Wanting to grab the various Barbarian and Necromancer challenges I was missing without respeccing my existing characters first lead me to creating a Deathblow Barbarian. While at the start this seemed rather powerful, by the end (although it certainly wasn’t weak) it felt both more fragile and weaker than the cobbled-together Shadowblight build. Even having all the required gear besides the Mythic.
Somewhat disappointed, as I was really hoping for a boss-killer that could finish off Lilith, I moved on to trying to create a Necromancer minion build. This failed miserably. It was barely capable of handling basic T3 content. While it’s possible that may have been a result of the mere level 8 masterwork and level 15 paragon glyphs, not being interested in putting much leveling effort into a build I planned to soon delete, it was more likely a lack of focus; there was Bone Storm, and Blood Lance, and all three minion types.
Extremely disappointed at this point I decided to check out Maxroll and Icy Veins‘ Shadowblight builds to see if my ‘finished’ build was missing anything obvious. Putting aside the whole Alter the Balance setup, which I dislike as it feels like an exploit and will be useless post-season, it turns out I was: Blighted Corpse Explosion. Taking the extra points out of Blight, 1 point from Necrotic Carapace, and dropping Sever (which was only there for Reaper’s Pursuit) let me take both that and put 3 points into Fueled By Death. Now having a consumption power, I was also able to swap the Bloodbath paragon board for Flesh-Eater.
This resulted in a pretty massive damage upgrade allowing a brute force victory over T4 Lilith, helped out a bit by having gotten better at dodging her Death From Above (the trick it seems is to keep running around the inner edge of the arena while she’s in the air) and finally finding the last Rune I needed for the Mythic greatsword.
Since that turned out so well, next up was looking at some endgame Minion builds hoping for similar inspiration. This turned out to be a wash. For whatever reason they’re focused on a single minion type, and if I’m going to be playing minions I want all the minions. Also, while I can understand focusing solely on Skeletal Mages if you’re using Hand of Naz and Service/Sacrifice, I’m deeply suspicious of the claim that sacrificing the Mages will result in more damage for the Reaping Warrior build than keeping them.
So I’m now split between two potential paths:
1) A bone-centric Reap build that uses Skirmishers 1, Bone Mages 1, and Bone Golem 2 supported by Corpse Tendrils, Bone Prison, and Bone Storm. Chaos powers being Alter the Balance, Grim Reapers, Unstable Power, & Crazy Brew with the intent being to just have bone shards flying everywhere and critting everything.
2) Based solely on having a 3-star Ancestral ring with Overpower damage just drop, keeping the Reaper theme but switching to a blood skill focus. I’m hesitant to try to re-tread that path though after the earlier Blood Lance debacle and none of the Mage minion options have any synergy.