Andariel's Visage:
This build does ALL of its damage through the poison nova explosionp from Andariel's Visage. We take lots of attack speed, lucky hit chance and damage multipliers in order to maximize our proc rate of Andariel's.
**Crowd Control: **
The main thing to know about this build is that you will pretty much only do damage when a monster is in a crowd control effect or a boss is staggered. If a mob is unstoppable (chains about their head) or a boss is not staggered, our damage drops significantly due to not activating most of our multipliers during this time as well as not having our additive crowd control dmg % active.
With that in mind, we have 2 things that help us significantly with this.
- Shared Misery + Random CC from Fists of Fate. This will pretty much instantly crowd control entire groups of mobs for us.
- We stagger bosses very fast with all of our crowd control (stun/freeze/slow/dazes)
Variations
I'd recommend reading the build variation descriptions to learn about the differences between them, but I'd recommend the starter build and then the optimize build for most content in the game. The no flurry variation is a new fun playstyle that does more damage, but is a little harder to play/build. The evade speed variation is a very unique playstyle with lots of dashing/speed.
Resist Cap and Armor Cap
Resist cap for Builds WITHOUT Tyrael's Might (jewelry)
1 topaz
1 ruby
1 amethyst
2 Implicit Cold Resist Rolls on rings
Armor cap for Builds WITHOUT Tyrael's Might:
Either
1 armor roll + 1 armor temper on gear
OR
1 GA (greater affix) armor roll + 25% masterwork upgrade
Resist cap for Builds WITH Tyrael's Might (jewelry)
Tyrael's might will cap our resists for us. Use Armor Gems (skulls instead)
Armor cap for Builds WITH Tyrael's Might (jewelry)
Because we are using Armor Gems (skulls) on jewelry, we just need a mid to high armor roll on our gear and 12/12 MW.
Attack Speed Cap
You need to be using daggers (they are faster than swords)
How to reach attack speed cap without Flurry or Rapid Aspect:
You will need +3 Alchemical Advantage on your amulet and 68% attack speed total on your gear to reach the 10 frame breakpoint. This can be done in many different ways, but ideally (without getting a GA andariels on attack speed roll) would be getting 2 masterwork crits on your andariel helm (58.5% attack speed) and a fists of fate with 10% attack speed on it. You can also put attack speed on rings as needed to make up for lower rolls on FoF or not enough MW procs.
If your just starting out, don't have masterworked gear and low or not much attack speed rolls, you could use flurry + combo points for an extra 45% attack speed until you get more attack speed.
If you amulet does not have +3 alchemical advantage, but you have the 68% attack speed, I'd still recommend NOT using Rapid Aspect as it will only make you go from 11 frames to 10 frames, which is about 10% more damage only.
Video Guides for more info:
https://youtu.be/8YmdNIQGQMw
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
1) Why Bow over Xbow? Answer: Bow deploys caltrops faster than Xbow (feels better). Caltrops depends on the 2hander attack speed. Xbow will do about 1.5% more dmg if you want to use that instead.
2) Is Damage per Dark Shroud % better than Dmg vs Crowd Control %? Yes, in season 5, damage per dark shroud % is so high that it even beats CC %. It gives us about 2x more damage. It also works even when the mob is not CC'd, so that is a big advantage as well.
2) Is X'fals worth in this build? No. Andy's won't proc x'fals and therefore x'fals won't proc enough to make it worth using over a legendary ring.
3) Can you use this without Andy's Helm? No.
4) Can we use starless skies? A: You can swap out the coldclip ring if you want for starless. It will give about 10% more damage in the ideal case of having 100% uptime on the 50% damage buff, but you sacrifice a temper to do so. And, this forces you to have to use flurry more often. If you already like using flurry every 3 seconds, go for it. I personally don’t like using it though.
5) Can you use doombringer? You can if you want more survival (good for hardcore). It is is pretty big DPS loss however.
6) Why do you use bursting venoms? Bursting venoms has a chance to proc andariel's visage along with all of your CC % tempers.
7) What should I put on my amulet? Frigid is a must have, After that, alchemist's fortune > malice > exploit, dex %, deadly venom are all roughly equal.
8) Does Dex scale Andy Dmg... the tooltip says "skill dmg"? Yes, dex scales Andy Dmg (and all flat damage) since the start of Season 4 change. The tooltip needs to be updated.
9) Can Andy's Proc "X"? No. Andariel's poison nova does not have lucky hit chance and therefore can't proc other procs. This is true in general that procs can't proc other procs except for bursting venoms, which does have a lucky hit chance currently.
10) How do you get Dark Shroud orbs around you without putting Dark Shroud on your bar? The umbrous aspect does this for us.
11) Does it matter if the roll is a low amount on the damage range for aspect on fists of fate? 1-300%. A: No, it won't make a big difference as it doesn't work on poison nova anyways. It'll just help a little with puncture damage, which is a very small part of our damage.
12) What stats matter on Fists of Fate? A: You mainly want high LHC (GA LHC pref) and and at least a 35% roll on the LHC:Random CC (over 50% when upgraded to CC everything fast and give bursting venoms a better chance of CC/staggering the boss, more the better. Attack speed is helpful to hit the attack speed cap, but you can get attack speed on another piece of gear if needed. Crit % is mostly useless, tho not bad to have.
13) Which is better Andy Barrage or Andy Puncture/Flurry? A: The two builds are very comparable in overall power thus far. I’d pick whichever playstyle you find more fun (melee vs range). For very high pit pushing, it is TBD, but barrage may have a slight edge b/c of survival. (hard to test pits atm). For all other content, pretty comparable from what I've seen thus far.
14) Is there a lucky hit chance cap to reach ? A: There is no LHC cap. More the better!
Creeping Death + Fists of Fate + Shared Misery Synergy Explanation
Creeping death and Fists of Fate work remarkably well together in this build.
Creeping death makes us do 40% more dmg for each CC effect on the enemy.
Fists of Fate applies a random CC effect. There are 7 different CC effects that it applies (stun, daze, freeze + chill, slow, taunt, immobolize).
Because we have such high LHC and fast attacks with puncture, we can easily apply all 7 effects on enemies permanently.
Shared misery can then spread these effects to all of the enemies.
This gives us 40% x 7 = 280% more damage on mobs just from creeping death + fists of fate + shared misery. Pretty amazing Synergy.
Rogue
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