“A sword age, a wind age, a wolf age. No longer is there mercy among men.”
~Art credit goes to Gambargin~
Stats with self-buffs + Ulzaad’s Decree (no Overguard)
What is this build?
This represents the next step on my continuing journey to make somewhat less popular builds/playstyles into successes.
It’s a Targo set,1-hand physical BA, non-retal S&B Blademaster.
Yes you read that right.
It invests into Overguard and Shieldmaiden, as well as the Stone Matron devotion because tbh I just kind of wanted to give that one a go.
Features
Pros
- Healthy balance of offense and defense. Not the fastest killer, but nevertheless respectable at the job while being very sturdy
- Big beefy armor and physical resistance
- Kills all superbosses with no change in setup
- Style points for using a shield as a shield, instead of just a stat stick
- HAMMER
- May have to quaff an energy potion once in a while
- It’s still probably way easier to just make a retal build, but c’est la vie
The build has passable, but far from amazing OA/DA. It also has massive shred for both:
OA shred: 55 (Seal of Annihilation) + 140 (Azrakaa) + 130 (Veil of Shadow) = 325 total
DA shred: 55 (Seal of Annihilation) + 270 (Blindside) + 70 (Boneshatter proc) = 395 total
In general, it relies on multiple stacking layers of defenses:
- 4.5-4.6k base armor from devotions and components
- 40-50% physical resistance (if you get a good roll on your shield)
- Damage absorption from the Menhir’s Bulwark exclusive skill
- Damage reduction from War Cry
- Physical damage reduction from Fist of Vire
- 33% chance to fumble from Circle of Slaughter
- The typical Nightblade bonuses to avoid melee attacks/projectiles
Ravager can barely touch this character.
Offensively, 1H BA actually does OK damage with this setup. No, it won’t be breaking any speed records, but it wipes up the majority of things surprisingly quick.
Full build process (long)
Crate keeps trying to buff 1-handed Blade Arc, with… well, mixed success I suppose. I have seen people use Targo’s Craft, but never before as a 1-handed build as seems to be the set’s intent (idk, could be wrong). 1.1.9.2 brought about new buffs to Targo, including to both the Blade Arc and the Amarasta’s Blade Burst parts of its skillset. So time to try it!
I have to drop a note about ABB here. At first, I tried to work ABB in – after all, it’s part of the Targo set, and we are playing a Blademaster. But no matter what I did with it, no matter how much I invested in it (I tried it hardcapped, I tried it as a 1-pointer with maxed Lethal Assault, you name the combo), no matter what extra MIs I used for it, it was always terrible even with all the additional buffs from Targo. Terrible needs to be repeated in all caps for emphasis: IT. WAS. TERRIBLE. The %weapon damage is far too pitiful for this 1-hander, the investment cost far too high. You’re just dumping out all your energy for literally no benefit. It would no doubt be more worthwhile as a proper spam skill (a la with an Amarastan Crusher), but that’s a different build from this one. Here, it’s not worth it even as support.
When I dropped 26/16 ABB from the build, the build’s performance immediately jumped.
Whatever… more points to devote to BA and our shield skills!
Paring down the build’s focus worked much better anyway. Once I stopped fooling about with such frills and focused on only BA, everything started to click into place. Like all my builds, a dumb amount of experimentation took place until I found what I think is an optimal (or something close) combination of moving parts.
Everything is built around the precious goal of balance. It attempts to be a proper shield build, so it invests in shield skills and devotions, but it DOES do some damage. For example I could have taken Obelisk of Menhir too, but went for more offensive T3s since I had already taken Shieldmaiden. And I invested heavily into cunning, taking only the minimum requirement for physique. I wanted to be able to tackle all the celestials and push high SR, so this build needed to be more than a “brick.”
Gear
Note: There is only one craftable item in this setup, the helm, and I crafted it for %armor.
Most items here are required (though the affixes are not, aside from I’d say physical resistance on the shield - otherwise mix and match what you need). There is the full Targo's Craft set itself, and then there all are the items which buff BA: Mogara's Fangs [amulet], Balthazar's Crest [medal], and Kalis'Ka's Harvest [shield]. Seeing as how 1-handed BA is quite humble in damage, it needs all the help it can get, so none of these can be dropped. Kalis’Ka’s Harvest also gives us 10% ADCTH to Blade Arc, which is lovely.
Grasp of Unchained Might is obviously mandatory as a BA item too, but it has an additional important bonus for us: it makes Ring of Steel give flat RR, and we will be using the skill as such. This saves us devotion points as well as skill points - no need for that annoying Terrify transmuter on War Cry.
The two rings are set in stone: Black Matriarch for -RR and Cronley's Signet for attack speed and Laceration, and the Chausses of Barbaros are… well. The amazing pants they always are. Deathstalker relic gives us more -RR as well as a good devotion proccer.
The only items you might use alternatives for are the belt and boots, if you need another way to balance resistances.
Performance
SR 95 Boss Room
Funny thing, I find Reaper and Kaisan quite manageable but Valdaran tricky on this build, at least above SR90. Sometimes he starts hitting like a truck randomly.
SR 85 Boss Room
Easy to facetank even with snoozy mutators (slow, slow, monsters had +phys res...)
Callagadra
Fun fact, this was my first Callagadra kill... EVER! You can see that I got the achievement in the video. I guess I was too afraid of wasting Celestial Essences on my other characters without knowing for sure if they could kill it, silly I know. It took only the single try as well. The first phase was mostly facetankable, second phase required more kiting.
Crate of Entertainment
Another fun fact, this was ALSO my first Crate kill ever. Unlike Calla this took me several tries, but I got there on the 3rd attempt (I did watch some videos of kills first, including a few of RektbyProtoss losing his HC characters RIP). Omg this was a fun fight though, even though I was having a heart attack basically the entire damn time. I LOVED IT.
Ravager of Minds
The easiest facetank ever, didn't need to use Overguard once, nor any healing potions.
Preemptive Q&A
Your DPS would be better if you went 2H/dual-wield.
Well of course, but that’s not what I’m trying to achieve here. There are already plenty of those builds that exist.
Your DPS would be better if you took Oleron’s Rage instead of Menhir’s Bulwark.
Aye, but then we’d lose that lovely damage absorption, which pairs so well with the shield playstyle. Offensively the OA loss from Oleron’s is sort of compensated by really heavy DA shred, and Menhir’s Bulwark does at least give you flat physical damage, so it’s not a total bust damage-wise.
No ghoul/bat?
Nah. Don’t be fooled by the relatively low global lifesteal %; as mentioned before the shield adds a lot of native lifesteal to Blade Arc, and we also have Bear. I found those two things to be enough. I did not need lifesteal potions even for any of the celestials (had them equipped for Ravager, but didn’t use them).
Ghoul is great to have, but there was too much other stuff I wanted.
Markovian’s Defense transmuter on Overguard? Eww.
It’s there only for the toughest SR/some celestial fights. For all other content, I would actually encourage you not to take it because it’s not needed whatsoever.
Final words
This was a really fun experiment. It was so fun, in fact, that I’m considering making a fresh character and using it to make a build/leveling diary just for this.
All feedback is welcome.
Be blessed by Odin Oleron, mighty warriors.
Or maybe a couple, I think Nery did one too? Anyways yeah, without that extra “juice” from somewhere it’s just plain bad unfortunately.
I could not agree more. I went with Targo Blademaster for underdog reasons, but warlord should actually be better in many ways. I had been hoping I could do something similar to my Rotgheist build, combining both the boosted skills on the set, but ABB just fails kind of miserably here.
) It is probably possible to do some alternate setup that does use it.
, the Vire proc is great. Damage+petrify+physical damage reduction.
I had been planning on testing a Warlord variant eventually as well, but keep getting distracted by other builds. Overall the performance should be even better, both offensively+defensively (phys RR, shield bonuses, HP), but I wanted to be a hipster and do it with Blademaster. Here you go,