HellRaizzer: Volatile dead done right

Hey all, I am working on a build and I would like to share it with you. I see another player has a similar build using the Witch Elemental. This build is different in several ways. I'm excited with the builds progress and Just wanted to share it with you.
https://youtu.be/jSh1oaZG7_c clip from my youtube stream.

Main attack Spell
Volatile dead + Concentrated effect+ Controlled destruction + Spell cascade + spell echo

Corpse Summons
Deerstalker boots+ Desecrate + Multiple Traps + Cluster Traps + culling
---------- This produces a very large number of corpses, The chaos aoe is very little damage but the focus is producing large numbers of corpses quickly. The culling however still kills mobs on low life. This just increases the clear speed by a tiny amount.

Support skills:
Cast on stun + Cremation +controlled destruction + Phase run

Utility skills:
fire golem (increased damage )
Devouring Totem (10% life/second )
Vaal detonate dead

Skill Tree Jewels:
Cheep construction: (+1 traps, -10% duration )
Chance to shock
Str +Dex
spell/fire/elemental damage of course

skill/item interactions:
Deerstalker boots ( trap throw speed + level 11 trap )
Sunblast belt ( reduced trap duration + End of duration trigger )
Three Dragons Mask ( Fire shocks instead of burns ) this gives a 20-50% damage bonus if you meed the requirements for shock.
Highborn Staff ( huge damage bonus for fire + free vengeance ) low end is 20chaos

Note, this build struggles with Str and Dex, other gear will need to compensate for this


Hope you like what I have so far. If and when I ever beat the game it will be with an original build. The max Stax poison barrage was a great build, but this one might be the one that does it for me :)

When using Desecrate with Spell Cascade you get 15 corpses, which is the max at any time.
A 2nd cast delete the old corpses, since 15 is the max.

Why do you think Trap is working differently giving you 25+ corpses?
If that is really the case (which i doubt), its broken and need a fix asap.

Is going Elementalist the right way here?
With Spell Cascade you are weaken the already low fire damage part massivly, you only increase the explosion damage part (because of numbers) which is purely based on monster life.

The influence of Elementalist doesent seem big and its pretty weak in defences.

I agree with you about some of your post. This is how I see it.

1) trap vs cascade
---- not all the traps trigger immediately.. some will trigger about 3 seconds after the initial ones trigger. This replenishes the corpses as I am consuming them. The end result is I get more without having to cast desecrate as often. In areas of high monster density I can cast even fewer as I consume the more recently dead.

On the down side- I have to have more skills linked to desecrate. This uses up an entire item slot and that may be a bigger issue in late game. For now its working out better for me.


2) Low defenses, yes witch blows on the defenses, but her starting spot is better and she scales her damage much faster and much higher. Even without the Templar elemental pierce skills she's going to do fine. Also remember the Templar abilities are a critical hit effect and the witch is going to do far more damage without bothering with critical hit mods by just straight damage scaling.

3) Damage scaling, The witch ascendancy add 230% to damage by itself. The highborn staff adds another 100% + bonus fire to spell. Add in the skill tree damage and were way over 500% fire damage. Volatile dead gains 120% from supports gems. Even if the fire damage for travel portion of the spell is reduced the 2ndary explosions are not. I'm putting out so many at a time the loss damage is compensated by the large number of orbs and explosions. The dragon mask adds shock which will also scale up the damage and increase clear speed. It's never going to do enough damage to shock bosses, but that can be done with a flask.

This is a strong build, I don't think end game content will be that difficult. The truth to that will be determined later.

You consume 6 corpses on a cast which creates 18 orbs.
It means you have 36+ orbs before you have to cast desecrate again.
This should kill any pack and more.

A new pack needs fresh corpses to start with anyway and you have to cast desecrate again.
All the struggle with traps, be it extra gems, extra uniques, less useful stats on them, waiting to have them triggered etc. is too much for my liking.

When i said Elementalist isnt probably the best choice for the build i didnt think about Templar, i thought about Necro. You can be incredibly tanky and The Scourge increases any damage quite well. You probably end up with slightly less damage compared to an Elementalist but i rather play red maps with a tanky build than a squishy one.

Dragon Mask isnt a bad idea but having a low crit rate means it will hardly shock. On top of that it gives no life or ES.

Two things

#1 why dragon mask?

The mechanics for shock are not solely based on critical hits...

For trash mobs you need to hit with enough damage to do 5% total life. This works outs to 60ms (milliseconds) of effect per 1% of total life. If you do not achieve 300ms total effect you won't get a status effect even with a critical.

When dealing with trash mobs this is very easy. Once you get more than 300ms of effect you roll your chance to shock. On a critical ( if you satisfy the 300ms ) your roll for chance to shock is effectively 100%. This means you will all ways shock as long as you do more than 5% of the targets total life in a single hit.

You can modify this with increased duration effects from jewels and items. But only to a maximum of 50%. IE.. 90ms / 1% of total life. For a boss this works out to 3.3% of the targets total life with a critical hit.

Voile dead + three dragons mask is never going to get shocks on bosses. Just isn't going to happen.

---However on trash mobs this will shock often and increase damage resulting in faster clear speed. For bosses you will need to shock with the finkters flask.

#2 Traps why?

Not all the traps go off at the same time, this allows me to cast more VD without stopping to cast Desecrate again. But the real reason is the Tinkers armor.

The tinkers armor yields 100 life and 50 ES every time a trap goes off. I can currently place 12 traps at any single time. That is a very large amount of healing (self healing even) that does not require flasks.

Witch Elemental is a glass cannon but but the item interactions with tinker armor and traps is a huge source of survival. Will I get 1 shot? sure, its bound to happen. But remember I am planning on using the highborn staff. That adds 20% chance to block? I'm sure the build isn't as squishy as you think. And when I do fail to block or evade, I have mind over matter to add another 30% to my life total.

I'm pretty sure the wording for Tinkerskin is "when your trap is triggered by an enemy"?
I like your corpse generation, but Unearth with GMP and faster casting will, after three casts, get you your 15 corpses (no limit though, and it's spammable).
With faster casting as well, you can drop the Spell Echo which is gimping your damage - drop Spell Cascade as well? That's two damage reductions there.

Thanks for sharing anyway.

"

FireAtWill wrote:

I'm pretty sure the wording for Tinkerskin is "when your trap is triggered by an enemy"?
I like your corpse generation, but Unearth with GMP and faster casting will, after three casts, get you your 15 corpses (no limit though, and it's spammable).
With faster casting as well, you can drop the Spell Echo which is gimping your damage - drop Spell Cascade as well? That's two damage reductions there.

Thanks for sharing anyway.

You are right, using Tinkerskin and Sunblast is a bad idea. Traps need to be triggered by mobs to get the benefits.

Unearth with GMP gives you 5 corpses, Desecrate with Spell Cascade 15, why would you cast Unearth 3 times when you just need 1 cast of Desecrate for the same result.
On top of that Unearth only produce Skeletal Archers which usual have lower life than Desecrate corpses. Lower life means lower explosions.

Spell Echo and Spell Cascade lower the damage of each Orb, especially Spell Cascade. But on the other hand you are producing alot more Orbs.
You need to look at total damage here, 18 low damage Orbs are still better than 3 high damage Orbs. You have to multiply PoB damage numbers with number of Orbs generated.

"

Xirce wrote:

Unearth with GMP gives you 5 corpses, Desecrate with Spell Cascade 15, why would you cast Unearth 3 times when you just need 1 cast of Desecrate for the same result.
On top of that Unearth only produce Skeletal Archers which usual have lower life than Desecrate corpses. Lower life means lower explosions.

If you were factoring in the corpse explosion, yes, corpse level would matter - I was looking at the angle of generating LOTS of corpses followed by LOTS of (3-at-a-time) orbs. Looking at his video, I'm sure I didn't have as much trouble or take as much time with the Kitava fight, but I may have been higher level than when he did it (playing HC, you err on the side of caution).

Anyway, like the description for Resolute Technique goes - quality, not quantity (or something like that :) )

Level 68, Just equipped my Tinker skin armor

https://youtu.be/TwleBeKYXu8

This Link speaks for itself.

Next item to acquire: Highborn staff, decent necklace and resist gear. I'll probably do the Labs before fighting Katava for the final fight.

I think for hardcore I would have equip the highborn staff as soon as it was available, I would have also grabed the extra block nodes for staves to the left of Templar. That's a lot of blocking and free power charges. I'm currently working toward the block nodes now. I was surviving on dps alone, but since I started mapping I see that the blocking needs to be a priority and developed more.

I've been looking through the other VD posts and there is a lot of variety on skill combos and equipment. I think I had the right idea with adding shock with three dragons, but there is a necklace that also does this and still allows for the Burning DOT. Taking the necklace and ditching the helm seems like the way to go. The wikki is not working for me right now, So I can't be more specific, I'll post another vid around level 80 when I have my build more situated and tested.

Big thanks to everyone who's checked out my Youtube page. I'm having a great time developing and playing the Hellraizzer. My stream is up to 4k views and I now have 9 subscribers. I think that's good for the beginning of my third month. I stream every day between 5-10pm EST (but not Tuesdays).