I plan to build a melee firestrike demo, using 2h weapons.
Damage is fire and burn, nothing else
The question is which second class to take…
Commando/soldier gives me some nice passives and OA,
while elementalist gives HP, feral hunger, wendigo totem and maybe
stormcaller pact for crit dmg.
Devotions i wanna go are kraken, Viper, solas witchblade and rhowans crown. Rest magi/ulzuins torch.
So which second class do you think is best?
I have no good endgame armor, just a nice weapon (infernal brimstone).
Gameplay will be like: Rush into the enemies (blitz or chaos strike), throw
some mines (with eldtrich fire), put up wendigo (with elemental storm) and
spam firestrike (maybe with flame torrent?)…
Ok…
Damage-wise sorcerer is best? Just because IEE and exclusive skill?
Iam afraid of being too squishy.
So elementalist is not worth?
I think mogdrogen pact, feral hunger, wendigo and maybe primal bond (damage reduction and physical+ which is converted to fire) is nice?
Err the physical damage bonus from Primal Bond is not converted to fire at all. Only base damage is affected by conversion. % bonuses aren’t.
Also I actually question whether Sorcerer would do more damage. Pyromancer would have the highest damage due to an extra source of RR, and Sorc also lacks attack speed.
Commando is probably the best bet IMO. Elementalist also lacks attack speed and OA because Shaman’s only AS and OA bonuses are tied to Savagery.
@Flurorine. For this particualr build, surprisingly sorc does more damage. But all presented variations are pretty close to one another and have their advantages of course. The weakest variation for this build damage wise is actually Commando which is why i didn’t even include him. He had like 14 seconds MQ kill time
Interesting, is that because of the extra crit damage while maintaining decent OA and conversion percentage ? To be perfectly honest I haven’t really looked into where the damage comes from on your build aside from your remark that procs do a lot of the work.
What’s the balance of direct fire to burn on the build ?
When looking at the sorc video it looks like MQ takes a couple hits that remove massive chunks of her healthbar instantly… I have no clue where they come from.
Also one would expect the combo with the highest combined RR potential to have the highest reliable damage, hmm…
I was recommending Commando because Vangarn said he has limited gear, it’s pretty certain to have the least damage when using Fire Strike, but it’s also bound to be the easiest to get going when you lack the great gear that gives both good defense and the OA to exploit crit damage.
Common mistake is that people give little to no attention at all to crit dmg and to much to atc speed/sheet dps.
Bonuses that elemental exchange line provides are in many cases more potent that the ones got from CoF when talking about elemental dmg and especially when talking about elemental dmg with high DoT values, where critical dmg is of high importance.
As to attack sped, its power is marginalized in new meta where high dots and burst like skills (ie SS, blitz, shotguns/procs of various kinds, etc) are caries of bulk of your dmg.
To try to simplify, for pierce based cadence BM some time ago was crucial to have atc speed on high lvl because all his power was in direct dmg it does by simply hitting, w/o almost any dot dmg. For current meta when it comes to dmg output, cold/frostburn SB, attack speed is of low to insignificant importance cuz its dmg comes from high dots and burst skill.
I understand the value of crit damage for DoT builds, I’m just surprised because I thought Fluff’s build was doing mostly direct damage from looking at the GT. His weapon damage breakdown is like 80% direct fire and burn is tiny.
Now it looks like I severely underestimated the amount of base burn damage in his skills and procs if that is his main damage source.
I actually have a spreadsheet to calculate crit contribution to direct damage and while it’s easy to calculate, it’s also way weaker than on DoTs.
Anyway the OP doesn’t have a Worldeater so Fluff’s build relying on the active shotgun for burst damage isn’t applicable, and we’re not answering his question.
OP has an Infernal Brimstone instead. Thinking about it, yeah it was dumb to think Pyro would do the most damage. If you’re willing to ditch FS, Cadence Commando would hit pretty hard, and Sorcerer could do well too by complementing FS with transmuted CT with maxed out Inferno.
