[3.23] [Leaguestarter] Exsanguinate Ascendant - a great all-rounder

Can you also share your atlas strategy?

Any thoughts on using Corrupting Cry instead of Righteous Fire? It seems like it more naturally combines with Exsang/Reap due to +1 physical gems also affecting it. Or even the new +1 physical tattoo

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ultra_super_hyper escribió:

Can you also share your atlas strategy?

Well, I don't really have one yet, but I think I'll stick to my old trusty trio: Harvest, Expedition, Exarch. Maybe this time I'll be clever though and switch to these after I use some Wandering Path trees that are great for league-start.

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Zocrates escribió:

Any thoughts on using Corrupting Cry instead of Righteous Fire? It seems like it more naturally combines with Exsang/Reap due to +1 physical gems also affecting it. Or even the new +1 physical tattoo

This could be a way to go, but there's a few things here:
1. Corrupting Cry lets us apply Corrupting Fever stacs via a Warcry or Exerted Attacks. Enduring Cry doesn't exert any attacks, nor is Exsanguinate an attack. That would mean, you'd get 4 corrupted blood stacks with a base duration of 2 seconds (for us it would be closer to 4 seconds thanks to our Skill Effect Duration) every 8 seconds (unless you're using General's Cry, then it would be every 4 seconds).

2. You'd want to support this Warcry with more supports that pump up the corrupted blood's damage (I believe Efficacy, Brutality and Swift Affliction should work) for it to be a noticeable change. Therefore, you'd need to sacrifice some of the current gems. I suppose one could cut one of the movement skills.

3 (probably most important). In this scenario the source of the damage would be the Corrupting Cry Support itself, so we would want to raise level of it. Thing is, a support gem is not a skill gem. It doesn't benefit from any +1 to all spell skill gems, or +1 to all physical spell skill gems, or even +1 to all skill gems. It is only scalable by things that scale all gems, without the 'skill' restriction, such as +2 AoE, +2 Warcry or +1 to Socketed Gems Corruptions.

To sum up - I think it could be some way to add damage to the build, but you have to ask yourself if this is worth your sockets. To me, the answer is 'no', especially of you compare how much damage RF grants for one gem socket opportunity cost.

Hi, im new to the game and i have the question, why Righteous fire? Cold iron point makes me deal no elemental damage, can you explain that to me pls ? sorry if theres a comment but i didnt find anything about that <3 great build by the way im loving it <3

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xxNarcissism escribió:

Hi, im new to the game and i have the question, why Righteous fire? Cold iron point makes me deal no elemental damage, can you explain that to me pls ? sorry if theres a comment but i didnt find anything about that <3 great build by the way im loving it <3

Hey there!

Righteous Fire has two components: one deals fire damage over time around you, the second one grants you more spell damage. The first one doesn't bother us, we don't intend to deal damage with RF anyway (which is why Cold Iron Point is great). The second one, thankfully, scales our damage, because both Exsanguinate and Reap have a line that states "modifiers to spell damage affect this spell's DoT".
This means, sustaining level 20 RF grants 39% more spell damage, which is a massive chunk of damage. Granted, it comes at a cost of degen, but this build aims to sustain it at some point after leaguestart.

whats a good farming strategy for this build? so long i did bosses but the loot feels underwhelming

Nice build. I really like Scions, and never played petrified blood before, while exsang is well known due to Seismic Trap builds. Perfect match for me :-)

SSF-Question: I usually do not find a Cold Iron Point, but a lot of double +phys skill +support something Staffs. If this happens again, I hope there's no problem on running a Staff with this build, is there?

Another question I read a few pages back: what about Corrupting Fever? I'm still using it, as I still have a "free" gem slot. It feels useless, as in, there's no difference whether CF is active or not. But at currently 14s duration, there's also not downside. Shouldn't it help somehow?

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Vapoch86 escribió:

whats a good farming strategy for this build? so long i did bosses but the loot feels underwhelming

Hey there!

The way I desinged this build is to be a bit of an all-rounder - so it doesn't really shine in any content. I always liked to do Harvest and Expedition with it - both reward build with defenses, and the build ignores many of the Expedition's downsides.

The build is a tad bit too slow for Legions/Breaches imo, but it's certainly doable.

Exarch/Eater altars are always fine, Exarch's downsides ones should be easier to deal with.

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kirjami escribió:

Nice build. I really like Scions, and never played petrified blood before, while exsang is well known due to Seismic Trap builds. Perfect match for me :-)

SSF-Question: I usually do not find a Cold Iron Point, but a lot of double +phys skill +support something Staffs. If this happens again, I hope there's no problem on running a Staff with this build, is there?

Another question I read a few pages back: what about Corrupting Fever? I'm still using it, as I still have a "free" gem slot. It feels useless, as in, there's no difference whether CF is active or not. But at currently 14s duration, there's also not downside. Shouldn't it help somehow?

Hey there!

SSF answer: Absolutely you can go any physical caster weapons. In 3.20 I did an experiment where I crafted +3phys/+2all Staff with some decent mods, and I had a lot more damage. You can go wands (beware of high int though, also you lose attack movement skills), rune daggers (although the implicit is wasted there), sceptres (again, wasted implicit, also, Leap Slam is much slower than Whirling Blades), staves (this time a good defensive implicit, but again, Leap Slam is slower, on the other hand you can go with second 6link, e.g. for Auras, and you can then utilise Enlighten to make reservation easier perhaps) or any combo of one-handed+shield (which will lose you some damage, but you will gain defenses, also, Shield Charge is fast).

The guide explicitly states to stick with Cold Iron Points for three reasons:
1. Excellent damage choice for a budget. This league CIPs were a bit more expensive, but still - 25c day3 is really affordable. If you'd want to go better, you'd have to have a one-hander with +1/+1, essence spell damage and crafted phys dot multi to be roughly on par with corrupted CIP.

2. Rune daggers enable Whirling Blades, and I like to have a fast movement skill - this is a decision that rules out wands for me (as sceptres are already sub-optimal). Yes, you could go with two-handers or better yet, with one-hander + shield, but this leads to the third point:

3. The build is rather defensive as far as the tree is considered, so going with dual-wielding CIPs is actually a balanced option, because it gives a solid damage up. Imo, in a softcore scenario, this is a well-balanced set of defensive layers.

Take that as an elaborate advice to how to approach your weapon choice, I suppose. Also, it is possible to "farm" Broken Truce - a card that grants CIP. It drops from Betrayal members in maps or can drop from Exarch monsters with active altar that grants chance to drop a unique weapon divcard. These are not common though.

CF question - Corrupting Fever has three issues here:

1. It requires links. I don't know about you, but I like to have some utility in my gems, which almost always means I am full with gems. I simply cannot squeeze another 4/5/6-link.

2. We don't hit frequently enough to reach 10 stacks consistently.

3. CF doesn't scale with spell damage, while Exsanguinate and Reap do, which means, some part of our investment would be wasted.