My Lich build - does it make a sense?

General
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Haven’t had a chance to play much. Had a wedding out of town, but I did make it to Monos before leaving. I am doing something a little different. Focusing on Necrotic DoT damage and using fear to help.

Problem I am having is just generating enough ward in general. I am only at about 2K ward as I am not getting much if any ward from skills.

I have a long way to go though. My gear and blessings are not in line yet so it will take some time to get those closer to being in line. I will post again soon with more details of the build. Damage is good so far.

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this is all a great conversation. I’ve been tinkering with a Lich that looks similar but I AM actually using Soul Feast. It’s not ready for prime time because I’m not super-familiar with the Lich mastery so I’m sort of playing around and figuring stuff out.

Mine’s DoT though.

This thread will help me understand many things I had questions about. Thanks for laying out the build @MasterBLB.

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So my build is Wandering spirits, Transplant, Drain Life, Spirit Plague and Bone Curse.

For Wandering Spirits, using it for damage and the fear. Not spec’d into the ward on expiration as I don’t feel like it is that great. It would better if you are channelling. Using spirits to shred necrotic resistance and then the Reap the Damned node for dmg to cursed and damned enemies.

Transplant, mostly using it for the bone armor and the kill threshold. Converted to necrotic and picked up guarenteed bleed with Hemophelia since im using Exsanguinous.

For Drain Life, I am channeling it for damage. Has some chance for slow and fear as well. Picked up Death’s Barrier for some ward on kill but it is not reliable since i have a lot of DoT damage and doesnt do anything on bosses. Getting a lot of Damned stacks with condemnation and dmg against damned. Planning to pick up Eternal Servitude so wandering spirits do not expire. Should allow to stack for a lot of DoT as long as I can maintain channeling.

Spirit Plague is focused on damage as well. Spell necrotic per int so I will be int stacking both for the damage but also for the ward retention. Nothing too fancy here. I did pick up one point in putrid recovery but I do not have too many hits. Not a lot of benefit here so I may change it.

Bone curse is a classic setup. Getting Mark for Death and then the guaranteed slow. Since I am channeling with DoT, not much hits happening so not much reason to get chill. Will want to try to get that on weapon.

With this, my survivability is based on fear, bone armor and just slowing enemies plus standard defenses with ward. Goal is to kill them before they can get to me. Getting my ward from chest armor and boots as you are using in your build.

Still in regular Monos. We will see how this does when I get to empowered. I think damage will be fine, but I am curious about survivability.

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I am at the dragons Mono. Up to 2.4K static ward and things are feeling a little better. Really need to stack int, both for damage and the ward retention. Then stacking life as that will boost my ward generated by the exsanguinous and last steps of living boots.

Thats my strategy, we will see how it plays out.

Biggest question I have at this point is why play this version rather than reaper death seal with spirit plague. It does solve the issue of going in and out of reaper form which I am not a huge fan of, but you learn to play with it since the build is so good. Still want to play this out, but I am not sure since this build is much less tanky thank the reaper death seal version. TBD.

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Lich’s leech also solves that.

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@CaiusMartius you welcome mate. Although this reply is targeted for danklebs you might find it interesting too.

@danklebs
You’ve made completely different build and skill setup, far from what I’ve designed. Skill setup also seems a bit messed up, I think it’s good to have a tool for most scenarios. Try something like this:

There are 5 points left, use them to pick either Mental Cacophony, or Deathbringer, or anything you like.

Spirit Plague damage setup - this was something I was using for leveling, except I’ve invested in bleed nodes, but as I gained experience with the build longer duration + causing enemies to deal less damage is more beneficial.

Bone Curse - single target setup against bosses/tough elites. Packs of common mobs should be oneshooted by Spirit Plague anyway.

Wandering Spirits - autocast - ward generator + bodyguards (they spawn and wander around you, so they are great against any chasers) + their shots trigger Bone Curse, which will help during boss fights. I’ve included fear from your version.

Transplant - quick escape role thanks to increased cast speed, leaves behind 3 Rip Blood casts to regain ward when you have to flee. Besides it serves as global damage buff. You can spec it into cull by removing points from Sticky Blood, Sadism and 2 from Acolyte’s Fervor - personally I don’t see that necessary because eternal lasting Bone Curse has the cull anyway.

Rip Blood ward-leeching setup - against targets whose survived Spirit Plague, also provides crowd control stun feature and ward leech. It is a hit, so it triggers Bone Curse too. Thanks to low mana cost, stunning and ward leeching it is possible to facetank stragglers left by Spirit Plague.

Usage of the build is as follow:

  • trigger autocast for Wandering Spirits
  • spot something at the edge of screen
  • cast Spirit Plague on that
  • stuff dies, move on, or…
  • if not died spam Rip Blood/Transplant away. Repeat. Recast Spirit Plague if it worn off.
  • against bosses cast Bone Curse at the beginning, and keep them cursed also by Spirit Plague, as its Enfeeblement node reduces damage of them by 18%. Spam Rip Blood as main, cheap damage dealer + ward generator + Bone Curse activator. BC will also cull the boss.

Also, 2.4k ward with the armor and boots is a bit low, do you use Opulent Focus offhand?

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Yea sorry. I kind of muddied the topic by throwing in a separate build, but its all in the spirit of running lich without reaper and death seal as that seems the obvious choice. I really should run your build and then run my build and compare both as well.

I also want to try your recommendations with rip blood. Seems like a good version as well and will boost the ward gained as well. One of the struggles with my build is that I am only getting ward from the passive gain due to low health and no sources of gaining as active playstyle from hits or anything so it doesnt increase in combat faster than out of combat. Rip blood would help with this.

I do not have the opulent focus yet. Still something I need to find, but it is in the plans. I can definitely get a lot more ward and will need it as I advance.

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Well mate, if you’ll spec your build to the suggested one let us know if it improved your gaming experience.

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I have another Lich that I wasnt using for anything so I am going to put together your build (or try to for comparison).

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Was just looking at your build, why aren’t you spec’d into Marrow Hunger in the marrow shard tree. 3% physical leech per point. That would be 90% damage from 3 points. Just tested it and it works.

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Also, in spirit plague tree, you should pick up Plague of Eyes node. With your current build (72 intelligence), it would add 72 flat damage which would translate to a lot more damage given that you are getting a lot of damage scaling from your leech and hollow lich.

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Because I don’t have enough points and bleed path has multiplicative modifier, also is applies bleeding for additional damage.
However, having less than 26 points available might make this node worthwhile, especially it also boosts Bone Curse. Thanks for the tip mate :slight_smile:

That would be even harmful, as it’d undermine the role of Spirit Plague, which is not dealing damage, but provide ward on hit(Putrid Recovery node) + reduce enemy damage(Enfeeblement node). Marrow Shards kill fast enough on their own, you need to aim carefully though so you hit with Bone Splinters not the shards themselves. If you need to kill stuff even faster just cast Bone Curse, as I’ve spotted it speeds up killing stuff ~4x.

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Builds like that have been played in the past a lot. Put in A Plague Bearer >Staff on top of it and go for the posion nodes and you most likely end up where others have been. With all the “losse life make ward” items you just need to push your maxlife wherever it’s possible and change life gain to ward gain and you’ll be golden.

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Don’t underestimate the defensive benefit of everything else being dead (quicker). That’s why you would benefit from the Reaper passive in Lich for 10% cull on all spell damage (Spirit Plague, Wandering Spirits, Bone Curse, Marrow Shards) as it’ll proc whenever the boss gets below the threshold rather than having to time your Transplant correctly.

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Hmm that’s actually a valid point - if monsters are killed before they attack me there is no real need to get ward on hit. Regaining ward start to matter during boss fights, during which stronger Spirit Plague should help damage-wise as well.
Okay, gonna try -1 Plague’s Purview +1 Plague of Eyes.

I’m still not convinced to this, I already have 12% culling in Bone Curse, and besides it’s hard to decide what other passives I have to sacrifice.

Current state (changed Opulent Focus to Crystal Skull)

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I always forget that node exists for some reason, ignore me…

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Np. mate, I do agree that having a convenient cull source is really helpful.

Btw, I’ve changed Spirit Plague the way mentioned above, and tried it against Heorot in Frozen Citadel - I do feel a difference in kill speed. Well, its DPS raised from 6k to 12k, it has to be noticeable. Gonna see how it preforms during a map run though.

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I am thoroughly enjoying this thread. So much of it comes down to numbers but then there is just straight preference. Seeing the various ideas definitely gets the creative juices flowing.

I am opting for the 20% cull with transplant and choosing to play around that and then using my bone curse for more CC with the slow and possibly chill.

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Ive played a LL Lich using Marrow Shards a long time ago. im sure I posted my build here but cant find/remember

Build is kind of trash and Marrow Shards needed a huge rework 2 years ago

Last Step/Exsang, 70+ int and you are looking at 3.5k Ward and roughly 10-20k crits on mobs

Aura of Decay with Wandering is far better, I think I was getting between 800-1.2m DoT for AoD/Deathseal/Wandering spam on the dummy

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Death seal doesn’t work well with ward. It consumes all your ward so you would be left with not much for defenses.

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