Summary
- Unique Interaction: Saitha’s Spear features a unique modifier that allows “Aggravating” a bleed to also “Aggravate” all ignites on the target, effectively doubling ignite damage.
- Aggravate Mechanics: Aggravating provides the benefit of “moving” damage without requiring the target to be in motion. This now extends to both bleeds and ignites when using this weapon.
- Vaal Cultivation: High-end scaling is achieved by using Vaal Cultivation orbs on corrupted spears to obtain a 300–400% increased physical damage modifier.
- Runeforging: The new Runeforging bench allows upgrading the base type of low-level unique weapons, significantly increasing base damage and scaling potential.
- Synergy with Blistering Bond: The updated Blistering Bond ring now allows bleed to deal fire damage and allows fire damage to contribute to bleed magnitude, enabling a purely fire-based ailment build.
- Build Progression: This is a high-investment, endgame-focused strategy, not recommended for league starters due to the scarcity of required currency and the need for specific unique item setups.
Understanding the Mechanics
- Saitha’s Spear Core Modifier: The weapon’s ability to aggravate ignites is exclusive to this item. Baseline ignite deals 20% of the hit’s fire damage per second for 4 seconds; an aggravated ignite doubles this to 40% per second for the same duration.
- Aggravate Mechanics: While the mechanic of taking extra bleed damage while moving is being removed for player characters in 0.5, it remains active for monsters. Aggravating a debuff forces the “moving” damage multiplier even if the target stands still.
Optimizing the Weapon
- Vaal Cultivation Strategy: To optimize the spear:
- Corrupt the weapon.
- Use a Vaal Cultivation orb to replace a less desirable modifier (e.g., flat fire damage or bleed chance) with the 300–400% increased physical damage modifier.
- Retain the unique “Aggravate” modifier and the flat physical damage modifier, as both are essential for the build’s scaling.
- Runeforging: Once the unique Verisium Runeforging is unlocked in Act 3, players can upgrade the base type of the spear to improve its damage significantly, which synergizes multiplicatively with the increased physical damage modifier.
Scaling Fire Ailments
- Blistering Bond Interaction: The updated Blistering Bond ring makes bleed damage fire-based and allows fire damage to contribute to the bleed’s magnitude.
- Explosive Spear: This skill is ideal for this setup, as it converts all physical damage to fire, allowing for a single high-damage hit that inflicts both ignite and bleed.
- Passive Tree Scaling: Because all damage is converted to fire, players can scale both ailments simultaneously using fire-specific nodes:
- Melting Flames: Provides increased fire damage based on the duration a target has been ignited.
- Fire Starter: Reduces enemy fire resistance when ignited, benefiting both bleed and ignite damage.
Endgame Considerations
- Critical Strike Scaling: As a 6% base crit weapon, scaling is required for late-game effectiveness:
- Anoint the “Struck Through” passive node to increase critical strike chance.
- Utilize “Critical Weakness” mechanics to apply flat critical strike bonuses.
- Consider Garokhns Resolve in the extreme endgame, which caps critical strike chance at 50% but provides a powerful mechanic where successful crits roll twice, applying the damage bonus twice if both succeed.
- Availability: Due to changes in the league mechanics, obtaining Vaal Cultivation orbs will be more difficult in the 0.5 patch. Players should treat this as a secondary or tertiary build rather than a starter.
Key References