Hello, wonderful people!
There’s a common opinion that Warborn builds outperform Markovian nowadays.
Today’s build is made to prove that Markovian deserves some love and attention even in AoM era.
Besides, I wished to make something special for my first S&B character ever. I bet no one expected this punch from good old Markovian.
It’s a classic S&B Witchblade using Cadence and Blitz as the main sources of damage.
Clears Crucible in 12 minutes. Surprising performance for shield-wielding character.
Core of the build
Main damage skills of this build are Cadence and Blitz.
Core items for this build are Beronath, Reforged and Markovian’s Bastion set.
This build stacks many sources of flat physical, elemental and chaos damage to overcome low offensive potential of one-handed weapon. All these damage types are converted to physical using Beronath, Reforged. As a side effect this build has huge load of internal trauma, so you can expect ~120k trauma ticks in Crucible.
Build’s defenses include big HP pool (~21k in Crucible), huge armor, shield, Overguard, Stone Form, Bloodthirster and Will of Menhir.
Key explanations
Mythical Mark of the Dreadblade is better damage-wise than Markovian’s medal or Blood Sigil of Chthon. I think +2 to Cadence makes that difference.
Haunted Steel is needed because we don’t have Ghoul (again). Damage loss from converting 10% physical damage to Vitality is ~400 of ~13k = 2-3%, but increase in survivability is much more. Rotating Bloodthirster, Overguard and Stone Form makes this build a true tank.
Targo’s Hammer deals good amount of damage, don’t underestimate it.
Gameplay
Aggressive melee combat.
It’s been a while since I facerolled Anasteria and Theodin with such comfort. Aleks meteors are not dangerous too, but keep an eye for them.
Almost all combinations of nemeses are facerolled. Low damage output from 1H weapon and low ADCtH, however, make sick combos of nemeses hard to outheal from. If you encounter double Reapers, kite a bit and watch your HP.
Max crit landed in Crucible (solo, Crucible buffs, no banners)
Stats pane (Deadly Momentum, Overguard up)
Video
ADRENALINE (Fevered Rage)
Crucible: default setup
A Call to Arms (no buffs, 1 banner)
Crucible: mad_lee’s spec
Crucible: with Blind Fury (for reference)
Lokarr
Mad Queen
* It is named Carrot because “Markovian” sounds close to “Carrot” when you say it in ukrainian or russian.
I prefer Seal of Blades but Haunted Steel is better. I made some calculations: damage loss is ~2-3%. After all, huge chunk of flat phys comes from conversions not affected by Haunted Steel.
No Warborn in my swamp
Jokes aside, Warborn Gavel gives the same weapon damage in result (near 21k) but have lower attack speed and no crit damage.
However, Warborn Gavel can be used to hardcap Cadence. Matter of taste.
Fortunately, I tested it
Really, 5% ADCtH is not enough in Crucible. Double reapers shred through your defenses even with that armor. Bloodthirster is needed
Nope, Occultist is better in any case. Phys RR, attack speed from Solael’s Witchflame, poison resistance, physical resistance - there’s no way Warder can outperform the Witchblade
Try to straightly replace Beronath with Deathdealer’s Sidearm and see what happens next
DK is the one that can currently hold a candle to WH. And you can do it with 3-6% lifesteal. A story for another time maybe…Tested WH, DK, Tact, Commando to have arrived at this conclusion
No doubts, necro is good too.
“And you can do it with 3-6% lifesteal.”
DK - maybe, due to MoT. WB - surely no. I cleared gladiator with 5% lifesteal but it was unsafe and edgy, I can’t call it tank.
I don’t understand why you are not using augments that give flat elemental + OA and not using Chains of Oleron in chest and using Bloodied Crystal (???) in ring slot. Your setup reminded me that I have a physical caster Defiler with a pretty devotion route.
And sure enough, I tried tweaking your setup so you get more stats and can use Assassin’s mark on Cadence so it is procced instantly:
I wonder how this’ll fare in terms of cleartime. Blind fury is a huge addition when it comes to dps, more so than Vire. This looks like one of the earlier prototypes of reasonably powerful tanks (aka fluff tactician) back when the Chinese didn’t grace us with DA yet.
Well, it’s up to the testing. On my physical caster shield defiler Empyrion and Vire are actually doing a lot of damage and healing. OP could also soft cap fighting form for better aoe. And to me proccing RR devo instantly was always higher damage than proccing anything else. But again, let’s see if Veteragna has time to test it
I use augments with flat cold, aether resistance and armor. They help on Anasteria and Theodin.
Bloodied crystal softcaps bleed resistance and provides some armor. 20% bleed res comes from temporary Bloodthirster.
but hey, warborn mace should be faster.
