Frenzy-like Spell

Recently I have rerolled my Ethereal Knives witch to CI, just for the fun of experimenting. So far I'm loving it, specially using Blood Rage to build frenzy charges. Very noticeable increase in cast speed.

However blood rage requires kills in order to get frenzy charges and, while this is mostly fine, when there's a culler in the party (power siphon wanders and magic-find cullers are quite common) I'm simply out of options.

I have enough free 4L gear to add alternative skills, but there's really no alternative for a spell caster.

*I thought, maybe, about using "CwDT-Frenzy-Additional Accuracy-whatever" combo or something of the sort to automatically build charges. Not sure if that'll be effective or even work, gotta test it.

i guess i have 2 suggestions on the matter.

1st: get the sharkskin unique boots called The Blood Dance. they provide frenzy charges on kills, balance out the life degen from Blood Rage, but most importantly increase your damage on low-life targets by 6% per frenzy charge. it may be a little hard to get a frenzy charge at the start, but after you get 1-2, you'll start doing more damage against low-life targets and make it easier to last hit them for charges.

2nd: get a bow or melee weapon in your second item slot and use frenzy to build up charges, then switch over your weapon sets. probly works well with my first suggestion.

Edit: though you're probly building frenzy charges for the cast speed, so the sharkskin boots wouldn't actually help...

Hey,

Thanks for the suggestion, mate. Even thought like you said those boots won't really help, alternative thinking is always welcome.

Because I am spec'ed into Chaos Innoculation, blood rage degen does not do any damage and it gives me a 100% chance to get a frenzy charge on kill. The way I see Blood Rage is as a two tier skill.

Tier 1:

- HP/Attack based characters get attack speed, life leech and frenzy charges, but the chaos degen applies. Low life builds are however very expensive to run effectively (Shav's pretty much mandatory).

- HP/Spellcasters get only frenzy charges, since attack speed and life leech do not apply to spells. Chaos degen applies.

Tier 2:

- CI/Attack based characters get life leech and frenzy charges, but not attack speed since they are always at full life. The chaos degen does not apply. These are quite popular.

- CI/Spellcaster characters get only frenzy charges. Chaos degen does not apply.


As you can see, Blood Rage does not look like a spellcaster friendly skill, motive for this decision unknown to me. In both tiers spellcasters get less benefits than attack-based for no apparent reason. HP/Spellcaster using bloodrage... better roll a wander?).

So spellcasters are getting the shaft from Blood Rage, and as you pointed out the only other alternative is to use an Attack-based skill (Frenzy), at the cost of DPS and not very effectively, since accuracy is bound to be low in most spellcaster builds.

I don't want to ask for a Blood Rage rebalance, since there are already plenty of "buff spellcasters" threads around. But a frenzy-like skill sounds reasonable, perhaps?


Edit: Made it two tiers, I think it explains the point better.