Most of these are still in the leveling phase - I’ve only hit 100 on Purifier, Druid, Trickster, and Tactician.
I had a Warder way back in vanilla so I’m tending more towards Archon. This seems like a good pairing mainly for Celestial Presence’s easy bleed/phys resist reduction. I’ll probably make it a Phys/Bleed build, since you can’t use ADctH on DoT bleed damage.
My only hesitation is gear support - Warder can utilize Guillotine and get the lovely +2 skills to both masteries, and I’m always partial to + skills. I see most Archons using Troll Bonecrusher, which does have awesome base damage though.
Good option for classes but I will add another - Warlord for 2H Bleeding Arc. Still my first choice is Warder. Shaman have - RR, nice exclusive skill and best bleeding gear is focused towards that class, especially Massacre relic.
For Warder you can go Savagery+Blade Arc on CD for massive bloody ticks. Or you can try spam BA ofc.
+1 Warder from me. Oathkeeper outside of guardians’ resistance reduction lacks strong sources of bleed ( bleed EoR is still a meme). Soldier has Blade arc on the other hand.
If only the guardians had base bleeding damage they would be worth pumping just like bleed blade spirits, but what can you do ¯_(ツ)_/¯ .
Why though? Care to explain? I have the impression Blade Arc or Forcewave are almost must-haves for bleed builds due to their innately high bleed damage. I assume an Archon would simply go with Savagery, but it seems to me it would depend more on getting specific equipment, of which I have no idea.
Thanks for the input guys - good food for thought.
I guess there are just so many goodies in Soldier that make it a great pairing all around. My Tactician is easily my strongest char now after optimizing it (probably not elite forum standard, but SR 75-76 is a breeze) and, aside from the obvious benefits of Inquisitor, a lot of this is down to Soldier. It just makes you sturdy and not have to worry about things like armor or armor abosrbs, not to mention health/physique boosts.
On the other hand my DW cold Trickster is getting his ass kicked in SR. I got to 70 w/o too much pain, but I think I’m going to quit now. It’s just too painful. And I’ve realized Grava’Thul is an unbelievable pain in the ass for meele.
Anyway, it’d be good to see the argument in favour of Archon. I love the idea of combining the resist shred of Celestial Presence with Swarm, but maybe that’s the only major perk.
I don’t always pick a build based on endgame potential however, pretty much all my picks so far have been thematic/experimental - I was well aware Infiltrator would likely make a much stronger DW cold build, but I already have a rune Infiltrator in the works, not to mention have used Inq like 3 times already… but maybe I should quit doing this if I want to avoid pain. I kinda feel like I’ve wasted time on my Trickster now.
You have “enough” RR with Shaman so you don´t need to invest in Celestial Presence.
(Technically, there is no such such thing as “enough RR” but there are only a few enemies with really high Bleeding RR so the ROI for skill points is better when taking Soldier. Imho).
Warder better. You can do cunning dump and not care about physique requirement, also Soldier has better sustain and bleed sources. And I HATE playing char with 118-120% ms, like a snail crawling.
