[1.1.4.2] Elemental (Not Really) Forcewave Tactician SR75

Intro

This is not my first build that I’ve composed myself but it’s the first one to beat SR75 and it’s the first build that I’m posting on the forum. I realize that it’s not very optimal and hasn’t been minmaxed thoroughly, so any advices towards improval are of great welcome. I only have 950 hours played atm, how much can I know anyway, lol?

It’s greenless because I don’t have enough time and perseverance to farm those, but you’re always welcome to experiment. The weapon is the only core item, everything else is replaceable as long as you have decent stats.

<<< GRIMTOOLS >>>


Screenshot with Word of Renewal and Inquisitor Seal up. And yeah this is my first toon. He was a Commando once until me and GDStash decided otherwise.

Originally it was supposed to be full elemental but without Justicar 2-pieces it would be kinda squishy and gloves offers 100% conversion physical -> fire to Forcewave in addition to 100% physical -> elemental from the weapon, making it 66.6% fire, 16.6% cold and 16.6% lightning. This is the reason why I focus on the gear with fire damage if there’re no good ones with elemental to be found, and also is why I give preference to the fire damage/RR devotions.

Gear explanation:

  • Weapon is the core of the build;
  • Bonemonger helm and chest is for reaching 22/12 in Seal, for better placement of Seals, and has somewhat decent stats;
  • Justicar Guard shoulders and gloves for tankiness and fire damage;
  • M. Closed Fist of Vengeance (ring 1) is not a first option I’d settle with, but without it build loses an enormous amount of OA;
  • M. Signet of the Runefather (ring 2) is good all around. It would be the best choice if it had OA or DA bonuses as well;
  • Amulet is for elemental RR on Word of Pain but offers good stats to the build anyway;
  • Boots gives good skill boosts and defensive stats, mainly physical resist. Probably can replace it with The Final March, need to think about it;
  • Ignaffar’s Combustion as the relic would be better almost all around, but I really wanted that ADHtC;
  • Belt is simply BiS;
  • I took M. Mark of Kalastor only to cover the lack of resist and OA and also to push Forcewave as much close to max ult. rank as possible. It doesn’t offer any damage, and would probably be first candidate to change on some well rolled double-rare green or MI with Forcewave skill boost.

Gameplay tips:

  • Main rule - if you’re not standing on a Seal (you have 5 of them and with ~30 sec duration) - you’re doing it wrong. But you already know that, don’t you?
  • High cast speed allows to squeeze all the spells in between Forcewaves without losing much dps so don’t hesitate to press all the buttons if killing takes more than 1 sec;
  • If you know you’re about to take a serious fight or just started one, place Seals next to each other so you can move around freely;

Pros:

  • Rather high armor (~3k);
  • Decent physical resist (~23%, but kinda low for my personal taste);
  • 200% cast speed;
  • ~2.4k% fire modifier, ~2k% cold and lightning modifiers;
  • Seal and Phoenix offers almost 600 damage absorption. Seal alone is enough to survive through any shotgun with ease;
  • ~18% ADCtH;
  • High stun resist (~75%);
  • RR: type A: 25 all (Revenant), type B: 20 elemental (Viper), type C: -12 elemental (amulet bonus to Word of Pain) + -10 elemental (weapon bonus to Seal) + -35 elemental (Aura of Censure) + -23 fire (Eldritch Fire); We also have 10 aether on Seal from helm but who cares
  • ~75% crit damage;
  • You’ll drink one energy potion per year;
  • Your forcewave can have fire SFX or elemental SFX depending on what item you put on last - gloves or weapon resp.

Cons:

  • Low slow resist (~20%);
  • Illegaly low DA (~2.8k, my toon has 2780). This is the first point that should be fixed if you want to push above SR75;
  • Low OA (~2.8k) but its partly fixed through Deadly Aim and Fighting Spirit;
  • Non-existant disruption resist;
  • Base resistances aren’t heavily overcapped so you can’t really facetank heavy hitters like Alex’s meteor unless he’s alone;
  • You need to keep track of the Seals constantly and be smart with their position. With Seal you’re a mighty tree, without - only a branch.

I don’t really like Crucible so I didn’t test the build there, but it doesn’t have high dps output so i guess it won’t be anywhere around 7mins. I’ve farmed SR 75-76 several times with 0-3 deaths depends on number of bosses pulled in boss room. 1v1 this build can withstand against almost anyone (this may include some kiting at high SR, especially if you see Grava PUTS HIS HANDS IN THE AIR :wink:)

This is my first ever 75 SR recorded. I was so excited that I even forgot about Seal management lol. As well as about making a video with decent quality

SR 75 Bossroom first ever pass

Outro

I want to thank the Safarel’s Discord Community for offering me tips about survival and tankiness in this build. I suppose that I’m not the first person to think about this build and play it, but I didn’t see analogs here on forum or compendium that are of FG era. Maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough tho
And please sorry for my English, it’s not my first language.

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Lovely build concept. A+! Will probably outperform @superfluff’s previous elemental FW if geared better.

May I make some suggestions?

Thanks a lot! And yeah, please make suggestions, I sense that there’re many things to improve.

Congrats on beating SR75. This weapon is a pain in the ass to build around.

I’m currently making builds for every 2H-sword and this guy is by far the most troublesome (i’m building for crucible tho). Forcewave with ele just doesnt match. Every time you try to improve your build you end up going Justicar and heavy fire because that path is far more profitable than ele. But at that point you can just drop this sword and go full fire forcewave with Shar’Zul, it is simply superior.

This is my theorycraft for now: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zD7blZ
First draft, before this one, also heavy into fire, failed miserably in crucible because of lack of single target dmg, hence this weird branching to Blades of Wrath. With 85%+ pierce conversion it is a monstrous single target nuke with Rune of Hagarrad.

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Thanks! And yeah, I too wanted to avoid Justicar, It’s just not really possible without sacrificing much.

Your draft looks neat apart from physical resist. And I always wanted to make something around Runebinder myself as well, so I’m probably gonna record this draft somewhere in my memory and try to replcate it later.

Runbinder is an interesting set but it’s very squishy. This is a variation of my first build (pierce tactician) i originally did with SR set: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWOk9yV
Kind of piano play but offensively it turned out to be all around good.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62ayxzm2

^This would be my take on it.

EDIT: BiS is probably something like this IMO - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZo69WkV

Shame you can’t fix OA, if not you can go bear king medal

EDIT: Regardless, you should try fateweaver’s.

It’s proc is very very powerful because the cooldown starts while the proc is active. This let’s you delay ghoul activation.

This is certainly an interesting suggestion, many points to think about. The only thing I don’t really enjoy here - low Physical resistance, but otherwise this looks really solid. Thanks again!

Just remember that with hard hitting debuffs and nems, physical resist really shines if you can get it pretty damn high.

In any case, if it were me, I would definitely include. Maybe you can try it and lmk? Curious to see how it does! :slight_smile:

I’ll certainly try that as soon as I get my hands on that Ravager’s helm!

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXmgPk2

Ey, that was then and for crucible :stuck_out_tongue:

@OP Congrats on your build!

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Nice build!

P.S: @Stupid_Dragon, take a look at this build. In our previous discussion about FW builds I mentioned elemental FW build concept.

I’m definitely stealing the Bonemonger idea.

Okay, so I tried this version and just made 3 runs of SR 75-76. Here’s my thoughts:

  • Your version is definetely has more average dps and kills things faster, but somehow didn’t succeed at beating max DPS (GI shows only 953k max dps while mine as you may see in the video was 1.065k)
  • It’s an enery hungry beast, I was drinking 4-8 energy potions per shard, most of those in the bossrooms
  • I’ve tweaked a little your build since I really hate these aetherial folk, and replaced most of vitality resist parts of augments with aether. As a result - I can no longer fear Anasteria, Alexander and the rest of this crowd, since they can’t really push my aether resist below 75%
  • Instead, Kuba, Fabius and Iron Maiden became my sworn enemies. I had nothing to fear from them with my version of the build and just facetanked them as they were nothing, but now I has been killed in 1v1 by Kuba 2 times and by Fabius 1 time
  • Overall, your version is more unstable, I sometimes get uncomfortable with how my health jumps from 100% to 50% and back 3 times per second. And I died at least one time per every shard, sometimes it was way more than just once in the bossrooms.

I think I’d stick with my version for now, but I really like your devotion setup. I guess I have to think about tweaking my devotions a little :slight_smile:

Thanks man!

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Thanks for taking the time to test out my suggestions. Much appreciated!

You’re welcome! Please come around if you have more suggestions towards improvement!

Might be worth mentioning that I typically build a spec which is excessively offensive, before slowly dialing up defense.

I find that if I do it the other way around, I get too comfortable with playing lazily, which I’m turn limits my piloting abilities.

Not trying to say that my build is better than yours here, just trying a suggestion for you to consider in your next theorycraft!

I’m looking forward to it

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Which build is that? I remember seeing a FW tactician build using SR set about 6 mos ago but can’t seem to find it in new forums.

was probably Pierce FW with nadaan