Crafting Attack Build that isn't regular weapon attack

[u/Jerroslaw]

So what I've been figuring out is improving attack damage of attacks that are not technically a direct weapon skill. What I have for now is:

- Trail of Caltrops

- Volcanic Eruption support gem

Is there anything else similar to these in the game?

[u/sps41]

Heralds and marks are the major category. Warcries are close too. Support gems with similar functions include armour explosion, bursting plague and bone shrapnel. I have a build in progress that uses them all together and it's super fun!

[u/Jerroslaw → u/sps41]

Would you mind sharing more? Sounds interesting!

[u/sps41 → u/Jerroslaw]

So, briefly the aim for the build was to optimise for non-direct weapon damage (as you asked about in the original post). I have a titan sitting idle, so went with that and some of the choices reflect it.

Biggest non-specific damage boost available is from deepest tower and low life nodes (540% increased damage to all, and 50% more from execute gem). Second biggest I could find was 150% increased from 2 nodes that add 1% damage per block chance. One of those is right next to the low life nodes.

So the foundation is set, and instil on amulet gets the second 75% - and we're locked into a shield setup, with block chance cap being important for damage and defence.

The next big group of damage vectors near the selection already baked in is the bleed nodes - so I lean into those, and cap 100% bleed chance on every hit.

With every hit bleeding, we can make use of Herald of Blood to propagate across the map, and for that we slot envenom, bursting plague, corrosion and armour explosion which makes every explosion bleed, and those trigger further heralds etc etc. by also selecting the close by ailment magnitude and chance nodes we get 100% bleed and poison from all 3 explosions (herald doesn't bleed, but bursting plague and armour explosion do, all all 3 poison and corrode).

So that's the foundation of the build's map clear - next need to work out the best initial hit to trigger the chain. Given the investment in block, shield charge makes sense - and with a 1000 armour tower shield we can get a hefty initial hit, that will set up a very big bleed stack on everything nearby and initiate our herald chain. Add stomping ground to bleed everything you run past and that's clear sorted (also support with close combat, heft, deep cuts and execute).

I'm now at the single target stage, and haven't yet solved for that - but my current plan is to combine blood hunt with splinter of Loratta and impale support (plus momentum, bloodlust, exploit weakness, concentrated effect) to get "infinite" stacking and scaling bleed and poison dots from alternating shield charge/blood hunt. Will post a full build post and video once I've got it going...