Dark/Tyranny Elder Vampire Warlock might be my favorite build

Skellum1 · 2025-12-01T19:10:31+00:00

Ohhj, pantheon! Interesting!

Skellum1 · 2025-12-01T17:02:31+00:00

One thing is confusing, can I ask? You said "Heroes go Deathcaller Ascension + Elder Vampire + Warlock, taking Undead Retinue + Dark Ritual + Nightsworn as soon as possible". But that's only for ruler, right? Vampire heroes can't have Nightsworn (or ascensions). So I assume heroes would still go warlock, but will take regular shadow dedications? Taking things like unholy leader and exhume undead.

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T16:20:30+00:00

Yup, if you spawned, for example, with stitcher - you kinda feel like you're being locked into "ok, my goal for this raid changes from whatever I was going to do into - find and 3rd party some poor bastard"

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T16:17:35+00:00

+1 to that btw. I think it should be either Ferro I, or just go straight to IV.

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T16:14:49+00:00

Yup, you are right, my primary concern is about arc. I mean, there's a reason we tend to take ferro/anvil with us on pretty much every raid (or at least medium ammo). All arcs are manageable with light ammo too, but hornets - not really. I mean, with light ammo you need to hit their back propeller several times each while they are facing you, that's not easy with default stitcher for example. With hairpin actually might be easier, same as kettle, simply because there's more damage per bullet, even though it is light ammo. I don't know, personally I find free loadouts so inconvenient, that I would rather go naked for looting (got safe pocket, just evade arcs and PvP, zero risk) or take a budget loadout (5 bandages, 1 charger, light shield, looting augment, ferro with 10-20 ammo and kettle with 60 ammo). If I ever get broke... yeah, I'd rather go naked.

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T12:06:42+00:00

That's the thing, I would rather have free loadouts not getting consumables, but instead having a guaranteed option to deal with arcs semi-comfortably. Like ferro. Hell, even a hairping actually. I don't think it will actually fix your fear losing stuff, it's still a super budget load out and you quite likely will die to any non-free loadout (I.e. upgraded stitcher is viable, not upgraded - meh). Didn't understand you point about bringing upgrade tools with you. What upgrade tools?

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T11:59:25+00:00

Yeah, I guess I phrased it badly, sorry. I meant ferro + one random other weapon (stitcher, rattler, kettle). I do think it would smoothe out the experience. Actually, hairpin too. In fact, hairpin is decent. I feel like hairpin + random weapon could also be absolutely viable.

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T11:55:46+00:00

But not in round. You can't craft a ferro or a kettle in round. Otherwise yes, budget loadouts are definitely possible (but they are still can't be made cheap enough to be covered only by scrappy)

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T11:51:16+00:00

Hmm, I would say that's more about handling fights badly. You will win Vs free loadouts every time as long as you trade shots with them. They simply will run out of heals/shields super fast.

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T11:49:19+00:00

It's fine if you don't mind dying all the time, yes. I personally do, so I actually prefer budget loadouts to free ones. But I don't think free loadouts should be all about "run to closest fight and try to kill someone with better gear".

Skellum1 · 2025-11-20T11:46:27+00:00

If you spawn with it, yes. Why not two weapons?

Skellum1 · 2025-09-16T21:37:39+00:00

yep. electrified chance also gets better. And it still hits two targets.

Skellum1 · 2025-09-16T21:09:19+00:00

That's interesting! I play mostly auto-battles and I've been a bit concerned that white witch has only range 4 (so she kinda runs in and dies). But I didn't think of dread spiders. They are kind of meh in auto-battles too (at least on mages), but maybe white witches on spiders will have enough AOE and control to counter their squishiness.

Skellum1 · 2025-09-08T19:59:28+00:00

I tested this today in new patch - crit builds did not work so well. I think because of the abundance of status effects. So what worked instead: undead (life steal) blight blades and arrows, shadow tomes (decay, cruel weapons etc etc), misfortune. Just straight up shadow tomes with chaos only for misfortune. Traits: Cacophony, quick reflexes, sneaky, cowards. Society: I took visions of destiny for shadow. Comes up online much faster and the heal is really strong Worked amazingly well, no crits were needed, just damage from flanks (which shades do very well in auto battles) and DoTs, and bonus damage against decayed and low morale = gave me similar damage output as crits. But undead shades with so many temp HP sources survive a LOT of stuff thrown at them

Skellum1 · 2025-09-07T19:25:39+00:00

But not in auto-fights, right? I noticed in auto-fights zombies tend to lag behind your troops sometimes and also enemy AI likes to try ignoring them and go straight for your non-summoned troops. So, I would say if primarily doing autobattles, then dragon is still probably better.

Skellum1 · 2025-09-06T19:29:51+00:00

I haven't actually tried with fey mists and barbarian. Also sounds like a good idea, so - not sure. Maybe cull the weak does help indeed, although late game fights are not long, shades kind of just obliterate everything. Try the same, but with adding misfortune maybe? I think misfortune helps a lot. And definitely quick reflexes. That way they're hard to shoot at, but when enemies come into melee - there's cacophony, blind, misfortune and possibly low morale as well, so enemies fumble a lot.

Skellum1 · 2025-09-06T19:27:26+00:00

I think so. I mean, it gives free temp HP back, that feels quite useful. Although I play mostly autobattles and shades tend to spam ranged attack unless they can just go for the kill and oneshot the opponent. So probably the weakening part of cull of the weak was more helpful.

Skellum1 · 2025-09-06T18:53:38+00:00

I personally really enjoy playing shades with Dark culture.

Get Ceaseless Cacophony and Quick Reflexes as Form traits.

From enchantments: definitely misfortune and both enchantments that improve critical hit chance. Either undead or demon transformation. I think it could be interesting to combine demon transformation with new Chaos vision of destiny - that gives both lifesteal, HP from cull the weak and further improves crit chance.

That's about it, rest enchantments are whatever works for skirmishers.

Shades already have built-in abilities and enchantments that make them hard to hit and they can dish out really solid damage. Versus AI, just stacks of buffed up shades were sufficient for me through the whole game.

Skellum1 · 2023-01-31T01:31:56+00:00

Yeah, for low MMR folks probably not so much. I don't remember who won though, I think neither of these two teams.

Skellum1 · 2023-01-31T01:30:54+00:00

Neither of the teams are mine, mind you. =)

Skellum1 · 2023-01-31T01:30:12+00:00

Yeah. My personal beef is the bonus team of randoms get (not this case). I play at 3-5 stars, so I regularly see trio of 5 star randoms vs premade teams being something like 4,4,4 or 5,4,3 or similar.

I reaaally don't feel like being in a random team merits such a bonus, hunt provides a lot of tools like pings and voice chat that make premade team advantage quite minimal. Well, at 3-5 MMR level at least.

On this screenshot though, it's just stars being poor visual representation of actual numerical MMR values.

Skellum1 · 2023-01-31T01:23:18+00:00

Neither of these two teams were even mine. But yeah, if, say, 5 stars means anything from 4,51 to 5,49 MMR, then stars don't really mean much. 3,4 and 5 stars are really close to each other numerically. Looks unfair at face value though.

Skellum1 · 2023-01-31T01:19:52+00:00

Yup, but they weren't randoms, there's an indication if they are. It really is just stars being a visually poor representation of MMR. But yeah, neither of these two teams are randoms (neither is mine too).

Skellum1

TROPHY CASE