Introduction

After watching Surgeon General's video showcasing self-triggering Vengeful Cry I decided to see if I could make the process automatic. The solution I came up with was using Phase Run and the crafted mod Trigger a Socketed Spell When You Use a Skill, With an 8 Second Cooldown to trigger Forbidden Rite. Because Phase Run has a 4 second cooldown and is instant, you can simply hold down the Phase Run button and it will line up with the cooldown on the crafted mod without interrupting you in any way. Additionally, using the new Runegraft of the Warp, a More Duration support, and a tiny bit of increased skill effect duration, we are able to have 100% uptime on Phase Run. Combining this with Rage Vortex of Berserking (RVoB), which gets the damage bonus throughout the ENTIRE duration of Phase Run (source), we effectively get 30% MORE physical damage, 49% increased movement speed, and phasing with 100% uptime.

The only way I could find to trigger Vengeful Cry was with The Eternal Apple unique shield, which lets you trigger a socketed Warcry when you reach maximum endurance charges. To gain endurance charges, I used the Enduring Composure small cluster notable, which causes you to gain an endurance charge every second after being hit. Because Forbidden Rite counts as a hit, this means we will always gain endurance charges for four seconds after using it. By getting our minimum endurance charges to be one less than our maximum endurance charges, we can trigger a Warcry every second if we have been hit recently. To ensure Vengeful Cry always has enough power, I opted to use the Chieftain ascendancy notable Sione, Sun's Roar. Additionally, scaling some Warcry duration and with the help of Runegraft of the Warp, we are easily able to reach an 8 second duration on Vengeful Cry.

With this setup, we can sustain RVoB for 46 seconds by holding down Phase Run. After 46 seconds, we will slowly start losing rage, at which point you can activate RVoB again to reset the rage loss.

To scale the damage, I decided to use Warcries, because we are already scaling Warcry effect and power. Additionally, RVoB snapshots exerts, meaning they will work for the entire duration of skill. I added Infernal Cry to our Warcry triggering setup and self cast the remaining three Warcries before using RVoB, although they could be linked with Autoexertion if preferred. This lets us have 100% uptime on the Infernal Cry buff automatically and double damage from Intimidating Cry at all times.

To play this build you essentially:

1. Hold down Phase Run

2. Use Warcries

3. Wait for Infernal Cry to trigger

4. Activate RVoB

5. Run around like a madman

6. Reuse Warcries and reactive RVoB between packs when the rage degen becomes too much

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until the map is clear

Problems

The main issue this build experiences is that, occasionally, you will take a savage hit from sources that are not Forbidden Rite. Ideally, Vengeful Cry would have an 8 second cooldown to match the trigger cooldown, but since The Eternal Apple gives 50% increased Warcry cooldown recovery, this isn't an option. This means it's possible for our Vengeful Cry cooldown to be out of sync with our trigger cooldown, leading to missed triggers, since we only have 2 seconds after triggering Forbidden Rite to trigger Vengeful Cry. To solve this, we can scale our Vengeful Cry duration such that, even if we miss a trigger, we have enough duration to get us to the next one, or, we can decrease the Vengeful Cry cooldown and increase the availability duration using Expert Retaliation, making it less likely that Vengeful Cry is on cooldown or unable to activate when it is triggered. Using Expert Retaliation, I have found that dropping Vengeful Cry is a lot more uncommon, and, even when it is dropped, the low cooldown means it usually comes up again shortly.

The other issue this build has is with general tankiness. Because we are using Forbidden Rite to take a savage hit and have 23 fortification stacks, we can only have 51% chaos resistance, or Vengeful Cry will not trigger. Additionally, The Eternal Apple makes it so we can't block, meaning our EHP is quite low. A higher budget version of this build could scale evasion and spell suppression to alleviate these issues. I am able to tank Shaper slams and most pinnacle boss attacks thanks to Chieftain giving us easy access to 90% max elemental resistances as well as Annihilation's Approach giving us 10% physical damage reduction. Additionally, the life regen and leech gives half of our health back every second, making it easy to survive lots of small hits.

Pros

Zooming around maps like you have Righteous Fire but with way more DPS is very fun.

Conclusion

I'm currently looking at scaling this build further. So far a physical variant with impales or a strength stacking version are looking strong using PoB, but the budget for them is a little higher. If you have any scaling suggestions please let me know.

PoB