Presenting: the Berserkeress! A late game melee sorc

Hey y’all, you may have read some of my other crazy builds before, the Reaver, the bowamancer. Well I got something very interesting for your consideration (and maybe testing).

Have you ever noticed the rune word Passion has +1

Berserk, and though “hmm, anyone can use it eh?” Then also noticed how the

Berserk skill puts out crazy magic damage but also lowers your defence to zero and though “I wonder if there’s a way to exploit that?”

Well wonder no more! I present for your consideration: the Berserkeress!

The punchline:

This build is going to turn your sorc on her head. It really leans into the defence going to zero thing, and uses some charges and gear procs to save some skill points, it’s defiantly tight, so you’ll want to be 90+ to try this build. Passion as your main weapon is

Key, you’ll need duel dreams in the

Helm and shield spot, Fortitude as your armour, definitely will want ravenfrost, soj/bk, but gloves,

Boots and belts are flexible. Your merc will need thornes aura, from either himself or Bramble and Infinity, and you’ll need a

Demon Limb either on switch or just for pre-buffing. Oh I hear you saying “blah… that’s nearly the same as a

Zeal sorc!” Well yes some of the gear is the same, but the play stile is very different. There’s lots of options for gear/stat distribution, we’ll have to do some testing.

When everything’s said and done, once your sorc starts whacking guys with magic and elemental damage (which won’t be a lot, but enough with everything else that’ll be going on), any melee attackers will

Thorns themselves to Death thanks to your merc, any ranged attackers will freeze to Death from your synergiezed chilling armour from your fort, and the pulsing lightning damage from your duel dreams will take care of the rest. You shouldn’t be that squishy with a good

Energy Shield up too.

Full disclosure I haven’t tested this build out yet, probably still a few things to iron out.

The set-up.

Gear:
Head and shield - Dream (in whatever bases you’d like, I’d stick with low level stuff)
Weapon - Passion in a

Phase Blade
Armour - Fortitude, can be whichever base you find the most aesthetically appealing, it’s basically just to get chilling armour, But the +damage, +life and all res is nice too
Amulet - highlords is likely bis here, maras is nice with the extra skills and res, but you need the ias, and

Critical Strike
Rings -

Raven Frost b/c being frozen sux, even if your whole point is to get hit. Your other ring could either be soj or bk, depending on how hard you want to lean into the whole

Energy Shield thing.
Gloves -

Laying of Hands is solid,

Magefist,

Frostburn, or steelrends

Belt - verduno,

String of Ears, arachnids mesh, all solid

Boots - probably war Travelers, gore riders, or goblin toes
Charms - anni & torch, then you’ll need to make up on resistances here, not as much +skills needed, but if your res are good I’d probably go with lightning (but there’s a good argument for any sorc branch). I designed this build around no sunder charms, but you could if you’d like, if so probably the lightning one
On swap - cta and Spirit,

Demon Limb, maybe a cta staff with +

Energy Shield

Merc’s gear:
Weapon - Infinity, needed to break immunities, and lower resists
Armour - Bramble, needed for

Thorns aura, sadly there’s not much else going on here, if you go the merc with

Thorns, then Fortitude, or Treachery

Helm - Andy’s, or any other +ias and life leach with immunities
Type of merc: might is ok,

Blessed Aim is good, cold aura is meh (you want guys to hit you), I think the

Prayer might be the best

Stats:
Strength - you could either go bare minimum, or increase your srength to increase your physical/magic damage. I’m inclined to go min, but I haven’t tested it out too much
Dex - should get enough ar from your gear and the

Enchant, so minimum to wear gear should be ok. You definitely don’t want to go max block, remember you want to get hit!
Life /mana - depending on how far into

Energy Shield you want to go you may want to add some extra points into mana, even so this isn’t an immortal sorc build so definitely a couple hundred points into life

Skills:
This is where it gets tough and there’s some options depending on how you want to play. You should have 101 skills at level 90, here’s my breakdown recommendations
Frozen & chilling armours - if you max these, your chilling armour does some serious damage, especially with Infinity and your

Cold Mastery

Cold Mastery - probably just a few points needed with the +skills

Warmth - synergy for

Enchant and increase mana recovery for

Energy Shield, probably max

Fire Mastery - probably just a few points needed with the +skills

Lightning Mastery - definitely want to get close to max on this
Telekenisis +

Energy Shield - we’re not running a full

Energy Shield here, but maybe 10 points total here should be good, I also need to confirm if damaged taken to your

Energy Shield is reflected by

Thorns, if not you definitely don’t want to max this, just enough to spread out the damage
With all the pre-reqs and other 1 point wonder that should be everything. I wanted to work thunderstorm in here, but damn that’s a hard nut to crack.

Play style.
So you pretty much should be good to just pre-buff with cta,

Enchant, nrg shield, maybe

Fade if you had a

Thorns merc and he was wearing Treachery, then just tele-stomp or run around,

Berserk the big/lightning immune guys, and have some fun!

A decently equipped

Zeal sorc can handle lots of the game on p7, so even if we have to tweek this build a bit, it should be fairly easy to get through most of the game at a respectable players count.

Let me know if you’ve tried this build or something like it and if you have any recommendations!

I look forward to your feedback and good luck!

I have alot of doubts about this.

It has been tested before and

Thorns is just not good, even when completely built for it.

Aside of Fortitude's titular feature Enhanced Damage, the other titular feature is massive defense. Using

Berserk will neutralize that.

Chilling Armor's Ice

Bolts are mostly a gimmick. Putting points in the other armors to synergize it seems quite a waste. You might be better off putting those in

Enchant so you can run a L35-L40

Enchant instead of L23, and save out a swap piece. It would also benefit your AR further.

When you're running a dual Dream melee sorc, the single biggest impacting factor in your combat play will be the

Confuse procs. Your playstyle will revolve alot around killing off mobs beating up each other, which doesn't mesh well with the idea of getting hit alot.

Imho, every melee sorc should put at least 1 point in

Static Field and

Frost Nova.

Thorns got quite the upgrade in the last patch, it’s actually useful now, I’m rocking it in my bowamancer with good effect. Macroboiboi put out some details on it, even recommending it over a might aura in most cases for a summoner (which is essentially the effect we’re trying to achieve).

Don’t discount chilling armour, fully synergized it’s putting out close to 750 cold damage per shot, coupled with

Conviction and

Cold Mastery, as long as the attacker isn’t immune it’s having some serious life removed. They will also hit bad guys in melee range that get in the way.

Even a level 23

Enchant is giving more than enough ar, at level 23 it gives +200%, which is better than most main combat skills.

As for the

Confuse procs, I still get attacked by confused mobs all the time, they just attack randomly, if you’re in melee range you’ll still get their attention!

Yea for sure a point will be in static, not convinced we need one in

Frost Nova though.

And the not capitalizing on the def of fort, yes but who says you need to fully utilize every stat on an item? This is for fun!

The

Chilling Armor is an interesting idea albeit only effective against a depressingly small number of mobs. But yeah, the dmg is far from bad.

Thorns..I just don't see. Even for the above-mentioned summoner it still is kind of "mweh" at best and the summons actually do take damage.
Using that on a sorc, even with a 1 pt

Energy Shield (which does reduce things), will return so little dmg that I just don't see it working in any useful way. Not to mention it is solely melee physical dmg, making it inherently also very situational. Considering your dual Dream approach, you'll likely be far more efficient just zealing those same mobs instead.

I don't see much different from zealsorc.

Berserk is to deal with immunities.
For non-immu,

Zeal should give more DPS.

Damn, no-one wants to try something new?

Nate wrote: 1 year ago

Damn, no-one wants to try something new?

Since it's your build idea, your runes, and you're determined to give it a try, I say go for it.


Note: In my defense you were warned by Ravoc and Schnorki.

Yea I got still to finish off my bowamancer and farm another

Jah first.

I’m not playing as much as I used to these days too, just trying to think up new builds is almost more fun than playing them!