DIABLO 4 SEASON 10 - DOES THE RAVENLORD HAVE A SHOT? (BUILD THEORY CRAFT)
So following up on Season 10, there’s a lot of cool new changes as mentioned in the previous post but one thing caught my eye…the new unique is (as I was hoping by the name) all about Ravens for the Druid! I theory crafted and ran (relatively unsuccessfully btw) a ravens only companion build in Season 9, check out my build published via Maxroll’s planner here:
https://maxroll.gg/d4/planner/pwkoe033
The issue was to make the run even the open world content on T4 you had to run a basically dead unique in Storms Companion to get the pack leader boon resets to get the near constant ravens actives. Other than that, somewhat spotty tempers in storm crit and raven double damage when possible. This build was pretty much a meme build this season and could only clear T4 content and up to about a 60-70 pit with ideal modifiers.
Enter the Kilt of the Blackwing…
This unique looks freaking AWESOME and single handedly fixes all my issues I had in S9 with a Ravens only build. This completely neutralizes the absolute need for Pack Leader to do damage with the procs for ravens casts on other companion actives AND shapeshifts. I think pack leader is still BiS for the wolf spirit to reset other companions. BUT, the build’s damage won’t be solely reliant on it. Also, with Grizzly Rage being nerfed (it needs to be, huge crutch ultimate, but I don’t think it should be irrelevant, we’ll have to see what happens) and none of the other ultis being super strong here (maybe a Mjolnic Ring with Cataclysm for Storm Damage and the %[x] buff?) I think the skill bar won’t be fighting for room really and you’ll have room for some experimentation.
On top of this, with Chaos Armor, it looks like the Kilt, Airidah’s and Mjolnic Ring are ALL Chaos drops, so as far as I can tell ANY of these can drop as any a lot, which means you could possibly grab this new unique as another slot and empower its implicit raven buffs (it looks like if it’s a chaos variation it gets a percent buff to the unique aspect according to screenshots I’ve seen online). Where this seems a no brainlet to me is getting the Kilt on an otherwise meh slot, and running Tibault’s Will for the +20%[x] and some form of unstoppable. Also, unless running other companions, there’s no need to run Spirit Bond Aspect (even though it’s my favorite aspect…) bc Ravens can’t take damage, so this frees up a slot, but also loses you out on some valuable DR.
More to come on this builds possible HUGE power spike bc of this item, without a doubt it’ll at the very least be an off meta but viable pick (like a Gathlen’s Birthright based Lightning Storm), which is a huge upgrade from the “current” version. Also, I’m eager to see the other part of this unique, the unkindness of ravens effect. This bolsters the raven count by 3, so that plus stampede, AND one with nature is going to amp the damage and number ALOT. I’m wondering if the active piece will still be as crucial or if you could just have an auto pilot ravens build utilizing solely the passive raven swoop attacks without using actives other than to buff the dps with more auto casts. Needless to say, I can’t wait to play this and theory craft more builds with the Chaos Armor aspect shake up coming in Season 10. The infernal hordes buffs are a nice change since I play compasses a lot to level w/ friends, so this fits right into my normal season rotation anyway.
I’ll leave you with this…Airidah’s + Cataclysm + Mjolnic + Tibault’s + Kilt of the Blackwing?!? Let the birds eat baby!!
