Immolator’s Oblation and Marina’s Lost Soul are two items that put DoT on the player in exchange for increased effect/power of other skill. For player wanting a high-risk-high-reward strategy, these items can be the cornerstone of some very fun builds. User @TheCurse showcased some very good builds using these two items.
Yet Acolyte’s Aura of Decay is probably one of the very few skills that has such deadly self-effect, while the skill can only inflict a fraction of the poison stacks of an Umbral Blade Rogue, require to be a lot closer to enemies and also require significant investment (especially if taking the Fume Weaver skill node).
I would very much like to see a unique items that leverage the poison self-inflicted by Aura of Decay, and turn it into something worthwhile. My suggestion for this unique would be :
- Don’t make it a Body Armour nor Boots item, and ideally not a Belt item, given the propension of Acolytes to pick Wards as their primary defense mechanism (making Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living mandatory, while Chains of Uleros or Strands of Souls are nice QoL to allow healing in a pinch)
- From the builds I’ve seen so far, AoD either seems to be a complement to Reaper Form (where the form’s high leech is used to offset the self-poison) or the main damage skill (used in conjuncture with other DoT skills, often using high ward generation to offset the self-poison). While I have a preference for the latter, I would rather see an item that can works with both playstyle. For instance, an effect that would empower Reaper’s form or Death Seal works against using ward as your main source of defense.
- Assuming that the “Hollow Lich” passive skill works with DoT skills, an option could be to have increased leech based on the amount of self poison you currently have. For Reaper Form, it would mean increased leech to keep the form up longer, while the passive would transform that leech into increased damage if you’re using AoD as your main damage skill (assuming that the increase in damage doesn’t translate into killing you because your ward resting value can’t keep up with the increased damage).
- Another idea could be for the item to increase the rate at which you inflict poison on enemies, allowing you to reach a maximum poison stack similar to the Rogue’s, while not adding more detriment to yourself.
- Or finally, the item could grant reduce damage over time taken, based on the number of poison stack on you. This would turn AoD self-damage from a linear scaling to a logarithmic one, and raising survivability in general. While this would be nice on an item, I could also see this effect being directly added to AoD’s skill tree, probably as an upgrade on Fume Weaver.
Thank you for taking the time to read my suggestion!