Before I start: This is a work in (slow, since I don’t have a lot of time to play games) progress. This hasn’t been tested with a level 100 character yet.
A few weeks ago, I read in an old reddit thread about default attacks cancelling spell animations and vice versa. To examine this behaviour ingame, I started a session with a level ~20 battlemage and reskilled him into Callidor’s Tempest and Cadence. I spent some time at the training dummy in devil’s crossing, where I figured, that there is indeed some animation cancellation happening. You won’t effectively get “twice as many” attacks, but alternating Callidor’s and Cadence seemed to reduce attack frequency to somewhere between 0.65x and 0.75x of their original values. I thought, I should try to build a character around this.
Two character builds immediately came to mind:
- S&B Battlemage tank with transmuted Cadence + Callidor’s Tempest with Aether -> Elemental conversion
- Off-hand Spellbinder with Fleshwarped Strikes + Callidor’s Tempest with Fire -> Aether conversion
Battlemage
This character, let’s call him “Panzer”, is currently at level 56.
[Grimtools]This is his current setup.
[Grimtools]This is what I’m planning to do with him.
As you can see, I haven’t given much thought to the equipment of the battlemage. Currently A3 Elite, this character has a modest kill speed and is completely indestructable. Having a shield and 37% total damage absorbtion plus Overguard on demand makes triggering Arcane Will a very rare event.
Spellbinder
My spellbinder, let’s call her “Elizabaeth”, is currently at level 87. She is a re-skilled Aether PRM build, where I simply reused the old equipment, so this is very far from optimal, too.
[Grimtools]She currently looks like this.
[Grimtools]And this is a vague idea of where it is going.
Elizabaeth is currently in A3 Ultimate and is crushing everything to pieces so far. I have to take a lot of care while playing, though since she is quite squishy. Interestingly, this character is either at full health (Which, at ~9000 is quite low, actually) or dead, since she has a lot of ADctH (which applies to Callidor’s weapon damage, too) and Siphon Souls. For bosses, Devastation helps, which makes her take down bosses pretty fast, too.
Play Style
Both characters are fairly similar to play: Target the largest enemy in sight and mash DWA and Callidor hotkeys. Since I like my mouse and my fingers, I made this more comfortable by writing a small AutoHotkey script:
´::
While GetKeyState("´")
{
Send, c
Sleep, 50
Send, v
Sleep, 50
}
return
Explanation: This script, when activated, replaces the button with "Alternate between C and V while this button is pressed. Make 50ms pause after each character sent". Then I map thekey to a mouse button, and I don’t have to mash the buttons any longer, as long as I map DWA and Callidor’s to C and V, respectively.
In conclusion, these characters are super fun to play. It feels much faster than my DW blademaster and I like the Callidor animation anyways.
For Panzer, I am pretty sure I won’t have any problems bringing him through Ultimate or even Gladiator Crucible. He won’t ever be a super fast character, but the amount of tankiness this character possesses is simply amazing. Blitz-ing through the enemies and watching trash maps explode and pushed away is awesome. Absolutely facerolling through everything, though bosses could be faster.
Elizabaeth on the other hand has quite a decent killspeed, even with bosses. Unfortunately, she is super squishy though and I have to dodge missiles and AOE all the time. I definitely need to see, how I can make her more defensive. Elizabaeth is definitely harder to play than Panzer, though I think she is more fun, too. I’m thinking about giving her Chaos Strike via Riftstone, since initiating fights feels a little sluggish, but her active skills are more fun to play and she is constantly joined by skeletons doing a lot of aether damage as well and taking aggro at times.
I’m interested in comments, especially regarding Elizabaeth (e.g. itemization advice). I would love her to be able to beat Crucible, since at the moment, I can’t see that happen. Unfortunately, I don’t even have all of the items of the grimtools build, so I have to see, what I can do with here in the long run.
At the moment, she is the most fun to play character I have.