Props

First and foremost, I need to give credit where its due. The inspiration for this build is entirely Kayemzee, a badass Defiler. You can see the video that really made me want to try this build here. I played Primeval during alpha but wanted a bit more raw survivability and CC instead of escapes. This will also be a work-in-progress until I get to try it out further.

Damage

The greater chunk of your damage will come from Witchcraft. This tree will also provide a lot of your crowd control but let's go over your damage abilities.
Basic attack/mobile filler: Any time you want to deal damage and your primary damage dealers are on cooldown.
Mud hand - Inflicts damage and snare which combos with for extra damage.
The stun from your Shield Slam can also combo well with for additional damage.
Casting mud hand after the afflicted a target with will heal you for the damage dealt.
and provide mild damage and control with a pushback and a snare on respectable cooldowns. Our single Archery cooldown offers a unique form of control and additional magic damage.

Crowd-Control

Witchcraft offers massive amounts of CC. In other builds I used shadowplay but I'm going to experiment with a control/tank based playstyle for beta. The Cooldown-based abilities and both have their effectiveness increased by and . These serve as complete loss of control for enemy characters and allow you to position yourself appropriately or focus fire primary targets. summons a prison of bone to contain enemies. The bones can be destroyed but serve as a temporary form of control all the same. Focal concussion is a short range stun that also happens to remove all buffs. Between these and the stuns and snares of your damage abilities, you should be able to put distance between you and your target. When you are unable to control your target(s) any longer, your utilities will come in play.

Utilities

The Defense skillset brings a wide array of utilities to the table with buffs that allow you to stay in the battle longer. is a standard health buff. It also allows you to gain a new resource that can be spent in the form of a heal with . and are survival cooldowns that make you the fat, unkillable Dark Archon with increased block rate and complete immunity to damage. Since you're a ranged class with no cooldown on , you can continuously snare enemies to keep them within range of your attacks while using these two movement-hindering abilities. Many of your other selections provide static damage mitigation.

Thoughts

Your general goal is to stay at range, using your damage cooldowns to maximize combo damage. Use your control abilities to gain and keep distance between you and your targets. Your defense cooldowns are there when you are out of escapes and expect to be taking some damage. This is all subject to change and still a very experimental build that may or may turn out as well as I hope it will. This is also meant to be a PvP-only build. I will be using this build to level to 50. The mana efficiency is much better for this linked build and still offers a lot of the same playstyles.

Author

You can see this build and more live in action on my twitch, found here. Also be sure to follow my twitter found here to find out when I go live.