Hell I run through Ulty with sub 2k DA, and sometimes barely scratch 2k OA. I play self found. And yes I twink, and turnpiphead has stated before he has a small army of toons going through at the same time. He should be able to find gear overall to twink up to beginning of ultimate.
My DPS is also generally around 5-10k at the beginning of ulty so you can’t really say I’m just killing everything faster!
I think Turniphead’s main issues are
item gear choices (he overrates all blues, even though good yellows and greens are often better at the time)
he maxes too many offensive active skills and not enough passives
specifically for this cadence build, undervalues by HEAPS the need for attack speed and a very fast attacking weapon
Why don’t you turn this guy into a elemental cadence battlemage? you can get 50% conversion from the cadence mutator, plus the IEE in arcanist can get you around 80% ish
You still need to stack more attack speed.
You still need to itemise better
You still need to get rid of callidors and pick up Olexas flash freeze instead, but only after passives that give OA and DA. leave OFF at 2 or 3 points until then!
Here’s an updated grimcalc based on an elemental cadence build. http://grimcalc.com/build/1006-5XzqF2
you have 75% conversion of physical to elemental not including putting a blessed steel in your weapon.
When you pump arcanist to 50, you can get another 15% conversion to (cold I think).
I’ve redone your devotions too. Focused more around elemental damage. Obviously need to finish rowans crown next before taking other stuff (probably some defensive constellations next).
You have no idea what you are talking about. I played self found battlemage all the way to ultimate on softcore with no death and that was stupidly easy. Trying to help someone is okay, making stupid statements left and right when you don’t know sh!t is just stupid.
Cadence + Callidor’s Tempest Battlemage is op because you can animation cancel Cadence with Callidor’s Tempest and effectively ignore attack speed and cast speed, and still cast everything a lot faster than you would otherwise playing pure Cadence or pure Callidor’s Tempest, and you also get to cast 2 skills instead of one for even more damage.
Has anyone made a guide about it on this forum? I have honestly no idea, I don’t read guides, but just because there isn’t a guide about something doesn’t mean sh!t sucks or isn’t possible. So few people write guides, let alone people who know what they are doing, it’s time consuming and people would rather spend their time elsewhere.
That doesn’t work, Cadence discord transmutor is applied as 50% BEFORE further transmutions.
Which means you have 1000 physical damage. You get 500 elemental, 500 physical. IEE is 25%. That is 25% applied to the 500, not 100. So you get 625 elemental, 375 physical. Arcanist can potentially try and push for 100% conversion, but it isn’t easy, and tends to depend on procs, and the discord transmutor is doing nothing in that instance. Also, the Discord Transmutor is ONLY on the Cadence proc, to boot, the other two attacks get no benefit at all.
Also, OFF is a max or ignore skill, all aspects of it scale massively with rank. Damage, area, and duration all scale on those same ranks you put into it, and it devalues heavily later in the game as enemies start developing CC resistance. Ultimate ranks of it are not really needed, but you at least need to 12/12 it.
Ultimately, for every person arguing that he should keep going. You are telling someone having very distinct issues to keep trying rather than re-rolling it into something significantly stronger. CAN he do it? Yes. Should he? No. I’ve made a ton of characters, and dragged most of them into elite at least, if not ultimate, and made a few battlemages trying to make it work. Every battlemage I’ve made feels like a half-assed something else. Sure, it worked, but… it felt half-assed. CT? Sorc does it a million times better, to the point that CT Sorc is still the strongest class this patch, having been mostly uneffected by the bugs that have been wrecking other classes in ultimate by the massive difficulty up. Cadence, be it gun or melee? Witchblades are walking tall, at build numero uno. Blade Arc, while a strong leveling tool, is generally considered weaker later in the game as the demand for AoE falls off compared to single target DPS.
From the OP’s earlier statements, what he wants is a melee attack focused character, not spells. Warder, Witchblade, or Blademaster all do this significantly better than arcanist, it’s just a fact. About the only thing Arc and Soldier bring together is durability. As I said before, it’s really good at not dying. That is a distinct fact about it. Not much else is worth it about the combo though.
I really just want a Soldier who has good dps with OFF and Sphere as the only backup.
I heard soldier was strong - Maybe I was wrong.
Really appreciate all feedback though. Looks like some people have succeeded with this class combination.
But with full Blade arc, his dps is bad, and as a previous poster said: he’s right I do depend on blues too much. I don’t even pick up yellows, but I do use a few greens.
I’m too focused on blues and I think my weapons crap.
Also you will probably not need sphere. Miror, nulification, Inner focus are things that you need. To make your life as simple as possible go physical dmg cadence.
so you can’t really say I’m just killing everything faster! 
