Melee Diviner?

[Mr. X]

Hi, I'd like to start a brand new character: a melee diviner.
I'm quite experienced in pure melee characters so I fear this "hybrid" since spirit is usually a caster.
I wanted to foucus on vitality damage.
My biggest concern is about attribute points and their distribution: both str and dex are low supported from mastery tree advancement... suggestions?

Thank you

[OneMuskyOx]

Working on a Diviner right now in a Lan game. The Attribute problem is a big factor in determining it. Strength is more important than DEX with the points I have found. Up your strength to keep up with armor requirements, as DEX is not a huge demand for most melee weapons. Item loadout is very important too. You may need "light" items or attribute boosters. Race up the mastery tree before investing in a ton of skills. It wasn't until around level 19 before I started investing in the skills. I am sturdy enough, able to wall bosses and boost the party and pets with passives.

As you said, Dream and Spirit synergize by chewing away at mobs just by being near them. You devour vitality, slow enemies, and bork their skills and defenses. Spirit's vitality shredding Helps with Trance of Empathy for the health conversion and Wrath for later. In addition the Deathchill Aura tree makes Distort reality murderous. Since the melee class has no other basic weapon substitutes, slap some points into Psionic Touch. It tacks on some Vitality damage and a bit of AoE. It won't be the destroyer of worlds, but it gives you some precious DPS and burns up weak mobs. The charged hit also sends enemies flying. The entertainment value alone is worth some points.

Dark Covenant and Trance of Convalescence makes for an interesting duo, as it makes the Health degen less painful. Empathy can work too, as life stealing weapons on top of Empathy's vampirism makes you chop up mobs like cordwood while keeping your health up. I mainly use Trance of Convalescence because my Diviner is multiplayer and it helps everybody. If I was going singleplayer I'd probably use Empathy or Wrath.

Grab Soul Shiver. It will help.

I am torn on the Lich. He's fun to chill with, and the Trances boost him as well. Convalescence improves his health and energy regen, and Empathy makes him bite back a bit, though not to the greatest level. As a melee class I tend to find him too much of a point sink, but I'll probably throwsome points on him in Epic after I get skill boosting items and the occasional shrine of mastery.

Ultimately I am experimenting with the Diviner too, and some other folks might have some good ideas as well. I like that the double INT tree allows me to wear some caster armor if I come across a nice green or blue piece.

[Mr. X]

Thank you for your comment it was really helpful.
I have still some uneasyness about dex: it's true about gear requirements but... OA & DA will be very very low...
this means that maybe diviner will be fine till epic but somewhere in legendary the journey will end: 1000 DA is minimum (act IV) to avoid criticals while 900 OA is enough to juat ensure that you at least hit the mobs regularly...
it's tricky because OA/DA importance shows up in almost only legendary but it's still a big issue.

in my experience it is difficult to match resistences & armor & damage & both OA/DA with a single gear arrangement unless you already farmed everything out of the game with previous chars.
This my conqueror knows:
"why are you letting me work if I defeated legendary hades?" - "loot" - "ok"

[Wasserblaffer]

Originally posted by Mr. X:

Thank you for your comment it was really helpful.
I have still some uneasyness about dex: it's true about gear requirements but... OA & DA will be very very low...

That's not quite true. The reason a Diviner is on low Dex., is because Dream mastery doesn't boost Dex. at all. However, it compensates for that a bit through Lucid Dream>>>Premonition. Paired with a 3:2 Str:Dex ratio, you should be fine.

Personally, I'm going for this build: https://www.kirmiziperfect.com/titancalc-anniversary-edition/TitanCalc7070.html?mastery=Diviner&master1=2&master2=9&sa=21&m1=32-6-0-0-8-1-1-0-1-16-1-0-8-0-1-8-1-1-1-1-16-0-0&m2=32-0-12-0-0-8-12-6-1-8-8-0-0-1-8-1-6-0-12-8-1-0-0

[Dakota]

Life leech might be a better damage type to look into than vitality. Vitality gets scaled up with INT, which you generally don't put any points into as a melee Diviner, however life leech scales with your character level. This means that if you find a nice life leeching weapon and have death chill aura on at all times to reduce the enemy resistance to it you become pretty much unkillable, especially with deathchill also reducing the enemy attack and attack speed.

You can also throw in trance of empathy early game to further your health gain in battle then move on to trance of wrath late game for extra damage and to further reduce enemy resistances.

Undead will be the main danger to your build since vitality and life leech attacks do nothing to them. Spirit Ward and Spirit Bane become a useful ability in those cases along with a nice hard hitting weapon and strong armor, though you'll need to drink health potions much more often in undead mobs compared to the more lively ones that serve as your health potions.

Soul Shiver's also a great artefact for you to pick up, also a good idea to keep a weapon with life leech for normal mobs then a weapon with 50% extra damage to undead as your secondary to swap to.

I'd recommend putting nothing into INT, getting all the strength you need to equip whatever equipment you want to plus about 20 so you're prepared to pick up higher level ones, then pour the rest into dex for high defensive ability so you just never die in battle and your life leech drains the health of everyone around you dealing massive DPS with the health of deathchill aura's necrosis.


Pretty great build, you'll be completely undedable throughout normal mode for the most part if you have decent resistances. Epic's not much of an issue either.

[Wasserblaffer]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Life leech might be a better damage type to look into than vitality. Vitality gets scaled up with INT, which you generally don't put any points into as a melee Diviner, however life leech scales with your character level.

I'd recommend putting nothing into INT, getting all the strength you need to equip whatever equipment you want to plus about 20 so you're prepared to pick up higher level ones, then pour the rest into dex for high defensive ability so you just never die in battle and your life leech drains the health of everyone around you dealing massive DPS with the health of deathchill aura's necrosis.

Pretty great build, you'll be completely undedable throughout normal mode for the most part if you have decent resistances. Epic's not much of an issue either.

What makes Vitality interesting is the damage done by the Lich King being largely vitality based as well, but overall I guess you're right. It doesn't really matter, as Necrosis and Lucid Dream are worth it in any case.

I haven't put any points in Int. indeed. Both masteries provide enough for this build. So far I've gone 3:2 Str.:Dex. as that's the basic melee characters distribution. I figured I'd want 600 Str. in the end, to be able to equip the best Str. based armour, and 3:2 gets you pretty close to that at level 75 (which should quite attainable now with Ragnarok).

Readin your comment I might consider more Dex. though.