So my first character to finish the game on was pretty much a pure arcanist. I finished normal veteran at lvl 49 and decided to move onto elite veteran.
For the life of me I can’t get past the warden’s 2nd phase.
His ranged attack which seems to be poison and possibly penetration or a bleed basically one shots me.
I’ve found tons of gear with various elemental resists, but haven’t found a single piece with poison resistance, so I’m sitting at -25%.
Of course the warden is immune to freezing, and mirror has a long cool down.
I’m super frustrated at this point and ready to reroll another class.
The Warden does no poison damage, as previously said. He does Aether damage, so aether resistances would be nice to have. Also, you should invest in Maiven’s Sphere of Protection spell in Arcanist, since that is an excellent spell to have, if you haven’t already.
You can always go back to Normal/Veteran to farm some more if the higher difficulties prove too challenging.
For clarification, the Warden deals some Aether damage, but most of what you’ll be getting hit by is Pierce/Bleed/Physical.
I’ve grown a distaste in offering build advice because its generally better for people to learn stuff on their own, but I would recommend fewer points in Arcane Will and more points in Physique, rather than Spirit.
Warden deals Physical and Aether primarily with also some Pierce/Bleed.
Going pure Arcanist which is the mastery with the least amount of health will be difficult as opposed to using another mastery to give stats/other skills.
If that level 85 build is what you’re aiming for you’ll have an even more difficult time later on in Elite and especially Ultimate unless you find some amazing items or expect to die a lot.
edit: First form is Physical and Aether Damage, Second form he is again mostly Physical and Aether but has a crossbow attack that deals Physical, Pierce, and Bleed damage which will take a large chunk of health if you are too close to him and get shot gunned or merely fail to dodge the bolts.
Looks like you’re going with a lightning build? Finding a way to work in widow may help as the arcane mines give a really nice - to lighting resists. That is huge if you’re focusing on Lightning. Also if you’re dying alot, you might want to try to also pick up some defensive devotions like Behemoth.
Going single mastery is tough… Especially with Arcanist. They have a lack of HP and they have no source of heals (good reason to pick up behemoth). Mirror is awesome, but as you mentioned, it has a long cool down time. So unless you can kill your target in 3 seconds (or have the devotion points for the hourglass devotion which would give you 8-11 seconds as you could spam mirror) you’re kind of screwed as a pure arcanist. PRM is also one of the tougher skills to make good for the arcanist (along with TSS, both of which are said to be receiving a buff in the next patch) without some really good gear.
That’s in ultimate. This is elite, single mastery characters actually shine here because you don’t have to actually have to choose to be a single mastery build yet. At this point your character is basically just trying to max out all the skills you need from one mastery, and the way max/overleveled skill scaling works it’s usually much more efficient to do so. You can then start working on leveling a second mastery at leisure.
Honestly it just looks like he’s not stacking a lot of HP and possibly resistances. Physique is something else - given HP/physique scaling on affixes, starting at around these levels it’s much more efficient to stack HP and +%health rather than physique if you’re only interested in health. He’s also still at a point where he can simply start dumping points into physique if he really wants to wear high end warrior gear.
Finally, he needs to start figuring out how to deal with recovering HP in end-game. Regen, life leech, lifesteal, direct healing or any combination of these work - he needs to start checking out constellations/components for sources of these.
All good points. I’ve been pretty much dumping 3 to 1 in spirit vs phys to decrease popping potions. More health definitely can’t hurt at this point.
I moved onto act 2 (for better lack of terminology), and seeing what I can find for gear.
At this point I haven’t really been stacking on particular stat for dmg, mostly whatever brings my base dmg up with panetti’s.
I’m 436% Fire bonus, 475% cold and 654% lightening. Most of my damage has been lightening at this point however. Panetti’s missile seems to be doing 617 dmg cold, 617 Fire, 756 Lightening, 590-804 Aether and 560 electrocute.
Flash freeze for survivability by freezing (most) everyone in place while I pew pew
I thought I was stuck in elite veteran.