Army of the Dead / Dead Storm
Cooldown: 120 seconds
Cost: 20% 100% health
Raise a storm of the dead that surround you in a 25 yards radius damaging enemies for 15,500% 300,000% weapon damage per second as Physical over 5 30 seconds.
Explainer
- Dead Storm means you must be dead to cast the storm, so it costs 100% health
- 300,000% is the damage output per second of 2250% (Blood Lance) x 20 Lances (Pestilence) x 600% (Corpsewhisper pauldrons)
- 30 seconds duration (3x the duration of Land Of the Dead) rewards the risk of having zero Life during this attack. It also balances the fact that Dead Storm does not freeze ennemies so does not Trigger Krysbin’s Sentence x3.
- In conclusion, it is just on par with Corpse Lance… with 0% Life.
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Bone Armor / Limited Immunity
Cooldown: 45 120 seconds
Your armor absorbs all incoming damage and grants immunity to all control impairing effects but only lasts for 5 40 seconds.
Explainer
- Cost 1 skill slot
- Helps to not die while executing Army of the Dead / Dead Storm
- Better choice to stay alive than Land of The Dead / Frozen Land (which only freeze ennemies from time to time), but less damage output since neither Army of the Dead / Dead Storm nor Bone Armor / Limited Immunity freeze ennemies
- 10 seconds more since you will cast it few seconds before Army of the Dead / Dead Storm (so there’s a delay), and also because when Army of the Dead / Dead Storm end, you are a zero Life and you need few seconds to regen some HP.
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Synergizes with : Trag’Oul’s Avatar now apply damage based on Life lost
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FAQ
Q : Can I forge a cooldown-based build with Bone Armor / Limited Immunity in order to, in practice, become invulnerable ?
A : Yes if you play ZNecro. No if you play damage dealer, because immunity does not help you to defeat Rift Guardians, especially In Greater Rifts where time to defeat them is limited. As you will need to slot other 120s cooldown skills to defeat Rifts Guardians, Trag’Oul’s Avatar 6p bonus will loadbalance the cooldown bonus on each of these skills, reducing your ability to create a cooldown build exclusively built on Bone Armor / Limited Immunity. In practice, the need for having a great damage output prevents players to become invulnerable 100% of the time.
Q : But can I forge a cooldown-based build with Bone Armor / Limited Immunity and Rathma’s Shield in order to, in practice, become invulnerable ?
A : No, Rathma’s Shield won’t help. If you sequentially use Land of the Dead, Army of the Dead, and Simulacrum (which is hard unless you have a macro), you can gain 12s of immunity of 3 x 120s cooldown. If you add Bone Armor / Limited Immunity, it is another 40s of immunity of a 120s cooldown. We can see here that Limited Immunity has the best ratio. Anyway it means you can get 52s of immunity of 480s cooldown (11% of the time). 480s cooldown (8 minutes) is a lot to break. In addition, you’ll still need skills to kill Rift Guardian in Greater Rifts.