IX. In-game MechanicsHere, I'll explain how certain spells work in-depth for the new summoners.
Infection Chain-Triggering MechanismAs you may have noticed, all PvE builds are essentially Acid/Putrefy or Vamp/Putrefy hybrids. This is because the bulk of your damage comes from DoT spells in mass PvE, and there is a certain automated chain triggering mechanism that benefits all builds:
Neurotoxin/Volatile Infection --triggers->
Putrefy --triggers->
Necropotency.Necropotency stacks up to 5 times and reduces the cast time of Vampirism/Acid Bolt/Dark Renewal/Blood Injection by 20%
for each stack, which means those spell become instant-cast at 5 stacks. However, when you cast any of those spells once, you use up all of the stacks.
Blood Aegis: MechanicsBlood Aegis is one of the most crucial spells a summoner must have; this is our only protection spell. At R3, you get 10 stacks of Blood Aegis. Each stack increases armor by a 8% bonus and each hit received will cancel 1 stack.
So it works something like this:
Let's say we have 1000 armor points, then:
10 stacks = 80% bonus (1000 base + 800 bonus = 1800 total armor)
9 stacks = 72% bonus (1000 base + 720 bonus = 1720)
8 stacks = 64% bonus (1000 + 640 = 1640)
.. and so on.
The shortcoming of this spell is that it's very easy to receive 10 rapid consequent hits. The blood cost of this spell is also kinda high (3 drops of blood).
Blood Injection VS. Dark Renewal in my Acid buildSome people wondered why I took Blood Injection instead of Dark Renewal in my Acid build. Here's why:
Neurotoxin/VI --triggers->
Putrefy --triggers-->
Necropotency.Necropotency can be used for Acid Bolt or Blood Injection, thus:
Acid Bolt --triggers-->
Darkweaver.Darkweaver reduces the cast time of Blood Injection by 50%.
This gives you 2 chances to reduce the cast time of Blood Injection, unlike in Vampirism builds where you can only reduce the cast time of Dark Renewal through Necropotency.
Overall, this greatly reduces the cast time of both Acid Bolt and Blood Injection simultaneously (i.e. both at the same time), which covers up the shortcoming of this build versus vampirism-based builds. With Blood Injection, you even have a chance to generate additional blood drops.
What if I urgently need to heal without waiting for those stacks to build up?Casting spells repeatedly (2 times in a row without Necro/Weaver):
Dark Renewal = 75K + 75K (initially) + 140K over 16 seconds = 290K within 19* seconds frame.
* (1.5 seconds + 1.5 seconds + 16 seconds, since HoT would start after the first cast, I've added extra 20K to the HoT since the effects renews with the second cast)
Cost: 2 drops of blood.
Blood Injection = 200K + 200K (initially) + 60K after 5 seconds = 460K within 11* seconds frame.
* (3 + 3 + 5 = 11)
Cost: 2 drops of blood.
The acid build can't deal damage and heals at the same time, so we need to get around this. Necropotency stacks for rapid Acid Bolts and Darkweaver for rapid Blood Injections will cover this pretty well.
Therefore, Blood Injection blows Dark Renewal out of the water for this build, and with the new grid skill in later patches Delayed Healing is getting a considerable boost.
