After starting out with glad and really enjoying eviscerate, I wanted to do something a little spicier. I try to end every league with a homebrew build that uses something new to that league or likely to get nuked, and in this case I passed over Svalinn for the runesmithing enchant "trigger a socketed fire spell on hit". On paper, compared to CoC I'm getting roughly tripled base damage from a +8 weapon AND getting 2x 6-link spells on 5.05 triggers/sec instead of 1 4-link spell on 10.10 triggers a sec. In practice, the damage just feels kind of okay, and at this point I believe that's more or less a byproduct of the skills being used (no conversion and no nimis / excessive shotgunning, they just do the listed damage). I don't see similar on ninja (all use the broken corpse skills which I wanted to avoid) but I also don't think much I'm doing is particularly groundbreaking, it's just a novel combination of concepts.

https://pobb.in/K6Pogi-O0z3q - About 500d give or take, with most of that being mb + jewels. All self-crafted crudely except glove suffixes so it could def be done cheaper. Axe + squire is most of the damage and only costs like 60d max, so you could reasonably use that offensive setup for 100d or less on another defensive framework IF you solve mana (eldritch battery). If anyone has any crafting questions just comment and I will try and explain what exactly I did, but most of it except the weapon is as easy as essence into wild bristle matron reforge life.

Inquis felt like the go-to ascendancy for enabling generic more damage multipliers - RF + pain attunement is 82% more, and the support that would be pen is a 39% more support instead too, so the ascendancy is helping me get about 2.5x dmg easier than I otherwise would. Other than the corrupted soul play, the two novel choices are eternal struggle, which beats a +2 amu since my main skill is lvl 29 already and inq loves the stats, and balance of terror to hit the cdr breakpoint for 5.05 triggers/sec.

Obviously I went in pretty heavy on defense, but I'm also not really seeing my scaling vectors for more offense unless I completely pivot to charge stacking which I'm not about to do. I can drop discipline and enlighten to free up 2 sockets easily enough (they're really just there bc I got the WE semi-cheap) but I'm not seeing a much better alternative. The one thing I do wish I could add besides damage is end charge generation, maybe as I get a couple more levels I can squeeze enduring composure or something in. If I've missed anything egregious that might help, please let me know as I'd love to get another chunk of damage here to make it feel smoother.

https://youtu.be/ERAcF_5REuQ?si=cnAPN0CYeyUiCnwn 124% more life uber cortex - I already updated my filter right after recording, I know. Good showcase of eh damage and really high durability in action though.