Hi there, as my first char, I’m building a Forcewave Warlord (92 now) and I seem to be stuck at the Steps of Torment boss, Zarthuzallen. I can’t understand why he kills me so easily with maxed resistance (fire overcapped by 25), 15k life and an OA and DA well within Ultimate recommendations on other threads. Any advice on what I could do to reduce my squishyness?
The base OA and DA are wrong for some reason on grim tools. The numbers (after buffs) are OA 2.2k, DA 2.8k and armor rating 2.1k. My resistances are all capped.
As a side note, even with this setup I can’t get past the SR10 boss on ELITE. Just how much more can my character be improved and how can I get there? I want to get the Shattered Realm set for this build but at this rate, I’ll need it to get to Ultimate SR60 which kind of defeats the purpose lol.
its hard to tell sometimes. Start with the life steal component for the gloves(restless remains) that is at least one thing. But if it is a sudden death then it is usually these shotgun type of spells. Multiple projectiles hit you at once which can mean a quick death. With forcewave you can test this by taking some distance and simply testing if that affects the speed at which you die.
What vizix said is my first thought - life steal. 6% isn’t bad but it isn’t good either unless you’re playing something that does a lot of damage. You are eerily close to picking up Tip the Scales or the 4% ADCtH node on Ghoul which would be huge helps, as would a Restless Remains component on your gloves for another 3%. I would even go as far as to take these over Dryad’s Blessing for this kind of character.
Your mastery defenses look mostly ok with the exception of Ascension and Resilience which you may want to consider investing in. I would also grab maxed Celestial Presence ASAP as it is a notable damage increase which will increase the amount of damage you life steal back, thus by proxy also increasing your survivability.
As for Zarthuzellan specifically, he I find is an odd one. On levelling characters I will sometimes suffer large amounts of burst damage against him and sometimes he’ll be fine. I have to wonder if he’s getting buffed by a Skeletal Priest that spawns in the fight or something similar as that would make him more dangerous even with capped Fire resistance.
Yeah, Zarthuzellan can be a tough sumbiatch sometimes. To add to the above, I would also keep my eye on skeletons that spawn during the fight, Skeletal Knights especially. Those kids can wield shields with physical retaliation which WILL BE transeferred to YOU when Guardians attack them.
Your OA is also kinda low, which renders Assassin’s Mark almost useless. And for whatever reason Dryad, Azrakaa and Assassin’s Blade don’t have a skill attached to them. Bind Ulzaad to War Cry, Dryad to Vire’s Might, Azrakaa/Assassin’s Blade to Forcewave/Guardians (or vice versa).
Half of your equipment are obsolete by far. Torso, shoulder, belt, boots, amulet. If you don’t have replacement, look at the both dlc faction vendor. Your OA are quite low to trigger assassin’s mark, and your elestial presence is non existent.
Zarthuzellan deal elemental + physical damage. His debuff reduce your physical resistance by 30, and in melee he have nova skill that shoot 16 projectile that each dealing heavy physical
and fire damage, this most likely the reason why you’re dead.
I recently noticed that his “shoot two waves of projectiles in an AoE” attack has really high base damage. You’d think that his shotgun blob launcher spell or his burning ground attack would do the most damage, but that one spell does a lot more than I would have expected. It could be the culprit if you get hit by 2 or 3 of those projectiles.
