Sara's Riftasin , A PVM Guide






Introduction

Good morning everyone, after making many Martial Art and Trapper Sins, Ive come to find a potent combo of items that allows one to have fantastic balance of melee kick some butt goodness without giving up much in damage on the trap tree. This can be played equally well on either side. The downfall normally for kicker sins is the lack of an aoe attack that actually takes enemies down. Insert Rift

Sins are the true swiss army knives of builds, able to run everywhere in the game with ample crowd control, multiple damage sources and even summons. As a comparable build, the Rift-a-din does less physical damage and attacks slower. He does not get summons nor the crowd control a sin is capable of.
My character requirement are a build that can take can run every other spot in the game, and that includes Ubers. If the char cannot solo everything, then it's of no use to me.

The down side here, is that this build is another one based on game items and if you do not have most of the ideal items you lose effectiveness. This build focuses on eeking out the max orb damage while balancing kicker, trapper and durability, afterall I only play hardcore mode . A weak char is a deeded character, and despite what the screen says, nobody will remember your deeds of valor.

The info collected here is nothing new, and I cannot claim credit for anything but the time I'm taking to compile it for you. However, I can say that I've had this guide posted over at another one of the largest and oldest Diablo forums now since Feb of 08. Nearly 24,000 Views and over 15 pages of props including being Stickied. With Kudos like this, I wanted to share my guide with the goodly folks here at jsp too.

[QUOTEQuote (LordC)]I built a kick/trapper based largely around this guide not too long ago. The character is more fun to play than any other I've ever made. The quantity of available gameplay decisions make it much more interactive than the typical melee or caster character. It's also incredibly powerful, which is unusual for such a relatively obscure build. Cheers to Sara for managing to pull that off. :thumbup:[/QUOTE]

[QUOTEQuote (AgentMarth)]I ended up trying this Sin, and I loved it. Its fun dealing every type of damage in the game, and launching Orb's everywhere. It doesn't even need top high end gear to make it work

In the end, I loved how she turned out. She is also one of the few chars that is enjoyable to walk through the game with, and I even plan to somewhat rebuild her to tweak her stats better.[/QUOTE]




Character Goals


However you cut it , these are the finished char goals


Faster Hit Rate:
27% - 6 frames 48%- 5 frames 86%- 4 frames
I suggest heading for either 48% or 86% depending on your choice of equipment.

75+ all res in hell. Overstack of 120% for Uber Meph
1200 min base life before bo or sages
50% min chance to block on HHG, and 75% on sanctuary
8/3/3 kicks or better.
the ability to have at least 50% cb via stashed item for bosses and ubers.
lifetap via Dracs or wand. Critical for uber running.




Kicking Basics


The following effects are carried by the kicking skills:
 Life Leech
 Mana Leech
 Elemental Damage
 Magical Damage
 Chance to cast X on striking/Attacking
 Crushing Blow
 Open Wounds
 Prevent Monster Heal
 Ignore Target Defense
 Hit Blinds Target
 Hit Causes Monster to Flee
 Hit Freezes target
 Hit Slows Target


What's not going to work with kicks:

Critical Strike , Deadly strike. Physical on wep damage including +min/Max damage



Skill Layout in simple Fashion:


Martial Arts Tree

20dtalon

Dragon Talon is chosen for it's ability to apply various mods like the chance to cast on our Rift. This attack is among the fastest in the game which means proc'ing mods is a cinch. Because it's also physical we have something to leach with.

Full 20 points advised for Maximum phy damage , and the Hefty Ar bonus. It helps if you can get enough points for a total of 6 kicks. This requires a skill level of 30

Dragon Tail = 1
Dragon Claw = 1
Tiger strike =1 *OPTIONAL*
Cobra strike =1 This skill is very useful early on for supplying Mana/life leach *OPTIONAL*
Dragon Flight=1 point. A useful way to summon stack via enemy-assisted teleport. Useful for picking out boss type monsters and things like Shamans


Trap Tree

20 Death sentry
Useful for it's ce and added light damage
20 light sentry
our main trap huge damage and another form of damage.
1 Blade Fury
1 Blade Shield. Blade shield will proc orbs and carry your elemental+ctc's

20 Shockweb
Increase light sentry damage and is more useful then charged bolt sentry. As a sin we're allowed 5 traps out. For me I choose to use 4 lightsentries, and 1 deathsentry. Picking shockweb gives us the option to at least use the synergy skill in conjuction with our regular in play traps.


Shadow disciples

1 in all skills except:

Shadow Master. Put enough points in this skill to hit level 17 master with final items equipped. I ended up with 2 hard points in this skill.

Bos is our primary aura in use on all but some specific situations where we may need the extra res from fade. Either one of these skills is good at level 1. They will be boosted to adequate levels. Some people may want to add another point in bos if it means hitting the next ias bp.

Once these core points are assigned any extra point should go to increasing your trap damage.






Stating



Strength
As you can guess enough for gear. As a kicker we will have more str then most other chars. This is because we need to equip hurty boots. I advocate using double up'd goblin toes, the highest str req item we *need* requires 172str.
Up'd Gores can make do with 156 str. These boots aren't recommended however.

Dex
Enough for Max block with Sanctuary Shield. Shoot for 50% block on Head hunter glory
Vit
Everything else.




Equipped Stuff


On to the fun part, what makes a rift kicker a rift kicker~!
First off, again this build is not cheap. I am also not going to list every wep possibility either. Just what I feel fits the theme and are a couple of the more popular options. As always Rare items have the potential to be the best. Good luck finding those.


Primary Wep: Rift War sceptor. I know you guys never saw this one coming..

Primary Shield.Head Hunters Glory shield, 3 socketed with 5/5 level cold facets. We get 15% skill damage much needed for boosting Frozen orb and another -15 enemy res. This coupled with infinnty merc means -100 all enemy res. This is the only unique shield in the game that has 3 sockets to make the most with. A 4 socketed faceted monarch (jmod if your a rich bastard) would also work, but you'd give up other stats the Head hunter offers us. If you wanted to sacrifice a bit of damage the only other option that jumps out at me is a Mosher's shield with 2facets

Switch wep:Hoto : chosen to use for our trap laying and prebluffing every sin skill we have.
Shield: Spirit monarch.


Helmet: Only one will do, Nightwings for the added cold skill damage and +2 skills that helps both our trap and melee attacks. 15 ias jewel with ammy let us exceed the 30 ias we need for preffered ias.

Belt:Tgods is my preffered Hardcore belt of choice on any char. Nos coil String of ears get mention.

Gloves: Dracs. The ow and str help a ton. Oh yeah free lifetap woot. Crafted Duel leach cb gloves are pretty hawt and worth mentioning.
Boots: Double Up'd Goblintoes (my pick), Up'd Goreriders or Shadow dancers. Why double up'd Gob's? Simple. Up'd these boots have nearly the same damage as up'd Gores. Because deadly strike doesnt work on kicks this leaves OW and frw. A Sin using BOS will not need to worry about run speed negating this "advantage". OW is a duration damage that is applied over 8 seconds. With Dracs and the speed and frequency of dtalon ( 6 kicks in 23 frames) you will apply OW to the target with dracs alone, and then reapply OW if the target is still alive after the initial burst o fthe dtalon kick cycle. In then end with gores, what your left with is lower cb. The only monsters that arent instagibed with this sins high damage is bosses. These will Die faster with the extra 10% cb your getting on gobs. As you can see from the equipment selection, this sin has few places to squeeze in CB, making the clear choice for a pvm Rift-a-Sin Goblin Toes Mirrored Boots. If your poor and dont have the runes to up your Gores then use them. Those who understand game mechanics will laugh at you however for being a cookie cutter sheeple.

Jewelry
Rings: 1 Ravenfrost. We need cbf somewhere. Dex helps with block and we even get a little cold damage. Yaay

1dwarf star for more life, mdr and firesorb. Take the sting out of fire damage

Ammy: Rare or Mara for prebluffing venom, shadow master and bos. After that I'd look at an ias ammy like Highlords or Cateye if your bos cannot meet your 8/3/3 kicks.


Armor:My top pick is COH. +2 skills and much needed res. Everything else it offers is nice.

Alternatives: Many good choices here like Treachory, Lionheart, Smoke, Ga plate or even Gbane. Whatever you use ensure your hitting the char goals.

Stashed wep's for boss killing and uber hunting : Shealed Fleshripper , Lastwish pb or Stormlash. The goal here is good speed with CB/OW
Stashed shield:Sanctuary Troll nest


Merc Act2.

Whichever your preferred guy is. I use a Might merc to increase my physical portion of my kick damage.

Holy freeze doesnt seem that handy since our sin has fantastic crowd control with COS and FO and a Shadow Master

Wep:Infinnity is hands down by far the best option. Increases all of our elemental damages. As a bonus this wep puts out great physical damage and even has cb of its own. The only downside here is no leach and it's slow.
Armor: Treachery. Has nearly everything the merc needs. 45 ias, ! Fade represents 60 all res, 15% dr, 15% curse reduction , fhr, level 15 Venom. Incredible armor for a "lem" rune.
Helm: Vampgaze. Basically this slot is needed for life leach. the dr% offered here is a real boon. Because it came from my zon, it has a 15% ias jewel in it.
Tal helm, Crown of thieves and Andy's helm are also fitting.

There is only 3 scepter's that this can be made in War scepter (ideal)Divine Sceptors and Caddie's. War scept is both easier to find and cheaper to repair. These have a base wsm of -10. This means weneed another 30 ias to hit the quickest kick followup, Shooting for 8/3/3/3/3/3 fpa. This gives us over 5 attacks a second. While the added elemental damages are nice cake mods, the real reason we're using rift is the chance to cast Frozen orb. With the right combo of items we can actually put out as much frozen orb damage as an orb sorcy. What advantage we have over the sorc counterpart is the fact we do not suffer a casting delay. It's very common to kick out 2/3 and even the rare 4 orbs in a single attack cycle. This gives us ultimate AOE in addition to all the usual kick damages the target will also face.


What about the Evil IM curse?

Play as a trapper. With our better then avg gear we have full powered LS/DS

Bust out our 1 point Blade fury

Throw Gimmersheds at stuff
Unequip boots and keep kicking. We still get the ctc's and elemental damage. Without a boot on we do so little physical damage we can kick with impunity!



Play by Numbers:

For Level 82 Hardcore sin of mine
BeatenByA_Girl

Full physical damage Dragon talon + All the elemental added damage from gear/charms

Here's the beauty of Rift
Level 21 frozen orb , by itself pulling about 270-275 damage per shard.
+30% skill damage from Nightwing's and facets put us about 350+ shard damage
-100 enemy res puts our effective orb damage to non cold immunes at 700 damage. WOW indeed! This is more then my partial Tal orb sorc mf'er(without skillers).
This is equivalent to a level 27 Frozen Orb with a level 17 Cold Mastery. As many of you who have made Frozen Orb Sorcs or used as a backup for duel tree, this a potent attack indeed.

Ive been a fan of FO for many years. It is one of the most powerful skills in the game. Even though the character screen shows that the dmg is low you must remember that the dmg listed is for each shard FO emits. The FO carries 16 shards and releases an additional 26 shards when traveling.
still maxing shockweb for more damage but..
Light sentry damage 4700 per trap. 5 traps available. After conviction we're looking at around 7K+ light damage per trap. Holy cow its only getting stronger.

Shock web: currently at about 1200

As Always, use charms to cover what your missing. Fhr, Res, Life and after those are addressed Skill gc's would be next. I feel Trap Gc's would be the most useful for this build.


For Ubers I remove Rift and the Cold shield and use Fleshripper+ sanctuary shield. Lastwish is another premium albeit expensive kicker wep for one who ubers often.

So thanks for reading. In conclusion I want to say this is one of the most effective do it all chars in the game. With all the fireworks going off it's also one of the flashiest. This is my 1st attempt at a guide here so feedback is welcomed.

~Sara

This post was edited by Master_Zappy on Jul 29 2009 03:12pm

tracking, will read later

Cool build.

good work on the guide, did it take you long?

Not super long as I have this guide stickied at my other D2 forum. I revamped it a bit adding some detail where I felt it was needed, removed some junk that wasn't necessary and in general made the formatting much better. I worked on it on and off a couple mins here and there all day during down time at work. The sin guides stickied here was missing this gem of a build.


Thanks by the way. It's imo the most powerful , well rounded pvm sin build. It beats a pure trapper because it handles light immunes much better. It's better then a pure kicker as well, we dont really give up much in the way of kicker stats and it has alot more aoe. Compared to throwing in venom or fireblast, ORB pwns face over those other two skills if your build around rift correctly. It's also a ton of fun being able to play hybrid style throwing in kicks, dflight, laying down traps and in general just kicking arse.

This post was edited by Master_Zappy on Jul 29 2009 03:50pm

This ^^

http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=33473347&f=87


You wanted to share this with jsp after all?

This post was edited by RaBBit3x on Jul 29 2009 03:54pm

Indeed. Made the layout a bit better which was the only criticism presented in that thread. The flaming spam monkey shouldnt ruin a guide that everyone can benefit from. So I changed my mind and reposted.

nice guide

Just read it. Very nice! I was actually thinking about making a kicker like this, or I was atleast giving it a thought, because I wanna make some sort of CTC character.