[3.0] VP DP OP - Dark Pact Berserker - New Minotaur Facetank Video

interesting, but without immortal call?

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BeneTleilax wrote:

interesting, but without immortal call?

Immortal call is less important now that Brine King exists, and Vortex is more defensive when you have 100% leech. We also don't generate Endurance charges, so it'll only last 0.6 seconds or so.

for stun and so on i have Kaom's Roots...ty for your answer!

I tried to read some comments but didn't find why atziri's acuity + MoM doesn't work, care to elaborate?

Also can this build solo guardians or shaper? I'm looking for the best end game dark pact build atm.

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Fimuli wrote:

I tried to read some comments but didn't find why atziri's acuity + MoM doesn't work, care to elaborate?

Also can this build solo guardians or shaper? I'm looking for the best end game dark pact build atm.

With MoM, enough damage will bring your mana to 0, stopping you from casting and therefore leeching. I was solving this problem with Lav's Spirit, which makes skills free for its duration (7 seconds). But it's also a mana flask, so it turns off when you get to full mana. Acuity gets you to full mana every hit. So suddenly Lav's only lets you cast 4 times in a fight, instead of for 28 seconds. Vaal Clarity didn't work, because we had no room for more gems, and I didn't like that it started empty and only stored one charge anyway.

As for guardians and shaper, I think so, but I haven't proven it yet. Reworking the build was a bit of a setback. My gear is worse than it was, and I'm down to lower tier maps than I was.

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With MoM, enough damage will bring your mana to 0, stopping you from casting and therefore leeching. I was solving this problem with Lav's Spirit, which makes skills free for its duration (7 seconds). But it's also a mana flask, so it turns off when you get to full mana. Acuity gets you to full mana every hit. So suddenly Lav's only lets you cast 4 times in a fight, instead of for 28 seconds. Vaal Clarity didn't work, because we had no room for more gems, and I didn't like that it started empty and only stored one charge anyway.

I remember you talking about getting a life:mana ratio of ~7:3 would solve this problem. Why won't that work? Sorry if I'm being blind here. :D

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RipleyScroll wrote:

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With MoM, enough damage will bring your mana to 0, stopping you from casting and therefore leeching. I was solving this problem with Lav's Spirit, which makes skills free for its duration (7 seconds). But it's also a mana flask, so it turns off when you get to full mana. Acuity gets you to full mana every hit. So suddenly Lav's only lets you cast 4 times in a fight, instead of for 28 seconds. Vaal Clarity didn't work, because we had no room for more gems, and I didn't like that it started empty and only stored one charge anyway.

I remember you talking about getting a life:mana ratio of ~7:3 would solve this problem. Why won't that work? Sorry if I'm being blind here. :D

It might, but even if it worked, it would have lowered either our health or our damage, still required two of the top 5 most expensive unique items in the game, and not been as good as the build that is currently up. I wasn't necessarily going to consider the new build the solution until I saw it was just straight up better.

Unfortunate, in light of my post explaining my motivations for this build, but that one obnoxious guy was right: 3M damage isn't all that much when you have magical christmasland gear. And gaining 500 health by dropping Kaom's Heart is pretty telling as well. I was so focused on doing cool things I wasn't doing good things.

I'm a little disappointed about losing a strong source of damage mitigation in MoM, so I'm trying to figure out some way to make our 8K life go further, but short of an even more unlikely perfect corruption on an amulet, I can't figure out a good way. Getting rid of AM isn't really a good option. Neither is getting rid of a ring, or changing to Witch (because then we'd need WM to leech, which begs the question).

That said, if we have to use Enfeeble and we can't get a curse amulet, Dropping a Ring and Haste for Doedre's Damning and Enfeeble is better than replacing Assassin's Mark.

I don't know man, I really feel you shoulda kept with maxing out the crit version and didn't listen to the haters.

I feel dropping MoM and just going full in on LIFE instead is the way to go. Get as much life as possible as it also helps scale out DP even further while adding in that additional layer of defense. Crit + acuity is great and it's that many more points freed up for more life on the tree.

I'm possibly going to try and still fit in CWDT + IC because porupines in groups still kill me. I could run Herald of Ice though to break them up instead but we'll see, still messing with things. I feel HoI in a non MoM setup is a good alternative as we have 0 mana issues without MoM. We could possibly run blasphemy + AM + Haste or HoI.

I followed your crit build and on a 5l pledge I've pushed red maps quicker / far easier then any other build I've tried since starting this game. I really feel you were onto something great and I see nothing but good things for that build.

For mobility I also got rid of flame dash. I hate flame dash, it's clunky and god forbid in a oh shit moment you move your mouse too far and it doesn't work to get you out. I switched it to a lightning warp setup with arcane surge. Even with the less duration to make LW smooth it's up 2-3 second which is more then enough for packs or to setup extra damage on a boss burst. I absolutely love warping into the middle of a pack and letting loose. Not only that but LW is like gods gift for running labs. It trivializes any traps.

In regards to stuns, we could use kaoms roots but we're pretty socket starved using kaom's. We do have enough leftover points to not take a few life nodes and instead take stun immunity if wanted. We're 5 points away which is a good tradeoff. I know with our huge hp (pushing 8k and I have lots of room in my gear to improve) we don't get stunned often, but we do still get stunned. And when leeching = life it sucks when stuns get through. I'm considering making the path to get it myself.

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RipleyScroll wrote:

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With MoM, enough damage will bring your mana to 0, stopping you from casting and therefore leeching. I was solving this problem with Lav's Spirit, which makes skills free for its duration (7 seconds). But it's also a mana flask, so it turns off when you get to full mana. Acuity gets you to full mana every hit. So suddenly Lav's only lets you cast 4 times in a fight, instead of for 28 seconds. Vaal Clarity didn't work, because we had no room for more gems, and I didn't like that it started empty and only stored one charge anyway.

I remember you talking about getting a life:mana ratio of ~7:3 would solve this problem. Why won't that work? Sorry if I'm being blind here. :D

It might, but even if it worked, it would have lowered either our health or our damage, still required two of the top 5 most expensive unique items in the game, and not been as good as the build that is currently up. I wasn't necessarily going to consider the new build the solution until I saw it was just straight up better.

Unfortunate, in light of my post explaining my motivations for this build, but that one obnoxious guy was right: 3M damage isn't all that much when you have magical christmasland gear. And gaining 500 health by dropping Kaom's Heart is pretty telling as well. I was so focused on doing cool things I wasn't doing good things.

I'm a little disappointed about losing a strong source of damage mitigation in MoM, so I'm trying to figure out some way to make our 8K life go further, but short of an even more unlikely perfect corruption on an amulet, I can't figure out a good way. Getting rid of AM isn't really a good option. Neither is getting rid of a ring, or changing to Witch (because then we'd need WM to leech, which begs the question).

That said, if we have to use Enfeeble and we can't get a curse amulet, Dropping a Ring and Haste for Doedre's Damning and Enfeeble is better than replacing Assassin's Mark.

Hi, it's me again. That's too bad you can't CWDT Wither. The Wither Totem stacks around 14 times with increased duration at the moment. I thought it'd be nice to get closer to 20 with a secondary cast.

Anyway. I haven't given up on MoM because I too love theorycrafting and I want to make it work. I've never had my sights on Kaom's Heart so I made a variant around that fact. And plus, Kaom's Heart sways the 7:3 ratio way too much if you are reserving mana. The only thing that sucks about a MoM build is that you can only really reserve mana for 1 thing as opposed to 2-3 things with non-MoM builds. Make your choice to miss out on many of the good options: Arctic Armor, Haste, Purities, Herald of Ice, Blasphemy curses, etc. RIP =(

Acuity is good for MoM, but I would use CWDT + Blade Vortex since it lasts a few seconds and gives instant Life Leech (from Vaal Pact) and gradual Mana Leech (from Pain Reaver); this with natural mana regen should be enough to mitigate the adverse Mana Leech effect from Acuity. You should also probably use Blade Vortex if you aren't at 7:3 Life:Mana. And also I would keep Vaal Pact because crit isn't guaranteed. I get around 30% crit if I use Assassin's Mark. It's better safe than sorry.

I'm testing out different things right now, but I don't think going both Life and Mana is a bad thing. I currently have about 5k life and 2.1k mana so I'm sitting at around 7.1k eHP with full resists. But this drops down to 5k eHP without instant Mana Leech from Acuity so I need to get that soon. The 2% of maximum mana per second default leech rate is killer, and all the increase leech rate nodes are way too far. Mana Leech Support gem is the only thing within reach that raises our leech rate. But I know if you stack nothing but %Life nodes, Kaom's will a crazy amount of HP, but don't you think 2k+ Mana added as part of your HP a crap ton too? And plus, you open up 6 more skill slots for auto-casting.

The things I've learned from this build is that damage is not a problem, and mobs of trash is not a problem. Only thing you need to worry about is having enough defense to not get OHKO'd by bosses. It's a shame you can't easily use a movement + Fortify combo while holding a staff unless you use Leap Slam or swap (really clunky swapping). The 20% damage reduction is really nice though. Enfeeble seems like a must if you are getting one-shotted.

My plan is as followed:

Pseudo 7-link Pledge of Hands with Dark Pact stuff.
Increased AoE and Item Rarity for farming.

Armor can be split in 3-link + 3-link for budget or CWDT strats: CWDT (Lv20) + Blade Vortex + Culling Strike Support and CWDT (Lv14) + Lightning Golem (Lv16) + Assassin's Mark (Lv17)
Blade Vortex is for the constant Life/Mana leech. I know you said Vortex is better for the cold, but that doesn't provide a passive source of leech, and chilling for the slow isn't that big of a deal for me at least. Culling strike is mainly for tough bosses that you wanna down quickly before things go south. Lightning Golem and Assassin's Mark aren't at max level, but the only thing we worry about here is the 9% cast speed buff from the golem and the 9% crit from Assassin's Mark (way too much DPS gain to pass up). The reason why Assassin's Mark is not a Blasphemy curse is because I only care to apply this during longer fights.

4-link: Wither + Spell Totem + Faster Cast + Increased Duration
This one is a no brainer. Faster cast applies only to the totem casting Wither, but not the totem itself, which sucks, but I believe the duration buff applies to both Wither and the totem?

4-link: Blasphemy + Enfeeble + Flame Dash + Faster Cast
Flame Dash as a mobility skill in fights is pretty good. Too bad you can't attach Fortify to it. Enfeeble is chosen because I suspect I will still get OHKO by bosses. Note that you will need +1 curse to apply both Assassin's Mark and Enfeeble.

4-link: Orb of Storms + Power Charge on Crit + Arcane Surge (Lv6) + Increased Duration
This provides more DPS. This is your only way to generate Power Charges during single target fights. 4 Power Charges means 8% more crit chance with Dark Pact and Orb of Storms. And plus you get an Arcane Surge every time you renew your Orb. Increased Duration also affects both your Orb and the Surge buff so that's amazing. Since this batch only supplies more damage which we have plenty of, it can be subbed out for something more defensive like Kaom's Roots if you'd like.

So that's my plan thus far.

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coaa wrote:

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Infernus2k wrote:

Hey guys,

so I rolled my DP Zerker today but I am having huge leech issues with bosses/rares so far. Packs and other stuff is really easy but I don't know how to kill bosses with this build. Currently I'm level 65 and going through act 9. for example the Basilisk which is has chaos resistances. I get close, put my wither totem spam DP and just die. It doesnt do a savage hit and otherwise I cant leech enough back. How do you guys handle those situations ?

I had the same problem. Until you get higher gems you don't hit hard enough to make up the life loss. You have to run blasphemy warlords mark to leech through single target. Your damage might still be too low to 100% it back but it'll be ALOT easier.

Thanks! That really helped alot. After hitting 69 I got myself a cherrubim's armour, now everything is a piece of cake.