[3.24] 🗡The Nightblade🗡 Unholy Might : 100% phys converted to chaos

Here's a short video I made for fun :

- Lava Chambers turns the unrighteous to ash... (TO ASH !)

I've finally looted my first exalted this league. It was in Atzoatl, thank you Alva !
So I decided to buy some stuff to prepare for higher Blighted maps.

First, those two daggers :

20c and 15c. Be mindful that it's really cheap. Similar ones were sold for double or triple the price.

But after all, when it comes to trading, you gotta be
Opportunistic !



Fast daggers (APS > 1.7) are just what I love, because they are such a great QoL : Whirling Blades is faster, you get faster to the 6th stage of BF, you stack poison faster etc.

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Ofc, I wanted had to test these little beauties. And my target of choice was the Elder. Coz bastard is just ugly.
With the dark tortured electro of Perturbator as soundtrack, this is even better :
#12 : T10 Elder

(If you've followed my videos in 3.7, you'll notice the return of the infamous taunting squid !)

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Then I decided to craft a new body armour.

First, I bought a 6-link EVA-based one, with high item level (82), so as to get high mods tiers. 45c.
Put 20%q with Armourer Scraps, then Perfect Fossil (6c) to improve it. Got 29% and decided to settle for it.
Then I tried Encrusted (2c) : got a white socket and 5 green. I needed other colours but didn't want to spam so I gave up the idea of a white.

Then an orb of scouring and we reach the crucial part : A Pristine (8c) for life mods, a Serrated (16c) in the hope of getting "socketed attacks have -15 to total mana cost". And as I felt filthy rich, I added a Sanctified (25c), to improve chances of getting high values.
Then you pray for RNGesus (there's no other god left in Wraeclast), you hold your breath and... wow.
Got an excellent one indeed.



The life regen can counteract a bit the DoT.
Only crap mod is the Thorn (reflect phys dmg to melee atkers), which only exists to block others.
But I wasn't expecting the awesome "maim support" that comes from Serrated.

And then, went to bench to recolor with "at least 1 red and 1 blue" and got two blue on first try.
Total cost of crafting : 102c.
This was my lucky day indeed.

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Next times : more Blighted maps videos.

I'm always trying to up the ante, so here is :

#13 : T10 Blighted Plateau.

I had my two rare daggers and still had the old armour :


Map is anointed with 2 Amber and 1 Sepia oils for 40% reduced cost of towers and 20% inc towers dmg.
Both rings are anointed with Clear and Verdant oils for 50% inc Meteor Towers dmg.

Meteor are actually much better as primary Towers : huge range, good dmg. Shock Towers are better as secondary support : enemies take inc dmg and then get wrecked by the Meteors.
With Verdant + Opalescent, you can get +1 Meteor/tower. Better but more expensive.

First msg updates

- Overview : links and stuff in league (up to lvl 91) and standard (lvl 95)
- New in 3.8 : more details
- Levelling : all 3.8 links
- Playstyle : more infos with Withering Steps
- Defense : detailed mechanisms improved
- Gems : updated. You can still find inconsistencies between league and standard for secondary skills. Depends if you can get a lvl3 Enlighten, if you prefer Pride, Blood & Sand or Flesh & Stone. If you self-cast Phase Run or not, if you want high level Precision or not etc. Make your choices ;)
- Options : For Pantheon, I now recommand Brine King at all times to avoid stun lock. One stun is ok but stun-lock is death.
- Crafting : Dagger and body armour explained.

All infos for the 3.7 version in the second message of the thread.

So I have been playing this build. It is tons of fun and one of the few builds I have played that feels like the theme it matches.

Couple questions. What is poisoning stuff for us for nightblade to work? Poison is very confusing to me.

Lastly my survivability seems very bad. From your videos everything looks ok so I am not sure what is going on. I left a copy of my POB if you have time. Understand if not as everyone is busy!
https://pastebin.com/vMvTE05E

Glad you appreciate the style of the build :)

First, poison and Nightblade do not have any relation.
Nightblade gives Dodge chance + crit chance + crit multi while Elusive.

Poison gives chaos over time dmg. The poisons can be stacked indefinitely.
Each poison lasts 2sec. But with the Noxious strike ascendancy, the more poisons you've inflicted recently, the longer they last : +5% duration for each poison applied during the 4 last seconds.
Say you apply 5 poisons/sec, that's 20 poisons in 4 sec. So the last poison you've applied and all subsequent ones will last 5*20 = 100% longer = 4 sec.

But it's true that this build does not use Poison for its dmg, contrary to all the cool new builds that use Cobra Lash, Venom Gyre or Pestilent Strike.
We use poison for its secondary effects, as given by Toxic Delivery : gain 20% of phys as extra chaos against poisoned enemies and +0.4% crit chance per poison on enemy, up to +2.0%.
So we just need 1 poison to get the 20% extra chaos dmg and 5 poisons to get +2% crit chance.
BF being a fast-hitting skill, that's very easy.

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I've checked your build : you may lack life, even though you already have excellent stuff (wow those cool daggers).
For your next levels, take the big life wheel. You can try to remove Aspect of the Panther for the moment and get Constitution instead.

Also, as you have a "-15 mana cost" on your body armour, try to remove Mind Drinker and take life instead. That should give you 4.3k instead of 3.8k, you'll feel the difference.

Finally, try to use Flesh & Stone in Sand Stance. You'll blind nearby enemies and take 5% reduced dmg from them thx to Silent Steps on the tree. And 10% reduced dmg from enemies outside the aura.
If you have too much mana reserved, you can use Herald of Purity instead of Pride, your DPS will not suffer too much.

Gl and Hf !

Thanks for the wonderful reply! I wrote Nightblade but I meant vile toxins, apologies. I am working on the wheel now, will try the suggestions. Will work on those suggestions and see where we can go!

Well, for Vile Toxins, it's easy : +5% more dmg / poison on enemy, up to 9.
So that's 45% more dmg with BF with 9 poisons.
45% of all dmg, not only chaos/poison.

How is poison applied. Just from plague bearer? I guess that was really my question. Sorry I still dont really understand things when it comes to this game.

Actually, with our build, every hit has a chance to poison.
Every hit of Blade Flurry or even Whirling Blades btw.

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Poison

Damage :

"

The base damage per second dealt by a given application of poison equals 20% of the combined physical and chaos damage of the base damage dealt which applied that particular instance of poison.

Say you deal 100 phys+chaos dmg on hit, then the enemy will take those 100 + 20 dmg/sec for 2sec = 140 total.
Imagine that the blades of your daggers are coated with poison. You physically hit and then you put poison in their blood, which do damage over time.

Chances to poison :

On the Ascendancy, you have Noxious Strike : 40% chance to poison on any hit.

Then on the tree, you have the two small nodes "Dagger dmg and Poison chance" : 2*10% chance to poison on hit with attacks.
So, on any attack hit, you got 60% chance to poison.

Now, those two small nodes lead to the notable Adder's Touch : your critical strikes have 40% chance to poison.
So, whenever your attacks deal a critical strike, you have 60+40 = 100% chance to poison.

> A non-crit has 60% chance to poison.
> A crit will always poison.

Say that ideally you have 100% crit chance, then you will poison on every hit.
But ofc, you have less than that. So you gotta know your crit chance and do the maths by weighting your crit and non-crit hits. But I'm not playing this game to do that, this is why I trust PoB to calculate it for me.
Go to PoB, "Calcs" and hover your mouse on "Chance to Poison", you will see full calculations.
This is why the Diamond is so good, because it greatly increases your chance to crit.

But as I've said, I don't rely on poison dmg. I prefer to kill on hit, it's faster. So I haven't talked about poison crit multiplier.
Besides, you can never leech on DoT, so that would be a problem for us if our hits were weak.

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Plague Bearer is another matter.
It does not hit, it's purely damage over time. Imagine a toxic cloud. It does not "physically" hit enemies. It slowly suffocate them.
First, you incubate Plague = you accumulate a stock of disease, based on the poison damage you deal with your skills. Your poison damage are reduced while incubating
Then you release the Plague. At level 20 and full charge, the gem will deal 1M poison dmg/sec to nearby enemies and it will deplete quickly. If you began infecting at 1M, it will deal 1M/sec until empty.
If you stop and start again infecting, it will deal only (say) 720k, because your "bag" was not full when you opened it.

Afaik, there is no way to increase the dmg of Plague above 1M with support gems. The only way is to raise the level of the gem above 20, with Vaal corruption or by socketing it in a stuff that has +x level to gems.

Now, things are clearer for me too :D