What you need to ask yourself is, how many balls do you want? And how purple do you want them?
If the answer to those questions is “all of them” & “so far into the ultra violet you’d need sheet metal for sunscreen”, then you’ve come to the right guide…
This is similar to @ZaeN’s build here but it’s more of a pure caster, probably less tanky & doesn’t have any 15% melee cull. Instead, we make up for it with EVEN MOAR BALLS!
Seriously.
Updates
19/10 - Added videos for Abomination, Rahyeh, Formosus & Lagon
How it works
We get Devouring Orb’s cooldown down to a mere 1.2s (or 1 if you want to use Inspiration on void skill kill shenanigans, 1.1s if you don’t want aforementioned shenanigans which don’t work on most bosses anyway). This allows you to have 9 Devouring Orbs up plus echoes (so, somewhere between 9 & 18 Orbs). Each Orb fires explosive purple balls every ~0.8s (~14 balls over it’s ~11s lifetime) for somewhere around 11 - 22 balls per second.
Also, unlike ZaeN’s build, this one does use 1 rare affix (% increased void damage & flat added void spell damage), but that’s optional. And on the positive side, this build doesn’t use a very rare set sword.
AND, if that wasn’t enough purple for you, we get to timelock mobs (bosses) for 2s every 9.2s, with a very nice purple shimmer on them. My youngest daughter would be proud.
And 145% cast speed (with another +10% if I could get some decent gloves with a t5 cast speed on them) & 566% void damage (again, would be a bit higher if I could get more t5 void damage affixes, maybe 600%-650%).
The basic premise have lots of Devouring Orbs up firing Abyssal Orbs while you either kite or do more damage with Smite. Sustain comes from leech (12% void leech from World Eater, 2% void leech from Anomaly, 2% overkill leech & 20%-40% increased damage leeched as hp from Woven Flesh and 200% increased health leech from Anomaly).
Every hit from Devouring Orb, Abyssal Orb, Void Rifts and Smite (but not Fissure) procs Future Strike. All of that damage is void damage and leechable.
Skills
Devouring Orb
This is our main skill. It’ll have a cooldown of 1.2s (potentially down to 1s with a few tweaks) with a duration of 11s for ~9 Orbs up at once. While the Orbs themselves won’t be doing any damage, they fire an aweful lot of balls all of which explode in a good sized AoE procing future strike on everything in range & when the trash dies, each Orb casts a void rift.
As I don’t take Dark Moon the cost of each Orb is significantly less (8 mana) so we can go ahem balls to the wall (sorry) with Orb Master for maximum ballage along side Dark Torrent.
The downside of not taking Dark Moon is that your Orbs don’t follow you, but that’s only an issue for the first few seconds on a boss. Trash don’t need all 9 Orbs up at once to kill them (& the range on the Orbs balls is quite a long way), plus you’ll be casting your Orbs ahead of you so when you come to anything to kill, you’ll already have a few Orbs in place (in addition to the Orbs behind the front row firing on the mobs as they walk towards you).
Smite
Smite is how we regain our Mana, plus do some decent damage & put down an AoE DoT (Fissure). If you’re less concerned about the hit damage, you could take points out of Sacrifice/Attonement/Conviction and put them into Heabvy Impact/Six Feet Under for cull at 9% from Fissure.
Anomaly
Anomaly provides us with some leech, 30% cooldown reduction (Swiftrest) and since I didn’t take Immediacy and I did take Time Lock, it provides ~0.4s of anomalisation (target is pushed forward in time) then 2s of stun.
Mobs need to be under the cursor to be hit by Anomaly/Time Lock, so it won’t affect too much of the trash, but it will affect bosses, so that makes them easier especially if it hits them just as they were about to do an annoying mechanic.
Volatile Reversal
Volatile Reversal provides 30% cast speed, 36% movement speed and a nifty way of getting out of danger (if you’ve not been stood in place for 4s or more). It can be a bit odd to use, so I mainly use it as an extra DPS buff (due to the higher cast speed, you can get more Smites out) against bosses when I don’t need to move.
Shield Rush
My preferred movement skill, but you can use Lunge if you prefer (for more DPS from the Initiative buff).
Passives
Sentinel
Not much to say here. I quite like Armour Clad for % damage reduction from nearby mobs, Time & Faith is essential for the mana regain on Smite usage. I’ve only got 5% block chance, so you could easily remove the points from Gladiator & put them in Relentless for more DPS. You could also take Axe Thrower if you wanted more hits, though we don’t use the Smite Idol (but you could if you wanted to).
Void Knight
Nothing particularly controversial here either. I’m currently lvl 74 & I’ve picked up most of the flat damage, life, attunement and echo nodes. I’m currently working on maxxing Dread (% void damage & movement speed) then I’ll put more points in Umbral Attunement for more damage and probably Abyssal Endurance (life), Doom Knight (more life) and Sorrow & Steel (more damage) though Singular Purpose gives a lot of void damage per point (15%) if you can stomach putting points in either Rot Grip/Woe which do nothing for us.
I’ve not put any points in any Paladin or Forge Guard passives, but Steel Aegis (block) & Battle Hardened (% armour & phys resist when hit) are good from the Forge Guard, and Honour (block) and Defiance (Attunement & ele reist) are good from the Paladin.
As for levelling, I tend to put points into the lower passives until I unlock the higher passives then move on to the higher passives, filling the lower ones when I’ve got all the way up.
Gear
This is what I’m aiming for but I’m not quite there yet.
If you want to maximise your cooldown reduction & get Devouring Orb down to 1s on trash, here’s another one, you’re giving up a small amount of %void damage to take a t5 CDR prefix on your helm to get your Devouring Orb cooldown to 1.1s (all the time) then you add in 1 Inspiring Large Idol for Inspiration on Void kill (20% cooldown reduction for 4s) which will take the Devouring Orb cooldown down to 1s when Inspiration is up.
Given our Orbs hit so frequently, we can get away with relatively low amounts of Frailty on hit, Chill on hit & Armour shred on hit.
As far as Idols are concerned, your choices are Annihilating Huge idols (22%-60% void damage for 4s after casting Devouring Orb) or Spiteful Adorned idols (30%-80% void damage for 4s when a skill echoes). The latter give more of an increase, but it’ll take longer to get the damage increase (since you’re waiting on RNG for the echo). You could take 2 of each, they’re both good.
Monolith modifiers
Avoid the usual ones:
- Dodge (this is hideous & should be avoided like the plague)
- Crit avoidance / Glancing blow (annoying & will halve your damage, but not “too bad” IMO)
- All resists is the given % reduction to your damage, so I’d rather not take it but it shouldn’t be “too bad” either
- Enrage, as long as it’s not on for the final quest echo boss it’s ok since the normal monolith bosses die pretty quickly
- Chill/Slow are also annoying but not too bad, more annoying than Armour shred/Mark for Death but all 4 modifiers will fall off after a few seconds of not being hit
Blessings
While you don’t get much choice in the blessings, these are what I would choose if I did get the choice.
Rahyeh:
Void damage! (30-50% from normal, 51-80% from empowered)
Leech rate (20-30% from normal, 35-50% from empowered)
Health (30-42 from normal, 43-60 from empowered)
Lagon:
Ele Resist (10-14% from normal, 15-20% from empowered)
Ward per sec (10-19 from normal, 20-30 from empowered)
Dragon Emperor:
All resist (8-15%)
Bleed on hit (40-80%)
Slow on hit (30-50%)
Videos TBC
Abomination:
Rahyeh:
Formosus:
Lagon:
Lagon is a bit harsh with Devouring Orb since you need to have your cursor over the edge to cast Smite but that means that Devouring Orb doesn’t appear to cast (or the Devouring Orbs are cast wherever Lagon’s base is).
You could definitely get it down below 1s that way. Especially with cooldown on the helm (& Swiftrest from Anomaly).
