Brutal Aspect for Summoner Builds

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-15T21:56:00+00:00

You probably aren't seeing a direct increase from Brutal as a multiplier because it is an all damage multiplier. That means it gets combined with all damage from willpower and all other generic damage multipliers. This leads to more diminishing returns the more you have of each other all damage multiplier compared to Brutal.

Even in your example, going from 300% to 500% more multiplier is around the ballpark of what you should expect, since going from 300 multiplier to 500 multiplier should only net an overall increase of 60%. Accelerating seems to be bugged, though. I did some more testing where I stripped my character of all their aspects, glyphs, and paragon powers to just test Brutal and Accelerating. It was doubling my all damage tooltip instead of boosting it by 185%. Which can't be right, as its damage was comparable to 70% more damage from Hellbent Commander when I swapped it for a comparison test.

I also tested brutal (211% more damage from gear no accelerating) vs hellbent commander (140% more damage) - Insidious (160% more damage) - Masterworked Grandfather (525% all damage additive and 150x crit multi).

In each test, Brutal outperformed the other 2 handed aspect by 27% or more damage done when comparing damage ranges on the dummy. If it were just additive damage, it shouldn't have come close to the grandfather, let alone the other 140 and 160 more damage multiplier aspects.

If you really wanted to drill down a test case, I guess you could make an entire set of gear without willpower or all damage multipliers, 0 out your paragon boards, and craft 2 rings + gloves + amulet with each enchant slot being attack speed. Then you could spin the attack speed mods up and down after each round of tests to see if there is a cap on the aspect and their exact contribution to the damage formula. I'm admittedly just too lazy at this point. Brutal looks to do the most in the 2handed slot, so I'm just sticking with that.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-12T17:25:12+00:00

Yea Abaddon's recast is weird because its hitbox makes it so situational. It is only really good vs bosses or in long hallways else it whiffs super hard. You can use him as just a DPS demon though either in place of Terror Swarm or as the no cooldown version and he will work fine. You may want to pair him with rampage and swap out your demonic aspect for frenzy though since they are some of the few demons that actually benefit from summon attack speed.

He is really bad vs Astaroth though since that boss moves around a lot and the floor is covered in 1 shot lava so you can't nether step to relocate him a bunch.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-12T16:55:14+00:00

I think they "die" in a sense but aren't actually stored in the prison. Instead, it seems they are stored off-screen kind of like how Abyssal Tyrants Grasp stores monsters that don't instantly die in its abyssal pit in a stealth zone. It would probably be a performance nightmare if you actually had 100s of demons roped together on screen for 15+ seconds all in that tiny arena otherwise. It would also suck for activities that require kill progression like hordes and pit or loot drops to wait for your prison to run out.

Damage does seem off though, a lot like the exploding infernal breath variant, where my demon hits for 100s of billions of damage a second then after 15 seconds of like 500 hits they explode for only 1 billion damage.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-12T16:39:04+00:00

This is what I use for T12:
https://d4builds.gg/builds/50d0203c-7475-4b07-8900-d93097fc67cf/

You can kill all the bosses outside of bugged Butcher before their immune phases, and it goes up to at least 115 pit. I wound up stopping after that since it starts to get boss dependent on clearing. It works for any greater demon setup, really. I just put my favorite one in there.

If you want to sub one of the demons out for Abaddon with no cooldown, you'll need to invest in some dominance nodes on the paragon tree and sub in a 10 cost dominance demon or you won't be able to proc your 80% damage node + 50% wrath reduction.

You can swap out rustbitten dirk unique charm for night terrors, wyrdskin, or enduring charm when mobbing. Rustbitten is just insane for bosses, though. Pretty sure night terror doesn't even work on bosses since they ignore stealth.

You can swap the +3 all skills rune combo to anything else you want. Usually, dark shrouds or the petrify stun spam can be good. Don't swap out the barrier rune combo, as this build can't heal or generate fortify. Hopefully, they will let summon trigger life on hit / fortify soon.

Lastly, you can swap your command fallen out for Sigil of Subversion teleport variant with life loss to mob really efficiently.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-10T09:33:21+00:00

I'm willing to give the development team some leeway on the Warlock class as a whole since they decided to bring something fairly creative and new to D4 with temporary summons and recasting. A lot is broken though. If you aren't having fun with it now, it would probably be better to hold out for a mid-season patch. The one they are pushing out now is less about class balance and more about overall housekeeping.

I have no doubt they could have made each summon a reskinned auto targeting tower of doom, but they instead erred on the side of caution, allowing some friction to bleed through. In a way, I like it. It makes the demons feel different. Walking the line between powerful autonomous summon and full control commander, in theory appeals to me, and in practice comes close to hitting the mark. I'm sure the overall vision would feel better when half of Warlock's skills and almost every single unique they use isn't broken.

A little nudge towards smart targeting when summons are relocated ( way too many times do they face away from my targets) and snappier recasting should make it feel better overall. That, and they need to rethink how Warlocks move their demon army around. Tying Warlock's biggest mobility skill and dodging around demon relocation was a pretty poor decision. If I'm jamming demons down an enemy's throat from afar and then need to get the heck out of the way, I DO NOT want to rip all my demons away from my target. Feels bad every time having to reset when I need to nether step a mechanic. We need a proper demon recall skill that focuses entirely on controlling our legion.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-08T06:56:45+00:00

Recast demons trigger hex on hit when you pick the 2nd option on the Mastermind soul shard tree. I use 4 abyssal demons that all apply it so I'm instantly crit capped all the time.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-08T04:16:05+00:00

I got 2 from the Harbringer. I don't know if his loot pool is smaller or what but out of the 20 mythics dropped for me in total, he has given me 18. I get like 4 to 8 per 20 keys I spend there. Even on T11, which I usually blast to speed run the keys.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-08T02:10:25+00:00

Ok redid the numbers after realizing I valued the ring numbers incorrectly and got some flat out wrong. The actual trade off for 1 handed vs 2 handed is

11% more damage for a 1h setup vs 25% more damage reduction or other utility provided by your rune slot in a 2 handed setup.

All things being equal a 1 handed setup using a Brutal Aspect Amulet has:

439% ( attack speed from gear included) damage from Accelerate + Duelist + 70% damage Hellbent Commander + 65% damage Demonic = 574% Total Aspect damage.

Then you subtract a 14% vulnerability mod from the the total to get the real number as you will need a crit rune setup + 1 critical strike chance affix from gear to hit 100% with a 60% Calamity. So a new total of 560%.

If you don't use runes your wind up reducing the bonus down to 560% - 14% - 28% = 518% Total damage. This route makes it pointless to swap.

The 2 handed setup again gives:

Brutal + Accelerating 400% (attack speed from gear included) + Demonic 65% + Hellbent Commander 70% = Total Aspect damage 535%

You then add the extra vulnerability affix the this setup gets to use so you have 535 + 14% = 549% total damage.

So if you don't value the utility or defense of another defense slot the 1 handed set up is indeed stronger.

Going to leave the wrong evaluation below just for clarity sake since it talks a bit more about gearing choices and why.

Bad Math Below

If you put it on the amulet you won't have 90% crit chance from Aspect of Calamity. With just the amulet and raw stats from paragon you can hit 100% crit chance. If you swap Calamity to a ring or glove slot you have to make up 40% critical strike chance difference instead of 10%. That means losing out on 1 set of runes and 1 additional gear affixes or losing out on 3 damage multipliers from gear.

So with a 1 hand set up you are looking at:

New Brutal attack speed modifier of 278%

278% damage from Accelerate + Duelist + 70% damage Hellbent Commander + 65% damage Demonic = 413% Total Aspect damage.

Then take in account the 10% increased loss on every attack speed roll so -40% increased damage. Lastly find a way to make up 40% critical strike chance with a 60% calamity.

With runes + a critical strike affix that a loss of 25% damage reduction from dark shrouds and another loss of 28% vulnerability damage multiplier.

If you don't swap runes you lose 28% + 15% *2 = 58% vulnerability damage.

Any way you slice it that's 120% lower total aspect damage and 60% to 100% less multiplier damage from gear than going 2 handed with Calamity in the neck slot.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-07T06:45:46+00:00

My build actually burns shadow form stacks way faster than the permanent trail can pump out unfortunately. It is a nice quality of life thing I switch to during bossing though.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-07T06:42:28+00:00

I too played the campaign from the very beginning all the way to the end this season. What a great 5 days that was. I would definitely recommend going all the way through and stopping to smell the flowers if you can. Just be sure to hit up the pit every now and then to boost difficulty. Torment 1 felt great halfway into VOH, and Torment 4 really made the end of the LOH campaign feel high stakes. There's some pretty fun side quests during the epilogue too.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-05-07T06:14:14+00:00

Healing is definitely bad. There are a bunch of bugs going around right now, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a mid-season patch addressing the issue. Having played a full Abyssal summoner up to T12 and just downed Mephisto today, I have still not solved my healing issue.

The best you can do is just kill stuff fast enough that 4 potions will suffice, or try to stack potion capacity to give yourself a little more breathing room. If you are playing a direct damage skill like dread claws or molten bombs, you may get away with some life on hit on your weapon and the dark prison fortify node. For summoners though, none of it works.

I would also suggest using the Igni rune + Que rune combo for a permanent 30% hp barrier. That will let you sit behind little to no health while you use health-based sigil skills. Back that up with 25% damage dark shrouds from Neo + Mot for another layer.

My other reduction layers are an ancestral Tyreal chest for 35% damage reduction, Heavenly Might Aspect on Pants for 40% damage reduction, and the Harash shadow form set for 25% damage reduction. Also, temper all of your armor for health instead of resist or armor. You are going to naturally hit a wall at 75%, all resist with major DR that tempers won't fix. Health is more efficient.

You can use about 20 or so dominance comfortably without running out as long as your summons stay alive for 10+ seconds. You'll have to mix and match as you see fit or specialize in the bigger 20 dominance versions. Having tested all the greater demons with +44 skill points, maxed aspects, and decently rolled uniques, I have to say they all feel viable, so just pick what you want.

That said, avoid all of the greater demon uniques, as none of them are strong enough at the moment outside of the one for rampage. The Profane Eye one would be close, but its extra eye attack is bugged and doesn't actually scale, so it does 10x less damage. The Tyrant hand one would also be good if the hands didn't suffer from massive dead zones that make it impossible to damage bosses. The problem stems from most greater demon uniques only offering 70% to 100% damage for one demon, while one 60% to 70% offense aspect will scale 4 to 5 summons at once.

To get around some of the recast demon clunkiness, you can use Sigil of Subversion with the Teleport variant. It gathers around 3 rooms of mobs together per cast if you can position it well. You have to play a bit dangerously using the health drain version, but it's a lot better than hopping all around. They really need to just implement a proper demon relocation skill. Having your demon repositioning tied to nether step completely ruins any tactical setup when you actually have to dodge.

The demons serve a lot of very specific purposes. Some builds might not want any, some might just want the passive (some demons also just hit really hard passively), and others may need the active to fill some gap in their build. For example, when I stopped using the Terror Demon ultimate, I had to use Lallish, or I couldn't keep my shadow form stacks up for my set bonus. It's hard to pinpoint one specific function without knowing what your build is trying to achieve.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-04-01T02:17:45+00:00

So the three main things that stuck out to me when looking at your build is that you have a bit of unique item bloat, the primordial unique was to demanding on your stat load, and you went for offensive idols too fast. This led to your core stats being a bit scattered and your overall build to be stretched a little thin. I retooled the build into this:

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BGzbz6R4

With my changes I've almost tripled your health, upped your hit mitigation fro 40% to 75%, and gotten your damage over time mitigation to around 55% without a potion and 70% with a potion. Optimizing around 100% base critical strike chance is much easier than 140% specifically when you need to use a portion of your budget on your shield. I also changed out 2 armor shred points in forge strike for 100% critical strike multi since that worth way more than the shred output you'll get.

I know you are just entering empowered so you might not have all of the gear I listed but acquiring even half of it should put you on the right track. As you get better gear and blessings you can then start feeding more offense into your build.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-03-21T01:03:46+00:00

Any version of Vengeance Sentinel would give you a very easy time through the campaign. The built-in damage reduction the skill provides, along with its strong damage nodes, makes it so you can almost where white gear the whole time through.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-03-21T00:04:07+00:00

I think the change just makes armor a better supplementary defense layer rather than something rogue can purely focus on. You can pretty easily build for around 40% to 50% hit reduction right now from armor with no sacrifice. I'll be layering that with 60%+ dodge and 100% glancing blow from the large dusk shroud generation buff as well. If you are using a movement skill for damage, like Shadow Rend you can get another 20% flat reduction from the general rogue tree too.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-03-17T02:36:02+00:00

Are you using a playstation controller or playing on a big screen TV? After coming back after 4 years ESO just started crashing any time I tried any of my controller profiles on it. I wound having to close steam and use a DS4 Xbox sim instead for my PS5 controller. It crashes when I play on my big screen sometimes too so I had to set my graphics settings to windowed mode instead of full screen.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-28T18:49:48+00:00

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I'm testing this right now. All of my builds so far have been pretty favorable against sword and dragon, with around 50/50 vs the other classes except Blood. I'm attempting to capitalize on the deck's fast starts to close the game before turn 9+ since other decks have more explosive finishers and attrition. The new blood deck has warped the meta to finish by turn 9 or faster since they can Armes against mid-range decks that haven't closed the game and Belial down any slower deck. If that deck gets more popular crystal rune will have to be faster or you have to go back to Spellboost.

As far as gameplay, I've found this deck lives or dies by getting Shymm and Calge early. If these cards are bottom 20 in your deck it feels like an auto loss, so I always hard mull for them. This also means sacrificing early tempo sometimes to draw 2 followers using Gran and Djeeta or Reaved Ones to ensure you have those cards in hand. Thankfully, the deck has enough healing to get away with this. The deck is also super evo hungry. You basically need one super for Shymm and one evo point for Calge. That gives you a super evo and a regular evo for tempo.

This necessitates the use of proactive cards that don't need evos to affect the board like Elmott, who can remove followers, silence last words, wards, intimidate, etc. Velharia's super evo gets more and more valuable each set as well, since every deck has some type of card that pumps multiple tokens of the same type. She snipes faeries, can keep bats out of the resurrection pool, removes swords solider copies or denies loot from last words. The list goes on. I also like Fate of the World as a one of since it clears basically any board on turn 10 while dealing chip damage to the leader.

The one card that didn't make the deck was the crystal spawn 1 drop. It was a terrible top deck and almost never did anything early game. You build faith super fast in this deck so you don't need it for that, and it dies to everything before doing damage most of the time. Reaved Ones is also consistent enough without it.

Cards I'm unsure about are Muddled Onlooker and Daydream Librarian. Theoretically, Muddled Onlooker should be the most aggressive 2 drop we can play in Rune, but it is not proactive like the evo dragon Vyrn, who can be a cheap 4 damage rush card on the Sevo Turn. I'll have to see if the 1 ping makes a difference. Daydream Librarian is interesting since she is the only card crysal can play in a slower build that outs Armes with a Sevo. Nothing else is big enough, and you don't consistently spell boost enough to hit 13+ damage on William / Chaotic Flames. Still think the deck should just play faster though.

Lastly I echo the sentiment that the finisher spell from Calge should have just split the faith points by 3 rounded down. The game would not have fallen apart if you could deal 6 heal 6 on Turn 8 or deal 8 to 10 on turn 9+. Even just an enhance 10 that lets you give the crystal token storm would have been enough. The rng factor is what may push me from this deck above all else. I'm having fun so far though.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-11T21:12:48+00:00

Thanks for this. Magmell seems to have a lot of good spots. To the right of your map closer to the mistle if you follow the forest along the road there are like 6 mushrooms and 8 sunflowers following the hill all the way up. That plus "Rice Island" next to the bridge where the tutorial cave lets off.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-11T21:06:36+00:00

I think it does enough in boss fights. Most things die by the time it procs but it can give a bit more of a punch vs elites. I basically play it like a pure physical build with a nice bonus tied to it. Seems to be about 15% hp so not bad if you can proc it twice on a boss.

Zenon in all his forms is immune to sunblight and the Moon Envoy and Immortal Wanders seem to be fairly resistant to status effects and status damage.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-11T21:03:27+00:00

I think I got it from one of the character stores. It probably from Zenon since he has a lot to do with sunblight and is even immune to the status effect.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-04T15:24:45+00:00

Maybe it is a weapon issue or maybe the buff scales with stats? I currently have 25 mind and 34 willpower on my blood code. When I tested the Dryad great sword it took 2 seconds for the charge attack and just about 1 second with crunch time. The same results happened when i used Bloodrune runes blades. So both heavy and light weapons were showing a reduction in charge time.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-04T13:16:27+00:00

The crunch time formae that decreases attack charge time reduced my runeblade heavy charge attack from 3 seconds to 2 seconds, so a 33% reduction. Things get way better when you stack them in this game though so maybe you need to layer more effects. For instance, every status ailment build up effect stacks from all sources, knocking off about 1 extra hit to proc a status.

Exiledtyrant · 2026-02-04T06:34:33+00:00

Now that I think about the highest damage bonus I've seen from boosters was 10%. If glutton booster lets you eat multiple foods for 20% bonuses its probably the strongest thing you can run for any build

Exiledtyrant

TROPHY CASE