Self-Cast Forbidden Rite Occultist
This Forbidden Rite build was designed by me in patch 3.15, the pain league, and it was able to do ALL content. The build is very complex and therefore will be expensive due to tons of parts needed to work together. In this guide, I will break down everything you need to know about the build.
Forbidden Rite is Chaos projectile spell that has increased flat damage based on your life and energy shield and it will do damage to yourself. It will shoot its primary projectile at a target and then 8 projectiles at surrounding targets. If there is one target around you it will be hit twice. Increasing projectiles via Greater Multiple Projectiles, Greater Volley or any other source such as a Dying Sun will add to the primary projectiles. If you have GMP and there is only one target it will be targeted by 6 projectiles.
The projectiles will target the enemy and fire around them and the amount of projectiles that will actually hit depends on the number of projectiles and the area of effect on them. You need a high amount of AoE for all your projectiles to overlap, and this is the primary reason we chose Occultist. Power Charge stacking Occultist is currently one of the best ways to achieve this AoE.
The Occultist ascendency has 6% AoE per Power Charge with items you get up to 200% increased AoE which brings the AoE on your FR to 13 or 14 with enough investment. Power Charge stacking also gives the build a huge amount of Crit Chance, Crit Multi and Cast Speed via Void Batteries. It also allows us to use the Badge of the Brotherhood which gives the build a huge amount of damage via Frenzies and it is the few sources of movement speed left in the game.
We have big increased damage from Void Batteries and Passives, Cast Speed from Void Battery/Frenzies, more damage from Frenzies, Crit from Power Charges as well as Crit Multi from Cluster Jewels and gems. We also scale Increased Damage Taken via Wither and more projectiles. Overall this build uses all the tools in the game to scale damage as high as possible. The only thing left to scale is the flat damage that comes as a part of the skill covered next.
The flat damage of Forbidden Rite comes from your Life and Energy Shield. You gain flat damage equal to 12% of your Maximum Life and 5% of your maximum energy shield. Hence Life is very important in the build. Whenever you cast FR, you will take 40% of your Maximum Life and 25% of your Maximum Energy Shield as Chaos damage. This will be mitigated by your Chaos resistance. If you have 6000 Life and 100 ES you will take 2400+ 25 = 2425 damage. This will be mitigated by resistance so if you have 80 chaos resistance you will only take 485 damage. 485 might not sound like a lot but when you cast 4 times a second 2000 damage is more than most builds can heal.
How do builds handle this problem? There are two ways, you can go CI which forces you into Energy Shield which severely limits the prefixes you can have on your gear, or you can heal through it. In our build, we’ve selected a life-based build and I use 3 different sources of healing to solve this issue. We have Leech via items, Regen and our main source of healing which is Life Gained on Hit.
Due to the self-damage nature of Forbidden Rite, we can use multiple Cast When Damage Taken setups into our build. You need to trigger Cast When Damage Taken every cast, and in order to do so you need to hit yourself for 528 damage (or 423 with Divergent CWDT).
To hit yourself for 528 you would need around 6550 Life without ES at 80 chaos resist.
I choose to use Ball Lightning and Blazing Salvo supported with Greater Multiple Projectiles and Cast When Damage Taken in the 4-link. In the end-game PoBs, we have 30 Life Gain On Hit with the Vitality Watcher’s Eye and 18 from each ring giving us a total of 66 LGoH. Ball Lightning with that AoE will hit small single targets 8 times per cast, Blazing Salvo will shoot 12 projectiles with Dying Sun up (8 will probably land each cast), Forbidden Rite will shoot 8 projectiles (9 with the enchant) and we also have a Purifying Flame which will hit once. Thats 25 hits per cast times 4 cast a second times 66 life. That is 6600 life a second just from life gain on hit on 1 target + 1200 leech and a few hundred regen, you heal for a lot. If you have multiple targets in high-end content you can heal up to 100k a second very easily.
The second CWDT link is Divergent Purifying Flame + Onslaught and a Mark. The build fires a Purifying Flame that will put Consecrated Ground on your target and will give you 5% regen when standing on top and also makes the target take extra damage due to its Divergent quality. It is linked to Onslaught which will give you Onslaught while bossing and trigger Assassin’s Mark that will give you Crit and Crit Multi.
When you are mapping we switch out the Assassin’s Mark for Warlord’s Mark which is used for Rage generation that allows us to activate Divergent Berserk that grants us 5% more damage while mapping due to its Divergent quality and 30% MORE movement speed as well as 20% less damage taken.
When you cast FR, the damage you take is instant but the projectiles have travel time, the curse will go off before the projectiles land giving you rage every time you stun a target and you have a 100% chance to stun if you deal at least 50% of the mob's life unless it has energy shield.
The 3rd link of CWDT is Immortal Call, Frost Shield, and Arcane Surge. This build runs an Enduring Composure Cluster Jewel notable, which generates an Endurance Charge every second for 4 seconds if you’ve been hit recently. Well you hit yourself all the time so it's on 100% of the time. This lets you proc Immortal Call with 4 endurance charges all the time mitigating tons of physical damage. The Frost Shield used to play a bigger part in the build, but in 3.16 we switched to armour based and no longer have the maximum energy shield for level 20 Frost Shield. It still serves as slight damage mitigation and an avenue for chill.
The damage taken part of FR also enables certain Pantheons, activates boots enchants and other triggers when you hit yourself. It’s important to add that CWDT has a 0.25 cooldown and it’s important for your cast speed not to exceed 4.0 casts per second or it will skip casts. Skipping casts will cause you to not heal and be prone to dying similar to not procing casts due to not having enough life. Overall it will provide you with tons of healing, Onslaught, Regen, Rage/Berserk, reduced mana cost, physical damage reduction, etc. and it's one of the most powerful mechanics in any build. However, due to changes in 3.15, CWDT has a huge mana multiplier(250%) and it leads to massive mana problems in the build.
The build has massive mana problems that have to be solved. Triggering that many spells with a 250% mana multiplier is going to prove difficult. A Mana Flask will help you early but it will be too inconsistent to use later on. In order to find out how much mana you use you have to add up Forbidden Rite, Ball Lightning, Warlord’s/Assassin’s Mark, Blazing Salvo, Purifying Flame and multiply that number by 4. That is your single cast and there are the cooldowns like Frost Shield and Immortal Call, which spike your mana cost.
You must make sure your mana will never drop to 0, and you have to make sure the total mana used per second is less than the total amount of mana regenerated per second to allow breathing room for spikes. Let's say you regenerated 60 mana a second you would probably want 10 mana per cast on FR and 0 mana on everything else and give yourself a 20 mana/sec for spike spells like IC and Frost Shield. Don't worry though there are plenty of people who can make this build work correctly without POB and then cry in your chat xD.
There are 4 ways to solve your mana, - flat Mana on Rings, Replica Conquerors Efficiency jewel, Reduced Mana Cost of Skills on your tree via Tireless, mana nodes and masteries. There is Recoup Mana which is harder to come by and mana regeneration. The first 2 help both consistency and spikes while the latter two only helps with consistency. You need to make sure you have enough mana or YOU CANNOT CAST AND YOU WILL DO SHIT DAMAGE AND THEN COMPLAIN ON FUCKING REDDIT ABOUT HOW MY BUILD SUCKS BUT IN ACTUALITY YOU = DUMB
In 3.16 the buffs to armour made it the best choice for primary defence since physical damage was our biggest weakness in 3.15. Determination has become the primary defensive aura for our build. Armour is supplemented by Physical Damage Reduction from both Enduring Composure with 4 Endurance Charges and 5% Pantheon Gruthkul if you don't take Garukhan for shock. We also have Immortal Call with a 50% uptime further reducing physical damage taken. Immortal Call on CWDT is not like in other builds due to the nature of FR; it will just go off as you cast spells. The elemental damage reduction is based on Glorious Vanity Divine Flesh (Xibaqua). Divine Flesh adds +5% to Maximum Chaos resistance which alleviates a lot of the chaos damage from FR, and we also get a single Born of Chaos to bring our chaos resistance up to 83%. Half of the elemental damage we take is converted to chaos damage basically making our elemental resistance 79%. Mageblood versions of the build will have massive elemental damage reduction via Sapphire, Topaz, and Ruby flask. Our build finishes above 6k life and has a massive amount of healing. This build has incredible survivability while hitting targets.
Forbidden Rite naturally fires 8 extra projectiles at surrounding targets making it have excellent coverage. We have Occultist’s Profane Bloom to supplement the clearing power of the skill. Since we already stack AoE for overlap on FR itself it makes our Bloom clear like a monster. The scaling on our explosions includes Increased Damage (Chaos, Area, universal), More Damage from Frenzies, Chaos resistance penetration, - resistance and Wither. Wither isn't needed at all on normal maps or anything besides Simulacrum Wave 30, 100% delirium or deep delve. In these instances, Wither will be applied via our Xiquaba. With a 25% chance to apply Wither on hit your projectiles will apply multiple stacks of wither on targets to increase the explosion damage by a ton.
For any build to feel smooth it has to have speed, both movement and cast. Our cast speed comes from Void Batteries, Frenzies, Onslaught, etc bringing us to about 170 cast speed to hit the 4.0 mark without going over. Our increased movement speed comes from Boots, Quicksilver Flask, and Elusive+ 100% Elusive effect via Badge of the Brotherhood. We gain Elusive via Redeemer boots (10% chance on hit) and we use Withering Step to reset Elusive. It will reset very quickly in packs due to the sheer number of projectile hits.
Even on white packs, the level 1 Blazing Salvo will land on the pack before the hard-hitting FR hits. Our increased movement speed is multiplied by Berserk (39% more with enchant) and Tailwind via boots. The Mageblood versions of the build will hit over 400 maximum movement speed while non-Mageblood builds will partially rely on HH or Inspired Learning for massive movement speed.
Forbidden Rite + GMP/Greater Volley + Power Charge on Crit + Pinpoint + Increased Crit Damage + Void Manipulation
Cast When Damage Taken 1 + Ball Lightning 1 + Blazing Salvo 1 + Greater Multiple Projectiles 20/20
Cast When Damage Taken 1 + Purifying Flame 1 + Assassin’s/Warlord’s Mark 5 + Onslaught 20/20
Cast When Damage Taken 1 + Immortal Call 1 + Frost Shield 1 + Arcane Surge 4
Determination - Our main source of physical damage reduction great to generate 20k+ of armour
Purity of Elements - Gives great elemental resistance so you don't have to have so much on gear, Avoids all elemental ailments allowing us to use Lunaris(6 elemental damage reduction) and Gruthkul ( 5% physical damage reduction)
Withering Step - Applies wither and resets Elusive
Flame Dash - Only dumb fucks dont play with this
Berserk - Massive movement speed, 5% more spell damage and 20 damage reduction in maps.
POB: https://pastebin.com/4SVyyWp0
Estimated 100-150ex
Enchant - Area of effect per quality
Scourge - Chaos damage, spell damage , Chaos pen, Triple damage, chaos spell gems.
Very good weapons for our build 2x power charges, massive spell damage, crit chance , cast speed. Please invest in decent cast speed wands the difference between 2x 10 cast speed and 20 cast speed is huge. Critical strike chance is also important.
Enchant - Forbidden Rite Projectiles (Berserk 30% effect if you want to go zoom)
Enchant: Commandment of Spite - When you are hit you release icy ground for Chill
1. Buy Fingerless silk gloves or temple mod gloves with good suffixes.
2. Use warlords exalted on them as a prefix. (if they are full on prefixes before or after the slam you can use harvest keep suffix).
3. Use Suffix cannot change. Use Reforge Caster for 100% chance to get spell damage
4 Use Suffix cannot change. Aisling
5. Craft physical damage converted to x and unveil. You want to take 60 life here if you can.
6. Craft damage damage during any flask effect, can also craft armour here and done.
I think elevated Onslaught is better than Tailwind because the Tailwind needs to be divined to 25% for 10% action speed and it's very hard to divine both Onslaught and tailwind. You can get both if you are rich but if you had to pick one Onslaught is cheaper and easier to divine.
Anoint: Infused
Rings If you have despair on your gloves from hands or some other source you will craft two ring #1s if you do not have despair you will craft 1 and 2.
A. Reforge caster using harvest until you hit a decent resist with open suffix and use suffix cannot change and reforge chaos 50% chance to get chaos resistance.
B. You can use Aetheric Fossil or Aetheric/metallic and take your chances. Can suffix cannot change and try to force on chaos resistance if you have an open suffix.
C. You can alt craft Despair and then imprint and use harvest Reforge More of any elemental to try to land a decent resistance then use Suffix cannot change and try to force on chaos resistance. Its too hard to force on an elemental resistance because there are damage mods as a prefix and a suffix so you might not want to waste your money.
Mageblood - OMEGALUL JUST farm 300 ex
HeadHunter - OMEGALUL Just farm 100 ex
Stygian Vise (Hunter)
(I suggest you buy these they are all a pain to craft yourself) The smalls are easy to craft but keep in mind you should use these to fill in whatever stats that are missing from your build so you might want to shop for these last.
Unholy grace - Cast speed + damage = lots of damage
Dark Ideation - The reason we use this node is so we don't have to go to the back for unholy grace saving us 2 points.
If you need to craft these yourself its an ilvl68+. Use reforge more chaos with harvest Aberrant fossils. Keep in mind its 300 Aberrant fossils for this exact combination.
Towering Threat - 8% life 10% aoe
Automatic endurance charge generation + armour
Born of Chaos - +3 to maximum chaos for Divine Flesh
We use Divine flesh for +5 to maximum chaos resistance to mitigate FR damage; it also provides us with protection against elemental damage. You want to divine your jewel for the 25% chance to wither on hit on one of the attribute nodes.
- Maximum life % , Multi while dual wielding , multi with spells, global multi, increased damage, increased area damage, increased chaos damage, increased cast speed, increased attack and cast speed, increased cast speed while dual wielding, increased spell damage, increased spell damage while dual wielding, elemental resistance, chaos resistance, stats. CORRUPTED BLOOD CANNOT BE INFLICTED ON YOU.
- Energy shield regen, Global multi, life, cast speed if you crit recently, cast speed, resistance, stats.
- 36 Aoe, 9 cast speed, 1% regen, 20% inc duration, some stats.
- You can use inspired learning on top left if you take 2 more points for armour ES notes.
Needed: Vitality Life gain on hit.
Really good: Vitality Leech ( This lets you use Awakened Void mani)
Optional: Determination physical damage reduction, Determination armour, purity of elements physical as fire, cold or lightning, Purity of elements Chaos resistance if your gear sucks really bad. Vitality regen. Vitality Life recovery rate.