Hi,
Having noticed the creation of this subforum, I thought I’d get some mod build content started by writing about my characters.
This is a build showcase, not a handholding build guide, so there isn’t a leveling section or how I got my devotions the way they are.
However, if you are so inclined, all the info is there to reverse-engineer the build.
Rather than giving a cooking recipe-style build, this thread is more about why certain things work in GD, and why I made certain choices.
95% of this build can be done in vanilla as well, since the mod isn’t that different from it.
Some background info, feel free to skip:
- About me:
ARPGs have been one of my favorite game genres for a long time— I started in Diablo 1 and never stopped since then.
Most of the big titles I’ve played in some way or another, and once I’d worn a game out, I’d look to mods to reinvigorate the experience.
The mods I like are content-expanding, or ones that improve or change the gameplay in some way, preferably to raise the challenge.
I’m not a fan of mods that make the game easier outside of some quality-of-life features, and I rarely use 3rd party programs or cheats since I’m looking to expand my interest in a game, rather than diminish it.
- About my builds:
[SPOILER]One of the parts I enjoy the most in these games is to think up builds that I find fun to play and that are also effective. Usually I just play blind and read over the skill descriptions and see where that brings me.
After a few playthroughs I look through skill calculators and available databases to work out any ideas I have. For these reasons, I never follow builds others made, although I do look at build guides and showcases sometimes to see what else is out there.
Since I mostly play solo and I don’t trade with other players, I don’t care much about how competitive my builds are— I just like creating them and (sometimes) to write about them.
To me, it’s more about materializing an idea that I thought seemed interesting and seeing how it works in practice. Some work better than expected, others not as well, but I usually can the truly unfeasible builds at the skill calculator stage, which saves some time.
Typically I will try to squeeze every last drop of performance out of a build by looking up the optimal items in every slot, the best investment-return ratio for skill ranks and their ultimate levels, and so on.
I’ll rarely go for cookie-cutter builds that use the popular sets, although I’ve made some builds using them in the past. I don’t find the sets particularly interesting anymore, since some of them are just too strong.
Plus as a player who doesn’t trade, it’s often hard to get all the parts. So rather than the large sets, I prefer to use a mix of Epics and Legendaries that fit my builds.
As I got bored of the lack of penalties from dying in SC, I switched to HC a couple months back so all of my builds generally feature a balanced ratio of offense and defense. You won’t see any 9K HP builds here.
I might go back to SC later though, when I feel like making some dumb builds with 50+ points in Cunning or Spirit and glass cannon items.[/spoiler]
- How this build came to be:
I had an idea to make a Cadence character of some kind, so it had to be a Soldier.
When this character was created, the skill had 4 charges in the Cornucopia mod, which meant it triggered every 5th hit.
This made it immediately obvious that you needed high attack speed to get good damage out of it.
Another realization I had after some tests, was that Cadence counts attacks that hit multiple times with one click, each as a separate charge.
So it wasn’t hard to see why the build had to be a dual wield character, which made Nightblade the obvious secondary mastery.
Next I planned which items I wanted to use.
As I recently finished a Saboteur with the Deathmarked set, I didn’t want to go for that again and I wanted to try something else.
Since Cadence scaled pretty well at high levels, I wanted to see how strong a build I could make by aiming to stack as many +Soldier levels as I could get, rather than stacking damage.
The mastery has many passives which get boosted by the +skill levels as well, which is a side-benefit.
Another thing is that most BM builds scale off Piercing damage, so I also tried to see if I could make a build that was based on Physical damage instead.
Cadence, Markovian’s Advantage and Deadly Momentum all have high values of flat Physical damage, so I wanted to leverage those values and trigger them as often as possible with high attack speed.
When 1.0.0.5 hit, Cadence was massively boosted in damage and Cornucopia adopted their version instead. I haven’t done any hard tests, but I feel that the new Cadence is slightly stronger than the 5 hit Cadence they used, so that was good for this build.
However, there were some other changes as well. The sizable Attack Speed bonus from Cornucopia’s DA was removed, so I had to change some things to make up for that. And the Reaver’s Claws I was using had their Piercing ratio increased, plus the Cadence line gained Piercing % bonuses.
Because of the above, I changed the build to be fully Piercing instead.
- How this build works:
It’s Cadence + WPS. But everyone says that sucks, right? Not really, because the WPS provide extra hits, which means you get more Cadence procs in a time period.
The WPS aren’t the main damage dealer like Execute is in some other BM builds: they are here to improve your Cadence, and to provide some auxiliary damage.
The build focuses on the high flat damage values many of the Soldier skills have when they are high level, and to trigger them as often as possible through high attack speed.
As the WPS aren’t as important damage-wise in this build, they aren’t maxed out. And because you simply don’t have the points for it, since it’s a 50/50 mastery build.
Note that every WPS that uses both weapons counts as 2 hits for charging Cadence. So the exceptions are:
- Zolhan’s Technique, which only uses the main hand. But this is still taken simply because I have so much +skill to Soldier, and the -AS is useful.
- Amarasta’s Quick Cut, which counts as 3 hits.
The Soldier WPS seem to have slightly slower animations than the NB ones, but at high attack speeds it doesn’t matter that much, and I didn’t have the skill points to invest more in NB. It would’ve been nice to have more points in MA though, since the flat damage and -DA scale very well.
I have exactly 100% chance in my WPS, so every click hits multiple times except for when Zolhan’s procs. That way, Cadence triggers very often, which is what I’m really after.
I also use a Plaguebearer’s weapon in my alternate slot, which I switch to every few seconds to get a bit more -res against bosses.
- Offense:
Unbuffed -> all buffs on -> stats (with most buffs) -> damage breakdown
Its tooltip DPS is not particularly high, but the actual damage is higher than it seems because of the charge mechanic.
This build outperforms some of my other builds that had tooltip DPS in the 60-85K range.
The main damage comes from the Cadence line, and since this is used on every hit, I linked Blind Fury to it.
I also have Assassin’s Mark for the -resistances, which is linked to one of the WPS.
The Unknown Soldier cluster is mostly taken for the stats, but since Living Shadow is only one node away, I took it. It’s not that great though, even after its recent buff in the mod.
All these effects are automatic, which makes the build very easy to play for the most part: all you need to do is hold down the button to trigger the above, it rotates between the devotions automatically.
As for the skill distribution, since this build maxes both masteries, the remaining points are spread extremely thin even with a large amount of +skill.
So careful selection had to be made to get the most out of every point:
- Fighting Form is left at one point, because it doesn’t scale that well compared to others.
- Deadly Momentum scales very well, so it’s pumped as high as possible for the flat damage.
- Oleron’s Rage is left at 12, because its ultimate ranks don’t scale that well, surprisingly for an Exclusive skill.
- On the other hand, Fighting Spirit scales quite well and gains duration and activation chance in the higher ranks. Note that the recharge time begins when the buff wears off, so you can never have 100% uptime on it.
- Blade Trap is taken to lower enemy DA%. Coupled with the -DA from MA, you can get their values quite low. I only have 4 points in Blade Trap since the scaling gets worse after that.
- Night’s Chill provides further -res to Piercing.
- Anatomy of Murder at rank 11, since the 12th point starts to get the worse values.
- Dual Blades isn’t maxed because there weren’t enough points, and the other abilities give more DPS per point. If you really want to you can take the points from Anatomy to put in this.
- For the same reason, Shadow Strike doesn’t have its links activated either.
- Ring of Steel’s link is useful to have for its fumble chance. The transmuter’s petrify disables a bit longer than stun usually, but I’d rather save the skill point.
- Defense:
Since this is a HC build, I made sure to have a decent HP pool and I managed to get all resistances capped.
However, this build is not a tank. It doesn’t have high armor nor a shield or high Physical resistance, damage absorption, etc.: all the things that make a good tank.
This build relies on the HP pool plus life steal to survive.
Which is supplemented by:
- Decent dodge bonuses from Shadow Dance rank 7 (scaling goes down from there).
- Health regeneration (Pneumatic Burst transmuter, Judicator rings, Behemoth).
- Slowing enemy attacks (Nidalla’s Hidden Hand, Veil of Shadow, Zolhan’s Technique).
- Stun and Fumble from Ring of Steel.
- Heal from P. Burst.
- Blade Barrier, although I actually never use this.
- Devotions:
The ones this build aims for are:
- Oleron: Blind Fury is great and the nodes are unbeatable.
- Behemoth: ol’ reliable, still good after nerfs.
- Assassin’s Blade: Assassin’s Mark for -res. This used to be -75%, imagine how broken that was.
- Blades of Nadaan: Attack Speed, and more importantly: increased Piercing ratio.
The rest that are taken are either to fill the requisites or to pad defenses.
- Crab: gives 3 purple and the nodes give decent defenses. Elemental Barrier is actually on quite often, and the mod’s version gives a fair amount of HP regen when it is on.
Behemoth and Oleron not displayed.
