Physical AAR Battlemage actually works and is fun to play. Build is enabled by Mythical Inashkor’s Head. For sustain the build uses amulet for ADCtH to AAR. It also has good defenses - Maiven’s Sphere, perma War Cry, Turtle, Crab and converted Scales (by the belt). Build also has high armor, DA and good CC resistances. It all makes it quite tanky. It also uses Mirror of Ereoctes and Nullfication when needed. Total physical RR is up to -98 %. Build also has high OA for good applying of Assasins’ Mark and crit damage on AAR. Base DPS is nice around 400k. Some damage also comes from the cunning dump. It is the most enjoyable AAR build. You use only two skills - AAR and War Cry and that’s it… Thus nothing interrupts you all the time like with other piano laser builds because War Cry doesn’t interrupt AAR. I wish more AAR builds would have so smooth gameplay like this one. Damage to humans bonus on relic is a must for high SR. This build can clear SR 36-37 fine and if played well even SR 38-39 most of the time. You can sometimes even finish SR 40 within the timer but not consistently enough.
This build is just a template. Customize it to your own liking.
AAR with passive buffs only
SR
In SR 36-37 I finished 5 out of 5 times within the timer. Don’t do anything too stupid and you will be fine. If you die you can still make it in time.
In SR 38-39 I finished 3 out of 5 times within the timer. If you die you will be on the edge with the timer. Fabius, Iron Maiden and Reaper are dangerous but manageable with good timing. Destroy Aleks crystals ASAP or move away from them. Fight Kaisan away from his crystals and avoid his pools. You will need some space with him. Avoid nemeses in the first three chunks.
You can sometimes even finish SR 40 within the timer but not consistently enough. Your success depends on whether you meet tough nemeses or not… Avoid big physical hits. Fabius, Iron Maiden and Reaper are very tough and one mistake will end you there. Sometimes the same bosses are relatively OK and sometimes almost impossible… Avoid nemeses in the first three chunks.
Celestials
Ravager of Minds can be killed without pharma. It is slower. Avoid null and sunder.
Calagadra can be killed without pharma. It is slower and you have to reposition yourself constantly. Tank only for a few seconds and avoid tornadoes and sunder.
That’s an indeed correct set of items for Physical AAR BM. I have couple of questions: so you are binding Maul to Deathstalker for speed and because you don’t need leech from it, right? Also, what devotion setups you tried that lead you to this devo setup? Was goal grabbing three points in Obelisk? Because you could grab quite a bit more of %damage there.
I want to use as little skills as possible and Deathstalker was left for it… I had Vire first but it had less % damage and armor. I tweaked it to this one because it was the best result in SR overall. It wasn’t the goal to grab it at first but it worked out the best in the end. Also energy regen was a pain to solve… Especially for Celestials and Iron Maiden…
If it works for you the best I can only recommend trying Watcher instead of Turtle (do you really need a fail safe with that much passive beef) and then Stag instead of Scarab (Stag getting armor instead of phys res next patch).
Really build dependant. I rarely take Turtle nowadays actually, I prefer to invest into strong first line defenses rather than to rely on this fail safe. Turtle is still good with cdr but on your build I feel like you are not proccing it much with such beefy defenses. But then when you are proccing it it’s gonna be a situation that probably got too hairy that you shouldn’t get into in the first place (like pulling multiple bosses at SR 36) and your hp is gonna go down quickly after it regardless. Rather invest into more DA.
Oh, also forgot to say that on your initial calc you are not using old Soldier’s formula 7 in Scars + Ancient Armor. Would help your build too since can drop Frozen Heart for something better (that Frozen Heart is a bit of an eye sore on a battlemage of all classes).
I think Turtle will give more armor as well. Only depends whether the 200 DA will make more difference or not… I am inclined more to the Turtle… Never enough fail safes and high SR is quite random with its dangers…
I wanted to cap those CC res.
Ancient armor is indeed an option I was considering it but in the end didn’t wanted to move points and resistances. With Watcher it would work better. I will have to try it with the new patch. But I am not much sold on giving up Turtle.
Don’t be inclined - testing it is the only way to know when it comes to such small differences.
Understandable that you needed freeze res cap however it’s just a suboptimal ring component especially on a class that has freeze res in both masteries and also benefits a LOT from flat armor form Bloodied Crystal.
As I said, I really don’t know what’s better here but on paper at least I would lean towards Watcher and in-game I would just compare how both feel.
It needs to be this high. You have only 5k energy (effectively 4k) and it goes down against single target bosses. So regen is an absolute necessity. AAR takes 526.1 per second… There are Scales and some absorb and leech but you still slightly lose energy as you attack and in a longer fight may need to use one potion. But mostly not. And with lower regen you would probably deplete it fairly quickly. If anything it still needs slightly more regen for fights like Iron Maiden. You need to use one potion with her close to the end of the fight.
