I started working on my own version again and I have all the gear except for Cinderscorn (currently using Alladra’s Spellblade instead). It’s a whole lot of fun to use and I’m also focusing a lot on Judgement, with Cinderscorn I should get it down to 2s CD.
But I’m having some DA/survivability issues.
This is my current more glass-cannony build I’m playtesting (but with different weapon and still farming some components): https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62a17a32
Another thing to consider is that I could hunt for some better rolls on the pants and off-hand, they’re decent but could be improved. Boots on the other hand are pretty amazing, doubt I’ll be able to craft anything better without going through a few hundred.
I’ve thought about more defensive devotions and Phoenix obviously comes to mind, Tortoise is another contender with all the CDR and I ended up with this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrP4dL2
The problem is that the ‘defensive’ version actually doesn’t gain any DA and loses over 100 OA.
Upside is some ~180 armor and ~200 HP alongside the above mentioned defensive devotions. I’ve yet to try it because I’m still attempting to tweak the devotion setup but it’s a tough process and I would be appreciative of some input.
Here’s a video of me dicking around with it in the Tainted Grove, only have around 2700 DA on my ‘in-progress’ version so don’t think I can take it to anything dangerous until I at least finish up my components.
I see now why you don’t like to put points into Clarity of Purpose, you didn’t even use Ascension once in your AG video lol
As for the defence I’m also having much problem myself right now because I find it difficult to push to SR 70, just failed two attempts last weekend. With 2800ish DA and 12000 HP I often got killed in a blink of an eye. Farming 65-66 was okay though as long as there’s no Grava/Kaisan in FG town boss map.
One thing I can say with confidence is that it’s worthwhile to overcap chaos resist for this build. Yours is just too low. In SR you’ll have a difficult time fighting Grava and some other general Chthonian bosses because
(1) they tend to have very high fire resist (Grava 94%, Gabal 98%, etc)
(2) they have annoying skills like nullification, skill disruption (I personally find this very annoying, being unable to skate = instant death), fissure, huge DA debuff + OA buff aura etc.
(3) they run very fast and it seems impossible to completely avoid getting hit
You really don’t want to add (4) they do chaos damage and your resist is low.
I’m going to try to get more HP + leeching instead of DA. I feel that in SR you can’t really completely avoid getting critted by bosses due to mutators / buff / debuff stacking. In one run some days ago there were two bosses that can buff OA and I had about 20% chance to be critted by them So I think being able to tank one hit and immediately leeching back is maaaaybe better than stacking DA.
I’ll blame me not using Ascension on my unfamiliarity with the build and not having added it to muscle memory yet, though I do believe I tried to cast it but accidentally interrupted due to cast speed reduction modifier. I also completely forgot to use my movement augment (Blazing Ends seems really potent with this build).
Speaking of, is it cast speed that speeds up the starting animation of Vire’s Might?
The build also already gets 3400 OA with Ascension up despite just a casual point in Clarity of Purpose, don’t feel like needs more, especially considering my 263 DA shred from Crushing Verdict and another -70 from Annihilation component.
As for Chaos resistance you’re absolutely right. My plan is to farm more off-hands and pants hoping that it’ll fix some DA and resistance issues.
Is the OP GT up to date? If not I’d love to see your current version.
How do you feel about Harp? For me all energy issues were solved with an Arcane Spark and I’m not a big fan of ‘chance on getting hit’ DA. Instead I’m looking at Tortoise since the high CDR would make it quite reliable. Do you know if the CD starts resetting once the absorption shield is used up or when triggered? I’m assuming the former.
For leech my current build uses Ghoul and Seal of Blades which seems enough, the problem with leech is that Vire’s Might only steals life if you charge right at an enemy and Judgement doesn’t do it at all.
Hmmm, that’s a really good question, never tested myself. I guess that skill CD is a bigger factor here as long as you don’t have super crap cast speed.
No it’s not, I’m still tweaking it from time to time and I’m actually not sure when I can get a final version or something. What I can say is that the OP GT is sufficient to climb to SR 65 and farm SR 65-66 more or less consistently, though it’s quite painful to overcome those SR 45-59 tiny boss rooms.
I’ve already dropped Harp in my current setup due to the same reason you mentioned
Not sure about Tortoise, never tried it.
Yeah this is the tricky part – in SR 70 the sustain provided by Blood of Dreeg + pots is not enough to keep alive against some bosses, so you’ll want to leech, but then you’ll receive more damage and thus you’ll want to leech even more, eventually making this build more like an autoattack build rather than a kiting one. And I think that’s where Templar becomes more flexible, because with mirror you can facetank even without good leeching. Still trying to figure out how to deal with this with Sentinel.
With 22/12 Tectonic Shift my CD is 0.6s and I often feel more limited by the casting animation than the CD itself as even with close range jumps it has reset by the time I arrive.
I realized that my build actually has 2 sources of weapon damage % from Light’s Oath and Wyrmbone Gauntlets, it may not be much but they proc very consistently with all the different burn sources going around.
For a short amount of time I tested a Templar version (just used GDstash) but didn’t like Callidor’s Tempest nearly as much as Judgment.
It has a very small AoE and is less safe to use
It splits enemies up rather than gathering them
It surprised me how efficient the pull effect of judgement is combined with permanent Meteor Shower, Volcanic Stride all over the ground and other AoE item procs.
That’s not to say Templar doesn’t have its own advantages, just not as fun to play so I’d rather make Sentinel work.
Mind posting your current GT even if you’re in the process of changing stuff? I don’t care for an ‘ultimate, completely finished’ version as we both have somewhat different ideas on how to approach the build and mine will deviate from yours no matter what. But it’s very helpful to see what choices other people make, it can be easy to get stuck on a single track and completely ignore different solutions to the problem you’re facing.
Compared to OP GT the main differences are:
Gears: changed ring for more OA, changed gloves for Judgement conversion
Skills: points moved from Heart of Wrath into Judgement
Devotion: dropped Harp, Hawk, Phoenix for Solemn Watcher and Sailor’s Guide.
Not sure if this one is better than OP setup or not. I actually want to try something more different but due to completely lack of iron bits I can’t even afford respeccing my skill points / devotions lol. I created a new dervish toon last week, bought a lot of exp potions without looking at my iron bits and went bankrupt Now I need to pick up all yellow and green trashes and sell them for money.
Edit2: I probably should get Bat for survivability, don’t remember why I didn’t take it in these setups.
The devotions are very similar to my tankier version with the only difference being Phoenix + Tortoise vs Magi and Sailor’s Guide (+2 more points in Rhowan’s Crown).
Now I have a lot of critique for your build and I hope you don’t take it the wrong way (but you don’t seem like the kind of person that would).
Personally I don’t like the Handguards of Justice at all, Wyrmbone grant a massive ~100 OA, only a tiny little bit less health, solid fire and burn % damage and a really good fire proc that can life steal.
Instead you could use Mark of Ulzuin which not only converts Judgments physical to fire, but reduces its CD by a whole second. But I realize your build lacks HP and it might be a way to compensate with Mark of Divinity.
I think you should invest a bit more into Haven to increase HP rather than sacrificing your medal slot, my defensive build gets 20 more OA than yours with ascension up (despite having 4/12 vs your 12/12) and it has better defensive devotions and DA too.
Hellforged Legplates are nice for Volcanic stride and physical resistance, but everything else is very lackluster. I couldn’t see myself switching from Kubacabra’s even though mine are somewhat mediocre at best. Also even though Volcanic Stride is nice, lowering the CD is a very nice QoL and can even help your defensive capabilities.
Similarly, boots are very hard to find for this build. I played around with Earthshatter a bit but then decided that it was better to get Tectonic Shift from Menhirinian and craft some nice boots.
Now those Tempest of Kings rolls are pretty disgusting (in the most positive way) and I probably crafted upwards of 250 boots if not more to get them, so that might not be an option for your broke ass.
How useful do you feel Iskandra’s Balance is? I don’t think I could sacrifice +1 to all, that nice aether & chaos res, health and solid circuit breaker. Has more value on Templar since you’ll gain +1 to arcanist.
Don’t get me wrong, the damage boost is very tempting but I don’t believe it’s worth the sacrifice (for my build at least).
Bat would be nice but due to its inefficient cost you’d have to make some sacrifices, like replacing Sailor’s Guide with Eel, then moving the points from Jackal and Scholar’s Light to Bat and placing 2 points in the crossroads. But it would work.
Lastly, not sure how you can stand using only 1 point in Curse of Frailty, personally I just dropped Vulnerability from 11 to 10 so I could up Curse to 7, the AoE and duration increase just makes it so much nicer to use. Though I can’t criticize you too much since I may or may not use a dedicated Celestial Presence set to scum an extra 11 mastery points out of the build.
I would like to use an offensive relic but I’m already struggling with defense as is and enemies melt quite fast.
Hellforged prevents me from capping Tectonic Shift, they also lose me 120 OA, 13 DA, 400 health and 150 armor.
It also gives me worthless fire resistance (already overcapped without augments) but screws over both my piercing and bleed resistance. Just try equipping them on the GT I linked and you’ll see the disaster it creates.
Physical resistance is great but this build already has an okay amount at 29%.
Any feedback is super welcome! And I really enjoy this kind of discussion.
Handguards of Justice is actually not so bad because
(1) 33% pierce res makes it a lot easier to overcap other res,
(2) that 18 flat fire damage can actually increase your fire weapon damage by 9%-10%, which approximately means you leech 9% more with just this one line. 73% more fire damage from Wyrmbone is just a 3.5% increase in total DPS, and its proc is 10%*10%/300%=0.33% increase of leeching, ignoring its 2s CD.
But yeah OA from Wyrmbone is good, so it’s a fair tradeoff I guess.
As for the medal I actually want to use Volcanum for +3 Volcanic Stride, but haven’t got one yet, so didn’t change that slot. MoD is a good lifesaver in SR 60~65ish but not so much in SR 70+.
Ulzuin looks not bad but I don’t have it lol
Agree about Haven, I can also see the value of +skills now because it saves some points from other skills and can eventually turns into HP or other things I need, which is great.
But I really like 12/12 Clarity of Purpose not only because OA but also CC resist. You’ll find a huge difference between 30% and 70% Freeze resist when fighting Moos. If you get chain CC’d then DA won’t help you alive. I even sacrificed some other things to get Sailor’s Guide just for those resists.
Yeah I agree that pants is not really good. That fire resist lol. I’m actually even thinking about changing to something like Barbaros if I can get Volcano Stride to 22/12 from other source, it looks like a free +100 OA. I’m also thinking about changing the boots, either to Stormtitan for stun res and HP, or to Primordial Rage for Volcanic Stride and OA.
I guess I’ll never try to craft crazy boots because Luck is my dump stat
I’m torn between having 22/12 Tectonic Shift or leave it at 15/12, the most value I see from 22/12 is a far better facetank possibility, but if 22/12 doesn’t make it possible to facetank at least 1 boss safely in SR 70+ then I don’t think it’s really worth the cost. I’ll probably test this later.
As Nery said, Iskandra is a great offensive relic, even without +1 arcanist. Just look at its +% damage, when everything works together it’s +20~25% DPS for a dot build. On the other hand, if only consider DPS, then +1 skill is about just +8% DPS (e.g. Volcanic stride burn is 634/2s with 22/12 and is 586/2s with 21/12, so it’s 8.2%).
But yeah practically speaking it’s difficult to match that proc uptime with Ascension uptime, and +1 skills also provides some defence which is good ofc, so I may or may not change it later. I’ll definitely switch to Eternity though if I can get the blueprint, I desperately need more Ascension uptime lol
And I’m actually quite curious how well Serenity proc works in practice, it looks waaaay weaker than Mark of Divinity proc, and MoD proc is just not enough to keep me alive in SR 70 due to 80s CD.
I’ll probably remove the burn node from Torch rather than changing Sailor’s Guide to Eel, as I mentioned above I feel I really need that freeze resist. But if I can get it from other source (maybe a frozen heart?) then I might keep that burn damage.
I had exactly the same thought on CoF as you, until I realised that I just can’t stop recasting it like every 3~4 sec due to paranoia or something
You say that Justice gives better life leech due to its flat damage, but as we discussed earlier the weak point of the build is that one must charge right at an enemy in order to trigger it. When I do that the health I get back is always good.
Wyrmbone on the other hand add a completely new 10% weapon proc which lets me life steal passively and from a safe distance, I’d argue that this adds way more overall life steal than some puny flat damage. Also keep in mind that the % bonus from Wyrmbone applies to all your damage such as devotions, item procs, Volcanic Stride, Judgement etc. etc. whilst the flat damage only applies to enemies struck directly by Vire’s Might.
I used Volcanum before but felt that Wyrmbone were too good which forced me into using Ulzuin for physical conversion. But honestly I’m happy with it, the reduced CD and bonus to Heart of Wrath is really nice.
About Clarity of Purpose, I just don’t like the idea of relying on a CD for CC resist, makes me feel like it’ll be unavailable when I need it the most.
You could also go for the middle route of 18/12 Tectonic Shift, I’ve been considering switching my Menhirian ring to something else (maybe Mythical ring of Ice and Fire) but I could never let go of my Kubacabra pants, you can get some really nice stats on those.
Relic choices, yeah I wouldn’t say that the Serenity proc is amazing, I see it more as a nice bonus. The real reason for me using it is the vital chaos & aether resistance stats alongside the +1 to all being very useful generally speaking and also enables me to get 22/12 tectonic shift.
The extra health and resisted reflect damage also isn’t to scoff at since we’re not Templars that can purge reflected burn debuffs.
I also think that you’re a bit dismissive about the ‘+1 to all is just 8% damage’. Think about:
The extra OA from Blood of Dreeg and Presence of Virtue
The extra crit damage, fire & burn damage from Divine Mandate
Boost to the whole Judgement line
Improves your favorite skill Ascension and Clarity of Purpose
And like you correctly pointed out it, on top of all this it saves you some extra points for skills you don’t wish to max, letting you invest those elsewhere.
Losing all that burn damage sucks, it’s a tough choice to make. Using a frozen heart would also mean losing a lot of DA since you’d be replacing a bloodied crystal.
I watched your SR video (skipped most except for boss battle) and I noticed you’re using GrimInternals, but don’t have the option enabled to show debuffs over enemy health bars. This is one of my favorite features and would help with your CoF paranoia.
The situation I’m facing is that if I don’t make some significant changes to my setup to allow creating a big burst damage that can reduce like 50% HP of Kaisan within one Ascension, then it’s enough to make it clear SR 70+. It’s not even about clear time, if I can’t kill one boss before dying then I just can’t pass that boss room. At the moment it’s like whenever I decide to do some damage I have 50% chance to get killed in 3 sec.
Your suggestions are good and I’m going to try out some, but I more or less feel that the improvements are still not significant enough to solve the problem. For example +1 to all skills is indeed not only +8% overall DPS, but IMO slight improvement like +14 OA and 2% crit just can’t replace the possibility of creating a damage peak within an Iskandra proc. (That being said, I might change the belt to get +1 OK skills if I can get CC resists from other source.)
To really make a big difference, the possible choice I see is to try out 22/12 (or 18/12) Tectonic Shift + more WD or ADctH to increase the facetank ability, and also 26/16 VM + 22/12 Volcanic Stride for more burst damage, so that I can beat Kaisan within like 2 Ascensions. I think VS and Magi proc (and even VM direct hits) are good for burst damage because they reapply very frequently, while things like Judgement can only reapply every 3s or so and thus do not benefit from Iskandra / crits much. I might even remove all additional points in Judgement / HoW to get more HP from Haven.
I actually didn’t know GI can show debuffs, thanks for this information!
Edit: just noticed that your tankier version has 24% more crit damage than my current setup, that’s actually quite big, so maybe I should try to get some more %crit.
Edit2: about cast speed, I remember when I tried 22/12 Tectonic Shift and bound VM to RMB, when skating without moving (e.g. toward a wall), after finishing a VM it still tries to do a default weapon attack before a second VM. So I guess this means that the VM casting animation finishes before its CD ends. But I think that was with 140%~150% cast speed, so not sure how it performs with 120~130%.
Edit3: I’ll probably try this setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NX4KRkN
Compared to my current setup: +700 HP, +200 OA, +21% crit, +15% WD, +9% ADCTH, +300% Fire, -140 DA, -150 Armor, -11~26% Physical res, Tectonic Shift 15->18, Volcanic Stride 19->22, -Judgement damage, -Magi/Elemental Storm/Sailor, +Phoenix/Bat/Revenant.
Edit4: Okay I finally figured out why I’m so against using Wyrmbone subconsciously, it’s simply because I just don’t have that gear
Edit5: the realisation: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/D2pxAey2
The actual OA is better (3350ish) than the one shown in GT due to recent buff to Galewind Treads, still worse than the original plan, so yeah Wyrmbone seems to be a good choice.
I wish I chose Kymon’s Chosen rather than Death’s Vigil, that would have make fixing resists much easier for this setup.
Tested in one SR 65-66 run, seems promising, can tank Fabius + Kaisan at the same time when Ascension is up, much better in terms of tankability than the previous one.
Arcanist is good of course (it is x1x1x1x2’s Templar skater that inspired me to try this set), but other classes also have their strength, it’s more or less a matter of taste IMO.
Occultist is not bad for a Fire skater, and also has the flexibility to run an Acid skater, which is impossible for Arcanist. With a warlord you can even try Internal Trauma skater. I also think there is possibility for a Pierce skater using https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/8753, though I have no idea how to make a pierce build and am not sure if it will work.
I tried to theorycraft a Paladin skater before, but had two issues: (1) couldn’t figure out how to get enough OA, Deadly Aim is nice but it needs good OA to trigger it in the first place; (2) the skater playstyle don’t seem to work well with seal.
Meanwhile the racial bonuses from Word of Renewal and Steel Resolve seem really great, the most difficult bosses I find are Chthonians and Kaisan, which is perfectly solved by those racial bonuses.
I’ll possibly try a skater paladin later, but it’s in the last of my already-too-long todo list:
Fire Sentinel > Acid Sentinel > Acid Dervish > Pierce Dervish > IT Warlord > Fire Paladin. All are skater builds
I’m not sure, most of those skater builds I plan to make have double RR sources from masteries except for pierce, and for pierce I think I’ve read from somewhere that I don’t need too much RR because it’s less resisted. But if I do cold skater build then I have at most 1 RR source from masteries, and it’s not fire so I can’t get too much +% damage to compensate like Templar.
So I think being able to tank one hit and immediately leeching back is maaaaybe better than stacking DA.
