The plague is back!
Glad to see the normality has returned to the universe, Boardmanâs using a Plague Bearerâs staffâŚ
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What are the main differences between this and your Rive VK build? Which is âbetterâ or which would you recommend more to a total noob?
well rive is using a different skill⌠different weapon⌠Hit damage instead of dot damage so its a completely different build. There both endgame builds, take time to gear for, i like plague and dots more and for me its nice since you can keep more range from the mobs.
Cool thanks man! Both your builds look awesome, Iâll have to play around and see which one I enjoy more then 
Great guides btw, thank you
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Bro, youâre coming out with fun looking builds faster than I can even put one good low-life set together! Cut it out (not really please keep doing what you do).
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Hmm⌠was just about to try out ZAENs Void Knight Leech build but then I saw your video clearing entire screens of Ice Goliaths⌠and I have the plague staffâŚ
respecing here I comeâŚ
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Ok then⌠Pretty decent build - if you have a decent base level, it works even while you dont have ideal gear.
Am at Level 77 and with appropriate passives leveled & skills to 18, I just toe-to-toed the Abomination tanking almost everything - only minimal kiting. I only have 600 health and 29% glancing blows and only have the plague staff and and no amulet. My elemental is 70%+ and others around 45%+ . He got me down to less than 50 health on a few occassions but the leech on this build means that you are almost instantaneously fully healed again a split second later - even before you realise you should probably have moved. Figure some luck came into play for me but was surprisingly easy using this build.
The most difficult part of this build is getting those per item boost affixes for necro/poison & glancing but it works even without the gear. And I have never seen the Vengence Mana boost affix on anything.
Not sure on the exact best playstyle / skill sequence is yet but is pretty decent moving around the mobs tagging them all and as long as devouring orb is up even rares are toast in a few seconds. It scales up in damage as you mow down the mobs and as long as there is something to destroy at no time do you feel like you are not doing enough damage. A few whacks at the nearest mob with the staff to replenish mana and your survival rate is high.
It seems so capable without the best gear that I figure its probably open to a lot of variation while you hope/farm for the BiS drops/crafts. I am using whatever I have in stash but nothing ideal yet.
Need to test out the other big bosses but I think that once correctly geared this build could be pretty much indestructable with a very nice paced clear rate.
Thumbs Up!
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Few more hours in this⌠just a quick update to say that I changed from the Plague Staff to the Blade and Defiance of the forgotten god & I swapped the helm for Decaying Skull⌠just to test the theory that this build may work with flexible gear requirements.
basic attack dps jumps to over 1200 from around 650. I still dont have BiS gear for all the protections but this combination seems to work quite wellâŚ
I also tried using Woven Flesh as the chest piece and that also seems to work pretty well tooâŚ
main issue I seem to be having is not the protections (although its still an issue with bosses) but its keeping mana up⌠still have not found the Vengence mana boost affix on anything yet.
Vengeance mana boost on use will take some gold at gambler to speed it up
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Unfortunately the basic attack dps is just that, it doesnât include any skill effects (unless theyâre global) or ailments. A better way would be to use a standard candle (ie, a non-monolith boss, or perhaps an early monolith boss if you can avoid too many modifiers that affect them) & see how long it takes to kill them.
Yip. I just wanted to see if temporary gear would work while I try for the gear Boardman21 suggests.
The plague staff is definitely faster if you manage to get some of the gear (esp void damage over time) but the others are all passable to use while you farm. Since finding the amulet (that i did not have) I have reverted back to the staff and I expect to stop using Woven Flesh when I find that elusive Mana on Vengence affix and/or improve my glancing blow stat.
Its a great build that is pretty easy to get to even if you dont have the perfect items - and this is occasionally a flaw in some end-game builds - getting there is hard.
Last update on this great build - Got to level 90 so far.
Pros:
- Clears mobs & rares incredibly well. Judicious use of pulling techniques make for pretty fast pre-boss part of a map.
- Temporary Passive & Skill boosts make you feel pretty godly sometimes.
- You can chop and change gear in the earlier levels to keep it working - some uniques also work as temporary items while you try to find BiS. e.g. Sunforged Curiass boosts physical & fire so much that you are very tanky against those types of mob damage.
- Mobility is good with speed increased boots to the point where you will forget to use Smite teleport half the time and I even used the skill point for more damage instead.
- Playstyle is actually quite easy and you dont have to concentrate that hard to stay alive and you dont have to spam skills (other than DOrb) all the time for the build to work.
Cons:
- D orbs needs to be up 100% all the time (autocast is the easiest).
- Mana management can be tricky before getting mana affix gear even with 4 mana efficiency idols.
- While boss fights are ok and do-able, I keep wishing for a single-target nuke but I figure the boss scaling thing will stop that.
- Gearing & gear progression is HARD at higher levels
- After T14 its hard. I have not had any gear upgrade in at least 10 char levels and its beginning to show on lvl 100 maps. Other than the amulet & staff, I have no BiS gear that matches boardmans recommendation - just mixed and matched as best I can.
- Mana on Vengence Affix is required to solve the mana issues and is very very very hard to find and impossible to find (for me at least) on decent body armour - compromises will have to be made and you will have to sacrifice your firstborn to the crafting fracture god.
- Void Damage Over Time affixes are a little less hard to find, but not by much.
I will definitely push this char to lvl 100 as I am comfortable with it now and like the playstyle. I have accepted the gearing headache and for now am willing to grind away at the problem.
Thanks for another great build @boardman21!
For boss fights, I found that not taking the Dark Moon node was acceptable, it massively reduces the mana cost & theyâll be in-range all the time in a boss fight, unless it moves around a lot. Even for clear itâs less of an issue than you may thing because the range on the Abyssal Orbs is pretty high. If you respecâd out of Dark Moon, youâd loose the movement speed, but youâd be able to max Orb master & be firing ALL OF THE ABYSSAL ORBS. And probably have more mana free for other things.
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