This is my attempt in creating an-offensive based caster that utilizes Soldier passives only for sustain. It was made for one purpose alone, and that is to spite the current state of the meta with regards to the approach in Caster play.
1pt. Panacetti’s (auto-attack) - to proc Elemental Storm for Elemental Resist Shred
Max Devastation w/ Aetherfire
Max Trozan Sky Shard w/ Meteorshower
Well, testing out the waters in Ultimate now, and the good news is that it’s not getting hit hard… yet.
But what disappoints me more is the lack of damage the Max’d Devastation and TSS offers with fairly mature Devotion Proc’s >> combo’d with flat+% resist shred from OFF and Elemental Storm, It takes a while to down a Hero. What ticks me off more is that my 1pt in all for skills in Panacetti’s are clearing out trash mobs faster than my AoE’s? If it’s having trouble with DPS this early in Ultimate, this will fail hard once I start pushing towards harder baddies…
Where did this Theorycraft go wrong? Can someone offer advice?
Dont pick soldier if you dont use a shield. Necromanser is lightyears ahead in everething for Arcanist regardless of dmg type.
TSS drop-off after lvl 75, at level 90 its borderline useless and at 100 it cant even be used as trash clearer unless you boost it with Trosan items.
Your devotions is a mess and dosent fit equiped items at all.
OA is way too Low, you need one thousand on top of what you have .
This was intended to be an Arcanist Skill heavy build. The Soldier Class was only picked for the HP%,regen & resists passives, circuit breaker and the generous flat bonus to both OA and DA. Add this to MSP’s %damage absorption and was supposed to decrease the need of Survivability-focused constellations enabling for more offensive options. I saw what you mean with the Necro on my Reaper-test. It’s disgusting how much damage output a mediocrely geared Necro gear can do in Ultimate in comparison to an Arcanist, who I consider is decently geared; but that doesn’t really help me out in salvaging this character, who is actually taking damage much better than I expected in Early Ultimate.
I’ve seen some TSS builds mid 2016, I haven’t really paid much attention to research since I steamrolled through Vet and Elite through resist shredding (filling the screen with Elemental Storms + OFF) before casting Devastation w/ Aetherfire and TSS w/ Meteor procs. I was not aware that these fell off hard at later levels.
It was meant to be an offensive set up. While, I know there are better procs like Reckless Tempest vs. Aetherfire. I’m currently spread thin as I invested on on Elemental Storm mainly for the flat resist shred. - - What would you suggest I use as procs instead?. Also can you clarify what you said regarding the devotions not synergizing well with equipment?
Yup, I’m aware of the OA deficiency, I do plan to re-gear eventually but I just didn’t expect this much damage drop when I got to Ultimate.
Looks very hybrid mage-tank melee rather than the caster type play I’m going for. I’ll look into damage conversions tonight when I do my reading. I’ve avoided this subject before cuz I din’t want to get involved in the messy science.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t there a time when you couldn’t maintain Star-Pact or cast Devastation when you had a shield, I forgot which? Was this changed? I remember contemplating about using a shield before.
This was intended to be an Arcanist Skill heavy build. The Soldier Class was only picked for the HP%,regen & resists passives, circuit breaker and the generous flat bonus to both OA and DA. Add this to MSP’s %damage absorption and was supposed to decrease the need of Survivability-focused constellations enabling for more offensive options. I saw what you mean with the Necro on my Reaper-test. It’s disgusting how much damage output a mediocrely geared Necro gear can do in Ultimate in comparison to an Arcanist, who I consider is decently geared; but that doesn’t really help me out in salvaging this character, who is actually taking damage much better than I expected in Early Ultimate.
Menhir will dosent work with caster offhand, so you wont get any breakers from soldier. HP gain from Spectral binding is almost the same as from soldier passive, you aslo get a bonus to OA. And you can invest in siphon souls for sustain and Mark of torment and Decay offer much better survivability that the whole Soldier class.
Then I guess it’s back to the Theoryboard for me and do some experimentation later for re-gears. Will probably roll with a shield that has some sort of cooldown reduction.
What’s your take on the effectiveness of Elemental Storm as a resist shred source?
After hours of experimentation, this is the best I can do to salvage my Thematic Character. By re-gearing, mainly with the use of the grimtools, I was able to reach 2.2k DA/2.8k OA+ get more +skills to make the build more flexible. Also got a lot of “When hit…” crowd-control effects, which is pretty golden
It keeps it’s integrity as a Offensive Devotion-based Caster that can take a decent amount of hits before going down.
Filling up the screen with Elemental Storms via PRM semi-maxed.
OFF + Devastation w/ Arcane Bomb + spammable CT w/ Eldritch Fire procs: RR Combo
TSS w/ Meteor Shower to clean up.
It’s a lot of cooldown micro-management though, but that’s what I like about playing casters; they should be interactive.
At the very least the damage output is now something I can work with; and the stats will only get better as I upgrade my gear for end-game.
I also suspect something was converting my Elemental Damage to something else, because I have lower +skills and lower Elemental damage in this reiteration, but my clear-speed is noticeably faster using new devotion procs that haven’t been levelled. OR… I might just be imagining things.
I reckon I should be able to clear Ultimate on my Battlemage now, but doing AoM/Fabius/Iron Maiden/Superbosses/Mad-Queen are out of the question.
What people are trying to tell you is that Battlemage works way better as a physical shield based build. If you insist on using elemental and aether damage you will get much higher value out of basically any other mastery in the game.
Menhir will requires a shield or the 2h weapon and you have neither. Outside of that you are using one horribly inefficient passive for health Regen and two more generic passive abilities, the equivalents of which exist in other masteries.
Lol, I know I did ask this when people advised me to use a shield, remember?
But I have 2 AoE’s: a TSS, which I’m on 95% of the time, and a swap with an Off-Hand to just to cast Devastation.
I am quite aware of this. The most obvious pick for me before engaging in this project was a Sorceror. The BWC debuff stacked with another RR debuff devotion skill pretty much eliminated the need for Elemental Storm, which could be used to develop another High Damage AoE proc like Reckless Tempest. Further more it’s toggled passive bonuses synergize well with Arcanist (in terms of dmg).
But I was going for an HC-viable caster at the time, and I didn’t feel that Sorc didn’t have the natural stats that fit the bill. The HC sorc builds at that time’s patch version, when I made this character, were natural tanks masquerading as a caster, exploiting the power of BWC and Devastation combo, as they stood smack dab in the middle of their own AoE’s; using the occasional Flashbang and OFF for utility use only.
I’m pretty sure I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike of this meta, which was why I made this toon the way it is. It was a trade off I was willing to make to prove to my own stubborn self that it can be done.
Played like a proper mage, but sturdy enough not to get 1- 5 shotted. Of course, I acknowledge that it will be an entirely different experience once I start dealing with Nemesis(s), if I ever choose to.
These are the “Fun vs. Efficient” choices that players choose when playing games. Something Crate seems to have s%#& on when they decided that everyone needed to be walking tanks to play through this game with their sanities intact.
Pretty much everything can be done, but there are only so many optimal options you can take.
Soldier is all about stacking armor, physical damage and using a shield. You have caster armor, no investment in overguard and you can’t use your Devastation anyway.
Going with your original setup would allow you to use Blast Shield. That, together with the Iskander set would give you enough tankiness to survive being in melee range. Check out Jov’s Fire Walk with me build to learn how to tank with a caster.
One way to make soldier work is to take Beronath Reforged together with the new Devastation-enabling shield. This combo converts all of your devastation damage to physical, which allows you to take the heavy soldier gear that boosts physical damage. That’s how you can stack high armor and get the pretty graphics of spells AND feel like a true battlemage. It will also convert all sources of Frost/Fire/Electro burn into Physical Trauma DOT and also converted Olexa into pure physical nuke, which reduces physical damage in turn. This synergy is excellent.
What you have currently is a smoking pile of crap that relies on the high physical resist of the shield for tankiness.
The soldier passives you have give you little - the shield block portion is weak without heavy investment into it. Literally if replace soldier with Demo with your current setup you will get more damage and more survivability. Flash bang to debuff, blast shield as a circuit breaker, cocktail as DPS option on top of doing great aoe damage and mines to boost the damage of your procs.
Hello! Dear OP, maybe it’s time to rethink your approach. The null investment into shield related skills gets you very little value over using an offhand. Also, the build path you chose is far from optimal for your selected masteries. While I also enjoy pulling out non-meta builds, this venue you are pursuing is probably not going to work, at least if you expect to achieve a somewhat competitive character to beat all or most of the content.
I think the advice to respec into a phys caster using beronath is actually really good for a caster battlemage. The rationale is basically switch to soldier gear which gives you phys dmge modifiers, plus soldier skills and overall tankiness. Your devotions should change accordingly, either looking for phys damage or elemental procs and phys rr. With beronath reforged all the flat elemental damage you apply will convert to physical and be modified by phys multipliers. That will result in a very tanky character played as a caster. Mighy be worth to give it a try!
I will consider the Physical Dmg Caster approach, but I will have to look into conversions, as this will be my first experience using the mechanic and am not at all familiar with it.
Or I’ll probably scrap this toon and restart as a Sorcerer. I made this concept a while back when, when there was limited gear to provide the defensive stats, which could support the sustain of the build without the defense-focused devotions.
With new components/augments/gear from AOM you now have the flexibility of making an offense oriented Sorc, and still get a decent DA/at least ~10k HP/decent natural HP regen/and a butt-load of armor.
Just feels bad, as I actually enjoyed this HC run, got pretty far and have it fail on me at this point… wanted to salvage it as best I could.
I used your suggestion as a base and tried optimizing both build and gear-wise. Simulated it on a test toon able to equip Beronath; and I tried experimented with the gears (Spellscourge Ammy + Shield & Krieg Set)
OA and Survivability just went through the roof… Loosing the 12% CD reduction from Starpact, didn’t hurt as much as I thought, and my DPS just rocked after. I won’t give up my Devotion nukes for Defensive ones though, that is what makes or breaks my thematic identity. I’ve decided that If close to 3k Armor, 2.5 DA and ~30% damage absorption w/ Toll’s Blood and Chariot isn’t enough to sustain me on a caster with Menhir’s Will and Overguard; then I should probably die altogether and shoot myself.
Was depressing to lose my Skyshard Nuke, but getting Bulwark in exchange for it was gold, especially when stacked with MSP. Was even experimenting with 3 Flesh Hulks on how much dmg I was receiving, was liking what I saw.
First I need to find these damned Legendaries; then level my B.M. to 94. Good stuff guys! Thanks for all the input. At the very least, I think this is the extent of how much this build concept can be optimized without resulting to true tank, though the stats say otherwise.
I’m honestly still confused as to what you were trying to accomplish with your previous build. You wanted to use pretty much every single Arcanist skill, as well as every offensive devotion you could, while picking Soldier for some tankiness despite apparently refusing to BE an actual tank? Like you want to feel safe but not TOO safe? With the goal of just spamming spells everywhere?
Regardless, there is definitely no gear out there that promotes that kind of “use every Arcanist skill” build, and gear is the name of the game. The Elemental to Physical conversion is your best shot as others have described, as this essentially turns all the Arcanist spells into the same damage type (Physical) and keeps their flashiness while actually being focused and benefited by Soldier’s Break Morale. Get Assassin’s Dagger and Ring of the Black Matriarch for more Physical resist shred. You can still keep the flashy devotions; in fact you can skip Arcane Bomb/Eldritch Fire/Elemental Storm and get the even flashier ones like Leviathan or Tempest (since you won’t care about Elemental RR shred anymore).
