Righteous Poison - Corpsewade Blood Mage

This build focuses purely on Corpsewade as the main skill. Corpsewade triggers Decompose on step, meaning you run around and watch enemies die from Poison.

Pros:

• Extremely Budget/SSF Viable (assuming you have Corpsewade)
• Lots of ways to scale the build's damage.
• Decently tanky - Life/ES/Mana all used as effective Life.
• Comfortable to play - Walk around and weapon swap occasionally
• Solid at dense content (Breach/Ritual)
• Can be used for MF (Increased Rarity)

Cons:

• Single-target damage is poor. Build cannot scale well for T3/4 Pinnacle Bosses. T15/16/17 Map Bosses and low Tier Pinnacles are ok but slow.
• Slow/Low Movement Speed. Corpsewade only has 10% MS and there isn't much around the Witch area.
• Can be clunky to play. If you mess up your Corpse revive, you'll be stuck with no damage.
• Potentially nerfed (Grim Feast)
• Burning Ground explodes the Poison Clouds. If a map boss rolls Trial of Fire, it'll be very hard to do. Burning Ground on maps also significantly lowers clear speed. (Still doable though)
• Elevation and poison cloud is bugged. Poison clouds will struggle to spread through elevation but visually looks like it should.
• Cannot do Simulacrum. Delirium mobs do not leave corpses behind, making this build quite bad for Simulacrum.
• Life Remnants Overflow Life does not maintain when Weapon Swapping. But the Overflow from Grim Feast will stay.

Pathfinder is Better

• All things considered, Pathfinder is the better Decompose Class since it can scale Poison much easier.
• This build is for comfy mapping/defensive/starter character. Pathfinder is the better all arounder.

I recommend following Skadoosh's Decompose Pathfinder if you want to build this way.

This build looks to use the Weapon Set system to summon a Skeletal Brute, which is then consumed by Decompose from Corpsewade.

Minions have a respawn timer. With this tree, your minions will respawn in approximately 7 seconds. We use the Weapon Swap to save the Corpse to consume when needed.

When mapping, you can chain Poison from the mobs corpses you kill into the next pack. If you walk through an area that isn't dense/the poison runs out, weapon swap to summon the Brute, pop it, and swap back to your curse setup.

For bossing you just drop corpses, swap to Blasphemy set, run around or Blink, rinse and repeat. Use Ball Lightning + Lightning Warp for Wither and Shocked Ground for more damage.

Important Note on Revive Timer and Combat

When there are no monsters near you, you can weapon swap quickly and respawn your Skeletal Brute over and over. You can use this to stack up Grim Feast to max before fighting monsters.

However, if you Weapon Swap while in combat, the Revive Timer will start EVEN IF your Brutes didn't die/decompose.

Because of this, if you get surrounded, Weapon Swap to summon your Brutes, but cannot move to trigger Decompose, Dodge Roll to try and get out. If you cannot get out you will need to swap back to set 2 and Blink out. However, by swapping without popping the Brutes, you will need to wait out the Revive Timer to pop the clouds again.

Notes on Corpsewade / Decompose

Decompose has a "hidden hit" that pretends to deal Chaos Damage equal to 38.5% of a Corpse's life. The Poison Cloud then scales off this hit. This is why things like Gain as Extra Chaos Damage work. It's also why Plaguefinger and Archmage also work to scale Decompose damage.

The Decompose skill does scale higher with levels, but barely. The difference between level 19 and level 18 Decompose is only about a 1% increase in damage. It's not worthwhile to invest into Chaos levels any higher, but if it's free it's still nice to have.

Important: The Level Requirement of Corpsewade is not always the same. You can get one as early as level 11, but the item level / Decompose level will be low. You also won't get as many Support Gems. Look for a Corpsewade that is high enough level for Level 18 Decompose. It's possible for level 19 to be dropped from Pinnacle Bosses, but the price to performance is not worthwhile.

V1.1 January 8, 2024

• Updated Tree/Weapon Swap
• Added some potential upgrades
• Unique Item Suggestions

V1 - December 21, 2024

• Initial Build Added
• Things to be tested
• • Potentially add Armour for Phys Mitigation through equipment
  • Scale more Life instead of ES if nerfed in the future
  • Potential for Recoup as defensive layer