I’d assume these characters are just too different to give a general assessment of a character’s resources. Of course people generally like 10k HP and maxed resistances, but how this weighs against and interacts with more armor, physical resist, lifesteal, DA, health regen, OA, massive skill bonuses, better debuffs or simply more DPS is just too different for each build, especially when taking into consideration completely different skills and all those celestial powers and how and when they get triggered.
Reading through some well-documented and well-discussed builds in the builds section may be your best bet to get a more general picture of some aspects.
I don’t know if “that’s better” (better than what by the way?) but it works for me
50% fumble comes from a 12/12 Circle of Slaughter (Nightblade). You can also have 40% fumble + 40% impaired aim from Searing Light (Demo). The 20% dodge is a 12/12 Shadow Dance and there are usually 5-10% to take on random legs and belts.
Better than physical resistance. My hellborne commando will probably stay as it is with the 15% phys resist but will try to go the fumble/dodge way with my dual pistol sorc
Almost all those builds are written by and intended for people who have insanely overgeared characters.
The OP was talking about his 2H melee woes. I can relate. 2H melee simply isn’t viable in Ultimate past the halfway point unless you’re overgeared as hell. And after Fort Icon you need to be full purple (which is impossible for new players) or you’ll have to go full tank. Recently I made it to Smuggler’s Pass on my 2H witchblade (with 0 deaths) and shelved the character because I couldn’t go any further. Past Cronley I survived only by chugging consumables every time I saw a pack of heroes. I tweaked and re-tweaked my build and devotions - there’s just no way to get all resists to 80 with the gear I have.
You don’t need to have 80 allres to finish the game. Some guys here finished game on ultimate with green gear only, for scientific purposes.
And 2h melee is one of the easiest ways to begin with. Get yourself some lifesteal and enjoy life in whatever you’re wearing. As long as Nemesis bosses, Mad Queen and Sentinel are not in question, you can farm whatever you want with moderate gear.
1- you don’t need to have all resists to 80, only the ones that are immediately useful, swapping accessories (they only take one slot in your bag!) or other gears (level 50 blue runnic bracers is great) can achieve that
2- you want some form of sustainability, it doesn’t matter what class your are playing, you are doing to die if you don’t have any. Health regeneration, lifesteal, healing, defensive ability, damage absorption etc… pick one maybe two or three.
3- don’t be stubborn, play with the options you are given, if you need to equip a shield for a specific fight, use consumables that boost your defences, equip different defensive augments or components, or carry more health, just do it, it’s possible to swap gears and lightly customize your character as you wish, you might as well take advantage of it.
3- you don’t need legendary gears, come on now, you don’t ask a man to catch a fish, to reward him with a fishing rod, you give the man a fishing rod, so he can catch a fish. The fish is you beating the game, the fishing rod is what you find along the way. The developers aren’t dumb, the game is designed around yellow green and blue gears since those are the items you find along the way. You can look up gladiator crucible as a comparison if you want a game mode that is designed around sets and legendaries, I can assure you it is much harder than the campaign.
4- random example, my 2 handed shaman/nightblade trashed ultimate in green faction gears just fine, now shaman has the overpowered wendigo totem, but I wasn’t even casting it much unless facing a boss. Other classes have other forms of sustainability.
The developers aren’t dumb but the balance in the game is largely community-driven, which inevitably means the feedback the developers receive consists mostly of the opinions of the veterans who already have everything and are bored and want ever more challenge. This problem isn’t exclusive to GD, of course. It happened before - to pretty much every community-driven game in history.
I knew what to expect so I’m not angry. But let’s face the truth: the entry barrier for Ultimate farming is currently sky high. (It’s not really farming until you can, for example, do BoC in about 15 minutes. If it takes you an hour, you won’t get anything because legendary droprate is abysmally low everywhere including endgame dungeons/bosses.) Trying to explain all this to the veterans is predictably futile. In my mother tongue we have a saying: “the well-fed doesn’t understand the hungry” and it 100% applies here. The rift between the old and the new players will grow ever wider.
No change has been made to the campaign, it is the same as it was when the game was being released and people started playing the game. If players beat the campaign the first time around on their first character, why can’t you?
The developers made the Crucible for the players who already beat the game and have everything.
I’d like to try to drag everyone’s attention back to the original post. There’s some specific questions there that could be tackled fruitfully.
But also, beyond the un-answered list of limited-scope questions, there’s a major caveat that I failed to pre-emptively disassemble:
An easy response on this topic is “it depends,” but that’s also entirely unhelpful. If a general comment about something isn’t quite possible, perhaps comment on a more specific example? Or a case study?
As a random example, if you run a character that is dependent on lifesteal as one of your primary means of survival, then how much lifesteal do you think this character required for viability? And/Or how much secondary survivability attributes, like HP pool or attack speed, etc, were required for this case study? I recognize that these factors work in concert, and most certainly this can be commented on beyond ‘it depends.’
This approach allows someone with any build to glean some info on the mechanical thresholds that yields predictability, or the ability to self-troubleshoot. My next character might not rely mainly on lifesteal, but I might be able to factor in my knowledge of it’s scale & threshold to use lifesteal more supplementally, as another example. This knowledge is universally useful.
Additionally, the thread was intended to be more broad than the matter of 2h builds - any build & defensive strategy can help inform, since all single defensive mechanics are theoretically relevant to all characters.
As a melee character, neither lifesteal nor circuit breakers will save you in Act 4 against huge crowds of aetherials. As long as you don’t attack your effective lifesteal is 0. So their ranged and casters will burn you very quickly while you’re running between them. Chthonics aren’t much better because lifesteal doesn’t work on Obsidians at all.
You can hit-and-run, sure, but if you can’t sustain melee, what’s the point? It’s better to pick a ranged spec then.
Stacking resists and raising your resist cap are hands down the best mitigation options. In the endgame everyone and their dog will lower your resists but temporarily going from 90 to 70 isn’t the same as from 70 to 50. 80 is enough for most zones but getting everything to 80 without a shield is a huge pain.
IMO, what 2H melee really needs is reliable on-demand mitigation vs. ranged attacks. Melee enemies you should be able to handle if your DPS is OK but what will save you from turning into a burned pincushion while you’re killing that Rage Hulk? His friends won’t stand idly by.
Have you considered asking for advices instead of bashing the game? If some players have no issue playing a 2 handed melee character, but you do, the issue is most likely you. There is no inherent difference between wielding a 2-handed sword and dual wielding 2 1-handed swords btw, so your issue is clearly your build / skill distribution and not the weapon you have, which make your suggestions a bit silly.
If you post your character sheet, your class and you skill distribution using grimcalc.com on the skills&classes sub forum, I’m sure some ppl will be able to help you out and point what’s wrong with your set up and how to improve it.
No, other players like you and I. People with purple sets are the 1%. And they didn’t start the game with purple set, they also played the game with what they had. 99% other players play the game with what they have.
How much of each defense type will make you immortal?
How much of each defense type will make you not be 1-shot?
What is the max monster damage that needs to be mitigated?
I think the answer is most certainly ‘it depends,’ because:
Every build has a mix of defenses no matter the focus
No one knows the exact highest crit monsters are capable of, especially if you factor in potential debuffs
There are skills to mitigate the occasional massive crit (blast shield, the death ward amulet thing, turtle shell, etc)
I think I know what you mean, I.e. If I focus on Armour, how much is enough to feel ‘safe’ across the board? But again I think the above additional factors make it impossible to be definitive about…
Yeah, even stuff like lifesteal is intricately tied to your damage output, that is also tied to your attack speed, the enemy defence, your skills, your debuffs, his buffs etc…
There is no rhetorical answer to it all and the best way to find out is to play the game yourself. Are you dying? Yes? How are you dying? Over time? Try more sustainability. Bursted down? Try more health, resistance, defensive ability. No? Try more offence.
On my latest character I use disabling as my main protection source.
As a lightning/cold Druid I permastun everything and never take damage. If I feel lazy I pop Mirror of Ereoctes (aka. Mirror of Erection) and facetank for 3 seconds.
The amount and quality of what you’re demanding is complex enough to form a proper bachelor’s case study. No sane man is going to produce you a function f(a, b, c, …) where a is hp, b is %lifesteal, c(x, y, …) is function for resist reduction, … over a game without being well paid for it.
Some waypoints that may (or may not) be true for most cases:
10k hp for chars w/o %damage absorbtion, 8k hp for chars with it.
70%+ all res apart from aether and stun. 40%+ for aether and stun. 10%+ phys res
1800+ da
This will prevent you from being oneshot in 99% cases. Now the second task is to regain health. This one is much more complicated. You cant rely on a single mechanics because there’s no mechanics that will work in every case. Some enemies are immune to lifesteal. Some enemies deal %reduced hp damage and dont give a shit about your hp pool. You need to combine different approaches.
I think you should plan to be able hold against 2 fatal strikes of nemesis boses. 10 k health, 2.2 k DA and at least 2k armour rating with max resistances. The higher the health regen, the better it is. If you dont have high regen, then go for life steal.
will look into retooling my commando for that. I only have 15% phys resist though that seems enough.