Theorycrafting thread: MF builds abusing the undead.

Pull up a chair, and grab a pour of whiskey.

With Halloween around the corner I thought this could create some fun discussion around thematic builds for the season.

+% enhanced damage to undead has been on my mind lately and by extension to that +% damage to demons as well.


Since the

Mausoleum is a level 85 area that can drop anything in the game, is it possible to create a build or builds that would be so jacked on +enhanced damage to undead that it could clear the

Mausoleum with complete ease?

Something fun, weird, yet relatively safe to do?

So far I've come up with two incomplete builds so far. Please bear in mind these are incomplete, just my whiskey fueled thoughts so far.
The Sanctuary Paladin

https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/9g0106zn I hope this link works. Let me know if it doesn't

Skills:

Sanctuary Aura,

Cleansing,

Zeal,

Sacrifice, the rest in

Holy Shield.



Items

Voice of Reason gives +375% damage to undead, another +50% if we use a

Scourge. Then I'm getting another +50% from Principle. If we are rich we can consider Chains of Honor for another 100%!

Either

Ghoulhide or

Gravepalm of course. I also figured

Gore Rider would be solid for any iteration of these builds.

I went with

Seraph's Hymn because of the theme here, but would highlords be better?

My thoughts

425% from Voice of Reason, 50% from Principle, 50% from

Seraph's Hymn, 200% on either glove....roughly, and 870% from Sanctuary.

Then there is the knock back effect against undead that

Sanctuary Aura has, this could be incredibly safe for the HC player.

MF items have to fit in somewhere...

I think I can do better than Rhyme but I went with it for the MF. Maybe there are better set/uniques I'm missing?
The Dual Lawbringer Barbarian

https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/em0106kt

So running with the

Sanctuary Aura theme, why not stack lawbringers on a barb for a stacked

Sanctuary Aura like one would for a tesladin with dual Dream?

If both of the lawbringers roll perfect we are talking a level 36

Sanctuary Aura dealing +1200% damage to undead!!!. The lowest roll will get you a level 32 aura still not bad.

Skills

I built this as a

Frenzy barb since he is dual wielding law bringers.

Frenzy,

Double Swing, Sword Mastery,

Battle Orders, There are a ton of free points to dump into....

Find Item? It seems pretty thematic to me, you kill a

Zombie then rip it apart looking for loot. There are tons of options here with the spare points.

Items

Very similar to the paladin.

Here is a short video of a Lawbringer build clearing the pit

The Lawbringer is built into a chainsaw.

Hail to the king baby!

Other Thoughts


MF needs to be figured into both of the builds. There is a lot of empty item slots to work with. If I missed any good undead damage items please bring them up.

If these are successful in the

Mausoleum then can we add +enhanced damage to demons to turn these into dedicated

Chaos Sanctuary clearing builds?

Black Hades comes to mind.

I've also been really interested in Edge, and wonder if one could pull off something similar with a undead slaying bowazon? But without

Sanctuary Aura can we get the necessary damage?

Tell me what you guys think, lets bounce some ideas off the wall.

I think it is a very cool idea. Expensive for a very niche part of the game, but cool. I'm not sure that it will be profitable compared to rolling standard MF and damage around a sorc etc.
I like the idea though - and go for it if you feel like it! And keep us updated

I'm going to go with an undead killer, but not in the same way you do. I'm actually going the painful route of making a FoH Paladin Combined with elemental

Zeal though, to be able to progress the rest of the game outside of

Mausoleum lol.

Still new, and more of a field-tester than a theory crafter, but i do focus on Bowgirls mainly so may have a little input

Edge is an underrated biw that can still pack a punch in Hell, with the right setup and base...

But if you would like some Undead Killer, i'd say Wrath is the bow to pick, since it has a lot of ED on both Demons and Undead.

As said still new so could be off here, but if i understood correctly mana steal usually doesn't work on Undead? But this bow also has a chance to cast

Life Tap on striking, which should work on every monster..

Also has fairly high chance to decrep, a decent Crushing Blow, PMH and CBF! - all of which is amazing, and leaves tons of room for creativity with the rest of the slots

Of course you could also think of

Goldstrike Arch: when upped to a

Hydra Bow, with tons of ED to Demons and Undead, it will hurt them! And of course has a chance to cast FoH

Only level 7, and lowish chance, but still, it sure fits that theme: I'll see if i can think of some useful items that could help out either Bow....

No doubt it's possible, probably not very viable, but fun for sure!

dirkemans wrote: 1 year ago

Still new, and more of a field-tester than a theory crafter, but i do focus on Bowgirls mainly so may have a little input

Edge is an underrated biw that can still pack a punch in Hell, with the right setup and base...

But if you would like some Undead Killer, i'd say Wrath is the bow to pick, since it has a lot of ED on both Demons and Undead.

As said still new so could be off here, but if i understood correctly mana steal usually doesn't work on Undead? But this bow also has a chance to cast

Life Tap on striking, which should work on every monster..

Also has fairly high chance to decrep, a decent Crushing Blow, PMH and CBF! - all of which is amazing, and leaves tons of room for creativity with the rest of the slots

Of course you could also think of

Goldstrike Arch: when upped to a

Hydra Bow, with tons of ED to Demons and Undead, it will hurt them! And of course has a chance to cast FoH

Only level 7, and lowish chance, but still, it sure fits that theme: I'll see if i can think of some useful items that could help out either Bow....

No doubt it's possible, probably not very viable, but fun for sure!

The problem with both, Edge and Wrath is that they ONLY have target-specific ED and no general ED, making them infinitely worse than pretty much any other alternative. A problem that goldstrike for example doesn't have.

The reason that's such a big deal is because your outgoing damage is effectively calculated in a 3 step process (simplified):

1) Get the base weapon damage (weapon + flat dmg)
2) Multiply with the general ED on the weapon
3) Multiply with any other ED summed up (target specific ed on weapon, skills, ed on other gear, stats, ...)

So say you have a bow with 50 weapon damage and 300% ED to undead (round numbers for easy math), that gives you 50 dmg against non-undead and 200 dmg against undead.

Now, if you have a bow with the same 50 weapon dmg, 200 ed and 200 ed to undead, you get 150 against everything non-undead (50*3) and a comparatively massive 450 dmg against undead (50*3*3).

That underlying importance of base ED becomes more and more significant the better your gear is because a Fortitude for example will add 300% dmg as a multiplier of your weapon dmg * base ED whereas for undead/demon ed, it will merely sum.

I.e. a bow with 50 dmg and 200 ed will do 150 dmg base multiplied by Fortitude = 600 dmg
That same bow with 50 dmg but 200 undead ed will do 50 * (200 undead ed+fort) = only 300 dmg, even against undead

Naturally, at lower gear levels you won't have Fortitude and the like but you do already get significant amounts of ED from your stat points and skills alone which follows the same Principle. Edge and Wrath may work to kind of kill stuff..but even compared to some lower tier options, they're pretty abysmal simply due to the complete lack of base ED. Well, especially since Wrath is FAR from being low or even mid tier. The only point of Wrath is to give it to your merc so she can keep

Decrepify up for you.

The problem with +% damage to Undead/Demons on a weapon is that it's calculated after weapon damage is calculated. So if you have, for sake of easy, 350% damage to Undead on a Voice of Reason

Scourge but no Enhanced damage % and a pair of

Gravepalm with 200% damage to Undead the calculation would be:

Scourge avg dmg=41.5
41.5*(1+650% ED)=311.25

compared to a lowly Passion runeword in the same

Scourge with 200% Enhanced damage paired with the same

Gravepalm, the calculation would be:

Scourge avg dmg=41.5
(41.5*(1+200% weapon ED))*(1+200% damage to Undead)=373.5 damage

Having normal Enhanced Damage % on the weapon will drastically increase the effects of +% damage to undead/demon.