nope, not really. You have to farm them or trade them.
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Lol this build does some serious damage, everything melts in half a second. When I got to 75 and equipped some of the gear (luckily I had a complete Infernal set already) I rushed Elite in like 3 hours. That’s my fastest personal record, ever. Can’t wait to get to 94.
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Just came back to this game due to the new DLC. How does shieldbreaker compare to purifier? Just roughly going over the skill trees it seems the main thing purifier has going for it is the additional DR from censure while oathkeeper probably provides more damage. Is there any more detailed comparison/theorycrafting?
Breaker is best casters, purifier is best for ranged
There are so many Purifier builds and Shieldbreaker builds that it’s really hard to compare. If you compare casters, than Purifiers are tankiers, but Shieldbreakers deal more damage in Fire Specs. But I would say the main difference is playstyle: Shieldbreaker are very fast due to the fact that they don’t need to stay in Seal and great movement skill (Vire’s Might). Purifiers depend on Inquisitor Seal and also have less range on casters because of how Censure works. But again, Purifiers are much tankier.
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I’m talking about a caster build built around BWC/Thermite and constellation procs. I’ve had fun with a purifier in Ashes but would level up a shieldbreaker if it was better than the purifier.
About censure, don’t the shieldbreaker summons have the same issue?
How much more damage are we talking about compared to purifier? How important is tankiness in the new content?
Shieldbreaker is better here no doubt. The amount of damage it extracts, squeezes out of Infernal Knight and BWC and Mines in this spec is insane and super fun to play.
They have a different issue sometimes - not being where you want them to be. But that’s like a really minor issue, never really had a problem with it personally. I mean, it doesn’t affect performance at all it seems.
Like quite a bit more damage. Purifiers are missing a lot of %Burn damage from their mastery and they have less OA and crit damage. Shieldbreaker also has a better source of Burn damage - Judgment.
Question of tankiness is very relative here. Because this build for example clears Crucible 150-170 consistently as well shards 65-66, however, it struggles in Shards 75-76. Of course you can remake it for Shards 75-76 but then it’s going to be a different build with different appeal. So depends on what you want.
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The burn damage %modifier is a bit higher for the shieldbreaker but it’s not a lot percentage wise. I can see judgment and more crit being a huge dps boost though.
I haven’t seen the new endgame yet, is shards 75/76 a lot better reward wise compared to the other stuff?
Thanks.
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I think it is marginally better than 65-66 and Crucible 150-170. It also depends a lot on the time spent versus rewards gained. Very few builds can actually farm 75-76 efficiently. Shards are also very random by nature, and the higher you go, the randomness increases exponentially. There is also quite a bit of cheese involved in SR farming.
I personally think that Crucible is lesser evil out of two endgames.
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Thanks again.
I would probably prefer the shards stuff since I’ve already spent hundreds of hours in the crucible.
What are the best builds for doing high shards efficiently currently?
Depends on what you mean by “doing high shards efficiently”. Like for farming you need a build that farm 75-76 fast and consistently. For trying to get as deep as you can for bragging rights and just because you want to you might need a different build.
I think absolutely best builds for fast 75-76 would be Retaliation Warlords.
There’s also this spreadsheet from MikeFic_YT that compares the loot up to SR 75-76 runs across difficulties. While it’s a small number of runs per tier, I’ve found the numbers fairly accurate. I think it has to do with how the rewards aren’t that variable, so even a small number of samples gets pretty close. It’s also one of the only resources I could find with actual numbers on the different shard runs.
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Is there other stuff that comes close? Like what’s the top 3 currently? All retal builds or other stuff too?
I honestly don’t know and I doubt somebody does. As a I said, Shards 75-76 are very random, it can be a breeze or it can be an impenetrable wall on some boss chunks with some mutators, so it’s hard to quantify. I guess one of the very top builds for it would my Dark One Conjurer. It will never have any problems at Shards 75-76 or Crucible 150-170.
Shitbreaker got more %damage, health, slow res, energy regen and a lot of oa and crit dmg constantly. Purifier got oa and crit boost only half the time (Deadly Aim), lots of da and more flat damage absorption more or less constantly (Seal; while shieldbreaker got less of it and half the time from Ascension) and most importantly the golden %damage reduction.
In general purifiers are tankier with a little less health, while shieldbreakers have potential for godly damage. Purifiers got best ranged builds, but for a demo caster build I’d take oathkeeper or arcanist. . Another thing people overlook; inquisitor has the Box - maybe the best proccer in the game. So for auramancers and procsters definitely inquisitor.
There’s no such thing. SR is too random and inconsistent to talk about what’s better than what. Also, depends what you mean by high shards. 80? 90? 100? World of difference between those.
However… 
I’d say the happy oupie bunch of vitality or lightning casters. That is Dark One or Light’s Defender based builds (Stormreaver - my fave - is still godly with 5:00 Crucible times and 95-ish shards). There are tankier things than these but usually they are a snoozefest. Almighty AAR spellbinder can also do 85-ish if built right and still be one of the fastest dmg dealers. For real high shards I guess some overtanked retal warlords.
Untrue. 75-76 is oodles and noodles more rewarding.
The biggest reason for this is that:
- It’s far easier to complete
- You are not punished with decreased loot should you die.
what about time you waste compared to SR65-66?
I’m trying to look at it from the perspective of the average player, I guess.
If I didn’t know the “tells” of each enemy, or their attack patterns (e.g. grava’s arm raise = nullification), I think SR is just more forgiving because I’m allowed to make mistakes.
Especially since any fatal error in Cr results in a dramatic decrease in loot, AND the fact that you’re going to need to farm tributes.
Of course if you have the right spec, and enough experience, cruci farming is most likely more efficient.
I think in the end, SR is more efficient in looting.
Basically you just need to reach 65 on one character, then all your other character can reach that. Also like spanks’ commented, SR is more forgiving.
Farming tribute in cruci is the worst and can be time consuming. Also climbing to 150 is boring. Same can be said to climbing to 75 though.
Yeah, but you can literally just do it once for SR.
In Cr, short of GDstashing, you literally need to climn to 150 for every single spec.
Basically, SR 75 > Cr 170 for the following:
- Looting
- Forgiveness
- Accessibility
- Difficulty (i.e. SR 75 is way easier)