[3.8] Ejun's VD Poet's Pen Necro | 8k+ life | For true gentlemen and ladies of culture

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ProgramTheHologram wrote:

I tried it with decent gear on std, its really not good, its pretty fast but the DPS is really bad compared to other builds. I really wanted this build to be good as PP VD is my favorite build ever but it just doesn't work :(

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Poet's Pen got a big buff in 3.8. Proc cool down went form 0.25s to 0.15. Bumping the default APS cap to 13.3. For APS calculation with CDR replace 8 with 13.3 and 12.5 with 7.5.

Nothing really changed for this particular build in 3.8 otherwise.

However Necromancer change made it, imo, by far the best ascendancy for Poet's Pen VD builds.
Here are 3 possible variants of necro builds:
1. Highest DPS (up to 3.8 mil for balls only) - https://pastebin.com/Ja6aTLJA
2. About 2k life more at a cost of 1mil dps - https://pastebin.com/YyFK9ZHq
3. Acro and a little bit more life, then #1 at cost of about 650k dps - https://pastebin.com/Ws7gz0vL

Use flesh offering fore more dps or bone offering for tankieness.

Can replace Zealotry with Aspect of the Spider(less dps, more defese) and remove Sovereignty cluster.

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Ejun wrote:

Hello, I'm Ejun and have played since closed beta but never posted my builds before.

NEW UPDATE!! SRS with Burning Legion is OP for leveling, level with this.
Find me at https://www.twitch.tv/kijar for questions

This is a build utilizing the reworked Necromancer ascendancy to become very powerful with a corpse consuming build.

Main buffs in 3.8

Spoiler

Necromancer is insanely strong for corpse builds
Desecrate doesn't have a cooldown anymore
Poet's pen internal cooldown lowered to 0.15 from 0.25 sec

Mechanics and Maths

Spoiler

The main mechanic that is exploited is the free casting nature of poet's pen VD setup with the new desecrate buff (no cooldown now).

Poet's Pen requires a lot of attack speed now because you only proc with one weapon with each attack. Especially now with the internal cooldown being lowered to 0.15 sec. This means you need 15+ APS to fully utilize the procs from Poet's Pen. This is no trivial task, but the new Nercomancer has a way to get around this issue!

Corpse Pact allows you to gain 2% attack and cast speed per corpse consumed recently. With my setup, this is 4 corpses from my desecrate Poet's Pen proc at a rate of somewhere between 10 and 20 APS divided by two and recently being 4 sec. This gives you about 2(%APS) * 4(VD) * 8(Attacks with PP) * 4(recently) = 256% attack speed. Keep in mind that this formula then can be applied again with an updated attack speed until it converges to a certain APS. This part will probably be calculated by hand when I get the time.

Not to mention that you always get the full benefits of Plague Bringer and Essence Glutton. This bring very good sources of shock and chill as well as mana and es regen. I'm not decided on Essence Glutton, may be exchanged with Commander of Darkness for Elemental Resistances to make gearing easier.

Path of Building

Spoiler

https://pastebin.com/XFiLYHBz

Skill Tree

Spoiler

http://poeurl.com/cygF

Videos

Spoiler

I'll update this section with build showcases and video guides when I've leveled my character and recorded some gameplay.

Potential Variations

Spoiler

One good option could be to use Spirit offering for the ES based on life for 2k+ extra ES. This ES could be sustained fairly well with Essence Glutton (about 6% ES regen) and some ES leech.

I used to love Pathfinder Poet's Pen VD with Indigon. That could be coming back with the new mana flasks which are not removed on full mana.

Closing Thoughts
Corpse Pact could receive a nerf in the form of a cap to the attack and cast speed gained knowing GGG from their policy on the Indigon nerf for example. Even with this cap, the build should still be good, but will be somewhat less effective. Feel free to try the build along side me and share your thoughts. I still have a lot of optimization to do on the build and I would appreciate the input.

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SlowJelly wrote:

why do you get minion nodes?