I’m quite new on the forums (well not really, but not very active), also I’m sorry because I’m not very good at introductions. I just wanted to share my experience with my infernal knight shieldbreaker build, I know some variations already exist with 1handed weaponery, so here’s my 2handed version of it.
Very good OA/DA rip, 250 OA with blackwater, 236 DA with judgment
Con :
Almost no resistance to stuns/petrification/freeze resist (depends on ascension to fix that)
Bleed/Aether resistance has low overcap
Only around 20-24% physical resist
Relies on a 5sec CD/cycle to deal most of its dmg
How does the build plays?
You engage your ennemies by throwing your blackwater cocktail first and charging a target with blazing charge. You pull ennemies inside your fire arena of doom with judgement. During your CD periods you alternate between blazing charge and blazing eruption for some surprising big hits and to CC weaker ennemies. Use termites when facing heroic targets or ennemies with high resistance to fire/chaos dmg.
You should be able to sustain most fights, the build is frankly quite tanky for what it is but you should also always keep ascension for heroic encounters or when you risk to be CCd.
The build can deal with SR 75+ and some Celestial Bosses too (Lokarr, Callagadra for sure), but the low physical resist can become problematic when facing multiple Nemesis, when blast shield and giant blood are down, don’t hesitate to hit and run.
Impressions :
I’m really in love with this build, it is fast and strong, versatile, it doesn’t feel boring because you are still vulnerable to high physical attacks and will die if you are not carefull enough.
Edit :After some extra testing, the increased resistance rip on Celestial Presence adds a lot, I was a bit scared because the burning portion was on the Guardian of Empyrion. But by focussing on the burning portion of each skills I was able to increase the Burning Dmg from 330K+ to 500K+ (when stars align). Thanks to USER_NAME_01 for his tips!
I hope you enjoy this build just as I enjoy it myself!
98 fire RR is actually low. Most enemies like to eat fire and swim in lava, so their resists are over 50 most of the time. Bosses usually have 67 or 97 fire resist, so it’s not that great. It would be insane if you managed to get over 150 fire RR.
This is fine, it’s neither much nor low. Most of my squishy builds sit at under 15% (casters usually at less than 10, quite often at 3 or 6).
Yes, I use Blazing Eruption the way I would use ABB on a Nightblade and I auto swing inbetween my cooldowns. With 150% attack speed and 2,4K% dmg it works surprisingly well. I also invested a couple of points into Smite for the extra burst and crowdcontrol it provides.
Been thinking about adding Celestial Presence too, that might work quite well for the build.
I’m conflicted about Resilience, I tried it with both blast shield at 12/12 and I just found having a single blast shield at 17/12 to be more effective.
I don’t see the point of Vire Might when I have Blazing Charge, especialy without the extra range from Volcanic Stride.
This build has melee capabilities, I wouldn’t give up on Smite when it has the capability to deal 60K+ dmg with critical strikes against regular ennemies and even more vs Undead/Chthonic.
I think you went a bit overboad with the OA and DA, changing Survivor to Osyr on trinkets is fine. Ravager on weapon is a bit too much, especially when you give up on 120% dmg bonus. I’ve switched to Solael’s and got some extra health while keeping the damage. I don’t like only having +5% bleeding resist, but with Ascension and Blast Shield it shouldn’t be to much of an issue.
I swiched back some stuff again, especially on the Termites, because completely maxed out they do provide 50% resistance rip + tons of burning dmg. Total fire resistance rip goes as follow : 50% elemental from Termites, 35% fire from Celestial Presence, 30% flat from Blackwater, 23% Fire from Eldricht Fire, 20% total elemental with Viper.
Have fun with 2.6k DA when you farm Aether crystals dude.
120% loss is 4.8% dmg loss and 4.4% dmg loss with Ascension up.
Don’t you know how Viper rr mechanic work btw? How did you get 158% fire resistance rip?
“20% reduced target’s elemental resistnaces” is not same as “-20%” in the calculation you know.
Why do you max Thermites so much, they are clunky and get miss. So huge waste of points. Better spend in celestial presences and Prescense of Virtue (for OA)
You have +70% crit damage, you really want more OA.
When you fight regular ennemies they melt down in seconds anyways, when you fight bosses your termites deal tons of extra burning Dmg while also shredding their resistance to pieces. Yes they are clunky, but between Celestial Presence, and Agonizing Flames, they bring the most to your DpS.
I can give up some OA and DA, because I have strong debuffs to OA and DA. Also burning dmg always procs the strongest tic, so I don’t requiere to crit as much as someone dealing direct dmg because the critical strike will overwrite the none critical strikes and those burning effects will last at least between 8 -12sec which leaves a large window to crit again.
For the resistance rip, I should have written up to 158% if you fight encounters like Callagadra since yes Viper doesn’t work like a flat debuff.
And while 60K direct dmg isn’t impressive for sure, it’s 60K on top of 500K burning while interupting some ennemies for only 2 skill points.
I use non-transmuted BWC since all the flat damage from the mace and set stacks. Especially fun on multi-phase bosses. They instantly melt if you stack mines and tons of BWC in-between phases.
Grimtools lack the 12% total physique bonus from helm, amulet and gloves so actual DA in-game is 3000+. I also had Magi at first but going Dying God net me around 150+ extra OA. Aetherfire is not too shabby of an alternative considering its 0 CD.
My wishlist for future patches would be more aether to fire conversion items, ideally on rings. Vanquisher set conversion conflicts with too many existing sets.
I agree with Malawilglenn here, build still looks like a very suboptimal version of what it could’ve been. Just ONE point in Resilience gives you another circuit breaker. Zero points in Presence of Virtue line? Wow, seems like a huge mistake, imo. That DA is indeed going to work versus Main Campaign content. In Shattered Realm or Crucible that Shieldbreaker is gonna be destroyed.
“The build can deal with SR 75+ and some Celestial Bosses too (Lokarr, Callagadra for sure), but the low physical resist can become problematic when facing multiple Nemesis, when blast shield and giant blood are down, don’t hesitate to hit and run.”
Did it ever occur to you all that some people don’t want the most overtuned builds out there, but just ones they can have fun with? Which is what Ambrecombe is doing.
Yes Mad Lee this builds gets wrecked if you are not carefull in SR75+ but it is doable, the build can kite quite well in the boss room and for the DA “issue”, you got shrines and tinctures of courage to temporary “fix” that.
But it doesn’t get wrecked because it has 2620 or 2800 (with the tincture) it could even have 3K+ and it would still die just as fast, do you know why? Because of the physical resistance and low armour, nothing else.
The reality is, you will only faceroll SR75+ if your build includes high sustain, high physical resist and high block mitigation, because ennemies have overtuned physical damage and if you don’t build around that, well, you make the game a lot lot harder for yourself.
Can my build be slightly improved (yes for sure) but telling me it’s VERY undertuned when I litteraly melt Lokarr in about 15sec, that’s a joke right?
I am not trying to make your build look bad or discredit you, dude. I am just speaking from experience. Casters or hybrids with DA that low are faulty by the definition. Armor and physical resistance is a completely different defensive mechanic and builds (casters mostly) that don’t have enough armor and physical resistance should have at least 2950 DA for comfortable gameplay.
That’s not true, a lot of casters that I make do pretty well in SR 75 without block or armor or high sustain.
Dude, you haven’t even taken Presence of Virture line. Somehow you found points to waste on Hellfire Mine to support insignificant Chaos portion of your damage, you have maxed out Thermite Mines, wasting 11 points for 11 more rr. You found extra point to softcap your WPS which is like 5% of your total damage output and Demon Fire.
Yet you haven’t found ~10 points for Presence of Virtue for free OA, hp and very important Health Reduction resistance? Not a single point into an amazing circuit breaker Resilience. Didn’t even take Vire’s Might for second teleport/gap closer.
I am sorry but your build is a very definition of “very undertuned” build. Those are all rookie’s mistakes. And it’s ok to make them. Don’t take it personally, when I was posting my first builds here two years ago I was making a lot of mistakes. I still do and I am never shy of asking for advice or listening to someone’s input.
The build works for him and he enjoys playing it that way. Don’t assume people want advice on their builds when they haven’t asked for it. Also don’t assume that because a build isn’t up to your elitist standard that they’re a rookie at the game.
If one posts builds on this forum, one should expect feedback, advice, critisism, praise. Otherwise one can keep his builds to himself.
That’s an overstatement. I am not imposing my “elitist standards”, if I were, I would recommend changing weapon/ring/devotions to what I would think was optimal here. Because this two-hander, for example, is not the best weapon for Infernal Knight Shieldbreaker, not even second best. But I am not even commenting that, it’s his choice, he wanted to play with it and it’s fine.
I am commenting on some general stuff like DA, crucial skills, stats, etc. that can make the build much more effecient and consistent within the set of items and devotions and playstyle that he chose based on his personal preference. And I will call spade a spade, that skill distribution is a sum of mistakes that rookies usually make. I am not saying it’s a bad thing. My first builds were much worse. I still sometimes make some obvious mistakes when I test my builds.
I don’t see a problem here. But I assume your speaking as a yourself and not as moderator and I respect your opinion. But I am not breaking any forum guidelines, I am offering constructive critisism, that is all. If op doesn’t want to improve his build it’s his choice.
