Rathma Instinct Leveling Guide

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RATHMA INSTINCT - LEVELING GUIDE
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This guide is a leveling guide to the Rathma Instinct builds. Please use the following links if you want to check out the final versions of the builds:

Blood Surge
Build: https://d4builds.gg/builds/cc78f504-a39a-4d8a-ad4b-36f049e605e7/
Explanations: https://pastebin.com/J05taeGj

Blood Lance
Build: https://d4builds.gg/builds/461847f0-b8f8-4afa-aaa4-209e94768a41/
Explanations: https://pastebin.com/6LxgVmhp

Changelog: https://pastebin.com/xtgvrhMm

The terms "Rathma Instinct" and "Cooldown Engine" will be used in this guide. You can find their definition at the begining of both final builds explanations.


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Summary
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- Important points about attack speed
- Playstyle and gear to use
- Skills to unlock point after point
- Paragon board
- Legendary aspects to use during leveling
- Gear affixes to look for during leveling
- Malignant hearts (season 1)


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Important points about attack speed
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This build heavily relies on attack speed. It's its attack speed that allows it to get back essence fast (from 0 to full in less than 2 seconds of basic attack in the final builds), its attack speed that makes it trigger overpower more often in a given time window etc.

With such a high speed, there are two things that may be obvious but are important to keep in mind:

- You can hold a skill button to chain cast it, no matter if it's on a mouse, a keyboard or a controller. This way, you're guaranteed to cast your skills at your full speed.

- The number of attacks is not limited by the animation speed of the skill used. It means that when you're at your max speed and you see 1 Hemorrhage full animation, no matter how fast the animation was, it's possible that you actually hit twice or more during this time.


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Playstyle and gear to use
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This build is all about speed and overpower triggers. For this reason we should mandatorily use a wand or a dagger, since they are the fastest weapons and every speed buffs we'll get will be based on your weapon speed. Wands are best because they offer inherent lucky hit chance increase, while daggers provide a damage bonus that does not apply to overpower damage.
For the off hand, shields are the best: focuses can't have life affixes and we want that, while we don't care that much for their inherent cooldown reduction and even less for the attack power they provide since its part in overpower damage is negligible. More defense, block chances and life affixes are a way better deal.

On the matter of playstyle there are two "stages": before and after Rathma's Vigor.

- Until we get Rathma's Vigor, we will use your skellies to help us out with damage output, all the while using Blood Surge as our core skill and Hemorrhage to get our essence back. Every 6th cast of Blood Surge will trigger an overpower and wipe an entire screen of enemies. At this stage, it's not that important, but if we happen to leave a group of enemies while being at our 5th cast of Blood Surge, it may be worth it to run around and gather a lot of enemies before pressing the button again and wipe them all in one go.
- Once we get Rathma's Vigor, we will have a guaranteed overpower trigger every 12 seconds. For this reason, we can focus most of the time on the "gathering a ton of enemies" -> "make them go boom" method. Usually it means our dungeon runs will be a series of 2 "booms", the first being our Rathma's Vigor proc and the second triggered by a Blood Surge spam.

For bosses it's even more simple: spam Blood Surge, get essence back with Hemorrhage, repeat. The fights may be a bit longer than usual when we get closer to lvl 50 before getting into WT3, but a skill switch explained bellow will make it all go smoothly in the capstone dungeon and onward.


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Skills to unlock point after point
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-- Until further notice, use Skirmishers then Reapers with the corpse upgrade, and Shadow mages then Cold mages with the essence upgrade when you can. Sacrifice Bone Golem as soon as you get it for more attack speed. --

1 Hemorrhage
2 Enhanced Hemorrhage
-> Hemorrhage will be the basic attack up to lvl 100. It gives a lot of essence, spawn blood orbs that keeps you healthy (and can give fortify when you unlock the paragon board later on). Finally, it's a blood skill so it benefits from every damage bonuses given to those.

3 Blood Surge
4 Enhanced Blood Surge
5 Paranormal Blood Surge
6 Acolyte Hemorrhage
-> Blood Surge is the core skill of the build. We take the overpower enhancement to be our main source of damage. To unlock the next skill node, we also grab acolyte Hemorrhage to improve its speed.

7 Blood Mist
8 Unliving Energy
9 Imperfectly Balanced
10 Imperfectly Balanced lvl 2
11 Imperfectly Balanced lvl 3
-> We get Blood Mist to be get ourselves out of dire situations (not a lot in WT1) then pump Imperfectly Balanced to the max as it is the first damage buff that applies on overpower damage.

12 Iron Maiden
13 Enhanced Iron Maiden
14 Abhorrent Iron Maiden
15 Death Embrace
16 Death Reach
17 Corpse Tendrils
18 Enhanced Corpse Tendrils
19 Blighted Corpse Tendrils
-> Iron Maiden is here to keep us Healthy and help with essence since Blood Surge is very expensive. Corpse Tendrils won't be used as much during leveling (since we won't have Grasping Veins yet) but it is still nice to have just in case + it can spawn Blood orbs

20 Gruesome Mending
21 Coalesced Blood
22 Coalesced Blood lvl 2
23 Coalesced Blood lvl 3
24 Tides of Blood
25 Tides of Blood lvl 2
26 Tides of blood lvl 3
27 Inspiring Leader
28 Inspiring Leader lvl 2
29 Inspiring Leader lvl 3
30 Bone Prison
31 Enhanced Bone Prison
32 Dreadful Bone Prison
33 Remove Death's Reach and add Drain Vitality + Drain Vitality lvl 2
34 Rathma's Vigor
-> A Big chuck of passive damage buffs, the more important being Tides of Blood and Inspiring Leader. Then we reach the Capstone passive, giving us a guaranteed overpower every 12 seconds. From this moment on, we sacrifice the skirmishers to get more crit chance and the bone mages to get a big boost to our overpower damage. Note that the Rathma's Vigor buff can be used in combination with Blood Mist for a lot of damage since every tick will overpower. We also put some points in Bone Prison and Drain Vitality to get some fortify generation, making our Overpower damage more potent. Death's Reach not applying to overpower damage since patch 1.1, we remove it and go for one more Drain Vitality level.

35 Stand Alone
36 Memento Mori
37 Memento Mori lvl 2
38 Memento Mori lvl 3
39 Stand Alone lvl 2
40 Stand Alone lvl 3
41 Amplify Damage
42 Amplify Damage lvl 2
43 Amplify Damage lvl 3
-> Another round of big damage/defensive buffs. Do not forget to always apply Iron Maiden to everything: it will give essence back, will give life back on enemies death and will now make enemies take more damage from us.

-> From here until you want to go and try the Cathedral to access WT3, just put points into Blood Surge and Hemorrhage: everything else will only be utility that  you will only need once you try to tackle harder content. During the leveling in WT1, giving more punch to our non-overpowered cast will be way more impactful that reducing cooldowns of unused skills or getting protection from Bone Storm.

Once you want to try the Cathedral and onward, you should follow those steps:
- Refund the points you put into Hemorrhage and Blood Surge except one each: there will be no need for more than one point in Hemorrhage and Blood Surge since overpower damage will be the main damage source and it doesn't care about the skill's level nor its base power
- Use the following guideline for your skill points

44 Enhanced Blood Mist
45 Corpse Tendrils lvl 2
46 Corpse Tendrils lvl 3
47 Corpse Tendril lvl 4
48 Corpse Tendrils lvl 5
-> We reduce the cooldown of Blood Mist for each overpower trigger we do, and reduce the cooldown of Corpse Tendrils as much as we can to be able to use it as often as possible. Note that these Corpse Tendrils points can be skipped and the points allocated to Death's Embrace/Drain Vitality if you're using the Sacrilegious Malignant Heart that will auto trigger corpse tendrils every 4 seconds.

49 Blood Mist lvl 2
Renown 1 Blood Mist lvl 3
Renown 2 Blood Mist lvl 4
Renown 3 Blood Mist lvl 5
Renown 4 Bone Storm
Renown 5 Prime Bone Storm
Renown 6 Supreme Bone Storm
-> Further Blood Mist cooldown decrease + picking up Bone Storm for protection. Note that Reap can replace Bone Storm to be able to generate a corpse on demand with Acolyte's Reap.

Renown 7 Ghastly Blood Mist
Renown 8 Corpse Explosion
Renown 9 Enhanced Corpse Explosion
Renown 10 Blighted Corpse Explosion
-> Finally, this part will allow to generate the Cooldown Engine (see top of this guide).


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Paragon Board
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**Glyphs**
- Blood-Drinker: used at the perfect spot in Blood Begets Blood, it boosts the overpower damage, blood orbs healing and willpower nodes around it. As soon as its bonus is unlocked, blood orbs will provide fortify and the build can switch from Initiate's Hemorage to Acolyte's Hemorage for even more speed. You should use it in the starting board until you've unlocked its spot in Blood Begets Blood
- Dominate: increases overpower damage. It should be used in the Scent of Death board for maximum efficiency, but you should use it as soon as you can (after Blood-Drinker) since it's that glyph that will give you the bigger damage boost.
- Amplify: used in the starting board. One of the rare effects increasing OP damage, so we take it.
- Control: used in Bloodbath. With Corpse Tendrils and the Decrepit Aura the additional bonus from this glyph will be in effect almost all the time.
- Territorial/Essence: used in the Bone Graft board. Your choice whether you prefer more defense with Territorial or more offense with Essence.

**Pathing**
- First put the blood drinker glyph in the starting board. As soon as possible, get the required intelligence to get its additional bonus
- Once you unlock your first additional board, choose Bloodbath and head straight to the legendary node.
- Next head right and unlock the Control glyph, make a detour up to get some maximum life % nodes, and then unlock the Blood Begets Blood board. In it, head towards its glyph socket and some overpower damage % nodes. Put the Dominate glyph in here while you're gathering enough intelligence to get the Blood-Drinker glyph additional bonus at this position. Once you do, put the Blood Drinker glyph here and switch the Dominate glyph to the first board.
- Head up to get some maximum life % nodes and up again to unlock the Bone Graft board but don't unlock anything there yet: you just need to unlock it first so its bonuses requirements will be easier to atteign and get you +4% life. On the Blood Begets Blood board, head down and on the right to unlock more overpower damage % nodes, then go all the way down and attach the Scent of Death board.
- Here go down to the legendary node, grabing some maximum life % on the way, then head down toward the glyph socket. Now you can move dominate at its rightful place in the Scent of Death board and get all the willpower nodes it deserves here + the armor nodes. Put the Amplify glyph on the first board, its final position.
- Now you can go back on the Bone Graft board. Get the maximum life % nodes on the left, and unlock the glyph on the right for Territorial/Essence.
- Once its done, go on the right of the Blood Begets Blood board and there, unlock Wither and its last maximum life % nodes.

**Glyphs leveling order**
First get to level 15 in this order: Blood-Drinker, Dominate, Amplify, Control, Territorial/Essence
Then get to level 21 in this order: Dominate, Blood-Drinker, Amplify, Control, Territorial/Essence

To know how your final paragon board should look like and get more information about the choices made, please refer to the final builds and explanations linked at the beginning of this guide.


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Legendary aspects to use while leveling
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First of, you should only put legendary aspect while leveling (so before getting to WT3 at least) on jewelry. If you keep the same amulet/rings for your whole leveling process it will not be as impactful as if you keep the same any other piece of gear, so it will be way less expensive to use jewelry to put the aspects you need for your leveling process on.
So during leveling, when you find a ring with an overpower or health affix, it is a good candidate for getting an aspect. For amulets, you'll probably want essence cost reduction and/or movement speed.

Two legendary aspects from the codex of power are very important for leveling: the Blood-bathed aspect and the Rapid aspect.

- The Blood-bathed aspect can be found by completing the Hoarfrost Demise in Fractured Peaks. This aspect makes our Blood Surge generate a second nova after the first one. The main interest of this aspect is that every hit generated by a Blood Surge cast will be overpowered. That means that we will get 3 overpowered hit for each overpowered cast of Blood Surge (the screen wide drain, the first nova, and the second nova).

- The Rapid aspect can be found by completing the Buried Halls dungeon in the dry steppes. It will increase our basic attack speed, hence increasing our essence generation. During the leveling process, it is the most needed thing and so this aspect should be imprinted on the amulet.

A third codex of power aspect will be used after reaching Rathma's Vigor and sacrificing all our minions: the Sacrificial aspect. It can be found by completing the Ruins of Eridu dungeon in Hawezar. It will increase the amount of stats our sacrifices give us, mostly increasing our overpower damage.

Later on, to get to the final forms of the Rathma Instinct build other aspects like the Rathma's Chosen aspect will be mandatory. For more information on those aspects, please refer to the Rathma Instinct builds explanations linked at the beginning of this guide.


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Gear affixes to look for during leveling
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Most of the time, you should look for +% overpower damage, +% life and speed affixes ("attack speed" and "basic skill attack speed") during leveling. Other interesting ones are crit chance, essence cost reduction and resource generation. Please note that crit damage affixes and other damage bonus affixes are not important since they do not apply on overpower damage.

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Malignant Hearts
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The Malignant Hearts you should use during your leveling process are those 3:
- Caged Heart of Determination (Devious, Utility): "Resource draining effects are 40-50% less effective. In addition, gain 3.0-8.0% increased Resource Generation" -> the resource generation is great is this resource hungry build.
- Caged Heart of the Sacrilegious (Vicious, Offensive): "Walking near a Corpse automatically activates an equipped Corpse Skill every second, dealing 40-30% reduced damage" -> combined with our use of Corpse Tendrils and not having Corpse Explosion on our skill bar (even when using the cooldown engine), this will automatically trigger corpse tendrils every 4 seconds more or less. This is great against packs, but it is also great against bosses: if you choose to use Reap instead of Bone Storm the same corpse will be used over and over staggering the boss at some point without having to do anything.
- Caged Heart of the Decrepit Aura (Brutal, Defensive): "When at least 5 enemies are near you, gain an aura that automatically curses surrounding enemies with Decrepify for 5-15 seconds" -> a free slow + damage reduction on surrounding enemies, even with no points invested in Decrepify.


This is the end of this guide. I hope you found it helpful and if you want to know how to go further on the Rathma Instinct build path, please check out the builds and explanations linked at the beginning of the guide :)