Build Guide
!!!!! This is a work in progress. I'll update this from time to time! !!!!!!!The basic idea is to rely on an Empowered Shrine permanently (with Gloves of Worship) to have permanent Epiphany: Insight and basically infinite spirit. In a fast clearing T6 group, this should be possible to achieve. Relying on the Empowered Shrine has the following effects:
- The shrine also increases spirit regeneration - combined with Insight, you'll never run out of spirit.
- Your limit as to how fast you can spawn SWK clones is only how much APS you have.
- You only need 33% unbuffed CDR to get there (details below).
- You don't have to take any spirit generator skills besides Epiphany.
- We have plenty of movement speed buffs that will make you feel like a teleporting Speedy Gonzalez.
- Since we're spending all 45 spirit per second that Epiphany: Insight gives us, we are healed by 70k life per second (add your own LPS to that, and 2% of health globe bonus) - you can easily get your healing up to 150-200k per second!
CDR theory: you need 8% CDR on gloves and shoulders, 10% on paragon, and a diamond in helmet. That puts you at 33.35%. Add Gogok with 15 stacks, it'll put you at 43.34%. With an Empowered Shrine, we reach almost 72% - an Epiphany downtime of 2 seconds, which is barely noticeable and will not cause any issues. Done!
"But what if the Empowered Shrine wears off or I didn't find one yet?" - for that we switch out three pieces of gear and one passive: instead of Seize the Initiative we take Beacon of Ytar, and we swap in Vigilante Belt, Leoric's Crown, and Sunwoku Gloves for Witching Hour, Sunwoku Helmet, and Gloves of Worship. That puts us at a bit over 64% CDR, with an Epiphany downtime of 6.5s - it's not perfect and might be noticeable towards the end of the Epiphany downtime, but it's not the end of the world and you'll get by. If you feel that it's too much for you you can swap a few more pieces: take Captain Crimson's boots+legs and a RoRG with CDR, for example, to put yourself at 2.76s Epiphany downtime.
Now, let's assume we have the Empowered Shrine active and run through the rift, how does this build work? Pretty simple: with perma Epiphany you'll be able to teleport constantly, plus you have Dashing Strike that you should use frequently for another 20% movement speed buff. Make sure you to keep Epiphany, Blinding Flash, and Breath of Heaven up as often as possible - as soon as they're out of cooldown. If you have a macro keyboard/mouse you can use that, although you need to deactivate it before teleporting to town, so it might add an annoyance. As your main spell, you're just pulling and killing everything in with CS like crazy - the CS explosion will deal some damage and the SWK clones will add damage on top of that.
Now to the choices and degrees and freedom of this build: you're not committed to any CS rune. You can choose whatever you want - based on which rune you prefer and which elements you have on bracers, SWK amulet, and SoJ.
- Eye of the Storm (lightning): Especially good for when you're not super fast and don't have perfect Empowered Shrine uptime, or you don't have as much CDR as needed.
- Implosion (holy): Much larger pull area. Awesome in maps like Cemetery and Blood Marsh.
- Sunburst (fire): Highest damage rune.
- Wall of Wind (cold): Freeze stuff after being pulled - it's especially great if you feel too squishy.
- Soothing Breeze (holy): An incredible group healing rune, especially awesome when you play with other squishy melee characters. With some health globe bonus on gear you can heal your group for up to 100k per second. Note that there are other (potentially better) healing spells for you and your group, so Implosion is usually the better choice unless you really need more healing.
- For lightning, you might use Schaefer's Hammer (2h weapon) or any two of Shard of Hate, Thunderfury, Odyn Son, Fulminator, or Won Kim Lau.
- For fire, you might use Maximus (2h weapon) or Devastator and Axe of Burning Sankis.
- For cold, you might use Wrath of the Bone King (2h weapon) or any two of Rimeheart, Azurewrath, Utar's Roar, or Shard of hate.
- For holy, you might use a Skycutter and Akanesh.
- Other weapons of interest might be Furnace (no list would be complete without it...), Flying Dragon (if you feel you could spend even more spirit), Inna's (if you want to get the set bonus - although it's not that useful); or even better two one-handed weapons such as Sunkeeper and a weapon with elemental damage that fits to your rune of choice. You could even use the Little Rogue and Slanderer set, if you have it, for even faster spam. But unless you sacrifice a million kittens to the RNG god you'll never see it, especially not ancient!
Finally, a word on the skills: there's lots of choices between buffing your DPS, attack speed, and movement speed. Since you have perma Dashing Strike/Epiphany teleport, it's not really necessary to go all crazy on the MS skills, so I took out Annihilation (MoC) and replaced it with Blinding Flash (Faith in the Light) for even more damage. You can take a defensive mantra or even Mantra of Healing if you feel you're too squishy and/or spirit starved. Same for Fire Ally - if you rather want more spirit, choose Air Ally. Basically, the only given spells in this build are Cyclone Strike and Epiphany: Insight.
!!!!! This is a work in progress. I'll update this from time to time! !!!!!!!
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