THE end game Nerva build - Necrosis with Fibula Orcus

[Avallach]

I picked up this item and didn't know what to do with it at first - I'd found Necrosis generally underwhelming, but since I was doing a Demon-side run (on Brutal) I thought I should give it a go at least once. It turned out to be pretty incredible.

Fibula Orcus, +1 turn Necrosis duration at the cost of Nerva applying Necrosis to himself at the end of each turn.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3250383524

I also have Necrosis Sigil - a piece of armour that gives +50% physical resist, +15% weapon damage for Necrosis, and +30% Necrosis damage increase. I don't know if it's mandatory, but it definitely helps.

It's mostly about the Fibula Orcus though - that +1 duration is a huge boost to Profane Arts, where every enemy starts off with 2 turns of Necrosis. The first turn it ticks for 15+ and the second turn for 30+, so already you're taking ~50 off most enemies. The third turn, if you keep Necrosis up it's another 50+ (and you only need to hit someone once to give 3 more turns of Necrosis). What's key is that in the first turn you're usually tied up with Unholy Chain and Death Hex, but now you have that second turn that you can use to keep Necrosis going and take advantage of its damage ramping.

Yes, single target damage is better than spreading it around, but the sheer amount of damage Necrosis is putting out now makes it hugely AP efficient - instead of needing an extra attack to finish off a lot of enemies, by turn 3 a lot of them can be left for Necrosis to finish off. Fights tend to last a bit longer in this than in Knights Tale, so you'll be getting pretty good value.

Next, Numbness reduces enemy resists by 5% every turn, so after 2 turns that's a minimum of 10% off all resists for everyone. I find encounter difficulty is (very roughly) about 40% based on combined enemy health/damage and 60% based on their resists. Being able to drop resists to use Unholy Chain, Taunt, Shield Bash knockdown, and more efficient stuns is huge.

As for spreading Necrosis past those first 2 turns, I of course had to take Chained Burst on Grave Conduit - the one that splits it between 3 targets. When I first tried it early game I hated it, I'd been using Nerva to finish off enemies and now he couldn't. But in the context of this build it feels absolutely fine. With Gather Essence you're getting permanent +5% weapon damage for everything that dies while suffering from Necrosis, which is pretty much everything, so you'll be doing decent damage after a few turns. And Necrosis is now what's going to be finishing off most enemies, much more efficiently than his basic attack ever did. It's worth using Steal Vigour in the first two turns to get an extra attack in to keep Necrosis up on anything that's going to live past then.

As a bonus, if you use his Ultimate it also applies 3 turns of Necrosis to everything. So now everything has a minimum 5 turns of Necrosis - if anything's alive that long it'll be ticking 150+ damage. I'd never bothered using it before, but now I'll often open with it in the final encounter, and it's a beautiful thing.

Now, the downside. Necrosis, on Nerva, every turn. It gets applied after you hit End Turn, and immediately ticks for damage, then keeps increasing every turn. His health pool is a lot lower than most of the enemies, so how does he survive it? Three things:
1) Lifesteal - 10% from Leech on Grave Conduit, 10% from Lemur Lar, and a little extra from kills via the Demonic path - and the final Demonic talent as a backup. Lifesteal doesn't seem to take actual health into account, so if an enemy has 10hp and Necrosis ticks for 100 to kill it, you'll still get lifesteal based on the 100.
2) Physical Resist - I currently have it over 100%, and he takes maybe half of the damage that low resist enemies take. Damage still escalates quickly, but it helps.
3) Desiccate with Preservation - this is crucial. Every 2 turns (or so) you can transfer your Necrosis onto an enemy, so it starts afresh at the low beginning damage. Desiccate with Soul Eater is pretty amazing anyway, dropping resists by 20%, so points well spent.

You will have to get used to Nerva's health being all over the place. The gains won't always balance the losses, but usually at the end of a fight if I leave a couple of enemies to die to Necrosis ticks, that'll heal him to full. The downside is you might collect a few less souls that way, so just something to balance.

I've had Undying Legion (final Demonic path talent) save him once or twice, and I've had him actually die once - but it was right at the end of a fight, I chose not to use a health pot, and wanted to see how it would play out in the next fight starting at 1 HP. Managing him a little more carefully, he was back to full health again by the end of it.

So, there it is, a Necrosis build in Brutal. I'm not sure if it would work as well in the campaign (with lower levels), but it's made end game a bit of a cakewalk so far. Very much dependant on that one piece of gear, but if it happens to drop for you, don't write it off!

[Avallach]

Last two ticks against Balor on Brutal - 1500 and 3300 (2000 overkill). And his physical resist down to 15 by the end with help from Profane Arts / Numbness, so keeping him mostly stunned after the first couple rounds.

Much easier fight on Brutal demonic path than it was on Hard humanity path.

I actually scrapped a Fibula that gives increased Necrosis damage / ramping, since using the one with +1 duration is critical for most fights. I should have kept it for boss fights though, it would have been over even sooner.

[=DeadShot=]

How do you get the necrosis to tick to 100? To get achievement?