Making blood surge work with A bone built

Ok, so I basically just started using BS for this season and loved it early leveling. It just feels nice. Lol. Now I just cleared into torment (lv 58 thank you, hold your applause) and have been using Iron Maiden the past few levels and into Torment. At 60 now, and I appreciate the extra damage and benefits that come with Iron Maiden, but I really liked using blood surge. Is it still viable? My build might have to move around a bit to make it work so I don’t want to go experimenting if I’ll end up regretting it. Especially now that I’m holding some decent gear. I just like it and hope that it could fit the bill…ed. (see what I did there). Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

Where will be certain “break points” where you will notice you either became to “squishy” or your DPS aren’t cutting it. With BS you are pretty much 1 trick pony in order to get most of it you have to put all synergies (think about hammerdin from D2 :slight_smile: ) This of course should not deter you from experimenting (since it relatively easy to alter your built as you go). The way you deal with “squishy” - at lower levels of NM dungeons you can get away with high level barrier or/and barrier on-demand (with unique pants) at higher level you will be force fall into the mist to survive. As for DPS part - each built revolves around certain unique (BS need Deathless vision) and you will also end up with 2H sword as a weapon … same goes to aspects. 2 of them critical for the built (one turn your BS into perma vulnerable tool and other boost your crit chance and damage with CT)

I know a ton of people push 2hand weapons especially in high nightmare tiers but a 2h weapon on a blood surge build seems (and after toying with it) really wrong to me. Attack speed is one of the number one things to focus on for a blood build, assuming they are utilizing overpower and fortify.

I suppose if the use of blood surge is purely supplemental and not depended on as the number one source of damage, it would be fine though.

I use Iron Maiden in my Blood Surge build. It’s hilarious because the whole damage portion doesn’t even matter. All that matters is the resource generation and heal plus damage amplification for good measure.

I honestly don’t know. I’m lv66 myself. The build does not show any signs of stopping during the leveling process. How it’ll perform in high NM’s I have zero idea.

To me it seemed like a no brainer. Blood Surge seemed like one of those abilities that is ‘one hitter quitter’. With 2H, it works exactly like that.

Yeah I utilize all of that. Early game, you can actually get 2H AS high enough that the generator will refill your resource meter but late game, there’s other aspects that compete with those slots that you can’t use it anymore. On my build, I have setups to deal with each thing. There’s a setup specifically for resource, for fortify, and so on.

That’s not really the case though. I use Blood Surge as the main ability with 2H weapon and I run the dungeon at 125% move speed with 3 Evade charges deleting entire packs. It works amazingly.

I’ve tried 1H+Focus and it feels nicer because you’re spamming BS, getting the OP, building the resource back super fast, then back to BS. It’s super smooth, I get it. I just did not like seeing less damage (even with OP) fly through the screen.

I’ve found that the Generator + Blood Surge is really the most basic (but functional) way to play but it’s not optimal. For example, even if you were to stick to 1H+Focus (or Shield, would be my choice personally), getting Essence Cost Reduction on Boots + Amulet, and Resource Generation on Rings would allow you to spam BS without using a generator AT ALL.

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Thank you for explaining the optimal methods to me based on your level 66 blood build. As someone who leveled a blood surge necro to 75 and my current blood lance necro is 90, I only ever end up agreeing with you on a point or two. Even if I have tried things you indicate back when I was starting out.

The thing is, numerically what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. With my current setup, not incl the paragon legendary node, I have ~515-550% OP. The weapon alone contains two 21% rubies and a 42% OP affix. You cannot outpace these numbers with a 1H.

What do you mean can’t outpace the numbers? My OP is currently 1,500something. I have room to raise it further. That’s just from my stat card. You should be getting up there eventually too regardless of the weapon.
I highly suggest you look up vids by “Struth Gaming.” I think he’s moved on to other things now but of everything I have read or watched about blood builds, he is the most informative.

You technically cannot. I have 2 sockets versus your 1. My OP affix rolls significantly higher than yours. If we have everything equal on all the other slots, the fact that I have a 2H means I’ll have a higher OP number than you do guaranteed.

If you think I am lying about my OP number, you’re just not taking the right paragon, aspects, pet sacrifice, etc. Or watch the vids by the Struth fellow I mentioned who will break it down for you and specifically show you how to get your OP much higher. It’s not hard to get your overpower even higher than my 1,500. Currently, I still have some overpower damage nodes on my last board and I could get more through item affixes as well.

I’m not saying you’re lying. I’m saying to look at each weapon objectively. One has two sockets and the other has one. One rolls the OP number much higher than the other.

I just did. What I saw wasn’t bad but it’s not as fancy as the things that I was doing. I wouldn’t run skeletons like he does but if you notice he uses 2H lol!

The only vid he uses a two hander in is from a month ago before several changes. IN the season 1 blood lance guide and the season 1 blood surge levelling guide, there is no 2hander. He doesn’t use skellies in either of these too once levelled up high enough.

In one of his vids he explains that after testing, a 2hander didn’t do much but make up the difference between having an off hand/aspect. Yeah, you may get to see bigger boom once in a while but I’ll take the extra speed to make up for it. Now that I’ve entered into tier 60 nightmare, the offhand got switched for a shield. Lidless wall, to be exact. You’re right of course that a 2hander weapon has two slots but so what? There are other things to do/tweak/mess with to make up for socketing one less ruby. Especially if those things let you speed to your guaranteed overpowers faster or up survivability. If I wanted a build just to see a huge number here and there, I would have gone bone spear.

I’m not sure what you mean by the things you do being fancier. That just sounds like narcissism. I’ve read all the things you have posted about blood builds and haven’t noticed anything I would regard as “fancy” in comparison.

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watch?v=F8zI6e9fhrk
Obviously a 2H right in frame 1 of the video.

Sigh. Obviously everything sounds like narcissism to someone like you who points to a Youtuber for all their information. That said, I haven’t posted about it yet quite obviously. I came up with quite a handful of effective setups on my own but I’m not sure if sharing these things is the best thing to do at the moment.

So far just because I corrected you on 1 thing, you’ve attacked me nonstop. I’m not a fellow player to you because nothing I say even matters. Your attitude is that only your point matters and you pull a variety of things to attempt to get the upper hand on me.

You’re right. Frame one. And then gone for the rest of the vid plus other build vids plus the written planners for either.

I don’t get all my info from streamers, that’s an assumption. Although even if I did, there is nothing wrong with that. The narcissism comment is because you’re always happy until anyone has a different thought. I have seen it from you on multiple posts. Hence people have actually warned people in other posts not to listen to you, since you’re convinced you’re the only one who knows what’s really going on, no matter how unhelpful it is.

Look, I tried. I thought I would engage. I’ll stop. I’m sure your level 66 knows best and anything you do is “fancy”.

Exactly. So when you’re going around the thread telling people, “1H is best, 1H is best”, listen to THIS guy, and I actually look dude up, HE USES A 2H JUST LIKE ME! It throws your whole credibility out the window, dude. How can you even recover from this?!?

It’s a valid one because that’s the first thing you did. You told me, “GO LOOK AT THIS GUY”. And I DID look at that guy, JUST LIKE YOU ASKED. Hence the YT link which I posted here. It proves without a shadow of a doubt, that I took what you said seriously and I went to investigate what you presented me with. Which shows that I respected you enough to spend time on what you thought.

DUDE. JUST FULL ON STOP! Go back and read my 1st reply to you in this thread. I basically stated, “hey, I understand what you’re saying, I understand how all that works, it’s your preference, that’s cool and all, but I like playing 2H. I noticed you said this doesn’t work, which is not true because I’m making it work”. And then you went from 0% to 100%. You’re unhinged attacking me relentlessly. Wtf am I supposed to do about that? 1st thing I did for you was be ultra considerate and then next thing I know I’m accusing you of lying which was nowhere close to my original intent.

You know, it’s funny because as much as the forum tells me that I’m wrong and what I’m doing doesn’t work, the fact that I’m breezing by the game and I’m continuing, not only progressing but wildly successful in doing so. It just proves that forum people have absolutely zero say so in the real results. If I was so bad as everyone is saying and that I really don’t know anything, then I’d have failed to progress and quit long ago. Just goes to show that I’m on the right side of history.

You said you’re Lv75? I’ll be lv70 later today when I wake up (I haven’t gone to sleep yet). I easily did 60-66 and I was just chillin here watching Hitch damn near complete his journey to Nordkapp on a bike.

  1. First one was 75. No other comment. Really doesn’t seem worth it. If I do, your wtf’s and caps and exclamation marks will just escalate. Like they do in your other posts. Great job exaggerating everything I said too. I’m just going to write this off as, I engaged with a child. Usually try to avoid it.

anyone who tells you to go 2hander with a Blood Surge build doesnt know what theyre talking about.

Two main reasons you should use a 1hander+shield.
Shield can roll health(which is your biggest damage stat as a Blood Surge necro, by a massive margin)
Attack speed is your friend. More attack speed = more Overpowers.
Overpowers which hit the same amount of damage regardless of if youre using a 1h or 2h.
In fact they hit harder if youre using a 1hander, because you have health on your shield.
And faster.

Secret 3rd reason: The Blood Surge aspect is mandatory, but the roll is irrelevant. So, your 1hander is the best place to put it. You can even pull it from the codex and it will perform the same as a perfect one. Then you have a extra defensive aspect on your shield(which youll need in late game), and can put whatever you were using a 2hander for aspect wise, just put on your neck.

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Boy. These players are really, REALLY bad.