[3.7] SC/HC - ED/Blight Trickster - Up to 10k eHP, Layered Defense, 3m DPS

Hello,

Would you mind explaining this part to me ?

"Playing a bare bones ED build with little to no defence feels very bad to me, so I always try to get a Snowblind Grace as soon as possible. This is the base for The Perfect Form, but it has lower dexterity requirements. Lower dex. req. means that it is easier to hit our desired colours on the item, so I always 6-socket and use Vorici 1B until I hit either BBBGGG or BBBGGR. If I hit my 6L colours, I have to consider if I have enough jewellers to 6-socket another one. This is also a reason to be rolling your stuff on The Snowblind Grace, as you aren't as heavily invested into the base yet. Eventually, I produce a 5-linked Perfect Form, and upgrade my rare items to match the new dexterity and resist requirements."

I'm confused on what i'm supposed to do, do i buy the Snowblind Grace and upgrade it once it's fully linked or do i buy a perfect form and start rolling socket/links/colors again ?

@CloakedJester, buying a Snowblind Grace and upgrading it with a Blessing of Tul and buying a Perfect Form directly both have their pros and cons.

The Snowblind Grace + Upgrade for 6L colours: Average chromatic cost with Vorici 1B: 378.7
The Perfect Form for 6L colours: Average chromatic cost with Vorici 1B: 511.1

On average, you will save some chromatics by upgrading after getting your desired colours. However, if you get The Perfect Form directly, you can spend a bit more money to get a good roll without any risk. No matter which way you decide to do it, you won't sit with a huge loss. I just wanted to explain my gearing process in more detail this league, as I just used it as a league starter. I don't feel the character is powerful enough to farm uber elder deathless so that I can level higher than level 95-96 while doing it.


@Fortran, going the armour/block route is perfectly fine. We don't get THAT much evasion through our passive tree and ascendancy. A friend of mine didn't like my evasion focus, so I suggested that he'd try using Lioneye's Remorse, Rumi's and a Cherrubim's Maleficence instead of my preferred setup. The loss of spell damage from the shield is regained on the body armour, so the damage output was pretty much the same. Your choice of using Skin of the Loyal to focus more on either Blight or ED works wonders as well.

I'm not a big fan of Reckless Defense unless I can get some serious crit damage mitigation in the build, but Vaal Grace is amazing. I don't use it as I have always been too starved on sockets. With a Hungry Loop setup, I can fit it, but I have no more room for keybinds, so I opted for a full CWDT (yawn) setup in my "new" 4L.

You will just have to test and find out how you want to play it on UElder. I am not a big fan of relying on Blight against him, but the DPS is now so high that it kinda works.

TL;DR: I prefer Eva/Spell dodge over Block/Spell block due to no stuns pretty much.

Burned 4 sets on uber with ED so far. I remember you killing them with about 90k tooltip ED dps. I have 170k unbuffed hideout tooltip on ED, but I still fail the dps check horribly. Maxblock allows tanking a lot of shaper balls and beams, but the arena gets covered with degen and I just die to that ((

Apart from UE I feel super tanky, unkillable, fast and destructive (

Gotta think.

Uber Elder is simply a bitch for this kind of build. We don't have the sustain to have the fight progress a lot, and we don't have the DPS to push the phases fast enough to feel comfortable. For a player like me, who prefer to be able to do all content in the game with one character, this build does not really cut it for that last fight. Unless we get some way to increase the damage in the next few patches, this build will just be my league starter while I gather some currency for other builds. It works just fine with my +1 skin of the loyal, but that's a too large investment to be a reliable choice.

For Uber Elder, you could try to swap your Determination for Purity of Ice or Vitality in your Essence Worm.

I am fine with dieing a lot at UE and I've enjoyed playing the build a lot. I am far from being a good arpg player, so I do not pursue deathless farming. I just want to kill it some day with my char and I am sure I will. Just gotta sit back and think it out)

Dropping determination would cost me that 30% more Pain Attunement damage multiplier and 8% block so I'm not sure it would make things easier. I don't have any problem with burst damage. I can survive a lot of balls or elder shards. I just die to that 100% field coverage. I actually came quite close on my second run. It was just one tiny bit of their lifebar.

I am thinking about using kaoms boots to damage them more consistently, but I have to uberlab them 15 times for +2% regen. Can probably drop my Reckoning->curse gems and get just one blasphemy->despair curse with impresense. Dunno about wither totem. I have to learn smart places for it or just stop using it. So far my totems are just being killed instantly in that fight. I probably can try using two Essence Worm rings with determination and purity of ice or vitality)

Didn't consider your belt. before the final phase, it sounds like you should focus more on ball placement and getting the poopy squids down fast. I'll to an uber elder attempt with more ED focus when I have time for it to see how it works out.

Oh, another question, even tho less concerning the actual guide.
How did you 6 link your Perfect Form ?
I mean, did you intentionaly farm to fuse it or did you just waited for the fusings to come.
And if you did farm them, could you tell me how ?

I usually keep all my different currencies for projects at the start of a league. Alts for crafting on good bases, alch scours for maps, so on. Once I get my 5L Perfect Form, I buy another Snowblind Grace to 6S, then I use my chromatics and fusings on it until I hit what I want. This league, I was unable to 6L it this way, and once my rares were good enough to only get marginally better with large investments, I started buying fusings or ex/chaos.

I mostly farm fusings through getting 6S items and vendoring them. Doesn't take long to stack up 1-2k Jeweller Orbs.

WE DID IT... IT'S OVER... IT'S FINALLY OVER!!!

So the UE is down on the 1st set after reequipping with one extra portal left. Still had some free ground in the middle, but not much.

Reequipped the following:
- kaom's boots with regen enchantment (only 80c for 194hp boots!)
- dropped Reckoning->curses and wither totem. curses on block are too slow. totem just dies.
- put Reckoning into shield charge setup to get fortify on block
- put on another Essence Worm ring with lvl21 vaal impurity of ice for +5% cold maxres
- impresence ammy with despair (actually reserves mana with 2 essence worms, but still needed)
- Ralakesh god for phys degen resist
- Vaal Blight with increased duration for 10 sec hinder

My big thought about the build: in the Incursion league Perfect Form is much much worse then Skin of the Loyal with high block because of temple corruptions. Uncorrupted Skins are just 1ex. +2 ED/Blight Skins are available for 8-9ex and they give 57% more ED damage over uncorrupted Perfect Form. How can you drop that much damage?

High or max block is actually very achievable with a good shield, block gloves, sai implicit, Reckless Defense jewels, abyss jewels, tempest shield, determination watcher's eye and an optional Rumi flask. I am playing with 5 Reckless Defense jewels and I think that it's very safe. All the crit damage mitigation you ever need is Soul of Solaris, which simply removes damage from critical strikes. Skin+block has its extra perks:
- potentially very high phys mitigation with good items. I have 9k armor in hideout and 27k with a flask.
- an option to use Reckoning and Tempest Shield for onhit stuff. I use Reckoning to apply curses and I am also thinking about Reckoning->Life Gain on Hit. It should be instant full healing on block vs packs, but I'm not sure I need it.

I hardly imagine myself killing UE without block. I am very bad at avoiding balls and shards so I better make sure I don't have to.

Anyway, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for this great build!!!!
I had a great time with it this league and will have more!

Edit: found out that fortify doesn't work with Reckoning. Meh)
Edit: hmm, actually CWDT should help with phys degen A LOT. its like 1sec immunity every 3 sec with increased duration

Grats on your kill. It does take determination and practice to kill him with a non Indigon ED character.


How do I drop that much damage? I don't! :D

I use Perfect Form for everything up to Uber Elder, than I swap my Blight setup into the Skin for that fight only. I also made sure my setup was able to handle swapping boots between Kaom's Roots and whatever other boots I was using to make the fight easier.

I now have my Arc trapper that does the fight deathlessly like a champ, so I swapped around on my gem setups to make the ED character smoother for Uber Lab instead of Elder.