Lich Flay build idea, Chaos Bolt proc + Bleed

Acolyte
1

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QkGkzGbQ

Here is my idea for a Lich Flay Bleed build. It really needs in-game testing to see what works and doesn’t, but if you see anything that could be a problem please let me know.

Offense:
The idea is to use Flay to proc Chaos Bolts, which then procs Blood Rip. As a bonus, the Chaos Bolts will also sometimes proc Harvest. Flay itself would do very little damage. Instead, Chaos Bolts is the main damage dealer, and Blood Rip would be extra damage and mob clearing. Having a large pool of mana would give Chaos Bolts a huge damage multiplier. I would convert as much damage to Physical as possible, and I would focus on physical and spell damage increases to make CB and BR do more damage.

I wanted to also add in a lot of Bleed sources, but I’m not sure if it will help or hinder the damage. The idea is to be able to manually cast Blood Rip on bosses/rares to trigger Blood Tether for extra single target damage. I think this is the biggest thing that needs to be tested. It might be better to just focus on spell damage (or maybe even just focus on Bleed?).

Also, because of the Cauldron of Blood and Crimson Favors node in the Warlock tree, Blood Rip should also get a LOT of extra casts and bleed!

Flay also applies Exposed Flesh curse, which then would proc Bone Curse from Chaos bolts, which would then proc Decrepify from the pearls of the swine. So 3 curses at all times.

Mana is going to be a big problem on mobs because each cast of Flay is going to use up HUGE amounts of mana. However, for bosses this problem can be removed with Harvest. This seems to be the reason the new Executioner’s Tithe axe has the Harvest stuff. So every 5 seconds or so you would have to manually cast Harvest and recover your mana. At least that’s how I imagine it will work?

This is the reason that I didn’t add in Marrow Shards, because I think Harvest is needed to solve mana problems. But if this can be worked out, then Marrow Shards might be a decent added damage source. However, it would only proc once per cast of Flay, unlike CB and BR which are going to be proccing like 10x per Flay, so maybe Marrow wouldn’t even add that much at all.

Finally, Reaper Form just seems to be the icing on the cake for boss fights, adding a large amount of damage and crit. Need to test the Death’s Door node because the way it’s worded, I think the low-life damage increase applies to everything, not just Reap. Otherwise take it out and put it into Soul for Soul.

I want to point out now that this build is ALWAYS considered low life because of the Corrupted Form passive, so there are a lot of items/skills that can benefit from this tag. Which brings me to the idols:

As for the idols, I’m not sure what is the best, so I just put in a variety of shapes to see what is available, and would have to test for what is the best. Should I focus on Bleed? Spell Damage? In any case, keep in mind that anything that procs at low life will be up 100% of the time. Also, you would always have an Ailment Overload because of the Cauldron of Blood node in Warlock tree. The idols would need a lot of testing to see what is best.

I think the Reliquary Nest relic is going to be the best Primordial item (for a lot of builds!!), because it makes the stats on all those idols go up by 50%?!?! That’s just INSANE and would increase both defense and offense by a lot!

In the passive skill tree, I really want to try out Corrupted Form and Accursed Feast together. I think the life leech bonuses would be insanely powerful. The fact that leech stacks would never fall off is HUGE. It means you are always going to insta-heal a LOT of health while you are attacking. And I’m 90% sure that this includes the damage from your Bleeds? Since it just says “damage leeched as health”, which should apply to everything. However, even if it doesn’t, you will still be leeching 5% (plus 66% of that) bleed damage from the Essence Devourer node. So leech will be AMAZING and will insta-heal anything that isn’t a one-shot. However. . .

Defenses might need some work just to avoid one-shots. Anything that doesn’t one-shot you should be able to be insta-healed, but gotta do something about those one shots. Remember, because of Corrupted Form, our health and ward will only be HALF of what is listed. So this is the part of the build that I think needs the most tweaking.

Ok any thoughts and ideas to improve/fix this?

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Hey first Tithe build in the forum throwing hands in the air :raised_hands:

Nice to see some theorycrafts shared here on the forum as well. Most stuff is happening on discord and a few on Reddit.

I really don’t wanna influence and sterr people too much, but when I see some people falling into some traps I still wanna chime in.

While Chaos Bolt is excellent for ailments, the bleeds your are trying to squeeze in would still only do a fraction of the damage your spell damage will do.
Deadly Plot onyl gives spell damage and all your spell damage form other sources will boost your bleed. Especially your Salt the Wounds seems wasted. almost, since you are not even stacking generic crit multi everywhere possible.

I do like Wall of Nothing, I think that is the first variation of this build that I saw with this.

It depends on the mobs and level of play, when mobs die to fast it will be a poblem yes, but when you don’t kill stuff with the melee portion of Flay and a decent amount of Chaos Bolts can hit it is fine for the most part. Chaos Bolt triggers from Chaos Rip are mana neutral thanks to Devour the Damned. Your mana will definitely still go down. because Deadly Plot makes Flay very expensive.

Yes that is exactly how I designed it. Giving Harvest some power and utility/sustain i nexchange for cooldown.

Yes Death’s Door is a generic %inc damage.
I am surprised you have not taken Rapid Destruction ins Reaper Form, 24% attack speed and 6% MS is pretty good, especialyl when you are right next to it anyway.

Reliquary Nest is up to 60% idol effectiveness

leech not falling of is achieved only with corrupted form already. Accursed Feast lets you facetank stuff better, but the leech will also fall off after 1,875 second already instead of 3 seconds. For hit based builds that can be quite dangerous, for ailment based builds it is much better, because even fi you have to move/dodge/play mechanics you wil lstill accumulate leech.

Yes, Lich Mastery Bonus, Essence Devourer and Accursed Feast’s Leech will work for Damage over Time as well.

Yeah that was exactly what I was thinking, when I saw your Health Pool and Passive Tree Corrupted Form does lower your eHP vs one-shots quite a lot, so you want to invest into health A LOT.

The last thing that I was surprised by is the use of an Off-Hand Catalyst, you are not even utilizing Tithe’s strongest unique affix. There are so many good options for DW, even when not going the super duper obvious top contenders. Especialyl considering the fact that you did try a hybrid bleed setup its eeven more surprising.

I do think the build will work fine, but at the very top end the hybrid approach does cost more than it gives you. many affixes simply don’t benefit both hit and dot and you try to split up too much stat priorities.

Anyway, interesting take, hope you have some fun with it!

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Thank you so much for the long and detailed reply!

I decided to abandon the hybrid bleed build, and just focus on spell damage. I’ll probably make a new post with a clean build

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