- Sheet dps is a good rule of the thumb for comparing variants of the same build without actually playing either. For example, an Aether Ray Sorc that does 60k sheet dps is probably less effective at killing things than the one that does 85k dps (unless the 85k one has serious offensive ability issues).
However, it is completely useless when comparing two different builds. For example, a 35k sheet dps Witch Hunter or Spellbreaker (cold or acid SS spammer) is miles ahead of even a 110k dps Aether ray build in terms of killing speed (and everything else tbh). This is because the sheet dps doesn’t take into account crit damage, procs, secondary skills you can spam (Ring of Steel, SS, Blade Burst in this case) and, most importantly, resistance reductions.
tl;dr - it’s great for evaluating variants of the same build, horrible for comparing different builds.
- Warders have been the class that has been able to beat up Avatar consistently since the first patch he was introduced in. This is because Wendigo totem and Menhir’s will are both amazing regeneration abilities (constant regen > life steal for Avatar), the high physique allows you to easily hit the defensive ability benchmark or get close to it (I think it’s 2400, but they keep changing his stats so my information could be outdated) and high health gives you a good buffer if something goes wrong. Also, Warder gear has universally high armor and physical resistance (+ two-hander Savagery bonus to physical res, and only Soldier can get 100% absorption), which makes his summon do nothing except enable your procs and lifesteal. Also, stuns are a major part of the fight, and any Warder variant has 60-80% stun resist.
There are two variants you can use:
A. Ultos lightning build
pros:
- Gear naturally gives you 92% lighting res cap and 150% total lightning res, you just need to change one component and 5 armor augments, and Avatar can’t out-dps your Wendigo.
- The build is all about single target dps, your Savagery does around 50k dps without crits.
- Your normal devotion/item setup gives you enough lightning resistance reduction to damage him, provided you are using Ulzuin’s hat (which you should be anyway).
- You have massive physical protection from your standard item setup, I wouldn’t be surprised if his pets did literally 0 physical damage to you.
- You need to hold down LMB on Avatar and press 1 for Wendigo totem every 10 sec or so. That’s basically it, you could train a liberal arts major to do it. Maybe, it’s still slightly harder than writing names on cups. Occasionally, you may need to clear the ranged summons when it gets crowded, but it’s not strictly necessary.
cons:
- No matter what you do, you will not be able to reduce his lightning resistance lower than around 80-90%, which seriously gimps your dps
- Furthermore, around 30-50% of your weapon damage is physical, which is completely wasted on him
- You have no effective way of clearing his pets. This is not a huge problem because they can title you at best, but it slows down your computer and makes it harder to target Mog himself.
- Ranged summons can still hurt you a bit with piercing damage, getting 85-92% pierce cap is inconvenient for an Ultos build, so you will have to eventually Blitz and kill them once 10+ spawn, making your kill time longer.
- A lot of your dps in normal fights comes from your massive crit bonus, but you will never get enough OA to crit Avatar.
conclusion:
Extremely consistent, almost impossible to die unless you fall asleep half way trough. No need for potions or special preparations. Also very slow, easily up to 25 min. I farmed all of my shoulders with this build, never died or even got close, and could just do normal BoC runs before or after the fight without changing gear.
B. Bleeding Warder (Bloodrager??)
DISCLAIMER:
I have much less experience with this setup, I have an old bleed Warder variant that I never updated to use the new set. I understand how the build works, but take everything I say with a grain of salt. For reference, I’ve been using a build similar to the Chinese one, except sword + shield instead of 2-hander, and with Overguard+S.Mastery instead of max Grasping Vines.
pros:
- Huge dps. Bleeding builds excel when they can stack all of their nasty shit onto a single, fat target, and there doesn’t get any fatter than this.
- Massive resistance reduction, you can easily get him down to <50% when you stack everything.
- Tons of Aoe for clearing his summons, bleed crits from Blade Arc kill them in a few ticks. Regardless of the build variant, they will be popping faster than he can summon them, which is important.
- Depending on the variant, can get insane DA. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be uncrittable in the current patch though, but any variant should easily have 2300 DA.
- High OA. This build might even crit occasionally. The best thing is, you don’t need to, the build doesn’t rely on high crits for dps.
cons:
- Lots of item swapping required to get the proper lightning resistance, which means that if you gear for Avatar, you can only do Avatar.
- Even with the item swapping, there is only so much you can do, and hitting 92% lightning res is probably just a wet dream. This is accentuated by the fact that the bleed builds very require specific items (mostly jewellery), because they rely on stacking flat bleed damage and multiplying it via Savagery+BA. It may be hard to find balance between damage and resistances.
- Due to being on the edge defensively, potions are required for safe, consistent runs. They need to be re-used at least once during the fight, which is a pain in the ass.
- I haven’t tried the 2-hander variant, but if the shield one needs potions, that one could even require disengaging every now and then in the second stage.
- A lot of skills you need to spam constantly to keep all of the debuffs up.
- Lower physical resistance means killing summons actually matters (not so much of a problem, as stated in the pros, you have tons of aoe).
conclusion:
Much faster kill times, around 15 min is realistic. However, you could die if you screw up, so you need to be concentrated for the whole second phase (around 10 min). Also, you need to fiddle around with the gear, probably get a second set of items just to kill him, which is inconvenient. That said, at least the fight isn’t boring, it’s a thrill the first time you do it. Would I want to re-do it? Probably not.
C. Comparison:
For easy farming, use the Ultos build. It take longer, but also takes absolutely no effort since he literally can’t do anything to you as long as you keep the totem up. Turn on the TV or play a a podcast in the background, and 3 hours later you will have a godly shoulder should you need it for your lightning Trickster. The bleeding build is faster, but takes much more effort. Avatar is a good benchmark test for the build, but you will probably not want to use that build for consistent farming.
