Offensive Build Analyze of Reaver

[helminthauge]

When you start playing a Reaver, you'd probably think about 2 possible builds. One wields 2 weapons, focuses on physical damage and uses Virulent Strike and Corrupting Strike as main offensive talents while leaving diseases as pure debuff. The other one wields a short staff, focuses on blight damage, using Channel Staff as their common attack and accumulate fataling diseases just as Corruptors do.

Which of these 2 is better? This article is purposed to give an analyze of these 2 builds.

This is the first article (and maybe also the last) of the "Offensive Build Analyze" serie. This serie focuses on comparing the damage output of an endgame character with a chosen class. It mimics the endgame equipments by generating randarts with 3 chosen egos with maximized numbers (but no random powers) or chosen fixdarts. It will test the damage of constant plain attacks (for weapon classes, that means without using any active talents with CDs forwardly) and 0-turn burst damage (which mimics a situation where you must kill an enemy before it ever has a chance to act, so the number of talents is limited, and all dots and map effects are not taken into consideration). It will also use dummies with no defense and some defenses as the target.

Interesting facts abour Reaver: unlike most talents which is spell and involves weapon attacks, the 3 talents in the Scourge tree can trigger talent on spell hit, as well as the additional attack providing by Corrupted Strength, this gives the Reaver tons of chances to trigger talent on spell hit. Corrupted Strength is a post talent activity, and in no cases is considered as a proc itself.

First let's go with the "physical" Reaver.
Your active damage talents include Virulent Strike and Corrupting Strike, and perhaps Bone Grab if you don't have a good Blink rune or you prefer moving the enemy towards you. Virulent Strike has very short CD but pretty low multiplier, while Corrupting Strike a higher multiplier and a longer CD.

Stat: max Strength, Dexterity and Magic, the rest into Cunning
Prodigies: Arcane Might + Flexible Combat

Class Talents:
Sanguisuge 1/1/1/2
Vim 1/1 (4 in Soul Rot floating)
Bone 1/5/2/5
Plague 5/5/1/3
Scourge 3/1/1/2
Reaving Combat 5/1/5/3
Rot 5/5/4/1

General Talents:
Combat training 3/1/4/5/5/0
Torment:1/1/1/1
Hexes:3/1/1
Vile life:3/1/1/1
Physics 4/2/1
Chemistry 3/1/2
This leaves you 8 points for racial talents. If you want more take some from Thick Skin, Light Armor Training and Smith.

Equipment:
Mainhand mace, hateful + quick + ruin + crystal edge
Offhand mace, balanced + crippling + enhanced + crystal edge
Body robe, ancient + fearwoven + stormwoven + ablative armor
Head wizard hat, Brotherhood + fearwoven + mountain + head lamp
Amulet, enraging + soulsear + murder
Cloak, backstab + battlemaster + conjuring + ground stripping
Hand gauntlet, nighthunter + strength + war-making + voratun grip
Belt, life + ravager + reinforced + fungal web
Feet, massive + spellbinding + void + kinetic stabiliser
Ring1, misery + perseverance + pilfering
Ring2, mountain + pilfering + speed
Lite, nightwalker + piercing + survivor
Tool digger, bloodhexed + brutal + quickening
"of war-making" ego on the handgear is critical, and try very hard to get another "of war-making", or "of the nighthunter", or "of the iron hand" ego, and try to get rid of those useless procs as hard as possible.

Plain attack DPT: about 22k against dummy without defense (about 90% are physical); about 7.5k against dummy with 250 armor, 90% resist all and 200 flat damage reduction (all physical), or about 12k if the player also has 30 ITEM_ACID_CORRODE as melee project (almost physical); about 5k against dummy with 70% evasion (about 90% are physical).
0-turn burst attack (presented in order of 5% percentile, first quartile, median, second quartile, 95% percentile): Blink rune + Corrupting Strike
27.6k, 32.9k, 45.7k, 54.4k, 71.7k against dummy without defense (n = 3000, about 85% are physical)
6.7k, 8.1k, 13.9k, 16.5k, 24.7k against dummy with 250 armor, 90% resist all and 200 flat damage reduction (n = 3000, about 98% are physical)
or 8.0k, 12.3k, 18.7k, 24.6k, 35.2k (n=3000, about 97% are physical) if the player also has 30 ITEM_ACID_CORRODE as melee project
1.5k, 4.7k, 10.0k, 15.4k, 25.1k against dummy with 70% evasion (n = 3000, about 80% are physical)

Then comes the "blight" Reaver.
This build uses diseases a lot and maxes all talents in Plague tree. Aside from the diseases here, Reaver also has Worm Rot, and can also find diseases from item procs and the viral injector tinker. If the enemy is melee type and hasn't get into range so far you can take your time to throw Epidemic and Worm Rot to it and then get range and trigger Virulent Disease and other proc diseases. Use Pitiless to extend disease duration. Use Cyst Burst to spread the disease or if you think that Catalepsy cannot kill it, or just use Catalepsy to kill it directly.
Your plain attack is using Channel Staff (and perhaps Soul Rot, but after the Arcane Might, the Channel Staff damage may actually be higher) and Cyst Burst. In endgame, the Cyst Burst damage should be higher than Channel Staff if the target has more than 3 diseases. The damage of Epidemic isn't that great and you can also proc it by weapon hit. Cyst Burst also has very short CD. Channel Staff also enables you to deal damage at range constantly if you prefer that.
Note that Reaver has no blight penetration on its own, and there's also no ego specially providing blight penetration. However, a 70% blight penetration is added to the build. A 30 ITEM_BLIGHT_DISEASE melee project is also added to the build.

Race: Doomelf, to exploit disease, and also a good defensive race generally
Stat: max Strength, Dexterity and Magic, the rest into Cunning
Prodigies: Adept + Arcane Might

Class Talents:
Sanguisuge 1/1/1/1
Vim 1/1 (4 in Soul Rot floating)
Bone 1/4/1/4
Plague 5/5/5/5
Scourge 1/2/1/1
Reaving Combat 5/5/5/1
Rot 5/4/2/1

General Talents:
Combat training 1/1/2/2/5/0 (or if you're sure that you'll use Life Drinker, get Dagger Mastery instead)
Staff Combat 5/5/1/1 (3 in Blunt Thrust floating)
Torment:1/1/1/1
Hexes:1/1/1
Vile life:2/1/1/1
Doomelf:1/5/1/4
Physics 1/1/1
Chemistry 2/2/1

Equipment:
Mainhand staff, bloodlich + cruel + magewarrior + mana coil
Offhand mace, crippling + hateful + plague + viral injector
Body robe, blight + power + tormentor + ablative armor
Head helm, blood + fortune + strength + air recycler
Amulet, serend + soulsear + murder
Cloak, envelopping + conjuring + backstabbing + ground stripping
Hand Dakhtun's Gauntlet + voratun grip
Belt, life + magery + reinforced + alchemist's helper
Feet, spellbinding + undeterred + blightbringer + kinetic stabiliser
Ring1, blight + painweaver + pilfering
Ring2, blight + pilfering + speed
Lite, nightwalker + piercing + survivor + white light emitter
Tool digger, brutal + crystal + quickening
"Plaguebringer's" ego on the weapon is critical. 100% spell critical chance is a must.
Black Robe can be good if you really can't find a good robe. Life Drinker is interesting but not that good. If you use any of these, take off the mana coil from the staff.

Plain attack DPT: about 19.4k against dummy without defense (about 88% are blight); about 7.5k against dummy with 250 armor, 90% resist all and 200 flat damage reduction (about 96% are blight), or about 9.4k if the player also has 30 ITEM_ACID_CORRODE as melee project (about 97% are blight); about 11.5k against dummy with 70% evasion (about 87% are blight).
0-turn Burst attack: (presented in order of 5% percentile, first quartile, median, second quartile, 95% percentile): Blink rune + Pitiless + Catalepsy
36.7k, 38.3k, 39.7k, 42.4k, 67.7k against dummy without defense (n = 3000, about 93% are blight)
16.3k, 17.0k, 17.7k, 19.4k, 36.1k against dummy with 250 armor, 90% resist all and 200 flat damage reduction (n = 3000, 98% are blight)
or 16.7k, 18.0k, 19.6k, 21.5k, 37.7k (n=3000, about 99% are blight) if the player also has 30 ITEM_ACID_CORRODE as melee project
Against the dummy with 70% evasion, the attack is changed to Channel Staff + Pitiless + Catalepsy, and assuming the enemy is not adjacent the damage is 22.4k, 22.6k, 23.0k, 24.4k, 25.5k (n = 3000, about 96% are blight)

Summary:
The "physical" Reaver has superior damage output against enemies with low defense. Against enemies with very high flat damage reduction, the "physical" Reaver also seems to win in longer combat. Note that the statistical test (using Wilcoxon test) doesn't suggest a significant difference in the burst damage against enemies with low defense. It also has minimal dependency on diseases in late game so it can go well with any races, and doesn't need to worry about the spellpower check and orcs' racial talent. Using minimal talents also makes this build not very vulnerable to silence. It should also have more freedom to choose the equipments, since multiple egos offer physical damage penetration, and it doesn't really care about spell critical chance. Although to exploit Flexible Combat it needs a really good pair of handgears. Plus this is without using Iron Grip and Lacerating Strikes, which all favors a build focusing on physical damage.
On the other hand, the "blighted" Reaver doesn't depend on weapon attacks so much so it performs far better against enemies with high chance to ignore melee weapon attacks or very high armor. Plus although the damage seems lower, there is actually a bias involved. For random powers, blight damage bonus is actually easier to find than physical damage bonus, but on egos blight is one of the damage type rarest to be bonused for. Plus timed use of Cyst Burst may also auguments the damage a lot. However it may struggle against enemies with high spell save and/or disease immunity. Learning Curse of Defenseless from escorts is recommended. Blight penetration is also hard to get. Plus, the require to wield both a staff and a weapon, as well as to use pitiless, makes this build extremely tight on general points, but using staff also gives the class another stun. With Defensive Posture, far higher Ruin number, 100% crit Blood Splash, and Adept enhancing Life Tap and Infestation, its defense should be better than the "physical" Reaver. Focusing on blight damage makes Overkill more useful, but there also exists horrors with blight affinity.
I haven't really played Reaver in any version. I guess the "blight" Reaver would have an easier life in midgame?

So together, if you have good luck, with proc chance, escorts and ego rerolling, you'd probably prefer the "physical" Reaver. If you really hate enemies evading your attacks, or if you want a unique play style, you should try the "blight" Reaver.

[cksiu]

This is very interesting. A couple of years ago, I tried the physical Reaver build many times and failed to get it going. The only win I could get was with a "blight" Reaver. I couldn't even hit level 25 with physical Reaver. There's no range, you have no spellpower, bonegrab doesn't hit. Also generics have no where to go.

Staff combat solves all of these problems. Indeed I checked the vault for all the recent wins (say between 1.6.0 and now). Physical and Blight styles are like 50/50 (judging by investment into cyst burst and other talents), but the majority of the physical Reavers also invested into staff combat and used staves.

[helminthauge]

I made a grave mistake to assume that the burst damage belonged to a normal distribution, but the result of Shapiro-Wilk test said no.
If you don't understand why this is important, the reason is that if a data sample doesn't belong to a normal distribution, the mean value (and variance value) can be completely meaningless. Let's take an extreme example. There is an A attack dealing 0 damage in 99% cases, but 1000 damage in 1% cases, and a B attack always dealing 5 damage. Of course the average damage of A attack is higher but it makes absolute no sense to conclude that A deals more damage than B in most cases. Actually its much safer to conclude that A deals less damage than B in most cases.
I have edited the main post to include the raw data and present the burst damage by percentiles, which are more meaningful for a non-normal distribution.

[helminthauge]

According to the Corruption Guide and some real experience of my friendes, Domination Hex is very powerful, so try to get some generic points into that.