Youtube guide & showcase
Buildplanner
Hey guys!
I’ve been an avid Warlock player since it’s release. When Spine of Malakros was first introduced, it was heavily bugged and extremely bad. It has since then been buffed and fixed, and in 1.2 it’s damage effectiveness was increased from 100% to 300%!!
I played this as a league starter, and although it wasn’t the best idea in hindsight, I am happy I decided on trying to make it work (again).
This build has a decent to good map clear, but where it really shines is bossing - it basically stunlocks them. It has innate high stun chance, and a very high single target DPS. I am currently clearing 1200 corruption (and could prolly push more) pretty comfortably atm, just to give you an indication of what it can achieve.
Flame Whip is a spell that comes with the weapon Spine of Malakros, which replaces Spirits on your C’thonic Fissure. If built correctly, it scales with ignite chance and necrotic res, gaining 1 added spell damage and 5% stun chance per 2% ignite chance. It also gets 6-9% crit multi per 10% necrotic res.
Some of these scalers come from the C’thonic Fissure tree itself, as the weapon makes Flame Whips use the C’thonic FIssures skill tree and all it’s modifiers, except the ones that specifically only work with Spirits (except spirit frequency).
The way we crit cap ourselves in this build, is by utilizing the skill node “Forbidden Chasm” and “Acid Bane” within the C’thonic Fissure skill tree. This way, we get 20% base crit, and 1% extra crit per 10% increased poison damage. Well, how do we get poison damage then? Through generic %increased damage modifiers from the passive tree, and by using a cool interaction from leech. By getting melee leech affix on your weapon, and picking the “Hollow Lich” passive, we can get up to 400% increased damage from this alone. To reach crit cap, we will need 750% increased poison damage in total.
Defensive-wise, we use the standard low life option, with %missing health gained as ward from gear. On top, we try to get as much armor as possible, without sacrificing too much max health. We also scale defenses through necrotic res (while simultaniously scaling dmg with it).
My version will also be stacking int, as I really like the benefits of 2x Red Rings, but it is possible to play this without them.
Overall, this is a very enjoyable build once you get it going, but I would not recommend it as a league starter, as you rely heavily on several items and affixes. Play it once you have a good collection of stuff, or you’ll be disappointed.
It is also worth mentioning that the 1x1 unique idol Singularity is a straight up 20% dmg increase of the build. It has some weird interaction with Acid Skin, so you can still crit with it. Not sure if it’s a bug or not, so use at your own discretion. Same goes for snapshotting Aura of Decay idols for 200% increased Poison damage (see youtube video).
Another note: this is NOT playable without the “Increased C’thonic Fissure spirit frequency” affix on your chestpiece. Get t7 asap.
Cheers,
Dirtbag