Been trying to make a Vengence build the passed few days and i’ve honestly struggled. However, I finally found some success on Void Knight, with the way I have myself set up I get roughly 50% damage reduction at base with an extra 18% for Riposte hits, so all in all i’m fairly tanky. My tooltip damage is 30-40k, which is a lot for a zero mana skill but it could be higher… Much higher, and here’s why:
Vengence has the node “Essence of Revenge” which grants void essence on riposte. Void essence gives both percent melee and void damage but if you don’t play VK the void is well… Null and void, pun intended. So why not just make it so taking that node converts the damage to void scaling.? This would firstly just make the skill scale better as right now on my set up I get 310% void increase and only 98% physical increase (thats 212% difference), and secondly it would make it much more obvious to new players that this skill would compliment void knight. On that note maybe adding fire scaling too would help both the Paladin and Forge out.
I tried both Paladin and Forge before Void due to both classes having good physical scaling and defensive options built in but both ended feeling lack luster. I think Paladin with a few better items could have done okay but honestly now i’ve played it on Void, the echoes are a game changer for Vengence, it just needs void scaling to really make it shine.
I am playing a very basic Forge Guard vengence build with the new hammer the more multiplier helps a lot, I made mine a dual-threat ranged/melee combo that uses shield rush/bash combo to charge into packs then strike with a shield throw then if anything is standing then vengence the boss/rare down. Hammer throw is the ranged attack to give diversity and the ability to clear and boss. This build is my low-level mono farmer. It tanks Rahyeh blasts and pretty much stands in Argentus with up to 100 corruption. I use this to farm up items for the next build I decide to make. I do not feel it is a shareable build but I have seen vengeance mobs take themselves out. Armor Shread is a must and some sort of physical penetration will also help.
Using the same hammer on my VK, assume the one that gives +3 to Vengence is the one you’re on about, and i’m also running dual-threat with a crit chance/multi sword. Both my Paladin and Forge builds could do 100 - 150 corruption no issue when it came to mobbing but bossing was VERY slow due to the big hit damage options being in all honesty pretty bad.
The reason VK works so well and as I said is the echoes, echoes are really good with Vengence, plus VK has Erasing Strike which out of the all the big hit skills (Erasing Strike, Judgement and Forge Strike) the sentinel has, Erasing Strike has the highest DPS so that deals with my single target but probably wouldn’t be needed for anything other than bosses outside of monoliths if Vengence had void scaling.
Got my VK build to 200 corruption so far but doubting I can push that any higher atm until I get some better role rare/mystic gear gear and legendary potential versions of the few uniques i’m using (Renegade’s Will (obviously needed), Ravenous Void (must have for the build), Siphon of Anguish (x2) (also a must have for Doom) and Suloron’s Step (not using currently as I don’t have the resistance for it but the extra crit multi would be nice)).
The thing is that these types of builds are not going to be the big damage super killer. They slowly work down the boss overtime and can outlast anything thrown at them being tanky.
You say that but if we compare that to Rive, another zero mana skill which in your opinion should not be big damage super killer, it can do huge amounts of physical damage when scaled with ignite and can easily handle bosses on its own, so in all Rive is great at mobbing due to large AoE cleave and pretty good at bossing though you will have to source your damage reduction from items and class tree but since you’ll be killing things quicker it’s not as needed.
Vengence on the other hand is much tankier and can do mobbing well since getting hit is it’s thing so getting hit more means more damage but terrible at bossing since getting hit is it’s thing and most bosses either only do large hits every so often, have mechanics which won’t proc and bypass Riposte’s damage reduction, have attacks that hit multiple times but staying in such an attack will no doubt kill you, or straight up have one-shot abilities.
Adding void will just make Vengence better, it wouldn’t hurt the game to do this and it wouldn’t make Vengence an instantly OP must use skill as it would still require investment for it to work. I never said I wanted it to melt bosses but it should at least be brought up to the level of the other zero mana cost skills. My current Vengence setup on VK has roughly a 40k tooltip, if this scaled with void I would estimate this would only go up to maybe 50-60k tooltip possibly more with the correct items such as more damage when a skill echos on both helm and body since that would give roughly an extra 300% damage.
This is the key problem with the combo skills, and why I kept the build in the lower end mono content. Riposte is too fickle to work properly, I avoid it in the tree and went for the chaining of skills route. Not every build needs to have void in it, plus void relies on echoes and void cleave or erasing strike to be truly effective which does not work with the Renegade’s will. Your points are well thought out, all I am saying there are other ways to look at it.
But my original question was “So why not just make it so taking that node (i.e Essence of Revenge) converts the damage to void scaling?”.
Vengence already has in-built void with the essence nodes, so why doesn’t it just add void scaling or flat melee void damage (something like +10 void per point upto +40 for all 4 points in both Revenge and Vindication). You have little to no reason in taking those nodes unless you’re playing VK since other nodes in the skill tree give the same amount of percentage Physical/melee scaling as the essence node.
That’s how i’m looking at it and is the reason why it just doesn’t make sense to me that Vengence doesn’t get some form of void damage be that flat or coverted scaling.
That is exactly what I am meaning is the interaction in all of the skill trees are not in sync with each other. Its the fact its is using an ability from an ability (takes ripsote to trigger the void essence) is the problem. With it being so close to the center and only costing 4 points that is OP by allowing flat melee damage of any type. The riposte or iron blade triggers just feel bad in general.
