I have about 1100h played on our beloved GD. The first half was on DAIL/Grimquest mods. Since AoM, I came back to “vanilla” exclusively. And 2 days ago, I finally bought the Crucible.
I have a few builds I’d like to share. They’ve all passed the Campaign “Exam” (kill Lokarr, Master of Flesh and all the Nemesis on the way) and I’d like to test and tweak them to at least be able to farm 100-150 Crucible.
As a Crucible noob, I have many questions:
I is there a detailed guide for HL Crucible farming? I only found one for leveling toons.
Is there a tribute meta? I mean, for all the defence buffs you can buy.
Is there a build meta? I read on forums that S&B tanks with healing and DoT Casters are best? Still the case?
What is the main focus when building for Crucible? for defence / attack / QoL ?
When you see crucible “150 or 170 viable”, is it with or without buffs?
Are there class combinations to avoid? I see Mage Hunter isn’t popular in the dedicated thread for crucible builds.
or archetypes (dual gun/wield for instance?
And anything else you might feel useful. Thanks for the help and your time.
None yet for 170 cause it’s still debatable whether you really want to farm 170 or just use it as a test for your builds. I’m personally on the don’t farm it side.
for 150, it’s 2 buffs 1 banner. You can find the usage on Drizzto’s guide. For 170 it’s also one of the debated things. Some want 2, 3, 4 buffs. Some use almost all tributes and get all 4 buffs plus one banner (usually vanguard) to use up 98 tributes including 150 skip. The thing with the current buffs is that what buffs you use will also determine how you build your character. If you use Ulo, you will be content with little overcap or even uncapped on some resistances.
The best build is pretty much subjective. Defense oriented players and newbies would want to use S&B and kiting/DoT casters cause those are the safer builds. As of the release of 1.0.6.0, offense players and some crucible veterans will probably prefer the fast clearing builds, which spans from dw melee, 2h autoattack and some casters. Superfluff’s newer builds and my most recent build are perfect examples of these builds. I won’t recommend these to players that are very new to cruci, though cause they will require the experience and knowledge of how the waves operate so they can be piloted effectively.
Pretty much depends on what you think is the best on question 3. Personally I would recommend going for QoL for your first few builds until you get really familiar with the waves. I’ll stress out that defense is very much a part of QoL in my dictionary, so yeah QoL and defense. Just don’t put too much on defense cause you won’t deal any damage if you do that. Once you get the groove of cruci then feel free to build pure damage builds that deal a shitton of damage.
it’s with buffs. The number of buffs/banners depend on the poster. The poster will generally indicate it him/herself if it is viable without buffs/banners, but the guy who constantly does that (JoV) isn’t playing anymore so right now every cruci viable build is with buffs.
Unpopular classes are either uninteresting or bad. Mage hunter isn’t bad but there isn’t really anything so unique that mage hunter can do compared to other classes (imo). This is the same case for all the classes for s&b physical soldier. You build them all the same way so only one build is really needed. The second case is where the class is just bad. Example is Defiler. Don’t think we need an explanation for that class.
As for archetypes, all are viable right now (thanks for the 2h rise, Crate). It’s mostly a case by case basis on what is viable or not but all archetypes have viable builds right now, though casters are probably the easiest to build along with krieg dk/battlemage.
Forgot about these three. Was just thinking of the classic SB, 2h, dw, caster in my answer. BTW, some channeling builds (DE, Flames) are viable, just AAR isn’t.
As a Crucible noob, I can recommend getting the defensive banner and fully upgrading it. It restores HP, grants DA (and probably other defense stats) and can save you from almost everything. Of course you can buy the buffs for tributes, which are really helpful. Also, remember to have capped resists.
I’ve seen some videos of cabalists and occasionally conjurer pet builds doing 170 with buffs. The 1.0.6.0 blessing/banner buffs really gave pets an edge. I’ve piloted 2 conjurer pet builds through 170 myself so far.
The only trouble I’ve really had so far is that pets get decimated by Aleksander’s meteor and all the other aether crap getting thrown around, but that’s more due to my difficulty obtaining the proper pet aether resists.
I quote Drizzto’s guide: “Vanguard banner level 3 (25 tribute) + 2 blessing (24 tribute) + raise the stack (15 tribute) -> 64 total tribute used, meanwhile a 100-150 clear reward you for 66.”
Is it still up to date ?
The builds I intended to try:
S&B CDR Aether Spellbinder;
S&B Aether Ritualist;
Full Runebinder 2H ranged Mage Hunter;
Physical S&B Commando (Full Markovian);
Full Harbinger 2H Ranged Pyromancer;
StrongHold (ex-Aegis) Commando;
DoT Poison Warlock.
Which one should I start with, to get used to the pace and wave sequence ?
Pet Conjurers are absolutely safe to farm 100-150 with 3 blessings and no banners (perhaps could do 2 blessings, but why risking), without MI/greens but with Mythical gear.
On builds: without grimtools it’s going to be hard to tell cause some things that look ridiculous will be viable if built properly. But I can probably provide some general insights on the concepts.
Spellbinder: CDR, Aether and Spellbinder are often the recipe to crucible success but I don’t know if s&b will be good at that considering you lose devastation and you don’t have dw/2h damage. Will surely survive cruci but will be slow compared to established caster/dw binders.
Ritualist: I think the binder will be hard, Ritualist more so. Shaman doesn’t have aether nor s&b support. Probably won’t be viable.
Runebinder 2h mage hunter: caster with runes will surely work but pure autoattacker will need a good amount of testing before you’ll get to a good spot. This will probably be one of those builds that will be fine if optimized but trash before you reach that point. I recommend tactician (check my profile) or Deceiver if you want an easier to build 2h runebinder autoattack build.
Markovian mando: go double blitz. Cadence versions are very slow from what I heard. Warborn is a lot better at that.
Harbinger 2h ranged: can’t really comment on this but the doom bolt version by sir spanksalot is there if you ever fail on ranged.
Aegis mando: fuck stronghold. And purifier is better than mando because censure.
Poisonlock - can work. WB is good with full dreeg so warlock could be fine too with mirror and maivens instead of soldier passives, but it’s not a guarantee considering you can’t get TD without gimping your build.
Elementalist is too squishy for Ultos right now. Still good in campaign but crucible will require elementalist to sacrifice damage for defensive stats.
Sorc and purifier don’t have totem but have way better defenses than elementalist. Sorc can go cdr with TD and ulzuins chosen to make up for the totem loss. Purifier also has storm box which light’s defender fully supports.
The links: Spellbinder 1 (tanky version - MoT + MoE + CDR => Campaign/Lokarr/nemesis = piece of cake) Spellbinder 2 (Elem to Aether version) Commando Physical (indeed a Cadence/Markovian version; very safe but low damage) Runebinder Mage Hunter (easy Lokarr) Harbinger Pyro (not refined at all) Poison Warlock(not refined either; good enough for clearing ultimate and kill Lokarr though) Ritualist (theorycraft based on MoT + Aether Savagery; the toon is still a vitality caster)