Hi guys!
Just finished the game on normal as single class arcanist (50 mastery, AAR build). Had a lot of fun playing single class arcanist, but i cant decide on the second class for arcanist to go for elite and ultimate.
Ive watched a lot of videos/forum threads, but i just cant grasp the synergy of all those second classes.
Can anyone please describe what benefits can an arcanist get by choosing each of second classes.
Thank you in advance,
P.s. if any dev is reading this, like to thank you for this wonderfull game, its been quite a long time since last time i “lost” all weekend playing a single game without eating and sleeping :rolleyes:
Well guys i am gratefull for your opinions, but i really want some details on the tradeoffs and benefits.
For example:
Soldier - you get more hp, but less dps stats…
And so on on each of them subclasses.
These are the benefits you get from each class to Boost your Arcanist
Demolitionist:
Blast Shield (Great Defensive Skill)
Black Water Cocktail w/ High Potency Transmuter (Good Damage Reduction for 2 skill points) (Can add in Agonizing Flames for good Source of Flat Resist Reduction)
Flame Touched (Great Source of Flat Offensive Ability)
Flash Bang (Good Crowd Control and Debuff of Enemies Defensive Ability)
Thermite Mine (Good Source of % Resist Reduction for Fire and Lightning Damage)
Vindictive Flame (Good Source of Total Speed. Also gives a little Defensive ABility and Health Regen)
Nightblade:
Pneumatic Burst (Great Heal can add in Defensive Ability & Dodge Chance with Shadow Dance)
Blade Barrier (oh Shit Button)
Anatomy of Murder (% Cunning & % Damage to Humans)
Phantasmal Armor (Adds Armor and Pierce Resists & Freeze Reduction)
Veil of Shadows (Decent Slow & Offensive Ability Debuff to Enemies)
Shaman:
Mogdrogens Pact (Energy Regen and Health Regen, Can add great % Health with Heart of the wild)
Wendigo Totem (Great Heal)
Storm Caller’s Pact (Best Source of Independent Crit Damage in Game)
Occultist:
Curse of Fraility (Great Slow and Can add % Elemental, Vitality & Poison/Acid Resist Reduction with Vulnerability)
Blood of Dreeg ( Good flat Heal and Great Source of Health Regen. Can get good source of Physical Resists by adding Aspect of the Guardian)
Summon Familiar with Mend Flesh (Adds a heal not sure how good as I never use it)
Possession (Has nice Damage Absorption)
Soldier:
Military Conditioning (%Physique & % Health)
Field Command (Offensive Ability, Defensive Ability & % Armor)
Warcry (Damage Reduction)
Oleron’s Rage (% Offensive Ability & Movement Speed)
Fighting Spirit (Great Passive for Burst Damage)
Decorated Soldier & Scars of Battle (Resists & Armor Absorption)
I dunno why run a full scale analysis. Soldier has some neat passives but that’s all. Shaman has Mogdrogen’s Pact and that’s all. These are defensive options that don’t provide anything to the build but defense. Nightblade has Pneumatic burst that is both an offensive, defensive buff plus sustain, also Veil of Shadows for some extra melee defense. Occultist technically shoul’ve been the way to go judging from how the end game gear is (lots of the +AAR gear is also +%aether and +%chaos), but in reality there’s only Doom Bolt on Occultist side (that’s converted to aether/vitality with the two Albrecht’s Duality rings), as well as some +%vitality to complement Disintegration. The thing is, if you don’t have all of this gear beforehand Nightblade would be better than Occultist.
But actually the most synergetic class for AAR is Demolitionist. Advantages:
Blast Shield to help you avoid being insta-gibbed.
Flame Touched will increase the fire part of the ray
1 point into Vindictive Flame will also help you avoid being overrun by fast melee enemies, while Ulzuin’s Wraith will attempt to auto-CC the enemies and instakill weak ones. It’s also very synergetic because it’s fire/lightning, and most aether devotions are actually aether/lightning.
Flashbang is an excellent debuff/CC ability
Occultist might be better if you had the items, but without them it’s Demo hands down for me.
P.S. my hardcore Sorc is exactly AAR and I had the same dilemma as you just three days ago.
I also agree that demo is one of the best synergies (my 1st/main character is also an AAR sorcerer), especially if you want to continue to run an AAR build. Stupid Dragon’s assessment is a very good, I just wanted to add a few things…
Flame touched is not only good for the fire portion of the but the +OA is really nice with the % OA boost from inner focus.
I put a few more points then 1 into VF as the total speed (helps both casting speed and run speed) is nice! I like to play with max run speed so you can mess around with the points here to potentially cap your run speed. Also with no natural heal (unless you get devotions) the increased HP regen helps some… Won’t save you’re life, but does help…
If you find golemborn greaves (typical boots most people run) putting one point into temper helps as well (especially thanks to the +3 for the boots). As a caster, armor is usually hurting and temper does help for only 1 point…
Thermite mines are another option, although can be tricky to deploy. The fire resist debuff (not shown on grim calc, but is there) is nice, especially as OFF’s fire resist debuff doesn’t work on bosses. I believe it is a “flat” debuff so if you do have other -X fire (or all) resistance there can be stacking issues… Albrecht’s duality rings make the thermite mines secondary skill, hellfire mine, quite powerful as well. If you have two (or even one plus clairvoyant’s mantle and robe depending on rolls) they will convert that chaos damage to aether, which is usually boosted significantly in an AAR build.
Flame Touch + flash bang (DA debuff)+inner spirit=nice OA for crits. Elemental balance + disintegration (only good on AAR, but still…) = nice for crit damage…
If you find golemborn greaves (typical boots most people run) putting one point into temper helps as well (especially thanks to the +3 for the boots). As a caster, armor is usually hurting and temper does help for only 1 point…
Wow, I haven’t considered this despite wearing Golemborn. Nice one.
I find Thermites unappealing for AAR, although I really loved them on the CT build. Tricky or not, they take time to deploy, time better spent evaporating your enemy. And I definitely won’t go 50\50 just for Hellfire (although idea of running Blood Orb of Chthon to make AAR and Devastation into aetherchaos skills amuses me, in that case Hellfire makes sense). 50/32 is a sweet spot.
I hesitated on the hellfire mines as well for a while especially as you can’t get mastery points back, but in the end I decided I wanted the attribute points/hp/energy from the 18 more mastery points. That actually adds a BASE of 63 each to physique and cunning, 54 spirit, 432 HP (609 with phys) and 252 (360 with spirit) energy… Its the only time I’ve actually backed up my character to test it out, but never converted back as it worked well for me.
I also am using two Albrecht’s Duality rings to convert all of that chaos damage to aether. They do some nice damage as I have about+1700% aether damage… They last for 60 seconds and doesn’t really take long to deploy. I just tap the button twice to start the battle and let them go. I also attached Aether Fire to them and they seem to proc that nicely! When I was running meteor shower, they were nice to for kiting as I could lead boss over them and trigger meteor shower… So good for just clearly trash, throw them out as you run by and between them and the procs they trigger most trash dies. Although most of time I don’t run as there is a chance those trash mobs drop some nice loot…rare, but it happens… I did back track one time and found an open hand of mercy just laying on the ground, I’m assuming form a trash mob as I will stop for heroes…
I have a PRM based arcanists (use druid class only for health) and I’d like to have a second arcanists based on the aether ray as main attack, is there any nice build arround it? I know I’m missing some aether items, but I van get them if I know this build is posible (farming and tradding).
You have options for building Aether ray, you can either go the pure chaos ray via Blood Orb of C’thon to turn Fire to Chaos, plus the transmutor to turn Aetehr into Chaos, to turn all the damage on the ray to Chaos, with a smidge of Vitality. This lets you focus just one stat purely, and triple down on Chaos pretty much.
Thats the basic idea, you have Doombolt, “Aether” Ray, and Devistation, with Blood of Dreeg + Giants + Lizard + Wendigo for sustain. I’d probably run the Clarivoyant set, although the stupid shoulders turning Chaos into aether would smudge down your DPS a little bit, but that set bonus is too tough to give up.
OOORRRR. You can just be a Sorc, and focus on Fire/Aether.
Aetherfire gear is mostly for CT, while most of the AAR gear is aetherchaos. So convert fire to chaos with Blood Rite to turn AAR into aetherchaos skill with a dip of vitality. My only concern is that Codex of Lies still might be better.
So your irony is completely uncalled for. Why it’s surprising that something that works for the warlock would also work for the sorcerer?
The chest piece also converts chaos to aether so if you have both you’d be converting 30-50% (depending on rolls) of your chaos to aether (at least the chaos damage that wasn’t originally converted from fire damage).
Not really any other decent +% chaos gear out there though… Maybe find some nice greens with good rolls? Could still you the clairvoyant’s hat and the nice +1 all skills…
You use Codex of Lies (which was actually my first legendary drop ever…never forget your first time they say…:rolleyes:) over Aldanar’s Vanity? The crit damage and resist reduction is nice…probably does more direct damage… But the +1 skills for demo/arcan is pretty big. Not too hard to max AAR without the +3 from the Codex. Also AV’s proc popping up devastation and/or mirror off CD is awesome…
Have you tried a blood orb on a sorcerer? They don’t have an innate heal ability. Sure you can get some via devotions, but it just seem that HP cost to use the blood orb would take too much of a toll on a sorcerer who doesn’t usually have a ton of HP to start with…
Actually I do use Aldanar’s Vanity atm, because I can’t cope with energy cost for now, even had to remove skillpoints, therefore I don’t see the point using Codex of Lies, at least for now. I’m sure it’s possible to hit 26/16 without Codex of Lies, but it’s also good because of -%aether resistance, which will allow me to use Agrivix instead of Necrosis. I haven’t tried Blood Orb yet, because I lost my only one when one of my characters died. I expect to cover the health cost with Vindictive Flame plus Lizard. Should be enough.
Do you know when resists are applied when damage is converted? For example, if you used thermite mines which have -fire resist, would that resist still be used or is it lost as the damage is converted first to chaos?
There is some nice gear to support the fire to chaos with Sorcerer… I think I have a blood orb, I might have to try it out tonight. I really like my warpfire converting cold (well 89% of it) from OFF to fire though… If all fire is converted to chaos, may not even need OFF now either… But herald’s apocalypse of chaos meteors sound fun… Although would probably switch to peerless eye to make up for the loss of +1 skill on AV. Or craft the essence of grim dawn… Can make up for the +1 skills of warpfire by completing clairvoyant’s set when switching to the wand… Albrecht’s Duality rings should still work well as the converted chaos won’t convert again and just get boosted from the + on the rings…hmmm…I’m intrigued now…
edit: damn, not sure how I forgot I don’t use that clairvoyant’s hat any more now that I have an outcast’s secret… hmmm… will have to make up those skill points elsewhere…
Although would probably switch to peerless eye to make up for the loss of +1 skill on AV. Or craft the essence of grim dawn… Can make up for the +1 skills of warpfire by completing clairvoyant’s set when switching to the wand… Albrecht’s Duality rings should still work well as the converted chaos won’t convert again and just get boosted from the + on the rings…hmmm…I’m intrigued now…