Sacred 2:Loco's la Chusa, Angel of Death

Loco's la Chusa, Angel of Death

By locolagarto

la Chusa

In the Hispanic folklore, Lechusa or la Chusa is a winged female figure resembling an owl that takes people's souls away when they are going to die.

If you whistle, and La Chusa returns the call, according to the myth death is near. You would know she was near from the sounds of her huge wings beating on a nearby window. If La Chusa could be captured and see the sun rise she would evolve into a beautiful young woman.

In some parts of Mexico it is said that they capture these birds with green vines and in the morning they transform back into women only to be burned at the stake. This is said only to happen in small remote towns.

[b]Planning[/b]

My main purpose for this build was to make a fun character that was dynamic enough to never get boring. So I made a list of things I thought the build would need. I knew I needed to have multiple aspects for both a dynamic play style as well as multiple buffs for defense. I tryed a Celestial/Rev Tech w/ magic staffs, I had taken AntiTrust's Queen of Blades to level 124 on Console and I had already taken a Rev/Exalted (Dobri's BFG) to level 155 with my Canon build. So I got to thinking about all the CAs that I really liked about the Seraphim. Once I had a short list of Combat Arts that would satisfy my lust for adventure I made a list of criteria I wanted to accomplish.

1. It had to be a fast starter, so a Melee dual wield build would be good. 2. It had to be able to level sufficiently at higher levels(+125) so Area of Effect seemed a must. 3. It needed to be very heavy on defense ( Or even approach Demi-God, As my Canon has). So buffs with good defensive bonuses was important. 4. It had to be able to take bosses solo, so some form of LL% either by weapon or Armor Sets.

So with my criteria in mind, I set out to build The Angel of Death, la Chusa. This build was tested in SP with a modified balance file to increase XP per kill by x10 to accelerate the testing (more on my testing experience later). I borrowed many parts from many builds(Most of them pre-Ice and Blood). This build will have access to a chest full of goodies, although, it could be run from an empty chest (as I did with my SP test char), it is not intended to have any bargaining. It will rely very heavily on buffs and will need [topic=15294][color="#FF0000"]Buff Suits[/color][/topic] to keep Regen levels low, while allowing maximum Damage and Defense potential from Buffs.

Skills

Level 2 Tactics_Lore Get to level and keep it there until 75. This will give us much needed weapon damage and mod points for Exalted Warrior aspect.

Level 3 Armor Lore We will need to get this up to level until 75. The regen penalty from armor will be maintained by keeping this at level until 75. As well as the damage absorption and ability to wear higher level items.

Level 5 Dual wield I plan on using dual Orc shocks at early levels. We will need to get this up to level until 75. This wil give us attack speed, base attack value, and at mastery chance for double hit. Once your attack speed is at 150, we can let this alone intil later. But master for the Double hit will be huge for boss fights.

Level 8 Exalted Warrior Focus This is our early level Aspect. Once the first 3 skills are at level the spare points will go here until we have enough mod points for 3 CAs. We can stop at 21 points until later levels.

Level 12 Concentration Only one point here for now until after level 75, then we can master this for 3 buffs if we want to. This will allow us to get our Warding Energy buff up and then Cleansing Brilliance later.

Level 18 Revered Technology Focus This is our utility aspect for Warding Energy Buff. 9 points for now to mod Warding Energy. Later we can take it to 31 points to mod flaring nova.

Level 25 Celestial Magic Focus This will be our late game aspect. Area of Effect damage will replace Pelting strike as our main leveling attacks. 21 points to mod Radiant Pillar and Cleansing Brilliance. The rest of the mod points will come from Celestial Magic lore.

Level 35 Damage Lore We will use this for additional Dot from Radiant Pillar and Flaring Nova and our Weapon attacks. And with Mastery it should be awesome.

Level 50 Warding Energy Lore Warding Energy will be our second buff and this Skill will greatly increase its effectiveness.

Level 65 Celestial Magic Lore This skill will really start to pump up the damage from Radiant Pillar. (Master this Fifth)

Attributes

Since we will not be taking constitution we will need to put all points into Vitality until level 50. Then we split it 50/50 Vitality and Willpower. willpower because it will greatly affect our warding energy buff (Spunky showed me this on my BFG build, Willpower increases the shield energy) and also give additional spell resistance to help against LL and casted spells.

Combat Arts

Battle Stance I just can't say enough about this buff. It does so much for the Seraphim. It multiplies attack and defense values, and when properly modified increases damage, chance to evade, chance to reflect Close Combat.

Aggression-this gives a really nice damage boost Flexibility- chance to evade Retaliation-chance to reflect Close Combat

Runes: Keep at 1 rune read for the first 75 levels and boost with Buff Suit

Pelting Strikes This will be our primary attack at low level and even later as a boss killer

Succession-chance for double hit Enfeeble-Lowers the enemies defense value Precision- chance for critical hits

Runes: 1 rune to start, after Rph is socketed and Regen penalties come down. keep at Focus Level. At level 75 I had 25 rune read. and a regen of 5.0s. with 1.0s Rph it was good to go with dual wield and double hits.

Dashing Alacrity This is a very helpful minibuff I use for boosts in run speed. With these modes you can pump it to 200 runes and it will last longer than the regen time.

Sprout- run speed Delay - lasts longer Impatients - shorter cooldown

Runes: You can take this to 200 runes as resources allow.

Warding Energy This will be our second Buff and a huge source of defense

Field force- increases the the base value of the shield Magic Mirror-Chance to reflect Combat Arts Block- fixed mitigation points

Runes: Keep at 1 rune read for the first 75 levels and boost with Buff Suit

Flaring Nova This is a nice weakening spell when you get mobbed or have a mob on your back. In combo with Radiant Pillar and with Damage Lore mastery it will do decent damage

Expand-larger Area of Effect Stun-temporary stun of ememies Flux- increased damage

Runes: I keep this at about 1.5s regen. that allows me to jump up and down all I want.

Cleansing Brilliance This will become our 3rd buff after Concentration Mastery. It is wonderful against undead and has some really nice weakening potential to reduce enemy attributes.

Blind-Lowers the enemies defense value Purify-Damages Undead Eagerness- Increased damage per second

Runes: Keep at 1 rune read for the first 75 levels and boost with Buff Suit

Radiant Pillar This will be our main mob killing Area of Effect in later levels.

Delude-lowers the enemies attack value Brightness-Increases the Area of Effect Ordeal- Deathblow deals double damage once the enemies HP fall below threshold.

Runes: I keep the regen at about 1.5s. that seems like a good stackable rate

Secondary Combat Arts

Hallowed Restoration

This will end up being a huge bonus to the build in sticky situation. it has a very large amount of healing available. I used it as a pre-buff before and during battles

Recuperation- Gives a HP regen live in battle. Prevention- for 10s give a huge anti-DOT boost Antidote- Shrugs off Detrimental effects

Armor

This is where it gets fun. I am a huge fan of the Celestial Magic Set Revelation of the Seraphim. It has 2 pieces with really nice all channel damage mitigation, and with 8 pieces worn you get a really nice LL% bonus. I will wear Endijans wings for the mitigation as well. And with the warding energy buff. that means 50% of all damage is wiped out before the your HP takes any damage. So easily we will have high damage reduction without even considering Armor or chance to reflect CC.

Socket-ables

Absorption warding energy = more % of shield damage before HP damage

Max shield energy = multiplies the base shield energy figure, more shield

Opponent level for deathblow = we want at least 50%. so when the enemies HP reaches 50% we deal double damage

+all skills = we don't need a lot, but some to help boost the skills we will leave at low level to help boost them until we can get them mastered

Anti-DOT= reduces the damage over time taken by the spiders in the jungle(a fav leveling area)

Regen Per Hit = instant regen of Combat Arts so we don't have to micro manage our regen times

Visibility Range = Woody posited that and increased visibility range increase the number of enemy that spawn. We are gonna be testing this theory.

+All Combat Arts. believe it or not we will be looking for ways to raise our regens. with Buff suits, Concentration Mastery and RpH. Adding +CA will be easy.

We will also need to make at least 2 Buff Suits (and 3 when we get Concentration mastered). We will be keeping our buffs at 1 Rune for at least the first 75 levels. this will keep Regens very low and allow us to add runes or +CAs to our attack to increase damage and effectiveness. See [topic=15294]HolosBrothers Guide to Buff Suits[/topic] for more details. Once suit for Battle Stance, and one for Warding energy.

Play style

In early levels we will run very much like a Queen of Blades, mostly melee. Using 2 weapons of our choosing. I wll be trying to use 1 handed Axes or hammers with poison socketed for there Poison Dot as well as they just sound so cool when the thud of impact hits your ears. Orc Shock's and Ragno's Slayers are nice, with the later having +CA skills, which is almost as good +All skills. Some other hafted weapons I like: Timora's have nice casting and +CA for later levels as well. And if I am lucky enough a pair of Kaldur's Legacy will make this toon a serious boss killer/legendary farmer. Thains Axe also has increased chance for secondary effect which will go with our Dot and damage lore nicely.

So just round up a mob and let loose with Pelting Strike. It has an animation of between 2 and 3 seconds, so keep Regen minus Rph in the 2-3 second range and it will swing those beautiful axes continuously

I keep Dashing on my 2 key and Pelting on 1. so I can always call up some run speed to the next target

In later levels

You will get bored of killing every monster 1 at a time. This is where the build morphs into a caster and Area of Effect killer. Radiant Pillar will serve as our mass effect damage CA. Round em up and let the light shine. The damage over time boosted by damage lore will make platinum and Niob lots of fun. Not to mention, the leveling speed will be awesome. Flaring Nova could also come online at any point as a softening up debuff of sorts with its mod for stun and the weakening affect of magic damage. Also by level 100 or so we want to have Concentrration mastered so we can run 3 buffs. Skellies heads are gonna be poppin' off

Bosses

Pelting Strike with dual axes and LL% from gear is gonna get the job done. With the reduction of enemy defense from Pelting and the fast damage per second of the dual axes she is gonna have no trouble taking bosses down. Combine that with the awesome defense from her buffs and she is gonna be a tank.

Skill Mastery

1. Tactics Lore @ level 75 2. Armor Lore @ level 75 3. Dual Wield @ level 75 4. Concentration @ level 87 5. Celestial Lore @ level 102 6. Warding Energy Lore @ level 117 7. Damage Lore @ level 132

Testing

This is the really fun part for me. I started with an empty chest, on Single Player in HC mode. I edited my balance file to speed the experience per kill. And then I headed into the wilds of Ancaria. I wanted to experiment in every region so that I had a good idea of how she would handle against every scenario.

Leveling from 1-15 went to fast to really be able to comment much, but I picked up and used whatever I could for gear and gems. I advanced through to Black oaks and killed the Boar, then on the the Gar in Orcish byway. I skipped Grunwald in the early levels and came back to it in my 70s. All in all I have to say that the Queen of Blades mode is an absolute blast. It is quite addictive actually...reminds me of some marathon Grinding in Gears of War 2.

I created buff suits from spare sets in the early levels and socketed Niob runes into them. one for Battle Stance and the other for Warding Energy. I had absolutely no trouble with regens. even with 25 runes read into Pelting strike at level 75 and a 5.2s regen. 0.8s of RpH was enough to have Pelting clocked and ready when I needed it.

I jumped to Gold at 60 and Plat at 100. Entered the jungle in Plat at 102 and really had a blast with all three buffs going. The Swamp was interesting with only 50% DOT. this is below the minimum I like for the swamp. Furian's recommended 75% is probably really accurate unless you like to live on the edge.

I discovered Hallowed Restoration for the first time in the swamp. Wow! What a life saver.( think of it as Golden-glade Touch with a duration of 10s).

Any way, I am at level 129 in Plat and having a blast. Celestial Lore mastered at 102 has made the Area of Effect start to come alive. I headed to the Blood Forest and was able to suffer the Daemonic Eyes just fine all the way to the Bodyguard.

Only issue is figuring out how to handle the Fens in the Dryad Isle. I have run the entire map up to the wastelands in Platinum and the only bugger is those Fens. I got a red flash once when 4-5 all hit me at once. Hallowed Restoration has turned into a real gem. with 9K healing and 1K hp regen per sec that stacks I just started spamming it until I was out of harms way, let my Shield regen then I was back at it with HR running full time. lots of damage taken, but it regened faster than a health pot would have. 3 more level till Damage lore is mastered. I can't wait to see the damage over time after mastery! :)

My plan is to take it to about 150 or so. But so far she is a blast and has not left me with any suprises.

Here is quick video of la Chusa taking out the Guardians.

Enjoy!

locolagarto

Originally published at DarkMattersfor review and discussion.

See Also

• Seraphim Guides
• Sacred 2 Player Contributed Guides