Rage Vortex of Berserking is a great new skill at low, medium, and high budgets. A version of cyclone that is actually good!

Since the launch of affliction I have been trying out a variety of the new transfigured gems. I've made builds using complex boneshatter and wildstrike of extremes, but my most successful by far has been Rage Vortex of Berserking, which I will refer to as RVB.

So, what is different with RVB compared to normal RV? The transfigured gem loses the ability to sacrifice rage for addtional damage, meaning it will do significantly less damage than a normal RV, even up to 50% less damage on a build with heavy rage investment. However, the strengths of the new gem outweigh this damage loss. RVB generates the storm around your character, slowly draining rage to maintain it. Essentially, this creates a very long duration cyclone or BV on your character. While the storm rages you are free to move around, use warcries, drop totems, cast curses or even use another attack. This results in a melee playstyle that is extremely mobile and flexible.

RVB is also a pretty unique skill gem in that you need to attack so rarely to keep its effect going. With berserker warcry rage generation and a redblade banner, a single storm can be kept going for thirty seconds or more. A similar skill like static strike has a base duration of only 3 seconds. This incredible duration opens up an extremely powerful exert option, ambush.

Ambush was buffed this patch to provide +35% base crit and 138% crit multi. This means that with just a couple crit wheels on the tree, you can become crit capped. It also allows you to equip Marylene's fallacy for a massive crit multi bonus while still easily keeping a 100% crit chance, providing a very cheap and powerful dps gain.

At a low budget, I think the best way to play the skill is pure phys with impale. You can grab a decent pdps axe or sword, redblade banner, marylene's, and a grab bag of rare life/resist gear and get millions of single target dps. With just a few divines, you should be able to comfortably clear all non-uber content. Big upgrades for this version are sources of +impale hits, better weapons, and flesh / flame gem sets.

I’ve thrown together a quick and dirty PoB for this entry level physical version, which can be found here https://pobb.in/BVkIESFInGox. My main issue with this version is that since a large portion of the damage comes from impale, the initial hits on new targets while mapping can feel a bit weak. My fantasy for the build was to be a buzzsaw or lawnmower rampaging though the map, and I didn’t quite achieve that here.

I then tried playing the build as elemental, using a paradoxica, awakened added cold and lightning gems, and a replica abyssus. The damage was much better, but it still had some flaws. Namely, since the build attacks so fast, each hit is low damage, meaning that elemental ailments such as shock and freeze weren’t getting strong applications. For the budget, I felt like I could do better.

I decided to try one more time by pivoting into the ever-popular strength stacking package. This includes replica alberon’s, chaos pen paradoxica, and the iron fortress. This version, while requiring more of a budget, is extremely powerful. My current PoB can be found here https://pobb.in/G3eQsUpCH5Ia, which reaches around 100 million dps with all the boxes ticked. I’ve done some Min-maxing in PoB, and think that 250 million dps is a realistic goal for the build.

The build does have a few unavoidable pain points. Like most warcry builds, it has quite a few buttons that you need to press regularly. It’s melee, so you need to drop totems on single target for maximum damage (Please GGG I would do anything for a keystone to let me play melee without totems), although this is less of an annoyance than on other melee builds as you can continue attacking while refreshing your totems. You also do need to keep an eye on both your rage and battlemages cry buff, but I have not found this to be particularly arduous, as the initial rage drain is very slow and battlemages cry with increased duration lasts 11-12 seconds per cast. Avoid running maps with less CDR rate or reduced buff duration, as these mods make the build extremely uncomfortable to play.

Despite these flaws, I’ve been having an amazing time playing this character. I’ve been able to complete any boss encounters, and have been farming dense wandering path, high wisp maps, making tons of currency, and even dropping my first ever mirror last night. It is tanky, has pretty good AoE and movement speed, as well as enough damage to drop any target. If you are interested in trying out this build and have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll try to answer everyone.

I’ve also made a short video with an alch and go wandering path map, uber cortex, and uber eater, to show off a bit of how the build looks in action, which can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCaXk_RV_40.