PTR Blood Rain build with Cruor's Embrace experience

Necromancer
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Hi, for those necros who haven’t played PTR, I would like to give a quick overview on a new unique necromancer gloves: Cruor’s Embrace and how did they fit into my personal Blood Rain build during PTR.

They can be farmed from Lord Zir and man, so difficult to find, I have spent four days before I got them dropped. By that time I had maybe 10 Ebonpiercers, a new amulet for Necro - also really good by the way. CE come with four affixes:

  • +X% Overpower Damage
  • +X% Core Damage
  • Lucky Hit: Up to a 5% Chance to Heal +X Life
  • +X to Blood Surge (Necromancer Only)

As we can see there is no Attack Speed or Critical Chance bonuses so much popular on gloves, however Attack Speed appears now on items like rings and Critical Chance can be increased by investing point into Inspiring Leader skill, so it should not be a major problem. When rolled with greater affixes, on a start before mastering value of affixes are about like this:

  • Overpower Damage is 94.5%
  • Core Damage is 42%
  • Heal is +1582
  • Blood Surge ranks is +4

Unique property for 925 Item Power:

  • Blood Surge consumes Corpses to cause mini novas, dealing [993 - 1360] damage. Damage is increased by 10% per target drained by the initial cast, up to %50. Damage is also increased by 20% for each Corpse consumed. (Necromancer Only)

Just to clarify, corpses explode all around, within and outside blood surge nova radius, at the same time.

Ok, so these gloves are godly, amazing! If you have been using Ring of Sacrilegious to spawn Corpse Explosion every 1 sec., equipped with Black River, CE clear entire screen within milliseconds! As far as I remember the maximum number of corpses at the same time you can have is about 15, so you want to keep the spawning rate around that value. In my build I have used reapers with 15% chance to spawn corpses along with Army of the Dead Ultimate skill which spawns Volatile Skeletons to leave corpse behind. AoE seems to be straight forward, but to deal equally good wit a single target, such as bosses, I have setup my build to use Blood Lance in place of a basic skill. BL is an already strong damage dealer, can use Hewed Flesh to spawn corpses and span to multiple opponents creating opportunity for another corpses. Having said that, I had to use Blood Mist with a minimum 50% increased movement speed (tempering) to travel between areas after quickly clearing one.

Talking about aspects: I would recommend to try Cadaverous Aspect. x50% on the next core skills cast was up all the time, since we detonate more than 5 corpses at once on average. Blood Rain build is using Banished Lord’s Talisman as a source of three guaranteed overpowers; the other two come from BL and BS. If it comes to Essence, I was using: 5 Cold Mages with 3 Essence per hit each, two point in Grim Harvest and Essence Regeneration that now can be found on items like Boots (with tempering it regenerates really quick). Other aspects I was testing: Blood-Bathed, Rathma’s Chosen and Blood Seeker’s. Blood Lance was also supported by Mutilator Plate.

Well, much more to say, but I don’t want to stretch it - I really recommend to check them out, obviously on dedicated Blood Builds. I was also testing Blight and Bone Spirit - they are also very strong, just not enough time (1 week only) to explore more. Currently we are waiting for possible changes after PTR feedback, thanks for a reading and I will see you in S4.

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Useful to know… A couple questions come to mind for Cruor’s Embrace, if you don’t mind (I never found the item on PTR, unfortunately…).

You didn’t/don’t need CE at all with the gloves to trigger buffs like Flesh Eater, Fueled by Death and Grim Harvest, correct? All of these are tied to corpse consumption but not CE directly. So I’d expect Cruor’s could trigger them via Surge without CE being on the bar. Similar to Osseous Gale aspect and the minion heal/priest ability.

If so, did every corpse consumed with Surge qualify as an individual consume? For instance, if you pop 5 corpses with Black River in one cast it’ll give a full 5 stack of Flesh Eater, instantly activating it, and each individual consume provides the 6 base essence from Grim Harvest, for a total of 30. I’d expect the gloves to behave the same way.

I’m imagining a scenario where one uses Cruor’s Embrace but doesn’t take CE, freeing up some skill points and a bar slot. Yet, you could still take Fueled by Death, Grim Harvest and Flesh Eater. Since Surge popping corpses would still qualify as corpse consumption. Whether it’d be any good or not is more up in the air.

Also, I wouldn’t expect those gloves to be a good fit with Black River or Howl. Since both of those are specifically tied to CE. The mini novas are presumably oblivious to CE and, by extension, both items. Outside of bugged interactions anyway. Sac Soul is more of a grey area since it could still auto-cast CT and the minion heal/priest ability.

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Yes, you get the benefit of each corpse that is consumed.

Actually, running both the unique and corpse explosion is anti synergistic. You wouldn’t have any corpses to explode (or use for the unique if you CE).

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Sounds exciting! Can’t wait to try it out. I think for S4 I’m aiming for my original build which is Pure Minions, but now with Mendeln. Obviously drops are going to determine what I get to run. We’ll see.

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Yes, what BattleTag mentioned is all true: Cruor’s Embrace consume corpses at once - so if there is 9 on the screen, the count will be 9 and will trigger Flesh Eater automatically. We obviously don’t want any other form of corpse consumption and I am happy we can have a little break from Corpse Explosion and Ring of Sacrilegious Soul.

As an example I use Cadaverous Aspect. It increases the damage of the next core skill by x10% up to x50% - so before I use any core skill, I can consume corpses to get higher value. I was observing status icon during Blood Surge and it was showing 5 almost all the time.

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Thanks. I asked because I never got a chance to test it and ensure all of that stuff works as expected.

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All right, there is actually more to test: interesting here is use of Blood-bathed Aspect which echoes nova again. If the first blast of Blood Surge triggers Hewed Flesh on the enemy, then the second blast might detonate corpses. I need to check this out - Blood Surge has low Lucky hit chance.

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Yes, the second nova will trigger any corpses from the 1st.

I cleared pit115 using the gloves and the Deathspeaker amulet, it’s a really flashy build. Lilith also goes down in less than 3 seconds per phase and NMD100 becomes a joke. Another cool thing is that Rahtmas Chosen on a 2H gives you 100% attack speed that also applies to minions, on top of the 100% from equipment, making them super fast to trigger the Mendeln ring for around 700k-1M damage. Don’t forget that by using a 2H, the rolls from the gloves and amulet mini novas are doubled, same goes for the ring. Theres also no need to run a basic skill or CE because of all the cost reduction, allowing you to use Bone Golem that gives you 5 corpses every big group for a Corpse Tendrils and 4 additional corpses for mini novas

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Nice! Using 2H is quite tempting and from what you are saying sounds solid.

Corpse Tendrils does not consume corpses, so it is 5 additional mini novas. I actually don’t use Golem with his taunt ability or CT to gather enemies in one place, cos I have different strategy on distributing corpses for mini novas.

I was testing actually Ring of Mendeln and Deathspeaker’s Pendant as well… It is just - legendary items now after tempering are so competitive against uniques that in some cases you might benefit much more from them. Say Ring of Mendeln has Thorns affix, which could be seen as a bottleneck on on non-thorn build, etc. - you could apply 85% damage to close/distant enemies for skeletons/mages instead for extra benefit, however with 3 sec phase kill on Lilith it doesn’t matter so much and it is all for fun.

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I played without the Mendeln ring too, my 2 options were grasping veins and conceited.

Another thing to keep in mind about a 2H is that cost reduction goes really high to the point that Blood Surge cost was down to 8. I could spam it all day, because essence per second was 16 so it was infinite essence without a generator, resource aspect, no cold mages and only 1 point in Grim Harvest because it’s a requirement. The 2H also gives the minions a bigger damage per hit without the speed penalty…the penanlty that you also don’t notice because of the 50% extra speed from Rathmas Chosen.

Heading back to the ring topic after mentioning the bonus to minion damage and speed bonus from using a 2H. The only reason I tried the Mendeln ring was because I was testing the Rathmas Chosen 100% attack speed to minions with the Cult Leader paragon node. The elite paragon node was bugged and you could go past the 100% speed cap so Rathmas Chosen was actually a better choice than Aspect of the Frenzy Dead because it was boosting your speed and theirs speed/damage. This will probably be fix for S4 but for the PRT it was a nice way to make a more hybrid build, the main damage from the build was Blood damage but with a minion flavor.

Note: Reapers and Bone Golem for extra corpses to cast mini surges that would also trigger lucky hits that could trigger Elemental Surge for 58,000 physical damage (bigger bonus damage from 2H). Shadow mages for the 15X damage.

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I am still not sure if want my Blood Surge be so fast - I use Blood Lance/Army of the Dead/Reapers for corpse build up and Blood Surge to execute Cruor’s Embrace with a few novas, then create corpses again. I was actually experimenting with Guaranteed Overpower against single target such as bosses:

  • Blood Lance (Supernatural)
  • Blood Surge (Paranormal)
  • Rathma’s Vigor
  • Banished Lord’s
  • Blood Boiling Aspect

Blood Mist cooldown reduced by 2 sec. every time you overpower was quite noticeable and quite good results with Blood Boiling - it spawns 3 drops for 6K physical on every overpower from you. I would say it was 30 drops on average every time I was hitting group of enemies, which gives about 180K physical damage just to move around with a nice “dark cloud” animation. No cost reduction in case Banished is used.

Like you said, after PTR S4 will invite more hybrid builds. For example I like Freeze effect, I use Cold Mages for chill effect and essence generation, but with the new tempering system they can support me with Vulnerable later on since we have more options for resource management on gear affixes. Will see, so far so good.

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Are you saying rathma’s can exceed the 100% attack speed cap, even for minions? That would be quite something.

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Let me explain, there are 2 attack speed caps. The normal one from gear, and the second one from aspects.

The minions Cult Leader paragon node says it gives X damage for every 20% attack speed to a maximum of 100% speed but it was bugged and was giving X damage past 100% speed. Because minions get 100% of your stats, they were receiving my 200% attack speed, resulting in a double X damage bonus from Cult Leader. Remember most minions builds use Frenzy Death for the minions attack speed but in a hybrid blood build it’s better to use Rathmas because both sides get the huge speed %.

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“* Your Minions deal 30%[ X ] increased damage for each 20%[ X ] of Attack Speed Bonus they have, up to a maximum of 100% Attack Speed Bonus.”

They don’t recive bonus damage above 100% attack speed bonus anymore. Atleast after the patch.

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Of course, for physical minion builds it might be an option to aim for the hard cap, though. They don’t have as many multipliers as shadow builds have.

After doing some digging, it appears that there are three aspects, which are in a separate bucket. These are Frenzied Dead, Accelerating and Rathma’s. In theory, you could reach 300% attack speed. Going from 200% to 300% has a lot less value than the first 100% IAS, though.

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I think in my build minions will server more as an utility with some extra damage on side. Let first list damage boost for Cruor’s Embrace in the best scenario:

  • Supernatural Blood Surge: x30% (with Fortify over 50% of max life)
  • Gloves: x50% per minimum 5 targets affected
  • Gloves: 20% for each corpse consumed on the screen (corpse limit apply)
  • Cadaverous Aspect: x50%(1h) or x100%(2h) after consuming minimum 5 corpses
  • Banished Lord’s: x60% when it overpowers on critical strikes
  • Blood Moon: x70% overpower bonus while affected with any curse
  • Flesh-Eater: x40% after consuming 5 corpses

This is one of my three powerful attack patterns (the other two being “Blood Mist-Blood Boiling-Army of the Dead” and “Blood Lance-Gore Quills-Embalmer”), so I guess my minions will have not much time to hit an enemy, however will be more of help against bosses.

Strangely, I don’t have actually space in my build for Blood-bathed Aspect(BB) and Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen(RC). RC gives 50% attack speed which I can substitute on rings/weapons with greater affix rolls and if lucky increased with tempering system. That means attack speed should appear at least 3 times as an affix on gear to keep it between 100% and 150%. The reason I prefer not to use BB is that I want to better control where x50%/x100% multiplier from Cadaverous goes after consuming corpses. When triggered, it can carry on to Blood Lance or I can recast Blood Surge again.

Minions:

I will probably switch my cold mages from first upgrade (3 essence per attack) to second upgrade (Vulnerable for 4 sec.) later on. I need to do some testing first. Warriors will stay as second upgrade to spawn corpses. For those using Blood Moon Breeches as a tip, 7% to curse enemies is calculated as 55% chance to apply curse when 11 minions hit at once. Golem? Well I have seen video golem dealing trillions/billions of damage (PTR only), but for that you need to sacrifice a lot of affixes on gear, 1 paragon board, 1 slot on skill bar, etc. - usually big damage is quickly met with nerfs to balance things out. It really depends on your build, I don’t want to encourage/discourage in this case.

This is all draft, so even I might change some things around in the build, since we are having Campfire on 2 May coming up. Can’t wait for a patch notes…

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Attack speed from affixes caps at 100%. You can’t really substitute Rathma’s with it because Rathma’s is in a separate bucket. Accelerating and Rathma’s are the only options that increase blood surge/lance attack speed further, hard capping at 5 attacks/second.

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Ok, thanks - good to know.