User:Kit Engel/Team - Vampiric Coven

Vampiric Coven two-man build. For random PVP stuff and absolutely crazy people.

The build is a type of lifesteal spike. The lifestealing skills and vampiric spirit provide massive amounts of single target damage, and the sacrifice from Cultist's Fervor causes Dark Aura to proc with any spell cast, providing area shadow damage to complement the lifestealing.

General Strategy

 * Begin by having both necromancers cast Arcane Mimicry. Note that Arcane Mimicry copies skills from a person in alphabetical order, for some strange reason, so the Cultist should cast first, to prevent himself from getting a copy of Cultist's Fervor again.
 * The Cultist casts Cultist's Fervor and Vampiric Spirit, the Vampire casts Arcane Echo, Cultist's Fervor, and Vampiric Spirit. Both cast Dark Aura.
 * Both necromancers should then run up to the target in question and hit Shadow Strike if the enemy is above 50% HP, followed by Life Siphon, then Vampiric Gaze. The Cultist should, at this point, cast Arcane Echo and Vampiric Spirit again; the Vampire should recast Cultist's Fervor. Repeat the attack sequence as necessary.

Things to Look Into
First off, the build is particularly weak when Arcane Mimicry is recharging, since a large portion of the damage simply doesn't happen. For the Cultist, his damage is approximately cut in half without Vampiric Spirit, in addition to the lack of lifestealing becoming dangerous with the amount of health he sacrifices. For the Vampire, the energy costs of Vampiric Spirit without the management gained by using Cultist's Fervor makes casting anything at all prohibitive. The Vampire also loses a significant amount of damage, since Dark Aura fails to proc without Cultist's Fervor as none of the skills innately require life sacrifice.
 * Make the build viable for usage while Arcane Mimicry is recharging. Perhaps the Cultist could bring Blood Ritual to offset the cost of Vampiric Spirit for the Vampire?
 * The Cultist arguably can function without Vampiric Spirit as a backup, long-range blood spiker. This would evidently be most useful if there were others in the group that are providing some pressure in the meantime.

The build is also naturally very fragile. Enchantment stripping ruins it more or less completely. There's probably very little way around this.

Other classes that may complement this build is a ranger with Quickening Zephyr, allowing the skills to be used more often. This has not been tested directly yet, so it may be that the extra energy cost per cast is unacceptable.

One a completely unrelated note, Cultist's Fervor can theoretically be kept up indefinitely with Serpent's Quickness.