care if they are ranged AoE mages, they will fck your sht up) and hit them with your monsters together. Eventually they will submit and you can move on to the next pack.

3. Repeat step 2

4. Repeat step 3

5. ????

6. profit


How to play if your Rampage ended
If you are up against something where you can't get your rampage up and the enemy is singletarget, swap to Monti's/Victario's and Melee Splash and Vaal Skellies (if they are done already or can't be summoned anyway) to Fortify/Melee Damage/Added Fire Damage and Phys to Light.


Skills and Links
Disclaimer: Those are just the skills I'm using in the setup they are in. You don't HAVE to link them exactly like that because there surely is room for improvement.

Dominating Blow - Melee Splash - Increased Duration - Culling strike

This is your main attack skill. The Melee splash allows for AoE domination, the increased duration for longer minion life and culling strike that you have a chance to finish stuff and give them AND Dominating Blow a damage boost. I decided against more than those links because the mana consumption is horrendous with DB. Your minions deal most damage anyway.

Raise Spectre - Summon Zombie - Melee Splash - Multistrike - Minion Damage - Vaal Summon Skeleton (Singletarget where Vaal Skeletons can't be summoned: Vaal Summon Skeleton -> Phys to Light, Melee Splash -> Melee Damage/Fortify/Added Fire Damage)

Vaal Summon Skeleton is here to help you with bosses. Those + flesh/spirit offering melt act bosses and map bosses. I managed to kill Daresso first try with this. (I died too but my minions cleaned up). If you are in a 6L Setup like me, you can trade this with something to support your Zombies/Spectres like Added Chaos Damage or Phys to Light.

This is really not the most optimal setup since your Spectres are most likely Fire Curtains or any ranged mob. However, they do profit from the Minion Damage. Your main focus isn't on spectres either so this should be ok. While Zombies do have an occasional AoE attack, Melee Splash allows for more reliable AoE clear in combination with your DB. Again, if you are in a 6L Setup like me, you can trade Melee Splash with something to support your Zombies/Spectres like Melee Damage or Fortify.

Convocation - Flesh Offering/Spirit Offering - Purity of the Elements - Desecrate

Pretty self explainatory. Convocation is REALLY useful with this build.

Desecrate helps you buff and redirect your minions. If you desecrate somewhere, your minions run to that location and you can flesh/spirit offer the living death out of those corpses (revive them as zombies/spectres when needed too)

Purity of Elements is just fine to raise the res roof to the cap.

Since I'm missing some defensive stats I've decided to run Spirit offering. The DPS is slightly higher than Flesh Offering, however, you might lose some dominated foes because you can't hit them fast enough. Also, Facebreakers might be better with this if you want to deal most damage because you'll also deal more chaos damage when you're unarmed and separated from TDD.

Pros of FO:
+ More Movement speed (helps keeping up the rampage)
+ More AS to help keeping the dominate debuff on the enemy (more likely to convert them on death)

Pros of SO:
+ Significantly more defensive as you gain ES and resistances (You are Melee)
+ +% physical damage as chaos damage gained. (Minions are mostly physical and your Dank Dervish aswell. You also deal more damage before you rampage.)

Animate Guardian/Spell Totem - Melee Splash - Increased Duration - Animate Weapon

Just because. An additional meatshield with 1.2 k chaos DoT on death so far. Use Melee Splash and equip it with Asenath's Gentle Touch (Applies Temp Chains in an AoE and increases its survivability, shock duration on enemies and gives defensiveness in general), Dying Breath and Leer Cast to buff you and your minions aswell as survive a bit and increase the efficiency of the curses your dominated minions deliver as those mostly synergize with the monsters around the curser. I'm also currently running a Death's Oath on it to deal a bit of damage around the Guardian. However if you do this, make sure it has a way to compensate for the degen, else you gotta rebuy everything every few hours.

Animate Weapon was originally just a Brainfart to maybe help with stuff like Izaro. Turns out it's really fun because you can just have 70 minions up all the time. It's not like one AW deals a ton of damage but more that a bunch pack a punch and soak up damage/block enemies etc. However, the animating does take a little bit of time which means you might lose your rampage because of it or some Monsters to dominate. It takes time to adjust to this playstyle but it's fun for sure. You lose a Guardian but you can optionally swap him with a spelltotem allowing you to summon weapons automatically. You do lose some vendor stuff though if you're not fast enough.

Wrath

One of the few auras I'm able to run atm because the lack of mana I have at my disposal. It buffs me and my minions and can help to shock occasionally. Also, you get res out of this if coupled with Commander of Darkness. Since this takes most mana, I put it into an Essence Worm.

Summon Lightning Golem

For the extra bit of AS to get the DB debuff going and the free Wrath aura every now and then. It also has a lotta live for the purpose of Caustic Clouds on death. Helps to occasionally shock the enemies.

Dank Dervish

You would be lucky to have more than 2 blue sockets.

I thought about this seriously and finally came to the conclusions to socket it with Melee Splash, Multistrike, Phys to Light, (TDD's AI got updated and it cyclones almost uninterrupted so Multistrike and Melee Splash are useless) Minion Damage, Minion Speed and Melee Damage on Full Life (TDD seems to not lose life has a LOT of damage reduction and if you have minion regen, MDoFL works on it. (Normal MD too ofc) You can fill it with any "more" multiplier you want. Even Hypothermia if you have some cold damage.
NOTE:
I managed to get RRRBBB sockets which I filled with phys to light instead of the poison gem. It helps shocking occasionally. It's fast anyway so Faster Attacks isn't needed anymore.


Clarity
The third aura, which uses the least mana of all auras and gives the same buffs as a normal aura. I only leveled it to lvl 8 to not reserve too much mana. If you manage to get an amulet with a lvl 8 Clarity, you can use the skillgemslot for something else. It's generally just to buff the minions even further but not using the rest of my mana.

Weapon Swap

Spell Totem - Summon Skeleton - Minion Damage

It's to make additional Meatshields and Damage Dealers once the Rampage ended for good. Since you get + Skeletons anyways from Passives, this would be a waste not to use them too. I'm considering to selfcast them but I am hesitating.

SRS - Melee Damage - Culling Strike

This is for killing bosses mostly.

Skilltree

Skilltree up 'til now

Spoiler


Reasoning behind the points
Increased Skill Effect Duration: You dip hard with those nodes. Your dominated minions stay longer and your flesh/spirit offering duration is also increased

Dexterity is required to wear "The Dancing Dervish"

All them Minion nodes: Well, you're relying on dominated minions and they have a 1/3 dmg penalty. The minion lifereg aswell as the res increases the meatshieldiness of your minions. The +% Minion life is also extremely useful for one of the ascendency skills.

Necromantic Aegis: This passive is for the weaponswap setup to allow your Minions to generate Charges for themselves and you. I got it fairly late since I didn't bother with single target.


Ascendency Skills
It is extremely unlikely that this build is Solo Uber Izaro viable so the Ascendancy is finished at 6 points but it doesn't hurt to get 8.

First thing I got was Beacon of Corruption.

You might ask why not Mistreass of Sacrifice. Well, one of the reasons was to test the thing as I had no idea how or if it would work but I didn't regret it.
The dominated minions don't suffer a health penalty, thus their max health is the same as the ones you haven't dominated yet + the increased minion health. This means when a minion expires, a minion dies, you die and respawn or leave the area, the minions release a caustic cloud being useful even in death.

Mistress of Sacrifice is extremely useful for the duration buff and the AS/CS/MS you get through Flesh offering. Since I made normal and cruel lab consecutively, it kinda didn't matter which I took firstly. It's personal preference when you want your minions strong.

Spirit eater was taken as last skill. Since you use offering and have a lot of minions around but no auras and a disregard for your own life, this is the only thing left. The 30% minion damage and damage in general is really useful.

I got a rush through Uber Lab and thus got another 2 ascendancy points. I did not pick Flesh Binder but Commander of Darkness because i don't have + Zombies on items and my Weaponswap is Mon'tregul's Grasp which would result in 4% phys reduction. Commander of Darkness also allows to swap out the rings because all res from auras and buffs for minions.


Bandits
-N----C----M
KILL THEM ALL


Map experience with it up to now
Clearing a lvl 76 rare Residence map with enfeeble 2 High Templars with 30% increased life/25% increased AoE isn't much of a problem up to now, gotta test it more.
ATZIRI IS POSSIBLE! <- Picture Proof
Ele reflect is not a problem
Phys reflect is not a problem
Reduced Mana and Health regen, not a problem
Elemental Equilibrium rather helps than hurts
Totems, not a problem and they rather help than hurt too
Extra damage, not a problem
Extra crit, you gotta watch out, the thing is that you can still be frozen.
Increased Monster Diversity really depends on the kind of monsters but it helps rather than hurts you because... more monsters
Bloodlines help you
Beyond monsters you have to watch out for but it works out
Nemesis Mods are awesome to dominate, especially storm heralds :D (You can't dominate volatiles as far as I saw)
Shocking/Burning/Chilled ground no problems up to now
desecrated ground can be a hazard if not cautious
Cursed with Enfeeble is no problem
2 bosses is only a problem with certain bosses

Rogue Exiles I've encountered so far were not a problem except Antalie Napora with LA in a Vorici mission. It hurts if you stand in your minions and LA pierces through because you may not kill her.

Master missions are possible without much of a problem except particular Vorici missions and Vagan duels.

Hall of Grandmasters is pretty much impossible solo

Lab is possible to Merciless, Izaro takes a while though since DB doesn't work on his summoned stuff and you'll have to work with caustic clouds on minion death and Zombies/Spectres/AW you carry with you themselves.

More to test


Video
Normal Atziri Run

I would love to hear some feedback about how to better this video instead of you just disliking it. Playing and speaking is something I don't normally do so it's pretty choppy, my apologies ^^'


End
This has proven to be the best build I've ever built funwise and gameplaywise as I haven't got bored with it yet. There might be still some way to go but so far it's really solid. I hope this helped you to make something your own or try this out. A video might be on its way if I find either the time or the place (:^)).

GL, hf, Bye.
Last edited by JoBilly on Jun 20, 2018, 11:33:44 AM
Last bumped on Feb 2, 2018, 5:31:29 AM
Changelog

17. June 2016

- Updated/Reconfigured Skilltree to fit better and be more defensive
- Updated Items section, still missing some things though
- Updated Skills section, using Spirit Offering now instead of Flesh offering. Both still possible

19. June 2016

- Updated Skilltree
- Added Experiences

21. June 2016

- Updated Items
- Updated Experiences

25. June 2016

- Added a showcase video


3. July 2016

- Updated Skilltree
- Updated Items
- Added Singletarget Setup
- Reconfigured Skillgems
- Tidied up Post

6. July 2016

- Updated Items
- Reconfigured Skillgems

- Fixed up post and formated

21. July 2016

- Added a sidenote for an Animate Weapon Hybrid

28. August 2016

- Updated experience, managed to solo Izaro

15. September 2016

- Updating to Atlas, will take a while.

22. September 2016

- Updated to Atlas
- Cleaned up Layout
- Updated Items
- Updated Skillgems
- Corrected some mistakes

23. September 2016

- Managed to do Atziri
- Updated Experience

07. October 2016

- Added Video of an Atziri kill

29. March 2017

- Updated to 2.6, pretty much nothing changed except the chest which is completely optional though
- TDD got an AI update and almost just cyclones now

10. December 2017

- Updated to 3.1, pretty much nothing changed

2. February 2018

- Added 3.1 Buffs section

4. March 2018

- Added 3.2 Notes

18. June 2018

- Added 3.3 Notes
Last edited by JoBilly on Jun 18, 2018, 5:52:51 PM
How fast is the build? And how good is the clearspeed?

I got that sword today and accidently 6l it


=/
The clearspeed is pretty nice once the snowball is rolling, but gets reset pretty hard if you die. TDD doesn't have to be 6 L to support "manifest weapon" (you could run a setup with this to start a rampage but you'd lose a slot and a whole skill once the weapon is disabled). Yours also has almost a perfect roll.
If you got a 3rd blue on the sword what would you pick, also do you have a general leveling guide like take x keystone first then head to x?
This thing never ever ever died on me so I guess it's immortal during the time it's up. Supportwise I guess phys to lightning for AoE shocking every now and then. The AS of this thing is bonkers with minion speed, AS and Multi. I would prolly also experiment with innervate, light pen (since my aura and the golem provide some lighnting damage) or added Chaos damage for a bit of added whambammo and ES penetration.

Quite possibly, red sockets would be nice too for added fire damage, melee damage (dunno if this works) melee damage on full life (never seen it take damage, but also dunno if this works) knockback (just for the lolz though) stun (for extra safety)

As for leveling I went in without much thoughtactually and the defensive nodes were taken rather late into the game.

First I took the ES nodes from the witch right at the sart, went to lord of the dead, up left left left , took the ES nodes there and went to death attunement over the damage side and left out the defensive minion nodes. From there I went down, took the strength noteable ignored Puppet master as of now and went to the Potency of Will noteable aswell as the Gravepact noteable aswell over the AS/CS side while ignoring the defensive side. After that I went over the Constitution Noteable to the Exceptional performance noteable. After that I pretty much took every single minion node that was left and filled the res nodes in the south of the scion, Faith and steel in the north aswell as cruel preparation. I refunded some points to go to Melding and from there to Foresight for some survivability. Still not done though. Now I'm stacking health and ES while trying to find an Armour Armor with health on it.
This sounds very cool, I want this to work out.
"
TrueEdge wrote:
How fast is the build? And how good is the clearspeed?

I got that sword today and accidently 6l it


=/


That sword works with 0 links doesn't it? What a waste xD
Errr, your items now all show up as your 6s Dancing Dervish.

Fun build so far, I'm at Lake farming stage.

How far have you ventured?
Ye, I kinda fckd up when I tried to edit it with my phone.

So far I've managed to clear lvl 75 maps with ease but I haven't had the pleasure to get my hands on any higher ones. The clearpseed is pretty nice.

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