Hello all,
First off, this is my first guide here (or anything not-technical for that matter). I’m not expecting it to be perfect, I just want to do something I think is neat and fun.
The target audience of this isn’t someone looking for a bleeding edge (pun!) build using only the best items. The idea is to take a character at level 1, build it to level 19, then discussions for levels 34 and 49. This is not a definitive guide, and I would love it for someone to show me a better way to make/play this char as I think it’s a lot of fun, which is all I ask.
To give you a sample of it’s power…
Yes, that is my armour earlier today. That is not a misprint, and I wasn’t getting attacked, that’s just standing still. Yes, this build works even with that, I just think it’s amusing to show.
Pro:
-fun as hell
-can tank (and face tank) a lot of critters
-lots of variety in build choices
Con:
-turns your health bar into a yo-yo later on
-kiting becomes your friend
-takes some getting used to (the attack sequence is a little different)
The build:
We start off with three very basic skills, and add little twists to them.
Rip Blood lvl 4
You start off with the orbs to keep yourself alive, branching to bleed later once you hit Lich and can get the bleed nodes. The idea is to NOT get the Splatter. The reason is the skill as-is clears fodder quickly enough (more in a bit), and cutting through a boss will become much more important than the rank-and-file, which will drop from bleed quickly enough.
Btw is there a way to spoiler the image or something so it’s not taking up too much of the screen?
Anyway, to skill #2, and that’s Bone Curse:
This is the start of the build. See that Armour Shred, Bleed. and Rip Blood nodes to your left? Those are your friends, and will make your life so much better. The idea behind this build is, if they have no armour, then they pop. And pop they will…plus more bleed is part of the plan.
Next at lvl 19 is Transplant, and these three skills are the ‘core’ of the build.
Again, looks straight forward, except for that one little skill in the lower right called Hemophilia. This is where the fun begins.
Once you get this, you can ‘attack’ just by using Bone Curse to mark a group then jump using Transplant. Almost everything will ‘pop’ with a very satisfying sound, and if you find something that doesn’t, it should die soon to the bleeds. If you need to, use Rip Blood directly, for example against hard targets.
Note: I want to try getting rid of the protections in the upper-left and replacing them with the explosions (to take more advantage of Hemophilia), but I’m not sure what that does yet to survival. We will test this soon!
The next two skills have some options available, and I’ll let you figure out which is ‘best’ but I will mention some strong candidates.
The two I didn’t use are:
Spirit Curse
-the bleed buffs are great and so is the +75% DoT, but to be frank I found it too slow and unnecessary.
Reaper Form
-I like this skill to be honest, but I am not using it in favour of pure offence. I find Reaper more defensive in nature with the huge stack of HP’s, but I need a boss-cutter, and there’s a skill that works well for this task which I’ll come to shortly.
The skills that I am using are…
Lvl 34: Aura of Decay
This skill changes everything. You’ll note the biggest change here is Decrepify, which changes the aura from poison to armour shed. I hope by now you’re starting to see a pattern. This is where the build came from is that I wanted to A) try a Bleed Lich, and B) I wanted to make a build using Decrepify as I’ve never seen a post about it, much less a build, and voila, two birds with one stone!
Note: you don’t need Inoculation, that’s just there out of force of habit and I haven’t bothered to swap it out yet. Focus on the bleed and the armour shred, and watch the bad guys just melt. Very satisfying indeed. This is why your armour disappears btw, but the build is still tanky-ish due to the blood orbs coming your way, which magically boost you back up to full.
Last but not least, level 49 I get Infernal Shade:
The biggest thing is the upper right to Blood Shade (which looks neat btw, like a bleeding idol) and the armour shred in the corner. This is why I choose AoD and Infernal Shade is for the Bleed and the Shred. To be honest, I kill most things fast enough without the Shade, so I only use this on hard targets, but it’s very useful for that. I just change up my rotation to add in the Shade vs anything bigger, then continue with the Bone Curse and Transplant, with the odd Rip Blood if it’s not dead yet.
Getting to glyphs, I think there are lots of good choices out there, and there isn’t one All-Powerful glyph that you must have to make it work. Some choices are:
The +Bleed is nice, but the +dam to Rip Blood is VERY helpful, as is things like +crit (you do a lot of phys damage hits), +fear (keeps them off you), +ward on kill (keep you alive), and probably a few others as well (+% health is never a bad thing). What I’m saying is you have lots of options while you’re seeing what’s right for you.
For the passive skill trees:
I’m not bothering to show the Acolyte base as I think it’s terrible and looking at it makes me sad.
For the Lich, this is around lvl 50, which nears the end of the “Beginning Guide” discussion plus I didn’t want to make a bleeding-edge build as I mentioned at the beginning.
The nodes we like here are Unclosing Wounds (I don’t see it used often but I love me some +14% damage), the +Vitality for some health, Three Plagues for penetration, Contagion Engine for that lovely +20% damage per point, then I go from there. There are lots of choices at the top of the tree, many of which I plan on getting. I picked up the one bleed node because I can, and the leech node to get a little health back.
For gear, I try to focus on +health early (to stay alive) and some resistances (mine are OK, in the 30-50% range) for defense, and anything I can get for offense (+spell damage and/or +DoT but focusing on the former for the Rip Blood). Again, you don’t need bleeding edge to survive, but I would recommend a little foot speed as running away will be your friend. This is also a great build to use Petals, which isn’t hard to get and should last for some time…
Overall, I love this build, and I’m very happy playing it. I hope that anyone who reads this and gives it a try to tell me what you think, good and bad. Also, if anyone wants any information on Decrepify, which seems to be a ‘lost’ node, feel free to ask and I’ll tell you what I know.
Thanks and good luck.
Shadewe