[3.17] Bah's Elemental Rage Vortex Berserker | 20-30M Sirus DPS | Mechanics are for cars

Introduction



It's me again, Bah, who likes his hipster builds nobody else plays. Went 40/40 challenges for Archnemesis so I decided to share this build.

As they say in FFXIV, mechanics are for cars. Dead bosses don't throw any mechanics at you. I wanted to create a high-DPS build to delete Archnemesis mobs. It succeeded.

This build is based on snapshotting many buffs on Rage Vortex, and then watching it shred anything. Rage Vortex is a pseudo-slam, that consumes rage to throw out a "cyclone" that moves forward and hits multiple times for several seconds. The vortex snapshots all the damage mods you have at the point you attack, such as exerted warcries and War Bringer. Unlike typical slams, it scales with attack speed, thus not wasting Berserker's many attack speed bonuses. Redblade Banner combined with War Bringer makes it easy to max out and then spend Rage. Using an Anarchic Spiritblade (from Heist) as a weapon means we can convert 100% damage to elemental, and then leverage The Interrogation to get 100% crit on any endgame boss.

For defence, we run Determination, Molten Shell, and Tempest Shield.


Overview

Pros:
+ Very high single-target DPS with decent clear
+ 100% crit vs endgame bosses is fun
+ 95 max Rage means fast movement and attack speed
+ Can do any reflect
+ Inspired Learning
+ Reasonably tanky with many layers of defence: Physical damage reduction, Fortify, Berserk, Molten Shell, Block+Spellblock, high life recovery from leech/life on hit/recover-life-on-kill, Hallowed Ground, and defensive Inspired Learning mods.
+ You can focus on dodging bosses while the Rage Vortex does its thing
+ 3.9 Leap Slams per second to zoom across the map

Cons:
- Need to juggle Rage and Warcries
- Can't do "no regen" map mods without swapping in a mana flask
- Pretty expensive to complete. The gear I'm using cost 30+ ex in total.
- Clear speed is mediocre because you have to actually aim


Videos

The Formed in 40s
Uber Elder
Sirus final phase


Path of Building

Pastebin link: https://pastebin.com/AbpcC9U6

Yes I maxed out all 3 ailments vs Sirus, because that's what it really is like. You can check the Youtube video for proof.

Also for Rage Vortex, for some reason PoB can't automatically calculate the DPS when you set "Max Hit" on Warcry. So multiply the "Average Damage" by "Attack Rate" to get the DPS.


Pantheon

Soul of the Brine King to avoid Freeze and mitigate Chill.


Ascendancy

War Bringer -> Crave the Slaughter -> Rite of Ruin -> Aspect of Carnage

First 3 are core. Aspect of Carnage is just for a DPS boost.


Levelling

Until you have a good Spiritblade and Redblade Banner, you can use Kondo's Pride, with the "min 10 power" Warcry Mastery for Rage generation. This worked for me to mid-yellow maps.


Skill Gems and links









Gear

Hello brother

Great guide and excellent work here

Cant believe you have no answers

This gona be my build for 3.18 , thank you so mich for your work

Much respect

One suggestion as a fellow slam addict

On medium you can take “ mob mentality” as you have for charges with whatever else and if push to lvl 100 with extra points i would use 2nd medium with “ lead by example “ for free perma onslaught and “ warning call” for free perma 100% increased armor

Man i love your guide i im gone smesh the new uber ubers and make you proud hahah <3

would the new unique helm echos of creation fit in here with all the warcrys?

Ofc but this is no flavor of the month meta easy mode

You need know positioning and mocromanage rage , easy 8 buttons active kind of gameplay

Also need to aim the ragestorm no run and spam aoe

I have a question about Rage Vortex and Scorched, Brittle, and Sapped.

Rage Vortex, so Intimidating Cry counts for the Vortex duration, does that mean Secrets of Suffering also works the same? or does it go off each hit from the Vortex, so if you have 15 attacks a second each attack has a chance of applying Secrets of Suffering?


Can Scorched, Brittle, and Sapped go above E.g. Scorched 30%? so if I took increased Effect of non-damaging ailments would that go above the 30%.

Why not take Skitterbots and Elemental Equilibrium?

"

eldest-bike4 wrote:

One suggestion as a fellow slam addict

On medium you can take “ mob mentality” as you have for charges with whatever else and if push to lvl 100 with extra points i would use 2nd medium with “ lead by example “ for free perma onslaught and “ warning call” for free perma 100% increased armor

Man i love your guide i im gone smesh the new uber ubers and make you proud hahah <3

Thanks! Yeah, those are good cluster passives I considered, but in the end I didn't have enough points on the build. It's a L100 build already.

"

brushwagg_go_bur wrote:

would the new unique helm echos of creation fit in here with all the warcrys?

You can try playing with the numbers on PoB, but I don't think it's worth it. It's going to be a lot more expensive to find a good lab enchant, and you lose the huge crit multiplier as well as flat physical damage. The latter is very important on this build because it's 100% phys-> ele conversion, and the Rage Vortex gem doesn't add phys damage itself.

"

saizosol wrote:

I have a question about Rage Vortex and Scorched, Brittle, and Sapped.

Rage Vortex, so Intimidating Cry counts for the Vortex duration, does that mean Secrets of Suffering also works the same? or does it go off each hit from the Vortex, so if you have 15 attacks a second each attack has a chance of applying Secrets of Suffering?


Can Scorched, Brittle, and Sapped go above E.g. Scorched 30%? so if I took increased Effect of non-damaging ailments would that go above the 30%.

Why not take Skitterbots and Elemental Equilibrium?

From my experience, a single Rage Vortex reliably procs all 3 ailments on endgame bosses. So presumably, the sword independently rolls the element, as well as the crit, for each hit on the vortex. However, the buffs and stats you have (including Exert) are snapshotted and apply to all the hits. I suppose it's like Earthquake and Earthshatter, where it hits many times, but an Exert applies to all hits of the same attack. Rage Vortex is similar, except that it's hitting about 40 times per skill use.

No, Scorched can't go above 30%. Increased ailment effect is not the same as increased ailment cap. The latter is extremely rare; I don't know if it exists in the game other than Elementalist's Shaper of Winter.

EE is good but I just didn't have the points for it, and apply exposure through other means anyway, so it's not that big of a buff. Also, if you take EE, you cannot have any added elemental damage on your gear AT ALL, which limits your options. For Skitterbots it's simply the lack of mana.

Thanks for the reply, cleared things up for me.

A rather solid build you have, I'm running my voidforge version https://pastebin.com/A8AXfRUr which I made back when Rage Vortex first came out, it works, hopefully, this time round I can get the items I want to make it a beast.

What do you think about new Warcry helm instead of Abyssus?

I ran this build as a league start and got up to level 95 and will likely not go any higher due to dying to much to risky content. Nonetheless, I like this build very much. In addition, I like how you presented the POB with relatively simple gear instead of top of the line everything, which provided more realistic expectations. I killed all regular end-game with ease, but did not try out the uber uber bosses yet because I am not that strong mechanically.

With respect to the POB, I made some slight variations, partially given I only got to 95 so far and saw some potential for easy upgrades:

- Forbidden Unstoppable instead of Unbreakable, I really disliked being slowed down by all the debuffs being thrown at me with the new rare monsters so I gave up some defences for it. This also allows us to drop Brineking pantheon because we are unaffected by freeze, chill, and stun at any rage level. I swapped it for Arakaali instead for better protection against DoTs.

- Included Defiance Banner by taking the reservation passive after Champion of the Cause. For only 1 point we get a bunch of armour, but at the cost of two gem sockets: 1 for Defiance Banner and 1 for Life tap linked to Mark on Hit because the mana cost was too high. So this setup sits the hydrosphere setup in the way for more damage.

- I valued the recover 15% life warcry mastery over the remove ailment, perhaps switching to flame dash instead of leap slam gives access to both but less mobility overall.

- I went for the cluster jewel suggested by eldest-bike4 (lead by example + warning call), because your specific medium cluster was too expensive at the time. At level 95 it feels worth over having a single additional endurance charge and a jewel socket for the same points, but I did not make an explicit comparison.

- Additional curse armor + elemental weakness ring for easy additional damage.

- I did not include an inspired learning due to the lack of points.

- I tried to include Infernal Cry for better clear as a fourth warcry, but it seem to proc somewhat unreliably and kills you with ele reflect. Notably, Tempest Shield's damage is still reflected, but level 5 awakened EDWA takes most of the risk away nonetheless.

- With a hits cannot be evaded craft from Vagan we can drop accuracy on gear for better/easier gearing, but that requires a very good sword in the first place, which I do not have myself.

All with all, well done and looking forward to your next build :)