Welcome to Build of the Week. I'm Nancy from MmoGah. This week, we're looking at Akshay's Ward Loop Scion, which uses a complex Cast When Damage Taken setup to create some frankly disrespectful spell spam.
How Does This Work?
I hope you like math. Let's start with Ward. It's a form of defense granted by Expedition items. When we get hit, the damage will be taken from our Ward before our Life or Energy Shield, and the Ward will break. After breaking, our Ward will be restored after a delay. Olroth's Resolve is a unique Flask that completely transforms this mechanic. After you take a swig, your Ward will be greatly reduced, but it won't break during the entire flask effect. What's important is that the damage you take is still tracked, even if it doesn't overcome the Ward. Thus, you can intentionally damage yourself to trigger Cast When Damage Taken setups without actually losing Life or Energy Shield, as long as each hit is less than your Ward.
This build uses Forbidden Rite and Summon Skeletons, both linked with Cast When Damage Taken combined with Heartbound Loop, to cause a recursion of self-inflicted damage forever. This damage triggers our other gem setups, which also use the Cast When Damage Taken gem to cast a myriad of spells that we spew forth relentlessly.
In their guide, Akshay has broken down exactly how the maths of this loop works. Hold on to your hats because we're going in.
Our main damage Link uses a level 21 Divergent Cast When Damage Taken gem, which triggers supported spells when you take a total of 2935 damage. We're dealing damage to ourselves using Heartbound Loop's "350 Physical Damage taken on Minion Death" mod and Forbidden Rite's "Take 40% of Maximum Life and 25% of Maximum Energy Shield as Chaos Damage effect". We summon three Skeletons which have a duration of 0.2 seconds thanks to two To Dust jewels, Anomalous Minion Speed, and the Window of Opportunity passives. When these Skeletons expire, they'll each feel 420 damage to us thanks to Heartbound Loop boosted by Noxious Catalysts, and we can safely tank this damage with our unbreakable Ward. This comes to 1260 out of the 2935 damage we need. We have 2923 Life, 64 Energy Shield, and -60% Chaos Res, so when we trigger Forbidden Rite, we take 1896 damage. So we are now taking a total of 3156 damage, triggering our big boy damage spells. This is more damage in a single hit than our Olroth's-affected Ward, so we take a bit of damage to Life. Skill gems supported by Cast When Damage Taken have a cooldown of 250 milliseconds before they can track damage or cast again, and we reduced this with a 10% Increased Cooldown Recovery Rate belt craft so we can cast spells every 0.23 seconds.
Got all that? All you really have to know is that we're damaging ourselves forever to trigger spells. But there are a few more important things about our self-damage loop. One is that we have to use the Brutal Restraint Timeless Jewel to grab The Traitor. This keystone provides flask charges every second but is spread out among our flasks. When combined with flask investment on our tree - and as long as we don't have too many flasks equipped, we can keep our all-important Ward flask, Olroth's Resolve, up permanently. Also, we can kickstart our Cast When Damage Taken loop by swapping weapons. Up our sleeve, we have two wands crafted with a mod that summons Spectral Spirits when equipped. Remember, we're using a Heartbound Loop that damages us when a minion dies. So when we swap our weapons back and forth, the Spectral Spirits die from being unequipped, and their death triggers Hearthbound Loop and damages us. Then the maths kicks in, and the damaged train has left the platform.
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DID YOU KNOW? |
Offence
So, what are our actual damage spells? Akshay suggests using two main Cold Damage setups using spells like Ice Spear and Creeping Frost with Cast When Damage Taken and the appropriate supports for extra damage. An important note is that the spells in our staff are supported by Arcane Surge and Bonechill, which boosts the damage of both spell setups. The weapon of choice here is Annihilating Light for that huge triple damage elemental spell boost. We're supplementing this with as many other damage mechanics as we can sneak in. Righteous Fire, Sigil of Power, Sniper's Mark linked to Cast When Damage Taken, so its auto-marking targets as we walk. We won't go into all of these, but one cool example is our Power Charges. We get these by crafting a Lightning Damage implicit on our helmet, then picking up a cluster jewel with the Stormrider mod "10% chance to gain a Power Charge when you shock a chilled enemy." Since our primary spells are chilling everything and we can shock things sometimes with the added Lightning Damage, we can trigger the mod often enough to have reliable Power Charge generation.
Defence
Some of the defences on this build are highly unusual. We can't use any Armor, Physical Damage Reduction, or Chaos Resist because that would brick our Cast When Damage Taken loop. Instead, we have to get creative. We've got a small Life pool, only around 3k Life. But thanks to our Olroth's Resolve flask, we don't lose any Life from hits more than our 1600 unbreakable Ward. We also supplement our small Life pool by using Mind Over Matter to direct some of the Life we do actually lose to our Mana. To make the most of our unbreakable Ward, Akshay notes that we should invest in mods and passives which recoup Life and Mana upon taking damage. These mods are very effective because we're taking a lot of damage that is ignored by our Ward, essentially letting us recoup Life and Mana for free. Additionally, since we have permanent flask uptime, it makes sense to use some strong defensive flasks, making whatever the best choice is for our setup. We're also reducing the Shock Effect on us by 95%, thanks to the Soul of Garukhan on the Pantheon and an Eater of Worlds implicit mod. This shock reduction is essential because, without it, our self-damage setup would instagib us every time we get shocked.
Final Thought
Akshay must be congratulated for maintaining such a thorough build guide and for the ongoing forum assistance they've been providing to help others make it work. This build is complex enough that missing just one element can break the entire thing.