Divine Retribution Archmage Hiero

After playing my leaguestart Blight of Contagion for a couple days, I got slightly tired of the somewhat clunky 2 button playstyle, so I decided to find myself a different slightly clunky 2 button build to play. After looking at the pacts, I settled on Divine Retribution, as I have had that spell on my radar for a bit, and at first glance it seemed like it would work exceptionally well with the new pact.

Figure I might as well link the pob here for easy reference, although I will also explain some important details below (plus some gameplay footage):

• https://pobb.in/1l3qb7WKKKiN
• https://pob.codes/b/1l3qb7WKKKi (in case the other one doesn't work)

Pros:

• Screenwide clear (typically going far offscreen in all directions)
• Good avoidance from 87/87 block
• Big hit pool from life+mana+ES
• Quite cheap to get started (just need some cheap uniques, the new pact, and a runegraft of stability)
• A lot of potential for scaling (can stack both mana and/or power charges)

Cons:

• 3 mandatory buttons (1 of which is shield charge, and another only once per 15 seconds, but still)
• Need 2-3 seconds to ramp up damage against bosses after each immunity phase or similar situation where you haven't had anything to hit for a couple seconds.
• Loses a lot of damage if the mob is near walls
• Some amount of delay from you click the damage spell until it actually hits

First, to explain why this build is actually quite good, I have to talk about the pact. Normally, divine retribution is paired with some form of spell cascade. From my testing, baseline it usually hits around 5 times per cast baseline, and regular spell cascade (which adds 2 extra areas) gets it up to like 10 or so. I'd imagine greater spell cascade would get it to like 15 or so, though I never tested. A level 20 pact adds 8 areas, and gets the spell to 20-30 overlaps from my testing, with a typical cast hitting around 25 times or so. Compared to last patch, that means that with the pact you're up a support from not needing greater spell cascade (they stack, but only additively, so it's not worth tanking the less damage multiplier IMO). This means you are up a support for 40% damage, and also skip a 25% less muiltiplier. Additionally, the pact has a 35% more multiplier (and it's always up due to the 1 cast per 2 seconds situation of the spell). Lastly, it roughly doubles the amount of hits you'd have before the patch. All in all, compared to last patch this should be around a 3-400% damage increase overall (if someone actually played it).

Retaliation skills are somewhat clunky, as they require you to block to be able to use them. To solve this issue, instead of wainting for mobs to hit (which works okay in maps and not okay against bosses), I instead opted for sacrificing my mainhand weapon slot for a monastery bell. With this equipped, shield charge will count as a block (as long as it hits an enemy), meaning I can trigger my skill at will. Furthermore, it gives unlucky block, which at first might seem bad, but when combined with the runegraft of stability, it's actually a nice upside - at 78/78 base block, I get 87.6% effective block chance against both attacks and spells, which is quite nice for defences.

Now, with the loss of my weapon, scaling levels seemed a bit harder, so I instead opted to go for an archmage setup for my flat damage. This also pairs very nicely with a long CD spell, as my current mana cost of around 1000 mana per cast (due to me taking 0 cost efficiency, and even taking the increased cost wheel for more max mana) would be unsustainable for any normal caster, but since I only cast my spell every 2 seconds, I've never had any mana issues.

In terms of supports, the two most powerful caster supports (IMO) are unholy trinity and overloaded intensity. Overloaded intensity is possible to keep up if I sacrifice 2 jewel slots for apex and nadir mode, however, the intensify stacks are not as a result of my slow cast speed. Thus it ended up not being worth it. Unholy trinity is also somewhat awkward - normally the way to solve it is to get some small amount of lightning to chaos (for instance a foulborn blue nightmare), however with archmage not having a damage range, this didn't work for me. Instead my solution was to utilize that I have to hit with my shield charge anyways - as long as shield charge does more phys than lightning, I can use that to keep up unholy trinity, which mostly works, as long as I make sure to have no phys to lightning conversion, use zealotry instead of wrath, and use a str shield for base damage (to make phys higher than lightning during arcane cloak uptime). In order to make shield charge hit (both for triggering and for unholy trinity), I also put an accuracy support, which gives it around 80-90% accuracy, which doesn't feel ideal, but works well enough most of the time.

While my current gear is obviously not super cheap, I would note that I started playing this on a relatively low budget, and it crushed straight out of the campaign in crappy rares with double kikazaru, foible, mindspiral, a foulborn oppressor with spell block and the monastery bell, plus the mostly mandatory pact and runegraft of stability. And even at that point the clear was solid, the build was quite tanky (gets to use ES+life+mana with almost svalinn-levels of block out of the gate).

Now, in terms of clunk, I feel like this is an important point to address, since if you are considering playing this build, this is probably what you're wondering the most about. I won't say it's the smoothest build you'll ever find, but I will say it's probably not as bad as you might imagine. The build has 3 mandatory buttons, however the pact lasts around 15 seconds, and generally never runs out of charges. Secondly, 1 of the 3 buttons is shield charge, which you'd probably be clicking anyways. The main clunk IMO comes from the slightly clunky targetting of shield charge, as well as having to use it even when not necesarry for positioning. On the upside, all other buttons than these 3 are automated, with mark on hit being enabled from having to hit with shield charge anyways, and arcane cloak being on automation.

Next, you might wonder what content this is good at, and so far my impressions has been that it's good at almost all content I've thrown at it, with the main caveat is that you lose a ton of damage when fighting mobs/bosses close to walls, since that eats up the overlaps on that "side". Additionally, bosses with frequent immunity phases are annoying, since your boss damage with no trash mobs around can be slow to ramp up, since you need to shield charge -> cast -> wait for CD -> shield charge -> cast -> wait the 1 sec for the cast to land to do real damage, as the first cast lacks a lot of your damage multipliers like unholy trinity, shock and unnerve which generally cuts it's damage by like 60-70%.

To finish the post, I'm including 3 videos containing gameplay footage, an uber eater, wave 14-15 simulacrum, and some (relatively easy apart from maybe the mercs) maps. Map showcase is more so to showcase the playstyle and feel of the build rather than it's power level, as I figure the first 2 do a better job of that anyways:

Eater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFq1KXpeZ74

Simulacrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKzEeW3QdWw

Mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a11Jek4u60A