1
Idea: Build around locust swarm, that focuses on killing all trash with 1 hit of the skill, at low monster power (1 or 2), at 100% success rate. Eliminate dependance of crit chance, for long duration dot skill.
Now, the problem of all dot skills is, as they are usually very powerful damage but in one hit, is being dependent on crit chance. These skills either crit and kill targets fast, or not crit and don't kill anything at all.
The reason why this is happening is low base damage of our weapons. If you use ceremonial knife + mojo combo, minimal base damage if it is around 400 for knife, 100 for mojo, not counting bonuses from jewelery. But if you hit dot with that, and it rolls low minimal damage and doesn't crit.. it deals very little damage, and most likely doesn't kill anything.
If we use 2h, it gets better. But we don't really want to use skorn as it is 1.00 speed and that weapon has not best base damage. It has crit bonus, and with 2h we end up having around 30% crit chance. Do we care if 30% of targets hit by locust swarm die instantly? No. The point is to make sure everything that didn't get hit by crit dies relatively fast (within 8s duration of skill at least).
So best way is to use 2h 0.9 speed mace with as high as possible minimal damage, preferably life steal and high inteligence.
What increases damage of "white" hits? Primary stat, bonus damage to skill, skill enhanced damage. So ideal weapon is mace with high base damage and high inteligence.
Skill bonuses come from helm, ring(s), amulet. Helm can roll up to 14% locust swarm, rings soj and skull grasp 12%, maras 12%. But we don't really want to use skull grasp at point of leveling paragon, so I suggest using only soj and hellfire ring.
At low monster power, we don't need crit chance and crit bonus for this build. If our weakes non crit hit kills any trash monster in the game, with minimal damage roll, crit doesn't really matter. We will not kill faster with it. Elites die to bears at mp1/2 in 2-3 seconds, and trash dies to 1 hit of locust, regardless if it is crit or not.
Priorities:
- highest minimal base damage weapon
- inteligence
- locust swarm damage bonus (helm, ring, amulet)
- enhanced damage skills (pierce the veil and provoke the pack)
For example locust swarm damage with items:
360% over 8s base. 14% helm, 12% soj, 12% mara = 38%. After bonus it is 497% over 8s.
Rune of choice is pestilence, It seems to be way more effective than last rune that deals most damage. Fact that pestilence spreads nearly instantly, makes up for lower damage. Last rune spreads so slowly in big crowds, we often end up goign too far from monster pack and it stops spreading if character is too far.
Skill setup:
http://us.battle.net...Xdfh!ZWY!cZZYca
provoke pack - extra 15% damage one of very few ways to increase locust damage
spirit walk honored guest - mana regen source, locust + ptv cost ton of mana, need full mana for bears before elites
horrify stalker - 20% movement
soul harvest 60s rune - keep 5 stacks as much as possible
locust swarm pestilence - our main move
bears - skill vs elites
circle of life - source of dogs
pierce the veil - 20% damage
gruesome feast - mana regen and tons of damage on a high int build
Gameplay of this build is about casting locust swarm once in a while, and watching it spreads. Monitoring minimap for legendary alerts. Don't wait till enemies die to swarm, just look for new monsters as fast as possible. Locust often goes even through walls so no need to visit all rooms in depth keeps for example. Vs elites use zombie bears. Recast and sacrifice dogs when they are up for additional 15% extra damage. Make sure 5 stacks of soul harvest are up all the time, since you need max damage output to be sure everything always dies to 1 hit of locust swarm.
This build uses spirit walk and horrify stalker for increased movement. Due to nature of locust skill, and fact most stuff dies out of out pickup range, there is no point to use grave injustice as kills will usually not count, unless you had pickup range reaching far beyond screen. However build is still fast because we are constantly moving, as we waste very little time on casting skills, swarm spreads through several screens on its own. It becomes really effective at farming, I find it faster than acid rain build that kills stuff in one hit, just because we don't have to spam any ability that often, which is essentially waste of time. Another advantage of it is, that it is relatively cheap. Gear without crit is cheap, weapon is matter of few hundred k.
